Armory

Another new one up!
 
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1104.html

Regardless of how one feels about a direct democracy system, The Orville has used the premise to tell an interesting science fiction story with a touch of allegory. 
 
In other words, pure Star Trek.

There are 2 things that this episode makes me think of when I watched it, especially in letting the masses decide guilt;
1) Should Jason Todd live or die : the masses vote overwhelmingly to die. Why, cause Why Not.
2) Sanjaya Malakar on American Idol and his remaining on the show long past when he should, partly due to the work of Howard Stern. In fact, Malloy even called it trial by American Idol.
It actually reminds me why the founding fathers supposedly put in the electoral college - because when you give the masses the chance to affect things directly without real guidance, it could go horribly wrong, and probably will.

Or,...... you may all be overthinking it. 
 
Orville is not supposed to be serious science fiction.   I am watching it with the same mindset as I do Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and the show is only getting better. 
 
Turn off the forebrain and use the hindbrain instead and you'll have a blast

In one of my FH (1e) games, I had an item, Roddenberry's Ring of Parallel Development, which gave the wearer the equivalent of a Universal Translator.

Every time I click on someone's "Like This" button, I feel I am contributing to the inevitable downward spiral toward the future "Majority Rule" showed us. 

"Majority Rule" gave me a few shudders and a few amused snorts with its "pushed just a little further" view of social media and the moral-mob vigilantism that, I am told, really does happen on it. But it also made me wince a few times with the characters' stupidity. As mentioned, the aspects of farce, satire and drama still don't mesh very well. But I've seen worse.
 
I also must compliment the show on its opening credits. They make space look beautiful. Awe-inspiring, even. I hope that at some point they can give more of a nod to the exploration aspect -- just the sheer gobsmacking beauty and strangeness of the universe. Like, an episode in which they have to land on that tumbling comet, or in a forming planetary system. No rubber science required; the real situations can be exotic enough.
 
Dean Shomshak

Well, maybe it is because I'm old enough, but Majority Rule actually gave me a few chills. Mob  Justice never really is no matter what form the mob takes. I do like that McFarlane is willing to let others take the lead.
 
And yes, Lamar was a bit asinine but then, he did say in the first episode he was a jerk

Jim Starlin comments on MCU's Thanos in Infinity War:
"“I want to tell all you Thanos fans out there, without giving anything away, you’re not going to be disappointed, far from it. I truly believe folks will be pleasantly shocked by how delightfully different these two movies will be from previous Marvel films.
 
Joe, Anthony, Chris, Stephen and the rest of the gang have my complete confidence in their ushering of our favorite Mad Titan out from the world of comics and into the Marvel cinematic universe. My first born leaves the nest to wreck havoc on the heavens. What more could a proud father hope for?”"
 
And Josh Brolin:
"“When they showed me a little six-minute teaser of a scene that I had done, I was so blown away by how next-level this digital process is and how real it feels. I don’t know how I could be anything but happy. If everybody hates me at the end of it, I don’t know, will it be worth it if it’s a great movie? Maybe.”"
 
http://wegotthiscovered.com/movies/thanos-fans-love-avengers-infinity-war-sequel/

I call that the "Warcraft war hammer," the kind of completely impractical prop that video games have convinced a generation to believe could actually be used in a fight.   In relation to modern Thor, that hammer is too long and bulky to do all the cool whirling tricks that Mjolnir has done in the comics. And it would have been practically impossible for a human actor to wield convincingly.
 
For most of the comic Thor's history, Mjolnir was drawn smaller than what Chris Hemsworth has carried in the movies. But it was still heftier than real-world historical war hammers. Hemsworth's hammer, were it made of steel, would take a strong man just to lift, let alone swing it as a weapon.

If we want to get 'logical' about it, transporters should require a receiver.  How are all those atoms being reassembled at range?  So leaving aside the fact that they were created for budgetary reasons, transporters don't really make sense, but replicators do.
 
However, one of my all-time favorite episodes of any Trek series made magic with the ol' transporter accident:  they brought Scotty back!
 
Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge: Yeah, well, I told the Captain I'd have this analysis done in an hour.
Scotty: How long will it really take?
Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge: An hour!
Scotty: Oh, you didn't tell him how long it would *really* take, did ya?
Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge: Well, of course I did.
Scotty: Oh, laddie. You've got a lot to learn if you want people to think of you as a miracle worker.

In Thor Ragnarok we have a close substitute for the comic Defenders non-team. Marvel's Defenders are: Dr Strange, Hulk, Silver Surfer, and Namor the Sub Mariner, and characters like Valkyrie joining later.
 
So in Ragnarok we have
Dr Strange cameo
Hulk
Thor replacing Silver Surfer
And Loki replacing Namor as Namor has been a villain.
And Valkyrie.

