Poll of the Day > All Geek's Eve

(+) Yeah! (+)

The rumors of Louis C.K. being a sexual harassment expert are finally confirmed. It was a hot rumor for more than a decade, and now it's confirmed firmed.

As we mentioned earlier it is probably best to separate the art with the artist so you can enjoy works of art guilty free.

However, it does look as if the Empire of sexual harassment in Holyywood might just be falling apart.
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It certainly paints a particularly dark episode of Louie in a new light.
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The Wave Master posted...

The rumors of Louis C.K. being a sexual harassment expert are finally confirmed. It was a hot rumor for more than a decade, and now it's confirmed firmed.

Some of the stories are pretty wtf, like a claim that he grabbed a girl by the back of the neck then whispered in her ear, "I will fuck you."

Guy always looked like a sick fuck, so I guess it's a case where you *can* judge the book by its cover.

The Wave Master posted...

As we mentioned earlier it is probably best to separate the art with the artist so you can enjoy works of art guilty free.

Which is why all the Spacey cancellations are annoying. We're losing out on the final season of House of Cards, unless they recast his role. It's a good thing I never started that.

The Wave Master posted...

However, it does look as if the Empire of sexual harassment in Holyywood might just be falling apart.

Yet Woody Allen still escapes scot-free.
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shadowsword87 posted...

Let me look that up and see what happened...
Oh shit

The democracy of Athens is overthrown by the oligarchic extremists, Antiphon, Theramenes, Peisander and Phrynichus in an effort by the oligarchists to exert more control over the conduct of the war with Sparta and its allies. A "Council of Four Hundred" is set up.

Hello plot.

Shortly after that, you've also got this:

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

There's a lot of that sort of thing going on in the time period.

And again, a lot of that back and forth is what weakened Greek strength and internal cohesion enough so that, a few decades later, one of the "barbarians" of the north came out of the backwater hick land of Macedon, conquered the entire peninsula, and then handed off the ensuing empire to his son. Who then went on a prolonged vacation to the east and caused a bit of trouble.

Also, look up stuff like the Delian League if you're interested in some of the more complicated politics of city-state interaction (and a lot of the things that eventually led to Sparta going after Athens in the first place).



shadowsword87 posted...

Oh also, how likely are the Gauls going to be poking and proding? We're they doing that constantly, or a special time?

Not very. They were mostly "stay at home" apart from the occasional trader or mercenary sort of deal (though you'd probably be more likely to see British Celts via the tin trade).

Though you've also got Massalia/Marseille, which was one of a number of Greek colonies in southern Gaul (in much the same way they had colonies like Syracuse in Italy), so there was SOME interaction, depending on where you were in the Greek world and who you were dealing with. If anything, colonies like that (and their eventually absorption into Rome) are a large part of what ultimately led to the Greek influence over Rome changing Roman culture so dramatically (which is why we tend to see the classical era as Greco-Roman in the first place). The Romans were turning Greek before they even made it to actual Greece.

In the same vein, one could argue that similar Greek colonies and lands in "Ionia" - what is present-day Turkey - are a large part of what triggered most Greek interaction with Persia in the first place, and which in turn could have potentially spurred a similar sort of backwards cultural transmission into Persia over time. Though in that case, Alexander got the job done much faster by killing his way into the heart of Persia and basically Hellenizing the fuck out of it all in one shot. And honestly, Persia's inherent culture and history was probably far more resistant to that sort of slow influence creep than Rome was, because early Rome kind of feels like a civilization without much strong sense of personal identity or culture to go with it. There; Greek sort of slipped in and filled in the gaps, but in Persia, a lot of that foundation already existed and was quite strong (strong enough that it persisted through both Greek and Roman domination to rise again later). If anything, Persia did to Greek rulers in Asia was the Greeks did to Rome, making them more Persianized.

At least until the Arabic Muslims came through and bulldozed their way through thousands of years of tradition and culture - but even there, Persian influence tended to color things in ways it never really did in the western Islamic cultures.

But since I've been talking about it, here:

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


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All right, well how about people who are claiming descendance from Assyria? I know that people will claim ancestry over it even nowadays. Would it be reasonable to have a group of them riding around still, 200 years later still raiding stuff?

I realize I'm focusing a lot on "barbarians", but PCs gotta fight something.

