Poll of the Day > All Geek's Eve

(+) Yeah! (+)

Oh, PO, I have a question for you, not sure if you can help, but you talked about the book that kicked off this idea, and I'm curious what you think. This is for the DnD game set in ancient Greece btw.

If a tribe of neanderthals somehow mannaged to survive into 400BC, what would they be like, compared to a society against more "modern" homo sapiens? What would they sound like? Would they even have a language? Would they have begun to have tools along with homo sapiens?
Ignoring any inbreeding or that sort of thing for how they survived, it's just a fun thing.

The Wave Master posted...

Enjoying the living hell out of Persona 5. There is just so much to do and absorb.

The social elements have finally opened up to me, and I have to choose how I spend every second of every day. Also, I have a deadline to complete the main quest while I have endless side quest options. Everything from a part time job to dating to reading for fun and even studying, so I don't flunk out of school, It's overwhelmingly great.

The turn based battle system is fun too. You have melee attacks, gun attacks, Persona attacks, and all sorts of other systems. You have to pay attention too because the enemies have the same systems including critical attacks, all out attacks, negoations with demons. Meaning if the enemies get rolling you could die before even getting a single turn. It's so versatile and great.

No offense to Grand Theft Zelda, and Mario with a magic cap, both are great, but they aren't this game, not by a long shot. I haven't even mentioned the amazing story. It's my game of the year so far with a month left. It's great, go buy it now.

They really fucking nailed it in this game.
Every single thing in the game is amazing.

I am a HUGE fan of how the battle system is so simple yet complicated. No crazy UI and barely any menu-ing even though you have so many options.

The fact that each action is mapped to a single button makes battles go so smoothly when you know what you are doing.

Unrelated, but as somebody who has seen Justice League I can say without sarcasm that the trailer for Avengers 3 is better than basically that entire movie. With the exception of a few scenes.

shadowsword87 posted...

Oh, PO, I have a question for you, not sure if you can help, but you talked about the book that kicked off this idea, and I'm curious what you think. This is for the DnD game set in ancient Greece btw.

If a tribe of neanderthals somehow mannaged to survive into 400BC, what would they be like, compared to a society against more "modern" homo sapiens? What would they sound like? Would they even have a language? Would they have begun to have tools along with homo sapiens?
Ignoring any inbreeding or that sort of thing for how they survived, it's just a fun thing.

Semirelated link...

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160607-monkey-stone-age-secrets-unveiled
---

shadowsword87 posted...

If a tribe of neanderthals somehow mannaged to survive into 400BC, what would they be like, compared to a society against more "modern" homo sapiens? What would they sound like? Would they even have a language? Would they have begun to have tools along with homo sapiens?

That really depends, doesn't it? If they encountered other cultures, especially on a regular basis, their society would change accordingly. However, if they were locked off from the rest of the world, odds are they might not change much at all depending on their access to resources, etc.

The best approach might be to figure out what you can about neanderthals then pick a civilization which existed in a circumstance similar to the one in which you're placing them (ie, intercultural interactions, natural resources, etc) then trace the development going forward. Given the gamut of human civilization, they *might* range anywhere from tribes of gatherer-hunters to a developed nation. After all, there are still some relatively primitive tribes left in the world today, largely thanks to having little or no contact with the outside world.

That said, science has shown that neanderthals' brains at the time were less developed in the areas associated with social interaction, etc, which means they'd be starting from a somewhat different place (although, if they continued to exist, they would have evolved over time)
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/science-shows-why-youre-smarter-than-a-neanderthal-1885827/
---

Zeus posted...

You mean "Nomad" was well-done or are you still talking about the Captain storyline?

Sorry, see how that could be read either way.

I meant "The Captain" and "The Commission" stuff in the 1980s storyline. The original Nomad story was in the 1970s, when I wasn't really reading comics, and looking back on it from farther on, it has a lot of hallmarks of the sort of 70s counterculture ideas that I was never really a fan of, so I didn't like it as much.

If I made a list of what I consider Marvel's best storylines (maybe top 10-20 or so), most of them would be from the early to mid 80s. That just feels like the most productive period to me, when they were properly balancing creativity and organization. After Jim Shooter got kicked out as Editor-in-Chief it feels like the entire company just started sliding into an "inmates running the asylum" sort of situation, combined with the downsides of a lot of older fanboy comic fans who fell in love with the comics in the 60s becoming writers (and writing at levels of quality approaching Internet fanfiction).

I always give Shooter a ton of credit, though. Partly because after he left Marvel he went on to create Valiant, which was fantastic early on (and which started sucking almost immediately after THEY leveraged him out), but partly because most of the artists and writers who talk the most shit about him seem to be massive assholes themselves.



Zeus posted...

I'm not sure anybody in the industry takes things like continuity all that seriously.

Probably because once you take continuity out of the equation these days, people stop reading.

You can get away with swapping in a new continuity (a la DC's endless reboots or Marvel creating the "Ultimate" line), and you can get good stuff out of standalone out-of-continuity stories (ie, stuff like Red Son), but it seems like most people tend to stop reading periodic release stories if they feel like there's no overarching storyline or continuity to hold it together. Doubly so if you start getting radically different interpretations of the same character in stories (ie, the reason why so many people hate DC's current version of Superman in the movies).

Or, to put it another way, if you give me the impression that no story you tell matters because none of them will ever impact any of the others, then why would I care about any story you tell?


---

Zeus posted...

Kind of an issue whenever you have never-ending series with no clear overarching story plans leading to a definite ending and everybody is allowed to have their own vision for characters.

That's part of why Marvel was so strong in the late 70s/early 80s - for a while, they actually DID have character growth. Peter Parker graduated high school and started dealing with adult issues. Reed Richards and Sue Storm had a kid. Chris Claremont was all about the idea of phasing out old X-Men characters in favor of new students every few years (which is why he married off Cyclops and essentially "retired" him). Iron Man became an alcoholic, recovered, had heart surgery to remove the pacemaker in his chest, Thor became an epic mythic storyline taking place over years worth of real time, and so on.

