Warp_Factor

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  1. What exactly is "alt padding"? Are we talking about an SG's leaders lying and pretending that every character in their SG is a real human being when it isn't? Or are we talking about just having alts in the group? I'm really not seeing the problem with alts, within reason and so long as the SG is honest about how many real human players are involved. I'd say if anything that refusing to allow people to play alts when they want to is going to be a problem for an SG.
  2. Warp_Factor

    RIP Greg Giraldo

    It's one thing when someone passes on after having realized their potential and made the impression on popular culture that they seem to be meant to make. George Carlin, for example. It's a sadder thing when someone with Giraldo's talent passes on before they're able to make that kind of splash. I really think he could have been huge if he'd just had more time. Sad stuff.
  3. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Hero Prime View Post
    The ongoing problem are the cries of elitism that spring up from those who don't fit, or those who join but are later found to be a bad fit, mostly made by people who don't seem to get that we don't think we're better than they are, just different.

    I think that's something we've lost as a society. In all our politically correct tolerance and acceptance of everyone else, we've forgotten that sometimes people just get along better with people most like them, and that not every group with a code of conduct and a list of conditions of acceptance is Inherently Evil™.
    Not only is this all very true, the fact that someone else is saying it suggests to me that maybe what this community needs isn't another thread about what people want in an SG, but a conversation about what SGs want from new members. That seems to me to be something far more beneficial to more people. However, I'm not sure how many SGs would be willing to have a frank and open discussion of it, given said cries of elitism.
  4. I'm just looking for somebody to name-drop in a story, someone a character is listening to.
  5. To be fair, both of them could have exercised a little more tact. That said, I was under the impression Genia was replying more to Omega Man than to the OP. I think a bit of frustration and a bit of generalization is forgivable after essentially being told "All the SGs on this server suck" when you're leading one of them.
  6. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Bill Z Bubba View Post
    First link: The top comment sums up my feelings quite appropriately.

    Second link: I own a Kittie album. Edit: glad to know they're still out there rockin.
    It might be worth your while to check out Amphibious Assault, it's an industrial project a couple of the gals from Kitty worked on with a guitarist I never heard of. Their full length District Six is very good, but their EP Of Better Days and Sin Eating is freakin' fantastic. Great band and really nice people; my last gig was opening for them in NYC, and they were so much cooler to us than any of the area bands we'd played with had ever been.
  7. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Chyll View Post
    I'm tired and I want to go to bed...


    One of the best scenes in the history of film.
    God, yeah. I just watched it again the other night, and I'm blown away by how well that whole film still holds up. Especially once they get out into the ocean and away from the island.
  8. Quote:
    Originally Posted by MentalMaden View Post
    Newsted had already played on an EP ($5.98 EP Garage Days Re-revisited) with them and finished a brief tour with them, so he wasn't "rushed into the studio" for .....And Justice for All.
    What I'd be curious to know is exactly why Newstead sounds so much better on that EP than on Justice. I mean, he sounds great, perfectly mixed and with an awesome tone. Then Justice rolls around, and it's like "Wait, did Metallica fire the new bass player and just record without one?" I like Justice, but the virtual lack of bass is a mark against it.
  9. Now that I think about it, I can't believe no one's mentioned KMFDM. Even I didn't mention them. Oh well. KMFDM, check them out. Some of the earliest and best guitar industrial out there. Probably start with the Brute album, then move on to Light. Amazing stuff.

    Also, if you can get ahold of any of their stuff Diatribe was pretty amazing. Very obscure industrial band that I think only put out one album, but it's an awesome album. Sadly, it's not up on Amazon or iTunes, but you might be able to find the CD used somewhere. Trust me, this is one you can safely buy sight unseen. It's really that good.
  10. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Zortel View Post
    ... Just listened to 'Fetters', and a few seconds into 'Dreaming of God' I was hooked. You plug well, because I -do- like what I'm hearing so far.

    Like may not be a strong enough word though. Going to listen to the stuff on myspace before throwing $10 at them.
    Sweet. Just be advised, some of the stuff on their Myspace is from the really low-fi demo we recorded early on (I was in the band at the time), and the sound quality is not what it maybe should have been. The Crossing, The Red Road, and The Machine Roars to Life are all good songs, but suffered from being recorded over a weekend in an apartment and not having enough time spent on making the bass and lead guitar sound good. The stuff from the album is much, much better in terms of sound quality.
  11. Not wanting to rehash previous suggestions too much, I'll just go with some stuff that hasn't been mentioned yet:

    1) Deftones. Their early stuff is basically textbook nu-metal, albeit very good textbook nu-metal. They've transitioned into something else entirely, equal parts delicately beautiful and heavy as hell. Check out their new record, Diamond Eyes (go with the deluxe version, the bonus tracks are some of the best on the record), and their third, White Pony. Incredible stuff.

    2) In Flames. I may have missed someone mentioning this band, I was a little surprised they hadn't been mentioned. Great European metal. I'm not really sure what style to even call them, just check them out.

