Trike

Prey is the best Predator movie since Predator. I had a lot of fun kicking the legs out from under the anti-woke incels claiming “a girl with no training beat a Predator solo!” Like, here’s a thought, watch the movie to discover that, in the words of Luke Skywalker, “Amazing. Every word of what you just said is wrong.” 😝 As for alien skull thing, the xenomorphs are not endoskeletal or exoskeletal: they’re mesoskeletal. Which means they’re both endo and exo. Mesoskeletons have never been seen on creatures on our world as big as the xenomorph, relegated to tiny ocean polyps found on coral reefs, but I would put forward that such things are exactly why Science Fiction is so freakin’ cool. Many moons ago when Mary Doria Russell’s novel The Sparrow came out, someone on Usenet was extremely annoyed because the aliens in that book were unlike anything that existed on Earth. I asked him why he bothered to read SF at all, if all he wanted was to see things from Earth except bigger.

If they’re taking a write-off on this, then the movie has to be destroyed and never released in any form whatsoever. That said, in recent days there have been multiple screenings for cast, crew, and executives on the WB lot, so I am 100% confident this will get leaked online sooner rather than later.

I am loving it. The show is funny, and that stinger for the first episode was legit hilarious. Showrunner Jessica Gao is doing a masterful job integrating the comic book storyline with the existing MCU canon, a tricky line to walk that not many get right. (Looking at you, Falcon & Winter Soldier.) So far (two episodes), this seems based primarily on the Dan Slott run collected in She-Hulk: Single Green Female and She-Hulk: Superhuman Law from 2005ish. There are, however, some significant departures, so I can’t predict with certainty what’s going to happen next. Tatiana Maslany is easily one of the greatest actors ever, a point solidified during her run on Orphan Black where she played multiple clones raised in different countries who had to interact with one another. That in itself was impressive, but when she had to play one clone impersonating another clone and she did it in such a way that you could see the first clone’s personality coming through the one she was pretending to be… I mean, I don’t know what alchemy that was, but it’s the most incredible acting I’ve ever seen. That bit about Bruce on the spaceship makes me wonder if they’re setting up World War Hulk. Why else would he go back to Sakaar if not to meet his son, Skaar?

So far I like Symphony Control. It’s a little weird to hear a somewhat feminine voice coming from my old dude, but I rarely play with sound on anyway. After a break when we finished Frostfire I went back to listening to an audiobook as I soloed. My highest Symphony toon is now 17 and I quite like the look of these powers. Kudos to the animator(s) on that. Looks like that boss fight from Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Spoilers: The aggro thing though… hoo-doggies, that definitely changed things for me. My Controller could not initiate any fights without serious risk of being immediately taken out, especially on teams. Even then he was at high risk because everyone else on my team had the two sonic shields to mitigate damage. So yeah, folks were really getting a chance to use their rez powers last night. 😆 I switched to a lowbie Blaster for a while just to see how the aggro would fare there and it was a lot of edge-of-my-seat nailbitiing in the lower levels — which I’m not complaining about, but it was kind of sweaty after awhile, so I then switched to taking screenshots to chill out. Stalkers are my least favorite, so if it’s that bad for high-damage Blasters, I’m not sure I’ll be interested in taking them out much. On the whole it seems okay to me. I really like the new Symphony powers, and that’s 90% of what I care about. —— Edit: clarified that 17 is my highest Symphony toon, not highest overall. Despite my severe altitis I do have a couple 50s and several high-40s characters.

But it’s aluminum.

Some new ones I've made recently and a couple older ones. https://ibb.co/Q9X1pD2 https://ibb.co/bJ9kTzR https://ibb.co/2WNkfj2 https://ibb.co/8gwmVNV https://ibb.co/xFWsLWG https://ibb.co/r35f7Vx

Related: Someone in-game the other day bemoaned the fact that they were about to turn 30. I was like, "My young brother, when I joined beta I was 39." 😂 I would french kiss Stheno to be 30 again for just a weekend. 😘

Or have multiple icons. Dr. Warning ⚠️ Dr. Warning ⚠️ ⚠️ Dr. Warning ⛔️ ⛔️ ⛔️

Yeah, I definitely see Manticore as a Silver Age Green Arrow, with a bit of Dark Age angst thrown in. One of my favorite current writers is Tom Taylor and in one of the Injustice books he has an exchange between Harley Quinn and Green Arrow where she changes the name of the Arrowcave to the Quiver. Amusing little side moment.

