Pattern Ghost

Yeah, I usually think of the son of an Atlantean woman and a lighthouse keeper version, since that was the current backstory when I was a kid. I knew he'd been around a while, just never thought much of his prior version or looked into it until fairly recently.

Do we know that the Batgirl movie is coming out before the solo Batfleck movie? I'd assume that the Batfleck one is further along, given that they haven't formalized the deal for Batgirl yet.

My mother was the 7th of 9 siblings (holy crap, I just realized my mother is 7 of 9!), and her oldest sister was older than my father's mother. So, it's possible for aunts to be a lot older than someone's parents. Of course, there's no indication that Peter's parents came from a big family, so it does look a bit odd. On the third hand, May could be a great aunt, which is what I just kind of mentally filled in over the years.

And starting things off and right doesn't require a bunch of Bat-movies prior to the Batgirl movie.

We've had plenty of Batmovies, I'm sure audiences will get the gist. It's not even the first time Batgirl's been on screen. Not that the other time is worth thinking about.

Slightly annoyed today by CO. My game card time ended today. So, my status went from Gold back to Silver. I ground out the 650 Snake Bucks needed to buy the new Gunslinger AT during the High Noon at Snake Gulch event, and bought the AT. Now that I'm Silver status, it's not letting me convert my Gunslingers and is showing me as not owning the AT. I'm sure that this will rise from slight annoyance to major peeve by the time they sort it out. I restarted WoW a few days ago. More demons. More portals. Still boring as hell. (For me, anyway.) I'll probably let it expire again when the token runs out. Maybe the new version of TSW will be up by then. EDIT: This morning, Cryptic support asked me for a screenshot (why? no idea), then promptly escalated the ticket. That's actually pretty good for Cryptic support. Mildly pleased. Will be shocked and amazed if the next tier of support actually fixes the problem in a timely manner, but still, this is an improvement.

That was actually a cool look for an aquatic character and made sense. It just wasn't nearly iconic enough for Aquaman, though. I didn't like it for him.

He's been strong since his first appearance. He punched a hole in a German submarine in his first story. That's pretty strong. The opening splash page also shows him deflecting heavy weapon fire with his forearm. So, pretty tough, too.

The first thing I thought when they cast him was "Namor eyebrows!"

FoxbatCon is running in CO. Inventor AT is up for 650 Foxbat creds.

His Golden Age origin from Wikipedia: Aquaman's first origin story was presented in flashback from his debut in More Fun Comics #73 (November 1941), narrated by the character himself: The story must start with my father, a famous undersea explorer — if I spoke his name, you would recognize it. My mother died when I was a baby, and he turned to his work of solving the ocean's secrets. His greatest discovery was an ancient city, in the depths where no other diver had ever penetrated. My father believed it was the lost kingdom of Atlantis. He made himself a water-tight home in one of the palaces and lived there, studying the records and devices of the race's marvelous wisdom. From the books and records, he learned ways of teaching me to live under the ocean, drawing oxygen from the water and using all the power of the sea to make me wonderfully strong and swift. By training and a hundred scientific secrets, I became what you see — a human being who lives and thrives under the water.

Looks like they've already tweaked the scaling. Link.

Aquaman was Superman-strong at his introduction. He seems to have missed out on the massive power creep Superman has enjoyed over the years, though. I think his first appearance could be classified as "Aquatic Superman." Strong because he comes from a higher-pressure(gravity) world, has issues with both being an alien and human (original Aquaman was a human by birth, raised in the ocean, Supes a Kryptonian raised by humans), swims and talks to fish instead of flies and has weird alien powers. Two versions of Doc Savage, really. Especially the "my dad taught me the ways of the sea after learning Atlantian secrets" original origin.

Found out a bit about the Secret World relaunch. Apparently, they're splitting it into a new FTP online action RPG called Secret World Legends, but keeping TSW intact as its own thing. Speculation is that TSW is going into maintenance mode. Link.

On the one hand, the first thing I thought of was Ang Lee's craptacular Hulk. On the other hand, at least he said he'd like to sit down and actually read a comic, which is a step Lee never bothered with.

I'll pass on that guy for either universe.

WoW Patch 7.2 dropped today. I'm still not too enthused about going back to the Legion grind, but might reactivate. I have until the 3rd left on my CO time card, so the timing's about right. I'm holding off on TSW until they get their relaunch or whatever done. They still haven't made any official statements as to what it'll entail. Edit: I may wait for them to fix this. (Nutshell: They've introduced item level scaling for mobs, so they gain health as you get higher ilvl. But it's currently broken.)

Aquaman's core concept is pretty cool, really. Superfriends didn't help his image, though.

It's sadder when they swipe their terminology from Firestarter.

You don't have to be arbitrary. If you want unreliable magic, you tell the PCs they're playing with fire, and when they get burned, you make it interesting. The BBC series Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell gives a good example. The character uses magic he knows is dangerous to advance his position, and in doing so creates a situation that the plot flows from. Now that PC's actions are a centerpiece of the adventure, or in a campaign, perhaps create an interesting side adventure. How that's resolved should be utterly fair. I'd say that if you want magic to figure into tactics as in a typical Pathfinder/DnD game, then it'd be unfair to make it unreliable. Your PCs will quickly all become rogues and fighters, leaving magic by the wayside. If you're going for tactical magic and still want some danger in the magic system, then doing something like separating the tactical magic system from the ritual magic system is probably in order. You want to bring your party's best fighter back from the dead? OK, you have some options, and they all have drawbacks. The easiest option, he comes back as a kind of stupid zombie, so scratch that. The second option, you have to petition a powerful magical being to help with the process, and run the risk of making a bad deal with said entity, or simply unleashing it on the world. As the GM, you can treat it as simply a roleplay opportunity for the PCs to outwit the entity. The negotiation can be the thing, in and of itself. Let them outwit the entity. This time. Maybe next time, it gets the upper hand. None of this is railroading. It's letting the players make decisions and steer the direction of the game as they play out the consequences. It's the furthest thing from railroading, and can be a lot more fun than the Pathfinder dickery described above.

Updated Version:

I did that. Just makes him look bigger, really.

The Pathfinder scenario imposes mechanical consequences. A good campaign striving to give magic unintended consequences should look to impose story consequences.

The Flash is probably the higher-rated show, so think of it as more of a marketing gimmick for Supergirl than a crossover.

That Melville, such a ray of sunshine.