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PA Comic: Wednesday, February 22nd- The Flashpoint

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Posts

  • GaslightGaslight Registered User regular
    Rehab wrote: »
    Timeline by Michael Crichton was pretty great too, which I actually recall you or Jerry discussing in a positive light in one of the podcasts. As far as the book is concerned anyway, that game did look terrible.

    They made a movie out of that which I am pretty sure bombed, but it's actually fairly enjoyable in a B-movie kind of way.

  • The Good Doctor TranThe Good Doctor Tran Registered User regular
    Gaslight wrote: »
    Rehab wrote: »
    Timeline by Michael Crichton was pretty great too, which I actually recall you or Jerry discussing in a positive light in one of the podcasts. As far as the book is concerned anyway, that game did look terrible.

    They made a movie out of that which I am pretty sure bombed, but it's actually fairly enjoyable in a B-movie kind of way.

    AND! It had an awesome video game spinoff that was around an hour long! I was really happy to have spent the last of my lifeguarding money from the previous summer on it.

    LoL & Spiral Knights & MC & SMNC: Carrington - Origin: CarringtonPlus - Steam: skdrtran
  • fortyforty Registered User regular
    edited February 2012
    I actually like Taco Bell. :/


    Also, I'm not sure why people (at least two on the first page of this thread) seem to think Tycho wrote today's newspost. He told us on Monday that there was going to be a guest poster today, he introduces the author in italicized text today, the writing is nothing like Tycho's distinctive mess, and the post isn't signed "(CW)TB out."

    forty on
  • Dropping LoadsDropping Loads Registered User regular
    edited February 2012
    jwalk wrote: »
    marsilies wrote: »
    Commenting on the newspost:

    The briefcase in Pulp Fiction is a homage/rip-off of the briefcase in Kiss Me Deadly, a 1955 film noir. The car trunk in Repo Man is a Kiss Me Deadly reference as well.
    http://www.avclub.com/articles/kiss-me-deadly,48753/

    Raiders may or may not have been referencing Kiss Me Deadly; there's biblical references for the Ark killing those that looked in it, but the visual portrayal in the film may have been inspired by Kiss Me Deadly:
    http://www.rationalchristianity.net/touch_ark.html

    Everything QT does is a rip off of something. Oh sorry... "homage".

    As for time machines, either they don't exist, or everyone in the future is some kind of goddamn dick. I mean seriously, can't ONE person go back in time and say, kill Hitler?? Nobody? DICKS.

    Everybody kills Hitler on their first trip.

    http://www.tor.com/stories/2011/08/wikihistory
    (This is a great little story about exactly that, in the form of a log book of the International association of time travelers.)

    Dropping Loads on
    Sceptre: Penny Arcade, where you get starcraft AND marriage advice.
    3clipse: The key to any successful marriage is a good mid-game transition.
  • jackaljackal Fuck Yes. That is an orderly anal warehouse. Registered User regular
    Building a time machine that only travels forward in time feels like building a car that only drives downhill.

  • Dropping LoadsDropping Loads Registered User regular
    Yeah, it would be no different than a stasis chamber.

    Sceptre: Penny Arcade, where you get starcraft AND marriage advice.
    3clipse: The key to any successful marriage is a good mid-game transition.
  • AurichAurich ArizonaRegistered User regular
    I kind of like the idea that even with time travel, time is still linear. For example, Gabe might go back to warn himself about the mediocre ranch dressing, but will have only created a future event of warning himself (presumably to enjoy the sound of his own voice, har har) rather than having actually affected the past event.

    That short story is hilarious. I am going to share it with everyone.

  • jwalkjwalk Registered User regular
    Gaslight wrote: »
    In the year 252525, the backwards time machine still won't have arrived...

    Speaking of over-analyzing time travel, if you want to be amused sometime, look up some of the competing theories Futurama fans have come up with to explain how time travel works in the "Futurama universe" based on that episode...complete with illustrative charts and graphs.

    And, they are all wrong, because, a wizard did it.

