Question of the Day!

General GTG Off Topic
#1075

Geeze, did I kill this thread with my last post? Or is Fjur simply on summer vacation?

#1076

Not sure what’s going on, but the forums have been fairly unpopulated for days, now… :confused:

#1077

No, it wasn’t you. : ) I had something of a medical emergency,* which is why I was absent for the past several days. But I’m back now! : D I’ve mostly recovered, but I can’t guarantee that I’ll be able to post a QotD every day, but at least now you know why, and anyone can feel free to post in my place.

Huh, that is quite odd. I haven’t the foggiest idea why. Curiouser and curiouser . . .

TV Tropes has a series of articles on the various Ages of Comic Books, which I found quite informative and entertaining:

QotD #122 Reply: Hmm, probably Golden, Silver, and Modern, then Bronze, then Dark.

Question of the Day #123: What is a sequel that you think is better than the original?

*Don’t worry, it wasn’t Coronavirus-19, thankfully.

1 Like
#1078

I’m glad you’re doing better, @fjur , and I hope you heal up well and quickly. Best wishes!

For the question, this’ll probably get me hung, but I greatly prefer Predator 2 over Predator. :blush: Predator was pure gun porn – the director even admitted openly that the studio told him to make it as gun porn. And that just infuriates me. In addition, I felt like the fundamental premise had some significant flaws which How It Should Have Ended did a good job of lampooning. :wink: I also had a military class that tried to pass it off as a good example of leadership in action, which was highly dubious…

The sequel had people that felt real, in an obviously alternate reality that was interesting and complex. It has its flaws, of course, but I really enjoyed it far more than the first. And the reveal of the wall of skulls was an awesome moment for a young sci-fi geek like myself. :smiley:

And now I want to go re-watch it to see how well it stands the test of time… :wink:

#1079

I have several of these, actually. I could mention “Species 2”, where the original is okay but kinda tepid, and the sequel dials it up to 11 in a way that really scratches my itch, or “The Lost World”, which I found more entertaining than “Jurassic Park” even if it was probably nowhere near as mind-blowing. But for the answer that is definitely going to make this entire community pillory me, I’ll pick “Spider-Man 3”. I watched the entire Tobey Maguire trilogy recently, and I found episodes 1 and 2 to be incredibly ponderous and self-serious, in a way that really only made sense in a pre-Marvel Cinematic Universe world. Spidey 3 isn’t exactly good, and the emo-haircut scene makes me cringe just like everyone else, but otherwise I found it to be more entertaining, with two villains instead of one per other movie, and both of them quite effectively portrayed.

#1080

Thanks, Rabit and Justifier!

QotD #123 Reply: Hmm, this is a hard one. I really didn’t like Frozen, but Frozen II remotely reminded me of Spirit Island. So, that, I guess?

Question of the Day #124: Podcasts are one of the newest forms of media. Do you listen to any (other than The Letters Page ; ))?

#1081

Heh, that’s a long list… :smirk: Cutting it down a little:

#1082

I used to listen to The Cracked Podcast, but it eventually lost my interest after Jack O’Brien left the company, shortly before the company left itself more or less (it’s complicated). There was however a spin-off podcast called Kurt Vonneguys which ran for 25 episodes, and I have all but one of them downloaded and regularly re-listen to them.

Other than that, I mostly follow a few podcast-esque YouTube channels, with minimal relevant video content, devoted to things like Star Trek, gender politics, and the aforementioned SCP Foundation.

#1083

QotD #124 Reply: I haven’t listened to anything other than The Letters Page, really. If I had the time, I might try The H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast, though.

Question of the Day #125: Wings or a prehensile tail?

#1084

Are the wings instead of arms or in addition to them. If it’s in addition to them, wings, otherwise the tail. (I like using my hands.)

#1085

I’m afraid of heights, so definitely the tail.

#1086

I was imagining the wings or tail in addition to all your other limbs, Pydro.

QotD #125 Reply: I don’t really need the mobility offered by wings; I have a car for that. However, holding three things at once would be quite useful. (But, to be frank, I find the idea of any extra limbs unsettling, and I’d prefer to keep my current loadout, thank you very much.)

Question of the Day #126: If you play roleplaying games, do you play them to roleplay a character in a fictional world, or to optimise your character to be the best it can be?

#1087

I don’t fully optimize, but I do try to achieve a high degree of system mastery (and I prefer complex systems that take a lot of mastering), because IMO it isn’t fun to be consistently useless unless the GM throws you all sorts of fiats in your favor. My primary goal isn’t necessarily to roleplay a character, or even to explore a fictional world, though both of those are sometimes desirable; I figure that those two goals, plus the semi-competitive aspect of trying to dominate a combat or other challenging encounter, plus my desire for selfish wish-fulfillment and power-tripping and other such vicarious experiences through a thinly-veiled Author Avatar type character (which hardly deserves to be called “roleplaying”), can all be mixed and matched to various degrees as befits my mood. I try to come up with a fun backstory for my character, but sometimes I end up forgetting it, or not being able to translate the personality I wrote down into a set of actions befitting a particular situation. In such cases, I tend to default to having the character act the way I myself (or a fantastically idealized version of me) would act in that situation, even if it contradicts what I wrote down as my theoretical character. It’d be nice if I could go full Method Actor with every character I dream up, since I’m certainly good enough at building a diverse stable of them…but the bottom line is, I’m playing the RPG so I can indulge my somewhat chaotic whims, and so I only maintain a consistent roleplay character for as long as it still amuses me to do so.

#1088

QotD #126 Reply: Both, really. I like making a fictional character and telling his or her story. But, I can’t tell that character’s story if he or she is not effective at what the character does. Thus, optimisation is necessary for roleplaying.

