I fed a MJ four image spread back into MJ and got this interesting result trying to turn the below into a black and white line art:

I didn't really think MJ would do a straight conversion, but the result was interesting.

9 hours ago, Old Man said:

Random reps are not empowered to direct the Capitol Police--only the House Speaker can do that.

Congress is the wrong branch to be directing the police in the first place, that's squarely Executive, not Legislative. (I know logic doesn't often enter into things, but still, seems wrong.)

On 12/30/2022 at 11:11 AM, unclevlad said:

Remember the inexplicable 4 murders in Idaho in mid-November?  A suspect has been arrested.

My niece and her boyfriend were renting a cabin in the area where he was arrested, when he was arrested.

OK, so I finally got bitten by the MidJourney bug because I had to set up a Discord account for something else.

After a little fiddling around, I made some images for a hypothetical noir planetary romance story I've had rattling around in the back of my brain:

Our hero:

a troubled war veteran, after catching a minor case of death from getting involved in the wrong situation with the best of intentions, awakens

in a ruined city in an alien desert, after dreaming of a woman who has haunted his nights ever since he woke up in that Army hospital tent, our titular Jade Eyed Princess:

He's astonished to find his old war wounds healed, but is soon set upon by a group of primitive hunters

who don't look quite human. These, he will later dub Big Heads. First, he must escape! Which he does. Fleeing into the desert, dawn breaks and he realizes he really isn't in Kansas (or the Bronx) anymore. The need for water sets in, so he tries to obtain some from a cactus-like plant

which lashes out at him with tentacle-like appendages, and nearly takes him down with a fast-acting poison. He manages to drag himself to a cave before the survivor of the Big Head hunting party shows back up with his clan. He awakens to find

an unusual, slightly grotesque, yet somehow adorable creature . . . chewing on his wounded leg! He's alarmed, and the creature jumps back and makes submissive gestures. He hears an amused laugh from the back of the cave, and turns to find

an ophidian woman with iridescent skin watching over him. She assures him the creature is only trying to clean the poison out of the wound, and in his fevered state, our Hero decides to just roll with it, because none of this is probably real anyway.

Some time later, the pair (trio!) are found by the Big Head search party and decide to deal with the situation head on. Which means a trial by combat. The festivities are interrupted before they begin by

a Royal Navy airship. The Big Heads have been in conflict with the Empire for some time. This is because the Empire controls the weather machines and has been withholding rain from the desert side for months, forestalling their brief annual rainy season, and the Big Heads have been raiding border settlements.

However, it turns out the airship is also looking for their Immortal Princess. Our Hero and Snake Lady (mostly Snake Lady) broker a tenuous truce and enlist the Big Heads to help with the search for the Princess. This, because the ship's commander discloses that the weather machines have been taken over by a rebel faction. All hope that the Princess can help sort this out.

Of course, there's that trial by combat to sort out first.

Our band finds the Princess. Hero, Snake Lady, and Head Big Head all fly off to

The mountain city capitol of the Empire, where Hero is fascinated by the Princess despite the warnings of Snake Lady. Political negotiations ensue. A small force lead by our Hero sets out to secure the weather machines.

That's all I have in pictures. Hero will find out some unpleasant truths when he meets older versions of himself in the form of both the Emperor and the rebel leader, and begins to once again question the reality of his situation . . . He's being made a plaything of by the Jade Eyed Princess.

Some writing software, like Scrivener, has a feature to save inspiration pics or reference pics for writers while they work on a story. I've always disregarded this habit, but I'm kind of warming up to it! MidJourney is pretty cool stuff.

Hope everyone is having a very Merry Christmas and joyous winter holiday celebrations!

10 hours ago, unclevlad said:

Johnson's seriously wrong for Bond, IMO.  Johnson's physicality is too brutish;  Bond is more refined.  He's too old to start in the part now, too;  he's 50. 

Just want to point out that I was talking about Cavill.

Also going to point out two more things:

Cavill was runner up to Craig for the role, and lost out to Craig b/c he was too young at the time. He's now 39. Craig was 38 when he was in Casino Royale. So, the Bond franchise runners likely have him in the back of their minds.

