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Marvel Roundup (12/12/12)

Laura Maier
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Marvel Roundup (12/12/12)

Marvel NOW! continues to reboot- er, reintroduce- our favourite characters, and this week sees the release of Cable and X-Force #1. Not in any way related to Uncanny X-Force, this sees Cable reuniting with Domino and Hope, and picking up Colossus, Forge and Dr. Nemesis. And lest we be tricked into thinking that they’ll be a squeaky-clean super-team…

Pictured: Cable blasting his uncle Havok, leader of the Uncanny Avengers, in the face
Pictured: Cable blasting his uncle Havok, leader of the Uncanny Avengers, in the face

Also debuting this week is Avengers Arena #1, in which a bunch of Avengers Academy students, the Runaways, and a few other kid heroes to round out numbers, must fight to the death on an isolated island at the whim of the villain Arcade. For some reason, I thought this was a great idea, until the harsh reality hit me that a lot of characters I love will die. Starting as they mean to go on, they wipe out one of my very favourite characters in the first issue. Not sure if want.

The Amazing Spider-Man, which released #699 last week, delays the arrival of the much-hyped #700 with The Amazing Spider-Man #699.1, an origin story for Morbius, the Living Vampire. It was a beautiful story, but seriously Marvel, get on with it! In Avengers Assemble #10, Bruce Banner and Tony Stark cut short their science battle to deal with possibly the biggest threat the world has ever faced- Hulk with a tummy ache.

Worse than it sounds.
Worse than it sounds.

The Richards family set off on their journey through time and space in Fantasic Four #2, having found suitable replacements for the four minutes they’ll be away.

You'd think he'd know better.
You’d think he’d know better.

Iron Man continues to track down the stolen samples of Extremis in Iron Man #4, which pits him against… a bunch of brainwashed and crazy superstitious blonde women. Creepy. And I’m not being sarcastic. Cap beats some sense into Bucky in Winter Soldier #13, and Kaine gets into the Christmas spirit in Scarlet Spider #12. And in Wolverine #317, Logan has a heart-to-heart with the Dreaming Woman, a psychic/telepath currently in diamond form.  She’s like Emma Frost, but with clothes!

In other universes, Jean Grey faces her destiny in Age of Apocalypse #10, but does she know the full story, or is there something the Purifiers are keeping from her? Spoiler: of course they’re keeping things from her, duh. Marvel Universe vs. Avengers #3 sees our heroes forced to work with Doom to stop the rage virus, but is Doom doing this for completely benevolent reasons, or does he have a hidden agenda? Spoiler: of course he has a hidden agenda, he’s Doom. X-Treme X-Men #7.1 returns Dazzler to her home dimension, but what will she think of the events that transpired in her absence? Spoiler: she’s not particularly fond.

 Which brings us to Dark Avengers #184– which follows, not the awesome characters I liked and hoped it would, but the ones I thought were as lame as it’s possible to get. And you know what? It’s brilliant. Toxie Doxie, Ragnarok, AI Apaec, Trickshot, Moonstone, Warden Walker, and the one good character Skaar, find themselves teleported to a parallel universe where the big heroes of the Marvel universe are engaged in a turf war over New York. The Dark Avengers do much better without their real-world counterparts to outshine them, and the gang war is pretty epic to watch.

 

Apocalypse Wow! Doomsday Myths Busted

Matt Geary
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Apocalypse Wow! Doomsday Myths Busted
Was going to write a piece about the end of the world on Friday but someone has already done it for me… SCORE!

 

The following article was provided for us by Sam Moorhouse on behalf of Jacamo

 

The end of the year is usually a time for celebration, but in 2012 things have taken a darker turn – it seems everyone from the ancient Sumerians to modern-day UFO abductees believe the world is coming to an end before the month is out. Let’s take a look at some of these doomsday predictions and see if we can separate fact from fiction:

 
DOOMSDAY IMAGES-11. End of the Mayan Calendar
 
The granddaddy of apocalyptic predictions, this one’s based on good old misinterpretation with a bit of dud info thrown in. The Mayan Long Count Calendar cycle comes in 394-year b’ak’tuns, or cycles, and it was believed that on December 21st we’re due for the end of the 13th b’ak’tun – which would leave the Mayan calendar showing a long line of zeroes, a bit like the odometer on your car resetting (or the Y2K bug – remember that?).
 
