Dr. MID-Nite

Falcon and Winter Soldier...interesting start.

1 hour ago, Lord Liaden said:

Godzilla became King the old-fashioned way, by killing everyone who didn't agree.

And it's the Americans who bestowed upon him the title of king. 

Wandavision

American Gods S3

The Boys S2

Gorath- Japanese sci-fi film along the lines of When Worlds Collide.

New Mutants was a mixed bag. Not terrible, but not really closely tied to the source material enough for fans to care. It also ties into the now completely irrelevant Fox universe so a lot of the proceedings seem pointless. Some good to great casting choices for at least some of the characters though.

Viperia's build IS Supergirl...right down to the heat vision. Depending on the campaign, you might want to give her some Damage Negation or Damage Reduction, but she's generally in that power range.

I kind of liked the Spectrum of Lanterns idea myself. It was cool when they deputized various DC heroes during Blackest Night. I get the criticisms, but it was fun reading...at least early on. DC's multiple reboots are what drove me away. DC in many respects was offering better writing for a while, but the constant reboots simply undermined everything. Marvel just completely lost track of why continuity and good writing are positives.

4 hours ago, Starlord said:

The last comic series I truly enjoyed was the Busiek/Perez run on Avengers in the late 90s.  I barely stayed with a couple comics here and there after that, although the 2nd JLA incarnation with Brad Meltzer and the brilliant Dwayne McDuffie (RIP) writing alongside Ed Benes art was decent.  After that and Civil War, I've left behind all current comics.  I still buy Graphic Novels for story arcs of comics in the 70's through 90's though.

The Busiek run was pretty damn good. He understood the characters.

2 hours ago, archer said:

 

"Other countries" don't give employees a working wage. 

 

"Employers" there give a working wage.

 

And employers in the vast majority of those countries aren't paying healthcare costs for any of their employees. And in many countries, the employers aren't paying unemployment costs or half of the social security costs.

 

Countries can make almost any system work, if they tinker with enough aspects of their systems to make it work. and do it over enough decades. Many healthcare systems in western Europe went to some form of nationalized healthcare in the 1950's and 1960's. That made it relatively easy to require higher wages in the 1980's and 1990's.

 

The problem the US has, at this point, is that no one wants to expend the political capital necessary to do a system-wide overhaul to fix Social Security, wages, and the healthcare system all at once.
 

Employers in said countries do so because of government regulation. They would probably not be doing so otherwise. So..."countries"....governments of said countries...whatever semantics makes you most comfortable. The point is that it gets done....in many cases as you stated...long ago. America has excuses...but no good ones.

And...yet again....other countries seem to manage giving their employees a working wage just fine. So most of the First World can do something the world's most powerful economy can't? It's not a question of can't. It's a question of won't. I'll go further....countries giving better living wages to their populace did not suffer price increases out of proportion to the increase in wages. If I'm making a living wage which enables me to pay my bills and occasionally buy something nice for myself, I am not going to give a **** about someone doing the SAME work making the same amount of money. We're doing the same work! And if you have a large investment in a secondary education....you're most likely making way more than minimum wage so the point is completely irrelevant. We're talking about MINIMUM wage. What person who "spent years and thousands of dollars on post-secondary education and professional development" is making minimum wage? Nobody I know....that's for damn sure. And...for the umpteenth time, other countries don't have this massive complaint of perceived "unfairness and discontent" among their workers that is being presented in arguments as inevitable. It's not. The populace in all of those countries have a much higher happiness index than people in the States do.

And....again...other countries pay their workers far better with far weaker economies. All these excuses show is that the way we run the economy in America is flawed....not that the minimum wage shouldn't be increased. If these "issues" are holding us back, then maybe we should fix them. Oh wait...this is America. We don't fix issues. We try to justify why all of our "issues" aren't really that bad and we should keep them because..."tradition". Me bad.

9 hours ago, Old Man said:

Looks like they're not even trying to hide it any more: (spoiled for literal Nazi symbology)

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

 

 

Naturally it's being denied as "an unfortunate coincidence", wink wink nudge nudge.

What the hell? I am so sick of Nazis in America.  The country needs to move forward and we keep trying to go back 100 years. So damn frustrating.

13 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

Unfortunately "political theater" plays a role in these arrangements. Emotions, biases, partisanship are unreasonable, but they're still powerful human motivations. In a representative democracy one ignores those motivations at peril, especially when one's political opponents can manipulate them to their own purpose. Appearances often count for as much as substance, sometimes even more.

This "political theater" ceased to be entertaining a LONG time ago.

6 hours ago, Starlord said:

It should be raised, and I'm saying that as someone who used to be a small business owner.

 

It should NOT be on the Covid bill and it should not more than double within 4 years.  I don't know about others, but that is what I said.  Just because the other side puts BS on bills as well isn't an argument and state-to-state cost of living is also a factor with a federal minimum wage.

