Vondy

Eh, Betsy Braddock was a white British girl until someone came up with a bad idea.

Dude, what are you smoking?
 
Who in the 80's ever heard of a Japanese Ninja? 
 
That's utter crazy talk and disinformation. 
 
For your future reference: REAL Ninjas are white, American, and wear camouflage pants...
 
The 80's was the golden era of the white boy ninjas!
 
Betsy as a white girl Ninja would have almost been the norm in the eighties.
 
Except, well... girl power and a British accent.
 
Not that normal and eighties go together, mind you. 
 
But still...
 

I'm just waiting for the day when someone complains they didn't get a Kryptonian to play Superman.

Dude, what are you smoking?
 
Who in the 80's ever heard of a Japanese Ninja? 
 
That's utter crazy talk and disinformation. 
 
For your future reference: REAL Ninjas are white, American, and wear camouflage pants...
 
The 80's was the golden era of the white boy ninjas!
 
Betsy as a white girl Ninja would have almost been the norm in the eighties.
 
Except, well... girl power and a British accent.
 
Not that normal and eighties go together, mind you. 
 
But still...
 

I'd prefer it if Marvel was simply left to its own discretion on these matters. But the world at large won't give them that much latitude. Everyone with an agenda is pulling at whatever exposed thread they can reach.
 
I don't care how they cast any of these characters as long as they do them well. Look at DC. They cast Superman with a suitably handome, square-jawed actor who certainly looks the part, but they got everything else so wrong he is unrecognizable as the last son of Krypton, at least to me (and a whole lot of others, apparently). Look at Paramount. They so thoroughly destroyed the iconic Star Trek characters in the new reboot that I refuse to acknowledge the new movies even exist. There are a lot of worse ways to ruin the legacy of your most treasured franchise characters than to cast them off-race or gender-swapped.
 
Look, it makes sense to me to update characters for a new generation (as long as you do it well). It makes sense to me to redraw and redefine characters in an effort to expand the fanbase and enlarge the potential audience. It makes no good sense to me to change characters in fundamental ways just to pander to social critics who aren't as interested in good storytelling as they are in merely balancing the scales. By the same token, I am not persuaded by any argument that says something is superior or more right merely because it is how it's always been.

I mean, how can this go wrong...
 

I thought black Heimdall was a bit much, I mean, you'd think that the Norse would have noticed this dude is black when they told the legends and myths these people were based on.  I can buy they got Thor's hair color off, but a black guy in Norway kinda stands out.  And the white British ancient one bothers me less by the change than by taking away a pretty significant role from an Asian actor.  I mean, how hard would it be to find an old mystical seeming Asian dude?  It was just obviously a "we need more women in the movies" move rather than any story thing.
 
Half Vietnamese is not all Asian, nor less Japanese.  I'm not a huge Munn fan to begin with, either, but I haven't been terribly impressed with any of the X-Men movies anyway so, no big deal.
 
But for me, the casting choices matter less than the motivation behind them: they're not doing it for story reasons or character reasons, its the stuff Vondy and Zslane wrote about above, its striving for a checklist of "social justice" choices in some kind of virtue signalling that is just lame.

Psyclocke, aka Elizabeth Baddock, born in Baddock Manor, England, and brother to Captain Britain? If this is the character you are thinking of, she is British and upper class, not Asian. 
http://marvel.com/universe/Psylocke

I dunno.  "White guy who is better than Asians at the martial art they invented" is a pretty venerable Hollywood (and comic book) stereotype in its own right.  

I like it when the source material is honored as well. However, Marvel does play with the "traditional" identities of their characters through their various comic reboots. Nick Fury isn't just a graying white dude anymore. There's been a black Spider-Man. Ms. Marvel is an Indian girl. Thor was a woman for a while. There doesn't seem to be any hard and fast rule that says Marvel is prohibited from changing things up, whether it is in their comics or their movies or their tv shows.
 
If Marvel wanted to make Danny Rand an asian guy, they could have done so and it would have seemed as un-radical a notion as Miles Morales or Kamala Kahn. Given all the opportunities for change that Marvel has taken advantage of recently in the comics, it becomes a little conspicuous when they don't do so in other media. It just becomes fodder for SJWs, and the bad press from disappointing them is arguably worse than the nerdrage they draw for daring to stray from the source material in any way.

I hated that storyline. I loved British psylock. Asian psylocke just kinda came outta nowhwere specifically to put an asian on the team. Wtf?

