Lothic

I think what we've seen of Daryl shows us that he's generally just a more thoughtful, level-headed person than his brother Merle. It'll be interesting to see what kind of relationship they had as brothers (and no, I don't mean the "Ewwww" kind of relationship this time) and whether or not their time apart has made Daryl more independent and less likely to agree with Merle's craziness.

Depending on the types of neighborhoods he was working in before the ZA maybe being a pizza delivery guy was actually good training for Glenn's scavenging missions.

Well not to take anything away from the moment of passion they shared but my guess is that Glenn, in all his youthful excitement, probably didn't "last" too long if you catch my drift. Sure it was a little silly for them to do it right in the middle of a public place where they might be attacked by some zombies, but then again it wasn't like they probably spent more than a few wild minutes at it anyway.

It's always a bit weird to hear British/Aussie actors in interviews fall back into their natural accents when you've only heard them do their American accents for a character in an American show. I could rattle off a bunch of those types such as Jamie Bamber (Capt. Apollo in NuBSG), Craig Horner (Richard Cypher in Legend of the Seeker) and even Ryan Kwanten (Jason Stackhouse from True Blood). There seems to be so many of them it sometimes makes me wonder if America actually won that revolution back in the 18th century or not.

If you're willing to make a distinction between "syndrome" WIR and "non-syndrome" WIR then I'm fine with that. But I'm also willing to bet that no one typically cares about splitting hairs over the "non-syndrome" version of this thing when it comes to any extended discussions about this. Even the OP's post was pretty clearly leaning towards the "syndrome" WIR version of this idea. *shrugs*

I've read back-n-forth debates on this subject for years. The people who've been involved in these debates have ranged in "authority" all the way from famous authors down to rabid fanbois. I can easily accept that you have no obligation to accept my conclusions on this matter. But I can ease your mind by saying that people who know more about this subject than either of us are going to be making points similar to both yours and mine for a long time to come.

The only reason the WIR meme exists as meme which has been debated for decades at all has been because there has always been an undercurrent of misogyny associated with how it's been applied to various stories. If we were just talking about a meme that had no loaded sexual connotations to it it would not be (rather dramatically) called the "woman in refrigerator" meme. Even the name of the meme itself is full of shock value designed to spur on exactly this kind of dissent and debate.

Your attempt to disassociate the sexual undercurrents from the meme itself is admirable but ultimately futile.

This is pretty much exactly how I felt about this SSA. My feelings of being irked about being forced to care about a character I was barely aware of far outweighed any feelings of concern over whether or not this story was a legitimate example of the WIR meme. *shrugs*

I think your definition of the WIR meme is so vaguely defined that it could literally apply to any story that has both males and females in it and one of those females is killed for any reason. A meme only really has meaning when it's used to describe something that's uniquely distinct from some other aspect of a story. If you let it apply to effectively every story imaginable then it fails to serve any purpose as a point of distinction.

I think you do in fact have to consider whether there's at least some element of misogyny involved before you can lump every "female death" story into the realm of the WIR meme. How the death is "handled" is an intrinsic part of the meme. The problem, which this ongoing thread so adequately shows us, is that the degree of how much misogyny is involved in a given story is often a very debatable point.

Double entendres are fun aren't they?

Seems reasonable to guess that now that they have a dog body model working that they could get other 4-legged critters made as well.

It's funny but a lot of the terms people use for things like this kind of depend on whether you were more of an original redside player or blueside player. There was a time when City of Heroes and City of Villains were far more seperated than they are now and some people still consider themselves primarily redside or blueside only players.

Case in point I started playing this game back long before City of Villians existed so I got used to calling it "exing" or "exemping down" (for blueside exemplaring). TBH even though I've been playing this game for over 7 years and have run at least a dozen villains in that time I still didn't instantly recongize/remember what you meant by your "mal" term myself.

I could see Merle being angry and crazy enough to want to get revenge on most of the main characters but would that include his brother Daryl too? I suppose he could have gone so far off the deep end that he might not care about getting his brother killed as well. *shrugs*

As for Merle becoming a "big bad" of the show I guess we'll start to find out next episode if that's where things are leading.

I had fun playing around with the dog last night on the Beta server. The Devs released the German Shepherd, the Autumn aura and the Pilgrim hat for limited testing last night. Since we got the aura today, and more than likely they'll save the Pilgrim hat for release on Nov 22nd (for Thanksgiving) maybe that means we'll get the dog next week.

