Does anyone here even LIKE comic books?
By
Adelie,
Posted on: 2011-01-13 16:15 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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Ah, but it isn't an 'anything-goes metaverse'. It has a lore, design of NPCs and world that is very modern age western super hero centric.|
Originally Posted by Bosstone
I personally love that this game is an anything-goes metaverse.
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There is/was a deliberate effort to make this a 'super hero MMO', not a generic mash up of sci-fi and whatever the fly-by-Twilight fad of the month is.
It just gets treated as the latter because some players (and devs) don't really care for super heroes, don't bother to respect the genre and setting or simply have a very lax opinion of what a super hero is.
You can pretend The Simpsons exist in the CoH universe, but they don't just because you can pick a yellow skin tone, spiky hair and rolled "Bart the Blaster" on Infinity.
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I think it goes rather further than that; there really are people for whom the pronoun is mostly neutral. I mean, one slightly older bit of text I have lying around says "Male and female created He him", clearly using "him" to refer explicitly to both male and female. Problem is, when you have a word with two meanings, they tend to get blurred. If "he" really means both "third person male" and "third person gender unknown", you can't tell which is intended, which creates a bias towards assuming "male". The ongoing attempt to fix this is interesting just because usually attempts to modify a language by declaration and fiat don't work, but this one has a reasonable chance.|
Originally Posted by Silver Gale
No, I assume she was raised in a society that has only reluctantly started thinking of women as real human beings for the last few decades, and the language hasn't quite caught up yet.
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Me, I'm sad to lose "they/their" as unambiguously plural; I recognize that even that was a change from a previous usage, but it was a useful usage to have. On the other hand, it's a lot easier to get people to accept "everyone ... they" than it is to coin a new pronoun and use it.
I was told at one point that English came very close to acquiring a consistently-male third person pronoun.
Of course, the other thing to watch out for remains: It isn't always obvious, when reading a given text, which set of conventions the author used, but assuming they used a particular set of conventions may result in misreading.
Some years back, I wrote a document where I just alternated pronouns from one paragraph to the next. Mostly people have been fine with it, people translating it have asked what it was, and one utterly illiterate person wrote me what I think was a very angry email about it.
Expectations aren't necessarily a bad thing to have, but as long-time MUD player coming into a six-year-old for-pay MMORPG in 2010, it sounds like yours may have been a bit skewed.
Since CoX really hasn't had an end-game except for the past few months, most people have created many, many characters. This has a tendency to devalue each individual "toon" (if you'll allow the vulgar argot) to the point where a player may not take as much care in the name, costume, or bio as they once did. Certainly, there are people with 50 characters who have detailed, interlocking novels behind them, just as there are those with only a few characters who still don't care about names, bios, or costumes as long as the XP, inf, and shards flow. I'm just pointing a general trend that may explain what you've seen. (BTW, I shudder to think what's you'd say to someone with a "lesbian hellion" back story.)
The answer to the question of whether players are interested in comics or not is wide open: again, since they game has been out so long it's had time to attract rabid comic book fans as well as people who just want a break from the plethora of sword n' sorcery MMOS out there. At this stage in the evolution of the MMORPG, the actual subject matter isn't a great indicator on who the audience will be. I can imagine your subject line on the Lord of the Rings Online Forum "Does anyone here even LIKE J.R.R. Tolkien?" would get a similar answer there: they have Insane Lore Nerds over there, as well as those who just want to pimp out their Gamble-specced burg for raids.
I take your criticism of the costume generator with more than a grain of salt. First off, the reason you see so much "ugly spiky things" is because you can make a Hero or a Villain to start. Lots of things that may not make sense for a hero from your perspective make perfect sense for a villain. Ultimately, players can do whatever they want, and I think it's one of the great strengths of the game.
As for the whole "sie/hir" issue, I'll just say I'm with Sam.
Welcome to the game. I think you're very fortunate to have joined our community as your first pay-subscription MMORPG. Here's hoping you'll stay awhile.
Agua Man lvl 48 Water/Electric Blaster
"To die hating NCSoft for shutting down City of Heroes, that was Freedom."