The idea that "STATUS QUO IS GOD" and that everything will eventually revert back to baseline, and no character will ever undergo meaningful growth or change really didn't start kicking in at Marvel until the later 80s (again, after they dumped Shooter), which is around the same time a lot of weaker writers started taking over titles written by giants of the industry, and rolling back most of their plots to be more like the comic they grew up liking (Thor and Spider-Man being particular victims of this), or trying to embrace the more "xtreme" mood of the era (the main downfall of the X-Men titles in the 90s). Then it kept getting worse, to the point now where it seems like there's an insane cosmic crossover happening every other month that will be forgotten 20 minutes after it's over, so literally nothing matters and nothing is worth caring about. It's barely worth getting interested in a title when a new, good writer comes along and starts telling interesting stories, because as soon as they leave the next guy is just going to ignore or retcon it all anyway.

If anything, the problem these days is the LACK of actual continuity, even as companies like Marvel and DC still pretend that they havecontinuity.

(And the fact that the industry has been hemorrhaging readers for years and is withering on the vine as the publishing arms keep trying to desperately stunt their way into grabbing new audiences is a reflection of that.)

These days strong continuity and story growth is usually only present in independent titles with a sole author, who can do what they want with characters without worry that the next writer is going to be brining characters back from the dead or magically undoing marriages and character development because they liked the old version of the character better. Unsurprisingly, those sorts of titles also seem to be the only titles comic fans or casuals actually CARE about these days (see also, The Walking Dead).


---

shadowsword87 posted...

but you talked about the book that kicked off this idea

Sapiens?

It's actually a damned good book, by the way. And contrary to what the title might imply, it deals with a lot more than just early prehistoric man. I recommend it as a read/buy if you haven't already.



shadowsword87 posted...

If a tribe of neanderthals somehow managed to survive into 400BC, what would they be like, compared to a society against more "modern" homo sapiens? What would they sound like? Would they even have a language? Would they have begun to have tools along with homo sapiens?

Would depend entirely on how and why they survived, I'd say.

If we're assuming they survived by being in a completely unreachable area that no homo sapien could reach in order to displace them (which would involve creative liberties with real world geography, because in actual history no such place really existed), then they could have existed unchanged, and would have been very much like the way they were in their heyday.

(This "isolation" scenario is how the last surviving "alternative" to homo sapiens seemed to survive until it's relatively "recent" end around 12000 BC or so - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_floresiensis )

Alternatively, we can assume a history where Neanderthals underwent a "cognitive revolution" in the same way homo sapiens did (some time around 70,000 BC or so) - early homo sapiens seems to have very distinct behavior differences from later, "modern" humans. If Neanderthals underwent the same shift, they might have been better able to compete (especially since they were stronger physically, and seemingly able to repel most homo sapien incursions prior to that point from what we can tell), and thus, survive much longer, possibly even to modern times.

(This "cognitive revolution" argument could actually work well in sci-fi with alien experimenters or precursor races who "uplift" primitive homo sapiens at that point, with the potential for Neanderthals to be uplifted in the same way.)

If we assume "moderized" Neanderthals who change enough to be able to survive and compete against homo sapiens, it's pretty much impossible to say what sort of behavior patterns they would have - they would be radically different, and could share or lack any given trait we normally associate with homo sapiens as long as it suits the needs of the author.

If we assume classic Neanderthals who survive unchanged in some way, it's hard to say what their behavior would be like at all, because we really don't know all that much about them at all. Contrary to popular assumptions about what cavemen were like in general, we know very little about Neanderthals. Almost every claim ever made about them has been disputed at one time or another. We can't even say if they had language as we understand it (though I would assume they almost certainly had some level of communication, because even modern primates do).

They would definitely possess simple tools, because we know actual Neanderthals did.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal_behavior

Also, this is a book you might want to consider looking into:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_in_the_Bottomlands

And, of course, there's also this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ugly_Little_Boy


---

Zeus posted...

That said, science has shown that neanderthals' brains at the time were less developed in the areas associated with social interaction, etc, which means they'd be starting from a somewhat different place (although, if they continued to exist, they would have evolved over time)

The trick to that is that, for most of the timescale where the two species overlapped, homo sapiens was apparently ALSO less developed than modern expectations. The two species (which may actually only be two separate branches of the same species, according to some modern interpretations) coexisted for tens of thousands of years in relative equilibrium, which would have been more or less impossible if sapiens were significantly more advanced mentally than Neanderthals.

Generally speaking, what we think of as "modern" humans in terms of brain capacity and thought processes didn't exist prior to around 70000 years ago. At which point we sort of kick-started into overdrive, moved into Neanderthal regions and wiped them out and/or subsumed them, spread across vast areas that would previously have been inhospitable (ie, the upward drive into Siberia and ultimately over into North America), and started developing the techniques that allowed us to reach islands (and to island-hop our way to places like Australia).

If we're imagining a scenario in which Neanderthals could somehow survive and compete, it's not impossible to assume they could have undergone a similar shift, even if they didn't in the world as we know it. It's also possible they could have undergone said shift while sapiens didn't, and we wouldn't be here now.


---

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Sapiens?

It's actually a damned good book, by the way. And contrary to what the title might imply, it deals with a lot more than just early prehistoric man. I recommend it as a read/buy if you haven't already.

Yeah, when in the first 20 pages or so, the author says that human language was created as a way to gossip, I knew I was in for a ride.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Zeus posted...

I'm not sure anybody in the industry takes things like continuity all that seriously.

Probably because once you take continuity out of the equation these days, people stop reading.

You can get away with swapping in a new continuity (a la DC's endless reboots or Marvel creating the "Ultimate" line), and you can get good stuff out of standalone out-of-continuity stories (ie, stuff like Red Son), but it seems like most people tend to stop reading periodic release stories if they feel like there's no overarching storyline or continuity to hold it together. Doubly so if you start getting radically different interpretations of the same character in stories (ie, the reason why so many people hate DC's current version of Superman in the movies).

Or, to put it another way, if you give me the impression that no story you tell matters because none of them will ever impact any of the others, then why would I care about any story you tell?

