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.

Well we addressed the elelphant in the room, or the reluctantly departing elephant in the room yesterday so let's put that to one side.

In far more uplifting news, a COVID 19 vaccine which is still undergoing stringent tests is suggesting very positive results.

American quiz show host Alex Trebek died aged 80. Since Jeopardy never made it to the UK, the impact is sort of diluted, but I understand he was much loved.

Also, Ken Spears, one of the co-creators of Scooby Doo, has died. His fellow co-creator, Joe Ruby, died three months ago.

A new Hyperloop vaccuum tube travel system has been tested in Nevada.

Star Trek: Discovery introduced it's first non-binary and trans characters in Nadira Tal and their boyfriend Gray. Whilst this is laudable, it has attracted some concern from both instantly buying into the "Kill your gays" trope (sort of, it's complicated) and by tying the only two such characters (so far) into a Trill focussed storyline (When the Trill as gender nonconforming analogue was already part of the Dax storyline) rather than just having trans and NB characters who are members of the crew. We'll see where this takes us.

Though that was as nothing compared to Supernatural, which had the angel Castiel, after 14 seasons or so, finally confess his love for Dean TO Dean, only for Dean so stand there like a deer caught in headlights, and for Castiel to be immeidately sent to (as some have referred to it) "super turbo gay Hell"... and that is literal, not figurative. Of course he STILL might be back by the end of the series, so who knows...

A trailer for the new Hardy Boys series from Hulu has dropped. It has a slightly diluted, "Junior Riverdale" vibe to it, and a much younger Joe than the norm (and a Frank who has an actor aged 23 playing a high schooler), but I suppose that gives the series more of a shelf life, if it lasts long enough.

And I forgot to mention The Mandalorian is back and is awesome, telling a good solid tale whilst also cramming in the classic Star wars easter eggs... the various droids that Peli Motto keeps in her engineering shop for example, and one in particular whose fate has been pondered since 1977! :) )

A happy Diwali to those who celebrate it!

Comments

[scelestus]

Was I the only one who thought seeing the child eating the eggs from the latest Mandalorian was kinda grotesque, instead of being funny?

[icon_uk]

I think it was sort of both, and they were still unfertilised eggs at that point.

[owlbrigade1]

Same. It was funny right up until he actually ate one, the sitcomesque always reaching for one but being told no, but then he started eating them and it was not funny at all then. The Mandalorian really needs to keep a closer eye on his kid and set clearer boundaries. I know people say "but they were unfertilised", but, to give it a real world context, would it be funny if someone broke into an embryologist's office and found a bunch of unfertilised eggs from, say, a cancer survivor who was depending on them to have a kid, and fed them to their cat? The Frog Lady was depending on those eggs to have a kid. It was a serious misstep in tone.

And the Mandalorian cannot afford anymore missteps in tone, since it has cast TWO transphobes in its line up. It is hard enough to watch it as it is. It needs to up its game.

[ironymaiden]

It was horrifying. And I thought maybe they were going to learn a lesson by the end of the episode, but nah, the joke was more important.

[tripodeca113]

Is it over? Is the doubt and confusion finally done?

My God, in its final days Supernatural makes one last desperate bid for relevancy. It will die very soon.

Hooray, a gift card I got was a worthless piece of plastic! It didn't work, and the website was awful. But I got it exchanged for another gift card which actually worked.

Oh look a remaster of the Mass Effect games, and hints indicating the franchise isn't dead forever.

[deh_tommy]

Pfft, that’s Supernatural. I don’t even watch the show and I know Castiel dies pretty much every other season.

[zachbeacon]

We also lost Ken Spears last week.

https://variety.com/2020/tv/news/ken-spears-dead-scooby-doo-co-creator-1234825813/

I hate our political system so much. On Wednesday I found out Biden had more votes than any US presidential canidate EVER. It wasn't until Saturday that anyone had any confidence that he'll win the electoral college despite leading by millions of votes. I looks like Trump still intends to fight this and - considering he spent four years packing courts - he might be able to pull off another Bush v Gore. This won't be real to me until the EC votes in December ... or maybe Biden's inauguration in January.

Also, I really wanted this to be a shutout. 70 million people voted for Trump despite everything and that's really worrying for 2024.

