RemusShepherd
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Quote:My guess is that's because it's well-done television horror. Horror doesn't appear often on television, and I can't remember any other serialized horror show. That makes it something new. So it's getting attention.Originally Posted by CaptainFoamerang
I wasn't really referring to you. I just get a sense from all the attention it gets from the internet and the media that folks are buying into the notion that this is the "it" show now. And I can't figure why that is, beyond some of the makeup effects. It's not particularly well-written, directed, or acted, and most of the characters aren't very interesting.
Also, because it is such a big-budget show the network is advertising the hell out of it. That brings viewers and buzz. I've never heard of a non-sports show getting a half-hour post-show. AMC is pushing it hard, and that push is paying off for them.
I enjoy the Walking Dead, but I wouldn't put it above most network fare. I liked the halloween episode of My Little Pony much better. ("The fun has been doubled!") -
Quote:Self-publishing of e-books is becoming common. Paying to have physical books published yourself and then hoping to sell them is going the way of the dodo.Originally Posted by Mandu
Even though self publishing of books is becoming more and more common and is actually used by quite a few popular authors "Vanity press" has become permanently associated with self publishing.
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Quote:You gave it a D? That's a big upgrade from the F- it was last month. What happened in this issue, if I may ask?Originally Posted by Durakken
red hood and the outlaws #2 = D
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Quote:I'm assuming the price is what it is because it's a physical book created by a print-on-demand company, and that's the cost of replication. POD books are almost always vanity books. They're too pricey to be competitive in any market.Originally Posted by Durakken
Are you saying that due to the price point? or cuz of something else? It was not intended to be a vanity press book as far as I know, but my brothers an idiot so >.>
If it's not a physical book -- if he's trying to sell an ebook -- then the price is just stone stupid. Go to Amazon (or whereever) right now and drop the price to $1.99. That's the entry price for most novels. (I don't know about poetry.)
If it is a physical book, I would suggest creating an ebook version and putting it on Amazon for $1.99. (Drop it to $0.99 after a few months if the sales are slow.) Link the ebook to the POD version. "If you enjoyed this book, you can get a real paper copy of it by going here!" You might get a handful of physical sales that way.
In any case, if you're going to publish anything (and you expect to make money on it) then you need to start with a marketing plan. Otherwise anything you publish is going to be just for your own vanity. -
Quote:I'm trying to figure out what 'commended' is a typo for. Committed? Ex-communicated? Cannon shot in the head?Originally Posted by ChrisMoses
Sounds like your brother deserves to be commended.
Yes, your brother showed initiative for getting a book out. That's an accomplishment. But he's done it in the worst way possible. What you have is essentially a 'vanity press' book. Tell your family about it. Some of them will buy it. In total, you should expect less than 20 sales from this book.
Learn from this experience, and use it to improve how you publish your next book. -
Let me make sure I have this straight. You and your brother self-published a book (of poetry?) and you want to know where you can advertise it?
I can help a little with that. I've done fairly extensive advertising for two webcomics, and I've been looking into advertising for a possible self-published novel.
For webcomics, your first stop is Project Wonderful. You make an ad graphic, put it on PW, tell it what sorts of sites to advertise on, and it just goes to town. For $100/month I got around
500,000 impressions and about 2,000 clicks. I'm running ads on sites like Dr. MacNinja and Sluggy Freelance right now. You don't need to be advertising a webcomic, and there are sites other than webcomics where you can send PW to advertise for you.
The 'grown up' version of Project Wonderful is called Federated Media. Much more expensive but much wider in scope, this is where you'd go to advertise on sites like BoingBoing and Gawker.
But paid ads are not the most efficient ads you can make.
Many books these days are coming with their own YouTube trailers. The authors mock up a video that's like a TV ad or a movie trailer, and then link the video everywhere they can. If the video goes viral you're gold. That's a longshot. But any attention helps.
The best option by far, though, is to get people talking about your book. Give it away for free to bloggers you like. Get someone to review it, or get a blogger to show your video trailer. Word of mouth is how the net operates best. It's not easy but when done right it can have incredible effects.
