Mod Post: Off-Topic Tuesday

[icon_uk]

In the comments to these weekly posts (and only these posts), it's your chance to go as off topic as you like.

Talk about non-comics stuff, thread derail, and just generally chat among yourselves.

The intent of these posts is to chat and have some fun and, sure, vent a little as required. Reasoned debate is fine, as always, but if you have to ask if something is going over the line, think carefully before posting please.

Normal board rules about conduct and behaviour still apply, of course.

It's been suggested that, if discussing spoilers for recent media events, it might be advisable to consider using the rot13 method to prevent other members seeing spoilers in passing.

The world situation is the world situation. If you're following the news, you know it as much as I do, if you're not, then there are better sources than me. But please, no doomscrolling, for your own sake.

Good news! Apparently Coyote vs. Acme has been sold to a distributor and WILL see the light of theatres in 2026!

A first glimpse of Beyond the Spider-Verse was seen with the release of some stills at CinemaCon though the release date not being until 2027 was a bit disappointing.

It's April Fool's Day, one of the few folk holidays which seems to be A) still very much needed and B) have been so overtaken by reality as to have been rendered null and void. Though there is also C) media sources being a lot more wary about duping their consumers in the age of "fake news" claims.

However, if you have a favourite memory of an April Fool's prank please do share it, I think we need the smile.

For a fun bit of nonsense, someone has started making morphing sequences for their custom LEGO Power Ranger minifigures

Comments

[super_fly]

It becomes difficult to enjoy April Fools Day when we suffer an excess of fools every other day. And too often the prank is a product that would actually be pretty neat if it were real or "The thing I just told you was a lie! April Fool!"

However the one prank I'll always remember is the BBC's report on Swiss spaghetti tree harvesting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVo_wkxH9dU Patently absurd, delivered completely straight.

[numeronone]

[numeronone]

I always had a fondness for Google announcing they'd add a morse code keyboard option to allow people to text one-handed without looking at their phones. That coulda been really cool with the right access to training.

[full_metal_ox]

However the one prank I'll always remember is the BBC's report on Swiss spaghetti tree harvesting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVo_wkxH9dU Patently absurd, delivered completely straight.

The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus is making a comeback—-good news for local farmers, since the octopi feed readily on the invasive Swiss Spaghetti Weevil, believed to have been introduced on Saskatchewan grain pirate ships.

[tripodeca113]

​[gasp] Apparently the creator of Moral Orel has written a script for a Moral Orel movie!
I mean it hasn't been approved or in production yet, but we have something for the first time in 17/12 years!
All the possibilities, anything could happen....

Ah yes the twentieth anniversary of the Doctor Who revival. You know I have not actually watched that season in full. I can only really remember watching one episode from when it first aired (I do remember bits and pieces from other episodes, but I don't know exactly when I saw them) Anyway:

Rose The 20th Anniversary Rewatch: I saw this one before around 2013.
Ah yes "Run for your life", "I can feel the Earth turning", "It won't be quiet, it won't be safe, and it won't be calm. But I'll tell you what it will be. It'll be the trip of a lifetime!" (okay that one was from the trailer)
The Doctor is kind of a jerk but he is trying to save the world.
Interestingly he tries to negotiate with the monster at the end. It doesn't work since it recognises him as a Time Lord, but it's nice when they don't just abandoned the sanctity of life just because their not conventionally human.

Haha the pictures of Christopher Eccleston crudely edited into old photos.
Props to that conspiracy theorist tracking the Doctor for correctly identifying him as an alien, and that he is not safe to be around.

Avatar The Last Airbender 20th anniversary rewatch: This time it's Imprisoned. Lays some pretty important groundwork for the rest of the show and gives Katara some nice character focus. This was the first episode left out of the live action TV show, but it was adapted in The Last Airbender so I guess it all evens out.
I think that this plot might have benefited from having forty minutes to work with, and it seems like a good fit for the more mature tone they claimed to want (of course the rest of that show was bad so they would have fucked it up, but we might at least have a cohesive bad show). Actually Shyamalan used this episode for a big 'The Avatar Is Back' moment which was something the TV show lacked due to how they adapted the Kysoshi Warrior's episode.

Well I watched Back to The Future Part II. Perhaps this was a bad idea considering I haven't seen the original movie (okay I did watch the first half hour in high school and the last fifteen minutes or so when it was on TV)
I liked the 2015 and alternative 1985 parts, but the return to 1955 seems like a dull idea both on a conceptual level and in execution. I mean Marty spends most of his time there locked in Biff's garage, then watching the events of the previous film from just off-screen. I hope they had better ideas they didn't have the budget for...

You know 2015 is clearly a dystopian hell (even ignoring how they got rid of lawyers). But they did manage to predict a nightmarish world were you can be fired via computer.

huh you know I wasn't expecting them to portray Biff quite so explicitly as an abusive husband. I mean I'm glad they treated it seriously but that's pretty dark.

Twilight Zone season five:

Ring-a-Ding Girl: You know I get the spirit of a dead actress coming back from beyond the grave to save her beloved town, but being getting sent back 12 hours before you died is odd.
Also her goal is to cancel the town picnic so the plane which crashes in the park doesn't kill anyone else, but wouldn't the stormy weather get it called off anyway?

You Drive: "Well I accidently killed a child in a hit and run, but on the plus side my work rival's been arrested for it. Everything is going my way!"
wow he might just be the worst character in the show....

The Long Marrow: You know she didn't have to be a some woman the astronaut just meet. She could have been his fiancé or something. At the very least having him say she's the love of his life even if they've only spent two hours together is weird. I wouldn't draw attention to that.

The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross: It was going okay but then the ending made me go 'what the fuck'.
So this hoodlum gets the power to trade physical characteristics with people.
Anyway he uses this to get rich selling his youth to a rich man (then buying it back from various young people) and become refined enough to get the woman he's after to go out with him. But he's still not nice enough for her, so he decides to buy her father's compassion off him.
This is pretty weird on the face of it, since the father hates him and doesn't want his daughter associating with him. But he does it anyway and then the next day he guns the suitor down because without compassion there's nothing stopping you from killing people you don't like?

Black Leather Jackets: Ah yes your typical "Alien learns about love and decides the humans deserve to live" story. It was structured weirdly, more like the first act of a movie so the plot only really starts 14 minutes in.
Anyway after an episode of seemingly only having three agents on Earth it turns out they have thousands of agents around the world and are just 48 hours away from enacting Operation Kill The Humans. I don't see how our hero could stop them especially with just two minutes left....oh their agents in the police got him and humanity is doomed.

okay

[zachbeacon]

Huh, if I had to guess which one of them was an actual spaceman, my money would have been on Peter Capaldi.

[tripodeca113]

An Adventure In Space And Time shows that Matt Smith is actually an immortal demon that haunts the BBC

[icon_uk]

Though he wasn't there in last years rescreening, replaced with Ncuti, because the scene was designed to allow any current/new Doctor to appear there.

[malurette]

Not an April Fool as the news are from yesterday: France's far right leader Marine Lepen got sentenced to a substantial (and yet still insufficient) fine, probably prison time and most importantly barred from entering the next elections! for embezzlement.
(Well ok her right hand man is still running and much more popular than I'm comfortable with, not to mention the other slightly-less-far-but-still-very-far-right party, so we're not out of the woods, but it's a start.)

[icon_uk]

Yeah, that was certainly noteworthy, though it does raise the spectre of the same approach being used by those of ill (or more ill) intent.

Once you weaponise the law to disqualify people from being able stand/vote/etc , it's a weapon both sides can use.

[cainofdreaming]

This wasn't a decision made by politicians, though. And given that the crime involved using a political position it seems fitting to me.

[icon_uk]

Oh, agreed in this instance and, speaking personally, it couldn't have happened to a worthier person (apart from the obvious). That it was a criminal trial for embezzlement helped.

