Raithe

Haven't really played much around with those things with 3.0. Do tactical flashpoints do that automatically if you're not in a group, or is that something you have to set up elsewhere? I've run through Illum and Makeb with a bunch of mine, along with the Oricron re-runs and such. I've got a handful of 55 to 53 level characters.

Well way back when, when they did the big pre-release "weekend" beta I spent the time playing the Trooper and got to about 2/3 of the way through Tatooine. With my current Trooper I'm just wrapping up Tatooine, so now I'm ready for the fresh story of it all. I have to admit, now that I've completed all the other class storylines, I've kind of poked a bit at the end-game stuff, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to throw in my subscription shortly. I'll have a push to finish off my Trooper and I'll be done unless there's anything really interesting added. I liked how they had the whole "you can play solo, or you can play socially to do this game, all the classes have that option." but the moment you hit the end-game, it's all operations and serious guild/large groups of friends playing the game. Otherwise there's just a few things to do that just grind, grind, grind, for credits and equipment. And unless you can get into the operations, you start losing out on the general storylines of what's happening.

Although I was tempted to throw this onto the funny things thread.. if people hadn't realised this was coming out : http://youtu.be/VcYaCZVfTGc

the Guardian - Fire in Major Russian Library Is it jaded and cynical of me, or just part of the in-built paranoia of a gamer... but why do I have a small part of my mind pondering "Just what did Vladimir get out of this happening?"

Put a final burst in, skipped the non-class missions on the latter half of Voss and Corellia to wrap up my Agent's class storyline. That was fairly entertaining, with some interesting twists back and forth. The only one I have left to push through now is the Trooper, have to decide whether I want to sink the time in to get that done...

While the sci-fi miniseries when they went onto Children of Dune had this.. http://youtu.be/hHy-OxoT7zU Which just works on so many levels.

Seriously, I needed to slow that part down, they went through a ton of gags in about 30 seconds, it was epic. You can find it on youtube easy enough.

Hm, and on the idle movie news... Apparently Edgar Wright is doing a steampunk Oliver Twist take.. TheMarySue - Edgar Wright : Steampunk Oliver Twist

See, I found the main thing that had me chuckle was the repeated in-joke about dredging the past because there are no new ideas. That and the whole Captains daughter moment. I would say the bit I found most entertaining about 22 Jump Street.. was the end credits and the whole run through of sequels to 44 Jump Street.

Plus, I have to point out SNL really doesn't travel outside of the US. We don't get re-showings of it, and half the time, any SNL clips are "Unavailable in your country" until about 6 months after the fact when someone puts it up on youtube... And of course, if you do see those clips, they don't actually include the names of the SNL cast. So unless it's someone known for something beyond that.. the odds of being recognised is pretty damn small.

Since we have the Ghostbuster talk here..

