Pattern Ghost

I'm mostly familiar with her from some appearances in the X-books from the late 80s, early 90s, where she's shown to be a competent team player. Granted, the character has been around for a very long time, and like many characters has a garbage back story, but I'm sure there are several incarnations better than what they put on screen.

9 hours ago, unclevlad said:

Altman back in...the old board tossed out and restructured.

I think that was one of only two ways it goes. MS offering jobs to anyone wanting to jump ship was a clear shot across the bow: Either get your act together or they're done.

Here's a summary of things MS CEO said in an interview with Bloomberg:

Here's the very latest on the OpenAI drama. Looks like it was fueled by a massive conflict of interest from a disgruntled board member with an interest in a competing company that was undercut by the release of the costomizable GPTs.

And here's another update video with more information:

It looks like MS may just cannibalize OpenAI over this drama. I'd say at least 50/50 odds that OpenAI is sunk unless they get their stuff together.

The Captain Marvel characterization in the MCU so far has been, to be charitable, bad. They decided to go with a female version of Maverick from Top Gun, which was lazy shorthand, inaccurate to the character known to comics fans, and failed to actually capture the essence of the Maverick character.

Movies are a group effort, so it's hard to say how much of that is the actress, and how much is what is asked of the actress. I don't care what she does off screen (within reason), but I don't like this iteration of Captain Marvel. Given that the actress likely has less input into what were some cringeworthy scenes in the movie, I suspect the issues lie more with the director/production side. (She doesn't seem to be a comics fan, so I'm seeing a lot of her ideas of the character being driven by what she was told by production.) Captain Marvel wasn't the worse MCU effort, but it was low-middle of the pack at best.

I've only seen Larson in United States of Tara, where she played a supporting part, but didn't have any issues with her acting there. My wife has seen another movie with her that she said was good, so I'll take her word for it. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter how good or bad she is, or whether she has given a good or bad impression in interviews.

The question is: Is this a good representation of Carol Danvers? I think she's off the mark, personality-wise. I'm hoping it's because of the origin shift and intentional to represent the trauma of the brain washing. One review I saw suggested this angle is at least somewhat addressed by The Marvels, so I intend to watch it when it comes to streaming and find out.

I think the bigger problem than any one actor is that Marvel has continually brought in directors, producers and writers who have no understanding of the comic book genre or respect for it. It will take creators with an understanding of the material and the insight to pull out the best of it and shape it into an enjoyable movie to move the franchise forward. 

So, Microsoft ended up hiring Altman over the weekend, heading off a price drop of their stock.

2 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

some hedge wizard guy

Or some guy whose name rhymes with Maron Bordo.

This is kind of interesting. I'm not sure this guy is quite right on a few things, but probably worth a listen.

In the news, drama and corporate infighting as OpenAI fires their CEO . . . then tries to woo him back:

11 minutes ago, Bazza said:

If Strange is portrayed correctly ie as a competent and consummate professional that he is, he doesn’t make a mistake and there is no movie. 

There's more than one way to skin a cat.

You know, reading this thread, it struck me why they need to ditch Kang: The Kang in Loki is, by definition, the most competent of the Kangs. And he's been dealt with already. Loki's Kang already won the Kang multiversal war. The threat of another war is moot with Loki being elevated to a cosmic being, and the TVA monitoring the timelines for Kang variants.

I just saw a video (read: take this with a huge grain of salt) saying that there was only one Marvel movie slated for 2024 release. I think they're taking the opportunity to catch their breath and try to get their mojo back. IMO, they should be looking to replicate the earlier success of building up a longer storyline with a big event conclusion. They aren't going to do it with a bunch of second stringer characters. Iron Man wasn't as well known to the general public as Hulk, Spider-Man, and Captain America, but he was a lot more familiar than anything that came around in the second/third wave of heroes.

