Durakken

>.> Considering one could argue that the point of the black out is an act that is meant to cause fear and panic to force people to recognize an issue and take proper action it could be labeled as terrorism, which is a flimsily defined word, which means hypothetically if the US decided to do that every single company that decided to do this could be considered terrorists which means they could be arrested and held without trial as well as have all their assets seized and controled by the US government under the NDAA...

Someone could argue and it could be done... This would circumvent the courts from ever ruling against the NDAA which it should do, but will never get a chance to.

I actually think that SOPA should pass to the degree that when it does it would cause enough of a stir that they would get to the Supreme Court and it would be labeled as unconstitutional and thus repealed... and it would also label the Internet as a Free Speech zone thing that would fall under those protections. My feeling that SOPA and PIPA are being carefully worded so that doesn't happen with every try at this they are going to get slicker and slicker until they get it passed and if that does happen the court will likely favor it rather than what it should do.


As far as effecting the rest of the world...only in so much as the majority of the structure of the internet is in the US as the US is behind, i believe it's either the EU or the UK, that which has ruled that internet is a natural right type thing that would go along with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And the Japanese internet would go largely the same way as it's more or less in the same camp with the high speed internet being free for all type thing. The other countries of the world would be largely unaffected politically as they already have these types of things in place and everywhere that doesn't realizes that it's against what the US is about and/or realizes how much the internet is needed for things such as what has occurred over the past year.

*cough* DCUO *cough*

Good writing is not subjective. Whether you like something or not is subjective.

There is technical good writing and art
There is technical bad writing and art
You can objectively say that the art and writing is good or bad

However whether it's good or bad doesn't mean you like it or hate it.

You can demonstrate this fact by picking something that you hate, forcing yourself to take part in 5 to 10 different variations of this thing you hate and then rank them from what you think is good and what you think is bad. The closer in similarity they are the better this works because there are number of variables that are at work and thus more likely that something that is something you like seeps into it and throws it off.

You can also look at things like does this make sense, is it communicating the message it's meaning to, are the proportions right, is this stylistic or is this just showing that this guy doesn't know what he's doing.

It's hard to describe, but the rule for writing that I'm sure everyone has heard (but teachers will never let you get away with) is that you have to learn how to do things right so that you can break the rules and it's well done. Every great writer, poet, lyricist breaks the rules, but they know the rules and where they do break them they convey a meaning or have a greater impact. And this can be seen by most people, not consciously, but more intuitively because when we look at someone breaking rules randomly and we see them not understanding the rules of the language it fails to make the impact desired and often time causes distaste for that particular person for most people.

I think a perfect example of this is...if i remember the names right... Roland Emerich and Micheal Bay. Bay is a moron. Emerich is a genius. They do things that are similar but the artistry of most of what Emerich does is apparent even in movies that people might call schlock where as Bay's movies are schlock and have no artistry. The Nostalgia Chick actually explains this quite well in one of her videos



Also... another thing... You can't just have any artist/writer on any book, film, whatever. Some people are just good at certain styles and horrible at others. giving Johns a series which has to run 6 issues and contains characters he tries to dis every time they appear in something he writes...probably a dumb move. For him, he should probably doing one shots of things he likes and letting him roll with ideas... perhaps give him DC presents and tell him to go wild. That would likely be his best work ever.

Each writer and artist has like 2 or 3 books and at least 1 colorist is on several books and he's one of the better colorists.

Speaking from experience and knowledge that's just insane, at least for art. 8 hours per page is what a good page generally takes for good artists (although it should be noticed that a majority of artists in the comic industry are not "good" they are terrible to average for the most part) 8 hours, 20 pages... that's 160 hours per issue and these guys are doing 40-60 pages if not more... 480 hours of work per month. That's 120 hours of work a week. Now, the reason they may be able to work on so many pages may be due to the fact that there are so many people working on each pages

penciler, inker, letterer, colorist... It really is a bit much... colorist is perhaps the most time intensive of those jobs.

So either these people are either extremely fast, not putting as much effort as they should, and/or burning out.