How far did the Huns get?
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Huns are in 300-500AD, so not close unfortunately.

So the Moors and random Bedouin tribes are also ruled out.

Short of some serious time shenanigans or flat out fiction, you're going to be hard pressed to come up with a credible force of Others.
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There's always Germanic tribes off doing Germanic things.

Oh duh, there's always the Scythians.

shadowsword87 posted...

All right, well how about people who are claiming descendance from Assyria? I know that people will claim ancestry over it even nowadays. Would it be reasonable to have a group of them riding around still, 200 years later still raiding stuff?

People always claim descent from all sorts of mythological forebears. Greeks were pretty keen on tracing their ancestry back to some great-grandfather or other who was secretly one of Zeus' kids or the like, and even today you've got lots of groups claiming to be descended from one of the Lost Tribes of Israel (which aren't actually missing - we basically know exactly what happened to them in the same way we know what happened to the settlers at Roanoke. The problem is that most people just repeat things they've heard verbatim without doing the 5 minutes worth of research it would take to get the answers).

The real problem is, the "survivors" of lost civilizations rarely get pushed out and become vagabonds and wanderers like in stories. What actually happens is that they intermarry into other groups, slowly evolving into new groups. What happened to the Assyrians after Assyria fell is that its land got absorbed into other empires (Persia, Chaldeans, the Medes, etc), and the people who used to think of themselves as Assyrians started thinking of themselves as Persians, Medians, and so on. Moreover, that's mainly the upper classes - most peasants never had an overdeveloped sense of cultural identity (remember, this is long before the advent of nationalism as a concept), so from their perspective the only real change was that they went from being peasants who paid taxes to one ruler to being being peasants who paid taxes to a slightly different noble. Sure, individuals might get pushed out of power and become bandits out of desperation, but that happens all the time anyway even without political upheaval, and the resulting outlaws rarely propagate their ideology beyond their own lifespan.

If you're bending history a bit to make things more interesting, you could go with having a secretive group that considers itself the surviving legacy of fallen Crete (ie, the Minoan civilization that was ultimately supplanted by the mainland Greeks prior to the Greek Heroic/Golden Age), or go back even farther and bring Atlantis into the mix (since Plato's version of the story had them as rivals to ancient Golden Age Athens).

Or you could go with the more mythological version of Troy (as opposed to the realistic version we're learning more and more about over time, which probably survived the Trojan War, got rebuilt, and continued on with life without any realistic inclination to swear 1000 years of vengeance against the Greeks - who were themselves a mostly different culture by 400 BC anyway). Virgil has Aeneas escaping Troy and going on to found Rome (well, to found Alba Longa which in turn founded Rome) while most of the other Trojans are killed and the city is destroyed (in reality, lots of people probably survived and just rebuilt the city, like they'd done half a dozen times before, because that was what life was like back then). In that scenario, a few dozen war-scarred survivors of Troy might theoretically establish a Greek "mystery cult" sort of group that exists to destroy Greece (and which might actually have been responsible for the soon-after fall of Mycenaean civilization and the beginning of the Greek Dark Age).

For flavor, maybe Trojan assassins kill targets with the ritualistic greeting "When you meet Priam in Hades, tell him the Sons of Ilion still honor his name."


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shadowsword87 posted...

I realize I'm focusing a lot on "barbarians", but PCs gotta fight something.

If you're setting a game in ancient Greece, odds are most of what the PCs are going to be fighting is each other.

Keep in mind, "Greece" didn't really exist as a nation, or even as a realistic coalition of allied states (a la the EU). Most of the city-states were in direct competition with each other, and the instances of one city fighting another (or a loose coalition of cities fighting a different loose coalition of other cities) happen far more frequently in Greek history than examples of them interacting with peace and friendship (the original Olympics were established as a means of trying to reduce that sort of tension). The Peloponnesian War was the most dramatic example, but in any given Greek campaign it would be entirely appropriate for Athenian heroes to wind up fighting Spartan raiders, Corinthian bandits, Argive pirates, or Thracian invaders.

Outside of the Greeks, there are always tons of threats. The Mediterranean is usually full of pirates regardless of the era (the names and faces change, piracy itself doesn't) - from the Sea Peoples to the Illyrians, the Moors, and eventually the Barbary corsairs (and even present day "terrorists"), there are always threats on the wine-dark sea. Thracians and Macedonians to the north were always considered to be "barbarians" in the usual sense of being backward thugs and uncouth savages. Farther to the north you've got steppe barbarian tribes like the Scythians. Rome and Carthage are growing threats to the west, Persia and other lands to the east and south offer challenges of their own, and so on.

