Search options (Page 45 of 57)

The British Men of Letters idea is still pretty cool to me.  The idea of a network of wards and sigils allowing them to track monsters before they do any damage is pretty sweet, but it sorta reminds me of how Europeans talk about (insert issue) working in their country and how the US could install their system to work better.

The problem is that England is the size of Alabama.  Warding "Every thoroughfare, every bridge, every dock, every airport" in England would've taken years.  It'd take decades in the US, even if they had an army of people doing it.  The British way is unquestionably the better way, but it's not exactly practical. 

I do really like the idea of a high-tech system tracking monsters before they do damage, though.  I'm curious to see how this is going to play out.  I'd love to see what the British MoL plan is.

Okay, we need an official timeline for this whole universe because when did Oliver have time to run off to New York with some "time historian" to dig up a submarine?  These crossovers are cool, and I love that the actors are willing to do them.  I thought the Felicity guest appearance on Flash was really genuine and cool, and I thought Oliver's part made sense from a character perspective.  But he's mayor and full-time solo vigilante on Arrow.  Taking a random trip would be harmful to both, and they don't really explain it.  He kept saying he was busy but apparently not too busy.

I didn't hate the premiere, but the show just doesn't do much for me.  I think I'm more excited to see Darhk and Thawne work together than anything else.  I still think Legends needed to be an anthology show.  They could be doing cool stories that the rest of the Arrowverse can't do.

Arrow, I think, was pretty good.  I'm liking these flashbacks more than previous ones, and I like the way the team is coming together.  I like Oliver's character a lot more this year, and Felicity has been more fun now that she's not carrying so much emotional baggage.  Considering the mess the Flash has been so far, I think Arrow might be the best of the shows right now.

As long as it wasn't someone with a laundry list of controversies, they would've won.  The problem with Cruz is that he turns people off.  It's a similar situation to Hillary, actually.  Hillary was unlikable before we even know anything about her.  She just turns people off.  It's the opposite of "it"

The way to beat Hillary is to let the attention be on her.  The only reason she's winning is that 100% of the attention is on Trump.  A boring Republican would beat her in a landslide because she can't divert attention anywhere.

And let's not pretend that Bill is any better than Trump.  They run in the same circles, and they both spent a ton of time with Jeffrey Epstein.  If Bill ran today, it'd be a ton of the same stuff.  But, again, I don't think he ever really wanted to be president.  I'm sure he loved the fame that came with it, though.

Wow....

You're watching this election, right?

MAKE THE MULTIVERSE HUMAN AGAIN.

My only thought is that speedsters work outside of normal physics.  So maybe they can't detect changes in time created by speedsters?  Only "traditional" time machines?

I think it's interesting that Republicans are going after Bill.  I think Hillary just used Bill for his charisma, and as soon as she's president, she has no further need for him.

SPECULATION ON THE MAN IN BLACK

*
*
*
*
*
*

There's a rumor that he's actually the same guy as William.  If you look at some hints, there's some indication some of the action takes place at a different time period:

- The head security officer said that an incident happened in the park 30 years ago.  The Man in Black says he's been coming to the park for 30 years.
- In the first episode, they show a run-down part of the building with escalators and a giant Delos corporation globe.  It looks like a lobby....suspiciously like the same lobby that William enters when he arrives at Westworld (shown at a different angle but similar).
- When William goes up the escalator, a promo for Westworld is shown with a retro-70s looking logo.  In the background of the lead writer's presentation this week, a different sleeker logo for Westworld is shown.  It could've easily been updated in 30 years.
- William is attracted to Dolores at first and the MiB indicates that they've had a history together that she never remembers.  The only other Host we've seen him with that has existed in the MiB storyline is Clementine (the Host at the brothel), and when they talked about getting rid of Maeve (the madam), they mentioned that Clementine would be promoted to the madam because she's been there before.
- As they are walking into town in the first episode, the Sheriff is recruiting people to help hunt down the killer from the first episode.  When William walks into town, it's a Union soldier recruiting people.  It could simply be that the Sheriff was malfunctioning and/or the killer storyline ended, but it could also be an earlier storyline that they did.

