Smersh

There's no need for anyone else's powers, or a tanker to use any power aside from taunt and hover/fly, to keep Recluse at range and shut down his options. No toggle debuffs or -fly need apply. It is as simple as -range and the ability to keep at range. Recluse cannot use his KO Blow if he cannot come close enough to do so.

Note that I did not make any such claims about Ghost Widow. Though, of course, a Ghost Widow who is locked onto a tanker that cannot reach that tanker with her AoE heal is limited to her ranged attacks and won't fire off that AoE heal, that's more a function of immobilizes than -range.

You're taking another tactic that was used and holding it up. That's fine, it is another tactic that can be used in the game. It could just as easily be used by a tanker with Darkest Night. The existence of another tactic does not invalidate the tactic that was described. And the use of -range and fly seems, to my mind, less exploitative than using Recluse's teleport tether that keeps him in range of his towers.

You are, of course, welcome to feel that it is a less 'pure' form of tanking Recluse. The obvious counter-argument is that using -range and keeping Recluse at range is using only the tanker's own powers, and uses inspirations only as a reactive measure, as opposed to leaning on powers not inherent to the tanker in the form of team buffs and stacking multiple purple inspirations.

Lies are repugnant, denying essential services like medical care and clean water are downright evil.

No, the OECD is a group of the world's richest economies and declares in its mission statement that it is focused on democracy and the market economy.

Yes, those countries are all democracies; this does not prevent them from also being socialist to one degree or another. A nation like Norway, for instance, has an economy that is much more socialist than that of the United States.

Socialism is not inherently opposed to democracy.

-WASHINGTON, D.C., Mathy Stanislaus, assistant administrator, EPA's Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response: The opinion piece, “Crying over spilled milk” [Commentary, Feb. 6], gives readers the impression that EPA intends to regulate all small dairy farms as part of its work to prevent oil spills. This is incorrect.

EPA has already proposed to exclude milk and milk product storage tanks from the spill prevention regulatory program. This common-sense decision was announced months ago.

Moreover, EPA already has stayed any compliance requirements for milk and milk product storage tanks pending the agency's final action on the proposed permanent exclusion. It is known that EPA will take final action on the proposed permanent exclusion this spring.

EPA stands with the president in his commitment to using common sense and transparency to review federal regulations. This commitment to transparency is precisely why EPA publicly announced its intention to delay compliance requirements for milk and milk product storage tanks in October of 2010. (source)

How would getting federal aid or scholarships have trivialized your grandfather's accomplishments?

Anecdotal evidence is anecdotal. While there are no legal barriers to transcending the circumstances of one's birth, those few cases in which it does happen are primarily used as propaganda to prevent an examination of the causes and effects of widespread inequality.

There is a huge gap in opportunity that derives from family background. There may be no legal barriers, but there are huge institutional and functional barriers. Oddly enough, more socialistic governments give a higher rate of social mobility - Denmark, Australia, Norway, Finland, Canada, Sweden, Germany and Spain all rate higher in social mobility than the United States. (Source)

American males are required, at the age of 18, to register for the draft. Serving in the military certainly does not fall into my definition of happiness, but I have to live with the threat that I might be called to military service entirely against my will.

Americans are required to pay taxes. Some people derive happiness from making money, and paying taxes takes away from that 'happiness.' Not paying your taxes leads to penalties and prison sentences.

Some Americans choose to endorse policies that tend towards limiting the rights of minorities - choosing not to serve certain sorts of people in their businesses, trying to require that certain religious displays be required in public institutions, and so on. We have a government that chooses to prevent these things in the interests of safeguarding the rights of the minority from the 'tyranny of the majority.'

These are real abridgments of freedom as you have defined it. You might argue (as would I) that they are necessary abridgments; without taxes, there is no infrastructure that allows for billionaires or aspiring billionaires.

The price of living in a society is giving up certain freedoms for the greater good. That's basic, and not subject to debate. You might choose to depict that as giving up certain freedoms to preserve the overall concept of freedom, but that does not change the fact that Americans are not as free as you seem to be implying.

I like the new costumes. The black on white is appealing to me.

The art? Well, since I haven't bought a comic in years, I'm not too worried about that. It's competent enough, though I tend to like cleaner lines when I'm reading comics. I'm no art critic, nor a critic of comics.

Lord Recluse does not fly, and doesn't have any way to keep you from flying. If your taunt is slotted for range, you can debuff his range so that he cannot hit you, even with his ranged attacks.

Ah. I've done something similar using Taunt, which was where I was coming from. I didn't use the windows - I had him trying to leap from banner stands trying to hit me with melee attacks, missing his jump towards me and trying again. Every five minutes or so he'd try to hit me with a channelgun attack.

It's pretty clearly borked.

We've done some flower-fencing and helped her wave a magic wand around. She also likes to play kinetic melee with Daddy.

That fourth Numina bonus will only affect the self-rez in Willpower - it only affects heals, not regeneration powers like Health or RttC.

Well, since I'm largely ignoring the Well for my Incarnate character... just throwing in some better superconductors, power relays and kinetic dampeners on his power armor. All completely mundane, and certainly not divinely inspired.

Nothing I've seen in the Incarnate system can't be explained by installing more gear in the power armor. Yet. Orbital laser nuke cannon? I've already used orbital WMD from Warburg. Pets? A clockwork control network shouldn't be too onerous. Adding new effects to attacks? You mean, like the procs I already have in there? No need to be an Incarnate to explain away any of those things.

Now, my other main... he was practically an Incarnate before the system was put into place. His 'Incarnate item' would be his special blade, the Godcutter, made from blue stone and forged to destroy cosmic-level entities. (Yeah, he's a Moorcock homage.)