However, unlike their gloomier cousins the Aztecs – who practically looked forward to the end of the world – the Maya had no apocalyptic myths and believed the end of the cycle merely brought a time of transition. What’s more, in May this year archaeologists released new details about the oldest known Mayan calendar, which revealed historians had been wrong all along – there are 17 b’ak’tuns in a cycle, not 13. Looks like we’ll be going B’ak’tun the Future for a while yet.
 
2. Infinite complexity and the I-Ching
 
DOOMSDAY IMAGES-2Scholarly shaman and mushroom connoisseur Terence McKenna came up with this little beauty in the 1970s, after applying a fractal function of his own devising to the I-Ching, an ancient Chinese method of divination. According to McKenna, the system predicts that the universe will reach a point of “infinite complexity” on December 21st, 2012, at which point everything possible will happen simultaneously.
 
The system does appear to show times of “great novelty” (read: “stuff happening”) that spookily aligns with historical events such as the fall of the Roman Empire and the two World Wars. However, McKenna’s theory is slightly undermined by his claim that it was revealed to him by an alien intelligence after imbibing psychedelic plants in the Amazon jungle.
 
3. Comets of the Bible Code
 
DOOMSDAY IMAGES-3People were looking for hidden words in the Bible long before Dan Brown arrived on the scene, going all the way back to the Hebrew tradition of Gematria. In the 1970s, Israeli mathematician Eliyahu Rips claimed he had used a computer to find encoded messages in the Book of Genesis. This was expanded upon by Michael Drosnin in his 1997 book The Bible Code.

Bible Coders ever since have been busy predicting all kinds of things, including a nuclear attack on Israel in 1996, a world war in 2006, Mitt Romney winning the 2012 presidential election and, yes, an Earth-shattering comet sometime in 2012. Remember World War 2006? Us neither.

 

 
4. Collision with ‘tenth planet’ Niburu
 
DOOMSDAY IMAGES-4When they weren’t busy inventing the wheel and written language, the Sumerians and Babylonians developed an incredibly advanced system of astronomy – and according to Zecharia Sitchin, an author who believed the ancient civilisations were in contact with aliens, they knew about the existence of a tenth planet.
 
However, it wasn’t until 1995 that Wisconsin woman Nancy Lieder suggested that this planet, called Nibiru, was on a collision course with Earth. She actually claimed it would hit in 2003, but when that didn’t happen, conspiracy theorists conveniently tied it in with the end of the Mayan calendar on December 21st instead.
 
5. Magnetic pole reversal
DOOMSDAY IMAGES-5Around 800,000 years ago, north was actually south. That’s a science fact. This is because the magnetic poles of the Earth reverse themselves every so often, which geophysicists think is a result of the flow of liquid iron in the planetary core. In fact, magnetic north has been moving by about 40 miles annually in the last few years – much faster than the 10 miles a year in the early 20th century.
 
An especially fast pole reversal – one disaster theory that had a starring role in the movie “2012” – could certainly cause tsunamis, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions that would mean curtains for the human race. The good news is that it just doesn’t happen, or at least, it’s never happened in the Earth’s 4.5 billion-year history. So NASA says, anyway, but what do they know?
 
6. Vengeful Hindu god
 
DOOMSDAY IMAGES-6Prince Lord Kalki, the tenth and final avatar of Vishnu, is foretold to appear at the end of our current epoch (called “Kali Yuga”). According to the Hindu religious text Vishnu Purana, he will appear on top of a white horse with a sword of fire, ready to purge the world of evildoers and usher in a new age of enlightenment.
 