That's about all I have right now. I'm not sure how to advertise a book of poetry specifically, but I hope some of these ideas help you. -
Quote:Sorry, it was mentioned earlier in the thread. The "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" is the bible for psychologists. Currently in its fourth edition, although a fifth is due out next year.Originally Posted by Kitsune9tails
dsm?
The DSM describes symptoms of every known mental problem in human beings, or at least as many as they could manage to fit into the book. It also puts them into rough classifications and offers treatment guidelines. Note that its terminology may be confusing to the layman; Sociopathy is a subset of 'Antisocial personality disorder', and I forget whether they've relabeled psychopathy or not. -
Quote:Start with the DSM. It's instructive to read earlier versions of the DSM so that you can see how the terminology was developed. But stick to the current definitions to avoid confusion.Originally Posted by Kitsune9tails
Color me intrigued.
Have you any book recommendations?
My specialty is in sexual perversions; I can give you a list of books dealing with that in private messages if you wish. You're more interested in psychopathy and sociopathy, and all I can tell you is that "Without Conscience" is supposed to be very good (I've read excerpts) and there's a new book called "The Psycopath Test" that I haven't gotten yet. Aside from that I've done general research about the nature of mental deviancy and some studies of specific serial killers. -
Quote:Okay, I understand a little better now. But I think you're mixing the definitions and that's confusing things.Originally Posted by Kitsune9tails
That is the definition that I am challenging here. Many villains beleive themselves to be acting for the betterment of society, and can draw you a road map from here to there. I am proferring an alternative conjecture; what if some people just can't care because of how they are wired, almost literally. And if that can be fixed, should it?
Sociopaths do not care about society. They have no regard for laws, customs, and taboos.
Psychopaths do not care about individual people. They have no empathy, sympathy, or mercy.
Your definition of 'villain' is of a person who is a psychopath but not a sociopath, and who was unalterably born that way.
You're also making a distinction about choice. You think some people know the laws but break them anyway, and some people have empathy but kill anyway. I don't care about that distinction. Anyone who has empathy but kills for fun is going to numb their empathy away in short order. A psychopath doesn't display empathy; whether they might once have had the capability for it doesn't matter.
I'm not as rigid in defining villainy or evil; I think they can be psychopaths or sociopaths, or both or none, and some are treatable and some are not. Basically, I don't like your setup. Evil is evil, and whether it's a clear choice or a predestined illness doesn't matter to me. I've already said that I don't think we should 'fix' anyone against their will, so I'm not going to backtrack on that question.
I think you do! Except that Dexter Douglas is not the kid with the laboratory; he's better known as Freakazoid. Total sociopath, but not a psychopath.Quote:Let me apply my hypothesis and see what I come up with:
Lex Luthor: understands social norms, never shows hesitation or guilt over the antisociality of his actions. Sociopath.
Frank Castle: understands social norms, never (?) shows hesitation/guilt? Sociopath. Has occaisionally been a psychopath, unable to see the social ramifications of his actions.
Justin Hammer: Lex knock-off (but a good one)
Dexter Douglas: Is this the kid from Dexter's Laboratory? Despite his genius, his brain is still maturing. Probably still clinically both psychopathic and sociopathic.
Dexter Morgan (I missed the last 2 seasons, no spoilers please): seems to have developed both hesitation and a conscience. Still suffers from antisocial compulsions. Inner monologue however suggests that he is only capable of recognizing social cues through rote memorization and great conscious effort. Psychopath, but not a sociopath (as of the end of season 3).
Do I win?
You correctly pegged Dexter Morgan as a psychopath but not a sociopath. He cares, deeply, about correcting the wrongs in society.
I would not count Frank Castle as a psychopath. He has feelings and recognizes them in others. Whether he's a sociopath or not depends on how he's portrayed; I lean towards saying he is one.
