30 Days of Scans megapost

[cardinalximenez]

Since I got behind on previous nominations, I´m collecting my entries so far into one post, in the order of the days.

First, favorite female character. Without a doubt, that honour goes to:



...Lara Croft. But only one version of her. Since she burst onto the scene in 1996, numerous different incarnations of her have appeared in various media, each with a different background, motivation, personality, and in some cases, methods. And all except the original have seemingly been created by taking all my most hated actionhero tropes and stitching them together. So, the original Lara is my favorite character, but sadly she´s virtually dead and buried along with Core Design, and an impostor is now starring in the videogame franchise.

Coming a close second is this familiar face:



Her royal highness, Diana of Themyscira, known to us mortals as Wonder Woman. Again, there´s only one version of her that I´m a fan of, namely the post-Crisis one. It was the mix of Greek mythology and her fighting to improve the world by speaking to the UN and visiting refugee camps that made her interesting and refreshingly different from other superheroes to me, but lately it seems she´s abandoned her world-improving ways, and she and the amazons have gone away from the pacifists they used to be and have become more the "look at me wrong and I´ll chop your head off" warrior type. I hope to see the old Diana and her fellow amazons return to the comic soon.

A character with the potential to become a favorite, because I thought she had a fascinating and tragic background story, is Hana Tsu-Vachel, from the sadly cancelled Fear Effect franchise.



Looking past the parody-level amount of fanservice and dirty banter between her and her lover Rain, I thought Hana had the potential to be a truly tough-as-nails die-for-her-lover kind of character, but I guess that will never be now.

As for comic location I´d most like to visit, I can only answer Themyscira.



Looking past the beasts living there, a beautiful tropical island filled with beautiful women, most of which are into each other, and who have a casual attitude towards public nudity, not to mention the beautiful Greek architecture, it´s a place I´d love to spend time in. I wouldn´t know where to look without getting in trouble with the amazons though.

Character most in need of her own movie? I´m dying to see a Tomb Raider movie that´s faithful to the original franchise, and Diana of course is also long overdue for the live action treatment, one that´s faithful to the post-Crisis comics.

LGBTQ character? Diana, she´s been bisexual since the comic was launched, but DC´s to this day reluctant to out her (apart from the occasional humorous hint), but hopefully one day we´ll finally see her and Artemis get their happy ending.



Hippolyta and Phillipus comes a close second, ever since their fight and subsequent makeup in "Challenge of the Gods" I´ve wanted to see a story focusing on their relationship, and on Phillipus, who I feel is a criminally overlooked character in the Wonderverse, considering she can hold her own against Hippolyta, has trained Diana, and is the captain of the guard. I´ve been writing my own Hippolya/Phillipus story, and dream of having it published by DC, but from what I hear they don´t accept submissions, and you have to be a prizewinning writer before they´ll let you have a shot at their characters, so that crushes that dream right there.



As you can probably figure out, Hana and Rain from earlier are also on my list of favorite LGBTQ characters, or at least Hana is, I find Rain a bit dull.

Well, there you have it, my nominations so far. While tracking down my old posts to reuse the images I found out my "lesbian moments of Wonder Woman" post has been linked to over at jezebel.com I feel important now!

I end this post with a recent Diana print and one of my new favorite images of her, I hope I can find that print at an affordable price.

Comments

[jeyl]

This is Jeyl and I approve this post. Although, Samus Aran is my pick. She's tighter on the controls. :D

[lieut_kettch]

Diana and Artemis? BLASPHEMY!

*puts on TEAM IO T-shirt*

[psychopathicus_rex]

I'm curious - do you mean that you're only into the Lara of the first game, period, or were there some sweeping changes made a few games after that that I don't know about? Because I played 'Tomb Raider 2', and a little of the first one (I had a demo), and I can't say I noticed any particular differences in Lara Croft herself.

[cardinalximenez]

I´m into the Lara Croft of the 90´es games (and TRII is my fav game btw), in 2003 the franchise was taken away from the original creators and given to Crystal Dynamics, and they dropped the original character and based their gameseries, which is ongoing to this day, on the Tomb Raider movies. Hence the Lara I love died in 2003.

[psychopathicus_rex]

Ohhh-hh. That's a shame; I only played the one game, but I was obsessed with that thing for like a year. Are the old ones still available?

[cardinalximenez]

I still see the original series (of six games) available in a collected volume for the PC, at least in my local gameshop, as for the PlayStation versions, I wouldn´t be surprised if they get rereleased for PlayStation Network, like some other PSOne titles have been.

[psychopathicus_rex]

But not for the Mac? Crap. Technology progresses, and leaves me behind.

[cardinalximenez]

Looking up "Tomb Raider mac" on amazon.com listed each of the individual games available for mac, as well as a collection called "Tomb Raider Trilogy" containing the first three games, so I guess you´ll have to go that route if you want to play the entire series.

[psychopathicus_rex]

Oh! Well, cool, then. I still have my old copy of the game, mind you, but I've been through four or five computers since then, and it won't work on my machine any more. So it's good to know that, when and if I actually manage to scrape the bread together to buy it, I can get a fresh new updated version.

[cardinalximenez]

There are online patches that can make the old TR games play on a modern PC, so I imagine there´re patches like that for the Mac as well.

[psychopathicus_rex]

Sounds intriguing. These patches, I take it, are little mini-programs that convince the computer that the old game is actually new?

[cardinalximenez]

I don´t know exactly how the patches work, but one thing they do is make the games work with current-gen soundcards and graphic cards, instead of the outdated hardware they were originally made for, as well as make the games run on newer versions of Windows, whereas the original games were made for DOS and Win95 and such.

[psychopathicus_rex]

Hrrm. Well, anyway, it's worth looking into. Thanks!