The people -- all 22 of them -- have spoken, and I have turned on polling in almost all the forums on the board.

The only boards without polling are now Introductions, Marketplace and Archived Fanfic Recommendations.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

With Code Geass R2 just about out the door, I thought it prudent to fire up a new thread for Gundam 00, since it will be cranking up next week. For those who
missed season 1, I'll do this in a fairly non-spoilery fashion. The major players of the series are the governments of Earth and a terrorist organization
calling itself Celestial Being, and it is the first Gundam series to not give us an unspecified 'future year' date, instead setting everything in the
Anno Domini calendar.

Season 1 ended on a vicious cliffhanger which I won't get into specifics on, other than you could probably hear the screams of nerd terror around the world
when they realized they'd have to wait a all of Summer before finding out what happened next.

Season 2 begins 4 years after the last episode of season 1, and will be numbered starting with Episode 26.

Our current major players for season 2 are as follows:

Celestial Being - Terrorists (let's not sugar coat it, they don't) devoted to antagonizing the entire world until they join together in cooperation (in
theory to destroy Celestial Being). The reason they are doing this is, in fact, really never explained. In fact, the one person who ALMOST spilled the beans
died a 'You Know Too Much' death within 15 seconds of realizing what was going on.

A-Laws - Mistakenly called the Arrows based on a voiceover from early on in the ad campaign, later confirmed in the current spelling on the liner notes for a
model. The black ops division of the United Earth Government. The government does not merely deny the existence of the A-Laws, they outright distort media
reports to keep people from finding out about them. They can't possibly be the Titans, they wear green instead of black and all their mecha are painted
red. They are also run by a guy who is totally not Char.

There are other players in all of this that would be spoiling for season 1 if I were to mention them. But all indications are that if you were a major jerk and
didn't get annihilated in episode 25, you'll be back for more this season. Considering that the first season pulled out a Xanatos Planned This Index
with absolutely no warning at all, season 2 promises a LOT of plot twists of its own.
- Grumpy Uncle Gearhead

A
creepy version of "Tiptoe Thru the Tulips"

Ring of Fire
''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

A little late on the draw, but... DAMNIT...

Not that it was completely unexpected, being 83 and all. (Did he age gracefully or WHAT? I had no idea he was that old!)

I could go with another rant about how bad this year has been for stars, celebrities, scientists, authors and all things sci-fi in terms of passings. But all
of a sudden it occurs to me...

I'm beginning to think I know how my dad must've felt when he was in his 40s. All the greats of HIS youth going away.

And I wonder how many people that I converse with online (many of whom weren't even BORN until I was out of high school even!) - how many of them actually
share my sense of "it's all going away"?

Is it really that bad this year? Or is it just my perception of things?

Not too terribly long ago, someone posted in one of the fora some links to some *very* tasty fanart of "wicked" versions of some of the Sailor
Senshi.

Well, there's more. While noodling about the internet, I found this:

Art of Alan Gutierrez

Only two of the "wicked Senshi" pictures are there, but there are also a *lot* of other anime characters, and some that appear to be
similarily-styled original creations. These are available as framed prints. The Saturn one on the second catalog page tempts me mightily....

This came about when I was considering dialog for Mal's Promo party and wouldn't leave me alone. It's not exactly what I'd usually consider finished (for a fic based around the last scene), but I figured I'd post to get some comments.

It's here! Let the bells ring out, let the banners fly, let the Skull make gurgling noises!



The whole comic will is available here.

http://www.magma.ca/~revdark/legendary_Tales_04.zip

I have just registered my domain, so expect to see these files migrate to a full web page in the near future.

The Story here.
''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

So Issue 4: Rescue is taking longer than I thought.

Originally I was going to do a Roman Holiday adventure, but due to model issues, I put it on hold and started building models for a story featuring Frostfire;
then that ran into some complications...

Then I went back to the Roman story; currently there are twelve pages rendered, laid out and captioned. So far so good. This issue features Superball,
Charcoal and Jackie rescuing a Sybil; a very common Cimerora adventure, but with several twists. Interestingly enough it is much harder to write Superball in
the comic book format than it is in a traditional story; caption bubbles tend to force a brevity of lunacy; plus it is much harder to capture the manic,
daffy-duck, movement in stills.

This issue also starts featuring pin-ups and bios on Legendary members (for which I am raiding the other threads and the wiki for details.) Meanwhile in the
Rogue Islands will also return - eventually I will have to have the villains hijack the comic (ala 'the pigs are taking over the muppet shot') but I
will need to expand my villain model library.

I hope COH has another comic contest soon...

Shayne

There's a new thread there that might be of interest to people.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.