Ironik

You said movies you enjoy are doomed to failure. Ergo, if you don't see them until they are out of the theatre, then they will succeed. It's basic math, really.

Anyone who thought Iron Man 2 was an "extended trailer" for The Avengers is a class-A idiot. IM2 rewards repeated viewings, because there's lots of stuff going on in the background which both help that story and fill out the larger universe. I'd think that geeks would be more lenient about this sort of thing because it's never been done before. And what I mean by that is: it has NEVER BEEN DONE BEFORE. No one has ever set out to intentionally connect an entire series of movies into one cohesive universe. So of course there are going to be brief asides and character cross-overs which connect any one film to the larger universe.

That seems to be the way SHIELD works, in the comics and now in the movies.

This is true. I think Beta Ray Bill had a giant rubber mallet or something equally 'tarded. Why it looked different for him I don't know. But the "brick on a stick" has been the design pretty much since the character's inception. The handle changes over time, but the big gray cinder block is standard. I like it. It's primordial and therefore timeless.

What YOU know about Thor and what the CHARACTERS know about him are probably somewhat different.

Apparently they made their money back with overseas sales before it even aired, so DVDs and such will be gravy.

I did this in a similar thread some months ago and got mocked for my trouble by trolls who are fine with low-grade writing.

One that I changed was something like, "You crack your knuckles and slick back your hair. Time to be the bad guy." No I don't and no I'm not. I'm a robot without knuckles or hair. Plus, I'm not a villain, I'm a rogue who is forced into doing this. So I changed it to, "They asked for a fight and it's time to deliver. This is going to be hard on the scenery." It captures the same irreverent tenor without hijacking your own personal motivation or describing your character.

As for SpittingTrashcan's contention that Sam's tone makes it seem like he's insulting everyone who disagrees with him, well... sometimes things *are* objectively wrong, even in art, including literature and game writing. The lazy over-reliance on telling us how we think in some missions is just dumb, and people who excuse it do come across as lackadaisical in their approach to entertainment. That outlook is why we have so much bottom-of-the-barrel junk on TV and in cinema: people don't demand better, so they get worse.

The writers here have done better -- we've all seen it. I think most of us who are asking for changes going forward just want the top-drawer stuff. And it's not like it's crushingly difficult to swap out motivations for facts and leave out the character details which may or may not fit the character.

Exactly. That's effective communication. Thus endeth the lesson.

Are there still lickable stamps? Because all the ones I've seen lately would pretty much ruin your whole day if you tried to lick them.

I'm pretty sure Neko actually *does* play for the other team, CR. So we can only admire her for her wit and charm.

I thought the same thing. But the rest of the drawing is the cat's pyjamas.

Check out the "For Science!" thread.

...thus began the war against Skynet. Or perhaps Jack Williams' Humanoids, come to care for us. Maybe Asimov's robots.

Watson shows that these baby-steps computer programs are already challenging us in trivia and language comprehension -- in five years we'll never beat one. Big Blue crushes our chess masters with straight-up number crunching. And the entirely artificial Emily Howell composes music we can't distinguish from human-made work. 20 years ago a computer program debuted that could write high-school-level sports stories. Nowadays, the programs are so good that entire websites use them and they are nearly indistinguishable from regular sports reporting. Already computers are getting dangerously close to being able to write novels. And really, wouldn't a robot's prose be superior to anything named "Twilight"?

Insert cliche "welcome our overlords" message here.

As we contemplate our doom -- or at least the annexation of human creativity -- go read Atomic Robo, the single best comic going today and hope that our new metallic brethren are as benevolent and cool as he is.