Though keep in mind the Classical Age really ISN'T the "Age of Heroes" - that was about 800 years earlier. Greeks wandering the lands fighting monsters or villains is kind of inappropriate, and would-be heroes would probably be looked down on as shiftless vagabonds, criminals, untrustworthy mercenaries, delusional madmen lost in an ancient past, or just irresponsible fools. Major movers and shakers in this culture are probably politicians or established military, and are more respected for working within existing systems, with individuality being less valued than being "civilized". At best, you might be able to cast them as a military scout group attached to a larger force.

So you might want to start by defining where the characters are going to be mainly based (because say, an "Athenian" campaign is going to be a lot different from a "Spartan" one), then doing research about that specific region, planning how the players are expected to do business there, and then deciding on who their enemies are going to be.


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ParanoidObsessive posted...

If you're setting a game in ancient Greece, odds are most of what the PCs are going to be fighting is each other.

It's not Greek-exclusive, and I'm fine making narrative leaps to have the PCs run around in Constantinople-controlled now-Spain.
I'm paying more attention to Greece right now because that's where the PCs are starting.

Basically what they are playing as is a former Spartan who was left for dead after a battle (a battle-monk), an escaping Persian (pew pew ranger), and then another person joined (a bow rogue). We're starting the game a year after they formed the mercenary group (either the Hounds of Hades or the Basilisk's Eye) and they have their first ship ready to sail off.
Right now I'm just looking to figure out some mooks to fight, and any interesting political situation to dump them in. Basic plot stuff.

EDIT: Also, to be clear; this is not going through the "Age of Heroes" stuff, we specifically chose to not go up against classic Greek mythology monsters and those sorts of things.

Yeah, mercenaries works.

It's probably the best way to do most real world historical campaigns, because it's about the closest we have historical to the "adventurer" stereotype. The only downside is that mercenaries tend to be looked down upon and treated like scum, because a lot of them WERE scum. The best groups were still men willing to kill other men for coin, while the worst were outright criminals themselves.

Mercenaries with a standing contract to a local ruler or who operate as general bounty hunters are probably the easiest to fit into a more civilized context, though. But "pirates" with a ship of their own can be fun as well.

The real question is whether you're going for straight historical or "fantasy historical". Because that changes a lot of the sort of stories you're telling. But a straight historical game is more or less taking D&D back to its own roots, since it started out as more realistic wargaming anyway.


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Historical+fun.

I'm willing to mess with the timeline and I'm trying my best to tone down the magic parts of DnD (and it sounds like my players are cool with it as well, based on the classes).

Also they want to actually grow their mercenary business, rather than it being just an excuse to run around and assassinate Roman officials.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Greeks were pretty keen on tracing their ancestry back to some great-grandfather or other who was secretly one of Zeus' kids

In their defense, I had a lot of kids.

The Wave Master posted...

As we mentioned earlier it is probably best to separate the art with the artist so you can enjoy works of art guilty free.

In addendum to my earlier response to this comment, I should point out I'm *still* totally bummed out that Hulk Hogan is on the outs with the WWE over such a stupid scandal. Granted, his involvement was minor in recent years (his biggest moments were hosting a WM and getting bullied by Brock Lesnar on a birthday-themed Raw) but you had always had merch.
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Somehow I think I hit the setting that PO would be the most interested in joining :P

shadowsword87 posted...

Somehow I think I hit the setting that PO would be the most interested in joining :P

Not necessarily? But keep in mind, I'm pretty keen on real world history in general, and I played a LOT of Vampire, so I'd occasionally deep-delve into history to come up with roots for characters. So it's an easy and interesting subject to discuss (and interests me more than a lot of constructed settings like Greyhawk or Eberron).