As far as I know, there's no evidence that directly disproves it.  The hardest evidence to argue about is the idea that the Hosts used to be pretty noticeable when they first started, but we don't really know how long the park has been in service.  There's a chance that the park has been around for 50 years, and the robots were perfected 20 years later.  That would leave the robots to be indistinguishable from humans in both time periods.  I've also seen people argue that the crazy prospector from episode 2 is proof that the robots *aren't* perfect in William's time.

Yeah, that's the crazy stuff to me.  Almost all this stuff is at least a decade old.  How did none of it come out during the primaries?

I don't believe most conspiracy theories, but the whole election (from start to finish) being orchestrated by the Clintons is one that makes sense to me. 

- Trump and the Clintons are friends and have been for a long time.
- Bill Clinton, according to several noted sources, is the one who convinced Trump to run.
- Many democrats reportedly voted Trump to help him win the republican primary
- The media holds on to all Trump-related negative stories until after the primary is over and it's too late for the Republicans to course-correct.
- Many of Trump's more-awful moments happened right after (or the same day) as Clinton's worst moments (he praised Saddam the same day as the Comey announcement, the Trump tapes came out the same day as the Clinton speeches)
- Trump hasn't released his taxes.  If Trump was paid any amount of money to run, that payment would show up in his taxes.  It's a point to make Hillary look strong and Donald look weak.
- Trump gets money, fame, notoriety.  Hillary gets to beat the only candidate that she could easily beat.

To be fair, they named him "James Olsen"

I think he needs to be killed off.  I like Mehcad Brooks as an actor, but he has zero chemistry with Melissa Benoist.  And they clearly don't know what to do with his character.

I think it'd be a lot of fun to do that.  Chaser9 (I think) and I plotted an episode guide for an entire 7-season run of Voyager at some point.  I really like my alternate season 6 of Supernatural.

There needs to be some consistency on how time works on these shows.  I don't think Supergirl did much of a time jump between seasons one and two, but Arrow definitely did.

Well, what's weird is that we're now in a third timeline.  There's the timeline where Barry became the Flash when he was older (not seen), the Season 1-2 Flash timeline where Thawne messed with everything, and now this new Flashpoint timeline.  And while they did a lot to show that things *mostly* happened the way that they were supposed to (they still took down Zoom, Reverse Flash, etc), there are still quite a few differences too. 

We're now in Fringe season 4 territory (which doesn't make me feel better) where we aren't really watching the same characters we've been watching this whole time.  Which does bother me.  I get making Barry pay for his mistakes, and hopefully this convinces him to stop time traveling.  But I thought this was a lesson Barry had learned already.  It's what makes Flashpoint so frustrating....Barry has *just* come to terms with his mother's death before he went back and saved her.

Oh absolutely.  If I were the Republicans, I'd have confirmed him yesterday.  I honestly don't know why they're not, especially with Republicans fleeing Trump left and right.  They're forfeiting the presidency, and they gotta know it's out of their hands.  Garland is their safest bet.

Okay, but embarrassment is one thing.  Would you rather send troops to Syria to fight Hillary's version of the Iraq War?  Do you want to restart the Cold War because Hillary wants to kill Putin's friend?  I'd rather be embarrassed than dead, and Hillary's more likely to get me killed.

People always use the nukes thing with Trump, but they seem to think we live in a world where the President has a big button on his desk with "NUKES" written on it.  To fire off a nuclear weapon, the president's command has to go through a handful of really smart people who are really good at their jobs.  Even if Trump wanted to nuke Paraguay because they made fun of him, there's a better chance Trump would end up impeached due to massive overuse of power than any missile would ever leave the ground.

Now restart the Cold War?  That's how nuclear devastation happens.