Eh, not really what I meant. I was talking more about maintaining consistent characters -- an area where comics tend to be notoriously bad -- and a lot of the smaller stuff. Granted, it also ties into the issue where a lot of the over-arching stories only span months or years rather than the title of the book. There's an absence of long-term planning, partly owing to the various talent involved and the lack of a central creator "policing" the direction. Subsequently, it's why a lot of the continuity feels like they're making it up as they go along -- because that's exactly what's happening much of the time.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

That's part of why Marvel was so strong in the late 70s/early 80s - for a while, they actually DID have character growth. Peter Parker graduated high school and started dealing with adult issues. Reed Richards and Sue Storm had a kid. Chris Claremont was all about the idea of phasing out old X-Men characters in favor of new students every few years (which is why he married off Cyclops and essentially "retired" him). Iron Man became an alcoholic, recovered, had heart surgery to remove the pacemaker in his chest, Thor became an epic mythic storyline taking place over years worth of real time, and so on.

Yes, at least that aspect was nice. Honestly it would be cool if things at least progressed in that direction, so that you'd have the kids of heroes who would eventually have their own storylines.

Granted, you still had *selective* advancement of time where even as some characters grew older and matured, others didn't change.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

trying to embrace the more "xtreme" mood of the era (the main downfall of the X-Men titles in the 90s).

Pfff, I enjoyed a lot of the 90s X-Men. It was when they introduced Omega Red, one of my fave X-Men rogues and fighting game characters (even if I'm mediocre with him... granted, he wasn't a top-tier character anyway).

ParanoidObsessive posted...

or magically undoing marriages

May the same happen to Quesada's marriage!
---

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Zeus posted...

That said, science has shown that neanderthals' brains at the time were less developed in the areas associated with social interaction, etc, which means they'd be starting from a somewhat different place (although, if they continued to exist, they would have evolved over time)

The trick to that is that, for most of the timescale where the two species overlapped, homo sapiens was apparently ALSO less developed than modern expectations. The two species (which may actually only be two separate branches of the same species, according to some modern interpretations) coexisted for tens of thousands of years in relative equilibrium, which would have been more or less impossible if sapiens were significantly more advanced mentally than Neanderthals.

Generally speaking, what we think of as "modern" humans in terms of brain capacity and thought processes didn't exist prior to around 70000 years ago. At which point we sort of kick-started into overdrive, moved into Neanderthal regions and wiped them out and/or subsumed them, spread across vast areas that would previously have been inhospitable (ie, the upward drive into Siberia and ultimately over into North America), and started developing the techniques that allowed us to reach islands (and to island-hop our way to places like Australia).

If we're imagining a scenario in which Neanderthals could somehow survive and compete, it's not impossible to assume they could have undergone a similar shift, even if they didn't in the world as we know it. It's also possible they could have undergone said shift while sapiens didn't, and we wouldn't be here now.

I'm talking apples-to-apples. The Smithsonian article compares prehistoric man's brain to the neanderthal's and found that the development of certain parts was very different, which may be one reason why sapiens were able to succeed.
---

Bit behind the 8-ball on this one, but just saw the trailer for X-Men: The New Mutants and... wtf?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qnb2ZdoxbbU

The opening seemed generic X-Men shit but then it suddenly goes horror (and not very subtly, given the line where they claim that it's a haunted house rather than a hospital). Really not sure how to feel about that. Sure, I like horror and a lot of superhero movies have been getting stale but... wtf?
---

The Animated Batma. Ninja trailer is up. It looks interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwPFxcefpdU
---

The Wave Master posted...

The Animated Batma. Ninja trailer is up. It looks interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwPFxcefpdU

tbh, until I saw it was going to use more villains than just the Joker, wasn't that interested. However, I saw what I thought looked like Penguin, Harley, Grodd (the most interesting of the bunch because wtf), and Two-Face in there. Not sure who the pink-haired chick is supposed to be. Guessing an original character?

Oh, plus the video from the other topic shows more... perhaps too much because it almost implies time travel or some nonsense as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9RMKTrQKZc
---

Wait, has Woken Matt become a thing on television now?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYVHNAAyJtM
---

Zeus posted...

The Smithsonian article compares prehistoric man's brain to the neanderthal's and found that the development of certain parts was very different, which may be one reason why sapiens were able to succeed.

Could you be more specific than just "prehistoric man"? That's a pretty long time where a lot of stuff happened.

shadowsword87 posted...

Zeus posted...

The Smithsonian article compares prehistoric man's brain to the neanderthal's and found that the development of certain parts was very different, which may be one reason why sapiens were able to succeed.

Could you be more specific than just "prehistoric man"? That's a pretty long time where a lot of stuff happened.

I might remind you that the article I linked is a lot more specific than I could ever be. =p
---

Megaman 11!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUX9wXhOlQg
---

Tried reading a few stories on CBR.com -- glanced at it due to the Demon Bear stuff (New Mutants background) then saw some interesting headlines in the sidebar -- and, I swear, the site must be run by functional illiterates. The "Animation Violation" story -- which I won't link to because I don't want to give shitty clickbait the views it wants -- has some of the worst "professional" writing I've seen in ages.

The Wave Master posted...

Megaman 11!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUX9wXhOlQg

Huh. And here just the other day somebody was complaining that there hasn't been a truly new Mega Man game in something like seven years.

At any rate, it looks pretty good. The only disappointment is that there's no 3DS version >_>
---

A part of me wants Megaman X1, X2, and X3 HD remaster. It would be glorious.

Even better if Capcom kind of forgets that everything after X3 was just erased from cannon. The X series was basically over after X4 anyway. I guess if they keep X4 that's fine, but the rest are average to trash.

Just finish the story because after they defeat Sigma in X3 it's still up in the air about how Wiley created Zero to kill the original Megaman, and successfully does so, but what about everyone else, Roll, Rush, Proto, etc. We need some clarity.
---

Yeah, women or broken Matt Hardy is,a thing.

With his brother injured he has to do something until The Royal Rumble.
---

Bayonetta 3 and Soul Calibur VI being announced last night at the video game awards.

Zelda took game of the year, and bloodbourne 2 was years or at least something from From Software.

Not a bad event overall.
---

shadowsword87 posted...

Yeah, when in the first 20 pages or so, the author says that human language was created as a way to gossip, I knew I was in for a ride.

By the end, it turns into what seems like a marketing campaign for transhumanism, so it's right up your alley. :-D


---

Zeus posted...

Pfff, I enjoyed a lot of the 90s X-Men. It was when they introduced Omega Red, one of my fave X-Men rogues and fighting game characters (even if I'm mediocre with him... granted, he wasn't a top-tier character anyway).

