An important rule: there can only be so much ninjitsu in any given area. Thus, when a single ninja is encountered he will be badass, whereas multiple ninji will be much weaker.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ConservationOfNinjutsu?from=Main.ConservationOfNinjitsu
Ps Cick on the above link only if you don’t value your social life. It will consumer the soul and life of anyone who enjoys fiction.
PPs Is this good enough Hannah?
I have just finished Fable 2. It was a solid action-adventure with strong roleplaying elements, and an interesting kinda emergent world thing goin’ on. What struck me was the interesting way that good vs evil was handled.
This is far from the first game to have such a system. Perhaps the company that is the kinf of good vs evil rpgs (excluding the first fable) is Bioware. However, the choice is either equal-but-different, in the case of Knights of the Old Republic, or slightly smaller reward for being good. This is echewed strongly by Fable 2: The good choice is often coupled with your in game character suffering and the player gaining a tangible disadvantage for the rest of the game. There are several significant ones, which I will not ruin for anyone who wants to play the game.
Being good traditionally requires sacrifices. Never has this been more true in a game than fable.
They broke the sacred wall between public and personal. That is all. Brand’s comedy exists in a bubble. It’s irreverant and vulger, and remains funny for the majority of people as long as there is strong seperation between him and the objects of his mockery. It’s like the snide comment you tell to your friend. Maybe you make a racist joke at a friend’s expense with the friend listening and fully in on the joke. As long as the participants remain in the closed of sphere on knowing, there is no problem.
However, when a venerable old guy is rung up by a couple of pricks insulting his relatives…. well….
There is very little difference between a couple of pricks and genuine comedy.
This woman is the cheese-grater of my soul. A horrible, disturbing puppet. A void of empty, petty ambition wrapped in a nanometer thick mask of authentic Americana. She is the political bogey-woman of America: a cold reptilian creature, made more frightening by her command of a narrative that certain portions of the American populace find irresistible. A narrative so strong that it preempts any rational response, undercutting the methods that should be its end by suggesting that unthinking subscription to tradition is good, and suggesting that any rational inquiry is elitist.
Luckily, it is highly unlikely that she will win. Go Obama. Her presence on the ticket makes your policy positions irrelevant. Pretty much wherever you stand, you are the lesser of two evils.
I’ve recently started watching House. Well, it’s something to do to stave off the boredom of unemployment. And it’s actually quite good, if extraordinarily predictable and formulaic. This is how every single episode so far:
1. Person going about their every day life gets struck down by mysterious ailment.
2. House gets involved, more often than not because the case is interesting.
3. Diagnosis 1: About 10-15 minutes in. Straightforward, but doesn’t work, generally makes things worse. Coma, further insanity etc.
4. Diagnosis 2: Almost always half way through. More sophisticated generally based on detective work. Still doesn’t work, paitent gets even worse, with every single internal organ shredding.
5. The final diagnosis. 5-10 minutes before the end. House makes brilliant intutive guess, paitent gets better, organs apparently regrowing, Wolverine style.
6. Sappy ending, where people learn a lesson. Except House, who is always right.
So formulaic is the structure, and so obtuse the subject matter (honestly, it may well be real medicine, but I don’t know or care), that the series rests entirely on characterisation. Hugh Laurie is brilliant as the titular bitter arsehole. The weakest link is his team. Two bits of vapid eye candy and a token black guy, who are given depth by troubled back story instead of particularly strong characterisation. Walking, talking tedium.
The Joker: You just couldn’t let me go could you? This is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object. You truly are incorruptible aren’t you? You won’t kill me out of some misplaced sense of self-righteousness, and I won’t kill you, because you’re just too much fun. I think you and I are destined to do this forever.
…they are so far away and remote, that humanity will never reach them.
…they twinkle and shine and occaisionally blow up.
…they are giant, burning, balls of gas.
…pretty to look at but you wouldn’t want to live there.
…probably already dead by time we see their light.
Early one morning
With time to kill
I borrowed Jebb’s rifle
And sat on a hill
I saw a lone rider
Crossing the plain
I drew a bead on him
To practice my aim
My brother’s rifle
Went off in my hand
A shot rang out
Across the land
The horse, he kept running
The rider was dead
I hung my head
I hung my head
…
Early one morning
With time to kill
I see the gallows
Up on a hill
And out in the distance
A trick of the brain
I see a lone rider
Crossing the plain
And he’d come to fetch me
To see what they’d done
And we’d ride together
To kingdom come
I prayed for god’s mercy
For soon I’d be dead
I hung my head
I hung my head
Johnny Casg version natch. (the Sting original is just weird…)
Carol Vorderman is quitting countdown.
…
Which constitutes breaking news, apparently.
It hurts.