Well, to address some of your concerns:

- I don't know why we'd expect a guest star on a CW to show a great depth of character in one episode.  To compare Man of Steel's Henry Cavill to Superman in Supergirl is insulting to both mediums.  Of course Clark in MoS is a deeper, more structured character.  He'd absolutely have to be.  And while I agree that he's a bit cartoonish, I think that's absolutely what they were going for.  He's a fun Superman.  He's got things figured out, and he's content with it.  He's a "perfect" character that our heroine is supposed to be achieving to be.  And since he's not going to be a regular on the show (at least, not that I'm aware of), I think his role in the show is fine.

(Side note: I don't want this to turn into another psychoanalysis of Superman, but I still say Superman in this showed more personality with his one wink than he did in both movies of the DCCU.  Compare the wink to the crestfallen look he gives the people at the fire.  In both cases, Superman has saved the day - why not have some fun with it?  It's like Supergirl's Superman gets an (what I would think is a realistic) adrenaline boost from flying around, and Snyder's Superman gets a boost of painkillers.  Again, they probably went too far in this one, but there's a happy medium where a character can be layered and still be allowed to have fun).

I hated the James/Kara relationship, and I'm glad they're moving away from it.  I don't like this version of Jimmy - I think he's miscast (and not because he's black - because he's a freakin' male model.  Can they do a body-swap of James and Curtis?  I think Curtis' actor would play a better Jimmy Olsen).

The kryptonite thing is weird because it's been established in many versions of Superman that he *wants* people to have kryptonite in case he goes crazy.  It's possible that this version of Superman has never been affected by magic or red Kryptonite so maybe he's never lost control.  And I get that there's a difference between giving Batman a sliver of kryptonite and the DEO having a cache of weapons.  So while I think J'onn could've been a little bit more proactive about ensuring Superman that the weapons are safe, I think Clark was flipping out just a bit too much.

Oh and was that the first official use of "Gotham" in the Arrowverse?  I know they've mentioned Bludhaven a few times, but I wasn't sure if Gotham was ever actually referenced.

Question, re: Clark/Kara.  When there's a major space launch or event that they might have to immediately get called to rescue....why aren't they more prepared?  Kara was super excited to watch the launch of the Venture, and it doesn't seem like Clark was even paying attention to it.  You'd think either of them (or both) would've been suited up and ready to go...just in case.

No, I get that.  But stuff happens in TV.  One of the regulars could've died.  I'm sure the writers of 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter didn't expect John Ritter to die, but he did.  And they had to adjust.  And maybe John had to be fired to leave, but what if they'd run into a situation like ST:TNG faced with Denise Crosby?  I'm sure they had great plans for Tasha Yar, but they had to adjust.

(I know none of the actors are dead, even now, but it was possible).

Not to mention the fact that the show's longevity could've changed things.  Jared and Jensen on Supernatural, staying for over a decade, is the exception...not the rule.  Mulder and Scully both left X-Files.  Everyone but Tom Welling left Smallville. 

Maybe Jerry's movie career (which started/continued while he was still doing Sliders) could've taken off earlier.  Maybe Mission to Mars could've been a bigger success, and he'd want to get out of his contract then.  Maybe Sabrina still could've wanted to leave Sliders to go get a job working with Aaron Sorkin.  Maybe nostalgia could've forced JRD to leave and create a number of Sallah-based Indiana Jones spinoff movies.

If he hates the characters because they weren't his vision, that's fine.  But if he was in the same situation, for whatever reason, he would've had to have adjusted accordingly.  If it were me, I'd be more upset at what they did with *his* characters than what they did with creations of their own.

But that's just me.

Well, I think your part about Gordon is the problem.  Take the kidnapper, for example.  These shows don't show it, but there's going to have to be an investigation into that guy's death.  In the official report, it'd have to say that he was killed by the Green Arrow.  The kill could be justified - officers are forced to kill suspects all the time (*not* looking to get political on this issue ) but the difference is that those officers have to give detailed explanations for how that person died.  There, presumably, needs to be some sort of evidence to prove that the killing was justified.

