The Old Hack

I so am not! I am XQ-32, the improved spambot sent to replace XQ-31b who went insane after deactivating and consuming the code of XQ-31a, the spambot who originally murdered and taking over the identity of whatever pointless human originally owned this account! ...all right, what is this 'Upgrade Version' button doing next to my login and why is it blin

This would be acceptable to me if it had been mentioned in-story. Unfortunately I cannot recall any evidence that it has been. Even Tedd tossing Grace a simple "How was therapy?" and getting a "Meh" in response would have been enough. But in the complete absence of such evidence I am afraid that I remain unconvinced. Mind you, as far as dropped plot threads go, that one is comparatively forgivable. In the case of something like Chris Claremont killing off an important supporting character, replacing her with an evil double and then just forgetting about it, it gets a little harder to swallow. It would seem that the whole plan of the evil double was to murder her twin, take over her life and then continue it with no further effect on any of the events in the story. I may perhaps be forgiven for considering that more than a little bit unsatisfying.

Shhh! Don't warn them, you bloody tit! *hides Sirleck lure* Telling you young'uns to gerroff our lawns IS how we have fun.

I'm way too feeble for that. *breaks into minute-long fit of coughing*

*looks uneasily at the National Bank, then turns a suspicious gaze on Parliament* Oh come on. It is not all bad. They have specialties like boiled fish, boiled beef, boiled pork cutlet, boiled... I am sorry. I thought I had a point but apparently it just boiled away. At least it did better than its predecessor, Deep Purple. Upon reaching the endgame it blew a fuse and then emitted smoke on the coolant and fire from its chips.

Goldarnit, too slow, mlooney beat me to the punch. Ah well.

http://www.egscomics.com/index.php?id=2497 "At least Magus is having fun." I can sort of follow that. He has been stuck in a nonphysical dimension for years and everybody he met there treated him like a punching bag. It must feel damn good to have an opponent you can really cut loose on after that.

As an addition: I have now written Dan. I am reproducing the letter here for your perusal and comments.

8.7. 8.5. 8.8. 8.9. 8.6. 9.1. And now for the artistic impression...

Geroff me lawn.

I do see the problem. I think our main difference is in how severe we think it is. I respect your opinion in this and perhaps writing Dan about it would not be a bad idea. I may do so myself. So, conceded. It is a problem, and noteworthy, and better to comment about it before it grows too large. I will write Dan about it; if you feel like it, I urge you to do so as well.

The whole thing just sounded barbaric to me anyway.

Star Wars: A New Hope came out 41 years ago now, does that help?

Please note that Noah couldn't hurt the dragon either. If this was meant to show how tough Noah was, it failed. It was Greg and Grace who ended up saving the day. Elliot knew she couldn't handle an opponent skilled at flying fighting and quite sensibly chose evasion. This is also known as intelligence. It is also noteworthy that neither of these two situations were fights as such. They were attempted murder -- aimed at Elliot. Colonel Sanders very carefully chose opposition that Elliot would not be able to handle. In both cases outside interference saved his life. This one? I see what you mean and I get how it could be understood that way. I just happen to think it is less serious than you believe. The Worf Effect came from a show where you had fights nearly every goldarn episode and where Starfleet Security, supposedly trained elite, got made laughingstocks of. EGS is a character driven dramedy and we have, what, one fight a year at most if even that much? And as to that, how often are EGS fights won based on raw power? Let me see. Damien self-destructed because he decided he couldn't live with not being a god. Ellen megazapped Vlad -- that might count, only Damien was already dead so there was no further reason to fight. Elliot beat up bullies, but mostly in flashbacks. Though he did squash the Bloodgrem's skull a little. Nanase ultimately talked Abraham down. The first fire elemental admittedly got kicked into the river, which did for it. As to Not-Tengu, once again Nanase and Ellen beat it with brainpower. The second fire elemental attack and the bulldog dragon got ended by superior power, but again applied with careful thought rather than just have Grace kill poor Dex. Dame Tara, as demonstrated, got first outmaneuvered and then talked down. The spider vampire got outgriffoned, it has to be said. The big abomination fight... Susan killed an abomination and outwitted another. Raven killed a couple through skill and experience. Pandora's finishing move can safely be said to have been raw power. As to Sirleck, he didn't as much get outfought as outright executed by Magus. About half of all EGS fights are ended or even averted through intelligence and/or intelligent application of available power. And there is less than one fight a year. I can see what you mean, I just don't think it is a huge problem yet myself.

The Moderator: Kindly do not make comparisons between current political figures and the Nazis or I will lock this thread. The same goes for all other kinds of off colour political comment no matter which side of the aisle. ~tOH.

Elliot saved quite a few lives by interposing himself between the traffic and the explosive fireball. I call that acquitting himself well.

They so weren't heretical! It was everybody else who were heretical! So there!

Absolutely, but if I admitted to that, I wouldn't sound like a contrary old grump who is constantly complaining about how much better everything used to be, even nostalgia.

They just don't make them like that anymore. Denmark made a go at it but all we got was a silly movie about a dinosaur tail tip that had been frozen since time immemorial which, when thawed, turned into a man in a rubber dinosaur suit bent on stomping a papier-mâché model of Copenhagen flat.

It is actually the lesser-known Pharaonic Library of Rutintutin which is hidden somewhere in the sands of the desert. It actually started out just as a quiet place for said Pharaoh to sit and relax while reading but then he got into the habit of just leaving his scrolls and steles there for later and soon they accumulated at a rapid rate. Eventually the Pharaoh decided that moving all that stuff back was just way too much of a bother, made the most of it and had a library constructed there.

It is worth mentioning that CGI isn't just CGI. One reason the Jurassic Park dinosaurs had such a huge impact apart from the time was the quality of the CGI used. They had attempted to include detail levels like the play of light on scales, the direction of incoming light, the shadows cast not only by the whole figure but also which parts of the figure itself lay in shadow and so forth. This obviously increased expense and time requirements significantly. Now compare this to CGI where it is just a random creature blob bungling through the movie. It may look nice, sure, but if the programmers did not take the above details into account, it won't look natural and your brain will balk at being fooled. Add in the Hollywood mentality of "Oh, we'll just do it with CGI, everybody loves that," and you have a bunch of cheaply animated computer cartoons instead of actual movies.

I very much agree. I will say that I have on occasion seen remakes bring a different viewpoint to the table, which in and of itself makes them worthwhile, I feel. Just as an example: The original "To Be or Not To Be" from 1942 remains an unsurpassed masterpiece, but I still enjoyed the Mel Brooks version from 1983. The Brooks version very much justified its own existence but it could not possibly replace the original.

To be fair, his father started it.

There once was a man named Oedipus Rex you may have heard about his odd complex his name appears in Freud's index because... he loved his mother.

Christiansborg, the site of our Parliament, lies about a hundred feet from one of our main thoroughfares and still seems to be only tenuously in contact with reality at all.