(All of the above, of course, are my opinions and my definitions. I have studied insanity a lot because I write novels about insane people, but I am not an accredited authority on the subject.) -
Quote:Neither am I, but that's how Kitsune phrased the question.Originally Posted by Jagged
Not sure what expecting a good life has to do with being a sociopath?
No. Classic mistake. A psychopath has no empathy. A sociopath has no regard for society's rules and constantly breaks them.Quote:A sociopath simply has zero empathy.
Batman breaks the rules of society whenever he is depicted as working against the cops or in danger of being arrested. If anyone in a comic describes Batman as a 'dangerous vigilante', then he's being portrayed as a sociopath. Nobody ever described Superman that way.
None of the five people on Kitsune's list are psychopaths. Batman's the only sociopath there, although I don't know about Wonder Woman, and it could be argued that Storm is an edge case.
My list of five people contains four sociopaths and three psychopaths. The ones who are both are the really dangerous people, the true villains. -
Quote:I'm not sure what you're on about. I think I disagree with most of your setup.Originally Posted by Kitsune9tails
Here's a question that's been mullin' and creepin' and crawlin' around in my head for a while.
Throughout history, there have been individuals who had every ability, every expectation, of living the good life with no effort. They had respect, loved ones, and even if they weren't rich they weren't exactly poor and suffering. People to whom society gave all, yet who defied society and chose to risk their well-being and lives in efforts to improve society itself, or to benefit others.
To duck the mods, let's keep the name-dropping fictional:
Bruce Wayne
Clark Kent
Peter Parker
Diana Prince
Ororo Munro
...are these people, almost by definition, sociopaths?
Bruce Wayne expected the good life with no effort. But his expectations were dashed. He is a sociopath. But I'd see him as an exception to the rules.
Clark Kent had no expectations of a good life. He doesn't have any loved ones beyond an adopted mother, and he has nobody's respect in his civilian guise. Society gave him almost nothing -- he works for a living. He's no sociopath.
Peter Parker has even less -- no good job, no family beyond an aunt, and the world gave him nothing at all, least of all respect. If MJ hadn't entered his life, Peter would be one of the saddest figures in the comics. Not a sociopath.
Diana Prince had every expectation of the good life. I'm a little fuzzy about why she left her island to meddle in mortal affairs, so I can't measure whether she's a sociopath or not.
Ororo Munro has a complex history -- orphan, street urchin, then goddess, then outcast, then teacher and leader, now goddess and queen. At times she had reason to expect a good life, but most of the time, no. She's a bit of an egomaniac, but not a sociopath.
A sociopath is someone who acts against the better interests of society, not just someone who defies society's conventions. Being a vigilante in and of itself is not sociopathic.
If you want examples of people who expected good lives but became sociopaths, I can give you a more interesting list:
Lex Luthor
Frank Castle
Justin Hammer
Dexter Douglas
Dexter Morgan
I'd class all but one of those as a sociopath. (A No-Prize to whoever figures out which one isn't. )
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The Walking Dead zombie plague is odd. Although they postulated that it was a virus or bacteria at the end of last season, it doesn't seem very much like one. No infection is going to reanimate completely dead bodies like this one does.
I haven't read the comic books, but I've heard that they eventually explain the plague as something supernatural. So I wouldn't expect it to follow the infected zombie rules. -
Quote:I'd need a LOT of proof, including proof that it's my fault, and proof that the world wouldn't be even worse if I had died. Incontrovertible proof.Originally Posted by Durakken
Someone comes from the future and says the entire world/galaxy/universe is destroyed or in a very poor state... They show you proof... and they say it's all your fault... so you must die!
Do you allow yourself to be killed?
If they somehow offer that proof, then I'd shrug my shoulders and say, "Yeah, I always suspected that might happen." Then I'd let them kill me. -
Note that some cultures consider anyone with red hair 'evil'. That's only about 2% of the earth's population.
I'm pretty sure that Pakistanis would label anyone from India 'evil'. There's a good billion people there.
Given time, I'm sure we can find enough excuses to kill off the entire human race in the name of vanquishing evil.
