@Arkandel Agreed 100%. People weren't 'tired of superheroes' before when Daredevil and Elektra and Batman and Robin came out. They were tired of bad superhero movies, just like they got tired of bad sci-fi movies at one point.
To totally mug Field of Dreams and leave it bleeding in an alleyway: If you write it well, they will come.
@Arkandel Pretty much. Although I am a DC fan at heart and will always be, right now I trust Marvsney's vision for its cinematic universe over WarDc.
And to think that this could have been DC, when Disney was eyeing it for purchase way back in the day... sigh
Ah well. Maybe one of the next Marvel phases will include Kamala Khan's Ms. Marvel or the Young Avengers. That would be cool, especially if they have a good America Chavez.
@Jaded That's one of the ones I missed, but I've heard great things about it.
@Arkandel said in Good or New Movies Review:
it was the first superhero film which juggled so many characters successfully and did them justice at the same time
Man, if this wasn't Disney/Marvel's "Watch how you do it right " to DC/Warner Brothers, I don't know what it was. Dawn of Justice tried to juggle three characters and two villains and it failed so hard...
Disney having the Force Awakens, Zootopia, Jungle Book and now Civil War up there in the 90%+ range versus WB's Pan and Dawn of Justice hovering around the 28% mark (WB was counting on Pan to be its new Harry Potter, and DoJ is their cinematic DCU kickoff) .... it's going to be a very tough year for WB/DC if Suicide Squad doesn't perform well. Pan was a financial flop and Dawn of Justice under-performed by WB standards, failing to break the billion.
I had hopes for "Wonder Woman", seeing how Jenkins gets the character... but the writer assigned for that is the man behind such gems as "Pan" and "Ice Age 4," and it is being produced by Snyder, so... abandon all hope. Gadot was pretty fantastic in her brief appearance, and Jenkins loves the character, but a terrible scriptwriter and the taint of Snyder may doom my favorite heroine 
I'm on two consent-based MU*s, and I honestly would love to be on a system-based one. An original setting- or at least a non-DC/Marvel setting would be refreshing as well, populated entirely by OCs.
I know that Empire Bay tried to do this, but the fact that they only have one active staffer, the headwiz being around only on Saturdays or so, kind of kills the place for me. I @mailed the headwiz concerning an issue with the system (a missing extra I needed for proper statting) that I had +requested about four weeks ago... but was never contacted about it, nor was I ever @mailed nor the job was ever commented on. The headwiz never got back to me, even after I sent a second @mail to point out that the job was no longer listed, but there were no @mails nor contacts explaining -what- actually happened to it... and since he's the only one with the power to approve sheets...
Yeah, I stopped logging there after that, it kind of showed me what sort of wasteland I'd be investing my time in. So...
System-based OC superhero RP... with a staff that's actually responsive.
I don't mean to brag, but...
Who the fuck am I kidding? I mean to brag.
Having to cancel a recital I was really looking forward to perform because I basically spent two weeks coughing and hacking due to sickness, and now I have to wait a comparable (if not longer) amount of time for my poor vocal cords to be recovered enough to even try to sing for sustained periods of time.
It's times like these that I envy people who have their instruments on the outside of their bodies.
@Jaded I've noticed my skype tends to crash at bizarre times, usually when I'm pasting text onto it. Not always when I've pasted text, but every time it has crashed it has been because of it.
SOMEHOW, I managed to lose a cell phone between exiting my job, walking twenty feet in an open parking lot to get into the car, and then walking twenty or so feet to get to my apartment, and it is MAGICALLY nowhere to be found.
Grrrrrr.
I post on my wall concerning the latest American Family Association nonsense. I make an off-the-cuff mention that I find it ridiculous that people who live by myths and fairy tales want to impose laws on the rest of the world based on those myths in order to make relationships and people they donât like illegal.
Christian apologist jumps at me and basically says I am attacking and demonizing all Christians.