[janegray]

Also, I really wanted this to be a shutout. 70 million people voted for Trump despite everything and that's really worrying for 2024.

Made a whole rant about that.

https://jeannettegray.tumblr.com/post/634404912689741824/i-hate-when-people-say-trump-is-such-a-weak

[mazway_75]

Okay, let's be clear: The Supreme Court is not going to overturn three or four states (because even if PA was overturned, Biden still got Arizona, Nevada and probably Georgia and North Carolina too). There is no basis for any "massive fraud", no way this gets through circuit court level rather than SCOTUS and Bush v Gore was just ordering stopping count, not overturning result.

The reason for all this is McConnell wants to fire up the base for the Georgia run-offs to keep Senate and Trump is just doing a major grift to build up money for legal fees and/or finance a network while also told he backs down, he can run again in 2024. Yes, it's troubling that they're doing this but it's their version of theater, use the "Biden not the real President" line to fight him in office and the fact most of the international community has also accepted Biden is another factor.

So yes, it's troubling, it's annoying and such but this "courts are going to overturn the election" thing isn't going to happen no matter how much the right-wing nuts believe it will.

[thezmage]

Alex Hirsch from Gravity Falls spammed Trump's voter fraud hotline:
https://twitter.com/_AlexHirsch/status/1324893912461291521?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1324911326624272384%7Ctwgr%5Eshare_3&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdeadline.com%2F2020%2F11%2Fgravity-falls-creator-alex-hirsch-calls-voter-fraud-hotline-on-hamburglar-like-fraud-1234611307%2F

[scorntx]

It's highly alarming that in America, a lead of four million is a "narrow margin".

Also concerned by the possibility that certain idiotic politicians on the non-American side of the pond will, rather than take the message, just double down on their mind-boggling stupidity out of childish contrarianism.
(I mean the British government.)


I wasn't really paying attention to the representation in Disco, though the "sudden asteroid out of nowhere" was ridiculous.
More concerned by their continuing crap-tacular methods of dealing with people with obvious trauma, which is apparently to just let them wander around until they finally snap.
(Though frankly, in a fictional setting, if a character says they're fine, that should be the signal to drag them off to a competent trained mental health professional, stat.)


A remark of the Mass Effect trilogy. Yay... I guess?
Apparently it's just a straight-up remake, which is... less yay?
They couldn't touch up the Mako, or the Hammerhead? Not even a little?
(And not really sure they needed a remake so soon all that much... the original games are both pretty recent and still hold up well.
... wondering if it's testing the waters, because speaking of...

And an honest-to-goodness new ME game! Actual yay!
... I hold out unqualified hope that it's a follow-up to Andromeda.

[owlbrigade1]

Oh the British Government has already doubled down on the stupid, with total non-entity, but full time big ego, John Redwood reportedly having sent Biden a threatening letter ahead of trade negotiations. It seems that the current UK Government really do want to be the North Korea of the North Atlantic in their delusional posturing.

[skjam]

Podiatrist visit coming up to deal with a minor but long-running issue.

Over at my blog, I look at a recent Netflix series: http://www.skjam.com/2020/11/09/webtoon-review-blood-of-zeus/

[lordultimus]

A man in Ohio was rescued from a house fire by a neighbor wearing a Homelander costume on Halloween night.

Anthony Starr tweeted "I've never been a prouder parent".

[juniper6]

I have found Star Girl on Amazon Prime, where I have to pay for it but don’t have to sit through five blocks of (the same) commercials as on the CW app, so that’s a win. I’m quite enjoying it now.

In other news, my mother (metastatic malignant melanoma) is still alive, and it looks like the experimental treatment may be doing her some good—although the side effects are horrible. Her 60th wedding anniversary is in April, and it seems there’s some hope that she will make it. And after much drama, we’ve finally gotten an appropriate home care team in place which is a huge relief to all of us, but most of all for my 88-year old father. That took more than two months to settle. Welcome to terminal illness in the USA.

This will be the first time in 23 years that we have not hosted Thanksgiving in my home. We’re all a little sad about it.

I met Joe Biden in the mid 1980’s. I like him a lot more now than I did then. 🙂

[janegray]

Humble bundle has the UDON Street Fighter comics. They are really good!