But I think Joseph Conrad said it best in The Heart of Darkness:
Quote:It was a beautiful piece of writing. The opening paragraph, however, in the light of later information, strikes me now as ominous. He began with the argument that we whites, from the point of development we had arrived at, 'must necessarily appear to the savages in the nature of supernatural beings -- we approach them with the might as of a deity,' and so on, and so on. 'By the simple exercise of our will we can exert a power for good practically unbounded,' etc., etc.
From that point he soared and took me with him. The peroration was magnificent, though difficult to remember, you know. It gave me the notion of an exotic Immensity ruled by an august Benevolence. It made me tingle with enthusiasm. This was the unbounded power of eloquence -- of words -- of burning noble words. There were no practical hints to interrupt the magic current of phrases, unless a kind of note at the foot of the last page, scrawled evidently much later, in an unsteady hand, may be regarded as the exposition of a method. It was very simple, and at the end of that moving appeal to every altruistic sentiment it blazed at you, luminous and terrifying, like a flash of lightning in a serene sky: 'Exterminate all the brutes!' -
Quote:Wait. Back up.Originally Posted by ChrisMoses
There are the obvious ones: Hulk began as an Avengers villain,
The Hulk debuted in his own title a year before The Avengers did, and he was one of their founding members. The Hulk is and always has been a hero.
All right. Now continue.
In the Silver Age, heroes were four-color good guys and villains were moustache-twirling bad guys. The comic business has evolved since then. Now every character -- good and bad -- has to be fleshed out and made as realistic as possible, and realistically nobody is wholly good or wholly bad. Villains switching sides has come about as a nod to realistic characters.Quote:What has always made Doom interesting was the relationships he developed with his archnemeses, but actually joining the team (however briefly this turns out to be), isn't that crossing a line?
What do you think?
Are heroic dalliances for villains a good thing?
That said, I think there are some archetypes that should remain untarnished as the pinnacles of good or evil. Captain America should never go bad. Doom, in my opinion, should never go good. If we don't have anchors at both ends of the spectrum, it's hard to measure everyone else.
Wolverine started out as a Hulk villain. That's the most successful Heel-Face-Turn I know of. Emma Frost's turn wasn't bad, either, but the X-Men books have always been shades of grey.Quote:In your estimation, what are the best transitions of villain to hero?
I always thought there was a role in the Marvel Universe for an angsty Doombot turned good, always worried about the demons hidden in his programming. But Doom himself we need to remain the blackest egoist imaginable.Quote:For the good of the character, perhaps "FF Doom" will turn out to only be a Doombot, thataway we can have our cake and eat it too! -
Quote:Yeah, I was guessing that Atom wasn't just a sparring bot -- he was Zeus' old sparring bot, and had some of Zeus' adaptive programming. But they never delivered on that in the movie. Maybe in the sequel. You know there has to be a rematch.Originally Posted by Frostbiter
Spoilers ahead:
To me it felt like there was more to Atom's story than they put into the movie. Why were Team Zeus unwilling to fight the match? Why did they offer to buy Atom in the first place? There are also a few scenes in the movie that to me suggested Atom was at least a little sentient. -
Quote:Since you're already mixing universes there, let me pile on to that. In the Hero P&P RPG system, the higher your strength the more it costs to take martial arts skill. Spider-Man would have trouble fitting martial arts into his already power-packed build. There's no way Superman would be able to manage it. Although in the Golden Age there was a martial art from Krypton known as Klurkor, and I think Lois Lane learned it at one point.Originally Posted by Starsman
I dont think he would see much difference. He can already, without training, do things that go beyond most martial arts disiplines. He has the agility, flexibility and strengt to pull out moves way more extreme than any martial arts can, and his spider sense means there is no such a thing as a "non telegraphic" attack that you can use against him.
In some ways you can say he already practices "spider style school of martial arts" :P
Superman is the one I would love to see get into martial arts. He constantly goes toe to toe with the lkes of Dark Seid who would likely be thrown off by some of the refined moves.