I agree. A few characters, however, you could get away with changing. For instance, while it would be playing to stereotype, you could make Iron Fist an Asian (or Eurasian) and not alter the character too deeply (and considering the dirth of Asian characters... maybe not such a bad thing). And, speaking of mixed-race people, I think Hollywood has a black-and-white mindset (pun intended) that ignores biracial people and implies we never mix and are forever divided.
 
Its kind of like the government census and EOE forms: you only get to check one, even if you are many. We officially endorse the divisive racial purity mindset. This is one of the things about Obama that saddened me. He's biracial. That was a huge opportunity that was completely missed. Is his having a black father and white mother really so uncomfortable that we can't put it out there and say he's a black and white president? Sorry. That was an unnecessary rant.
 
But, I guess my point is, I think staying true to the core concepts works well and shows respect for the source material - I agree with you - but racial background isn't key to every concept, either. In some cases you might be able to make an adjustment without doing damage.

I would replace -confidence with -esteem, because the latter is a prerequisite for the former. Because I think approximately nothing on the societal level now is done to provide young men with a reason to feel good about themselves. When pushed into that sort of void, people of any subdivision will make stuff up. I think this manifests so strongly in gaming communities because games more or less by definition are fantasy situations, and the constraints of actual physical or mental abilities or social skills are not in effect; the whole point of fantasy is you can manufacture whatever situation you like. And mostly what these young men would like is some indication that there exists a reality which does not despise them ... perhaps not enough that everyone else actively wants them to die, but a state where these people do not exist and are wholly excluded from the environment ... yeah, they'd like a world that has (but doesn't have the guts to admit openly) the implicit attitude that things would be better if those boys were the functional equivalent of not living; just go away! Unsurprisingly, the fantasy world that gets created doesn't pay much respect to what the "real world" wants, in all senses of what it wants.
 
Somewhat allied to that, thinking on a meta-level ...
 
When the word "nerd" came into use (back in '70s) it was a kiss of social death. The nerds were almost invariably boys/young men who did not have abilities to which mainstream culture assigned positive worth (athleticism; social charm; wealth and showy possessions). Social rejects, who found in games (wargames, then RPGs) an avenue which did not require those mainstream-value abilities and even provided a (small) community where something like camaraderie could be found ... something the "nerd" label by its intent utterly deprived them of.
 
Then computer hardware, long a nerd province, started making large amounts of money. The stigma of the label went away.
 
But the root phenomenon didn't go away. There's still a lot of young men who are not given any reason for living by the social mainstream, and girls are explicitly part of that mainstream.
 
So they are back festering emotionally and socially in on-line communities, where nothing like face-to-face contact exists. And guess what? Just like all humans, they crave and create a community of their own.
 
Same phenomenon. Same root cause. And once again, the real world trowels stronger and deeper rejection upon them for being the people that were rejected in the first place.

And, if Ant-Man can get inside Tony's suit, well... Ants in your pants.

I'm using hyperbole to make a serious point.   Raymond Chandler: “As to the emotional basis of the hard-boiled story... obviously it does not believe that murder will out and justice will be done — unless some very determined individual makes it his business to see that justice is done. These stories were about the men who made that happen.”   The focus in on private and individual and justice. Not on public and institution and order. It was assumed, if the powers that be had their way, no justice would come to the common man. The hard-boiled hero was not cop, soldier, g-man, member of the elks, or lover of PTA women.    He was a disruptor who did right despite - and in spite of - those in authority with official power. He represented purity in the face of institutional corruption and an oppression under color of law. He did not enforce bankrupt rules. He went out and fought for principles and righteousness.   He was a modern day Jeremiah the Prophet. Jeremiah was God's prophet. He stood up for truth, and justice, and righteousness. He went against the corrupt system and called out the leaders. What happened? They tried to kill him, imprison him, and discredit him.  He kept going - infused with courage and compassion for the people and a dogged desire to see justice win out.    That is the emotional basis that drives the superhero, but our culture has changed. Today, we are regulation loving sheep who fetishize government, order, the status quo, institutions, and rules. We obediently accept censorship, thought police, intellectual boshevism, zero tolerance policies, TSA gropings, and pervasive invasive government surveillance.   Extreme rendition? Water boarding? Extra-judicial killings? The loss of freedom? Insofar as its the other guy. Insofar as we are safe. Insofar as the government does for us instead of our doing for our neighbors and ourselves. When I said Zero Dark Thirty and Jack Bauer were now our national anthem and our national hero, I meant it.   And, it shows in our comic book derived media, too. Who will protect us from the heroes? Well, the government of course. They'll make sure all is well. Those superheroes have to be registered and regulated! After all, they wear masks, just like criminals! The constant zombie-horde of cop shows and espionage thrillers and special forces movies have increasingly become bald-faced propaganda for statist power.   Put your faith in the system, the institutions, and the powers that be. Don't question the rules. Don't question the outcomes, or the means to the outcomes, or the corruption and injustice inherent in our society. Don't rock the boat. And, especially, don't trust the goodness of the individual that marks the hallmark of the knight errant, the cowboy, the hard-boiled detective, and the superhero.   Superheroes are disruptors, superheroes threaten to unmask the status quo, and superheroes are therefore dangerous. Tony Stark in Civil War represents the antithesis of the hard-boiled detective and his pajama wearing son. Captain America is Chandler's bygone hero tilting at windmills in a world that would rather he stand down. Cap is The Last of the Mohicans. Which, as a term, is probably violating someone's speech-code and zero tolerance policy.   I guess what I'm saying is that the superhero hasn't realized society is looking the other way while the government unmasks him and puts him in a cell, to protect itself in the name of the people. That his mask was originally a totem intended to strike fear into evil-doers and to protect not himself, but his loved ones, from reprisals is lost on the sheeple who more deep down inside agree with Tony Stark. That the authors don't understand the emotional basis of the superhero is just a sign that the cultural rendition order has already been given.   Rant Off!