I disagree to some extent. The federal minimum wage is way too low and has been for a long time. You can flip burgers in Denmark for over 20 dollars an hour and their economy isn't collapsing. If the "doubling" seems too much, it's because we've been way behind the eight ball on this front. Sorry if we now have to rip the band aid off. And if we use the state argument as an impediment to raising wages for workers, we just might as well say we live in a country where you're never going to make a living wage. No...15 dollars an hour isn't equal in all states, but it's a start and we can even get our government to do that. Again, putting more money in more people's hands has never been bad. The working class spends it on the economy. The 1% hoards it. I do agree it shouldn't have been on the COVID bill. The issues deserves its own completely separate legislation.

I'm so sick of the fallacy of "raising the minimum wage will hurt the economy". The evidence doesn't support this. Putting more money in the hands of more people has never been a negative.

I think Steampunk has some fantastic elements that could conceivably be placed in Land of Legends territory...though there's a stronger argument for it being part of Babylon.

1 hour ago, Old Man said:

It’s not humanity I’ve lost faith in, but certain public figures and businesspeople who wield outsize influence. 

They have all the power and influence....hence my dismay.

I'm rapidly losing faith in humanity. Something needs to change...quickly.

15 hours ago, zslane said:

Except for Mothra and Hedorah, I still consider Japanese kaiju primarily lizard-based. Even when fused with other things, be they plants or mechanized parts, they are still mostly reptilian or saurian in appearance. King Caesar has fur, but they just couldn't resist the temptation to give him reptilian/saurian skin.

This may be true of Toho, but beyond that...the sky's the limit. Tokusatsu TV has given us every type of kaiju imaginable.

41 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

 

In addition to the arthropods from the Toho stable like Mothra, her sibling Battra, and the ones I mentioned above, don't overlook King Caesar, and Toho's take on Frankenstein, and the humanoid Gargantuas spawned from him. Toho's kaiju are much broader than lizards and dinosaurs.

That's an understatement. LOL

16 minutes ago, Pattern Ghost said:

 

Ahem, we invented the giant radioactive lizard from the ocean genre, a year before Godzilla was introduced.

Of course, I'm pretty sure nobody would pay to see that match up. Godzilla and Kong just have more history and personality, and their origin movies have a bit more gravitas.

This is true, but in this film...the bomb is merely a plot device to awaken then monster. In fact...the monster itself isn't radioactive and radiation in fact is implicitly used to kill it. So it's not a "giant radioactive lizard" in the sense that Godzilla is. In Gojira, it's part and parcel of his very nature. It IS the bomb...given life. I'll also note that Godzilla is more popular than all of Harryhausen's monsters put together. (I love Harryhausen's films as well).

I will also note that Eiji Tsuburaya had written a treatment for what would eventually become Godzilla in 1951 (two years before the release of Beast). The monster in it was a giant octopus. The success of Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and an opening in Toho's 1954 schedule prompted a new screenplay to be written in 1954 by Shigeru Kayama and that became the "giant radioactive lizard" we all know and love.

Rush Limbaugh was the poster child for the narrow minded backward attitudes that have held this country back for so long. The sad part is that he basically went through his life being as much of a POS as possible and got rewarded for it. Now, he'll be the martyr for "traditional" conservative values. I feel a bit for his immediate family and friends, but that's as far as my sympathies go.

7 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

I just want to point out that Kong has a fuller history in popular media than some in this discussion may assume, as well as a larger past connection to Toho Studios. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Kong_(franchise)

And I'll note that 1967's King Kong Escapes is a lot of fun. It features a ton of Toho cast regulars, a great score, and...Mechani Kong!

3 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

You could be right about an age thing. Many millennials did not grow up watching old Godzilla movies on afternoon TV. Their programming tends to be a lot more fragmented and based on specific demand, so they might be less exposed. OTOH in America Godzilla has almost always carried the stigma of "kids" entertainment, like cartoons. Maybe a lot of people figured they had to grow out of liking them.

 

But hey, Kong is an American monster, while Godzilla is unquestionably Japanese. Maybe nationalist "home team" has something to do with it?

There is definitely a case to be made for this theory. Godzilla's strongest fan base seems to be in the 30-60 age range. They would have seen classic kaiju films either in theaters or on TV if they're closer to the end of the age range. Those closer to 30 would have had the benefit of VHS and the Heisei series of the 90's to strengthen their interest.

While I wasn't expecting the impeachment to go through, it's still disappointing to see the will of the people ignored....again. I'm starting to think nothing good is ever going to come from our current system.

Most of the 60's flicks are played straight with a few exceptions. As the decade moved on, the films got lighter in tone, but even then we still got films like War of the Gargantuas in 1966.

4 hours ago, zslane said:

 

It seems that every movie studio has to learn the same lesson--sometimes over and over again--for themselves. They all seem to think that making movies which "appeal to kids" is equivalent to making movies "just for kids", thereby turning off the rest of the potential audience. "All ages" does not mean "little kids only", but few movie executives/producers seem to grok that.

I agree, but in Japan at the time...sci fi tv shows targeting children were extremely popular so it's understandable at the time that they would go this route. We're of course analyzing from hindsight.