Question of the Day #127: Which Sentinels character do you think would be the best candidate to star in a movie adaptation?

1 Like
#1089

You’d want someone who doesn’t invite too many comparisons to existing franchises (this kills Guise, who would otherwise be the obvious choice), and isn’t too far down the rabbit hole of Christopher’s specific interests (sorry, Argent Adept). My choice would probably be Absolute Zero, I think his story is pretty darn cinematic, plus you set up for an easy sequel with Tachyon, who’s a strong runner-up choice (it doesn’t seem likely we’ll be getting a movie for the Flash character from Justice League after all, and anyway that take on the character is very far away from Tacky personality-wise). I could also see doing Ra though, or maybe Parse if you can get the right writer to do her justice (and handwave her backstory so you don’t have to explain either Omnitron or OblivAeon).

My personal favorite characters are unfortunately mostly not the right ones for this…too many people would dismiss The Naturalist as a Captain Planet ripoff, fail to gel with Nightmist, or be scared off the Chrono-Ranger property because of the Jonah Hex movie that everyone said was terrible (although Mastadon wrote an awesome theme tune for it). And of course, Captain Cosmic would have a crazy special effects budget if you didn’t want it to look totally unbelievable, which it probably would anyway (the same problems, minus a drastically miscast Ryan Reynolds and some terrible writing, that made it a huge struggle for me to enjoy the 2011 Green Lantern movie, although I did manage to enjoy it on some levels).

A few characters like Bunker or Fanatic have a lot of potential that I can see, but I’m personally turned off by them, so the ones I picked above are a compromise between my own wishes and the likely opinion of The Market.

#1090

QotD #127 Reply: Huh, when I thought of this QotD, comparisons to existing films hadn’t come to mind. If we’re talking about what The Market might like, what about a Slaughterhouse Six film? ('Cause I hear people like Villain-centric things.) Or maybe an Anti-Heroic Expatriette shooting up everyone. Or the whole dark and gritty Dark Watch (sans the upbeat Setback. Replace him with . . . oh, The Wraith or Writhe.) Or what about a Legacy film where he has to deal with the corruption of FILTER before it splits off from the US Government? Okay, maybe I’m accentuating the negative aspects of what I think The Market is like.

Hmm . . . folks seem to like team-ups against big cosmic threats, so any of the Villains from Wrath of the Cosmos or Voss or Cosmic Omnitron versus the Freedom Five (but replace Bunker with Nightmist [because I think Bunker is the least popular of the FF, and Nightmist is a pretty popular-character?]) could have potential. No, not “Cosmitron,” that would only work as a sequel. Out of those, I think Deadline could work the best.

But wait, Sentinel Comics exists in a Reality other than ours. We don’t know what other franchises there are to be compared to. Nor should we assume all these hypothetical films take place in the present; they could have been produced before several of the films we’re comparing them to!

So, as for characters that I would actually like movies about (compared to The Market), I think The Southwest Sentinels could have potential for a fun, light-hearted, family film that has no connections to other SC properties. (It could still be fun to have the Tachyon Easter Egg, though.) Mister Fixer or Black Fist could also be pretty cool. Ra and The Visionary also have potential to be good films.

Okay, I now realise that several of my above suggestions are more than just one character, like the Question asked . . . eh. Also, oh boy was this a long reply.

Question of the Day #128: Darkvision (the ability to see in darkness) or “X-Ray Vision” (the ability to see through non-transparent matter)?

(On a completely unrelated note, today I realised that this Forum does not support indenting via the tab key.)

#1091

Question of the Day #129: What media/entertainment franchise/work do you dislike the most?

#1092

128 answer: Depends on whether we’re talking comic-book X-ray vision, where you look at a woman with a blouse and instead you see the bra she has on under it, or realistic X-ray vision, where you look at the same woman and you see all her internal organs. If it’s the latter version, I’ll take darkvision.

129 answer: Oh jeeze, I hate so many things, but the absolute WORST? That’s hard. Off the top of my head, the worst thing I can come up with that I’ve ever experienced (having avoided most of the things that I would definitely really hate) was a 2009ish movie called “The Covenant”. The trailers made it look like it would be cool…it was not. Absolutely godawful. I also hated the movie of The Spirit, but that one I could at least give a little credit for trying to do something unusual; the Covenant wasn’t just crap, it was cliched crap.

#1093

Justifier, I meant cinematic “X-Ray Vision” (thus the quote marks and parenthetical clarifying note), not realistic x-ray vision.

QotD #129 Reply: Well, as I said earlier in this thread, I dislike Anti-Heroes, so the Punisher is a strong candidate. However, I believe that my top choice would be the Potter franchise. (Yes, I dislike it so much that I will not type his full name or link to the Wikipedia page about it. I assume that it is popular enough that you will all know what I mean.) I have various reasons that I dislike that franchise and its eponymous character, none of which I will elaborate on here (unless asked). If you greatly like the franchise, we must simply agree to disagree.

Question of the Day #130: Do you know any languages other than English? Do you want to know any?

#1094

If you wanna unburden yourself about those reasons for hating the franchise, you’re welcome to PM me. I’ve never read or seen it, but cultural osmosis has given me reason to think I would have a mostly negative opinion, so you’re welcome to bash it in my presence and give me more information to support my existing lack of enthusiasm.

130 answer: Never learned a full language, though I know assorted words from a dozen of them. I’m most interested in, and closest to having a partial understanding of, Spanish and German, the former because I live in a heavily Hispanic neighborhood and the latter mostly because of their cultural fetish for board gaming. I don’t know if I’ll ever get around to sitting down with one of my Berlitz books and finishing the proper learning process, but if my life would stop applying its steel-toed boot to my nether regions, perhaps I just might.