Puzzled me inquires as to why, considering the context of my post was exclusively focused on the AFA, Focus on the family and similar organizations that want to make religion into law.
The answer? Because I apparently consider religion as nonsense, I am attacking and demonizing Christians everywhere. I will reiterate- here is a grown man who basically considers any dissenting opinion concerning their beliefs⌠an attack, and bigotry. And called me a bigot for it.
Whatâs even more precious is when I turned the tables on him and proceeded to point out that, as a Christian, if anyone came up to him and tried to convince him that they believed in Zeus, or Mazdra, Ganesh or fairies, he would regard their beliefs and wrong and, in many cases, nonsense. Because Christian doctrine is monotheistic and therefore regards all other religions as false.
Congratulations, I told him. By your own definition, youâre a bigot. I havenât heard from him yet.
Itâs Monday morning- I shouldnât be craving a shot of Baileyâs.
@Arkandel I regularly have to be pulled back from balconies whenever my character casts a flight spell.
@Coin they had better not catch you rolling 20s, that's all I'm sayin'.
Do you bike?
I don't ask this as a "gotcha" question. I ask it because often, these sort of things are a perception issue.
You are much, much, much more likely to notice misbehavior on a bicycle if you are directly affected by it (like, say, while you're driving), much the same way that I am much, much, much more likely to notice misbehavior by a driver because I'm super squishy and hyper aware of my fragility when it comes to cars.
This is the main reason I insist that stupidity transcends vehicle type; saying otherwise is ignoring the other factors and points of view. Conversely, you'll never hear me say, "Cyclists are better behaved!" because we're not. Hell, the one joke I made that got all this started was about how cyclists could misbehave.
I do bike quite a bit, actually- or did until two weeks ago. I have (had) a Schwinn Voyageur, but it got stolen two weeks ago from the bike rack in front of a friend's apartment building. I usually adhere to the rules of the road in an almost anal-retentive way because I don't want to be squished 
Over here in my state, there seems to be an epidemic of cyclists who fragrantly disregard the rules of the road. I regularly see them riding two to three to four abreast, even on major streets instead of riding single file... because I guess you just have to have that cycling buddy chat. I see more cyclists willingly ignoring Stop signs and engaging in traffic tomfoolery because they think they can get away with it due to their vehicles being small and very maneuverable- while disregarding that if you cross in front of a car who has the right of way and they're going 40MPH, all of that is worth diddly squat when it comes to peeling you off the road.
So, of course, when someone causes an accident because they're not following the rules of the road, the "Share the road!" people start screaming their heads off. But in my time driving in Colorado, I have seen more cyclists flagrantly breaking the rules of the road than I have seen drivers on average... and I live in a university town full of drivers from all kinds of states, and they usually lose their shit when Colorado does what Colorado does and hits them with insane weather during Winter and Spring (a season that should really be called "Surprise!" here).
There's something about the smooth lines of the bike that make people think they can behave like a vehicle and a pedestrian at the same time, while expecting to be treated like a vehicle. It's disconcerting.
And then, there's the "cool dudes" on motorcycles who like to swerve in between lines of cars going 70MPH on the highway because they totally can't die, right?
@Arkandel And here I always thought the seat would be determined by a feat of strength. I have made many fast friends while pile-driving them on the train... of course, they stop being my friends once the dizziness wears off.
@somasatori I guess the assumption was that, because I wasn't doing it as my day job, it wasn't my real job at all.
Mind you, in a way there's a reason for that assumption- because if you intend to make something your profession, people assume that you're going to be doing it as your main endeavor. Because some creative careers have specific obstacles that make that not an immediate "thing" to do right away as the only thing you do, it can seem to some people that it's just something you're doing on the side for fun instead of your vocation, if you catch my drift.
It's still rather irritating once you get asked about it for the millionth time, though.