I was always of the mindset that characters like Cable and Gambit represent some of the worst aspects of where the comics were going at the time, and the fact that 90s kids latched onto them so hard and turned them into popular and enduring characters is one of the many, many, many reasons why I have such little respect for 90s kids.

That being said, the writing on most Marvel comics definitely took a dramatic downturn in the 90s, not just the X-titles. Basically squeezing Claremont out to replace him with Jim Lee (who left almost immediately to form Image anyway - which itself became the textbook for everything wrote with 90s comics) left the X-titles somewhat rudderless, and weaker writers helmed titles that relied on too many tropes of the era.

There's a reason why the comic fan community used to use the phrase "God protect the children of today from the 90s".

(And then, of course, 2010s DC went and hired most of the people responsible for the 90s, and SURPRISE! the New 52 turned out to be mostly shit.)



Zeus posted...

ParanoidObsessive posted...

or magically undoing marriages

May the same happen to Quesada's marriage!

Considering he basically created a sort of Mary Sue girlfriend for Peter and named her after his own daughter (Carlie), and then forced her on Peter to mostly get him away from MJ, you might take at least some vicarious pleasure in the fact that a later writer had her get sprayed in the face with Goblin formula, so she's basically kind of deformed now, and then she was "put on a bus" and sent out of the comic for the foreseeable future.

---

Zeus posted...

Bit behind the 8-ball on this one, but just saw the trailer for X-Men: The New Mutants and... wtf?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qnb2ZdoxbbU

The opening seemed generic X-Men shit but then it suddenly goes horror (and not very subtly, given the line where they claim that it's a haunted house rather than a hospital). Really not sure how to feel about that. Sure, I like horror and a lot of superhero movies have been getting stale but... wtf?

They're trying to do the Demon Bear storyline:

http://marvel.wikia.com/wiki/Demon_Bear_(Earth-616)

No idea how close it's going to be to the actual comic story, but I assume they're going to go for an angle where you're led to suspect it's tied to Illyana and her demony magic side, only to have the twist be that it was Dani all along.

Early New Mutants was pretty dark. It could potentially work as a horror franchise if done right (though whether or not it WILL be done right is another question entirely).

Though this may all be moot, if the deal Disney and Fox have been discussing actually goes through, because if it does all of the X-Men rights will revert back to Marvel anyway, and odds are everything will get rebooted one way or another.


---

Zeus posted...

Wait, has Woken Matt become a thing on television now?

Yes.

Matt filed a claim on the "Broken" gimmick, and because of how legal stuff works, Impact would have had to step up and file an objection and then be willing to fight him in open court over it. But Impact is basically hemorrhaging money, so they openly admitted they're not going to bother.

So, for all intents and purposes, Matt owns the "Broken" gimmick now.

He's going to use "Woken" Matt Hardy in the WWE though, because apparently he worked out a deal with Vince where it will essentially be the same character, but the WWE can trademark and sell merch based on it, and if he ever leaves, he can still go back to being "Broken" in the indies or in other promotions.

It's pretty much the best-case scenario in terms of how the rights are going to be handled. So now all we have to do is wait and see how the WWE manages to fuck the gimmick up with poor writing and not supporting Matt's vision.

(That being said, supposedly Vince is currently strongly behind Matt having creative freedom to do what he wants with it, so a combination of TV time and doing his own thing online might still keep him strongly over. As long as the creative department doesn't resent him for it and constantly book him in bullshit angles, and as long as Vince doesn't sour on the idea eventually, it could be good.)


---

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I was always of the mindset that characters like Cable and Gambit represent some of the worst aspects of where the comics were going at the time, and the fact that 90s kids latched onto them so hard and turned them into popular and enduring characters is one of the many, many, many reasons why I have such little respect for 90s kids.

I like Gambit, but was never a Cable guy (or a Cable Man!). Honestly surprised to hear your rancor for Gambit, given that he has a neat design and power. (Cable I completely understand.)

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Matt filed a claim on the "Broken" gimmick, and because of how legal stuff works, Impact would have had to step up and file an objection and then be willing to fight him in open court over it. But Impact is basically hemorrhaging money, so they openly admitted they're not going to bother.

Hooray for Anthem Sports finally backing down because of costs. It was a dick move anyway. I guess that they're probably hurting for money between paying Corgan to go away and Impact (or whatever they're calling it now) underperforming.

Granted, by now a lot of Matt's shine has faded and he's unlikely to get the kind of push on WWE that he got on TNA but still, it makes me want to watch Raw again. (Plus it'll be nice to watch Strowman.)

ParanoidObsessive posted...

He's going to use "Woken" Matt Hardy in the WWE though, because apparently he worked out a deal with Vince where it will essentially be the same character, but the WWE can trademark and sell merch based on it, and if he ever leaves, he can still go back to being "Broken" in the indies or in other promotions.

Kinda makes sense. Granted, it'd be nice if he could consistently use it wherever but, eh, WWE nowadays.
---

Zeus posted...

I like Gambit, but was never a Cable guy (or a Cable Man!). Honestly surprised to hear your rancor for Gambit, given that he has a neat design and power. (Cable I completely understand.)

I didn't like him because he kind of felt like lazy writing. It's like, "Okay, kids like Wolverine, but we only have one Wolverine, and even Wolverine is sort of tamer now, so we have to make more bad boy characters with mysterious pasts so they can be surrogate Wolverines." Cable sort of fell into that same category, only with lots of guns and pouches because Liefeld.

It also didn't help that I was annoyed by the way they handled the whole Gambit/Rogue relationship, because it made pretty much zero sense at the time (or mostly since). Rogue hooking up with Magneto made more sense, and even that was sort of weird/squickish. It made Gambit feel almost like he was being presented as someone's Mary Sue fanfic character (and, seeing what sort of characters Jim Lee introduced once they started Image, I'm kind of even more convinced of that, just like I can make some fairly educated guesses as to why Psylocke was magically turned into a Japanese ninja for absolutely no sane or rational reason).

I probably would have liked Gambit better if they'd stuck with the original intention and had him revealed as an undercover bad guy who was essentially infiltrating the X-Men on behalf of Mr. Sinister, but the combination of 90s kids gushing over him and Claremont getting the boot sort of put the kibosh on that.

