http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20080215]Today's User Friendly

(I remember when this sort of dialogue almost required someone to say "All your base" somewhere...)

 
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

So, did anyone manage to get into one of the iterations? If so, what was it like? Was it worth it?
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

http://hanzismatter.com/]Hanzi Smatter - dedicated to the misuse of Chinese characters in western culture

A bit drier than http://engrish.com/]engrish.com, but still fun (in a particular sense of the word)...

 
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

While I like International Super Teams, I also love Green Ronin's Freedom
City setting for their Mutants and Masterminds superhero rpg. Whereas IST was built on the idea "What if
Supers existed in the real world, and their actions had real consequences?", Freedom City was built on the idea "What if Supers existed, but
we lived in their world?" It's really a quaint little love-affair
with classic comics book stories, with a lot of homages to everything from Superman to Neil Gaiman.

Now, the book mostly focuses on Freedom City, USA, and it's respective superhero population, and mostly glosses over the rest of the world's events,
except for generic "the world, as we know it" notes. But I feel the setting could be, at least in certain ways, compatible with IST. The basic
timeline of world events are compatible, and the Freedom City history and characters could be added rather neatly into the ISTverse with only minor issues.

For exemple, Freedom City includes a brief "Moore Act" of zero tolerance on costumed heroes from 1984 to 1992, forcing even it's prime hero
Centurion to stop operating within the city. This times rather nicely with the foundation of the International Super Teams. Therefore, one could say
Centurion joined with IST, giving it greater credibility and acceptance amongst the American public. Then came the 1992 Terminus Invasion, which mobilized the
largest alliance of heroes ever seen, including virtually every available IST, many of which suffered substantial losses, including Centurion's sacrifice.
Two years later, the Freedom League is re-established in the city, and becomes America's premier superhero team, with only IST getting more worldwide
respectibility.

Meanwhile, IST has the full support of UNISON, the United Nations International Superhuman Oversight Network, a organization of super-agents that has more or
less replaced the old Peacekeeper corps. The various branches of UNISON deal with everything from natural disaster relief, to investigating supernormal
threats, to fighting terrorist agencies using mundane methods. In short, everything that falls between the cracks of IST is UNISON's to mop up.

In the USA, however, such functions are handled by AEGIS, the American Elite Government Intervention Service. It is a paramilitary organisation equipped with
ultra-tech equipment to deal with superhuman crime and violence. As it employs neither nukes nor super-powered operatives, it has remained relatively
untouched by the UN 1982 edicts, and are hailed as America's first line of defense against super-threats. And since the election of Republican Candidate
Buchanan to the White House, AEGIS has seen it's budget increased substantially, even with the percieved downfall of the SHADOW terrorist organization.
The former Soviet Block, Israel, Red China and Great Britain all have similar national agencies.

Meanwhile, while SHADOW is staying in the shadows, rebuilding it's forces and planning new schemes, a radical terrorist cartel known as Overthrow has
arisen to take it's place in the limelight. Under the leadership of Dominic Ashe, a European left-wing terrorist of the 1980s, Overthrow is an umbrella
group that has absorbed smaller left-wing terror organizations and formed them into a single group that has, since the 1990s, responsible for hundreds of acts
of violence: assassinations, kidnappings and bombings alike, and has virtually replaced Islamic terror groups as a world-class threat. Suspicions regarding
Overthrow's backing ranges from Red China to the South American dictatorships to ramnants of SHADOW.

...That's all I've got so far. What do you guys think?

Anyone else atching this series?

Its awesome!

Episode 6 just had something Ive been waiting for :-)

(Horo getting pissed and laying the smack down)

Anchorage Daily News: http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/wildlife ... 12399.html]Falling moose nearly takes out trooper

I can't help but think "my sister had a moose..."

 
 
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

A little blast from my past I found yesterday on YouTube...

well, it reminds me of it, anyway.� This isnt my work, just had to share...
Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky?
That's every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry-
NO QUARTER!!!
-- "No Quarter", by Echo's Children

Is anyone besides me having trouble connecting to Eyrie Production's webserver (Aka Rei, IIRC Gryphon's comments correctly)
Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky?
That's every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry-
NO QUARTER!!!
-- "No Quarter", by Echo's Children

Okay, so, does anyone know anything about this KickApps outfit? Anyone have any dealings with them before?

It should go without saying that I'm going to google them thoroughly to see what others have to say about them.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

Free to a good home:
A Naruto otaku fic idea I had at random: The same sort of occurence that caused the central premise of Eric Flint's 1632 happens to Konoha, dropping it into an American suburb in 1992. So we have pre-internet anime fans, etc... and nobody on the American side of things knows anything about Naruto. A major plus is the ability to do a "high school fic" with the canon characters infiltrating "Town Name High School" under the Hokage's orders without necessarily having the fic turn to crap by default. A major bonus if the "real world" focus teen is completely NORMAL. To quote Piers Anthony: a person with "hair-colored hair."
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll