shameless plug

Okay, recently Jim has started a blog of his own (yay Jim!) Anyway he posted today in response to an email from a friend and as a way of shamelessly plugging his blog I will post part of my response here!

In reference to the death of imagination...

"This is a bit of a bitter and jaded argument. In so much as I agree with being angry at the Bats thing saying that there is no more imagination is unfair in the extreme. Imagination is "the mental creation of an idea or thought representative of a quality of uniqueness". As such it is NOT an entirely unique thought (if there even is such a thing on the grander scale). Take mythology for example - the story of Cinderella has been told in references to different cultures all over the world - before many of these cultures had any contact with one another. Why? If these cultures had met with eachother we would say that one culture had just adapted the story from the other (still imaginative in its own right), but that's not what happened. Perhaps we should look at the bigger picture of humanity. The stories we tell, no matter how fantastical, our stories of our experiences, of our lives, of what we perceive and observe. That's why so many myths hold similar themes and even plots and characters. Because despite the fact that you live in a different place or even time the human story is in so many ways the same. So perhaps there are no NEW stories, but there is still imagination, without that we would stop telling the story. Take Gregory Maguire for example, he's made a career out of the retelling of stories from a different perspective - Confessions of An Ugly Stepsiter, Mirror Mirror, Wicked..., and all these stories can offer us is a different perspective. In comics look towards Neil Gaimen and Bill Willingham - they both rely heavily on stories that have been told before to guide them as they tell us the stories from their perspective. It's not about the originality of a story because you will always find something else like it... it's about how it's told. It's about whether or not the story tells us."

Yay, shameless plugging :)

superhero quiz!

You Are Batman

Billionaire playboy by day. Saving the world by night. And you're not even a true superhero. Just someone with a lot of expensive toys!

What Superhero Are You?

more legion fun

Heh, check out Wildfire... this character creation thing is so much fun :)

ah, flight

Well what do you know, I've managed to invent my own flight ring!

Here's what Atlas City looks like from above!

Of course my flight ring isn't as cool as Dad's yet... I can only fly VERY slowly.

City of Heroes

My boyfriend picked up City of Heroes the other day (an online game) and as much as the game itself is somewhat entertaining the true greatness of this game is character creation. It's soooo much fun to make superheroes and their costumes. Let me introduce you to my character, Brainiac 5's kid, Brainiac 6! Her name would have to be Quelore Dox... I think she'll have to be a character when I run my Legion Aberrant game :) (no I don't know who the mother is =P)

This is a close up!

Then here's a shot taken when I was using my force shield (from my force shield belt of course!).

Anyway, I think she turned out nicely :) One day I'll get flight when I invent a flight ring!

cancellations

So our Abberrant game got canned :( Aparrently a majority of our gamer base (André and I not included) were not having fun with the game. So we were out voted and that's it =/ No more Tsunami or Valor for now. Since André was so bummed out about it I decided that once I was done running my L5R campaign I'd run a superhero game. However I refuse to use the Abberrant world because it reminds me way too much of the Marvel Universe (or at least what the Marvel U is in danger of becoming with this Civil War nonsense). I think it loses some key elements of the superhero genre such as:

1. Orgins. Part of the fun of the superhero world is the variety of zany hero and villian orgins. Abberrant, having come up with a technical reason for characters to have powers (very similar to the mutant gene in Marvel) loses out on this aspect of the genre. At least Marvel allows for the occasional Spiderman, Dr. Strange or Thor type character. In Abberrant ALL powers come from a biological mutation. There are no exceptions.

2. Aliens. There are no where near enough aliens in Abberrant. It's very disheartening considering some of my favorite characters (Starfire, Martian Manhunter) are aliens. I think the whole space epic is a part of comic book genre that deserves to be explored if you're going to role-play superheroes. There are also no amazons, robots, or sea-dwellers.

3. Awesome villians. Abberrant's villians are soooo two dimensional. Ever good superhero world needs villians like Brain and Mallah, Lex Luthor (in purple spandex!), Joker, Magneto... I could go on. Not to mention the fact that every good hero/hero group needs their own rogue gallery and with flat background villians, well, there's very little to work with.



So I've decided when I run my game that I may use some of the Abberrant system but I've decided to use 31st century DCN as my setting. Because nothing says super team fun like the Legion. I'd give my players two choices - they could either play Legionaires or Legion rejectees... and form a substitute Legion :) That way I could use characters and villains from the old Legion books and have a great backdrop built in. I'd use some of the core Legionaires as NPCs but I'd let the players get assigned to missions by themselves. I know if I was a superhero I'd want my chance to beat down Emerald Empress, Universo and Starfinger! I mean, who wouldn't?

Babs

You know what makes me happy? Barbra Gordon as Batgirl. I know that the recent issue of Birds of Prey may just be a cruel hoax. BUT with Cassie Cain out of the picture I am hopeful. I would be insanely happy if Babs was Batgirl again. I am probably setting myself of for severe disappointment, but hey, I'm a sucker.

Thank Goodness

Mr. Didio,

I would like to discuss your recent letter (found in Ion#4 among other books).

"I just happened to mention I wanted Nightwing to die in Infinate Crisis... I thought it was a funny story but boy did it piss people off. It seems that there is a huge (and as I found out, very vocal) fan base for Dick Grayson."

Wow Dan, just figured this one out, eh? The sheer amount of commentary on the comic blogs and forums alone in regards to Devin Grayson (as in hating her for messing with Nightwing) didn't tip you off? I'm not sure how that one passed you by, but hey, at least the powers that be squashed your death of Nightwing idea before you ended up tarred and feathered. Because believe you me, I would have showed up with the tar.



"My first reaction when I got my job was that he was redundant and had to go."

Redundant? Redundant how... isn't the fact that he was neither Batman nor Robin the same thing that made him unique? If he was filling the role of another character then yes, he'd be redundant... but heck, even Nightwing realized that he had grown beyond Robin and didn't want to be Batman. In fact that was the whole reason Marv Wolfman made him into Nightwing back in his Titans days - because Dick wanted to become his own man, his own kind of hero. Even Chuck Dixon covered that in Nightwing Year One.

Thank goodness the vocal fans of the DCN have once again (*cough* Manhunter *cough*) informed you of your mistakes. As much as your decisions seriously piss me off at least you listen to the fans. Nightwing will be in good hands with Marv Wolfman and hopefully with whoever follows him.

Now you just need to listen to those of us who are angry at the idea that you don't want Dick and Babs to get together. Somehow, at the rate you're going, I expect this won't be the last time you have angry fans chasing you around.

Thanks for your time. Please stop messing with our beloved characters. Batwoman is NOT an acceptable consolation prize.

~Cshiana