Olantern

You might try asking in the Costume (Re-)Design Thread, stickied at the top of this forum. A lot of creative costume specialists frequent that thread, and you're bound to get some submissions that will at least give a starting point.

I'm having issues with image hosting at the moment, so I don't have anything to suggest for you myself; sorry.

I more or less agree with you, and this is speaking as someone who was impressed with the conception of Thomas Covenant.

I think I've had similar reactions to the OP, from time to time. I noticed this in the recent superheroic prose anthology, Masked. (Refer to the "Superhero Fiction (Not Comics)" thread for more information on this book.) While most of the stories were well-written, I was struck by the fact that most of them also focused on either "villains" being victimized by superheroes or on demonstrating, to put it briefly, that "superheroes are crazy and sick." I don't think this was really meant to be the theme of the book, either, which made its prevalance all the more interesting.

Notably, I see much the same attitude from forumites, from time to time. I vividly recall a comic creator discussion where one participant stated something along the lines of, "All heroes are really just egotistical monsters, while villains are expressing freedom." Now, I can appreciate the idea of a story where a superhero is an egotistical monster and a so-called villain (the protagonist of the story) is expressing freedom, but, simply because we can imagine that story, does that make every hero a bad guy and every criminal heroic? I don't think so. Your Mileage May Vary. (For those interested in these sorts of issues, you might enjoy my AE arc, "Primal Crusade," #459120; think about the Crusader's Manifesto.)

At the same time, angst, or even torturous, tormented character development, has its place. It should just seem natural, not forced, as it clearly did to SuperOz in the examples he gave, or as it does it me in, say, Joss Whedon properties ("Ah! I'll kill off a character at random! That'll prove this is meaningful!"). Making these things believable, and making them draw sympathy for the protagonist rather than antipathy, is one of the components of superior writing.

That was amusing. Especially the throwaway joke about tvtropes.com. This guy really has geekdom's number!

Oh, and if I were Spider-Man, at this point, I'd be considering dying of shame.

I got all but Issues 12 and 16.

I could remember the primary word from the title of i12, but not the full phrase. I realized after I finished that everything I tried came from Samuraiko's i12 trailer.

For i16, amusingly, I could remember the non-English title, "Kaleidescope," but not the English title. This is odd, since I have nothing whatsoever to do with the French or German (or even UK, for that matter) servers.

The full issue list bears out my longterm, gut feeling that issue titles have generally been getting less evocative over time, though there have been a few standouts throughout the game's life.

For me, this just isn't a big deal. Even for characters with highly developed backstories, having the game dictate things is just a fact of its being a game and an MMO. When I want absolute creative control over something, I'll write it myself. Surrendering a little bit of that control seems like a fair price to me to use the game's art assets, community, etc.

Your Mileage May Vary.

My favorite part of the new information presented in this announcement is that the devs are using the general (primarily British, but also used by many non-lawyer Americans) spelling "judgement" rather than the legal spelling "judgment," which has always looked unprofessional to me.

Everyone knows that the real reason for Cole's invasion is due to his ambition to star as Captain Steuben in a movie version of TV's The Love Boat. You think I'm lying? He wears the uniform all the time as it is.

Since BrandX did it, I'll do my own predictions of the winners, too. Note that these would not necessarily be my choices; these are the characters I think will win the voting.

Ordinarily, I'm not one to trash the latest film meant to appeal to geeks. In this case, though, I honestly wonder what was going through the producers'/director's/writers' heads that made them think this bizarre mish-mash of fairly weak ideas (a Green Hornet movie? Seth Rogen as a costumed hero?) would be a success. Seriously. I'd like to know.

Well, I'm happy to report that we managed to take down one (unfortunately, only one) dropship. We had a decent turnout for such short notice; we started off with two full teams and a team of 2, which dwindled substantially as we went on. Considering the fairly small numbers, I thought we did quite well.

We managed to take down our ship in Talos Island, with its long flight path. Special thanks go to my fellow team leaders, Tempest Teacup and Termyt, who also provided help with targeting and assembling at the beginning of the ships' runs.

Thanks again to all who participated! If you got any screenshots, feel free to post them here!

This sort of thing is why we need a Rikti Monkey Epic Archetype.