For deaths that Oliver is responsible for, there's no follow-up.  Oliver isn't giving a detailed statement.  So the police, most of the time, I'd assume, won't be able to tell the difference between a guy Oliver shot to save Thea and a guy Oliver just walked in and murdered.  I think that's the primary reason for Oliver's "no kill" policy.  He went from a guy the police were always looking to catch to a guy that the police were willing to work alongside.

The reason why I give the example of the kidnappers is that he's a guy who was no match for Oliver.  Oliver had already beaten him when Oliver killed him.  The fight was over.  His justification for the murder wasn't the fact that he was a dangerous man - it was that he knew that Oliver could defend himself (and I'm not even sure that was enough for anyone to put two and two together that he was the Green Arrow).

It's the issue I see with any hero killing.  Batman killing the Joker is justified to me because he's a psychopath who will end up doing much worse if he's allowed to live.  Killer Croc is an even match for Batman, and if Batman needs to put him down to win a fight, then it's fine.  It's why I was okay with Superman killing Zod in Man of Steel. 

But a low-level thug should be taken care of and incapacitated if no one else is in danger.  Otherwise, I think it goes from necessary to excessive.  I know that thug could grow up to be a Joker or a Captain Cold or a Lex Luthor, but I don't think that's a decision that Oliver (or Felicity's form) can make in the moment.

Well, after things were looking pretty good for him for a while, there's virtually no way he wins now.  Hillary Clinton will be president. Now I know a lot of people were anti-Trump, and I get that.  I don't like him, and I think he'd be a terrible president.  But I saw this example on Twitter, and I think it fits.  This election is like the end of The Graduate - we as a country have shown up en masse to rush out to the church and tell this woman we love her because the alternative is so terrible.  So we do it, we tell her, she comes with us, and we escape on this bus.  And, like the characters in the movie, our smiles fade as we realize the decision we just made. 

Hillary Clinton will be president.

During this whole campaign, it's all been about Trump.  Hillary is supposed to be this policy expert, but I've seen about five different campaign ads for Hillary (I'm in Texas so I bet she has more), and only one was about her at all.  When she answers questions, she doesn't answer how she'll do it....she answers how he'll do it worse.  When Hillary supporters talk about the election, it's always about him and how horrible he is.

And he is.  But that's not the point.

Hillary Clinton will be president.

People talk about Hillary using Obama's words.  "The most qualified person to ever run."  And that's always bothered me.  For all the research that's been done into both candidate's pasts, I don't think any major news source really looked into the quote.  People are just accepting it.  I looked into it, and it's basically laughable when you dig into it.  John Quincy Adams was also a senator just as long as Hillary, was secretary of state for longer, and was also foreign minister several times under different presidents, and was a member of the House.  If you want to give Hillary extra years of experience for being the wife to the president, then you have to also give credit to Adams for being the son of one of the creators of the nation. 

Martin Van Buren has the same resume as Hillary (minus being Bill Clinton's wife), but he was also Vice President, Governor of New York, Attorney General of New York, and foreign minister to the UK. 

Is she more qualified than, say, Obama was?  Yes.  But she's also about 20 years older than he was.  I'd hope she has more experience.  In fact, as the second-oldest person to ever be inaugurated, there's almost no reason why she shouldn't have more than 12 years of experience in public office.

What's crazy is that this woman is going to be president, but she really hasn't had to sell herself.  All she's had to sell is how bad Trump is.  And she's done a good job.  But I'll repeat again:

Hillary Clinton will be president.

The same day the Trump tape came out, Hillary's Goldman Sachs speeches were leaked.  In some of the speeches, she admitted that she has a "public and private" position on certain issues.  She talked about how she's out of touch with the middle class because she's so wealthy.  So if you're looking to her to fix any issues related to Wall Street, she won't.  In fact, professionally, I'd suggest buying stock in Goldman Sachs if you can afford it.  She's going to make them a lot of money.