The best example I know of where a super-strong individual knows martial arts is Black Bolt, of the Inhumans. Yes, he can disintegrate people with his voice. But he doesn't like to do that, and he's been shown to be able to beat people into submission with fancy Inhuman kung fu. -
Quote:No. Impulse buyers will not purchase anything unless they are invited to do so. That's why they put candy and trash magazines next to the cashier in the supermarket. Marketers use the psychology of impulse buying to position their product in a way that encourages the impulse.Originally Posted by Emberly
They may well have spent those points, but that is due to them being impulsive, not Paragon Studios nefariously releasing awesome stuff ten days early. Put another way, impulsive spenders with attractive purchase options will always run themselves bingo on points, regardless of the release schedule of said purchase options.
Microtransactions, multiple currencies, and 'technical glitches' are all tools that can be used to pry a customer's impulses open.
Whether Paragon Studios is doing that intentionally or not, I don't know. I am only stating that they are building up a record of shady decisions. -
Quote:Whoops. My start date was May 4th -- I thought I was there at launch, but it looks like I was about a week later. My mistake.Originally Posted by Texas Justice
City of Heroes released on April 28, 2004 (A few sites incorrectly list it as April 27, 2004). It did not release on the 4th as you claim. My sub renews near the end of the month as it always has, not near the beginning of the month.
So they'll probably deliver new content items on the 15th of each month. Whatever is the best time that their data tells them for grabbing those impatient buyers. -
Quote:You're confused because you're looking at trivialities and not the big picture.Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
I'm confused. Where is this "a week late month after month" argument coming from? They'll be a week late THIS month.
This month a technical problem gains them some extra impulse purchases.
Next month they'll have another excuse and another piece of content to lure in the impulse buyers.
By February they'll have cranked through the data and they'll know when to release things for maximum profit (hint: It'll be the first of the month, because that's just before most long-term player's start day of the 4th, which was release day) and they'll know how long to leave things on sale.
By next summer they'll introduce yet another currency, or another wait-for-points plan, or something else that ultimately will give them a marginal increase in profits. Three months after that, they'll do it again. And again. And again.
It's not about any specific event. It's all about keeping the players off-balance so that they are unable to budget their money and their time. This makes more money flow toward the game.
It started with the bait-and-switch they pulled when they went back on their promise of giving all the points for a subscription on the initial renewal date. From here it will only get worse, more devious, and more difficult to understand and plan for.
Maybe. Maybe Paragon Studios hasn't succumbed to the evils of gamification and microtransactions, and all the shady coincidences so far have just been accidents. But every time these coincidences happen it looks a little worse. It is making me lose confidence in a company I once trusted. -
Quote:Again, this isn't about me, or points. It's about one way in which a company who is savvy about their users psychology can wring amoral profits from their microtransaction system.Originally Posted by TerraDraconis
The paranoia inherent in this is amazing. You mean your being forced to spend money now to buy it? You can't wait 6 days from the release of the new stuff until you have points?
Does this mean that Positrons flying black thug squad will show up at your door to force you to buy points rather than waiting?
Let's say the game has 100,000 players. Let's say that 1% of them do not have the impulse control necessary to wait 10 days to get their points. They spend $10 to get the points to buy a new powerset, and the company gets $10,000 this month that they normally would not receive.
Next month they can play the same trick again with some other new content.
Microtransactions are a way to play on the psychology of gamers to wring additional profits out of them. Multiple currency systems are a way of obfuscating the amount of money the player is spending. All the game companies are switching to these systems and hiring psychologists to learn how to manipulate their playerbase. This isn't paranoia, it's an industry acknowledged practice. (Long article, but it presents the concepts very well.)
I don't mind this, mostly because it's everywhere. I just thought Paragon Studios was better than most companies and they wouldn't use their new Freedom system to do evil. But shady 'technical problems' make me question my confidence in them. -
A week ago there was a thread about this in the Technical forum that explained that subscribers with a start date earlier than the 11th got their points for September in advance because COH Freedom was released after their regular date. What Zwillinger is saying now contradicts this. Zwill's saying we'll get our points on the 11th; before they were saying we wouldn't get any at all. I prefer Zwill's scenario.