The date of the arrival of Kalki varies according to who’s calculating it, but some sources believe it was due to happen in early 2012, when the moon, sun, Venus and Jupiter entered the same astrological sign. However, if he does arrive, the avatar of Vishnu may find he has competition from around a dozen other people in the world who already claim to be Lord Kalki.
 
7. The Ascension
 
DOOMSDAY IMAGES-7Worrying about the Rapture is so last year, after American Christian broadcaster Harold Camping spectacularly failed to predict the date the faithful would be taken to Heaven. Now all the cool kids are looking forward to the Ascension, courtesy of an extraterrestrial entity named Ashtar who has been channeling messages to his followers since 1952.
 
According to believers, a world leader will soon disclose that we have been in contact with beings from other galaxies for some time, before the planet enters a time of great upheaval and followers have their inner frequencies raised until they pass vibrationally into the fifth dimension. As you do.

Ted (Film) – 7GPPs

JodieAvo
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Ted (Film) – 7GPPs

Straight to the Point: I am a big fan of anything Seth MacFarlane related, and this film is a brilliant mish mash of adult humour,  big kid behaviours, and the on-going war of “bros before hoes”; frustratingly hilarious.

Ted (2012) was directed by Seth MacFarlane and as a result of a childhood wish, John Bennett’s life is changed forever when his favourite toy, Teddy, comes to life; a true friend finally. All grown up, John (played by Mark Wahlberg) and Ted (voiced by Seth MacFarlane) are still the best of friends and have become pot smoking wasters. John has found a long term girlfriend, Lori (played by Mila Kunis) who puts up with the playfully annoying pair.

After a night out, everything comes to a boil where John is faced with an ultimatum from Lori: the bear moves out or else. Now, here is where my blood starts to simmer. The mix of bromance and romance is starting to tip out of balance, and it seems to be falling on the side of romance. At this point I start to scream at the TV, loud and with a fearsome roar “BROS BEFORE HOES JOHN!!!”

Aside from the frustrating hatred that is starting to flower in the back of my brain for Lori, (how dare she break up thunder buddies!) the film has wonderfully funny moments, including the song which has gone viral, “thunder buddies” that I must admit, when hearing it first, I couldn’t stop laughing at. Swearing so frequently, they may actually have Tourettes and an unhealthy fascination with flash Gordon, the dynamic duo has a friendship that can last through anything. Or can it?

While not the strongest of storylines, the raunchy jokes, and the subtle references to Family Guy makes up for it a little. Ted has a fantastic personality and the friendship bond that John and him share reminds me a little of  myself and my best friend. They can say anything to each other and even fight at times but after all that, they are still best friends.

The movie seems to scream the message of friendship from the rooftops and even the person who stood in the way of this bond in the first place ends up bringing them back together; because that is how it should be. I shout at the screen once more “BROS BEFORE HOES JOHN!!!” and this time, I think he may have heard me.

All in all Ted is a fun and mindless romp and I would recommend a viewing, not because of the storyline, which is as flaky as the life Ted and John are living, but because of the sense of humour we all love so much. If you like Seth McFarlane and Family Guy you will love this Movie.

 

The Walking Dead: Season One Review – 9GPP

Andrew Corban
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The Walking Dead: Season One Review – 9GPP

Straight to the Point –This outstanding series packs a real emotional punch plus its superb narrative is some of the best in any video game I have played which makes it my Game of the Year

There have been many great games this year; I have enjoyed forging medieval empires in Crusader Kings 2, slow motion shoot dodging in Max Payne 3 or saving the galaxy as Commander Shepherd in Mass Effect 3 but my game/series of 2012 by a long way is The Walking Dead.

The Walking Dead is a five part episodic series based on the popular comic book franchise and these episodes have become widely admired, as the season has progressed, for their tremendous storytelling and the emotional punch of the decisions they force you to make.

walking-dead1

You play as former university professor and recently convicted murderer Lee Everett; who at the beginning of episode one survives a car crash on his way to prison in Georgia during the first few hours of the zombie apocalypse. Soon after this he comes across and befriends a young eight year old child called Clementine who has been surviving alone in her tree house after her babysitter met a nasty end. At this early stage of the first episode you are introduced to the standout feature of this series, the difficult choices the game will make you decide on, when Clementine asks you about her parents and if they are still alive. You have the option of consoling her about what has happened, keeping her spirits up by saying they may be alive or bluntly telling her that they will not be returning. All of this is being said to an eight year old girl as civilisation crumbles around you, no punches are being pulled.