âYouâre an opera singer but you still have a day job? So when do you plan to turn into a real opera singer?â
I know almost every opera singer gets asked this at some point or another. It doesnât make it any less irritating, though. Iâm honestly tempted to print out little pamphlets to carry with me so as not to waste time explaining that yes, while I am a professional and beginning to make a name for myself, unless theyâre independently wealthy or come from families that are independently wealthy⌠or have a spouse who makes a lot of moolah (mine canât work due to a disability, so Iâm the provider and sole source of income for the household), most singers need to find a job with steady employment (and benefits donât hurt either) because there will be seasons where youâre getting work out the wazooâŚ
And then thereâll be dry seasons where nobody seems to be casting for your voice type. Example: Iâm a lyric tenor who specializes in Mozart and the Bel Canto tradition. Two years ago it seemed like every company in the state was doing either Puccini (which, except for two operas, always requires a heavier, bigger tenor voice) or birazzo atonal modern crap or Russian operas (Russian composers liked their tenor voices big, meaty and screamy) so there wasnât really much worth auditioning for. You could always audition with out-of-state companies⌠but weâre talking hundreds of dollars in hotel costs, plane trips, audition costs (yes, that is a thing, many companies charge you to audition for them), so more often than not it is a huge gamble because there are more singers than roles floating around, and casting doesnât go to the best singer- nowadays it tends to go to whomever the stage director thinks looks the part, even if they are not that good a singer.
The music director doesnât get any input in casting in a lot of companies.
So what happens if you do a round of auditions but the stage directors prefer a tenor with cast-iron pecs and arms that look like theyâre smuggling cantaloupes- Who cares if he sounds like heâs trying to shit a porcupine when going for the high C if he looks great in his underwear? (Because opera is clearly not about the music, how silly!)
Yup, youâve just lost about a thou or more looking for work.
And thatâs why singers get day jobs. Because until (and if) you manage to get to a certain level where you arenât auditioning for houses but houses are asking you to come sing for them (and pay your way and housing), there is no way in hell youâre going to have a steady enough income.
Mind you, this isnât really the fault of the profession as much as the administrative side of the profession. Most opera houses havenât moved out of the 19th century in their thinking and the system still reflects the days when singers often depended on patrons to pay for their expenses. Most companies want to hear you auditioning live for them because of the unreliability of recordings (classically-trained voices donâtâ record well unless youâre using some top-of-the-line expensive mikes, otherwise a lot of partials are lost), which means traveling to them to get the gigs until they know you enough to recall what you sound like from memory when casting. Some companies are starting to hold joint auditions together in one location so singers donât have to basically go broke running from one place to another⌠but not enough are doing it right now.
And then you have the biggest mixed bags of all, the pay-to-sing âYoung Artist Programs.â Most of these programs advertise themselves as unique opportunities to work with professionals on the field under their training for x number of weeks while you put an opera or two together. You get charged tuition, room and board for these things (ranging from $2000 to $4000), but companies love to see that shit on your resume when youâre auditioning. Even if a large number of them are vanity projects that wonât teach you much that you canât pick up by just doing productions yourself.
There are some that are worth it. One of them is a Colorado Springs program that is dirt cheap by comparison⌠for three weeks and the cost of $1200, and you get to work with fantastic professionals, coaches and the like (two summers ago, one of the voice teachers had just come back from Germany singing with Renee Fleming in a major production of Faust). The woman who runs it is a bona fide ex-star of the Met and the international stage, and she actually cares about the singers. So there are good programs out there, but itâs hard to find out which kind youâre in until itâs too late to get out. The opera administration side of things needs to get its ass into the 21st century⌠and hopefully it will before itâs the 22nd century
So⌠all of that is why some opera singers need day jobs.
Mind you, the money isnât bad when itâs there- I basically got paid a nice amount for two one-hour rehearsals and two one-hour performances, but the frequency and cash flow of the gigs aren't enough yet to justify throwing caution to the wind.
⌠well, looks like I needed to get a lot off my chest, huh?