But TrueGentleman is right. There shouldn't have been this level of misunderstanding in the first place.
This isn't about points, or tokens, or even how much money and time we've put into the game. It's about the confusion of this new system, and what appears to be intentional obfuscation on the part of Paragon Studios. CoH contains some of the smartest players in any MMO, and we are more knowledgeable about this game than any other game community. If a game company intends to turn us into puppets, we can see the strings being tied to our fingers.
Microtransactions, multiple currencies, essentially worthless giveaways and 'technical problems' that encourage players to make impulse buys -- these are tricks used by amoral companies to addict players and squeeze money off of them. And all of them came at the expense of actually improving the game.
Now we have a delay in reward points that just happens to coincide with the release of a long-awaited powerset. But this 'technical problem' can be overcome easily by just giving them extra money. Isn't that convenient.
These incidents are eroding my trust in this game and the developers behind it. All of CoH Freedom seems shady to me so far. It feels like there's a shell game going on and I've lost track of where they're hiding the ball. -
Quote:You may have changed the window scaling in your Graphics options to make your windows and text larger. I do the same thing, I'm getting too old for tiny windows and text. But the email window doesn't work well with window scaling and it will refuse to scroll all the way down.Originally Posted by Mr_Samoa
My problem with is is that the scroll bar doesn't quite go down all the way. It makes it difficult to see what I still have unclaimed.
The fix is to type:
/windowscale email 1.0
You'll need to do that for every character. That sets your window scaling to default for just the email window. (You can do that with any window you wish, if you want to have different windows at different scales, by the way. Just change 'email' to 'recipes' or 'chat' or whatever the window name is.) -
Quote:(fingers in ears) La, lala, lala...I'm not listening...Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Just be thankful the thread didn't turn to "centrifugal force."
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( cracks knuckles )
I am a physicist. I have taught freshman level physics at a university. I've been ignoring the physics side discussion because it made me weep for your generation. But let me do a little explaining.
There are 'forces'. We know of five: Electricity, Magnetism, Gravity, Weak and Strong. Electricity and magnetism are usually rolled into one, called Electromagnetism, because they can be described with a single theory.
The Weak force handles interactions inside an atomic nuclei. It is very seldom relevant.
The Strong force handles interactions inside a boson -- a proton or neutron. These particles are made of smaller particles called quarks, and the Strong force is all about the quarks. It's only relevant at energies where you're splitting particles apart.
You all know Gravity, I hope.
Now, when we talk about 'energy', it really only exists in combination with momentum. Photons have momentum and thus energy, but no mass. Other particles have mass and momentum, and their energy is often called kinetic energy.
'Potential energy' isn't an energy at all, it's just a privileged position within a force field that could turn into energy in the right circumstance. Lift an object, you create gravitational potential. Pull quarks apart and you create strong force potential. It ain't energy until it moves something.
Saying that 'everything is kinetic energy' is not quite right, but it's a simplification I could live with if I were talking to kindergartners. The main problem with it is not in how energy is defined but in how it is transmitted. Those means are varied. At a macroscopic scale, objects hit each other when their electron shells try to overlap but can't because of electromagnetic forces, and so instead of collapsing they trade kinetic energy.
At a microscopic scale it gets more complicated. The kinetic energy of ions can break molecular bonds (alpha radiation, fire), or create molecular interactions at an accelerated speed (fire, acid), you can get resonant absorption (light, gamma radiation), you can get bremstralung effects from magnetic forces on near-light-speed particles (beta radiation, particle beams), you can get weak interactions (meson beams), you can get strong interactions (very high energy particle beams), and you can get heating from a particle current jostling past your atoms (fire, lightning). I've probably missed a few.
So there's a lot of different ways to hurt something. They're not all 'kinetic'.
You decide for yourself which can be absorbed by any fictional supervillain you choose to name.