The series does a great job of constantly throwing up these tough decisions, normally with only a few seconds to decide which response or decision to take. You must choose between sticking to your morals or being pragmatic and are never given an indication of which are right or wrong, making them simply different decisions each with their own consequence in both the short and long term.

However, these decisions do at times only give what I would call the illusion of choice as some events are fated to happen regardless of choice. It didn’t comes across as an issue or that it detracted from the story of Lee, Clementine and the other survivors but it did seem a pity that the storyline did not branch off more based on your decisions. The choices I was forced to make did nevertheless make it my story and it has not disappointed. After some of these decisions I would think about them afterwards, trying to think was it possible to have changed the outcome if I had chosen a different option. The decisions and events were still powerful moments, especially when offered mere seconds to make them, and they are emotionally charged as I had to on several occasions put down the controller and walk away from the game for a while to get my head round it, and after one especially difficult decision, to actually come to terms with what had just happened.

Walking-dead2

Throughout all five episodes you will meet a varied cast of survivors and must deal with the clashes of personality and power struggles between them, especially as the ongoing horror of what is happening in the world around you truly hits home as it changes or even breaks them. The decisions you make plays a crucial role in how those characters perceive you which in turn affects if they will assist or hinder you in later episodes. The only issue I really had was that some of the characters and their back story were  sadly undeveloped, especially what exactly had happened with Lee that resulted in his conviction for murder.

Outside of the interactions with the other survivors lies the games main relationship, that of Lee and Clementine. She isn’t a feisty child genius or streetwise comedy sidekick; she is just an eight year old girl but one you feel protective of and emotionally attached to as Lee shepherds her through the dangerous journey across Georgia. It’s not just protecting her from zombies or other survivors directly, there is the looking after her by deciding if you will teach her to shoot and defend herself, or how you react when she asks if she has a “say” in the group. This  all builds up into how she perceives you and how your relationship develops and the last episode has some very emotional scenes between the two. It helps that I found the voice acting of both Lee and Clementine  excellent which was also true for all the other characters, it is hugely important in a game such as this for the actors to convey the dialogue meaningfully, which on the whole they succeed at doing.

walkingdead-3

The Walking Dead comics have a very recognisable art style which Telltale games do a good job of recreating. There are some technical issues with the graphics; the game has noticeable issues during some cut scenes with the game straining to merely chug along but this problem diminished as the season progressed.

My biggest issue with the game is that outside of the powerful story there is the lack of much meaningful gameplay; don’t expect fiendishly hard puzzles to tax you nor intense action against the hordes of zombies or other survivors you come across. The puzzles seem to be fairly straight forward while the action sequences rely more often than not on Quick Time Events. They are enjoyable enough, can be quite tense and keep the story progressing but it seems a shame they weren’t elaborated on further but that probably wasn’t so easy to do within the episodic model.

This leads me onto one of the best successes of The Walking Dead: Season One, the episodic nature of the game means it never out stays its welcome. I would eagerly await the next installment , an easily digestible two to three hours meaning plenty could be packed in without the need for filler and it does a great job of avoiding having the series treading water. The first episode was released seven months ago; I have been talking about it with family, friends and co-workers ever since and much longer than any other game I ever played before.

The Walking Dead: Season One is an emotional and at times harrowing experience, the choices it forced me to make still stick out in my mind as some of the most difficult in any game I have ever played. Telltale Games have faithfully created an excellent homage to the Walking Dead comics, doing the licence justice but have also created a series which has raised the bar for video game storylines and is easily my game of 2012.

 

 

More Stargate Universe?

Becca Harper
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More Stargate Universe?