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In light of that, I suspect your interpretation of super heroes is shaped by bad Wolverine fanfic and possibly JLA: Act of God.|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
They do come closer to my interpretation of it, so at least they are batting .500 there.
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My personal interpretation of "the superhero genre" IS an anything-goes metaverse. The origin stories for established DC and Marvel superheroes are already so varied and incredible that anything we can think up pales in comparison. This is a genre that includes Superman, Martian Manhunter, Spiderman, the X-Men, Thor, Captain Carrot and the Zoo Crew, the Watchmen, Camelot 3000, The Punisher, etc. etc. etc.|
Originally Posted by Johnny_Butane
Ah, but it isn't an 'anything-goes metaverse'. It has a lore, design of NPCs and world that is very modern age western super hero centric.
There is/was a deliberate effort to make this a 'super hero MMO', not a generic mash up of sci-fi and whatever the fly-by-Twilight fad of the month is. It just gets treated as the latter because some players (and devs) don't really care for super heroes, don't bother to respect the genre and setting or simply have a very lax opinion of what a super hero is. You can pretend The Simpsons exist in the CoH universe, but they don't just because you can pick a yellow skin tone, spiky hair and rolled "Bart the Blaster" on Infinity. |
There is NO character you can make that isn't superhero genre-worthy. Even Bart the Blaster. Bart gains superpowers and fights crime. Huzzah.
De minimis non curat Lex Luthor.
And to follow up, yes, City has an established lore, one that can be quite engaging.
It also has aliens, parallel dimensions, alternate universes, and just about every single loophole you can think of which any character with any kind of backstory can squeeze into.
De minimis non curat Lex Luthor.
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Ramdomly approaching strangers to rectify arbitrary matters is, in most cultures (whether real-world or online), not typically considered effective or gracious. The pleasanter tactic, if one is unable to restrain one's corrective impulses, is first to compliment them on their efforts before bringing up, almost reluctantly, the minor flaw in their otherwise praiseworthy work.|
Originally Posted by PoisonPen
* I didn't realize it was against etiquette to point out typos for people. In most contexts people regard it as a courtesy.
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| * To those who have expressed preferences for alternative comics outside the capes and leotards variety, I like those too: Sandman, Maus, the Invisibles, anything by Robert Crumb, the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, Promethea, and so on. It's just that, like a lot of folks in the alternative and independent comics scene whose work I respect, like Grant Morrison and and Alan Moore, I also have a nostalgic love/hate relationship with the Golden and Silver ages of comics -- Superman + red kryptonite = Ant-head Superman! (Read Grant Morrison's brilliant Flex Mentallo for his psychological explanation for the weird, psychedelic nature of that Red Superman/Blue Superman stuff from the Silver Age.) Morrison in particular loves to deconstruct the Golden and Silver Ages, but always with respect. |
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Sounds like interactive games on the scale of MMO's just arent your thing and you would probably be happier playing a single player game, nothing wrong with that.Youll never be happy playing an MMO when you think everyone should play/act/think like you do.
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Originally Posted by PoisonPen
I'm a new player here at CoX, although I've been MUDing since the early 80s. It also marks the first time I've paid money to play an MMO. As a huge comic book fan who started reading back when they were still 20 cents each, I was really excited about playing CoX. Imagine my disappointment, then, in what I've experienced.