But laws are made by politicians, as are the consequences of breaking those laws, so I always worry in situations like this.

As someone noted about the US approach, if being sent to prison permanently removes your right to vote, then some parties will have a vested interest in which crimes mean you get sent to prison.

In the UK serving prisoners cannot vote, though they can when released, and it took until 2018 or so for the Government to agree terms with the European Court of Human Rights that those awaiting trial, on remand, civil prisoners and those on controlled release into the community should still be able to vote.

[cainofdreaming]

I think that's just some states in the US. I myself stumbled upon the fact that even in Florida you can vote after you've paid your debts (moneywise) after released from prison.

[thezmage]

It's just some states. It largely became a thing because police officers in those states got tired of rounding up all the minorities they could on election day to prevent them from voting so they decided to do this so they only had to do it once.

At least that's what I've heard, I haven't done anything to verify it

[malurette]

It's more complicated in France, some prisoners can and do vote, some can't, though I'm not clear on what crimes make a difference exactly. (For now. You can never tell what right-wing politicians will decide later.)

[scorntx]

Not the best week, all told.
Not talking about the general situation of the world, government incompetence and / or malice or all of that, just...
Last Monday started off relatively fine. Light sinusitis and a missed package (which turned up the next day) aside.
Then, Tuesday happened.
The dog was having trouble excreting and walking. Well, it's not a problem, said I. He probably just ate something he shouldn't have again, or it's just dog constipation, it'll pass.
Wednesday morning, no change. And he really couldn't walk. So we took him to the vets.
It was a blockage. A really big blockage, and they weren't absolutely sure surgery would be any good, even if he survived it.
Discussions were had. Long, difficult, unpleasant discussions.
Because that's your dog. Supposed to look after them.
And it'd have been one thing if he'd clearly been so far gone; with first dog by the end of it he was nothing but skin and bones. With our last one she was so out of it by the end she had no idea where she was. But this one was, eating and not wanting walks aside, still being mostly his usual self, and it just felt (personally, at least) like it was giving up on him, even though we'd been over the options and none of them were good.
In the end, however, it was decided.

... we only had him two and a half years. And he was often a nuisance. He barked, he howled, he fidgeted, he scroodled, he was absolutely certain he was allowed on beds. But we still loved him.
So that completely sucked.

(didn't have the option of watching my comfort movie because it's not on Netflix and the DVD's long out of print 'round these parts.)

[icon_uk]

I'm sorry for your loss, especially so unexpectedly.

In the words of Will Rogers; "If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went."

[scorntx]

Thank you.

Quite like the Far Side's idea, where every half an hour a truck full of meat passes by, and all the dogs chose whether to chase it or not.
Sounds like a fun option to me.

[full_metal_ox]

Since it’s National Poetry Month, here’s Jimmy Stewart on his departed dog Beau:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwGnCIdHQH0

[sisterofbloomerjunior]

My condolences.

[scorntx]

On significantly less depressing news:
Got my sourcebook for the Transformers RPG. Interesting read.
... I like the bit where it says players have to be polite Decepticons.
Because, y'know. Just because you're playing the bad guys, can't be rude.
Or work for Unicron, apparently.
Hey, it's the Transformers Roleplaying Game, not Call of Cthulhu.


Been re-reading Hickman's Avengers run because this is just one of those things that cycles through my brain every few months, and also apparently I'm masochistic.
Really thinking I should try and write down my thoughts on it somewhere. That usually makes any ideas dry up and disappear forever.
But skipping over all that:
Goodness, but Spider-Woman does absolutely nothing. Like, at all.
She's mostly there to stand next to Black Widow or be in crowd scenes, and there are whole stretches at a time when she's not even present.
There's about one time when she uses her powers on-page, and that's in an issue co-written by Nick Spencer.

(side-note: there's a nice artistic touch in the issues on Starbrand where Dustin Weaver actually draws him in the style of Romita Jr., pointy nose and prominent cheekbones included.)