Okay so I’m very excited here’s why, yesterday David Hewlett aka the annoyingly lovable Rodney McKay from pretty much all versions of Stargate tweeted the following:

More Stargate Universe? A film maybe? Well he later added this:

Which I think pretty much confirms a film which I’m going to speculate will be an appropriate ending to the SGU Stargate Universe, which may include some Atlantis action but wait, what if some if SG1 are also in it…okay I think I’m getting carried away, but for good reason.  I was very sad when SG1 ended I am a huge fan, I even own a crystal prop from the show I purchased at a con many years ago. When SGU first hit our screens I will admit I was all geared up to love it. Unfortunately it quickly became a chore, a series I had to watch because it was Stargate, but I frequently found myself day dreaming about redecorating and only tuning into about two thirds of the episodes the whole time wishing a good old fashioned Goa’uld would pop up.  

Then it surprised me and started to get better and, more importantly, interesting. Suddenly within a couple episodes I actually wanted the crew to survive, except for Camille, she was just a pain in the backside. By the time the final episode aired I was actually sorry to see it go and even joined the ‘bring back SGU’ Facebook group. It ended with me wanting more.

All hopes of a SGU film seemed to be dashed back in April 2011.  At the official Stargate convention in Vancouver Stargate writer Brad Wright addressed the audience saying “We just recently found out that the SGU movie is not going to happen, it took too long.  We just couldn’t get it together in time, and the window has closed.  It’s actually sad for me, because after 17 years, I’m cleaning out my desk tomorrow morning.” cue a thoroughly deflated audience with tears in their eyes.

Though Hewletts tweets give us all a little hope,  I would point out that there has been no official confirmation and there is always the possibility that Hewlett is using the sets, which he bought and stored when SGU ended, for a different sci-fi based film project, so keep your fingers crossed geeks. Stargate may be back.

telc
Teal’c and me? Indeed

The Future of the Bat: How two filmmakers and a Warner Bros. executive can make or break the Batman series

TheSlasherJunkie
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The Future of the Bat: How two filmmakers and a Warner Bros. executive can make or break the Batman series

imageAny of the writers at Geek Pride can tell you that my specialty is movies. What they can’t tell you is that my specialty, more specifically, is film adaptations. Classic literature, contemporary novels, comic books, video games, things of this nature. It goes back to when my uncle Rusch showed me the Batman Animated Series at age four. I’ve worshiped Batman ever since, and few filmmakers have affected the franchise more than Christopher Nolan.

Nolan doesn’t write his own work. He never has. His primary writer is usually his brother, Jonathan. His first three films, the ones that got him the job on Batman, were psychological thrillers. “Following” deals with obsessions, “Memento” deals with memory, and “Insomnia” deals with, well, insomnia. Between “The Dark Knight” and “The Dark Knight Rises”, he did “Inception”, dealing with dreams. One would think that he had a degree in psychology. Interestingly, the project that got him involved was written by an unknown writer of a well known series.

David Goyer is best known for his work as the writer of the Dark Knight Trilogy, but before that he wrote the Blade trilogy, even directing the much-despised “Blade Trinity”. Blade tells the story of a Marvel antihero, a human-vampire hybrid, that was introduced in the “House of Dracula” series. Yes, Blade was a Marvel character. Goyer chose to recover from “Blade Trinity” with “Batman Begins”, his reboot of the Batman franchise. Warner Bros. wanted to reboot it, as they had messed it up oh, so terribly.

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taken from http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000318/

“Batman and Robin” came out in 1997, while “Batman Begins” came out in 2005. With “Batman Begins”, we saw an edgier version of Batman. We saw the Batman of today’s comics on the screen, and people loved it. It was dark, it was creepy, it was mean. What Warner Bros. loved- it was edgy. It sold like hot cakes, so they knew they had something good, and it showed even more so five years later with 2008’s “The Dark Knight”. “Batman Begins” earned its PG-13 status, but “The Dark Knight” bordered on an R. It was everything that we saw before, and so much more. We saw evil fighting back, and we loved it. Nolan and Goyer did too, but they had no idea where to go with it. Because of this, Nolan worked on “Inception” while Goyer wrote the script for the final film of the trilogy, “The Dark Knight Rises”.