While the law requires that, acts of conscience contrary to orders will, in most cases, be career stalling if not court-martial launching. Further, you are insisting on an narrow and inflexible interpretation of events that others who viewed the movie clearly don't share. That the pilot didn't know about the tessaract doesn't alter the fact that the shot-callers were taking it into account.
 
A small tac-nuke would destroy a square kilometer of Manhattan, which is less area than the Avengers and Aliens had already trashed. As a result, it might well have been not only lawful under the rules of war, but arguably a road to fewer deaths in the final balance sheet. Destroy a kilometer of New York to end an alien invasion and turn the tide in a battle that was already taking down large buildings and killing thousands? A chunk of Manhattan vs. Planet Earth?
 
There are those who would consider not giving or following that order immoral. Its quite likely no one would give a damn about the pilot's man-in-a-foxhole moral quandaries - and prosecute him right into Leavenworth. Could it have been a non-nuke? Sure. But one that would take down Stark Tower would require a bomber and take longer to deploy. I'm not saying your are wrong, per se, but I am saying you don't have an interpretive monopoly on what to take away from that sequence.
 
And, in the end, we're arguing whether its realistic when Thor is fricking using his hammer like a helicopter blade?

Khelben Blackstaff.

While the law requires that, acts of conscience contrary to orders will, in most cases, be career stalling if not court-martial launching. Further, you are insisting on an narrow and inflexible interpretation of events that others who viewed the movie clearly don't share. That the pilot didn't know about the tessaract doesn't alter the fact that the shot-callers were taking it into account.
 
A small tac-nuke would destroy a square kilometer of Manhattan, which is less area than the Avengers and Aliens had already trashed. As a result, it might well have been not only lawful under the rules of war, but arguably a road to fewer deaths in the final balance sheet. Destroy a kilometer of New York to end an alien invasion and turn the tide in a battle that was already taking down large buildings and killing thousands? A chunk of Manhattan vs. Planet Earth?
 
There are those who would consider not giving or following that order immoral. Its quite likely no one would give a damn about the pilot's man-in-a-foxhole moral quandaries - and prosecute him right into Leavenworth. Could it have been a non-nuke? Sure. But one that would take down Stark Tower would require a bomber and take longer to deploy. I'm not saying your are wrong, per se, but I am saying you don't have an interpretive monopoly on what to take away from that sequence.
 
And, in the end, we're arguing whether its realistic when Thor is fricking using his hammer like a helicopter blade?

Clarification: the scene showing the nuke-carrying jet being lifted into takeoff position, had a voice-over from a World Security Council member ordering the pilot to make the strike, stating that Fury's order had been overridden. Which I can accept the Council had the authority to do.
 
Modern nukes can have a blast radius measured in miles, more than enough to reach that portal. If that had even been the intended target -- it was being generated from the Tesseract device atop Stark Tower. I can see the logic in thinking, "destroy the Tesseract, destroy the gate." Not saying it was correct, just logical.
 
In any case, the Cold War-spawned doctrine of "Mutually Assured Destruction" kinda rewrote the definition of, "idiotic and immoral orders."

