Amentep

Arguably, both of WW's major origins make her supernatural, so I'd think an argument similar to the "why does Superman need to be muscular if his superpowers are where he's pulling his strength from* and not his muscles" could be applied to her. The biggest thing (to my mind) is the movie ensuring I believe she's WW. *Note I think this argument mostly fall on Post-Crisis Superman, whose powers were defined as a form of telekinesis rather than a yellow-sun fueled body. Movies I watched over the weekend: Guardians of the Galaxy 2 - very similar to the first film; I'd argue neither really better or worse. Nice visualizations of some of the cosmic stuff. Kurt Russel was really good. Avalance Sharks - lol, wtf? Now You See Me 2 - A decent caper film; I don't think the narrative is as strong as the first film, but I liked the set pieces a lot.

The avatars do line up good for a fight - vs

I don't imagine many HS programs get students to near fluency. Maybe if someone does a full four years in an advanced program. I'm not sure they are designed for that, though.

I remembered enough of HS French to mess up my college Spanish classes as I'd start sentences in Spanish and end them in French (stupid Romance languages).

All of the pets I had got sick in cars. Made trips to the vet fun.

Are you saying required to get into the 4-year program or required to graduate from the program? Most HS (even Texas, IIRC) require some form of FL work for HS Graduation. So a lot of colleges expect it for admissions purposes. But I'd be surprised if a lot of 4-year BS programs are requiring a foreign language at the most competitive schools as part of the graduation requirements. Liberal arts programs, maybe, but not science.

Just realized that I missed noting the 100 anniversary of the death of one of my favorite Pre-Raphelite artists, John William Watterhouse: One of his Lady of Shalott Paintings Destiny

I must not be watching the right TV shows (entirely possible). I saw the original trailer a couple of times on TV and not at all in the movie theaters (not even on WB films, which was surprising).

Its been reported that WW has a bigger ad budget than Suicide Squad, but I'm not seeing it so far. That said, they may be planning a media blitz before it opens or something

I was only trying to say the man is hit or miss; when he's good he's usually really good when he's bad he's usually really bad. I make no claims The Dark Tower will be any good. But then I actually tried to read the first one a few times and gave up; it wasn't for me.

And The Client, A Time to Kill, A Beautiful Mind, Cinderella Man... Also its my understanding a TV show set in the Dark Tower universe is forthcoming; essentially (again as I understand it), the TV show fills in the back story (ie stuff from the books).

I think that's one of the big questions really, is whether Jodorowsky is being literal or if he's trying to shock the audience (something that fits into the era of El Topo,as within the decade on either side of that film we get things like Kenneth Anger's Scorpio Rising, John Waters' Pink Flamingos and Armando Bo's Fuego and dozens more films that break taboos and try their best to move the viewer out of their comfort zone). I don't blame her for taking Jodorowsky's statements literally though; without him (or the actress) providing additional context all she really has to go on is his words. I also don't blame his defenders who'll argue that Jodorowsky's interviews include a lot of posturing and postulating and aren't always sincere as they're part of a broader performance.

Well to be fair to the author, even if she'd included his caveat from the interview (that he'd explained the scene to the actress, including what he planned to do) and the inference (that she'd agreed to it), it still raises a couple of questions - ie as he was in a position of authority over her, did she really have the ability to disagree with what he did; did her reaction indicate that what he did and what he explained not the same, and did any of it happen at all since AFAIK we only have Jodorowsky's statements on it - and we know that he wants to provoke people and shake the establishment and again AFAIK wouldn't be above doing it in an interview. The important thing would be to have the actress' view of it, but its not there leaving what happened legitimately open for debate I think. I find it distracting that the author seems to mistakenly attributes the scene to Fando y Lis (it wasn't) and that they question El Topo as an early midnight movie (it was), but that doesn't invalidate her argument which, honestly, is a fair position. Not everyone is going to try to figure out whether Jordorowsky's statements are performance or real, or what he might mean when he uses loaded language.

The Dark Tower The Defenders (series) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4h3m7B4v6Zc

Blade More like 'so bad it's good'. Did he have a comic before the movies. Blade 2 or 3, the one with Ron Pearlman and Ryan Renolds is my fave. The character had been around since 1973, mostly in Marvel's TOMB OF DRACULA, but had solo stories in some anthology titles - VAMPIRE TALES (#8 & 9), MARVEL PREVIEW (#3 & 8.) He was in the Nightstalkers team series in the early 1990s. His first stand alone solo titles (some one-shots and a miniseries) I think came in 1998 in the lead-up to the first film.

Adjectives - well defined in a scale - are mostly an example because I've wondered myself whether or not providing numbers to the player encourages min-maxing because if the numbers are there some players will feel incentivized to use those numbers to create a "superior" build rather than creating a character to play and one of the ideas I wondered if it would work would be character creation via an adjective-like system that gave a well defined scale but hid the actual numbers from the player. So naturally when I saw Cain's triangles - with and without the adjectives - I perked up. Obviously graphical representations could be done (distance on a mini-map for projectiles, bars that filled/depleted) as well, but gets closer to the numerical system, I guess. One of the things I've gotten from this discussion is that RPGs perhaps fill a niche that bridges simulation and gameist(? is that the right term?) design. ie the player doesn't need to know the exact damage Mario does when he shoots a fireball in Super Mario Bros (gameist), but they do need to know what the maximum distance of a particular type of missle is and the direction and windspeed acting on it when I fire it from my mech in Battletech (simulation).

