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 scans_daily. But please, no doomscrolling, for your own sake.

Happy Lantern Festival, as the first Full Moon of the Chinese New Year dawns... or dusks... you know what I mean?

Those of us hoping for at least one month of the current US Presidemcy which wasn't an entire new verse of "We Didn't Start the Fire" were disappointed again when the US and Israel decided to bomb Iran. And those wondering "Why" have the disturbing benefit of multiple choices answers, as Trump, Vance, Rubio and Netenyahu all appear to have different explanations.

The fact folks were instantly able to point to a series of tweets from 2012 when Trump speculated that Obama would, because of plummetting popularity declare war on Iran as a distraction has not gone un-noticed.

Sigh...

A by-election in England last week gave us the first Green MP to ever win a by-election (As opposed to a General Election), and by a handsome majority too. This led Reform, who are finding out out that being hostile arseholes to pretty much every possible minority group is not paying off the way they hoped it would, to immediately pull a Trump card, and claim/whine that the election was rigged against them.


We bid a sad farewell to co-creator of Red Dwarf, Rob Grant, who passed away at the age of 70. "Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast!"

I've not watched the new Monarch: Legacy of Monsters episode yet, but I have high hopes.

I did watch the latest Starfleet Academy which is a strange mix between working through grief via "Our Town" (a 1938 meta-textual play which, as far as I am aware, has no real pop culture relevance outside the US) and a rather beautiful subplot (Which was a lot stronger than the actual plot IMHO) with Robert Picardo's Doctor and SAM.

Comments

[onsokumaru]

Current worlwide event remind me a Charlie Hebdo cartoon from some weeks ago, featuring a smug Khamenei taunting Netanyahu: "You'll never be able to kill as many Iranians as I do". I hope the following days don't prove them wrong.

This week is a sad week for artists.
Jacopo Camagni passed away at 48 yo. He was currently drawing Generation X-23.
Clément Oubrerie died at 59. He was the artist of "Aya de Yopougon" writen by Marguerite Abouet, a nice comics following the lives of young women in Abidjan in the 70s.


I really got into the new Shonen Jump heroic fantasy manga, Kinato's magic. Not original, but nice art, likable characters, and great humour. It introduced a badass female warrior who wanted to be a knight and was all "mlady" every time she saw a woman.
[warning for homophobia] I guess
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[tripodeca113]

Well I managed to get the pay issue sorted so I'm no longer receiving $1000 a fortnight for work I haven't done. (I don't particularly want to do this but I imagine the consequences if Johnny Government ever noticed would probably be worse. And at least I haven't had to give any of it back...)
The problem with night driving is that some people turn their high beams all the way up and their so fucking bright I can't see them properly.

Over the last two months I've watched nine season of the Walking Dead
There was a rough patch during season eight where I'm not sure if watching at least two episodes of the show a day had started to numb my mind or if the show had hit it's nadir.
But I got through that and was pleasantly surprised by season nine.

Now it's time to complain about the garbage people.
Rick's community is under the yolk of the Saviors led by the brutal warlord Negan.
One day Rick finds one of their people missing and most of their supplies gone.
Rick's group is able to track the mysterious raiders to a garbage dump where there revealed to be a bunch of weirdos who speak weirdly and wear matching trench coats.
Anyway Rick is able to win their respect by defeating their zombie idol in a trial by combat and asks them to join forces against Negan. Their leader agrees if Rick can supply the guns they need.
So Rick goes and gets the guns, only for them to claim it's not enough guns for all of them. They then take almost all the guns and tell him to get more, so Rick and friends have to go steal another community's guns.
Finally it's time for them to go to war against Negan!.....only for them to betray Rick and side with Negan.
But with the help of the other oppressed communities their able to win the day and force Negan to retreat, with the garbage people fleeing back to the junk yard.

That brings us to season eight and the war against Negan has begun in earnest. A daring strike sees Negan and his forces trapped in their base when it's besieged by a hoard of zombies.
Rick goes to ask the garbage people for take part in a final strike against Negan. Because I guess he hadn't had enough of being dicked around by them last season. Unsurprisingly Rick's offer ends with him being stripped, tied up and locked in a shipping container.
Also in a bizarre detail we see that their leader likes to make junk sculptures wearing only an apron.
Then they try to kill Rick by getting a zombie they made into an art project to eat his face, but Rick is able to free himself, kill a bunch of them and take their leader hostage (all with his hands still tied behind his back). He tells them after this the allied communities will consider them an enemy and come for them after the Savior.
And so they agree to help him....but Negan's managed to escape and so they immediately give up and run away.
Now the episode after probably the heaviest (and arguably stupidest) creative choice the writers could have made gur qrngu bs Evpx'f fba Pney, Rick goes back to ask the garbage people for help! Thankfully for us by the time Rick arrives Trevor from Grand Theft Auto V has massacred them. Their leader the only survivor suddenly starts talking normally and tells Rick how she used to be an artist who found neat things to paint at the dump, but after the zombie apocalypse it people who are the canvas or something.
Rick has enough of her bullshit and leaves her to be killed by zombies, but she survives and solemnly puts her zombified people out of their misery by luring them into a trash compactor. Strangely the scene keeps on going after that and ends with her eating a can of peaches.

This isn't the end of her however, since she pops up a few episodes later managing to capture Negan and blaming him for the death of her people plans to get an even more elaborate zombie she made into an art project to eat his face. Sadly she left him tied up next to a bag containing a loaded gun, her irreplaceable photos of her life before and a flare.
Then they talk through their issues with Negan revealing to her that Trevor actually disobeyed his orders to only kill one person, so she let him go so he can kill him.
And in the finale episode of the season she leaves the junk yard so she can rejoin society.

We then jump ahead two years later where all the communities now live together in an uneasy peace. She starts dating Father Gabriel (the man she kidnapped back in season seven) everything is great.
But then someone starts killing the Saviors, and since the Saviors killed all her people she's the prime suspect. She needs to get out of there and goes back to the junk yard to find a walkie talkie so can talk with some unseen people. Gabriel follows her so she ties him and almost lets a zombie eat his face and starts speaking weirdly again. But then she's moved by his speech about forgiveness and how we can change and better ourselves.
It revealed that her community was capturing people and trading them with the unseen group for supplies. She planned to use Gabriel as her ticket out of here, but she can't bring herself to do that now so she runs off.

She tries to figure out what to do next when she finds a horribly injured Rick (this happened through an unrelated plot). She calls the people again and they take her and Rick away via helicopter to an unknown destination.
They try and present this as a desperate bid to save Rick's life, but it does involve taking Rick away from all his friends, family and loved ones so it doesn't win her many points with the audience.

[icon_uk]

As a non-driving pedestrian, I loathe LED headlights in cars because, as far as I can tell, they can't dip the way old headlights did, and which custom and practice made the polite thing to do when driving through towns. As such it's dazzle dazzle dazzle all the damn time now.

[full_metal_ox]

Happy Lantern Festival, as the first Full Moon of the Chinese New Year dawns... or dusks... you know what II mean?

And happy Girls’ Day in Japan; time to bedeck everything in pink and green and throw tea parties beneath the gaze of the Emperor and Empress dolls!