Grey Pilgrim

Bah, I'll have to wait to buy until my account gets a new month on the 15ish. Hopefully that will be easy enough, the rewards system is working a little better there (still no idea why they give reward tokens toward the END of your month of subscription).

I'm pairing Water Blast with Psychic for a Blaster and coloring both silver. Haven't played Psy very far on a Blaster yet and I saved the name "Silverlode." Should be pretty fun, lot of fun mechanics in both sets that should work well.

Energy was another obvious pairing, but I have way too many Blasters with that secondary.

It could just be from seeing them via trailers, though I did see some more in depth bits with Sally Field when she was being interviewed on some morning "news" program. Martin Sheen I can usually roll with and he does seem to get into the role more, or at least enough that he feels a bit like his character. Sally Field is kind of like Tom Cruise in that she's playing herself in her roles. Sometimes that works, sometimes that doesn't, and it just feels weird to me with Aunt Mae.

I may get over it and see it in a rental at some point, but I doubt I will in the movie theater. Even if an air-conditioned theater on a hot day sounds good.

Totino's? No, my wife and I never, ever buy those anymore. Never, no sir.

Wow. If people did the same to you on the forums they'd either be moderated for it or banned. I wonder why... it couldn't be because it's... hateful? wrong? rude?

Of course! Internet hate is srs bsns. I don't get it, but it is. I don't particularly care for Angelina Jolie, but you don't see me trolling the internet about it or making up conspiracy theories to support my dislike. WAY too much effort... I'd rather just ignore celebrities I don't care for.

This hate is also more amusing (bemusing?) because Luli ends these statements with "love."

Not necessarily, but that often seems to be the excuse for a lot of the stupid, over the top things said by celebrities and journalists. Some other things are just plain stupid through and through.

Woo. Maintaining the stereotype...

Not denying that it doesn't happen, but still...

Pffft. I'm at 200%. Newb.

Well, at least you're out there with your over the top hate.

You don't like her, you don't like her. Fine. Leave out statements that are basic equivalents to calling someone a trashy, brainless bimbo.

Just to provide a reminder of why those handlers are around in cons... Wil Wheaton was surrounded by fans outside a restaurant during a con, and they would not let him through, because he OWED them autographs and his time, right at that moment. Felicia helped extricate him. He actually did the same for her some weeks before that incident.

Handlers sounds hoity-toity, and they can be, but there are reasons for them, sadly.

And even then, Felicia Day does not always have handlers. One of the main people for Child's Play was being interviewed by the recent Mario Marathon 5 crew, and she said that a woman on her own asked her for directions at a recent con. Only after did she realize it was Felicia Day. Funny.

So... what's the basis for you thinking she's not a gamer, other than not crossing some arbitrary commitment line to games? If you've seen any of her frequent talks or videos about games, she clearly plays them a lot and enjoys them. And I suppose you could call it all faked, but... wow, that's stretching it. Unless you're one of those that thinks actors are acting all the time...

Kind of being elitist about elitists, aren't you? Somewhat funny...

In their defense, it's a pity that they couldn't have an opinion on current events without there being repercussions. That said, you're quite right in saying they didn't really think it through, especially given their audience base. It's kind of why I think celebrities should keep way away from politics in general if they want to keep focused on their original career.

Anyway, to the topic in general, the response from some male gamers to Felicia Day and female gamers in general is mystifying. I don't know how any female likes playing any FPS game, since the reaction of far too many on a standard server is to be bombarded by joking and serious comments on their sex, how they can't believe she's a girl, and far worse. This isn't 100% the case (and I even played in a BF2 clan with a woman who was freaking deadly in a helicopter), but it's pretty common.

And then there's stuff like male gamers attacking a woman raising money on kickstarter to research the relationship between games and women. She didn't even put up a clear cut theory or argument (as I understood it) and the misogynists came out of the woodwork, attacking her via every internet outlet possible.

For Felicia Day, it utterly baffles me. If you don't like her personality or the shows she makes (or has been on), that's fair enough. But attacking her geek/gamer cred or even getting misogynistic about it is bizarre, as is making statements about her doing nothing for gaming or internet culture. You can dislike Led Zeppelin and Felicia Day, but trying to say they didn't have an impact on their prospective fields is being blind at best.

You forget to add that he was dressed as a woman. That made Faramir kind of disturbing to me once I realized it was the same actor. *shudders*

I'm still trying to wash my brain out after an image someone put up on this forum of Mr. Smith/Elrond/Hugo Weaving in drag for a movie role. Heh.