I really think you're comparing apples and kumquats. You keep comparing a numerical system with random adjectives. If "mediocre range, good armour and the capacity to deploy a fair number of fighters" uses a scale where "mediocre" "good" and "fair" are defined, then either "swell" would also be defined on that scale, or it wouldn't be used. A lot of games have used S, A, B, C, D, E, F ranks to define equipment. Sure they show the numbers behind it, but the truth is (IMO) you don't really need the numbers to make a decision. S is defined as better than A, so an S weapon should have better overall stats than an A. Do you really need to know exact specific tonnages of your mech in Battletech? Or do you really only need to know the comparative weight compared to others mechs? Heck you could use the lightest mech (say a Wasp which IIRC is at 20 tons) and use that as a base weight. An Arbelest weighs 1.25 Wasps. An Orion is 3.75 times the weight of a Wasp. If you establish that heavier = slower, doesn't the game player know all they need to know without calculating anything and without needing specific tonnages? Its just a step further to abstract that to light, medium and heavy (which is already there in the description of the mech) and use no numbers at all.

Wouldn't this be a product of being more a simulation of something that exists in the real world rather than an abstraction designed for a non-simulation style fantasy game? I don't disagree that a simulation would have to provide information in the way the real-word thing being simulated would (ie a flight simulator or aerial combat simulator or tank simulator or racing simulator is going to need to provide the same kind of numerical data that the vehicle would provide during real-world operations).

5 is better than 7 in a subtractive system where lower numbers are better than higher. 4/5 is better than 4/7 in a divisive system where the number represents the denominator. 7 is only better than 5 in an additive or multiplicative system. Ergo the relative relationship between 5 and 7 with respect to which is better in a game is predicated on what system the numbers are going into rather than their numerical position within a counting set. As a separate question, I don't understand (and I mean this literally, not as some kind of snark) the insistence in knowing how much better "good" is from "okay" in a video game? If the game is giving you appropriate feedback, why would you need to know more than "good" is better than "okay"? How does knowing that improve the game or the ability to hone your character in the game -considering that unlike P&P you don't actually have to do the math yourself?

I bet it was the Decepticons. The Transformers should have hid their vault better.

I've never played a fighting game where it was necessary to figure out exactly how many points of life a move took off. It was often required to know the priority of the attacks so as to be able to counter actions. That said, I've never played outside of local circles, so perhaps its more important to elite players looking to find an edge on one another? A couple of further thoughts - About baseball stats - they are derivative of real actions. The only numbers that really matter to the game are balls/strikes/outs/innings/scores which are inherent in the game and described to the viewer by the rules of the game (ie the system). While much pleasure can be had debating the benefits of a .200 batter with a high home run percentage vs a lifetime .333 batter with a low home run percentage, that's actually not what the game is about. And to counter the idea that 9 and 10 is naturally understood without in-game context and feedback, I ask - is the system additive (10 would be superior to 9), subtractive (9 would be superior to 10) or divisional (the superiority would be whether the numbers were being used as a numerator with the same denominator or denominator with the same numerator)? You can't say that 10 is always going to be better than 9; the system dictates that - the same as a well designed adjective scale. What the player needs is appropriate feedback about the well designed system - whether its numbers or adjectives. Yes, math will be at the back end of the activities, but what I'm not convinced is that its necessary for the player to understand the math excepting if the players main interest is in min/maxing stats and equipment. Which may be fun, but I'm not sure its actually the point of an RPG anymore so than debating hit statistics is for baseball. And I gathered from Tim's comments that some people feel that if you're not calculating min-max and understanding the math, that RPGs are impenetrable. Which if true - and I know people who've expressed that statement - then a well designed adjective system could address that problem (with, perhaps, adding in its own unique issues).

I'm not sure I'd call all 7 mistakes of his presentation mistakes, either. I can see a benefit to not using numbers. That benefit is that the computer game player doesn't need to know math, therefore the math could be replaced with an adjective system that could be more friendly. I'm of an agreement that POEs mechanics would be hard to express without numbers; that really doesn't make it a simple or eligant design (given the complaints about how it worked and changes to same over the development, perhaps the opposite?)

Sure there's going to be math involved. Did I say there wasn't? My only question is in a computer game how much math the player actually need to play the game. It seems to me if there is well defined feedback it shouldn't matter if the feedback is numbers or words. You'd still need to define a spectrum of words that create a scale of some sort without numbers (worst-worse-bad-average-good-better-best being an obvious example). But my point is that is just as intuitive as, say, a 10 point scale (it is, in essence, a 7 pt scale without using the numbers). Using arbitrary words - yucky-terrible-not great-bad- better but not quite good - good - okay - nice - fine - great - awesome - stupendous wouldn't be well defined to the audience (anymore so than say, using any unclear numerical system, say one that uses really large numbers).