What about Bill helping fix the economy?  While it's true that the economy was great from 1992 to 2000, it has almost nothing to do with anything Bill did.  In 1992-2000, something you're using right now rose to public prominence.  An entire industry was literally created out of thin air overnight, and the economy boomed because of it.  If you want to look at Bill's policies, they actually led to the subprime crisis.  So if you're looking for 90s prosperity out of a Clinton White House again, you're not going to get it unless she's able to invent a new internet.

But she's great on foreign policy, right?  Well, that's also not quite true.  While Trump is an idiot for saying she founded ISIS, a lot of her work as secretary of state certainly didn't make the ISIS situation better.  Her key policy weapon in the Middle East seems to be assassination.  And that might well work in Syria under a Hillary presidency, but I don't think it fixes the problem there.  And the Russians won't like that....but we'll come back to Russia again.

Hillary Clinton is a war hawk.  Plain and simple.  More than the Bushes, if you listen to certain prominent people.  Under Hillary, war will be a weapon she uses quickly and often.  She's promised that she won't put any more troops in the middle east, but based on her record, that's almost certainly her "public" position and not her private one.  There will be troops in Syria.  She wanted to go there while she was secretary of state, and Obama is the one who kept us out.  Hillary Clinton will be president, and it'll be her call.  We're going.

If you don't believe she's a hawk, read this article.  Written by a paper that has been extremely polite to her for a really long time.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/24/magaz … -hawk.html

On ISIS, all she talks about is more of the same.  But is more of the same even working?  Is Obama making progress in defeating ISIS, and if he's not, how could she possibly make progress with the same strategy?

So what about Russia?  We can't elect Trump because he's a friend of Putin.  Or a puppet for Putin.  Trump will dismantle NATO because that's what Putin wants.  We can't elect Trump because Putin wants him.

Here's the bad news.  He wants Trump because he hates Hillary.  I've read that he's *afraid* of Hillary.  Now I've thought about this a lot because it scares me.  A scared Putin scares me.  Because Putin will be in charge in Russia until he dies.  Even if he's removed from power, he'll still be in charge because he's working to make sure one of his lieutenants is in charge. 

Hillary wants to remove/kill Assad.  Putin is friends with Assad.

If you go to Hillary's website, there's sections on her policies on dozens of issues.  If you read them, they're vague one-sentence bullet points that sound great.  She's got one on gay rights, on minority rights, on the economy, on ISIS, and a ton of others.

Nothing on Russia.

She's talked a lot about Russian/American relations if Trump is president.  Nothing about it if she is.  People talk about World War 3 if Trump is president, but they don't want to talk about the very-real Cold War 2 when Hillary is president.

Everyone's thrilled that Trump's finally getting wounded.  But when the smoke clears and Hillary is in office, we're all going to be a little like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TP4MuVnS2A

Flashpoint spoilers....

S
P
O
I
L
E
R
S

Well, I thought it was an interesting episode, but I feel like they held back.  With four shows on at the same time, I think they really could've had fun with Flashpoint.  I think they would've had to have been creative with it, but it could've been cool to have an entire episode of Arrow that took place in the Flashpoint universe (like the entire episodes that took place in the Other Side universe on Fringe or the episodes that took place in the Mirror Universe on DS9/ENT.

I get why they didn't - it's not fair to viewers of Arrow to force them to understand a plotline from Flash.  But I think they could've done it a different way.  Maybe the last two minutes of Arrow's season finale are used to set it up.  Maybe show a bit from the Flash finale and then show Oliver changing into a darker version of himself.  I don't think it'd take much explanation.

Maybe they even incorporate the Legends premiere into it.  They fix stuff like that, after all.  Flashpoint is what sets up the Legion of Doom. 