There were bone claws in the movie. They even had Sabertooth stomp on them and break half of them off, in a comic shoutout. Too bad the movie really, really sucked.

It's fairly rare for a single police officer to randomly encounter a violent felony in progress, though it does happen. In those cases, police are required to give an audible warning and instruct the felon to surrender. Such a case may very well end with the officer firing his or her weapon, but there are strict guidelines on when and how an officer can use force, and all such incidents are subject to review. A police officer may use force in the course of his or her duties, but it's the last resort - their primary duty is to apprehend criminals.

Batman does not subject himself to any of those guidelines or review.

No knock warrants are still subject to a judge issuing that warrant. The police are very limited in the circumstances in which they can just break a door open without any prior approval or anyone looking at what they are doing - if they hear gunshots or a fight on the other side of a door, for instance. Our legal system uses a variety of systems to keep those in power from exceeding the limits of their power.

Batman opts out of that entirely. Better trained than the police or not, he's a force unto himself. The only thing keeping him honest is himself, which works in fiction, but we don't trust that in our real-life systems. In fact, we tend to look at those who see themselves as unaccountable with their power in a negative light.

Absolutely - that's a central part of my thesis. We want to see Batman busting heads. That's what we signed up for, and that's what we want to see when we read a Batman comic or watch a Batman movie. It's all part of the fantasy.

But, when we step back and apply a little real-world thinking to him, he gets to be a little scary. We have to trust him, because we have no other way to keep him accountable.

The things he does, there are precedents for civilians getting involved. But those precedents are limited, and in those cases those actions are carefully examined. Our legal system, for good reason, tries to keep law enforcement activities restricted to trained professionals. Even an individual investigation should then be turned over to law enforcement for confirmation and followup. Batman does the investigation himself, and then does the apprehension himself. That's all well and good, assuming that he doesn't produce evidence that would be thrown out of court because of how it was collected, resulting in a dismissal. "Getting off on a technicality" is usually a result of the exclusionary principle, which is foundational to protecting the rights of citizens from police abuse. (Batman's methods probably result in no few acquittals.)

I agree with this statement completely. Again, the narrative demands that Batman do these things, because no one else will. That's the agreement we enter into with the authors of Batman when we sit down to read it.

That does not mean that the underlying assumptions of the narrative are immune to examination.

Yes. But the underlying assumption is that it takes a specially gifted, self-appointed individual who is not bound by the law to enforce the law. The system is corrupt, and the only way to save the ordinary citizens is to operate outside the system entirely.

When the legal system is that far gone and we have to look to a self-appointed strongman to protect us from crime, that's pretty much the end of the line for the social order.

(Incidentally, that's what I loved most about the end of The Dark Knight - Nolan acknowledges that in order for Batman to do what he does, he has to be hunted and opposed by the legal system. Batman as an institution is a threat to civil society and the rule of law.)

Like heck - Robin Hood's a socialist, taking back from parasitic landholders the worker's rightful share of their labors. The landholders add no value to the land, they just extract unfair rents and impoverish the people who are doing the actual work.

Nice try, but... no.

To be fair - I think the original article has its issues, and that while Batman comes from an extremely privileged background, I don't think that class warfare is the major issue with Batman.

Even sociopaths deserve their day in court, and have certain rights that Batman violates. They retain those rights until they are convicted in a court of law and sentenced by a jury of their peers. That's the foundation of our civil society - that we can only be punished when we are proved guilty, because we have decided as a nation that it's better for guilty people to go free than for innocent people to be punished. Batman skips all of that, and if he's going after you, there's a presumption of guilt. And Batman's never wrong about that.

The issue is one of narrative convenience - Batman's methods are justified because every single person he goes after is a genuine criminal with no extenuating circumstances. They're bad guys, pure and simple, and no one argues that the Joker is just 'misunderstood.' That makes it easy to cheer for Batman, because all the people he goes after are EVIL. He never makes mistakes, so his unshakable belief in himself as the only source of real justice is justified. Narratively, it doesn't matter that Batman's violating their rights or brutalizing them - they're bad guys getting their comeuppance. That's cool, I can understand that - I love lots of fiction where the hero gets stuff done without worrying about technicalities. That doesn't mean that, when you step back, you realize that Dirty Harry is a bad cop and you wouldn't want him in your town, let alone the heroes of Lethal Weapon. It doesn't make Batman noble, it makes him a crypto-fascist vigilante.

You can enjoy the story and gloss over it in your mind, because it's not important to the story - our heroes only do these things to the really bad guys, we're assured, and we don't worry about it. But when you do think about it, it's really hard to justify the existence of Batman.

To hit your major point - Batman is a greater threat to the social order than criminals. In our social order, we know there will be criminals, and we're set up to handle that - we have police, courts, prisons. Batman says the social order is corrupt and weak, and only he and his violent methods can save us from the other, the evil scary criminals.

When Superman is fighting someone who's on an equal level with him, conventional law enforcement and the court system are incapable of dealing with that threat.

That's much less the case with the threats Batman faces.

I do have to wonder what would happen if Bruce invested an amount of money equal to what he spends on being Batman on social welfare programs, drug treatment centers, job retraining and the like. I suspect he doesn't because he likes being Batman.

Batman is dangerous. No one can decide what is right except for him, and we have only his assurance that he will never compromise his principles. He's completely unaccountable to anyone. He's got a deep-seated belief that only he can deliver real justice in Gotham because of endemic corruption, and is not afraid to use fear and violence to promote his ends. That's not to say that the people he fights aren't bad people - but there is no protection from Batman for someone being in the wrong place at the wrong time. You can't sue Batman if he injures you in the pursuit of a bad guy. And, of course, Batman always only goes after bad guys - there's never any ambiguity or mistaken identity...

I've not read a Batman comic in 15 years, so correct me if I'm wrong on any of those points.