@Call Me Tom -
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! A worthy skill in itself!
Start publishing on
DD Comics!
Advertise with us
Comic Talk and General Discussion *
Rant, moan, rave and share - for all your chatter, natter, ETCETERA! 2013/2014
@Banes: I don't have anything to add to the serious side of the conversation here, but when I'm sick or very anxious I always watch Napoleon Dynamite.
I've seen the first half of it way more times than the second half because I often fall asleep halfway through. : )
On the other hand, if I'm feeling more moderately anxious or upset I like to go in the other direction and watch political commentary shows. I find that getting myself wound up about other people's problems instead of my own helps me feel better.
Well another chapter in my life has ended. And a new adventure is about to begin. There is relief that something dark has passed and anticipation of what is to come. It is promising. Now if I could just get motivated to shoot more pictures for the comic BECAUSE I'M ALMOST OUT OF BUFFER! EEEEEK!
Judge, never have enough judges for these awards things. More importantly with all the nomination Death P0rn got, volunteer to ensure this year's DD Awards does not become the Death P0rn Appreciation Show!
eeeberrrr eeeberrr yaaablllll yaaablll….
er… um…
nevermind. still recovering from this morning. Got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning and nearly knocked myself out (my bed is against the wall)…
Lessee… something else…
Y'know? I watch some Japanese Super Robot (think Superhero, but as a Robot… Tranzor/Mazinger Z is one such example) shows and I'm annoyed with two things.
1. IF there are female super robots in the show, they're mostly ineffectual and useless… especially if their pilot is the girlfriend of the main hotblooded male hero. And in Tranzor Z this is glaringly apparent… Tranzor Z is armed with an amazing variety of weaponry, such as Rocket Fists, a weapon that fires missiles like a gatling gun, a chest emblem that melts enemies and a tornado that the Tranzor Z spits out that rusts enemies to death. The weapon the female super robot has? Chest Missiles. And only TWO of them…
2. They're "hypersexualized" to accentuate them being female. These may or may not have actual fantastic weapons, but if there's a male Super Robot as a protagonist, she'll never be on even par with him.
Funny thing is this… the character Airachnid from Transformers Prime. I admire that bot because she's the most ruthless, evil female robot out there. Commits genocide for kicks, has no problem with slow torture and slowly killing anyone or anything. Then again, her character design is an indicator of her personality (her design is based on that evil queen from the Snow White movie).
And then there's Neon Genesis Evangelion's Asuka Langely Sohryu. Completely arrogant about her piloting skills on the outside, but inside she's as messed up as the male protagonist, all coming to a head when her mind is invaded by one of the aliens and she's forced to face that part of herself… Keep in mind that this anime series was made when its creator was having a very bad bout of depression…
Bravo, you sound like a cicada that's just come out of hibernation… :)
Lonne… Asuka is such an irritating character… Actually ALL those Evangelion characters were irritating. Soooooo emo. But Shinji… oh man, worst character ever!
Best female character in anime and manga I can think of off the top of my head is Major Kusanagi (Ghost in the Shell), be even in her case she's still a sexist trope- she's a cyborg but still her bod is always on show and her "being strong" is actually just her playing a masculine role.
Buuut, then the series IS aimed typically at males, so you expect that.
It's not a giant robo series either…
For Giant robo series, how about Patlabor? That has the trope of the small female who LUUURVS her big mecha robo and likes to tinker around fixing it, but I can't remember that being particularly sexist apart from that. She's a bit more able than most of the guys even!
Also, Miriya from Robotech 1, Dena from Robotech 2, and Rook from Robotech 3.
In those cases the female characters are pretty well done. Miriya has a failing in that she sort of plays second fiddle to Max after they're together and she falls for him so hard initially… but she's pretty badass generally.
Rook and Dena though are pretty perfect. They're kickarse, in charge, not all fan-servicey and half naked (though there IS specific bits of fanservice in the original Southern cross series), but they're still normal females- not simply female characters with masculine traits to make them seem "stronger".
ozoneocean wrote:Certainly feels that way. I was falsely accused of theft at the site, suspended for a week and then told there was no evidence for further dicipliary action but I could move to another site. It's a huge crock and stinks to high heaven. But after being on site for five years I had good rapport with the residents possibly better than the executive director. I knew her job was in jeopardy and knowing where all the bodies were buried I was a threat to her position. So I had to go. I have friends in the building so I'll be visiting them in the future but it's politics and the director had to make changes to secure herself so out I go. People are like that. Residents have offered to start a petition to keep me on and my wife and attorney think I should write the director and declare that it's just so wrong. But the whole point of being an executive is to act on a paranoid whim to get rid of especially competent employees who could make you look bad.