Then again, I was already starting to grow disillusioned with Marvel as a whole by that point, and switching more and more over to Valiant (which was fantastic, at least until they shit-canned Jim Shooter), so it's also possible that at least some of my resentment for characters like Gambit and Cable was rooted in the fact that they were the tangible symbol of Marvel turning into something I honestly didn't like or respect any more, simply by virtue of being in the wrong place at the wrong time (and on that note, I never liked Venom as a character, either)
.


Zeus posted...

Hooray for Anthem Sports finally backing down because of costs. It was a dick move anyway.

Well, that was sort of the point. The idea was to punish the guys who were leaving and prevent them from doing the thing that made them popular, as sort of a warning to other guys on the roster - basically, if you stay here until you get popular enough to go somewhere better, we're going to fuck you, so just stay here and play ball.

The problem is, it backfired - it basically painted them as a company that workers weren't going to want to come work for, especially when the indies were thriving in a way they hadn't for decades, and the perception was that performers could retain creative freedom AND make more money working the indie scene than they could for a company that barely had TV presence and was borderline bankrupt 9/10ths of the time.

The irony, of course, is that Impact/Anthem wasn't doing anything that the WWF/WWE hadn't done for 20+ years (see also, the Dudley Boys). But we're kind of used to the WWE being assholes by this point. This was Impact's opportunity to win people over by being the better man, and in the end, lost those same people by being assholes.



Zeus posted...

Kinda makes sense.

Which is the weirdest thing of all, because since when did anything behind the scenes in wrestling ever make sense? It always seems to come across like a carny show being run by lunatics and con artists.


---

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Then again, I was already starting to grow disillusioned with Marvel as a whole by that point, and switching more and more over to Valiant (which was fantastic, at least until they shit-canned Jim Shooter), so it's also possible that at least some of my resentment for characters like Gambit and Cable was rooted in the fact that they were the tangible symbol of Marvel turning into something I honestly didn't like or respect any more, simply by virtue of being in the wrong place at the wrong time (and on that note, I never liked Venom as a character, either)

I would just *love* to hear your thoughts on Speedball/Penance.

>_>
---

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I probably would have liked Gambit better if they'd stuck with the original intention and had him revealed as an undercover bad guy who was essentially infiltrating the X-Men on behalf of Mr. Sinister, but the combination of 90s kids gushing over him and Claremont getting the boot sort of put the kibosh on that.

Might have been an interesting angle if he betrayed Sinister instead at the end, but given that the Teen Titans -- the DC attempt to capitalize on X-Men -- had done their whole Judas Contract just a few years earlier, it would just feel like a pale imitation.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Well, that was sort of the point. The idea was to punish the guys who were leaving and prevent them from doing the thing that made them popular, as sort of a warning to other guys on the roster - basically, if you stay here until you get popular enough to go somewhere better, we're going to fuck you, so just stay here and play ball.

I'm not sure it was necessarily done as punishment, because Anthem was only too happy to see them leave since they never valued the Hardyz or understood their gimmick. I think it was just a crass attempt to capitalize on getting extra money, since TNA had tried doing that beforehand. TNA had long credited itself with getting their gimmick over and felt that it deserved a slice of that pie, trying to get some of their indy and merchandising money. Not that I blame them, because there was a lot of money floating around.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Which is the weirdest thing of all, because since when did anything behind the scenes in wrestling ever make sense? It always seems to come across like a carny show being run by lunatics and con artists.

Well, considering that wrestling has carny roots... At any rate, it's a weird compromise that wouldn't happen anywhere else. Legit talent would be able to take their name wherever (sports or MMA) and actors wouldn't be able to take their character somewhere else (and might even run into snags playing a character too similar to their old one).

Of course, as you noted, before VKM took over the industry, wrestlers would come into and leave territories with their own gimmicks (and, if something changed, they'd be allowed to keep it). However, a lot of that was *because* of the federation system where promotions shared talent and guys were moved between territories to keep people hot or cool them down (or to toss a mask on them and pretend they were a new person). There was a lot of incentive to build up talent and let them maintain their identity because they would be that much better when they came back to you and, of course, you weren't in direct competition. Granted, with national tv, you kinda can't run a model like that *without* competing.

As for lunatics and con artists, it's worth remembering that VKM would go out of his way to poach top talent, give them a goofy gimmick and absolutely bury them until they weren't worth anything to anybody, then let them go back to their old promotion who couldn't use them any more. As far as con artists go, VKM is king.
---

WhiskeyDisk posted...

I would just *love* to hear your thoughts on Speedball/Penance.

I thought Speedball was lame from word go (he was basically a 60's flavored superhero who didn't really fit in the 1980s marketplace).

Penance was eye-rollingly ridiculous, but in a lot of ways it was relatively palatable, because it always felt like something of a deliberate parody of those sort of grimdark edgelord sort of characters from the 90s, and because they saddled the gimmick on to a character I didn't give a single shit about in the first place, I could sort of step back and view it objectively. It felt like THEY knew how stupid it was, so we could all laugh about how stupid it was together.

Then again, I was never into New Warriors at any point, and I didn't really read too many books with either Penance OR Speedball in them, so I'm kind of on the periphery of that situation regardless. If I'd been a major New Warriors fan I'd probably be more annoyed.

(Side-tangent - I still have the first comic Speedball ever appeared it. I suspect it isn't worth all that much :-P )



Zeus posted...

Might have been an interesting angle if he betrayed Sinister instead at the end, but given that the Teen Titans -- the DC attempt to capitalize on X-Men -- had done their whole Judas Contract just a few years earlier, it would just feel like a pale imitation.

Yeah, but that's my point - I didn't really want him to betray Sinister in the end, because I thought he was basically built from the ground up to be a villain pretending (barely) to be good, not a reluctant villain with a heart of gold just waiting for the love of his newfound friends to redeem him from his evil past.

It sort of goes hand-in-hand with why most of his early interactions with the rest of the team involved him being kind of slimy and manipulative, and Wolverine basically being REALLY fucking wary of him (and why Bishop basically wanted to kill him almost immediately the first time they met). Most of which got dropped when they decided they'd rather keep him as a legitimate hero (and which led to the more confusing aspects of the "X-Men traitor" storyline, because it ultimately grew out of his aborted story arc).