What pattern is on the sleeves? Stars? It looks like a knit sweater in this pic.

Did anyone tote it up and average it out? I’m 57, btw. My grandmother just turned 108 and she’s doing fine. Weirdly, two of her high school classmates live in the same nursing home she does. I wonder what’s in the water there? They just celebrated their 90th (!!) high school reunion.

Related question: do we know the oldest being in the CoH universe? How about oldest member of each faction? Like, is Nemesis the oldest human? Is Stheno the oldest snake?

I do wonder how difficult it would be to create Technology/Science attacks of things like ice, fire, sonic, and mental powers. In the real world we have sound cannons, and the Klingons use sonic blasters. DC has a number of villains who use ice weapons, particularly Mr. Freeze and Captain Cold. DC’s Mad Hatter and Marvel’s Ringmaster use mind-control hats, and Marvel also has the brainwashing Serpent Crown, while the Penguin has his mesmerizing umbrella (also a heat ray umbrella). Jafar in Aladdin has a mind-control staff, as does Loki in the MCU. Then there are characters like Paste Pot Pete who have glue guns to immobilize foes. So it’s not like these types of weapons are unprecedented. The question is, how hard would it be to animate these things in the game.

Maybe a one-off level 50 mission: Contact: “Hey hero, remember back in the day when you beat up Frostfire and sent him to the Zig? Well, he’s out of prison now and looking for some payback. Oh, and he’s brought his big sister along to even the odds. Her name is Firefrost.”

Feels relevant somehow: https://ibb.co/0jPT2PP

Just want to point out that barely 250,000 of those are mine.

…and now I have to create yet another alt called Name Sniper.

I also play mostly soundless. I don’t find that the audio adds much to the game in most instances, although I have always appreciated the fact that footfalls vary depending on the surface, a detail few games include. The various sound glitches while teaming can be aggravating, and as others have said, some sounds are just unpleasant. So hearing those constantly, and often overlapping with multiple toons with the same powers, can lead to migraines.

Going back to the original question, are there any human immortals? Or “potential immortals”, barring death by misadventure? I like srmalloy’s distinction between “unaging” and “undying” versions of immortality. Undying implies godlike abilities to recover from any injury, even complete dissolution, a la Dr. Manhattan, or a creature incapable of being so destroyed due to godlike invulnerability. I assume a purely human immortal is impossible, given our built-in senescence, but a near-human mutant with a healing factor might suffice to fit this category. (And a male who passes on his unaging + undying ability would effectively result in an entire planet of immortals, something I don’t think the writers of Wolverine have ever pursued. Technically a female immortal (X-23/Laura, Wolverine’s female clone) would eventually accomplish the same, but she could only bear one child per year, while a man could impregnate several women per day.)

So taking this all into account, is the ultimate takeaway that a nictus is effectively immortal if it manages to find a new host every decade? Related: I’m not up on nictus lore; can they take over an unwilling host? If so, that makes their immortality fairly assured.

My favorite mission arc is the Keith Nance doppelgänger one. My favorite *map* is the Frostfire finale one. I never tire of slippin’ around and skating down that ice ramp. That said, I am curious about some of these others, such as the Dark Astoria one. I haven’t played that in over a decade, so I’d like to give it a go. What’s the first contact there?

https://ibb.co/pz6tcZR https://ibb.co/DWMT7mz https://ibb.co/tb4CDSz

https://ibb.co/mcpVrk3 https://ibb.co/gPC4xbH https://ibb.co/BwmqtVz

Lots of us have been using DeviantArt since way back, but today I was organizing my various favorites folders and came across these two concept pieces. Uploaded in 2015, but I have no idea when they were done. Click the link to see them full size. I’d love to see CoH using Unreal 5 or similar. https://www.deviantart.com/scribblepadstudios/gallery https://ibb.co/pQhF273 https://ibb.co/cvXFnRC

Or a mug with all the icons circling it, maybe in a spiral for design pizzazz. I'd buy that for a dollar! (Or ten.)