Doctor Roswell

They're actually F'bee and Wiwee. It's subtle, like the difference between Demmy Moore and D'mi Moore. Or Lindsay Lo-Han and Lindsay Lowwan.

I'm sure some people do.

But I'm equally sure they realize how childish and petty that would be, so I doubt that's the case with anyone involved in this thread, what with all the discussion of how grown-up the term "toon" is.

True! That's another of my pedantic pet peeves.

An acronym, by definition, is a set of initials which is pronounced like a word. UNICEF and SHIELD are acronyms. FBI and WWE are not.

My issue isn't with convenience; it's that "toon" is a ridiculous-sounding term. Convenience/efficiency is one of the excuses people use for perpetuating what I view as an idiotic pseudo-word similar to "hella."

Look at it this way: "Poo" has even fewer letters than "toon," and they're right next to each other on the keyboard (plus closer to Enter), and there are only two unique letters to worry about. That's even easier than "toon"! Let's all start using that word for our characters instead! What's that you say? You say the difference in convenience, speed and efficiency is negligible, and we'd all sound like morons if we did that? So we should all use the "harder" one instead, despite the advantages of "poo"? And you'd probably think anyone who did say "poo" couldn't possibly be serious, just because that would be such a stupid word to use? Well, okay, if you're sure....

Aww... where'd smug, "thanks for playing" Gob go? This new guy's just mean.

Look, I'm fine with letting people say it if that's their "thing." Mention it in-game, and while it might make some vein in my forehead that may or may not exist only in my imagination throb a little, I won't say anything about it. When I say something about it is when someone specifically asks for my thoughts on the subject.

Just like when some simpleton says "hella" or refers to scratching an itch as "itching myself." I'll let it go... right up until the point when someone asks for my thoughts on "hella" or using "itch" to refer to an action one performs instead of a sensation one experiences. Or if a discussion I'm already involved in turns to that.

And my thoughts are thus:

• It's not that much quicker or easier than using a real word. If five keystrokes is really the difference between life or death for you, chances are you shouldn't make any keystrokes until you're out of danger. Don't say "oh no, I'm about to run into that other car" or "meesa gonna die." Hit the brakes and then talk about it after the peril is no longer imminent.
• Anyone who says it sounds a little silly. Like an adult referring to their stomach as a "tummy." Every time you say it, there's a tiny part of me that wants to tell you to come back and talk to me again once you've mastered shapes and colors and what sound a duck makes, when you're ready for grown-up words.

I guess I'll just count myself lucky "shmooples" isn't easier to type than "toon" or everyone would be calling their characters that instead, regardless of how asinine it sounds.

Being present within a specific form of media doesn't make a character synonymous with that medium. Captain Kirk is not a television series, he's a television character. Marty McFly is not a movie, he's a movie character. Lara Croft is not a video game, she's a video game character. Atticus Finch is not literature, he's a literary character. Stewie Griffin is not a cartoon, he's a cartoon character.

If you really need the ham-fisted, drill-it-into-your-head approach, fine: the operative word here is character. A character is a character, not the medium in which the character is presented -- no matter how many different types of media the character has appeared in. If you take a photograph of me, I don't become a photograph, I become the subject of a photograph. Being in something doesn't make me that thing. Referencing myself in this post doesn't make me a forum post, it makes me the subject of a forum post. Being in a cartoon wouldn't make me a cartoon. It would make me a cartoon character.

Where, EXACTLY in this thread do you see me saying anything of the sort? Read the post you quoted again.

Characters in a cartoon = cartoon characters. Characters in a TV show = TV characters. Characters in a comic book = comic book characters. Characters in a video game = video game characters.

But what if I were to call it a cartoon? Would that diminish it?

It's a hand-drawn, two-dimensional representation of a subject, after all. Just like the "cartoons" in comic books.

It happens automatically when a topic gets too many replies for one page.

3 by my settings, by the way.