What Goyer was able to do was combine the events of the first film, in which Batman single handedly takes down Ra’s Al-Ghul and his League of Shadows, with the comic arc “Knightfall”, doing what Goyer did best, and fixing Burton’s mistakes with great characters. The Joker that Goyer and Nolan used in “The Dark Knight” was a vast improvement from Jack Nicholson’s in 1989’s “Batman”, and the dynamic duo did the same thing with Bane. In “Batman & Robin”, Bane was nothing more than a goon of Poison Ivy. In every other medium, Bane is the most vicious and calculating enemy that Batman had ever faced.

In “Knightfall”, Bane sets loose the inmates of Arkham Asylum to wear out Batman, in an attempt to prove his superiority, ultimately succeeding.. Goyer was able to tie this with the events of the first film, making Bane a League of Shadows reject, teaming up with Ra’s’ daughter, Talia, in a successful attempt to take over the city. This combination allows for one last hurrah, and a neat way to wrap up the series.

In the final moments of the film, you see Bruce Wayne “die” (not really. He fakes his death so that he and Selina Kyle can have a life in Italy), turning his mansion into a Boys’ Home and handing the Batcave (logically, the cape and cowl as well) to former GCPD cop Jonathan Robin Blake. Yes, Robin. He’s more or less a combination of the three main Robins (Dick Grayson was an orphan that would later become a cop in Bludhaven, Jason Todd grew up on the streets and Tim Drake found out Bruce’s secret using his remarkable gut instinct), and we never know what he does with the Cave. This is where things get interesting.

Warner-Bros-Pictures-postWarner Bros. has talked about rebooting the series (again) since before “The Dark Knight Rises” hit theaters, and there are a couple of ways they could go about this. Based on the fact that Christopher Nolan is producing the upcoming “Man of Steel” (clearly the reboot of Superman), WB obviously wants it to be in the same vein, yet stay fun. This is Superman, after all. Hence why Nolan is merely producing. The director is none other than Zack fucking Snyder.

Snyder is a household name, with only 4 films under his belt. His feature film debut was the remake of “Dawn of the Dead”, followed by his adaptation of Frank Miller’s Graphic Novel “300”. After learning from the mistakes of “300”, he adapted his all-time favorite, “Watchmen”. He required every member of the cast and crew to read it, and there were so many copies on set that you can find a copy in two scenes- Hollis Mason’s Bookshelf when he gets beaten to death, and Nite Owl’s desk when he first has sex with Silk Spectre. It was after this that he made his first original piece, “Sucker Punch”, and then onto the original superhero.

Given what we know, Snyder is a bona fide nerd. Nolan isn’t a whole lot less of one. Snyder fits the bill perfectly for the directors chair, and Nolan has as much experience with superheroes, but why involve him? Realism is nice, logic is better, but Nolan is typically dark and brooding, not fun and energetic, unlike Snyder. Why combine these two? Simple- competition.

Nvidia giving away FREE copies of Metro 2033

Matt_Walklate
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Nvidia giving away FREE copies of Metro 2033

Attention PC gamers! If anyone out there hasn’t yet played the great Metro 2033 now’s your chance. Nvidia are giving out 1000 keys to download the game on Steam; Every day until Christmas Eve. EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. Presumably Nvidia is trying to drum up some interest for the franchise ahead of the release of Metro: Last Light, after the sequel was heavily delayed due to THQ’s problems of late, and let’s face it, this can only help the ailing developer further after the success of it’s Humble Bundle too. All you need to do to get your key is like Nvidia’s Facebook page, and keep your eye holes peeled.

Dust and Sand – Chapter 23 – By Sean P. Wallace

SeanPWallace
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Dust and Sand – Chapter 23 – By Sean P. Wallace

Chapter 23

Dust felt The Badlands stirring with interest as they ran to Claw of the Gods, a thousand eyes and consciousnesses giving them cautious initial glances and weighing up their options. The death of so many of their kin would always attract notice, let alone when he was the one to do it, and this attention gave Dust extra impetus to finish their business quickly.