Kara is insulated from the changes, but they could've used Flashpoint to bring her into the universe.  Instead, there might be some minor ripples but it's basically already fixed.  And even then, I don't think they did that many changes.  They even had most of them working as a team by the end of the episode.  I don't even feel like the Joe stuff was justified or his "redemption" earned.  It felt rushed so that it didn't have to impact the other shows.

I understood why they tried to keep it contained, but I feel like they really missed their chance to do something cool.

http://www.superherohype.com/news/38333 … e#/slide/1

Maybe World Killer is the best example to look at. 

World Killer Quinn, like Sliders Reborn Quinn, made a massive error and worked tirelessly to fix it.  But, at some point, WK Quinn got discouraged and quit.  Season 4 (Canon in Sliders, not canon in Sliders Reborn) abandoned the correction of some of his mistakes (saving Earth Prime, rescuing Wade, etc) when he viewed those things to be out of his control.

I think we can say that Quinn is willing to do whatever it takes to fix a problem....presuming that it's a problem he thinks he can fix.  If it's a problem that becomes too frustrating, too difficult, or seemingly impossible, I think Quinn does have the capacity in him to quit.

I don't think that analysis helps either of your cases.

It's been a couple years since they've done the show.  It might take them an episode or two for them to get back into rhythm.

(Did I do that correctly?)

I actually have had this conversation recently with ireactions, but my only issue with monsters is the show's tendency to only feature worlds that seemingly branched off pretty recently.  For the most part, almost every world they featured had humans that evolved the same way as on Earth Prime.  Language evolved the same way as Earth Prime.  People tended to build buildings in the same place looking the same way, and an extraordinary amount of people had sex at the exact same time with the exact same sperm reaching the egg each time.

And it makes sense from a production standpoint.  People are easier to film as....people.  Sets are more easily redressed than rebuilt.

But when you take a step passed that (and you can when filming restraints no longer apply - like in a book/fanfic/comic), you understand that in a multiverse of infinite worlds, *most* of the worlds the Sliders would land on would feature "monsters."  Super-intelligent dinosaurs that evolved freely with no mass extinction would be monsters, but that's almost what happened.  Same with dolphins, rats, and any of the other primates.

An astronomer friend of mine told me about theories that alien worlds could have life that derives from thermosynthesis instead of photosynthesis.  So, yeah, a world with people who die if exposed to sunlight (vampires) is easily possible if you unhinge the show from the constraints of a show.

I don't disagree with anything in this, but wouldn't an extended amount of time sliding eventually "soldierize" anyone?  Not only would they end up getting involved in actual conflicts (which happened as early as the Pilot), but they'd be acquiring soldier-like skills on a daily basis.  They're effectively homeless hobos traveling from "town" to "town" having to scrape enough of a living, but their journey could also be that of a squadron of soldiers who have to get from point A to point B in enemy territory.  Quinn could be anti-conflict, but he'd be eventually forced to at some point.  He'd probably eventually have to use a weapon.  He'd probably eventually have to kill someone.  And then again.

Because it was a 90s show, not much really carried on from week to week, but a sliders reboot now would have to show the physical and mental toll that sliding would take.  They'd have no money and no permanent shelter, and they'd have to be very quick on their feet to get by.  They'd either have to be criminals (Rembrandt stealing from his double) or con men (falsifying or stealing an identity) just to make ends meet.

I don't particularly like any version of sliders where they end up as Navy SEALs, able to take out an army of mercenaries with ease (see The Walking Dead), but they'd definitely become more like an Army the longer they slid.

Even if they're leaving Kara in her own Earth, I don't know why they don't move her to a different city.  National City doesn't provide them anything interesting, and it'd explain why certain people (like Cat) aren't always there.  They could move Kara to, say, Coast City and keep her there if anything ever happens to move her to the Arrowverse.

He's saying that seasons 3 and 4 didn't happen because he hates them