Sometimes the players get totally focused on some minute point that's totally irrelevant to the episode. (So true!)

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency is back, and it's just as manic as last season.
Elijah Wood, Alan Tudyk... what's not to love?

Yep, exactly. The same way guys identify with Thor. Which is to say, in ways that have nothing to do with finding similarities in their respective abilities or life experiences. In fact, we don't really identify with them, rather we idolize the values and convictions (and resulting actions) of these characters, whether they are demi-god superheroes or not, and those values and convictions aren't race- or gender-specific.
 
I get excited when I see a heroic character like Wonder Woman fight the good fight, and I get equally excited when I see the same exact values being championed, and the same good fight being fought by a character like Captain America. The gender of the character is immaterial since it is their core values that matter, not the color of their skin or the nature of their reproductive organs. Yet there seems to be this thing where a lot of folks don't find their hearts and minds opened to those values, and the inspirational power of those actions, unless they come packaged in a form that matches what they see in a mirror. And that's just sad.

The irony of a man telling women they can't relate to a character that has, for nearly a century, been an iconic symbol of perseverance and strength for women in a male-ruled society is not lost on me.  This same type of thinking had male writers using WW as the JL secretary for a time.  BTW, she is also a symbol of compassion, mercy and peace...but yeah, she has superpowers so what woman could possibly relate to her?

"That carpet's not even 2 weeks old!"
"And yet you let gamers in here with food. So who's really to blame here?"
 
(OOC obviously)

I'd take James Cameron's comments with several grains of salt. I smell more than a whiff of sour grapes that people are embracing Wonder Woman and not still fawning over the women from his past movies.

Diana not flawed? She's naive, she's opinionated, she's cocky and stubborn. She gives of herself without reservation, so she gets her heart broken again and again.
 
As for T'challa, from what we've seen so far in the movies he appears to be proud almost to the point of arrogance. But he and his people are African root and branch, and they're great, and they owe nothing to the society of the white man to achieve that greatness. That, I believe, is what will impact black audiences.

Representation matters.

Couldn't we have said the same thing about Themiscyra before Wonder Woman's movie? And now I hear from woman after woman that seeing all those strong, magnificent women in their own society fills them with pride and the sense of empowerment. For comic readers it wasn't news, but for the wider movie audience it hit like a revelation.
 
And from the comic-book history perspective, the Black Panther was never a minor character. He was the first black superhero in mainstream American comics, created at a time when that name carried a big political resonance. He's starred in his own comics series repeatedly over the years, as well as an animated television series. His stories have dealt with very mature and controversial issues.

While I understand drawing those parallels, the way the Black Panther fights on screen so far is very different from Iron Man's. The Panther's tech has been "upgraded" over decades in the comics. Likewise how Wakanda has been depicted has evolved. Now while I'm not saying anyone here is looking at it that way, someone reading "agrarian society with great resources" could accuse that of being a stereotypical Western perspective of Africa. One of the reasons the Black Panther mythology resonates so much with many black people, is because Wakanda is the most technologically advanced nation in the world, yet it was never conquered, never colonized by Europeans. Its contemporary society is firmly rooted in its traditional culture, not the wake of white masters. And T'Challa is not just a superhero, he's a king, of a country where that title means a lot. The Black Panther symbolizes the greatness of Africa's past, and its potential greatness in the future.

Yeah, not all attempts to evolve a character to "keep up with the times" are successful. I think Spider-Man is another good example of An Upgrade Too Far...

A reach-back to letter M:
 
The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes. Probably the definitive book on the Manhattan Project now.

I coulda sworn I'd done this already but the thread isn't starred for me, so...
 
How did you come up with your 'handle' (forum name)?
My first Champions character was a powered armor type called Arsenal.  When I started playing City of Heroes, that name wasn't available so I took Armory.
 
What was the first tabletop RPG you GMed?  
AD&D, back in 1978 or '79.
 
What was the first tabletop RPG you Played?  
Same answer.
 
What are you currently Playing/GMing?  
Since my discovery of Champions in 1982, I have not played nor GMed any other RPG.  My current campaign has been running about 10 years with the same group of players, a current-day superhero game (I share a universe with two other GMs who each runs a separate team).  We're still using 5Er for that one.  The link to the Obsidian Portal site is in my sig.
 
When did you start to play Hero?  
1982, I think it was 2nd Edition (gray cover).  It was just me and a friend of mine, we both fell in love with it immediately.  He had already been trying to run a superhero game in AD&D; my Half-Elven thief PC had obtained a 'suit of the gods', enchanted leather armor that gave her all kinds of powers.  It was stupid, but we were 17 and new to the whole concept.  Champions and the Hero System were exactly what we were looking for.