On the topic of the Judas Contract, though, it's worth noting that that story worked best in the comics because Terra WAS a complete shit, and WASN'T somehow redeemed by the end of the storyline. Yes, they played it much straighter in the Teen Titans cartoon, but then again, they weren't going to have Deathstroke fucking a teenage girl in the cartoon, either (especially when they couldn't even call him DEATHstroke in the cartoon for standards & practices reasons). Ultimately, it feels like Gambit's story would have been more interesting if they'd played it the same way but with different story beats, not just imitating the story for 90% of it and then just going for a swerve ending.

Derivative isn't necessarily a bad thing in comic stories, as long as you manage to tell the story WELL. The original Secret Wars was literally just a longer, slightly embellished copy of the Contest of Champions from the year before, yet most people barely remember the Contest, and people who do are still likely to give higher praise to Secret Wars. Meanwhile, Secret Wars II was basically an attempt to do a similar crossover with a radically different story, and most people shit on it (I enjoyed it myself, though even I admit that it was the harbinger of the modern "everything is event-driven crossover bullshit" style of publishing that has slowly eaten into the medium like a giant tumor).


---

Zeus posted...

I'm not sure it was necessarily done as punishment, because Anthem was only too happy to see them leave since they never valued the Hardyz or understood their gimmick. I think it was just a crass attempt to capitalize on getting extra money, since TNA had tried doing that beforehand. TNA had long credited itself with getting their gimmick over and felt that it deserved a slice of that pie, trying to get some of their indy and merchandising money. Not that I blame them, because there was a lot of money floating around.

I don't really think it was about money. Mainly because I can only assume that even the Anthem higher-ups were aware enough to understand they couldn't really DO anything with the "Broken" concept themselves without the Hardys, which meant they had no real way to profit off it directly. And "trying to get a slice of merch money" doesn't really feel like a potential motive, partly because preventing the Hardys from using the gimmick meant that merch sales would inevitably decline anyway, and partly because it doesn't seem like any sort of profit sharing on merch or just allowing Impact the right to sell Broken merch was ever discussed as a compromise at any point when it was still in contention.

Plus, when the rumors suggested the WWE WAS willing to throw money at Anthem to get them to give up their claim, Anthem still didn't seem to want to play ball. If it was JUST a money issue, I would think they'd have grabbed for that deal (especially considering their apparent financial woes), rather than going all-or-nothing (and winding up with nothing, which is what happened) on it.

I get the impression it was more about the same motivation that is behind why Vince can be incredibly petty about allowing guys to use their own name in the WWE or take aspects of their gimmick there out of it when they leave. Namely, it's more of a vindictive move to punish people who leave, and to make sure they can't transition their success to the benefit of your competitor company. Which is a logic I understand in principle (especially from Vince's perspective, because it's an attitude he developed around the time that WCW was still a very real threat), but at this point I'm not sure how anyone can actually think that Impact and WWE are even "rivals" in any realistic way, or believe that whatever minor rub the Hardys could have brought with them into the WWE would have seriously detracted from TNA/Impact's viewship than was going to happen regardless.

A lot of behind-the-scenes news and rumors that come out of Impact seem to imply no one there knows what the fuck they're doing and things are incredibly unprofessional in general, so I can absolutely see the entire scenario being rooted in little more than a dickwaving grudge by execs who thought they could get away with it, only to find that they'd bitten off more than they could chew.


---

ParanoidObsessive posted...

On the topic of the Judas Contract, though, it's worth noting that that story worked best in the comics because Terra WAS a complete shit, and WASN'T somehow redeemed by the end of the storyline.

Although it pretty often begged the question *why* Terra was kept around, other than Beast Boy crushing on her pretty hard. The thing that made Gambit exciting by contrast was the is "he or isn't he" which I don't really recall being present with Terra although, in fairness, it's been a considerable amount of time since I read that story arc.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Yes, they played it much straighter in the Teen Titans cartoon, but then again, they weren't going to have Deathstroke fucking a teenage girl in the cartoon, either (especially when they couldn't even call him DEATHstroke in the cartoon for standards & practices reasons)

At least in the cartoon you could understand why the team kept her around. Although some characters had occasional doubts, she got along much better with everybody. Plus the ultimate wrapup had a pleasant bittersweet quality. Not the faux hero's sacrifice, mind you, but instead the fact that she faked her death to live a normal life and Beast Boy decides to put aside his personal happiness to let Terra keep hers. Not that her death didn't provide Beast Boy with a lot of material in the comics, including that brief and underwhelming reappearance during Blackest Night

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Derivative isn't necessarily a bad thing in comic stories, as long as you manage to tell the story WELL. The original Secret Wars was literally just a longer, slightly embellished copy of the Contest of Champions from the year before, yet most people barely remember the Contest, and people who do are still likely to give higher praise to Secret Wars. Meanwhile, Secret Wars II was basically an attempt to do a similar crossover with a radically different story, and most people shit on it (I enjoyed it myself, though even I admit that it was the harbinger of the modern "everything is event-driven crossover bullshit" style of publishing that has slowly eaten into the medium like a giant tumor).

While comics are a highly derivative medium, playing major things so close has a tendency to cheapen things because you're constantly drawing mental comparisons. Or, at least, I wind up drawing mental comparisons.
---

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I don't really think it was about money. Mainly because I can only assume that even the Anthem higher-ups were aware enough to understand they couldn't really DO anything with the "Broken" concept themselves without the Hardys, which meant they had no real way to profit off it directly. And "trying to get a slice of merch money" doesn't really feel like a potential motive, partly because preventing the Hardys from using the gimmick meant that merch sales would inevitably decline anyway, and partly because it doesn't seem like any sort of profit sharing on merch or just allowing Impact the right to sell Broken merch was ever discussed as a compromise at any point when it was still in contention.

Meltzer or somebody discussed the departure at length a long while back. While I can't remember if some revelations were based on a conference call or a source at the company, the gist of the discussion was that Anthem executives didn't really care about the Hardyz or saw much value there. They felt that the Hardyz were overpaid so, when their contract came up, they didn't really put in a strong offer. Sure, it's possible that they were trying to buy them with a lowball and attempted to punish them after, but TNA was already trying to work its claws into the Hardyz outside merchandising so it seemed like a natural extension of that effort.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

And "trying to get a slice of merch money" doesn't really feel like a potential motive, partly because preventing the Hardys from using the gimmick meant that merch sales would inevitably decline anyway, and partly because it doesn't seem like any sort of profit sharing on merch or just allowing Impact the right to sell Broken merch was ever discussed as a compromise at any point when it was still in contention.

