You guys interested?  She's good - and also one of the first friends I ever made online, so I trust her implicitly.  This will be a paid gig - I've told her that each of you would be paying for your own sketches.

Here's her DA page:
https://www.deviantart.com/armaina

Right now, all she really needs is reference images, as well as other details such as what size, flat image or fully shaded, and what anime style you want.

The Green Book

Guerrilla Warfare has changed a great deal in the last half century - especially with the advent of facebook and the internet however the basic tenant remains the same.

He must exhaust the enemy by constant harrasment
He must attack constantly, and from all directions
He must stage succesful retreats, return to the attack, and avoid encounters with the enemy that are not of his own making.


Yes. I did just post a Terrorist Training Manual to the forum.

You are alll on a CIA watch list.

In case anyone is interested, there is a bluray release of the BBC Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy tv show.

I've had a look at a discussion thread https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=304425  and its a mixed bag.  Good sound, decent extras but a bad job in upscaling the video seems to be the majority view.

Also for everyone across the pond, to quote the web forum above "The blu-ray is region free but with a 50i picture format rather than 60i meaning if you live outside a PAL region make sure your player and TV support the format".

As for amazon links

UK Special Edition
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hitchhikers-Gui...uraycom-21

UK VHS style pack
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hitchhikers-Gal...uraycom-21

US llnk for special edition (new and used)
https://www.amazon.com/Hitchhikers-Guide...990&sr=1-1

Mark

Here in Ventura, once stood a pair of trees on a hill.  They had stood there since the long, long ago, where the legendary farmers -- men of McGraths, the Donlons, the Borchards, and the Ortegas -- had placed them high above the city of San Buenaventura.  And there they stood and grew across the long decades, keeping silent vigil above a prosperous town, and inspiring us with simple beauty.

The Two Trees were not ordinary trees, but blue gum eucalptus, brought and placed here from lands far to the West.  They were something of an emblem for local businesses, with representations proudly emblazoned in logos and signs.  Through my youth, they were an everpresent feature on the skyline, inspiring dreams and fantasies.  For in one direction stood the earthy hills, and in the other lay the sea and the enchanted isles.

Perhaps they were descendants of the Two Trees of Valinor, Laurelin and Telperion, who shed their light on all of Arda, from Valinor across the western sea to Middle-Earth and beyond.  For just like their ancestors, in recent years, they started to sicken.

In the Years of the Trees, the Trees of Valinor lit the whole world, until Morgoth convinced Ungoliant to inject her poison into them.  As the two trees died, the light of the world slowly faded away, until the Valar took the last living fruit of Laurelin and the last living flower of Telperion and used them to create the Moon and Sun.  But they, too, were corrupted by Ungoliant's poison -- the last remaining pure light of the trees were bound in the Silmarilli of Fëanor, taken and held in Morgoth's terrible crown for a thousand years.

The Two Trees of Ventura too faltered.  First the eastern tree sickened, and grew weak.  Then the great fires came and scorched the very leaves off the branches and extinguished the life out of our sacred trees.  A month later, a windstorm came and snapped the eastern tree's trunk in twain, so what remains of the glory of the Two Trees is a tall stump and a dead, wintry outline of the formerly great branches.

Where once they stood for our prosperity and resilience, now the Two Trees are a tall reminder of what we have lost -- irreplaceable lives, homes of friends sacrificed to the flames, the days we lived in thick smoke, families rent apart as people move away to find a place to live.

As our city is once again wreathed in smoke, mere months after the previous fire, it grows more painful once again.  The inescapable fact is that in this new era, the light of the world is no longer pure; it has been corrupted by the flames that once again consume homes and lives.  Everything has an orangish tint and is covered in a layer of dust and soot -- all of the city's colors have dimmed.

Men's hearts too, have dimmed.  Our President has said that we don't deserve aid in fighting the fires.  People argue in earnest that separating children from their parents is good and just.  Still, we feed the fires ever more, with cars and plants and factories.  The Devil Winds come more and more often as we burn the fuel to light the lamps to blot out the stars.

I can still remember the pure light and star-filled skies, but I can no longer see it here.  With the passing of our Two Trees, a little more of the light of faith is gone from the world.  Yet I can see the smoky light of the flame racing down the hills towards us once again.  And Melkor, in the Void beyond the Walls of the World, is laughing.

I'm sure you've seen this before: Spikyhair Shinysmile, teenaged amnesiac of few words but prodigious fighting skill, sets out to discover his past and along the way gathers a band of oddball companions and uncovers a heinous plot to recover some artifact of the lost golden age and foil it to save the world, possibly bringing a return of the golden age along the way or at least preventing whatever caused it to fall from happening again.

Of course you have. It's the story of at least 80% of every RPG video game ever made.

My question is how to put together a plot line to not merely avoid this tried and true and horribly overdone formula, but subvert and perhaps mock it a bit as well, without descending into twee or complete sociopathy.

My initial idea is to have the protagonist begin as the local Super-Emperor of Everything but everyone else has lost their memory, and therefore everything is falling apart, let alone anyone recognizing your authoritah. I'm divided over whether there should be a semi-standard system of character upgrades framed as brushing the rust off your personal skills now that there aren't legions of soldiers to obey your every whim, or if character generation should end with abilities and skills and super final attack sure-kill secret moves mostly in the state they'll be throughout, aside from equipment upgrades and so on. Probably a blend would be best there, but the right balance point would be critical.

Finding and dealing with the cause of the problem is the end of tutorial mode, or at most the first chapter, but there is no reset button involved; the rest of the game is... I dunno. Getting people's skills and purpose restored to keep the infrastructure lashed together enough that the world doesn't go completely post-apocalypse-grimderp? Build your armies anew and reconquer the setting with the help of various super-weapons only the MC remembers how to use? Something less widespread, basically becoming the bandit-king of a city state to maintain your own standard of living (and incidentally that of your immediate followers) and watch the world beyond the reach of your hands burn?

Is it actually necessary to send the player out to do hero stuff in order to have gameplay value? I'm not seeing a whole lot of options that actually sound engaging, and cliches become cliches because they resonate with people over and over; Tropes Are Not Bad and so on.

Partial transcript of an interview (with a link to the audio of the complete interview): If the midterms were a battle for America's soul, who won?

No tl;dr possible - it's too detailed and far-ranging. (And if anybody replies within a half-hour of seeing this post, I'll know you didn't actually listen to the interview.)

There is this, though:

Quote:If you look at when positive social change happens, it rarely happens through voting for the people we like, who then pass a law. What happens is that you have a great groundswell; you have communities of activists, of parents, of sympathetic people who begin to make changes. A thousand small sanities are usually more effective than one big idea.

Youths sue US government over climate change, government argues they have no legal right to decent environment.

"By contrast, the US Department of Justice argues that “there is no right to ‘a climate system capable of sustaining human life’”

Just... fuck right off. 80s cartoon villains are better human beings than you assnuggets.

Sadly, it's not a set you can buy.



Several more pictures here:
https://hiconsumption.com/2018/05/lego-sr-71-blackbird/

And with this post I open the new video thread. (And for anyone who missed it, the old thread is here.)

Don't bother with guns, don't bother to hide
You'd better just run, don't shelter inside
Godzilla is coming to town

He's making a mess, stomping it twice
Gonna put out those bright city lights
Godzilla is coming to town

He sees you with his tonsils
Your screams won't change your fate
Human weapons are useless
so you'd better flee fast for goodness sake

Try not to get et, and try not to die
You can't hope to win, be glad you survive
When Godzilla is coming to town



Come on, everybody join in!