Off the top of my head, I had a Parthian vampire at one point (albeit only as the sire of an Andalusian vampire who was Embraced around 800 AD or so), and I did a TON of research on Marseille/Massalia to use as a setting for Dark Ages Vampire stuff (ironically enough, there's not a ton of in-depth history of the city available online, at least not easy to track down sort of basic details). I worked out a ton of details, and was going to post it online on my old WoD website, but I never did finish that particular project.

http://sites.google.com/site/celanteinn/lasombra/marseille

I also looked into stuff with the Sea Peoples (which sort of tangentially relates to the Greek Dark Ages) because the Lasombra are sort of tied to them canonically.

And, geek stuff removed from the equation, I actually had a couple of college classes on the Greek Dark Ages and burial practices from the period, so I was always at least partly interested in the region/era (not entirely dissimilar to when I went through Anglophile and Japanophile phases at various times).

I've been reading a lot of ancient and classical era history recently as well. The closest I probably get to your period was a pretty good book about Alexander the Great (mostly how his empire fractured after his death), and if you skew a bit farther west, a couple of books about Rome and Carthage around the time of the Punic Wars.


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Oh man, I just got real sad. I thought the Sack of Rome was in 410 BC and I got super excited, not 410 AD.

shadowsword87 posted...

Oh man, I just got real sad. I thought the Sack of Rome was in 410 BC and I got super excited, not 410 AD.

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

You're welcome.


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So, Sony now wants to make a Morbius the Living Vampire movie...which is the same concept Sam Raimi had for the original Spider-Man 4, which they shit on.

Let's all take a second to appreciate this.
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I thought Spidey 4 was supposed to be the Lizard? At any rate, after Spidey 3, they'd shit on anything Raimi had to say.
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So, PO, what do you think of Thirteenth Doctor's outfit, now that it's been revealed?
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Zeus posted...

I thought Spidey 4 was supposed to be the Lizard? At any rate, after Spidey 3, they'd shit on anything Raimi had to say.

The open secret is SM3 was shit BECAUSE Sony kept dicking Raimi around, so he basically said fuck it, made a the shit movie that Sony wanted, then went "See? I told you so." But instead of learning anything from it, Sony double-downed jettisoned Raimi, now coming back to his idea for SP4 a decade later.

Sony is just a really dumb company.
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Entity13 posted...

So, PO, what do you think of Thirteenth Doctor's outfit, now that it's been revealed?

I'm sort of of the mindset that the show ended in 2011-12 or so.


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I just pulled the trigger and bought a new desktop.

What are some awesome games that game out in the last couple of years?

There is s lot to respond to and talk about.

First, I get final robot leg on Friday. It's black, glows in the dark, and has Spider-Man on the leg. I have not seen the final product, as I will on Friday, but I saw the prototype, and it looks cool.

Now the hard part begins as I have months of rehab to experience so that I can get back to normal. I'm not going to give up, and it's going to be difficult, but I won't give up.
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

Entity13 posted...

So, PO, what do you think of Thirteenth Doctor's outfit, now that it's been revealed?

I'm sort of of the mindset that the show ended in 2011-12 or so.

tbh, I think I've also just checked out at this point.

The Wave Master posted...

First, I get final robot leg on Friday. It's black, glows in the dark, and has Spider-Man on the leg. I have not seen the final product, as I will on Friday, but I saw the prototype, and it looks cool.

Any built-in weapons?

The Wave Master posted...

Now the hard part begins as I have months of rehab to experience so that I can get back to normal. I'm not going to give up, and it's going to be difficult, but I won't give up.

The downside to a cool robot leg =x At any rate, is this a permanent prosthetic or does it replaced every certain number of years? Also, do they adjust it after a set period of time?
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knivesX2004 posted...

I just pulled the trigger and bought a new desktop.

What are some awesome games that game out in the last couple of years?

Didn't you say you were building one?

I'm waiting for Black Friday/Cyber Monday price cuts, but I more or less have mine mapped out.

Holy holy shit, robo-leg? We will require pics once it is all done.
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Never give up Wave!

I was going to build a PC but the offer of this prebuilt was too good.
It was 400 off their list (which wasn't TERRIBLY overpriced) plus some "free upgrades" to better hardware and they even threw in a mechanical keyboard and surround sound headset for "free".

Total cost was just above 2k because I went balls deep and got a 1080 ti ftw3 or whatever.

Player Unknown Battlegrounds is the current fun game.
I'm a big fan right now.

My robot leg doesn't come with any weapons. Well, no weapons yet, but I plan to put a Progressive Knife like in Eva in this initial version. I figured a gun or a rocket wouldn't make it past airport security so I will stick with a giant glowing electric knife for now.

The leg will need to be adjusted for weight gain, weight loss, adjustments to make sure I am not in pain, and as my stump gets smaller over time it has to be adjusted further. This will probably be a battle for the rest of my life.

Overall, it's looking good and I will post pictures sometime this weekend.
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CyborgSage00x0 posted...

I'm waiting for Black Friday/Cyber Monday price cuts, but I more or less have mine mapped out.

Honestly, I'm so backlogged these days I might just sit out this black friday / cyber monday. In addition to the fact that I play maybe 5% of the games I buy in any given year, I've got a mountain of books and then I've got a huge queue of films, tv, etc, to watch. At some point, I might just call PotD quits for a few months and try to catch up on my reading so I can do something with the books (or, at least, the ones I suspect I won't read again afterward).

The only thing I might buy is another copy of a Pokemon game if I see one really cheap.
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The Wave Master posted...

and as my stump gets smaller over time it has to be adjusted further.

Ew. How does that work? Just atrophy around the afflicted area?

In general, I realize that much of what I think I know about prosthetics comes from FMA.
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Did I ever tell you guys that years back, I started to log every new game, book, film, or TV season I finished in a given year, just to see what I consume in a given year? I feel like I have. And by "new", I mean, I have never read/watched/played it before, the year it came out doesn't matter.

I'm up to 80 films and 20 TV seasons this year. I'll have to check again, but I think 12 games, too. Only 3 books though, sadly.
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CyborgSage00x0 posted...

Did I ever tell you guys that years back, I started to log every new game, book, film, or TV season I finished in a given year, just to see what I consume in a given year? I feel like I have. And by "new", I mean, I have never read/watched/played it before, the year it came out doesn't matter.

You mentioned it and I had asked what method you were using to track it but you never got back to me. Somebody else then responded and we got into a side-discussion where I talked about my horror film spreadsheet.

CyborgSage00x0 posted...

I'm up to 80 films and 20 TV seasons this year. I'll have to check again, but I think 12 games, too. Only 3 books though, sadly.

I'm not sure I've done all that much this year.
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Who would have guessed that Justice League was not that good?

I did not see this coming at all. 2 directors, a terrible universe setup, bad CGI, I thought this would have been great. I was soooooo.... wrong.
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Sure is convenient they put an embargo on reviews. Oh wait, no it's not. They know they are putting out garbage but it makes money so they don't give a shit.

Zeus posted...

You mentioned it and I had asked what method you were using to track it but you never got back to me. Somebody else then responded and we got into a side-discussion where I talked about my horror film spreadsheet.

Oh. I just have a notebook on my desk where I log it, but I recently uploaded it to Google Docs as well.
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The Wave Master posted...

Who would have guessed that Justice League was not that good?

I did not see this coming at all. 2 directors, a terrible universe setup, bad CGI, I thought this would have been great. I was soooooo.... wrong.

Seen it or are you basing this on reviews?

CyborgSage00x0 posted...

Zeus posted...

You mentioned it and I had asked what method you were using to track it but you never got back to me. Somebody else then responded and we got into a side-discussion where I talked about my horror film spreadsheet.

Oh. I just have a notebook on my desk where I log it, but I recently uploaded it to Google Docs as well.

So just a word doc or text file? I guess I go nerdier with it.
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I havent seen Justice League as of yet, and honestly I do not plan on going. With the review embargoes, and the less than stellar reviews already up, my suspicions of this project being mediocre to hot garbage are confirmed.

Plus With Black Friday coming up I figured my time and money would be better spent getting some of the video games I missed earlier this year and add them to my collection.
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Was cleaning up because I'm moving some stuff to put in additional bookshelves and decided to glance at a May 2007 Nintendo Power I owned, which I assume I saved because it had a Dialga cover.

(Not my actual issue, just a screencap from Amazon)


Kind of a more major issue. On the front, it references Custom Robo Arena which I absolutely loved and, of course, the mag has a long feature about it.

