Amentep

My dad had a pinto for 15+ years. The gas tank problem was fixed via the mandatory fix recall and it ran really well until it sat for a length of years unused.

Light doesn't have mass (or more accurately, the photons that make up light have an invariant mass of 0). Not having mass doesn't mean it doesn't have energy, which it does. This energy can relate a relativistic mass for light if light was trapped and in that case the energy can be also be harnessed in some way (regardless of mass). As I understand it.

Watched Puppet Master X (2012) - Toulon's puppets continue the fight against Nazi's sometime in the 1940s. Its fun enough, I wouldn't rank it in the best of the series, but it does better than the worst. Sort of middle of the pack. Ratatouille (2007) - a fun Pixar film; its exciting as its going but I felt the end felt oddly distancing.

Great, now I went and Googled it... Its more than just the blisters too - you can give other people chicken pox if they've never had it, and you can't keep food down during the active period. The blisters, even after they subside may still cause pain. Moral of the story - get the shingles vaccine. My brother saw that in the theater. As I recall that's the one where a fight broke out in the theater several rows ahead of him (but no pommel horses became involved). The film won a contest by WB and Amazon and was released on DVD in 2007 so it has a cult following - reportedly due to how entertainingly bad it is.

Malc I hope you realize that strip clubs are demeaning to women and against the principles of social justice I do frequent strip clubs sometimes, I actually enjoy partying with strippers. They are easy to understand and don't tend to complicate things. Its funny but when I first went to strip clubs I thought I had to save the girls from this "iniquitous" lifestyle . Everyone had a story about why they were doing what they doing but I realized later the girls were just reading my concern and attempting to connect with me so I would feel relaxed. If I now go to strip clubs I do best thing you can do, buy them a few drinks, treat them politely, chat about unimportant things and then pay them for the nights excursions. Keep it simple and don't try to over analyze things is a strip club Next week's lecture in the Bruce's Comportment series will be The House of Lords. Isn't it the same thing, buy them drinks, pay them and don't try to save them from their "iniquitous" lifestyle?

Looks like she's going to attack with extreme nagging. That's not a woman, Kefka's a man, baby. A man!* Unless you're talking about Terra in which case, mea culpa. *may or may not be cosplayed by a man, though. And he was a weird evil jester type guy so the look is out there. I suppose for me, I don't really think about the visual look of the character to be a real representation of what they were. Most people, for example, wouldn't camp in full plate, would take their helmet off when talking with the King, etc. Its an abstraction. Mind you realistically I say the same thing about boob plate; its not realistic but there you go. If the style fits the game (like I think all the Dragon's Crown protagonists do) then I'm okay with it. Just as I'm okay with PE dispensing with boob plate and the like.

Touché! But it was still "real world" flight of fancy. And I understand that; it'd have been nice if that's what they said rather than soundbyting it.

Poster: “Sir, you are drunk.” Walsingham: “Troll, you are ugly. In the morning, I shall be sober.” Walsingham: "Writing a post is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement; then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him out to the public." ...yeah I can see it.

I'd imagine that most people being bandied about as "white knights" aren't really trying to help people who are helpless so much as to add their voice to the voices of others - particularly in cases where a homogenous group of critics might be dismissed for pushing an agenda for their demographics or belief set by adding a larger, less homogenous nature to the criticism.

The Dark Sleep (2012) - movie loosely inspired by HP Lovecrafts "Dreams in the Witch House", it'd be considered a poor adaption if it billed itself as such; as it is its an enjoyable low budget horror film (although I think they overloaded the opening with conflict between the heroine and her ex, making her look worse as a character than necessary). The Lurking Fear (1994) another poor adaption of an HPL story (this time billed as such). As an adaption its a total failure changing the mood and story elements. As its own - divorced of the HPL connection - as a crime film that happens in a horror town its okay. Ashley Laurence is pretty good as the main heroine, Jeffery Combs is brilliant as a boozy doctor, Vincent Schiavelli is very welcome in a sleazy cameo. Jon Finch is good in a thankless role that asks little of him (his acting pretty much makes it). Allison Mackie's character seems to veer between sympathetic and psychotic for no reason and there's little explanation why Paul Mantee's reverend is crazy or why/how the creatures are. Its the kind of film where characters can be killed in the next room and no one hears or monsters can break through a window and drag someone off and no one bothers to try and block the broken window up.

Yeah sorry, I was still in the edit time window and had seen the Arnold video and decided instead of double posting I'd edit my original. Alan Moore does look a bit like the film Hagrid, yeah. Mind you he's always looked like that; I remember the first picture I saw of him back in the 80s he looked like a bearded long haired floating head (thanks to wearing a black shirt against a black background) so its not a new look, really.

I've seen bits and pieces of that - should sit down and give it a watch but its been on at an awkward time locally.

They misspelled "Charlton". http://youtu.be/9LUv3kbmNfg

For the record, the Disneyland castles for Cinderella (multiple references including Moszna Castle, Château de Chaumont and Alcázar of Segovia) and Sleeping Beauty (heavily based on Neuschwanstein Castle) were based on real castles not just some flight of fancy.

Part of this is because those characters are much older and less overall relevant in today's world. There is certainly loud pushback on a lot of assumptions about comic book/cartoon characters today, however. Some of the more common ones that I'm aware of (with exceptionally minimal understanding of the comic book scene since I have never read them) are things like the Hawkeye Initiative (the most classic pose being the various ones where a woman character is able to show off both her chest and ass cleavage in the same shot). Comic Cons and the like (as well as game cons, and really a lot of places of geek culture that have historically been heavily dominated by males) have started to see movements such as Cosplay is not Consent because it's enough of a problem. A friend of mine is a member of the 501st Legion out of Calgary (and is actually a huge fan of Darth Nihilus and has frequently cosplayed as him) and has had to deal with it personally herself. Yeah the Hawkeye Initiative is amusing in its attack of certain poor artistic decision some artists insist on continuing to make. I'm not sure I can really relate COSPLAY IS NOT CONSENT to body types in video games (unless you're making a connection regarding objectification and how it spills out from fiction into real life and I'm missing it?) One of the things I find interesting trend wise with cosplay is the pushback against people cosplaying outside of the race or gender simply because people assume that these extreme conceptual body types (super musceled dude, super busty woman) are easily replicable in real life by every person.