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/street-fighter-media-do-books?hmb_source=navbar&hmb_medium=product_tile&hmb_campaign=tile_index_9

[malurette]

My brother became a dad early this morning! Luckily I put the final touch to the Fourth Doctor scarf I knitted for my sister-in-law just two days ago, it's ready to send so she'll receive it when she comes back from the hospital.

[cygnia]

Pics?

[deh_tommy]

I’m really surprised to see no one talking about the massive culling of the minks or the brewing war between Azerbaijan and Algeria.

[leahandillyana]

Algieria?

[thanekos]

I'd say " yeeted to super hell " was the funniest way to describe that turn in Supernatural, but then someone paralleled it with that late 90s Tales of Spider-Man Chameleon story.

[magicrubbish]

That confession at least and at last put an end to the father of all queer baits.
Does anyone still watch Supernatural? I saw the trending on Twitter and went to see what the hu ha is all about. Dean's reaction ruined it for me.

[iamrman]

I have 13 volumes of the classic G.I. Joe comics to read, so that will be taking up most of my time.

Whenever I'm down, I just watch the intro to the old G.I. Joe movie. I might be a bitter and cynical Englishman, but I always get a kick out of it.

[donnblake]

I'm reading "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall," by Anne Bronte (realizing that while I'd read Charlotte's "Jane Eyre," and Emily's "Wuthering Heights," I'd yet to read anything by Anne). I find myself rather unimpressed with the attitude of the top-level narrator, and deeply sympathetic to the female narrator of the nested narrative , if occasionally deeply frustrated by her self-sacrificing attitude. It's a bit like a horror movie in slow motion, yelling "Get out of there!" As she starts to realize just what a manipulative, emotionally abusive wastrel her friend/fiance/husband is.

[icon_uk]

There was a TV adaption of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall a few years back which was the dullest thing I could recall watching in a very long time.

[stubbleupdate]

Is anybody else on the AC Valhalla journey now?

My copy came through on Saturday, so I poured about 7 hours into it then, and have done an hour and a bit each other night (because being a part time student and having a full time job is difficult).

My current favourite easter egg is a cameo by Trogdor the Burninator




I'm enjoying having a bit to do each evening, and advancing the story a bit, while also discovering new ways to be a viking

[scorntx]

Have to wait for the end of the year for Valhalla.
(mutter, grumble, mutter.)

Just one question, though:
Does it bring back the database? Heard that it does.

[magicrubbish]

This year Diwali is going to be slightly different that it is usually celebrated , due to ..what else Covid situation. Though with the new vaccine in the horizon , things will probably soon go back to normal.
I think this season of The Mandalorian is slightly underwhelming than the 1st season , but that could be due to overwhelming expectations as well.

[thezmage]

Fauci predicts the vaccine will be here in April, apparently. I don't know if that's referring to the world as a whole or just the US though.

[thezmage]

The Nosleep podcast has a spinoff of sorts that just launched called the Writer's Mythos where they talk about one writer an episode (I haven't actually listened so I can't tell you how it is or how deep their conversations are. Tomorrow's episode is on Junji Ito, which I thought some people here might find interesting

EDIT: for those of you into ttrpgs, the Kickstarter for Thirsty Sword Lesbians has almost ended. Truly staggering number of stretch goals, probably never get them all cheaper.

[leahandillyana]

Poland is introducing a law that makes the whole country an upgraded LGBT free zone. The law will criminalize being openly queer - no prides, no queer orgs, no queer publications. Heck, probably even a common dude coming out will be a crime! Law banning abortion to save a woman's life and new anti-protest law are also being worked on.
Good job, Americans. However, Biden and Harris in White House is not the end of the fight. It is merely a return to where we were under Obama. And since he left, new severe problems arose. I don't think Biden is equiped to deal with them, and even if he does, Republican-dominated Congress and Senate will surely oppose him.
In Abhkazia conflict, Russia brokered a "peace" that irl means victory for Azerbaijan and puts the Ormians in Abhkazia in danger. Riots broke in Yerevan after the peace was signed. I'm pretty sure it'll be short lived.
And seriously, does anyone know what is happening with the refugees in the Meditteranean?