Bravo, you sound like a cicada that's just come out of hibernation… :)
And the new site promises to be a lot better. It even might pay more.
Thanks for the expanded story! Sounds pretty bad but I'm glad you came out of it ok. Some peple are natural cocks… You should defiitely always tell it how it is I think.
Anyway, the old place didn't often treat you very well. They kept having you work at odd hours and massively long shifts… I hope the new place is way better.
Wow…. so now you have to be wary of your boss as he/she has only their personal intrests in mind… I hope the new place works out well for you, Bravo.
Heh… learned a new term that describes a minority group in MMOs. These players are called Content Locusts.They're often the first players to be in the game when it comes out, blow through all the quests in record time and they also reach max level faster than the rest of the playerbase combined. And when they get to the end the complain loudly that there's nothing there. And they definitely are loud… they post more on their game forum than anyone else. And they can be dangerous to a game company.
Blizzard made the mistake of trying to satisfy this minority by turning up the difficulty level of WoW. This resulted in a large chunk of its playerbase leaving… this large chunk being comprised of players who were still moving through the content, or beginners who just started the game after the change was made.
Blizzard has the resources to withstand something like this, so they reset the difficulty levels to normal with another patch. Lesson learned the hard way…
I lost an ebay auction for a sabertache… it was a good price and I was the first bidder, but the bastards got in and jacked the price up. But I had a small measure of revenge- even though the price went above what I was willing to pay at the end, I still kept bidding it right up anyway, hoping to make his victory as dear as possible! :)
It's a tricky game though, you don't want to accidentally win it and end up owing a mint. Tricky, but fun! ^_^
Still need a good sabertache though, but I think I can make a better one myself. Antiques are all very well, but no good if you're afraid of damaging them.
Sabertache is a kind of dcoument bag carried by certain cavalry soldiers and later exclusively officers. The second image is from a 90mm miniature that stands about four inches tall. (Life Guards ca 1850) Good old Shepard Paine the true master. I gave up on having full sized, it's so much easier to paint a miniature. Shep Paine has acquired a huge collection of the real thing over the years mostly as payment for figure commisions.
Rather than ebay why not try the reinactor suppliers? like: http://en.empirecostume.com/sabretache-empire-c140.htm
If I had the spare time I'd probably be a reinactor. But alas I don't.
Because reenactor supplies are WAAAAAYYYYY too expensive! If you know where to look you can get the real antique stuff for a fraction of the cost of re-production stuff generally, but it depends on on type of object.
A genuine antique sabertache with that sort of decoration can be worth several thousand dollars… The one I was bidding for was the simple leather type with a metal decoration on the cover, that was relatively cheap.
I have patterns for the real thing though and I have the skill, the reference, the smarts, and knowledge of where to get the supplies to make my own elaborate style one though… But as you say the limiting factor is TIME!
Heh, I'm no re-enactor , I just love the outfit. Renacting is great, but those guys like to be historically correct to specific units and things. I like to have authentic stuff, never some modern reinterpretation, but not conforming exactly to any specific actual unit.
The really super awesome cool is when you go to a show and in walks in a completely authentic Hussar of the 4th Hussars circa 1809. The jaw drops and you take all kinds of pictures becuase it's amazing how the stuff is worn as opposed to how figures are sculpted. Then there's the two Hessian officers just strolling down the street in Colonial Williamsberg talking in German. They were doing officers on parole during Lafyette's occupation of Williamsberg. And I admonished them for swearing auf deutsch in front of a little kid. They were amazed that some tourist not only understood German but could identify their regiments.
I've been to some the largest reinactments and talked to the people and gotten a great feeling for the life that a representation of generic uniform just can't match. But then I'm a uniform geek who knows what differentiates a French hussar in 1809 from one in 1778 or even 1805. At the Battle of Monmouth Courthouse reinactment it was neat to see the British Dragoons and the Loyalist Dragoons and the one guy going his own way doing a Brunswicker Jaeger. I was the only one in the audience who ided his uniform.
The thing that makes the repro stuff so expensive is all the embroidery. Considering they are still issued to the mounted Guard regiments for changing of the guard at Westminster finding a relatively recent one second hand is not that hard or expensive. And they were still manufactured as late as the 1960's for cavalry officer full dress (I have a book on the British cavalry regiments circa 1973 with all the full dress uniforms. Only the Royal Tank Regiment didn't have a full dress that was frozen at the turn of the 20th Century. They had a simple blue and black tunic with hat)
cool youtube video with the Russian TV report on the reinactment of the Battle of Borodino in 2012.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hZUxHBsnhw
Nice examples BTW!