Or Top Gun. Or Heat. Or Tombstone. Or who knows how many more movies I'm not thinking of without looking at IMDB.

Anyway. Bunch of people keep bringing up Mark Hamill as the Joker. I think the first time I figured it out was after seeing one of my favorite Batman cartoons for the second time, where the Joker is infecting people in Gotham with some kind of gas barge on the river. Has some awesome music, and then my brother or I noticed "Mark Hamill" by The Joker. Blew our minds about as much as The Usual Suspects a little later (we watched that one twice in a row).

Which incidentally had Pete Postlethwaite in it, who played minor roles in all kinds of crazy and all over the place movies, like Inception, Romeo and Juliet, and even Dragonheart.

Well hey, my students, who were all in the 19-22 range, didn't know who Val Kilmer was. I gave you the benefit of the doubt, after all!

Please tell me you knew that was Tom Berenger and you're not like my college students this year who didn't know who Val Kilmer is.

Most people have given out the ones that I knew (like Jack Black in X-Files). Vincent D'Onofrio as Thor blew my mind.

Most of Liam Niesson's smaller parts have been noted, but I know I was surprised to see him in the role of a priest in The Mission (excellent movie if you haven't seen it) along Robert De Niro and Jeremy Irons.

Extra points for finding a facepalm pic with Nazis in it!

Getting to this virulent thread late, but this is the most apt description I've seen of the movie. I've been perplexed by the people that think it's a brilliant satire of government, society, and war (like the movie works on the same level as Wag the Dog or Dr. Strangelove). You nailed a good response.

Death of the Author strikes me as a critics trying to get back at creators for the frequent quip "if you can't create, critique."

CS Lewis had a good line on the issue, something to the effect of "if you read a poem without minding the author's intent, you're reading your own poem, not the author's. If you like making your own poem, all well and good, but don't confuse it with the author's poem, please."

Hope they included other contacts that reference portals with this. I know Maria Jenkins sent me to one of these for a mission or so of hers.

I can haz pay 2 win?

Ohhh, I kind of like the idea of Power Blast being a pencil cone. Kind of thematic, to my mind. But I can also see why people wouldn't like that. I find hitting more than one target with Piercing Rounds trivial on teams and generally easy at x2 or x3 soloing, but most seem to complaining about it as well.

Still, it seems like the extra work it takes to use Piercing Rounds an AOE should be accounted for better. I'm curious to see what adjustments Synapse made to the set.

We might have to see what the animations look like to know. I believe Arbiter Hawk said some of the really short ones look weird as is and will be lengthened a bit.

Other limiters could be recharge or just Aim and Build Up auto-triggering, or something like those things (dropping the To Hit requirement altogether). I also don't know how weird it might be for the standard snipes to increase their activation below the already lengthy interrupt. Can those two things be differentiated by the game?

At this point I'm a big a worn out the subject and just want to see what we test first. I don't know which of these insta-snipe ideas is better than just keeping them as they work and upping their damage more to make them worth using that way.

Heh.

My comments were/are based on what we have now and what we know of the changes. If Aim and Build Up become auto triggers for Blasters, I'll be more happy with the Snipe changes we can see so far (I think I noted that in another thread... hard to keep track of them all).

And as for the min/maxing stuff, I quite agree, but... there are such things as encouraging certain build decisions. I see enough people figuring out what needs to be done for insta-snipes to be concerned, and can see why they are doing it as well. I also think there are better/easier ways to prevent insta-snipes than the to hit buff. Last, but not least, I prefer the mechanic/power to work consistently. People weight this differently, I guess, but I'd like staple attacks to be more consistent between sets.

That's enough for me to want further work on the proposal, but I'm fairly sure that's going to happen.

Well, there are some that are getting a bit bleak about how this is a lame improvement for Blasters and such, but that's not that many people. Maybe I'm reading the wrong threads, but I don't see any sky is falling from anyone other than the usual people that act that way.

We'll see where it goes in beta, but Hybrid when it hit beta had at least some indications that the devs didn't want it up all the time. Snipes current proposal seems to be okay with it being perma if there is enough investment from the build (both from the numbers and Hawk's comments in the Blaster thread).

Out of curiosity, what do you mean by Assassin's Strike? It works pretty well right now across powersets and is a great boost to my Stalkers' combat ability. I wish the Snip proposal worked as well.