  • Hahnsoo1Hahnsoo1 Make Ready. We Hunt.Registered User regular
    edited February 2012
    jackal wrote: »
    Building a time machine that only travels forward in time feels like building a car that only drives downhill.
    According to special relativity, we are ALL time travelers moving forward in time, at different rates respective to each other based on our velocity.

    We were discussing Time Travel stories and media in Steam Chat earlier, and how nearly all of them have irony or paradoxes as their central conceit. The only examples that I came up with at the time that didn't have loads of irony or a time paradox were some episodes of Quantum Leap (where it would get pretty old if they kept going back to that formula) and nearly the entire run of the terrible UPN show Time Trax (basically: Time Cop, the series).

    And "To Say Nothing of the Dog" by Connie Willis should be required reading for time travel fiction. Loads of humor and great writing.

    Hahnsoo1 on
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  • Blake TBlake T Do you have enemies then? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.Registered User regular
    Wait so Marty kisses his own mum?!?!??

    Gross!

  • TofystedethTofystedeth Registered User regular
    All You Zombies by Heinlein is one of the most convoluted time travel paradoxes I've encountered. There's also By His Bootstraps (Warning: PDF).

    John Varley had a pretty fun one, Millenium, in which the last surviving humans from a polluted and dying Earth use a time machine to kidnap people from disasters such as midair collisions and replace them with clones, to put them in stasis for repopulating. In that one, they can't open a time gate to any point in time at which a time gate is already open. Apparently the also made a movie of it.

    steam_sig.png
  • SabreMauSabreMau ネトゲしよう 판다리아Registered User regular
    Hahnsoo1 wrote: »
    the terrible UPN show Time Trax

    But Time Trax predated UPN by two years.

  • Monkey Ball WarriorMonkey Ball Warrior A collection of mediocre hats Seattle, WARegistered User regular
    Primer approached time travel with the right level of wtf'ery.

    "I resent the entire notion of a body as an ante and then raise you a generalized dissatisfaction with physicality itself" -- Tycho
  • Hahnsoo1Hahnsoo1 Make Ready. We Hunt.Registered User regular
    SabreMau wrote: »
    Hahnsoo1 wrote: »
    the terrible UPN show Time Trax

    But Time Trax predated UPN by two years.
    They probably used a time machine. :O

    Yeah, it probably predates UPN, but UPN was the network where those shows go to die. Lots of those crazy shows appeared like Tekwar when they went into syndication. Either that, or that was just my local cable company.

    8i1dt37buh2m.png
  • SabreMauSabreMau ネトゲしよう 판다리아Registered User regular
    I remember it airing on the local station that later became our UPN affiliate, but this was back when they were still a local syndication channel.

  • KagatoKagato Registered User new member
    Now there's some serendipity!
    My wife borrowed an October '11 back issue of the New Yorker from the library the other day.
    I found this cartoon inside:
    zachary-kanin-i-m-you-from-the-future-i-came-back-to-warn-you-not-to-order-the-scallop-new-yorker-cartoon.jpg

    It's not the similarity of the jokes that gets me, but that despite the months between them I read them only hours apart. :o

  • jackaljackal Fuck Yes. That is an orderly anal warehouse. Registered User regular
    Some charlatan has stolen a Ziggy and passed it off as his own. I can prove it! Quick, Elaine, to my archives!

  • LucreelLucreel Registered User regular
    If I had time travel, I'd just try to use it for "Chrono-tourism" - go back and visit the library of Alexandria, catch an ancient greek play performed live, go see if Moses really did split the Red Sea. Of course, the fun there, is observing history without actually changing it. I bet someone could create a book, or even a series of books, all about that theme. A sort of group of historians from the future, time travelling to the past to witness and verify history, and always trying to avoid becoming part of that history. Has anyone already written such a book (one thing I've learned is that if I can come up with an idea, even though it's novel to me, it's probably already been done)?

