When Is A Villain Not Truly Villain?

Not long ago @torstenvblog and I were talking about nerd stuff as we always do and we got to talking about the bad guys in comics and movies, and when maybe they aren’t really the bad guys. Some of them are quite cut and dry, like Jason Vorhees or  Freddie Krueger. One wears a hockey mask and kills horny teens and the other was basically a child molester that later killed people in their dreams. No sane person will ever make a real argument for them and say hey he was just misunderstood or those campers deserved it. There are however villains that, maybe aren’t quite villains, at least not in the traditional sense of they are bad guys, just bad from the perspective of who the hero of the story is.

A good example of this, however, is Magneto from Xmen. He isn’t really a bad guy, he simply disagrees with Professor X on how best to protect mutants. Sure he does some questionable things, but if someone was trying to hurt you and everyone you cared about and your people wouldn’t you be willing to do some less than honest and moral things to protect them?

Another solid example is Ocean Master in the Aquaman movie. All he really wanted to do was stop the humans from destroying the ocean his people live in, and sure while he did steal a submarine and kill a ton of people to start a war under a false pretense but his heart was in the right place. He wasn’t doing it because he wanted to hurt people or he hated anyone, he thought he was doing what was best for Atlantis.

So really, at what point are people no longer villains? Is it when they can reasonably and appropriately justify what they are doing to a reasonable person? Or is it when they give up their quest and die for the greater good like Loki? I’m not sure there is an easy answer, and everyone will have a different one but for me, a big part of it comes down to intent. Look at Thanos from the MCU. Nobody would argue what he was doing was truly good, but he wasn’t really wrong. It would have saved his world, and it did help other worlds he had conquered. Most importantly his intent is good, he wants to make sure what happened to his world doesn’t happen to others. While he is quite misguided it isn’t really fair to say he is evil or a villain, he is just a bad guy from the perspective of the heroes. A future blog we will discuss what makes a hero, and why Captain America wasn’t truly a good guy recently. Until then tell me what you think, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Distant Worlds, The Journey Continues

It is that time of the week again, where I regale you with tales from deep space, such as this planet I found.

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That as you guys know is my ship, the SVG Morning Star. Anyway, after leaving a station in the Omega system I journeyed through many systems.

The journey for me personally has been quite tame, with the exception of my little explosion at The View. That being said its the people on the journey so far that have been interesting. One commander whose name escapes me took severe damage landing on a planet, bad enough he was worried about taking off. He was about 1000 light years from a station and another commander left omega to bring repair limpets to repair his ship, a trip that probably took a decent amount of time. This is just one story of many like it where people will go out of their way to make sure the group makes the trip intact.

After a long journey of about 5-6 thousand light years, I made it to an abandoned settlement where we were set to meet. There plenty of us there, mostly just goofing off at that point since the festivities hadn’t started yet.

Yes, by the way, that one bottom picture is a Krait, the one next to it? Someone landed their Krait on top of their friends Krait. I never found out why, but hey it is what it is. I drove my SRV for a bit, some guy jumped over me, another landed his SRV on my ship. It was a very odd yet interesting time. That honestly is what the trip really is. It is long periods of nothingness and just scanning various planets with occasional interesting moments. In fact, the interaction with people is what does it, similar to most other things. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

What Is The Dota 2 International? — 16-Bit Dad

Recently I covered the history of eSports and how it has grown over the past few years. What started out as a one-off tournament turned into a fully-fledged industry. Now, eSports events all over the world are being held in stadiums traditionally reserved for the likes of football games. One such event is the Dota…

via What Is The Dota 2 International? — 16-Bit Dad

Why I Am Ignore Next Gen Console Rumors

I am sure you have seen them by now because they are everywhere. They have been for a while now. The new PlayStation can do this, the new Xbox will be named that they both will be in 16k. That last one I made up for the record, nobody quote that. Honestly however that is why I am ignoring them. Specs are always subject to change, so at this point even if the leak is real, and it probably isn’t it is far to early to know how real it is.

The other issue is many times these rumors and leaks come from off-handed comments like the one I made earlier. Someone says we wanted to aim for X standard and people want to take it as fact or report it simply because people want to know and they know it will get them clicks or views. For me, the only real option is to more or less ignore them completely since focusing on them won’t make them come any faster. How do you guys deal with the rumors? Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

FUN FACT; SUPERMAN (1978) — Movie News & Reviews

Did you know…. Hollywood icon Marlon Brando signed on to play Jor-El 3 years before the first Richard Donner Superman film was made. His contract included a clause that required him to complete all of his scenes in twelve days alongside a salary of $3.7 million and 11.75% of the total box office gross profits, which […]

via FUN FACT; SUPERMAN (1978) — Movie News & Reviews

Soda Dungeon (Mobile)

Soda Dungeon is kind of odd. You visit a bar that sells soda, decide you want to be an adventurer but can’t afford it and send a soda addict to go adventuring for you. Not even kidding about that. You then use that money to upgrade the bar (at the request of the owner) so you can attract new people to adventure for you.