The first disappointment is that the game feels like a ghost town. I will see a handful of people occasionally, but what few people are around all tend to be level 50s -- and this brings me to the part which annoys me most. The vast majority of the level 50s I've encountered seem to treat this game as just another kill-the-monster, get-the-treasure MMO where the idea is to min/max your power potential. They create stupid or boring names (some of them don't even bother to think of superhero names, they use what appears to be a name chosen randomly from a phone book), and can't be bothered to create even the most basic background. Reading through the various fora here, people seem to be interested solely in obsessing over "toons" and "shards" and "IO builds" and which "AV" slots out best and other arcane trivia. You could replace the supervillains with orcs or Imperial stormtroopers and I doubt they would even notice the difference -- or care if they did. I tried three or four different servers, just to make sure it wasn't a local phenomenon, and I've experienced the same thing on each one. I'm not a fanatical roleplayer, but I'm frankly baffled that on a game which is supposed to be about comic books, no one seems to have any interest in comic books. It's not helped that the costume creation system appears to be geared toward awful 90s "Dark Age" comics; you can get 200 different types of ugly spiky things for your shoulders, but try getting tassles on your cape or a swashbuckling tabard or animal heads other than "snarling death monster" -- Mr. Talky Tawny is not welcome here. The final straw for me may have been the exchange I had last night with a "50" where I sent hir a message that sie had a few typos in hir background, and helpfully provided the corrections. Sie replied that if sie wanted someone to edit hir background text sie would ask over Global, and that I was now welcomed to (and I quote) "iggy." I was taken aback by the sheer sour rudeness, and it ruined all my sense of enjoyment for the evening. This is only my second month playing, but I'm already questioning whether I want to continue. |
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I have a vocabulary larger than 99% of most people's (tested and approved to be so!) and I had never heard of "hir" and "sie." Those sound so ridiculously pretentious and politically correct, I can only imagine how PoisonPen must've come across in-game correcting someone's bio out of the blue.|
Originally Posted by UberGuy
Define "real life".
They aren't formally accepted parts of the language, if that's what you're asking. |
Anyway, Virtue is where you want to be and hanging out in both the Comic Culture and Roleplaying forums to get a feel for where comic book fans hang out.
The Alt Alphabet ~ OPC: Other People's Characters ~ Terrific Screenshots of Cool ~ Superhero Fiction
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If you're going to start tossing out Act of God, the gloves come off buster. Lets stick to the subject at hand, and not calling each other dyslexic alien psychotic nightmare fuel, shall we.|
Originally Posted by Johnny_Butane
In light of that, I suspect your interpretation of super heroes is shaped by bad Wolverine fanfic and possibly JLA: Act of God.
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You don't call me Act of God retarded, I won't call your vision of tankers shouting "I am a MAN" and punching someone through the intestines.
(For a thread asking whether anyone here likes comic books, its tossing a lot of inside ball around; separate from the discussion of whether or not pronouns should have balls that is.)
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I love comics. I ran 2 different comic shops.
Probably a small minority here but...
I never grew up reading superhero comic books. Since I was raised in a francophone household, my lit consisted of stuff like Asterix, Tintin, Gaston Lagaffe, Iznogoud, Buck Danny...the first two you could call "superheroic" I guess, since Asterix gets super strength from a potion and they both have high cunning/mental acuity.
Found out about superheroes from seeing Superman on TV (Chris Reeve).
Really had no interest in super comics. First comic series I read was Strangers in Paradise, got to meet Terry several times, fantastic guy. Other stuff was Fables and Knights of the Dinner Table. I never found that ONE comic about superheroes that was intelligent, not OVERLY violent and wasn't all spandex/big bewbs/etc.
I've pretty much stayed subbed here because of the costume creator and variety of powers. The gameplay is pretty repetitive, to be honest...but you level quickly enough to make it palatable.
IOs are a big draw as well; they add ANOTHER level of customization and power boosting that helps keep the game fresh.
The comic book aspect...quite peripheral to me, but I may be an oddball there. 
Questions about the game, either side? /t @Neuronia or @Neuronium, with your queries!
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At first I thought "hir" and "sie" were typos of "her" and "she." New words that are more confusing than the words they try to replace are bad words. Whoever came up with those two things ought to be punished by being forced to transcribe the Iliad and Odyssey into Esperanto... and make it rhyme. Those who use them in a non-smirking fashion should be punished by being forced to sing the resultant epic. And then listen to it. On a loop. Forever.|
Originally Posted by Zikar
Wow, I started a bit of a snowball there.
Gender neutral eh? That's kind of odd... especially (as other have pointed out) "they" and "their" are already accepted. Also, "hir" is probably the worst possible concept for being gender neutral since when spoken it would be identical to "her"... *baffled* Personally, I've always used "they" and "their" when referring to posters I don't know the genders to and I've always gone with toon gender in game (unless, again, I know their actual gender). Just goes to show that some people will make a big deal out of anything. |
Most linguists agree that "they" and "their" are fine stand-ins for true gender-neutral pronouns and from a practical standpoint you might as well, since most people are using them in that fashion anyway.
The Alt Alphabet ~ OPC: Other People's Characters ~ Terrific Screenshots of Cool ~ Superhero Fiction
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"Sticks and stone may break my bones, but words can really hurt."
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Originally Posted by Silver Gale
I like how something as simple as using a different pronoun is apparently a "naked plea for attention". Which has apparently caused people to jump out from all sides to let us know their preferences for grammatical particles. It's almost like the words we use to refer to other human beings are important, or something.
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The Alt Alphabet ~ OPC: Other People's Characters ~ Terrific Screenshots of Cool ~ Superhero Fiction
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I've encountered them before, but typically only in online RPG circles where openly hermaphroditic characters were common. It's completely nonstandard and very very twee, especially when being used as presumably "polite" gender-neutral terminology. It's also wrong, given that the usage I've seen it in is specifically to refer to characters known to be neither male nor female, but not to characters whose gender is an unknown. That's always been "they."|
Originally Posted by Ironik
At first I thought "hir" and "sie" were typos of "her" and "she." New words that are more confusing than the words they try to replace are bad words. Whoever came up with those two things ought to be punished by being forced to transcribe the Iliad and Odyssey into Esperanto... and make it rhyme. Those who use them in a non-smirking fashion should be punished by being forced to sing the resultant epic. And then listen to it. On a loop. Forever.
Most linguists agree that "they" and "their" are fine stand-ins for true gender-neutral pronouns and from a practical standpoint you might as well, since most people are using them in that fashion anyway. |
Now please, please let's all pretend I don't possess this knowledge.
De minimis non curat Lex Luthor.
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I believe I know what you mean, and I agree. For me, creating a Silver Age style look usually involves selecting skin-tight spanex and then experimenting with colors and patterns. It doesn't require the wide array of complex accessories that the more modern look does. Therefore there are more parts in the costume designer that favor the later.|
Originally Posted by Jophiel
I think it's easy for the creator to look that way because making non-spandex costumes requires "things". Jackets, armors, different pants, boots, spikes, and whatever other doo-dads. Spandex mainly requires the "tights" option and a bunch of patterns.
That's simplified but I hope you see what I mean. |
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Originally Posted by Johnny_Butane
There is/was a deliberate effort to make this a 'super hero MMO', not a generic mash up of sci-fi and whatever the fly-by-Twilight fad of the month is.
It just gets treated as the latter because some players (and devs) don't really care for super heroes, don't bother to respect the genre and setting or simply have a very lax opinion of what a super hero is. |
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This phrase seems to define the CoH forums.
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Originally Posted by Bosstone
Now please, please let's all pretend I don't possess this knowledge.
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Yeah....because before Thor you did not have heroes inspired by fantasy, horror, and mythology. There never were super-heroes such as Dr. Fate, the Spectre, the Shining Knight, the Gay Ghost (in modern times referred to as the Grim Ghost since "gay" has a different meaning than in the 40's), Ibis the Invincible, Kid Eternity, and....need I really go on? These are just popular heroes from the 40's (other than the Gay Ghost, who I know lasted awhile but may not have been especially popular) I could think of in 1 minute off the top of my head. I didn't even get into the obscure, usually one or two-shot, stable of appropriate themed heroes from Marvel's 40's comics.|
Originally Posted by Johnny_Butane
That is an outlier. Marvel's Thor was specifically created as an experiment in meshing super hero and fantasy/myth....
Also, one of the main draws of Thor was that he was such a fish out of water and unique being a fantasy hero in a super hero world. |
Fantasy, horror, and mythology have been prominent staples of comic-book super heroes since the inception of the comic-book super-hero, as well as things we now associate with FRPGs. Thor wasn't even the first god-turned-super-hero, though no others became popular. The greek gods played a prominent part in Wonder Woman's early adventures as well, the god Mars was a frequent "super-villain" in her stories.
There is very, very little I have seen in this game in the way of player-created characters that was not a part of the super-hero genre in the very beginning.