Here's what gets me... I can get over the art most times, but the writing, which is the least time intensive, but also the most important... has been **** for the most part in the new 52. This has to do partially with the fact the writers don't care about the characters they are writing for, but that's not the whole of it I don't think because a good professional writer can write for anything... It's that there is no clear concise vision of, no long term vision for, and no idea what to do with most of these characters... and on top of that anything they may think up can't be the same thing as the characters already knew in most cases...

For example, Batgirl. It's a terrible book... you can see Gail Simone struggling... It's not because she's a bad writer or what she is doing necessarily bad, but also because of the back drop she's writing against which is "Let's give Barbara her legs back" ok... we can do that. That could be an interesting story for the pre-flashpoint Barbara Gordon. There is so much to work with in that back drop... now erase 20 years of history and compress the other 30 years that was compressed to 10 into 3 or erase parts of it and you have a new character virtually that is walking around with a name that has a lot of baggage and a "interesting story" that's been thrown onto this new character that really doesn't work so you have to come up with a new story while putting this new character that is somewhat like this other character she is supposed be and not retread any ground

Imagine if when they made Bruce Batman again what they did was go "Ok Bruce is going to come back as Batman... but now we're going to erase everything after 1970... but we still want a Red Hood story and we still want the death of Jason Todd so we're going to make Dick Grayson be the Robin that died, and then come back as Red Hood and then Tim Drake was Robin at some point, but now He's Nightwing because we want Damian still as Robin"

Imagine how awful that would be for the readers but even more so for the writers that would have to try to make Tim Drake this new character that isn't Dick as Nightwing or Tim as Red Robin... There's no where new for that character to go as it is because now you have to retread that old territory to make this new character work, but you're not going to make anyone happy doing that.

Does that make sense? Basically you got those titles... and then you got these other new titles that are aren't being given time or effort nor should they be when your stars are all messed up...

You also have these other titles that are not "new" but people either don't know them or in the case of Static know them, sorta, but not that version, but they're trying to use the known version to try to get people to read this new version but then they're not explaining how this new version is... so new readers are confused there too.

hadnt heard of it... i read all of it now. it's good. could use someone with better english skills as sometimes it is hard to read, but nothing too serious. Also some of the "specials" which are backgrounds have bad art in my opinion, and crud stories, but over all they're ok... so i just added this to my list ^.^

also since no one mentioned it...
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=268380

sidenote: yes i read all 500 pages of DBM today...

Basically, what they are doing is bad and I forget the technical terms for it, but its making the brand lose value as well as not adding value.

Assuming DC has a brand value of 100 and Batman generates 60 of that alone from having Books like Batman and detective Comics vol 1... That 60 value is degenerated by books like The Dark Knight, Batman and Robin, Detective Comics vol 2, etc... this devalues the Batman and the DC brands by itself... So a good brand in a bad book can cause damage to itself and DC...

But then we also have New Brands and Bad Brands such as Liefeld, Men of War, Justice League Dark, and OMAC... Introducing new brands would seem good but its not... It depends on how you handle them. for example even though I think OMAC is utter crap the fact is they dealt with it by canceling it. This says they are willing to feign interest in new brands but are unwilling to let them grow. And this does more damage in the long run than having a bad title as part of the brand.

This overall is bad business because it degrades the brand and ends up meaning you are making less money over all.

Good business practices are where you use a Batman brand to prop a new title up to get someone to try it (like what crossovers do) and where you don't cancel brands for several years so they can grow into themselves, find the proper audience, and or find the right creative team.

See in the good case what you are doing is lowering the brand value of one brand to prop up several others which could build their own brand and at the same time build the brand rep overall by showing your willing to give things a try and not just pretend like you are.


Look at Fox... it's well known for launching shows people love, but then canceling it pretty quickly because the audience isn't there immediately, shifting time slots, putting on at bad times, etc until they just decide to cancel it and then they say "we tried" hen we all know they didn't.

That's called bad business... i would explain... but i'm hungry >.> and can't put those words together at the moment.

you mean with the whole pandora and horn of crap thing that was cross overed from storm watch to superman and has not appeared at all or been explained since? Nope couldn't possibly be a set up for a cross over...

Groups = Sub-cultures... VIP, Premium, and Free Users are all groups.