Given how successful Lost was as a show I wouldn't be surprised to see a lot of other shows try to copy it in some form or fashion.

I don't think many of these characters are -willingly- working for the Evil Queen. For one reason or another they may have no real choice in the matter.

Remember the world of Storybrook is kind of like the Matrix designed to benefit the Evil Queen so naturally everything (and everyone) in the town is geared towards her will and her control. I think what we'll find is that as the show goes on more and more of the characters will turn against the "Madame Mayor" as her control over her cursed world begins to crumble.

This at least seems plausible given what we know. It would "explain" Merle being there and conclude the Sophia arc of the story.

I can accept that Daryl could come up with the Cherokee Rose story as a method to comfort Carol in her time of despair. But I just can't wrap my head around the idea of him using that story as a means to report that he knows for a fact that Sophia is dead. He just seems far too "down to Earth" and practical to be vague during a time when he would have direct news to deliver.

I just have to see this thing from my own personal point of view: if I knew for a fact that a mother's child was dead in this kind of situation and I was going to have to be the one to tell that mother that sad news I wouldn't use a vague anecdote, I would plain direct language. I simply can't imagine Daryl not being up-front about it.

I'm sure they could explain how Merle finds the group if that's what the storywriters want to do, and the writing on the windshield could be one way to explain it. Still, I think that'd be pushing it just a bit as far as "pure luck" goes. Obviously we'll find out next week one way or the other.

I'm willing to accept that's a remote possibility. But I also expect the brewing drama between Rick, Lori and Shane is probably going to be able to explode eventually regardless if you throw in the idea that Rick was "snipped" or not.

The mere fact of adding an entire new contact to the game could have had the potential to "break" something as well. I remain unconvinced that it was "easier" to add an entirely new contact with new options to the game than it would have been to add a few new options to the Options Menu, something they have ALREADY DONE many times before.

I've been a software engineer for almost 20 years. I can smell "Dev BS" a mile away. Trust me when I say dreaming up conspiracy theories isn't my game these days either. *shrugs*

I've watched the Devs add dozens of new options to the Options Menu over the years. If it was -actually- hard to do that then why was it so easy for all those other options?

People have been suggesting that they "replace" things like Group Fly with "better" powers for close to 8 years now.
Face it, it's not going to happen.

Actually I'm not convinced it would be difficult for the Devs to put new options in the Options Menu at all. In fact if you've paid attention our Devs have added new options to the Options Menu relatively regularly for years now.

Basically if the Devs have ever told anyone that it would be "hard" to put these specific kinds of options in the Options Menu then that was their roundabout way of telling us they don't WANT to do that, not that they CAN'T do that. In fact if you wanted to be picky about this it was probably "harder" to put Null the Gull into the game (from a software point of view) than it would have been to have simply added new options in the existing Options Menu.

No, they isolated these several options to Null the Gull to do just that - isolate them from the "normal" options because they still don't really actually want to accept these compromises as mainstream features. The Devs clearly fought the idea of giving us ways to avoid things like SB and Group Fly for years because people have been suggesting that forever. They only just recently decided to give us a way to do it via Null the Gull. But just because they reluctantly decided to give us options to do that doesn't mean they had to make those options easy to use or widely-obvious. Thus Null the Gull.

Once again it'd be nice if the Devs eventually accepted these options as legitimate and decided to put them in the Options Menu to make them easy to use. But frankly I'm not expecting that to happen anytime soon and, as I've explained, I understand why they did it the way they did. *shrugs*

I can understand why the Devs decided to implement this thing like this. I'm not saying I AGREE with it - I'm just saying I think I know why they did it like this.

Basically the Devs consider the options Null the Gull provides sort of almost like "not ready for prime time" test features. I'm convinced that they are NOT convinced that these options are actually important enough or mainstream enough to make them more fundamental to the game. This is the reason why they are not part of the main options menu and might never be. By keeping them isolated to Null the Gull it would be very easy, if needed, to yank them back out of the game by simply removing Null from Pocket D.

Null the Gull is a convenient method for the Devs to offer these options as a sort of trial balloon for people who really want them. I actually believe the Devs DON'T actually want us to have a way to avoid SB or Group Fly for instance but were willing to offer the compromise of Null the Gull for those people willing to figure it out and go through the motions of having to go to Pocket D to take advantage of them.

Null the Gull is essentially a semi-secret access point that let's the Devs firmly control the questionable (at least to them) options being provided. I agree it's annoying to have to work it this way, but I honestly don't see it changing anytime soon. *shrugs*