Not that he needed any.

Naismith was behind him, her rifle in one hand and the torch he’d handed her flaming in the other. Ruining their night vision and giving their position away was unfortunate but having Naismith blind and defenceless was not an option. The fire showed her face had hardened with determination, the earlier tears were just a memory.

They were moving slowly and that was Dust’s fault. His legs were leaden and his lungs felt two sizes too small; recovering from his wounds had drained Dust good. He didn’t push himself for fear of emptying a well he might need to draw from soon. That and he trusted Shadows Fade to deal with anything that might come her way. Really, it was that comfort that allowed him to hold back.

It took them more than ten minutes to get to Claw of the Gods. The Spirit Wolf watched them with feral impatience as they clambered up to meet her then ran north the moment they crested the rise. She left the rifle in her wake. It dripped with the blood magic he’d felt before.

Dust wasn’t quite ready to start another sprint. “Woah there,” he wheezed.

It didn’t hear him. Naismith shouted “Hey! Wait!”

The Spirit Wolf turned and whined. It pawed at the earth again and kept looking north but stayed put.

“Are you alright, Dust?” Naismith asked.

He bent over, rested his hands on his knees. “Just need to… catch my breath.”

“Really?”

Her incredulity made him laugh, which didn’t help his breathlessness none. But he didn’t mind as he regarded Naismith with more endearment now despite her having the caused his troubles. Or, rather, because of it. That and her having shown another crack of decency beneath her spoiled shell.

“Really. Not even I can take a beating like that and come away Scot-free.”

“I… it is just that the stories suggest that you are invincible…”

He smiled and took a deep breath. Two more and he stopped wheezing. The tiredness washed through him, leaking out from his boots like piss.

“Course they do. Only two kinds of people tell stories about me, Naismith; those who survived me and those who’ve never met me. If they survived me, they exaggerate. Especially if I’ve handed them a beating. And if they’ve never met me, they make the story interesting as possible. No-one’s impressed by or interested in a man getting sore after a fight so that never comes up.”

She blushed. “I must confess that I hadn’t thought of it like that. Of course, that makes a great deal of sense.”

Dust stretched out and felt his bones creak. “You ready to go?”

“Yep.”

With that Dust started jogging toward Claw of the Gods, who broke into a sprint.

Seconds later, they ran past the bloody corpse of a small Mexican wearing cheap, dirty clothes, one with only the faintest hint of magic about him. He had a gun in each hand and most of his throat was missing, having been torn out by Claw of the Gods. Drag marks trailed away from his feet, suggesting that he had been killed elsewhere, perhaps from the vantage point he’d shot at Dust from.

“One down,” Dust said.

Naismith looked pale even in the light of her torch. She refused to look at the corpse.

They ran on, an amber spot on the dark night. More and more things watched them, scrying spells and supernatural senses bombarding the group like rain in a storm. A few eldritch creatures were nearby, their taint dancing on Dust’s own senses, but they wouldn’t risk stepping out into the open.

Just to be safe, Dust straightened and ran as normally as he could.

Soon they passed another harrier. This one was much taller and wider, a formidable man when he’d been alive. His arms were splayed out by his sides and he stared wide-eyed at the overcast night sky with his tongue lolling. A broken rifle lay by his side. Three stabs to the chest seemed to have done for him, Shadows Fade’s handiwork.

“That’s two.”

Dust noted that there wasn’t nearly so much blood soaked into the earth as there ought to be. He checked the wrists and saw deep, badly-tended cuts; he’d been bled before the fight and was probably the first one to die.

“Please, Dust,” Naismith said, her voice small and weak.

“What?”

“They were still men, despite what they did.”

“He willingly worked with people who worship the Triangle. And not even for faith but for money. He’s as bad as any monster we might face.”