The game is honestly kind of boring fast. You unlock more people by increasing your reputation and by unlocking new sodas to bring in new people to send in after new gear and money. I honestly can not recommend this game, it gets boring fast and isn’t all that interesting. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Hot Pursuit (1987)

Hot Pursuit from 1987 is the story of Dan Bartlett (John Cusack) and his failure to catch a plane on time after he fails a chemistry test. Now he must catch a later flight to catch up with his girlfriend and her insanely rich family. Upon landing in the Caribbean he tries to catch a cab which is stolen from him, and this is where it turns into almost an old fashioned role-playing game.

Seriously, he will meet 3 friendly Rastafarians that he mistakenly thinks may be criminals because he was warned to watch out for the locals. They actually teach him to throw a machete. He will then narrowly miss meeting up with his girlfriend, he will give up hope and get drunk. He will then be basically kidnapped after he passes out and ends up with a seemingly crazed man obsessed with catching up with the boat his girlfriend is on, but he will luckily end up learning on to sail. I am telling you this because it all comes back around.

Later on, he will eventually meet up with his girlfriend, and I don’t want to spoil the ending but learning to throw a machete and sail factors into the ending. Each main person he meets teaches him a new skill to help him in his quest. This isn’t bad, it was just painfully glaring there. The movie itself has some laughs but admittedly isn’t very good and definitely is not one of John Cusack’s better movies. As a person that loves 80’s movies, this one was just not very enjoyable. I did like the ending, the journey there just didn’t worth it. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Welcome To February

Welcome to February, the month of love. This month has a few happenings for me you can see here. Happenings In February That being said, this month around oh I guess the 14th I will probably review some movies about love for no reason in particular. Maybe there is a holiday there. Anyway, January was a great start to the year and played a lot of great games, like Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition (PS4) which is a game I had great experiences with years ago and experienced again now. I haven’t had the chance to try out Resident Evil 2 or Kingdom Hearts 3 yet but I am sure I will soon enough. This year in gaming has already been great, and I am enjoying The Start Of Distant Worlds Two as well. So everyone enjoy this month, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Top Ten Tuesday: Newest Additions to My Reading Pile — The Hannie Corner

Top Ten Tuesday is a creation from The Broke and the Bookish, but now lives with That Artsy Reader Girl. This week’s topic is about the newest additions to my to-read list. As it turns out, I’m the worst at keeping a to-read list so instead of trying to sift through everything I want to […]

via Top Ten Tuesday: Newest Additions to My Reading Pile — The Hannie Corner

Why Married With Children Wouldn’t Work In 2019

Every so often someone asks the question, why don;y we have a Married With Children Spinoff like Married With Grandchildren? Well, truth be told, for the same reason The Office wouldn’t work according to Steve Carell. Except even worse as the show is much older and possibly even more offensive by the standards of today.

For the younger readers, and those that lived in a cave from 1987 until 1997, the show was about the Bundy family. The middle-class family in Chicago is the American dream, husband and wife, one son and one daughter owns a home and a dog. Don’t ask me how they are middle-class, Al Bundy is a shoe salesman and his wife doesn’t work. He tells us this constantly that he hates his job and the fat slobs that come in there. By the way, this is a recurring theme. He routinely insults the women that come in. Here is a clip.

As you can see, while funny this would probably piss a lot of people off. Don’t get me wrong, if a person acted like that in real life he would rightfully get punched in the face and so would half the women, but it still wouldn’t likely go well today.

Other issues are his relationship with his wife Peggy. Now they obviously love each other, hell despite his claims of hating her he had multiple chances to cheat and never did and rarely truly disrespected her. But the jokes today would be a huge line many wouldn’t like being crossed.

He also has similar things to say about his female neighbor tho he is best friends with her husbands. (She has 2 throughout the show)

The show is just full of humor that by today’s standards would be viewed as degrading towards, well everyone honestly. Even Al, who is constantly made fun of for being a loser shoe salesman whose best days were in high school. The show is literally built around insults, but they are used to show that while they talk to each other a certain way they are a family that loves each other. Al has multiple chances to cheat on Peggy but never does. Peggy while lazy and insulting to her husband actually does cook him dinner and make sure he is taken care of, and later on, when she wants to get a job Al supports her even tho half the show is him making fun of feminist, tho admittedly the over the top feminist most people make fun of. Sadly however in today’s world shows like this and The Office won’t really do well on T.V. without upsetting people, and a lot of companies won’t want to risk it. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.