However, what I was really surprised by was how many games featured in the issue that I wound up owning. Hell, there's a cool ad for the Marvel VS DS game and even that I wound up buying (it was awful). There's a small review for Naruto Ninja Council 3 (also pretty bad; got it on clearance or something). Pokemon Revolution had a review (which I bought used for $30, never played). The DS port of SimCity is in here (never figured out the controls; paid like $3-7 at a Gamestop). Touch the Dead had a review -- I think I paid $15 for that, totally not worth it. Blazing Angels for the Wii got reviewed, didn't really like that. Legend of the Dragon for the Wii had ads; I think I bought it but never played it. And there's a full-page ad for Chocobo Tales which I bought and was a pretty fun game (or collection of minigames) although I can't recall fully beating it.

More interestingly, pretty much everything wasn't bought at release -- excluding Pokemon Pearl and maybe CRA.

There are a few things which I thought looked neat at the time that I never picked up. Godzilla Unleashed for the Wii, which I think the pricing kinda sucked and I recall not liking the final roster for what I'd pay. The Force Unleashed for the DS is another one although, given Star Wars' track record for DS games, it's probably just as well. And, and I was half thinking of getting the Code Lyoko DS game but instead I got one of the PSP ones on clearance.

And, glancing over it, I didn't remember anything about SNK vs Capcom Card Fighters for the DS, but I kinda want it.

The Wave Master posted...

I havent seen Justice League as of yet, and honestly I do not plan on going. With the review embargoes, and the less than stellar reviews already up, my suspicions of this project being mediocre to hot garbage are confirmed.

I find it relatively rare that reviewers ever get anything all that right.
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Found a stack of Magi-Nation cards while clearing out an old storage unit, including some holos I didn't remember (although with cards from the .hack CCG).

It also reminded me how I recently learned (because I don't recall knowing this at the time) that there was a Hercules: The Legendary Journeys CCG.

Also found my ticket stub for a regional wrestling promotion whose event I attended back in 2006. It had a bunch of then-TNA stars, with the main event being AJ Styles vs Abyss which, at the time, I wasn't that enthusiastic about. 10-11 years later, that's changed a little bit.
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For full disclosure I am a huge comic book fan, a bigger movie fan, and a Geek. However, I'm a Marvel guy versus a DC guy. That doesnt mean I hate DC, but I don't gush everytime I see Batman, or think that Superman is so great. I love those characters, but they aren't my favorite.

Which is why I'm not too excited for Justice League. Because between the Synder Murserverse being terrible, the directing situation, the other bad set up movies, and the terrible CGI, I just can't get too invested. I don't think the movie will be without some redeeming qualities, but I'm supposed to pay 25 dollars for tickets, and another 25 bucks for snacks and drinks. No, I'm good.

I didn't even love Wonder Woman like the critics did. I will talk abour that in my mext post.

Basically this movie looks like poop, and I don't need reviewers to tell me when I see or smell poop. I'm old enough and smart enough to recognize crap when I see it. Plus With Black Friday coming up I can spend that 50 bucks on like 3 damn good games. Which will give me a lot more entertainment and value.
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Wonder Woman movie spoilers.....

Gal Godot is great as Wonder Woman. She is beautiful, graceful, powerful, charming, loving, and amazing. Even Captain Kirk is great as Steve Trevor. Basically the casting of the leads is spot on. In fact the entire cast is great. The supporting characters are cool with interesting back stories and motivations, and each gets a moment to shine.

The directing is too botch too. Patty Jenkins does a great job, and the movie is shot and edited well too. It's really nice and refreshing to have a woman direct a strung woman dominated movie and character. All around, great work. It also helps that I can see the fight scenes. No damn shaky can, or fights edited so you can't tell who hit who or why.

However, I was bored from frame one because of the mediocre plot. Not to get into details, but the main villain is a joke, makes no sense, and can be spotted about ten Seconds after they appear on screen.

What's so bad about the villain is that the tragedy of bad DC movie CGI strikes again. The Last fight was all done in a computer, which is a huge disconnect from the rest of the film. Where the fights are down and dirty, shot well, choreographed nicely, and done with little to no CGI.

Then we get to how Wonder Woman literally wins World War I by herself. Or how in this whole big world she just magically runs into lthe main villain. There are just too many coincidences to be accepted or ignored. The score is also pretty damn pedestrian too. Nothing too remembetable at all.

Overall, it's C or a B minus movie. How do the test of you feel?
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Wonder woman spoilers.
I was super on board up until the ending. I would LOVE to have had the bad guy be influencing the doctor face lady but once he turned into the big bad final boss and devolved into a generic "punch here to win" I got frustrated.