  • Billy ChenowithBilly Chenowith Registered User regular
    jackal wrote: »
    Some charlatan has stolen a Ziggy and passed it off as his own. I can prove it! Quick, Elaine, to my archives!
    Hahahaha

  • MagnumCTMagnumCT Registered User regular
    I like the time travel stories where people go back and affect the past, but their presence causes events to happen they already did. So say someone went back and just did whatever they wanted to do, or tried to stay out of the way, or didn't care either way, they were always part of the history of that world and everything they did already had an effect. They just didn't realize it before they went back and time and did it.

    I feel that explanation is kind of funky.

    Makes sense, it's the Oedipus/prophecy thing. Prophet prophesizes, subject takes action to avoid the prophecy which ends up causing the event to happen. I like that too.

  • El SkidEl Skid The frozen white northRegistered User regular
    edited February 2012
    KalTorak wrote: »
    Margarazzi wrote:
    srwFd.jpg

    Why does everyone do this? Harry Potter operates on Time Loop theory; they never saw Buckbeak's death.

    Oddly, I was just thinking about this sort of thing earlier this morning. Well, not that oddly, I think about it a lot.

    Also there's no way to travel forward; they'd have to go back 14 years, save Harry's parents, and then stick around in the past forever.

    Well technically Harry's parents would have to stay in hiding such that nobody knew they were alive until the day the time turner was used, and then have a huge party.

    What they would have to do is go back to the past, waylay voldemort such that he never got to the house, dress up as Voldemort, use Avada Kadavra on some fleas or something and have Harry's parent's play dead, cast "cause scar" on Harry, and then blow up the house, taking his parents with them. It turns out Voldemort just took credit for the scar cause it seemed badass instead of telling people how he got ganged up on by like 10 of the strongest wizards they could find and got his body killed (it's not murder if the wizard has 25 horacruxes!).

    ...wow I'm such a geek. I'm going to go hide now.

    Also, this is an awesome comic- not so much because it's awesome on it's own, but because of the fodder it gives to the comic edit people. Check out the awesome posts forum, you'll thank me later. :D

    El Skid on
  • IvarIvar Oslo, NorwayRegistered User regular
    edited February 2012
    Or just check out the comic edits thread

    Ivar on
  • Hahnsoo1Hahnsoo1 Make Ready. We Hunt.Registered User regular
    Lucreel wrote: »
    If I had time travel, I'd just try to use it for "Chrono-tourism" - go back and visit the library of Alexandria, catch an ancient greek play performed live, go see if Moses really did split the Red Sea. Of course, the fun there, is observing history without actually changing it. I bet someone could create a book, or even a series of books, all about that theme. A sort of group of historians from the future, time travelling to the past to witness and verify history, and always trying to avoid becoming part of that history. Has anyone already written such a book (one thing I've learned is that if I can come up with an idea, even though it's novel to me, it's probably already been done)?
    There's a story out there about the Titanic sinking because of all the time traveler tourists that keep going to the Titanic.

    8i1dt37buh2m.png
  • KelorKelor Registered User regular
    edited February 2012
    I like the time travel stories where people go back and affect the past, but their presence causes events to happen they already did. So say someone went back and just did whatever they wanted to do, or tried to stay out of the way, or didn't care either way, they were always part of the history of that world and everything they did already had an effect. They just didn't realize it before they went back and time and did it.

    I feel that explanation is kind of funky.

    I read a series of books by an Australian author, I don't recall how far foward it was set but it was I think maybe twenty or thirty years from now. It sort of extrapolates on events that have happened so far, the whole War on Terror has basically snowballed worldwide but it's focused on a UN taskforce that's heading down to Indonesia to try and quell the muslim uprising that is ongoing there before it spreads further north or south. A civilian vessel that was tinkering around with physics experiments (providing the excuse for the plot) has a test go wrong, throwing the fleet back to 1942 smack in the middle of the US taskforce headed for Midway. They wipe out most of the contempory fleet and throw time hell of out of whack.

