Oh, this made me laugh. Considering this has been a long week at work, I needed that.
Don't it just figure?
All I know is that the FB site "Almost Nerdy" shared this. If someone knows who created it, please let me know so I can attribute that to them.
For the record, I did look for "Summoning Stone" as a website, but no dice. There's way too many references to the Hearthstone card "Summoning Stone" to make it a worthwhile search.
EtA: There's a Twitter Feed called SummoningStone, and that's likely where this came from.
From a vigil held in Bangkok, Thailand, for the victims of the Orlando shooting. From courierpostonline.com Photographer: Dario Pignatelli, Getty Image
Yeah, it's a gloomy kind of day today --both outside, where it's rainy, and inside at work-- so my mind has turned to more whimsical musings.
Do Elves ever get seasonal allergies? When I see the Night Elf pic below, all I can think of is that in September and October, I'd be miserable.
From walldevil.com, based on a Blizzard artwork.
Unlike their common counterparts in fiction, the dwarves in Terry Brooks' Shannara series are scared as hell of being underground. (It was mentioned heavily in the very first book about how the Dwarves had to deal with all sorts of things underground during the years that they "became" Dwarves that it left a scar on their collective psyche.) Why don't you see that sort of thing more often in Fantasy fiction?
The Star Trek Next Generation Federation jumpsuit is one of those outfits that flatters most forms, so why did Cryptic Studios feel the need to sex up their loading screens and whatnot? There's absolutely no need, and I can tell you from having been to Star Trek conventions before that a well done ST:TNG jumpsuit does VERY well all by itself without having to unzip or sexy up anything. To quote George Takei: "Oh mmyyy....."
I'm not posting the pic from A New Dawn, as it likely shows
someone from the alternate ST "Imperial" universe. (From reddit.com)
I realize that for the sake of continuity that Governor Saresh had to disappear from Taris' questlines on SWTOR, but I still miss her. Even though my Smuggler was unable to successfully flirt with her. (Hey, it fit that the Old Man would find an older woman like Saresh attractive.)
Yeah yeah yeah. I've heard that one before, Saresh.
From Reddit.com
Yesterday I pulled out my old copy of The Tolkien Scrapbook (now called A Tolkien Treasury) and perused the articles inside. The article The Evolution of Tolkien Fandom by Philip Helms reminded me how I really really wanted to run my own fanzine back in the day, using mimeograph to put everything together. But I never a) had the money for a mimeograph machine, and b) never really had the oomph to start and keep running a fanzine all by myself.
And now the Tolkien fanzines at least are either mostly gone or have evolved into real scholarly works, and I'm not that into the History of Middle Earth series. Blogging is about as much of a "fanzine" mentality as I can handle.
A copy of Orcrist #3, circa 1969/1970, published
by the University of Wisconsin Tolkien Society.
From tolkienguide.com
I've been tossing around the idea of splurging on a used Xbox 360 so I (and the mini-Reds) could play the Mass Effect trilogy (among other titles) without having to buy multiple copies of the game for the PC. I'd consider a 360 over the current gen consoles because the multiple disk games (such as ME2 and 3) aren't quite ready for backwards compatibility with the XBone, and the PS4 is now going to release yetanother version of the PS4, and I don't want to get on that treadmill. Besides, I'm more likely to find a used 360 (or even a PS3) at garage sales than the current gen consoles, anyway.
As if I don't have enough things to do.
From masseffect.bioware.com
The Boss has the day off, and is over watching Muhammad Ali's funeral procession on television (thank you, Chromecast). And the news just broke a short time ago that another sports legend, Canada's Gordie Howe, passed away. The fact that it is raining outside is somehow appropriate.
Some people remember him as that D-Con Fogger pitchman.
Others remember him from Saturday cartoons.
Others remember him from the movie starring Will Smith, or the When We Were Kings documentary.
Others still remember him from his moment in the sun at the 1996 Olympics, his body shaking violently from Parkinson's, as he held aloft the Olypmic torch.
Some still remember him as Cassius Clay, the young man who won the Light Heavyweight Boxing gold medal in the 1960 Olympics.
But for those who saw him fight in the ring, he was always Muhammad Ali, The Greatest.
And if you didn't think he was The Greatest, he would tell you he was. And use poetry to back it up. Yeah, and his fists, too.
Ali knocking down Sonny Liston in 1965. From The Guardian.
But Ali finally succumbed to a respiratory ailment overnight, and died at the age of 74. I'm certain that Parkinson's disease, that he battled for over thirty years, helped do him in.
***
Back when boxing was found on national television --without the need for pay per view-- Muhammad Ali conquered the media. As the undisputed Heavyweight Boxing Champion, Ali was more than just a celebrity. He had a quick and sharp mind, using it to recite his own poetry and to comment on all sorts of things. Oh, and to also get into the heads of his opponents.