Those were parts of the actual terms that they tried to approach the Hardyz with. Actually, Sports Illustrated discusses a lot of the case in detail.

https://www.si.com/extra-mustard/2017/07/14/matt-jeff-hardy-boyz-broken-wwe-impact

Sources tell Sports Illustrated that Impact attempted to sign Jeff Hardy to a lucrative offer, yet only offered Matt Hardy a fraction of what he had been making. Matt Hardy was also promised a position on the Impact creative team, but sources close to the situation informed SI that offer was rescinded by Impact head Jeff Jarrett.

Which also ties into what Meltzer was talking about.

Both sides came to terms on an agreement, sources say, with the Hardys paying $10,000 to $15,000 for the rights to the trademark. The deal would have included a non-disparagement clause, which Matts wife, Reby, mentioned on Twitter. A $1,000 fine would have been levied for the first offense, and then $5,000 penalties would have been enforced thereafter. The Hardys were even willing to sign off on a press release, publicly ending the ordeal on good terms. Yet Anthem then wanted 50 percent of all Hardy revenue, including Jeff Hardys art and music, which was viewed by the Hardys as a monumental heist and money-grab.

So that allegedly did factor into the discussion, although -- if similar attempts hadn't been made in the past -- it might seem like they were only trying to screw with them.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I get the impression it was more about the same motivation that is behind why Vince can be incredibly petty about allowing guys to use their own name in the WWE or take aspects of their gimmick there out of it when they leave. Namely, it's more of a vindictive move to punish people who leave, and to make sure they can't transition their success to the benefit of your competitor company.

Anthem always seemed too green to the business to make those connections. Plus VKM's attitude wasn't typical of the industry, either as an insider or outsider.
---

ParanoidObsessive posted...

A lot of behind-the-scenes news and rumors that come out of Impact seem to imply no one there knows what the fuck they're doing and things are incredibly unprofessional in general, so I can absolutely see the entire scenario being rooted in little more than a dickwaving grudge by execs who thought they could get away with it, only to find that they'd bitten off more than they could chew.

Well, the company has been consistently owned and managed by people who don't know the business with occasional oversight from people who don't understand the industry. It's really no surprise that even when throwing massive amounts of cash at it that TNA would be run poorly. However, if claims are true, the executives almost seemed to want to get rid of Matt by fucking with him so hard during negotiations. It's hard to rationalize that they wanted to keep him when they were engaging in those kinds of behaviors. And, if they were driving him off THEN punishing him for leaving, it seems more like a personal vendetta than business. Makes you wonder if Matt slept with one of their wives or daughters.

Otherwise, while it's unlikely that TNA would ever truly compete with the WWE, it *could* have still turned a consistent profit and worked at a certain level. The current situation is a compounding of repeated poor choices by outsiders who think they know better than insiders (or, going back to Hogan's run, outsiders who put their faith in the wrong insiders)
---

Zeus posted...

Although it pretty often begged the question *why* Terra was kept around, other than Beast Boy crushing on her pretty hard. The thing that made Gambit exciting by contrast was the is "he or isn't he" which I don't really recall being present with Terra although, in fairness, it's been a considerable amount of time since I read that story arc.

Oh, I agree that's kind of questionable in that story, but I'd attribute that to the fact that it was DC (and pre-Crisis at that). In other words, it was a setting where most heroes were stupidly optimistic to the point of suicidal behavior, and you could easily see a team of heroes going "Well, yes, she's kind of a bitch and not overly likeable, but we have to open our hearts to her and help her redeem herself, so that she doesn't go bad." An even more understandable motivation when you remember that the Titans of the era were basically a team of misfits themselves, and thus far more inclined to want to give another misfit the benefit of the doubt.

It also doesn't help that the storyline was SHORT, though. People who are used to comic stories dragging out over a dozen issues these days (or even people who remember her storyline being dragged out across the entire season of the Teen Titans cartoon she appeared in) hear about this amazing story with a great reputation from "the old days", and don't realize the entire thing from beginning to end was like four issues. There was barely enough time for her to establish herself as part of the team or give them a reason to trust/care about her before it was time for her to betray them. In a longer narrative, they might have worked to make her more sympathetic or hidden her true loyalties from the reader more.

(In contrast, when DC did the same thing with Atomica as a lead-in to Forever Evil, the reveal took about twice as long, and they went out of their way to make her as likeable as possible before pulling the rug out on the reader, because there the goal was to fool the audience as much as the Justice League itself.)

Gambit was always just some dirtbag who met and tagged along with Storm (in spite of Storm having no real reason to trust, like, or keep him around) until she hooked back up with the rest of the X-Men, at which point he basically joined the team more out of inertia than anything else.



Zeus posted...

While comics are a highly derivative medium, playing major things so close has a tendency to cheapen things because you're constantly drawing mental comparisons. Or, at least, I wind up drawing mental comparisons.

Trying to copy or set up ironic echoes is pretty standard in comics, though. Whether it's done deliberately for one of any number of reasons, or is done more on the sly in the hopes that the readers won't realize, it happens so damned often that very few writers see it as a negative when plotting out new stories. If anything, it's probably seen as a strong positive. Even moreso these days, with Marvel recycling the names of old crossovers (Secret War, Contest of Champions, Civil War II, etc) and referencing the plots of old stories in the movies.

It's always a question of how stories are handled, though. The Watchmen are literal carbon copy versions of existing characters who were pasted into a much deeper story that people apparently liked and which had something of an effect on the industry going forward (note understated sarcasm). The Squadron Supreme was literally just the Justice League with a thin coat of paint, but used to tell a really interesting story about just how far heroes will (which DC blatantly ripped-off in reverse years later when they did Identity Crisis, and which was somewhat more subtly ripped off years earlier in the Justice League cartoon with the Justice Lords).


---

ParanoidObsessive posted...

(Side-tangent - I still have the first comic Speedball ever appeared it. I suspect it isn't worth all that much :-P )

Same here too actually, but it has some odd sentimental value to me since "Springdale, CT" is an area of my hometown and is hilariously nothing like that part of Stamford.