Naismith couldn’t look at him, like he were the harrier’s corpses. “I don’t know if I can think like that.”

More unexpected softness. Though this time it was a weakness. “If you’re to take over the Solution, you’d better work out how,” he said, not unkindly.

GameOverCast Eps # 122 (Mature Language)

Matt Geary
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GameOverCast Eps # 122 (Mature Language)

 

New Gameovercast Podcast is online. Press the link below orrrrrr, as always, subscibe on I-Tunes to listen

 

Hello and welcome to Episode 122 of the GameoverCast!

This weeks show is brought to you by Nijinsky, Radarhead, Gibson and Major Tom!

In games we talk MUCHO Planetside 2, Walking dead episode 5 (sniffle), Dayz Namalsk, Starcraft 2 and Family Guy…….

This week we also have a frickin awesome Planetside 2 Competition, we have the most awesome t-shirts, a Planetside 2 Man Bag, Planetside 2 Medallions and more to give away. Listen to find out how!

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Spike, VGA 10, and the everyday geek.

TheSlasherJunkie
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Spike, VGA 10, and the everyday geek.

It’s interesting to think how far geeks have come in the last 25 years. We went from being the social outcasts to the cool kids. I didn’t start knowingly watching Star Trek until people made fun of me for watching it and playing D&D (which I still don’t do, though I’ve been trying to start VTR), but now I get props for my Superman and Batman shirts. It’s truly bizarre, and this has been demonstrated via Spike TV.

I remember coming home from school and seeing my mom watching reruns of “Highlander” followed by TNG reruns on Spike. Later on, watching CSI: reruns followed by episodes of “The Ultimate Fighter”. Friday nights would be occupied by “MANswers” and “GameTrailers TV”, and every year they would do the Scream Awards and Video Game Awards (VGA’s). This last one, recently hosted by Samuel L. Jackson and featuring musical appearances by Linkin Park and Tenacious D. The Scream Awards were never as popular as the VGA’s, mainly because the topics covered in the Scream Awards were never as popular as video games. Let me rephrase- comic books, horror, and sci-fi are less popular than video games. Take a moment. Let that sink in. How in the hell did that happen?!

 

Pic taken from http://siwhgk.wordpress.com/2009/06/02/its-not-so-bad-bein-trendy-geeks-as-hip-cats/

This is evidence to a subspecies of geek that I have only recently discovered- the geekus urbanum, or everyday geek. The everyday geek is much more casual than the geekus originum, or original geek, and thus is much more socially acceptable. They may watch Star Wars on occasion, or know Wells like the back of their hand, but more commonly they may only watch Star Wars a couple times and play Call of Duty for the online multi-player. They may watch Highlander once, but never again, and then wonder why it is so popular. They walk among us. They serve our coffee, pump our gas, stock our stores, even work on our television shows. There are only so many ways to tell them apart, but even they prove useless when applied. They rarely wear geek shirts, they don’t decorate their cars with geek references, and are dumbstruck when quizzed on the most essential science fiction and comic books. Terrifying as this sounds, there are as many of them as there are of us. Hell, some of them are probably reading this very article.

I don’t discriminate. Originum or Urbanum, I don’t care. We geeks were the social outcasts for decades, still are in many cases, and will always be the minority. We can’t judge or allow our membership to deem some “not geeky enough”, or even “too geeky”. The word itself is used as a badge of honor. The term itself started as a derogatory, referring to sideshow freaks. It was used in reference to schoolchildren in the 1950’s, and got rather stuck. Since then, it has gone to refer to any of us whose hobbies revolve around tv, movies, video games, tabletops, classics and comics. Be they writers, cosplayers, or just appreciators, geeks they are. The casual geek is merely a geek by definition, but they remain a geek. We should not forget the anguish of our forefathers, and the misfitting of many today, but embrace them! Educate them, aid in their evolution. I’m certain that we all had a mentor, someone who helped educate us.

We all know them, and we should help them. If they don’t want to, it’s okay. Nobody likes to have something shoved down their throats. Well, some do, but that’s just weird.

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