He was past his prime when I was a kid, and my first memories of him were that of a poster child for staying on longer than he should have. Thankfully, time has erased those last years of his boxing career, focusing instead on his finest moments in the ring. And his humanitarian efforts.
Muhammad Ali was one of those larger than life personalities that you simply never forget.
In case you lived under a rock the past week --or didn't know anything about Activision Blizzard-- you'd know that Overwatch was released into the wild.
And now they've begun throwing the ban hammer around.
While others are applauding the swift action to keep people from cheating on the game, I'm skeptical whether they can keep up the pace with cheaters without devoting a lot of resources to constantly monitoring the situation.
Judging by my experiences with a certain MMO from Blizzard, I'm not exactly sure that they'll be able to keep up over the long haul. I'm sure I'm not the only one, but I'd frequently report toons with racist/sexist names or people who behaved badly in the game. But as time went on, I began to realize that the reporting did little good: when a person with a overtly racist toon name is L76 and playing in a battleground, that means that either nobody reported them or that the admins didn't bother dealing with the issue. And with people who leveled in the days before the instant L90 (or whatever it is now), they couldn't avoid people even if they tried.* And for that person to be playing in BGs....
I am glad that Blizz is starting off strong, but they now have to commit to follow through for the long run. And judging by at least one of their other properties, I'm not so sure that commitment will be there.
*And if anyone knows about that, it's me. I'd play at odd hours, serverwise, and even if you leveled simply by node farming or killing monsters out in the field you will still run into other people from time to time.
Okay, after kind of a rough week at work, here's a YouTube "Honest Trailer" that I've been laughing at. It's a couple of years old, corresponding with the release of Warlords, but it is still accurate.
I'd been channeling my inner Leia when I first saw the trailer for Warcraft: The Beginning.
"I have a bad feeling about this" was my mantra whenever it would pop up on my blogger list as well as my Facebook feed. I remember how I really really wanted the Dungeons and Dragons movie* to succeed, but all it really did was become a punchline on how stupid the game must be to create a movie this bad. The mini-Reds would laugh at the occasional D&D Movie snippet that they'd find on YouTube, from Jeremy Irons' dreadful overacting to the actual use of the D&D metaterm "low level" in a description of a Mage in the movie.
Don't say I didn't warn you.
But still, I knew that there was a possibility that the Warcraft movie might turn out pretty good. For me, the major issue was going to be not whether they could find decent acting or direction, but whether the movie was going to be written primarily for the fans or for the wider audience. The former would go no matter what, but the latter were needed for sequels to happen. And for that to work, you needed to perform your world building gradually, following the example of Peter Jackson with the Lord of the Rings Trilogy.**
The worst thing that could happen? That you'd be required to perform research in order to understand and enjoy Warcraft: The Beginning.
The reviews aren't looking so good at the moment, with Rotten Tomatoes' Tomatometer sitting at 33% positive critical reviews.
And that doesn't even include the bad review that Kotaku published.
The commentary that I've been reading isn't exactly helping matters. When you've got fans hollering about how people should have done their research or played the game in order to appreciate the movie, that's not a good thing. That's the equivalent of telling fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe that they should have read all of the backstory in the comics before they went to go see Captain America: Civil War.
Gee, thanks, Comic Book Guy. From quickmeme.com
Things might change once more reviews are released, but right now it's not looking good for the Warcraft franchise.
Will I see the film in the theater? Not likely, as I rarely go to see movies in the theater***, but that doesn't mean that I won't hope for a decent turnout. But at the same time, the movie has to earn the turnout by being a good film that is accessible to the general public, and I'm not sure that Warcraft: The Beginning has what it takes.
*It it was at all possible, there were two sequels to the D&D movie. One went straight to the (then) Sci-Fi Channel, called Curse of the Dragon God, and the other... Let's just say that the other one --The Book of Vile Darkness-- is so bad that while it is listed in IMDB as a "TV Movie" I never saw it released onto television at all. If it did, I'd say it escaped more than was released.
**Even then, there were plenty of people who couldn't follow the details in the movie, but still liked it for the spectacle. And that was for an Academy Award winning trilogy. The problem with The Hobbit? Peter didn't follow the world building pace that he did in LOTR. Sure, a lot of the stuff was found in the LOTR Appendices, but it wasn't necessary to expand The Hobbit into three full movies.
***I typically don't have that much time to block off for a matinee, and that kind of leads into the second reason: it costs too much. I'd rather buy or rent the movie for little more than the cost of a theater ticket than have to deal with the decline in movie theater going etiquette. Oh, I've got stories to tell about theater and concert experiences.....