Actually, whenever something is proposed for anything pretty much it should be asked "how can this be abused?" then "Can we counter/fix that?" and then you weigh it against what you want to do and if the problems it could cause are worth the problems it fixes or features added.

For example... War is horrible. War is waged by living things. To do away with war one could easily kill all living humans... This is not something that any living thing would agree with so not a viable solution.

Turning back to the proposed solution... letting any section of a populace silence/ban a person... Seems like a good idea because if that many people dislike that other person they have to be a legitimate problem...common sense says so... but it dismisses why that person is unliked or who dislikes them. Someone who follows the rules and reports legitimate troublemakers will be hated by those troublemakers and the original person acts right the more those who they report will react and ban together to get rid of them.

basically there is a 2000 person culture with several sub-cultures... as well *** sub-cultures of them where the sub-sub-cultures not getting along and wanting to get rid of another.

Wow... that is horrible. Bad CG, Bad fight choreography, bad characterization which leads to bad acting. Seriously Live action Sailor Moon looks better than that...

Reread what I said. Think about what I'm saying before you speak, then post your response. You obviously don't understand what I said and I'll be nice by not making a long post explaining how what you said is sexist, though perhaps yo were trying to be funny. meh.

sorry, but i found this typo funny and because it's my opinion it certainly matters.

I agree that people can understand and not like. That is obvious, but I'm not talking about that. Often times you can spot when someone doesn't understand or didn't read, because they either ask a question that was answered or misstate an argument.

i was going to respond to the other half of your post, but that's not necessary given the above explanation. I am just letting you know so you don't claim I'm just ignoring what you said.

You know, you could directly state your opinion rather than...what's the word I'm thinking of? I'm going to ignore that is what you're doing and respond to you by pointing out that to me and several people I've talked to what Eminem is doing is clear and obvious from the presentation, his own statements, tracks that came afterwards, and the whole of the work that it is in.

I'm also going to refrain from pointing out that your statements can be used to argue something else which I don't think you'd want to so >.> yeah moving on.

The question however is where is the line drawn of Does this guy suck as an artist vs These people aren't ready for it.

I can use myself as an example. I know according to many many scholastic tests I have excellent writing and comprehension skills that are beyond the average person, however I continuously seem to fail to communicate (apparently) with some individuals. I can argue that these people should learn to read properly so they can understand what I'm writing, but at the same time, the whole purpose of writing is to communicate so it could be seen that even though I'm proficient at whatever it is I am proficient at I am failing at the basic level and thus nullifying the argument that I have superior writing abilities, because if I did I'd not have any problems communicating.

I can make both arguments and both seem valid to me, but still there becomes a matter of to what extent does that hold up? Should I, as writer, write in the simplest forms possible in hopes that one day they'll understand if I just simplify a little more? Or should it be the case that I be elitist and say you can only get this when you become as elite as I? The obvious answer is that the reader needs to try harder and the writer needs to simplify, but to what extent? Many writers choose words for a subtle meaning or feeling or rythm. Should a writer compromise for that for comprehension? Wouldn't doing so make the work less to some degrees? If that is the case should there not be elitism to some degree? That if you can't understand this or that, too bad for you?


btw... pre-emptive: I'm only using this as an example and not meaning to start some argument so please don't insult other or me if you continue on with this example.

You should actually pay attention to what he's saying and how he presents because they aren't misogynist. Violent yes, but it is pretty clear that all the parts that are "misogynistic" according to others are people who listen on a very shallow level, because the whole idea of all of those parts are "this is absurd and wrong" but also fantasy to a degree of letting loose to solve that problem.

It's just him saying in a more graphical way "Sometime I wish I could just shoot you" because that is a very simple answer and exploring those fantasies is healthy, but since he is presenting this as absurd and wrong to do it also sends the message of "Hey i understand, but it's still wrong"

Oh also... his later work is a lot less of that.

Well the thing is... this goes a bit into elitism... Should someone that is elite come down to the level of the masses to make them understand? But then I also have to wonder if someone is truly as great as that shouldn't they be able to?

I think the former more so than the latter a bit because I don't really have any interest in those who don't wish to improve themselves, but then if one doesn't give the chance to those to understand and improve isn't that just them failing to communicate and taking part in the project of humanity...