Firefighters wear masks, just like criminals and terrorists. 

A little early for the pulps, but Bass Reeves was a freed slaved who was one of the first black US Deputy Marshals. He worked for the famous hanging judge Isaac Parker, who valued him highly. Reeves came out on top in fourteen gunfights and arrested an brought an estimated 3,000 fugitives to justice. He was never seriously wounded, but on one instance, had his hat shot off. Two notable cases, 1) he single apprehended 19 horse thieves, 2) he brought in his own son for murder.

It also occurred to me that, at the venue, concessions and memorabilia are major sales items.
 
The concessions are usually sub-contracted to third-party vendors, so the team will have a business person to run that.
 
The memorabilia stores at the stadium are sometimes owned and operated run by the team / organization.
 
If so, you'll have a manager and staff for the store as well.
 
Incidentally, the Seahawks organization is big enough that has two training facilities.
 
The larger is 200,000 square feet with 48,000 dedicated to office and business staff.

In terms of "cleaners," a facilities staff w. ground-keepers would be included.
 
In terms of "security," stadium security and team security will be separate.
 
Most teams likely have a security coordinator who does threat assessment and vets transportation, lodging, and insane fans.
 
For coaching, there is the head coach, defensive coach, offensive coach, special teams coach....
 
Also, don't forget legal and business departments.
 
Football teams have huge insurance and liability requirements that require a ton of paper. 
 
And contracts are handled by teams of lawyers.
 
What about a sports psychologist?

How did you come up with your 'handle' (forum name)? 
 
My name is David. My college era gaming group called me "Dave Man" and then "D-Man" when they got lazy. I do not know why. It was stupid. Embracing this pointless nickname, my handle back on the Cybergames boards and then the Hero boards and then these here resurrected Hero boards was D-Man.
 
However, back during the flame-wars of old (today is weak tea compared to 2003-2005) I led a coalition of like-minded flame-war disrupting and derailing dastards under the moniker of Von D-Man, the monocole doffing, hessian boot wearing, kaisereich uniform wearing, bad German accent wielding Supreme Leader of PAID in Full. Whenever the flame warriors gave up and surrendered a thread (and boo-hoo'd at me in whiny private messages) we informed them they had been "Paid in Full."
 
Yet, someone took to abbreviating Von D-Man as VD-Man and, well, no thank you. Since ScubaHERO had taken to referring to me as "Von-D," and occasionally "Vondy," I asked Simon to change my handle to Vondy. It has been thus for years on end now.
 
What was the first tabletop RPG you played? 
 
The blue-covered1977 Dungeons and Dragon boxed set. It was 1979. I was 7. 
 
I played a ton of early games, however, and I loved a lot of them.
 
What was the first tabletop RPG you GMed? 
 
Same.
 
What are you currently playing/GMing? 
 
I have been running FFG Star Wars, but last week converted the characters to Hero 5th. 
 
I have a street-level TAS style Hero game I want to run in the near future. 
 
When did you start to play Hero?
 
I first played Hero in 1983, but didn't settle on it as my system of choice until 1991. 

Have now changed location from Southern Utah (Kanab) back up to Portland, Oregon.
 
Last Monday, got the moving truck and lots of people helped pack it with two expert Tetris masters getting everything in.
Only hiccups was the crate I was packing my computer room stuff into got put on the truck before most of the computers were put in the truck, and some loose parts got put in other boxes and onto the truck.  (And then the final packing of the computer room was still to be done.)   Wasn't a huge deal then, but made the setting up the computer room smoothly at the destination more difficult.
Tuesday morning, woke up to snow on the ground and bad weather from Kanab to Boise.  Truck was heavy enough, that the snow didn't really matter much, but at least in Utah, it seemed if we hit the wrong type of bump, the truck would go into a weird harmonic dance that felt like the truck would tip over. Figured out how to spot the road conditions that caused that and slowed down when needed...
Got into Boise around 9pm, took off early the next morning and drove thru very nice weather arriving in Portland around 2pm.   A bit early for the landlord, but his son was able to let us into the apartment.  And since most of my friends work, I did most of the unloading.  A few showed up and we got the truck done at 8pm.
Thursday was return the truck, run some errands including getting a new phone.  (I now have a "smart" phone).   Friday, I drove to San Diego for my cousin's wedding on Saturday.   Today, I'm having an early dinner with friends, then driving back to Portland part way tonight, and finishing tomorrow.
I think Tuesday will be an all sleep day...