Ms. Marvel was popular with comics readers, and although I never read her book I thought it was one of the better Disney+ shows. Most people panned it as another M-She-U project, but the story was well done. The same happened with Hawkeye, which I thought was great. Two of the strongest shows in the line up were dismissed because the general audience weren't familiar with the characters involved, and didn't want to give them a chance after other projects soured their taste. A local radio idiot the other day said the title for The Marvels was boring, because it was the same as the name of the company, and unoriginal. Another critic complained that Ms Marvel and Captain Marvel's uniforms were too similar, showing an apparent lack of knowledge of the concept of legacy characters in comics. Many, many idiots have complained that they didn't need to make a female Hulk who's better at controlling her change than Bruce, where we see her as a classic character, and know that she'd gained control over her powers and decided to live as She Hulk full time in the comics at one point. There's a lot of stuff comics readers understand, and many characters we recognize, that the general public doesn't.

IMO, they should focus on putting Avengers and Avengers legacy characters (like all those Young Avengers they've introduced) on the small screen on Disney Plus shows, and keep them disconnected (even if they share continuity) from the movie universe. Then they move forward with a Fantastic Four or X-Men franchise that builds up to something. Or both. They can run one cosmic/multi-dimensional adventure track with Fantastic Four, and run a largely Earthbound track for X-men. There's also crossover potential for events once the X-men introduces their own cosmic and multidimensional threats. There's enough material in both franchises to keep each its own phase. Any way they approach it, they need to find new, fresh spaces to play in, but with highly recognizable characters. (I probably wouldn't start with Fantastic Four due to their prior history on screen possibly tainting the franchise given the public's lowered expectations of quality from the studio.)

I'm still at 1150. Been feeling under the weather this last week. I might try to knock out some words tonight.

5 hours ago, Hermit said:

Today, we let our dog pass out of pain and out of this world. So I've not gotten any real writing done and not sure I will today.

Condolences, losing a pet is tough. 

I'm likely to finish today at 0. Had a long day of visiting family for my niece's birthday party today, so that wore me out. It didn't help that I woke up at 330 this morning and couldn't go back to sleep.

Ugh. New day! Headache is gone, so I'm going to try to buckle down and catch up some.

Ended with 0 today. Still have that headache.

Nursing a giant headache today.

6 hours ago, Old Man said:

Sounds like lessons have finally been learned but that it'll take a year or so to turn the juggernaut around.

Sounds about right. Juggernaut is notoriously hard to turn around.

I'm closing out below par, too. My sleeping schedule is all messed up, so I only did the initial post-midnight session last night. Ending with the 1150 I posted above.

Still, that's not nothing. We're still in the game, Cancer!

Another example of disgustingly careless implementation of an AI feature by Microsoft:

https://www.axios.com/2023/10/31/guardian-microsoft-generative-ai-poll-death

12 minutes ago, BoloOfEarth said:

Washed ashore?  Hope the hero had some shampoo and soap handy.  Still, seems an odd way to start a book with a little oceanside bathing.

Hygiene is often overlooked in fantasy fiction. It's always a good idea to start your adventure fresh, and with clean underwear.

Midjourney seems to have no concept of what a turkey looks like. Ended up making my new avatar with DALLE-3, which seems to do great at cartoony stuff.

14 minutes ago, assault said:

You can start with her not being washed ashore. Being stuck in the middle of the ocean knowing you are going to die allows for a lot of plots.

Nah, I already have him in a shallow grave. That's enough near death to start off with.

First writing session done: 1 hr 17 minutes / 1150 words. Wanted to get some words in before bed. I'm going to try to get some writing in before bed and first thing in the morning each day.

Working title: Crow the Agnostic

I'll probably change the protagonist's name and thus the title at some point, but I'm feeling lazy about naming tonight.

It has begun! First chapter started. Our hero has washed ashore. Because that's never been done before, amIright?

Watched Disney's Haunted Mansion remake today on Disney Plus. It was better than I expected. It had a solid cast and was pretty fun overall. Definitely aimed at a younger/family audience.

I think that ideal solution requires a degree of rational detachment that simply doesn't exist in any of the parties involved. I also suspect that HAMAS and their allies intended their attack to provoke exactly this kind of response from Israel, to damage their standing on the global stage. I think this conflict is less about waging asymmetrical warfare in the military sense, so much as in the political sense, bolstered by the proven effectiveness of disinformation campaigns.