    It's interesting because it's dealing with a large population of people who get shoved through time and their effects on the past's society where most time travel books tend to be one or a handful of people. So you've got the good, fun, pulpy stuff as they try to repair some of the damage they've done, but with so many people information gets out. Hitler and Stalin both find out about plots (or even rumours) of events that originally happened and instigate huge purges.

    The part I enjoyed most was all the social side of things. You have women and blacks who are used to having the same rights as any other member of society that are now discriminated against. One of the submarine captains is a lesbian, the Admiral in charge of the fleet is of German ancestry and the people living at the base on Pearl Harbour don't have a whole lot of love for the Japanese members of the fleet. Who should have the rights to all the media they brought back with them? Does Elvis get to own his works before he even creates them? The Russians aren't exactly big fans of the direction that their country takes after the war originally finished either. And you've got the obvious one of what happens when everyone is aware of nuclear bombs.

    If you're into that sort of alternate history it's worth giving it a try.

    Weapons of Choice by John Birmingham.

    Kelor on
  • agilemaniaagilemania Lyon EstatesRegistered User regular
    Lucreel wrote: »
    If I had time travel, I'd just try to use it for "Chrono-tourism" - go back and visit the library of Alexandria, catch an ancient greek play performed live, go see if Moses really did split the Red Sea. Of course, the fun there, is observing history without actually changing it. I bet someone could create a book, or even a series of books, all about that theme. A sort of group of historians from the future, time travelling to the past to witness and verify history, and always trying to avoid becoming part of that history. Has anyone already written such a book (one thing I've learned is that if I can come up with an idea, even though it's novel to me, it's probably already been done)?
    Doomsday Book by Connie Willis is one that springs to mind.

  • ThreeCubedThreeCubed Grandma Winky's fat ankles Registered User regular
    The Time Traveler's Wife dealt really well with time travel. It's basically done the way @The Geebs that is a Pony likes it done.

    It's a very lady book, though, so dudes may be a little turned off of it.

    EyQGd.jpg
  • King RiptorKing Riptor Registered User regular
    I like the time travel stories where people go back and affect the past, but their presence causes events to happen they already did. So say someone went back and just did whatever they wanted to do, or tried to stay out of the way, or didn't care either way, they were always part of the history of that world and everything they did already had an effect. They just didn't realize it before they went back and time and did it.

    I feel that explanation is kind of funky.

    Gargoyles did this.

    A lot.

    As far as I'm concerned it's pretty much the only way time travel can work unless each trip creates a new parallel universe.

    I have a podcast now. It's about video games and anime!Find it here.
  • HenroidHenroid Mexican kicked from Immigration Thread Centrism is Racism :3Registered User regular
    I like the time travel stories where people go back and affect the past, but their presence causes events to happen they already did. So say someone went back and just did whatever they wanted to do, or tried to stay out of the way, or didn't care either way, they were always part of the history of that world and everything they did already had an effect. They just didn't realize it before they went back and time and did it.

    I feel that explanation is kind of funky.

    Gargoyles did this.

    A lot.

    As far as I'm concerned it's pretty much the only way time travel can work unless each trip creates a new parallel universe.

    Really, it's the only way it works out. And Gargoyles even flatly stated it too (when the Arch-Mage saves, uh, himself, and is showing his past self what to do and how to do it, he mentions that the Grimoire has to remain in play in history). Also on that note with Gargoyles, apparently there were comics and the Phoenix Gate trapped Brooklyn in some sort of solo adventure? That would've been crazy to see in the show if Disney let it run its course naturally.

  • DJ EebsDJ Eebs Moderator, Administrator admin
    animorphs and lost did it!

  • Jam WarriorJam Warrior Registered User regular
    jackal wrote: »
    Building a time machine that only travels forward in time feels like building a car that only drives downhill.

    I have a time machine that only goes forwards. It's called my bed.

    To the my non quantum physics educated brain backwards time travel is clearly guff. Forwards timetravel as a perception thing due to relativity, fine, but really then what's the point?

    MhCw7nZ.gif
  • ShexyBShexyB Registered User regular
    Taco Bell so awsome like it so much :)

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