Sabretaches are funny things… Basically a very flat ceremonial document case for maps, orders, that sort of thing. But very silly, hugely expensive, and impractical. Buuuut they look really cool even so.
Just another element in the asymmetrical wonder of the ideal hussar ensemble that goes to prove that symmetry is NOT the whole story when it comes to beauty or artistic appeal.
There were some that were just flat pieces of cheap leather stiffened with cardboard with a simple purse and document pocket sewn onto the other flap. The insignia was painted or even printed on the outside or white cutout number was glued on. Super cheap. Just like people don't realize shakos were often made out of felt covered cardboard with the insignia crudely cast metal or just a piece of cloth (the cockade) sewn on. And you see the sagging piece of garbage they turned into in the Sharpe series.
The plumes were often paper or sewn cloth, not feathers or plumes. Sometimes big plumes were no more than furry bags stuffed with rags.
Yeah, during the Napoleonic war there were a lot of poor officers on all sides of the conflict so even after the war they couldn't afford full dress and hand-me-downs only spread so far.
While there was that rougher aspect, and that has always been a part of every conflict from Greek Hoplites, to French knights, to waffen SS - in crappy muddy stained poorly fitting makeshift stuff and that does have it's own sort of appeal, there was also always the ideal as well and THAT is what appeals to me. ^_^
Even though it can be so unatainable.
Ugh… so those are Sabretaches. Sorry, when I see the "tache" I think of hair on the face… -_-
Just curious about something. What do you call a return policy like this? Where you can return a defective product to a store for a refund or another item like it, except that it must not be opened or they will not accept it?
hahaha! It took me a while to get that :)
Of, they just all bugger off because they hate us and they wanna be on Facebook or Tublr or instagram or something instead. :(
Listen to the Quackcast!!!!!
http://www.drunkduck.com/quackcast/
Wow… a lot of MMORPGs have gone "Free to Play". And that worries me…
Too many games could oversaturate the market, and there'd be problems with that. Well… a former developer of Dark Age of Camelot predicts this anyway, and says that Pay to Play games will win out. But with the economy the way it is, not a lot of people can afford to spend $15 a month on an online game.
*sigh* So the DrunkDuck has his own Facebook and Twitter page? It must be a sign of the times. Next thing we know, there'll be no more webcomics… they'll all be replaced by Web Animations. Or Cartoons and Animated Shows made using easy to use Software.
Waitaminute! That might be a good thing. maybe….
Oh, DD has had it's own Facebook and Twitter pages for Aaaaages, plus G+ and Tumblr… Live Journal too.
Not many people really interact with those either though, not regularly anyway. DD is flattening…
As the old gaurd naturally leave, there are no new people to replace them because signups are always so screwy here, and so much needs fixing so it's hard for new people to find and contribute to the forums.
Plus the deadness is a vicious cycle. People don't won't to really be part of a ghost town.
If the place was fixed then we could rebuild… But, it's just us stubborn ones hanging on. I'm still putting almost the same amount of work into the sight as I was two years ago though…
So it's pretty demorralising to see work go for nothing, especially when it's not even that fun or interesting. The only real fun I get is doing the actual Quackcasts…
-Not organising them or editing them or doing the notes and all that running around, which takes many hours- the actualy calls themselves.
It's the most active part of the main admin side of the site… If I had my way the latest quackcasts would have a permenant player+playlist on the front page.
Advertise with us
DDComics is community owned.
The following patrons help keep the lights on. You can support DDComics on Patreon.
- Banes
- JustNoPoint
- RMccool
- Abt_Nihil
- Gunwallace
- cresc
- PaulEberhardt
- Emma_Clare
- FunctionCreep
- SinJinsoku
- Smkinoshita
- jerrie
- Chickfighter
- Andreas_Helixfinger
- Tantz_Aerine
- Genejoke
- Davey Do
- Gullas
- Roma
- NanoCritters
- Teh Andeh
- Peipei
- Digital_Genesis
- Hushicho
- Palouka
- Cheeko
- Paneltastic
- L.C.Stein
- Zombienomicon
- Dpat57
- Bravo1102
- TheJagged
- LoliGen
- OrcGirl
- Fallopiancrusader
- Arborcides
- ChipperChartreuse
- Mogtrost
- InkyMoondrop
- jgib99
- Call me tom
- OrGiveMeDeath_Ind
- Mks_monsters
- GregJ
- HawkandFloAdventures
- Soushiyo