@Doctor Gemini
Arc #271637 - Welcome to M.A.G.I. - An alternative first story arc for magic origin heroes. At Hero Registration you heard the jokes about Azuria always losing things. When she loses the entire M.A.G.I. vault, you are chosen to find it.
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Well, of course there are some people who choose to ignore the lore and do whatever they want. But that doesn't mean the lore doesn't allow for it anyway... you just need to work it in a bit.|
Originally Posted by Johnny_Butane
Ah, but it isn't an 'anything-goes metaverse'. It has a lore, design of NPCs and world that is very modern age western super hero centric.
There is/was a deliberate effort to make this a 'super hero MMO', not a generic mash up of sci-fi and whatever the fly-by-Twilight fad of the month is. It just gets treated as the latter because some players (and devs) don't really care for super heroes, don't bother to respect the genre and setting or simply have a very lax opinion of what a super hero is. You can pretend The Simpsons exist in the CoH universe, but they don't just because you can pick a yellow skin tone, spiky hair and rolled "Bart the Blaster" on Infinity. . |
For instance, The Simpsons wouldn't exist in normal Primal Earth, and probably not in any other normal dimension. BUT a character from that could still fit. One of the villain side contacts, the TV, introduced the concept that the inside of the Television is it's own reality, and that can actually be invaded and manipulated. You can actually go inside this reality in some of the missions, too! So, we have established lore that, even if television stuff doesn't exist normally in normal reality, they DO exist in their own reality, inside the Television.
So, if I wanted to make a Simpsons character, I could weave a story about some experiment or hole in reality that allowed the character to cross over into the real world. And it would fit in perfectly with the game's established lore. ...Of course I wouldn't use The Simpsons, since that would get me generic'd in a heartbeat... but the example still stands.
If I want to make a character that was originally a television character and somehow crossed over into the real world, I can. The game allows for it.
So still, pretty much anything goes in this game... ...as long as you can come up with a good enough explanation for it, at least.
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Arguably the Asian-influenced concepts could be, especially if you accept Johnny's limitation of Western superheroes. Still, magical girls, sentai, and tokusatsu are pretty much Japan's version of superheroes, so I don't see why they shouldn't count.
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Originally Posted by Doctor_Gemini
There is very, very little I have seen in this game in the way of player-created characters that was not a part of the super-hero genre in the very beginning.
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De minimis non curat Lex Luthor.
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Besides, we all know there are no females on the internet.|
Originally Posted by Silver Gale
Using "he" as the default means that a man will never have to experience being referred to with a pronoun he is uncomfortable with, while a woman who is referred to as "he" has to choose between shouldering the discomfort or go "actually, I'm not a 'he' " and risk the discussion being derailed.
Using "he" as the default, you're not using "a gender neutral 'he' ", you're assuming everyone to be male unless they say otherwise. |
I absolutely refuse to use those two so-called gender neutral words that have been bandied about in this thread. I'll use "qa" and "hulirtuyurtliyarmienyrotruhrohtumizsluezorf'abaty ". After all, if I'm going to use made-up words that 90% of all English speakers have never heard of, so others have no idea what the hell I'm talking about, I may as well make up my own.
But only today, I'll make up new words tomorrow, because I won't even remember the 2 letter one by then. Either that or I can choose to communicate in a manner that most others will also understand.
@Doctor Gemini
Arc #271637 - Welcome to M.A.G.I. - An alternative first story arc for magic origin heroes. At Hero Registration you heard the jokes about Azuria always losing things. When she loses the entire M.A.G.I. vault, you are chosen to find it.
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Only by a certain type of man |
Originally Posted by Bronze Knight
Aside from the fact that it's simply irrelevant in a video game, he is used by default.
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@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
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They do, and they do |
Originally Posted by Johnny_Butane
Honestly, I think a better question is "Do the devs truly like comic books?"
And if so, "Why don't they act more like it?" |
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
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I can see the connection now |
Originally Posted by Chaos Creator
The Comic books you mean (Western style)? Hate 'em.
I like being evil. |
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
That's simplified but I hope you see what I mean.