The basic idea of putting you in the situation by fiat of god could work - except it sounds like he made it something you were forced to accept rather than being forced on you (like, say, having your characters and some NPCs awaken in the past with no clue how to get there and a magic scroll explaining what had to be done that you could then argue over). Or your DM could have briefed you prior to character creation about what you know of the situation (the sun never rose) and knowing that your character has accepted a summon by the gods and started in the tower. Why you accepted the summon could be left to the player. Then the characters could be given the non-choice and all sent whether they agree or not. It seems to me he's having a hard time getting the ideas from his head and across to his players (same thing I had with that darn elephant; I just didn't sell it in the right way).

True, but when they're by the same company I can see people thinking they have to be the same. I'd rate Brave much, much higher than Brother Bear.

He is making perfect sense. And I see it like he does. I want to be able to do any quest at any time given that I am currently able to access it's location. Not only when some unknown condition has been met at some unknown point in the game. Constantly having to recheck every area of the game in case a previous action unlocked some hidden content sounds grating, especially when you do a replay of the game and already know that "this" quest should be "here", but it isn't. One way to solve this would be to keep the quests from being area specific; ie if you unlock quest Z after completing Quest D, then the quest giver spawns at the next logical area you enter the first time or something, perhaps seeking you out because they've heard of your success at completing Quest D.

Awww, thanks. I like to think I learned something over the years. But just that one thing. When I was 10 I created a dungeon with an elephant in it. It wasn't the only thing in it and in my defense I was 10. Oh yeah and the Elephant had fallen through the ceiling and had half-hit points because of it. But did the players care about my finely crafted dungeon? Noooo....but then they wouldn't let me run them through TOMB OF HORRORS either...and quit my Star Frontiers game too...a sign perhaps? The quest hook was "there's loot in a dungeon, if you like loot go there." Morale of the story: Not everyone is equipped to be a good DM. Or don't let 10 year-olds create adventures in an RPG no matter how much they pester everyone. Something like that. Anyhow, does seem a really big plot railroad there. That's a cute story I commend your 10 year old effort I drew a map too! I wish I still had it.

My memory of the original Tomb Raider was that Lara Crofts bosom looked (not exactly) like a 3D triangle. It was only in later iterations as they improved the graphics did they hew to the proportions created by that initial triangle like quadrilateral form (or was it a pentagon?).

Kind of reminds of those characters we "rolled" up when I was about 13 and first discovered the AD&D game and got to take home my buddy's copy of the PHB and practice creating some characters. "Well sure I rolled up this paladin with 18/00 Str, 17 Dex, 18 Con, 12 Int, 14 Wis and 17 Cha, with 4d6 drop lowest. Why would I lie about something like that?" We did 4d6 drop the lowest BUT everyone rolled in front of all the other players, so we tended to have what we had. We also did 3d6 but 7x rolls and you place the 6 totals you wanted to keep. Although in Gamma World we did allow the scrapping of useless characters after rolling mutations.

When I was 10 I created a dungeon with an elephant in it. It wasn't the only thing in it and in my defense I was 10. Oh yeah and the Elephant had fallen through the ceiling and had half-hit points because of it. But did the players care about my finely crafted dungeon? Noooo....but then they wouldn't let me run them through TOMB OF HORRORS either...and quit my Star Frontiers game too...a sign perhaps? The quest hook was "there's loot in a dungeon, if you like loot go there." Morale of the story: Not everyone is equipped to be a good DM. Or don't let 10 year-olds create adventures in an RPG no matter how much they pester everyone. Something like that. Anyhow, does seem a really big plot railroad there.

I haven't seen anything in Wasteland 2 that jumped out and slapped me in the face making me think "my god...that's terrible." And I backed it. But then, I'm pretty reasonable in my expectations for the game, I guess.

To muddy the waters even more, there are a lot of women who defend, lets say, Powergirl's bosom because the stories have grown to accommodate the character addressing the issue that she's got a large chest and how that makes her perceived (ie the creators have tried to "own" the issue rather than ignore it). There's a complex dynamic that exists in relation to character creation that I think would be best left to the creators creating what they think works and the audience embracing or ignoring it. Personally I'm just as discouraged by pundits complaining about the body types used in DRAGON'S CROWN (which is OTT but then just about everything in the game is) and those who criticized Obsidian for making a conscious decision to avoid "boob armor" in PE and demanded sexy fantasy armor in the game. I'm happy to let people create what fits their game and letting it work (or not) on its own merits (or lack of same)

Since when? A lot of people seem to enjoy comics, too, and cartoony body proportions certainly exist there. In fact, i'd posit they were imported from there. One would think that cartoony body proportions came from...well...cartoons. But then I don't think anyone is complaining about Betty Boop on the thread. Or Daisy Duck. Or Minnie Mouse. Jessica Rabbit maybe? That said massive mammaries in superhero comic books are a modern day hot button topic in comics communities as people wonder whether "breast size" actually counts towards existing characterization or if its just continually perpetuated titillation. Heck there was outrage - OUTRAGE - when DC attempted to have Wonder Woman wear pants a couple of years ago, much less doing something like...de-emphasizing Power Girl's bust (which also gets cries of outrage).