    3) Three Inches of Blood. Somewhat obscure power metal band from Canada. These guys embody everything fun about metal, IMO. I actually made fun of them a bit when I first heard them, but they got stuck in my head and I eventually decided I was off base in criticizing them; the things I was making fun of about them were actually all the things that make them awesome. Great fun metal, none of the navel gazing that seems to have overtaken mainstream metal these days. Check out Advance and Vanquish, you can't go wrong with it.

    4) Mastadon. I've only heard a bit of these guys, to be truthful, but I've really dug what I've heard. Very cool prog-death-thrash-whatever metal. Sort of a mixed bag of heaviness.

    5) Dared The Knot. This is a shameless plug for some good friends of mine. Great industrial metal band with prog and alternative rock influences. Check them out here. I think you'll like them, they're drawing ideas from a lot of the bands you're asking about.
  12. I have to know. Are you familiar with Axe Cop?
  13. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Scarlet_Phantom View Post
    The Las Vegas rampage took place in the FF book. Illuminati was were the aftermath is mentioned and the body count. Both coincided with the start of the Planet Hulk storyline in Hulks book.
    This is correct. Hulk's lethal rampage was solidly canon in the buildup to Planet Hulk. At some point between then and when World War Hulk started, Marvel softened on it and appear to have unofficially retconned it. It's a weird situation, they've been very contradictory about it. Not unlike their handling of Ghost Rider continuity, only this happened in a much shorter period of time. Hulk killing people in Vegas was clearly canon at that point, and was just sort of forgotten about. By the end of World War Hulk, no one seemed to acknowledge that Hulk had killed people.
  14. This weekend was an odd one given the release of Civ V. A lot of people were playing it tonight. I wouldn't take tonight's lack of attendance as indicating anything other than that Civ V is freakin' excellent (seriously, it really is) and folks got totally absorbed by it. Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated.
  15. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Knightslayer View Post
    I think most of the Heavy RP SG's don't do many "community" events because that'd involve a lot of Non-RPers and "Light" ones, and having to interact with the ones going "lol" and " " generally isn't something they want to do (unless it's entirely OOC of course).


    That's likely true. There are other reasons for not doing public events. Think about it from the point of view of an SG leader. I could:

    1) Run an event for my SGmates and friends. At worst, it might not quite gel and we'll all skip it and try something different next time, no harm done. At best, it'll be freakin' awesome and everyone will have fun.

    2) Run an event for the community. At worst, the influx of strangers and weird ego people will turn the thing into a total clusterf^$k, and even the tiniest mistake on the part of the event organizers will result in a thread on this forum screaming about what a-holes they are and how horrible they are for having invested time and effort into the community. At best, it'll be freakin' awesome and everyone will have fun except for the handful of dipsticks who didn't understand what the event was about and wasted the event organizers' time bellyaching at them in tells about it.

    You tell me which sounds like the better choice.
  16. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Genia View Post
    See, this is why I almost never recruit on the forums. Who needs an attitude like that? If you don't think you'll find a decent group, then you probably won't; you'll fill your head with so many demands and sub-demands that even a decent active group will fail to satisfy you.

    Besides, here's something I discovered as both a player and an SG leader - if you just want all the food chewed for you and put in your mouth, you'll never integrate with a group. You will whine and moan about how it's not active, but you yourself will never form teams or initiate RP or promote storyline ideas. You'll cry about how the Old Guard doesn't want you, but you'll lurk on the SG channels, sulking, and never even try to involve yourself.

    Sorry, kids. I'm not a kindergarten teacher. I'm not even a high school teacher and believe me, I've absolutely no interest in being one. You have to do your own share of work if you want to successfully integrate in a group as a newcomer, and the "leaders" should not feel obligated to constantly put teams and plot on a platter before you. Do the leaders have responsibility? Yes. Do they have more responsibility than a casual player? Yes. Do they have sole responsibility and you have none? Sorry, no.

    So I wish you luck, but I for myself will continue recruiting selectively, and be satisfied with a significant group of players who are willing to participate in making the group an interesting, active place.
    Hot tip: Just because most SG leaders don't post what Genia just posted, doesn't mean a good number of us don't more or less agree with her. Do with that information what you will.
  17. Quote:
    Originally Posted by TroyHickman View Post
    I scripted a Hulk story once (ACTOR Comics Presents benefit book), and I have to say, it was really difficult to do. Because of the Hulk's limited vocabulary and emotional range, it's like trying to put words in the mouth of a very small child. So maybe what you're responding to is the feeling that he's not a fully developed character because, well, because kids aren't fully developed yet. I mean, we might like reading an adventure with the six year old Franklin Richards, but I'm not sure if we'd want to follow it on a monthly basis. It might be why I've always preferred the Hulk in team books like the Defenders, where everything doesn't rest on him. Or maybe he should be mainly the catalyst in his stories, like Steve Gerber's Man-Thing stuff.