So... in any a situation where shaving five whole letters off of what you're typing is in any way significant, chances are you're too busy to be typing at all, and you won't be responding anyway until that boss is finished off or that room is cleared or whatever. Either that, or things aren't so hairy that you can't manage complete sentences with capitalization and everything (but no end punctuation for some reason), in which case you probably don't really need five keystrokes' worth of time anyway.

Got it.

Speak for yourself. The ones I left in there have been making me fantasize about doing Jack Bauer-like things to people since before "Jack Bauer" was a thing.

Also, a "cartoon" is a drawn picture, or a story told using drawn pictures. The characters contained therein are "cartoon characters." Calling Fry from Futurama a "cartoon" is like calling Jack Bauer from 24 a "TV show." In my opinion.

I can't imagine a situation in which I'd need to use either during a fight or other fast-paced situation. If I'm referring to a character as a character in game chat, it's certainly not while I'm hip-deep in Nemesis. And in my experience, that's how... pretty much every player is. If you need help, it's "help" or maybe "I need help," not "my toon needs help" or "my character needs help." A character is only referred to as such (using any of the terms being discussed here) outside of actual combat: "That's a cool-looking character." "Do you have any other heroes?" "Have you used Willpower on a toon before?"

MMOs need "toon" like a ghoti needs a bicycle.

For me, "toon" isn't really the problem. It's a symptom of a problem:

"Toon" is at least a pseudo-word. But it's only a few short steps from that to using other "easier" shorthand like "ur" and "ppl"... it's easier to type, sure, but most of it isn't easier to read; I feel like I spend half my life deciphering secret, cryptic puzzles that read like vanity license plates instead of honest attempts at communication.

I'll forgive it if you're playing the game from a cell phone and that cell phone has only a numeric keypad. If you have a full keyboard with a dedicated key for every letter, there's no excuse.

But in either case it refers to something more akin to Spongebob than Superman.

I think the question was intended more as "where did it come from in the context of this game or MMOs in general?" than "when was the first time it was used, ever?" SJG released Toon, yes, but in the nearly three decades since, nobody's started calling their D&D character a "toon" as a result.

That kind of thing takes time.

The current business model is only a single quarter old.

Sounds like they must have re-thought it. Going purely from memory, someone (Posi? Black Scorpion? I forget) said that basically, once a second set is released, there will always be two available -- a "new" one and an "old" one.

And like I said, as of yesterday, that's what the Beta server is showing, too -- Celestial and Fire and Ice at VIP tier 9.

The inf badges only count inf earned, not gained through selling drops or using the auction house or having it traded or mailed to you. There's no reason a prestige badge couldn't ignore converted prestige the same way, and only count prestige gained by defeating enemies and completing missions/arcs.

Fire and Ice will rotate in. Both it and Celestial will be available. It's that way on Beta right now, in fact.

Then, at some later date, a third, thus-far-unannounced set will rotate in. That's when Celestial rotates out.

I'm going over uStream right now to find the video where the devs confirmed it.

EDIT: Of course. I can find the videos from the day they talked about it (turns out it was November 23), but they cut off before the chat Q&A, so I can't link to anything that confirms what I'm saying they said. But I swear they said it!

Either way, yes, I'd be very, very surprised if Celestial is still available ten months from now.

The phrase one of the devs used a while back (late November) on uStream for where the Celestial set would be going when it's replaced was "into the Disney vault." Which basically means it will probably be back at some point in the future, but nobody (possibly including the devs themselves) really knows when, or for how long, or can promise it will come back at all.

Also, just to calm some panic here, in that same uStream session, the devs clarified (to a point) when Celestial is going away: There's another set coming, called "Fire and Ice." It will be likely released around the same time as i22 (pay special attention to the words "likely" and "around"). When Fire and Ice comes out, both it and Celestial will be available. Only when yet a third T9 VIP set is released (so far a third hasn't even been announced) will Celestial go into the Disney vault.

So you've probably got six months or so, or until roughly Issue 23 (that's a three, not a two), to get this sorted out. No rush. It's not like Celestial is going to disappear without months of warning.