Oedipus_Tex

Is that what Beam Rifle, Staff Melee, Time Manipulation, and Dual Pistols were?

Electric Control, yes, definitely.

It's a matter of taste obviously but I'd have rathered almost anything else, and this is my only way to let them know.

Yes, that's why my post goes on beyond those two sentences.

Not that being Mag 2 vs 3 matters for the reasons a Controller would want them. You just need enough to overstack a boss.

My DM character is so strong I shrug about Black Hole.

Gravity, Force Field, and Sonic Resonance really do need a fix to these powers though.

I think it's debatable. Thunderclap is a fast recharging AoE control that was ported without issue. I'm not sure if I'd call Thunderclap "powerful," although for wonky reasons it is better on Controllers than on Defenders (sidenote: I've long maintained that Defenders should have Controller modifiers or higher for mezz durations but without Overpower or Containment).

Anyway, I do think removing Fearsome Stare is the right way to go in this particular case. I can't form an opinion on the new set until I see it. Soul Absorption for example doesn't sound very good as just a +Regen power. But if it's +Regen, +Recovery, or something similar it could turn out to be very good. The loss of -ToHit hurts... but hurts Controllers by far least of the various ATs tha have Dark.

The more typical way to do it is like this:




Being shirtless and in a towel was a critical plot point in the Human Torch's character arc.

[spoilers ahead]

Sookie Stackhouse was special from the get go. She was a psychic who, it eventually is revealed, is a descendant of fairies (her origin story). Her parents had already been murdered years before, though she thought it was an accident (origin story reveal). Her employer was a shapeshifter. Her brother was a male harlot who on his own accord ends up turning into a werepanther. Her fellow waitress was murdered, as was the cook (he lived in the TV series). She also got over said vampire boyfriend, and ended up dating a string of guys in a fashion normally reserved for characters like James Bond. While romance is a major element of her novels, the main focus is almost always on solving mysteries or outwitting the scheming of evil vampires, werewolves, and humans, often through a series of extended action sequences. While she is not a scrapper by choice, she shot Debbie Pelt dead when her life was threatened.

The two genres aren't exactly the same, but they have a lot in common.

I appreciate you saying that. To be honest I was a little stunned to read the initial responses to my conjecture that Paranormal Romance and the Superhero genres are closely related. Looking back on it I can see how it might possibly seem like I was saying that to make the Superhero genre more palatable to women you have to Sex and the City it up. I still feel like your take on what I wrote was a bit unfair but I'm willing to bury the hatchet because I generally like you and what you write.

Anyway, my take on the situation is still that just adding more strong female characters is unlikely to attract volumes of female readers. I have plenty of female geek friends; most of them have no interest in reading superhero comics whatsoever but are mad consumers of paranormal stories. Their reasons for watching and reading this material is sometimes because there are chicks that "kick butt" but just as often that there is a guy on the show who is hot and often shirtless. What will attract female readers is stories that appeal to females. That might seem like an infinite loop but is demonstrably true in that there are subsets of the super-powered entity genres that attract many female fans already. It is likely there are other formulas that would prove popular; what they might look like is hard to conjecture. And whatever their nature, some women will still not like them, and maybe even find them reductive or insulting in their own way.

Bluntly: what the heck are you talking about? I wasn't talking about women's and men's tastes in general. I was talking about a specific genre that appeals heavily to women. Do you disagree that Paranormal Romance appeals more strongly to women than men? If not, why are you blowing the issue up from a specific observation about the genres to a statement about people in general?


You're right. It IS a false dichotomy, and one I haven't written about at all.


It does to me too, which is why I didn't write anything like that.


Why is it so hard to believe women have the agency to select what they want to read for themselves? Obviously ALL women don't like Romance novels, but it will take a heck a lot of evidence to show that it's not a genre more typically enjoyed by women than by men.

As far as motivating women to read more comic books, I don't care either way because I don't read comic books. I just hope we don't get a thread soon with posters who wrap themselves in pink flag trying to convince people comics need to recruit me without consulting me first about why I don't read them or considering that I have the agency to select what I want (in my case, paranormal romance before comic books for sure).

If that is how it is coming across, that is not what I mean. I don't think I've said anything about TPR that other people haven't said about comic books. It is a genre that appeals primarily to females. I haven't said anything about it being impossible to create a genre that appeals to multiple audiences. Since you agree with me that "comics" are primarily a male genre the rest of your post makes little sense to me. My point was that we don't have to look far for content involving super powered beings that has strong female appeal, because it already exists. It's just rarely classified with comic books, perhaps in part because just being associated with comic books and the dorkiness involved there might turn off some potential readers.



Yet you feel comfortable talking about how comics are a men's genre and need to do more to appeal to women. I don't understand where the above statements are coming from at all. I also feel that by giving me a lecture about Sexism 101 you are implying something very sinister about my motives. IMO it's inappropriate and offensive.


[EDIT: Changed to correctly respond to a misread of the final question. When I originally responded I read the final question as a rhetorical "Clearly men and women like different things.]

I have no idea how you got this out what I wrote, when my entire post about similarities between comic books and material popular with women! IMO this is guilt by association at best. I'm not going to respond to it because it's framing both what I wrote and me as a person in a way that is IMO inappropriately charged with sexist implications.




None of that is in question. Again I don't know how you got that out of what I wrote.

[EDIT: Fixed misattributed quote]

This is why I made the point about Teen Paranormal Romance and similar genres. There are super powered characters and who are appealing to female fan bases. They just have a different aesthetic. Compare the plot of a Sookie Stackhouse novel to a comic book arc. Can you tell the difference?

There are plenty of reasons many women don't read comics. One that hasn't been brought up yet is that, let's face it, comics are a socially tainted genre. They are associated with juvenility and geekdom. Women may not read many comics, but neither (presumably) do "alpha men" in the language of mainstream social hierarchy. Reading comic books is often interpreted in society at large as something to be ashamed of. (Comic book movies on the other hand seem to be more allowable.) When women are attracted to something like Twilight or True Blood, it could be the case that part of that is explicitly because it is not a comic book. If you took the same stories and made comics of them the appeal may be questionable.

In the long run the question may not be how to get more women into comic books, but why is the barrier draw at "superheroes" specifically and not "people with super (sometimes supernatural) powers."

Just to add to this, I notice few people are concerned that boys aren't reading enough Teen Paranormal Romance. (That is a real category a co-worker of mine recently spotted at a Barnes and Noble).

There are genres that are primarily successful with female consumers. I'm often surprised how rarely these genres are compared to the superhero/comics genre as a distaff counterpart in terms of dorkiness. Is there really a big difference between wanting to save people with your super powers, and wanting to save people who have super powers? IMO, not really. And (spoiler alert, kind of) the women in TPR tend to either have or wind up with supernatural powers of their own--powers that are not at all unlike the abilities of a super-heroine.

Basically, I'm not sure if we're cutting off at the right threshold when talking about "the superhero genre." In terms of capes and tights and all that maybe men specifically dominate that particular aesthetic, but IMO when all of the pieces are lain on the table, women have their own extremely popular wing of geekdom, even if it is not recognized as such.

"Miss" Liberty of Atlas Park is fine. It was her mom, "Ms." Liberty who died, although she is long since retired and is more or less a non-entity in the game.

I disagree. Bodies placed in food storage units for others to find is ripped straight from a horror movie. There is also a trope name for it (isn't there always): http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...PeekABooCorpse.

And no I don't think the horror genre has much to do with the WWD arc, but thats because I don't think WWD is an example of conscious or unconscious sexism.