    Just throwing out a theory.
    That's a fair point if you're sticking with the classic rampaging Hulk, which makes a lot of sense if you're writing for an audience that aren't necessarily Hulk fans. Hence SuperOz and I geeking out over the Peter David run on the book. Bringing in the multiple personality thing could have been a cheap gimmick, but it wound up bringing much needed depth to the character.
  18. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Scarlet_Phantom View Post
    After his rampage in Las Vegas he ended up killing 26 people. Maria Hill, the commander of Shield at that time has a conversation with Iron Man about it. She uses the Green Gobllin as a comparison and suggest that it would be better to kill a monster then lock it up untill it can escape again to go on killing. She then tells Stark, "Shield is doing everything it can to stop the Hulk, are you?" Shield was pretty much giving Stark license to deal with Hulk. They were sanctioned and aided by Shield, Shield personnel and property was used to get him on that shuttle. To complain that they tricked him is like a criminal complain about a sting operation the cops set up. The Hulk had the blood of those 26 people on his hands, he got off light.
    To be fair and maybe preempt any confusion, Marvel has flip-flopped on whether Hulk has killed people. For a while they went with him killing 26 people in Vegas, then inexplicably characters stopped referring to it and Amadeus Cho started running around talking about how the Hulk never killed anyone. I'd write that off as Cho being a bit of a fanboy if not for the fact that no one in the entire freakin' MU that I've seen has mentioned the 26 in Vegas since sometime around when World War Hulk started.
  19. For those who don't enjoy Hulk or feel like you don't "get" the character, check out Peter David's run during the '90s, along with the Future Imperfect 2-shot. I loved Planet Hulk, and liked WWH well enough, but nothing humanized the character like David's run on the book. I would go so far as to say that if you haven't read at least some of it, you really should reconsider even commenting on the character. It's that definitive a run.
  20. Quote:
    Originally Posted by TrueGentleman View Post
    In 1999 DC Comics bought Wildstorm. It was generally agreed they wanted it for three things. The colourists. Jim Lee. And Alan Moore.

    At this point, what else is DC Comics supposed to do?

    P.S. Warren Ellis and Kurt Busiek don't sound especially hopeful about what's in store for their creator-owned titles with Wildstorm.
    For what it's worth, Busiek owns Astro City. If Wildstorm try to do anything funny with it, he should be able to tell them to sod off and take it to another publisher. If he's signed any really unusual contracts that may not be the case, but Busiek's been around the block a time or two. He knows what he's doing on the business side of things, I think.
  21. Sad, but not surprising. Wildstorm's been running on fumes for a long time now, and it seems like most of the creators who got the chance to work on the WSU books either didn't care about the characters or cared about them for the wrong reasons.
  22. From Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas:

    Quote:
    Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Has it been five years? Six? It seems like a lifetime. The kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle 60's was a very special time and place to be a part of. But no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive, in that corner of time in the world… Whatever it meant. There was madness in any direction. At any hour, you could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right. That we were winning. And that I think was the handle. That sense of inevitable victory over the forces of old and evil. Not in any mean or military sense. We didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. We had all the momentum. We were riding the crest, of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look west. And with the right kind of eyes – you can almost see the high watermark – that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.
  23. I'd kind of like to see a new villain, mostly because after the first GR movie I don't trust these guys to get any of the classic villains right. I liked GR, don't get me wrong, but I really have a huge soft spot for the '90s era GR villains and it'd really bum me out to see them screwed up. Screwing up Blackheart was one thing, there's no realistic chance of anyone getting him right on the big screen anyway. Skinner or Blackout though... it's possible to get them right, but there's no way this studio would pull it off. I'd go in hoping to see Skinner and Blackout and leave mad that I got some crappy new characters with their names instead.
  24. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Nericus View Post
    Presuming that in the movie the spirit that is hosted by Blaze IS Zarathos like it was in his original comic series....

    The more recent comic series turned everything upside down and on its ear, and while its clear that Blaze is the GR:Spirit of Vengeance in the comics, he's not hosting Zarathos this time around. It's a different spirit, most likely the one Dan Ketch hosted before he had it exorcised.


    Still I look forward to the sequel, despite a few problems I didn't mind the first, especially since John Blaze as a comic character has always been pretty two dimensional/cardboard anyway so Cage can pretty much play Blaze how he wants. Though in the movie, Blaze being a twitching paranoid train wreck of a person before the devil activated the Rider was comic book accurate from the first series.

    Wouldn't mind seeing Sam Elliot appear again as Carter Slade/Western GR, but that isn't likely.
    The last Ghost Rider series established the Ghost Riders as heavenly spirits, basically heaven's black ops team. Blaze and Ketch are possessed by two different spirits and always have been, and Zarathos' role isn't really very clear now. Jason Aaron's GR run was great IMO, but it did basically ignore big chunks of GR continuity. Not a bad thing in this case, since big chunks of GR continuity suck and deserve to be ignored.