Lord Liaden

You otter start every day with a good breakfast. In almost every other species besides ourselves, the males have to put on the display and make the effort to attract the females. Maybe the relationship issues in our society stem from having gotten that backwards?

Hmm... I'm not sure WW II scenarios would really match with Faerie. It's more about the fantastical, the larger-than-life, and war stories have been predominantly historical and realistic. Maybe because so many people have lived them. But there have undoubtedly been evolutions of the Imaginal Realms to match the shifts in popular entertainment-fueled imaginations, especially since they can involve hundreds of millions. I remember discussing here with Dean Shomshak the possibility that the Australian aboriginal Dreamtime has by now become infested with the post-apoc freaks from the Mad Max movie series. Dean suggested calling it "the Way Outback." I would be surprised if now the Japanese kami, oni, tengu, heroic samurai, etc. don't have to sometimes get out of the way of wandering kaiju. Tarzan almost certainly roams West African mythic jungles. Heck, the rain forest of the Mayan region of Faerie might have a Predator stalking it. Elysium, of course, has its "pop culture heavens." Images of famous people from living memory live in Babylon. I'd be willing to bet there's a corner of the Netherworld where not all demons are irredeemably evil, because that notion has become popular in recent decades. That might be where you could hang out with Hellboy, Lucie and Maze, and Crowley.

Which movie are you referring to, PG? Several kaiju and Harryhausen films are on reputable online hosts these days.

We had an extensive, high-quality Shadowrun-to-Hero fan conversion in PDF on the now sadly-defunct Star Hero Fandom website. That would probably make a fine place to start building an official Hero sourcebook. While I can find that website via the marvelous Internet Archive Wayback Machine, that particular PDF appears inextractable.

And shouldn't the representative of his state in the Senate be there showing support when his state is in crisis?

It did spawn a pretty kick-ass animated series, though. I'm not even getting into the utterly indescribable creatures like Hedorah and Biollante.

In addition to the arthropods from the Toho stable like Mothra, her sibling Battra, and the ones I mentioned above, don't overlook King Caesar, and Toho's take on Frankenstein, and the humanoid Gargantuas spawned from him. Toho's kaiju are much broader than lizards and dinosaurs.

BTW you can see inspirations from The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (a well-made and financially successful giant monster flick) in the 1998 American Godzilla film, like the amphibious giant attacking a ship at sea, and rampaging across Manhattan. But the latter was an inferior movie in almost every way except film making technology.

Well, you're kinda splitting hairs here. Kumonga is an inflated spider. Kamacuras is an inflated mantis. Gamera is an inflated turtle. It's also rather misleading to characterize King Kong as "a standard animal monster." Kong was "the Eighth Wonder of the World," a unique, breathtakingly giant ape who awed all who saw him. All Toho and Legendary did was make him more giant, and put him in a movie with other giants. And that's not unprecedented either. Don't forget the original movie Kong's battle with the T-Rex, which Peter Jackson tripled for his remake. Kong vs Godzilla can be viewed as an extension of that fight.

I just want to point out that Kong has a fuller history in popular media than some in this discussion may assume, as well as a larger past connection to Toho Studios. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Kong_(franchise)

This is the line we're getting from politicians desperate to avoid the blame for not having winterized their power system. I know it's Texas, but this isn't the first time they've had a run of cold weather in the winter. And climatologists have warned them that extreme weather events like this are going to become more frequent due to global warming. Other states with average colder winters and more use of renewables are coping just fine, because they spent to prepare their grids to handle it. The great majority of Texas' energy is generated by oil, coal, natural gas and nuclear, and that's what's freezing. That's also a segment of the economy that has enormous political clout in Texas, and a vested interest in denigrating renewable energy.

I think his history might have been a little different.

Gee, Duke, you suddenly read like you're steriaca.

While they do tease out the monster over the course of the film, and we rarely get a scene lingering on it, it is shown in some detail from various angles. Like these.

J.J. Abrams has stated in interviews that his movie Cloverfield was motivated by a desire to create the kind of iconic monster for American audiences that Godzilla is for Japanese. Setting aside the implied hubris of that , Clover is of course part of a different franchise and different universe. OTOH given the premise they've set up for that universe, a crossover is theoretically possible.

The first half of this video contains lots of really practical advice for staying warm during power outages.

The first half of this video details much really practical advice on staying warm during power outages:

Originally posted to one of the Picture threads, but when we talk of combining ch'i with other forces I can't help thinking of this.

Perhaps you're thinking of Broken Earth, the post-apoc game setting licensed for the Savage Worlds system. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/126143/Broken-Earth-Savage-Worlds

It's considered unseemly to speak ill of the dead, and this isn't the Political Discussion thread. So I'll just say I'm shedding no tears.

Were you thinking that Keith's Savage Earth has something to do with the Savage Worlds game system? If so, follow the link, it's for Hero 5E, nothing to do with Savage Worlds in system or setting.

Recognition plays a big factor IME. Relating that to Barsoom, look how badly the John Carter movie bombed. But I've long dreamed of getting enough money to pay Keith Curtis to publish his Savage Earth campaign, full color and hardcover. It's Hero, it's glorious, and there's nothing else like it.

You could be right about an age thing. Many millennials did not grow up watching old Godzilla movies on afternoon TV. Their programming tends to be a lot more fragmented and based on specific demand, so they might be less exposed. OTOH in America Godzilla has almost always carried the stigma of "kids" entertainment, like cartoons. Maybe a lot of people figured they had to grow out of liking them. But hey, Kong is an American monster, while Godzilla is unquestionably Japanese. Maybe nationalist "home team" has something to do with it?

It kind of depends on whose reaction you're sampling. In North America the idea of a technically high-quality Godzilla movie was huge for existing Godzilla fans, but they're only a small fraction of the movie-viewing public in that part of the world. Most of that public had only the sketchiest awareness of Godzilla, and what they knew they tended not to take seriously. Kong, on the other hand, is an iconic American character which many more people knew something about beforehand. I suspect some of the excitement also comes from Godzilla being filmed in an American storytelling style. You only have to compare the monsterverse movies to the most recent Japanese entry in the franchise, Shin Gojira -- wildly successful and popular in Japan -- to see the differing expectations the two cultures have for these movies.