As for his size? He doesn't walk around looking jacked constantly. He's a big guy without the Witcher/Superman level of muscle, at 6'1" and a pretty broad shouldered build, but he's not super bulky just walking around at his normal fitness level. I've met Sean Connery, who's an inch taller and seemed taller yet, b/c he's also a big, broad-shouldered guy. He had a fair run on Bond.

The big question is how they want to go with the next Bond? Do they want to go with ex-military action guy again, or suave Roger Moore type? I'm not overly familiar or a real fan of the Bond character, but I've read all of two short stories featuring him, and the ex-military action guy was stressed more in that material. So, it's definitely a facet of his character.

All that aside, I'm not too worried about Cavill's career. He's already got a dream gig, with producer credit, so more creative control, lined up. I'll watch that if it makes it to streaming. If not that, I'm sure he'll be around to entertain us for some time to come. He's talented, and seems to be a very composed, decent sort of guy.

Here's an interview with Cavill, where he discusses that bit about his earlier Bond near miss that I mentioned:

1 hour ago, dmjalund said:

If Neflix is smart, they will beg him to reclaim his role in the Witcher

Nah, this frees him up for more Enola Holmes movies.

My bet is he lands on James Bond, provided they want the next Bond to be a white male. I've heard rumors they're considering female or BIPOC Bond. Not sure how firm those are versus speculative.

Maybe Marvel will grab him. They're going to be bringing back the X-franchises eventually, so there are plenty of opportunities there. For Marvel, Captain Britain or maybe Union Jack are pretty obvious choices, let him speak in his native accent, and lesser known to movie audiences, which provides creative leeway for the actor, director and writers. Plus, Captain Britain is X-adjacent.

9 hours ago, Logan D. Hurricanes said:

All at Once

One at a Time?

7 hours ago, Lectryk said:

And Vlad owes him big time.

I'm pretty sure that's not a concept rattling around that particular thick skull. You don't owe a mark.

He'd take him in, and continue using him against us, of course.

He'll flee the country, or attempt to, before taking his own life. He's a coward.

Get well soon, DT.

Condolences, Christopher. Thanks for sharing your memories of your brother.

Grats on surviving another year, Log!

I was joking about hammering out 50k in five days, but I do have a slight itch to get back to writing. This wasn't the best November to for me to attempt a NaNoWriMo, though.

1 minute ago, csyphrett said:

A guy at the nanoboard said he had 3 million words written for the year which is like 270k a month

There's got to be some point where quality suffers for quantity.

I'm at 0 words so far this year.

I'll start first thing tomorrow.

Maybe I'll hammer out that Noir Planetary Romance idea I've had kicking around in the back of my head for a few years.

https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/06/01/how-the-walt-disney-company-makes-most-of-its-mone.aspx

1 hour ago, Lord Liaden said:

Of course you can come up with some mechanism, but you're missing the bigger picture. Steve Rogers became a true Nietzschean superman, an Aryan-looking Nazi ideal. Except he was American, created by a German scientist who rejected fascism, and became a symbol of everything opposed to the Nazis. That has a resonance that's hard to recreate.

Do you think that was by design or happenstance? I'm not a big enough comics buff to know that level of history behind the creation of the characters.

I do agree with your point of Cap fitting the time he was created in. I was just playing around. That's why I tossed an emoji in there. 🤪<- like that

What's that from, Logan? I think I want to read that book.

They had some science happening in the 1860s that could be sprinkled in for origin story flavoring:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1860_in_science

Edit: The top of the page has a list of links to different years, so you can click through the years and look for interesting breakthroughs to comic book-ify.

On 11/15/2022 at 8:26 AM, Lord Liaden said:

Giving him a Civil War origin would be a big risk. No super-soldier serum, so you have to come up with an entirely different path for him to gain powers.

Voodoo cocktail and focusing the rays of the sun through a gemstone with particular properties. I mean, you can change the SFX up all day long. Captain Federalist, savior of the Union! 😁

Sorry GM Joe, I only made it halfway through your post. Could you summarize?

j/k

Life's too short to waste on finishing stuff you don't like.

Thanks, Doc! Well done. More, please.

3 hours ago, Cygnia said:

It gets worse, Hermit...

 

US official: Russian missiles crossed into Poland, killing 2

How did I not see this before I posted the same thing?

🤦‍♂️