Not everything has to be a good damn fight scene. Look at Jessica Jones.

I just finished The Three-Body Problem and it's... frustrating is the right word.
It's a really interesting world full of great ideas and the science is spot on, and everything else is just so boring.

All of the characters are stoic badasses who just sit around and stare off into the distance. The only character I saw that had any sort of strong personality was The American General being brash and American talking about America while everyone else was calming him down.

Nobody ever just f***ing talks to each other and explains what's going on, instead wanting to show things, despite just explaining the situation would be faster and easier.

I'm not 100% sure how it got a Hugo Award.

The Wave Master posted...

My robot leg doesn't come with any weapons. Well, no weapons yet, but I plan to put a Progressive Knife like in Eva in this initial version. I figured a gun or a rocket wouldn't make it past airport security so I will stick with a giant glowing electric knife for now.

You need to get them to put one of these in it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDwOpQbFf4o



Zeus posted...

The Wave Master posted...

and as my stump gets smaller over time it has to be adjusted further.

Ew. How does that work? Just atrophy around the afflicted area?

Dentures actually work the same way - without real teeth, calcium slowly stops being channeled to the jaw, which, combined with age and just general wear and tear, means your jaw slowly starts to erode a bit. So you basically have to get new dentures every X number of years or so, because they have to be refitted to your mouth or they start to hurt a lot.

With a leg, I'd assume you'd have the same problem of having to refit the join over time, but if you also lose a couple inches in length as it goes, you might start to have issues with your hips and back, because legs being different lengths actually cause more problems than most people realize.



shadowsword87 posted...

I just finished The Three-Body Problem and it's... frustrating is the right word.
It's a really interesting world full of great ideas and the science is spot on, and everything else is just so boring.

I've noticed as I get older I've been phasing fantasy and sci-fi out of my reading more and more. I'll still occasionally read the odd fantasy novel (or series), but I don't go actively looking for it as much as I used to, and I'm not as enthusiastic about it as I used to be.

I've got the added problem of being a speed-reader, though. When you can go through a single book in a couple days and burn your way through a new author's entire body of work shortly after you discover them, it means it gets harder and harder to find authors whose work you enjoy enough to seek out their stuff. And it doesn't seem like there are a ton of good writers coming up to replace the older ones who've died or to provide an alternative to the writers whose works I've already read in their entirety.

Right now I'm reading this, and it's actually pretty good/interesting:

http://www.amazon.com/Sapiens-Humankind-Yuval-Noah-Harari/dp/0062316095

Some of what's in it is stuff I already knew from other books, but it's always interesting to see how different writers present the same info in different contexts.


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knivesX2004 posted...

Not everything has to be a good damn fight scene. Look at Jessica Jones.

Jessica Jones had several large fights, though. The only difference was it wasn't against the villain himself, always somebody he controlled including the epic showdown with Luke Cage. That's also overlooking that she fought the juiced-up Nuke/Will Simpson.

shadowsword87 posted...

I just finished The Three-Body Problem and it's... frustrating is the right word.
It's a really interesting world full of great ideas and the science is spot on, and everything else is just so boring.

[...]

I'm not 100% sure how it got a Hugo Award.

The Hugo has become increasingly politicized so... there's that.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I've got the added problem of being a speed-reader, though. When you can go through a single book in a couple days and burn your way through a new author's entire body of work shortly after you discover them, it means it gets harder and harder to find authors whose work you enjoy enough to seek out their stuff. And it doesn't seem like there are a ton of good writers coming up to replace the older ones who've died or to provide an alternative to the writers whose works I've already read in their entirety.

I can't speed-read any more. I wind up fixating on certain things to try to get more of the impact. Part of it is an OCD thing, I'm sure; I've actually noticed I've been having more trouble with OCD since starting to read more again.
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Justice League is tracking for less than stellar numbers this weekend.

Currently the movie is tracking for less than 100 million dollars for the 3 day weekend. Considering that the reshoots cost more than its domestic opening weekend it's really an issue.

As for my robot leg. It's made from carbon fiber. It's just one solid piece with an opening for my leg socket. There just is not any room for weapons, but I will make due without a rocket or Progresso e knife.... For nw!p

If anyone can show me a way to post pictures so you can see my leg then I will post them.
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