Two best random articles seen on the news feed in the last week:
One proclaiming that Avengers: Doomsday will "give us the Thor / Loki confrontation we've been waiting for".
But- but-... Ragnarok! You may not like it, but it definitely happened!

The other was "Is Assassin's Creed: Shadows historically accurate?"


Another preview for Legends: A-Z shows we got Mareep! Yaaay!
(Also, apparently part of the plot is people competing to earn a wish.
I think I've seen that movie.
Chris Pine turned out to be a baddie after one song.)

[knight_moves]

Sam Mendes is making, not just a Beatles biopic, but a quadrilogy of Beatles biopics. Each focused on a different member of the brand and with every British actor likely to have a hundred Reader x Fics on Tumblr in the lead roles.

Personally, I think it's a bit much--assuming each movie is two hours long, this would make for a cinematic examination of Beatlemania that is only an hour shy of Shoah--but given the way Boomers have resolutely held onto, well, everything, why should Oscarbait be any different?

In other English news, a four-year-old was expelled from nursery school for transphobia, perhaps explaining why some would rather think about the good old days than current events.

[cyberghostface]

Of course that article brought in terfs like Helen Joyce who use scare quotes around ‘transphobia’.

[full_metal_ox]

I’ve not been able to find any impartial articles explaining what the expletive deleted actually happened.

[cyberghostface]

Yeah I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s misleading. I remember there was a furor over kids identifying as cats and wanting to use litter boxes in school and shockingly it was a hoax. Stories like this are effectively used to get a reaction from certain groups.

[full_metal_ox]

And leading thence into the assumption that any child pretending to be an animal for any reason—which, last I checked, was one of the major things kids do—is a nascent FURVERT! Imagination terrifies these folks as much as empathy.

[metadronos]

Meanwhile, I and many Beatles fans are still waiting for the long-delayed second volume of Mark Lewisohn's All These Years biographic triology. I was hyped back when the first book (which ends in 1962, just before the group hit it big nationally) came out in 2013. Since then... nothing. :(

[cygnia]

One of the grandnephews got diagnosed with retinoblastoma. The doctors think they caught it in time so that it won't spread to the other eye or the brain.

For April 1st, Fascinating Horror takes on "Twister".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhhkaYo7Suc

[cainofdreaming]

I was expecting the other Twister:

[icon_uk]

Ditto, truth be told.

There are Vincent Price levels of horror potential in Killer Twister.

[cainofdreaming]

Yeah, if they can make dozens of movies out of another toy company product - Ouija then Twister should have at least the one.

[thezmage]

You could get some good body horror out of this. Somebody's arms and legs start twisting to go in particular places. Could be quite horrifying.

[cainofdreaming]

Junji Ito's: The Twister of Amigara Fault.

[metadronos]

Duolingo users will appreciate this April Fool's gag.

[ghost13]

Missed that

[zachbeacon]

I hate this holiday so much.

Getting our house in order.

[sisterofbloomerjunior]

We’re planning on selling our vehicle back to the dealership Saturday. We’ve talked to our insurance agent and will overall save money by unbundling our coverage even though our deductible will increase. Good thing so far we live where there’s decent public transportation.

We’re also discussing selling the house (possibly this year?) and moving into senior housing. I’m unsure how much we’re going to have to move after we get rid of various items one way or another.

[ghost13]

I briefly convinced my mum I was gay lol all in good fun, that's not homophobic
Right?? Reminds me of Barry in that comic movie.

Still haven't finished ep 1 of Jem, though it's already a killer cartoon.

Yes, Dami is still my favorite.

Listening to System Shock soundtrack currently.

[full_metal_ox]

I’m firmly of the belief that Jem should’ve been interactive: remember how comics like Millie the Model used to solicit fashion designs from the readers, and winning submissions would appear in the comic? Jem would seem to be a gift-wrapped opportunity for that.

(It’s also noteworthy that—forty years ago!—Jem was a successful music producer who went to the trouble of maintaining a secret stage identity to avoid being perceived as a nepo baby, and that the Holograms had creative control rather than being some male Svengali’s construct.)