Also, we're very close to needing a new topic again.

Have we done "Auld Geek Syne" yet?
---

Eh, I'm not sure if PO didn't notice my other two posts because he was busy replying to the first one or if he had nothing else to say pertaining to the wrestling situation.

At any rate, last night I wound up watching clips from "Almost Got 'im" (B:TAS) which, for the most part, I've remembered for the meme-tastic Croc story ("It was a big rock") and the twist. However, all things considered, it might be one of the best episodes in the series and quite possibly my favorite -- not so much for the individual stories, but instead the villain interactions which casts the gang in a slightly different light. (Kinda for the same reason why I loved JLU's "Task Force X" although "Flash and Substance" *might* be my favorite episode.)

WhiskeyDisk posted...

Have we done "Auld Geek Syne" yet?

I'm guessing you guys did "We Wish You a Merry Geekmas" long before I became active here?
---

The end is near. Of the topic at least.

Time to come up with some name suggestions for the next topic.
---

Where is everyone?

Anyway. I bought my Last Jedi tickets. I'm going Sunday afternoon with the wife.

Reviews have been really positive. So I'm kind of excited.
---

The Wave Master posted...

Where is everyone?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shs7VQhVvxA




I've been playing Horizon: Zero Dawn now that the complete edition finally got released with the DLC, because I hate buying piecemeal games, and am willing to delay my gratification.


---

I've been working on exams, because I'm taking forever to get through college.

Not sure if everybody saw it, but there was a question about the ideal fanbase size:
https://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/3-poll-of-the-day/76080258

While a lot of people went the wimpy route of preferring a median, I stuck more within the spirit of the question and answered larger. I know that the world is full of jealous geeks who very much like something being "their thing," but I've usually preferred being able to share the things I love (excluding women, obviously). Sure, the content gets diluted at times when things are mass-market, but you usually have several incarnations of that thing going at once.

Particularly because I love merch. I like little figurines, etc, and I tend to line the front of my shelves with them (sometimes display cabinets, when I can find a good, cheap one; kinda want to rig up a step shelving unit eventually). So when I noticed that Funko had a little Stripe figure in its pint-sized heroes horror line, I grabbed one today: (It's blind-bagged, but you can easily feel for the ears.)

https://www.funko.com/products/all/brands/pint-size-heroes/pint-size-heroes-horror

Sure, I own a lot of Gremlins stuff (although I missed some of the early NECA mogwai because I was spazzing over QC issues and I skipped some of the gremlins for that same reason), but when I see new stuff it's hard to resist. Possibly because, once upon a time, it *was* kinda hard to get your hands on it and I grew up wanting more.

Also, while trying to find info about that to post here, I learned that there's a Jafar genie Pop! and now I kinda want one. I'll have to check my local Hot Topic/TRU/B&N at some point.
https://www.funko.com/products/all/all/product/pop-disney-aladdin-red-jafar

The Wave Master posted...

Where is everyone?

Didn't want to rush the demise.

The Wave Master posted...

Time to come up with some name suggestions for the next topic.

The Geek who Stole Christmas
The Nightmare Before Geekmas
Merry Geekmas to All and to All a Good Night
Geekmas Greetings
The Last Geek
The Geekwalkers and the Long Night
Geekvengers: Geekfinity War (or Geekvengers: Infinity War)
The Infinity Geeklet
The Christmas Geek
Geekbusters 2
Silent Night, Geekly Night

shadowsword87 posted...

I've been working on exams, because I'm taking forever to get through college.

I always forget that the 87 in your name isn't the year of your birth >_>
---

Zeus posted...

I always forget that the 87 in your name isn't the year of your birth >_>

Yeah no worries, that's because I was 12 when I made this account and wanted to be super sneaky about how old I was.
It didn't work because I posted like an idiot, but that was the idea.

Geek Alone
Geek Hard
National Lampoon's Geekmas Vacation
Auld Geek Syne
Festivus for the Geek of us
(Alternately) Geektivus for the rest of us
A Geekmas Story
Baby it's Geek outside
Geek, frankincense, and myrrh
Do geeks know it's Xmas time at all?
So this is Geekmas
I'm getting geek stuff for Xmas
Live from the island of misfit geeks
Rockin around the Geekmas tree
All I want for Xmas is my two front Geek
Oh Geekmas tree, oh Geekmas tree!
Mele kalGeekimaka

...
---

The Wave Master posted...

Where is everyone?

Working and playing Xenoblade 2, with around 5 other games on the backburner, plus my SNES Classic I haven't gotten around to yet, and also Romancing Saga 2 on Friday. I've cut my farting-around-on-the-Internet time accordingly.

I've been busy with a long list of things as well. I'm not even done updating my guides to .hack//G.U., which I thought I would have been by now.
---

The Wave Master posted...

Where is everyone?

I'm off-work, so I hypothetically have more free time, but I'd devoting pretty much all of it to games atm. Finished Mario Odyssey (or at least, collected enough moons to feel satisfied), moved onto Doom (finally) and Fractured But Whole. I'm also up to 77 movies watched on the year. Will see Star Wars this weekend.

Raganork posted...

Working and playing Xenoblade 2,

How yah liking it so far? Without major spoilers or anything. I bought mine, but I won't touch it til next year. Gonna trying to finish the above listed games, and Kingdom Battle, first (not to mention the BotW DLC).
---

CyborgSage00x0 posted...

How yah liking it so far? Without major spoilers or anything. I bought mine, but I won't touch it til next year. Gonna trying to finish the above listed games, and Kingdom Battle, first (not to mention the BotW DLC).

Love it. Honestly, the battle system is so great that it kinda ruins the simplicity of the first game for me. I've spent almost all of my free time playing it since launch day and still want to play more. I can count on one hand the number of games I've played for more than 50 hours this year, and this is one of them after only two weeks. That alone should say just how much I love the game.

But man, what an amazing first year for the Switch. Zelda BotW, Mario Odyssey, and Xenoblade 2 aren't just great games; they're the best entries in their respective series. Picking a game of the year is gonna be very tough, especially considering the competition consists of god-tier gems like Nier and Persona 5.

I've seen a few spoilers for Last Jedi, on purpose, so I can enjoy the movie for what it's worth without people trying to ruin it for me.
---