Also, given the amount of sexism conversations that have been going on of late, I thought this one might be worth a throwdown. (Plus I'm sure our resident SJW might enjoy it). TheMarySue - The Story of Eowyn This got distilled down to “I am no man.” Look, I know they couldn’t have just put this in verbatim, it’s got an old-timey cadence and they’d already tweaked other dialog to be less formal. But. There is so much more here than “I am no man.” First of all, he didn’t just threaten her with death. He threatened her with horrifying, endless torture and mind rape, basically. And she laughs at him. And then she stabs him in the face. What’s more? She makes him afraid before she does it because up until then, he thought he was immortal. Whoops! I think you lose a lot of important nuance by over simplifying it to “I am no man.” Still, I could have lived with that except for what comes after. See, in the book, she’s falls over onto her enemy because he’s so evil that his death nearly kills her. She’s found later on the battlefield and they think she’s dead. Eomer is incredibly upset (understandably) and ends up going off in a foul, suicidal mood, where he and the other riders chant “death, death, death” as they cut a swath through the enemy. It’s pretty bleak. The movie, for no reason I can fathom, decides that Eowyn can’t just kill the Witch King. Nope. After this huge showdown she also needs to be chased by Tumor the Orc, an enemy we got introduced to that isn’t A. interesting B. even in the same category of terrifying as the Witch King. He’s completely beneath her as a foe at this point. So far as I can tell he exists so that Aragorn can kill him and “save” her, without actually knowing he did so. Which is just…weird. Why would you have this amazing moment where Eowyn defeats an enemy literally no one else in Middle Earth could have…and then have her crawling away from a generic, malignant orc in the aftermath? And why does Aragorn need to save her? What does this do for either character? Other than undermine her achievement, of course. It’s one of the most perplexing character and narrative choices/changes in the films. What’s more: I don’t think it occurred to anyone that, along with making her overly lovesick, they inadvertently damsel’d her. For me, it’s a frustrating example of casual sexism creeping in. It’s even more frustrating when you realize Tolkien, writing in a time that was quite a bit less progressive than now for women, did it better. Sticking closer to the original narrative and character would have solved this issue neatly. It stands out as pointless and tacked on. After all of this, Eowyn ends up in the Houses of Healing and eventually meets Faramir. They develop a strong bond, one based on compassion and understanding, and we see that Faramir truly appreciates her for who she is. He knows she’s a warrior and a queen in her own right, he never talks down to her or treats her as less than his equal. We get a hint of this in the extended edition of Return of the King, and I know they didn’t really have time to do more. Yet I still miss that relationship because it says so much about both characters. Eowyn ends up discovering what real love is and finally being seen by someone for the amazing person she is. I guess what bugs me most is that they took a legitimately “strong” female character, and by that I mean a complex, flawed, brave, and ultimately a triumphant warrior woman who has her own major arc…and reduced her down to something less than that. To me, strength in a character is about more than their ability to hit or kill things, and while Eowyn’s big moment is certainly defeating The Lord of the Nazgûl, it’s her defiance in the face of insurmountable odds that truly makes her “strong”. I wish the film version had honored that more. Because that would have been honoring the proto-feminist character Tolkien created.

I half wonder if they couldn't have run it with Sean Patrick Flanery now.. He did a pretty good showing as Young Indy in the Chronicles, and with his current age now, you could probably work nicely to do some Pre-Raiders of the Ark stories.. Unless they're doing it as a total reboot.

"It's not like they're ruining your childhood memories, so much as sidling up in a suspicious manner, putting their hands in your pockets and molesting them somewhat..."

Yup. It's a little bit disturbing. But, different cultures, there's always going to be weird things from someone's perspective.

Just for the Geekness... Observation Deck - The Pryde Scale (Or Fun with Aging in the Marvel Universe)

So is tapdancing on broken glass. Don't knock it 'til you've tried it. And then sold the resulting piece at a fine art exhibit. Don't laugh so much about that until you've travelled on the metro train in Mexico City. You actually have the panhandlers get on the train, put out a small cloth full of broken glass, and basically cut themselves up on it , and they stop and move on when people give them loose change.

To put it in perspective with a quote from the film Plunkett and Macleane: Macleane: Still swinging both ways, Rochester? Lord Rochester: Jamie, I swing every way.

Or all about maximising your space..? In a 258 square feet apartment... http://youtu.be/juWaO5TJS00

It's all about the nature of community? A "town" in Alaska where the majority of the population live and work within the same building that can only be entered through a miles long tunnel... http://youtu.be/naPguX84Amg

Hm, well the doctors are still hemming and hawing a bit, waiting on test results, but they now think that one of the shadows on my mothers lungs are likely to be a tumour, so...potentially cancer. On the upside of things, they're now saying that since the infectious influenza, most of the fluid in her lungs, and such is gone, that she's likely to be treatable as an outpatient. So after about two months in hospital they might release her around Friday... Also, after over 10 years spent as her primary carer and receiving the associated carers allowance and income support, I've been summoned to a "Local Compliance Interview" just to ensure that I am who I say I am, and have been told to bring my passport, drivers license, and bank statements to prove that I'm not independently wealthy and have a job that gives me mucho money. So that looks like it could be interesting.

Hm, have to say I'm not sure what to make of the finale to Galavant. Didn't seem to have the magic or punch of some of the earlier episodes.