marvel comics – AggroChat

Bookshops, Marvels, and a couple of Lokis

November 10, 2023 by Belghast

Good Morning Friends! I am getting a bit late this morning because I have been off-watching the last of the Loki series. We have the day off from work, and I have a list of things I plan on doing today but have yet to start. One of these is breaking down the mountain of shipping boxes I have carelessly thrown in the garage, and I plan on doing so while listening to an audiobook to make the time pass more easily. Speaking of books… I wrapped up Bookshops and Bonedust by Travis Baldree. This book came out on the 7th and I think maybe this is the fastest I have ever consumed a book. There is just something cozy about the style of writing of these books and how easy it is to consume. Truth be told there is nothing terribly special about the setting of the books themselves because it is sort of this familiar fantasy setting that would blend cleanly with any D&D session. What makes them special however is the love and attention paid to the characters. Legends and Lattes was probably my favorite book that I read this year because it created this tapestry of characters that now all have permanent homes in my heart. I can’t say that Bookshops and Bonedust is necessarily a better book, but it is still equally enjoyable. Where Legends starts at the end of Viv’s adventuring life… this book is set far earlier in the very beginning as she was earning her place in an Adventuring company and got knocked out of battle and forced to stay behind and heal. This is a book about becoming the Viv that we know in the first book, and some of the key moments that set her on a path to that eventual future. Above anything else though it is a book about falling in love with books… and the friends that you meet along the way that influence your tastes. I chiseled careful niches in my soul for a whole new cast of beloved characters, and I think you will as well.

I watched The Marvels, and I think this is probably going to be a bit of a divisive film. Let’s just get this out of the way… I loved it and I think it might be slingshotted into the pantheon of my favorite Marvel films. However, I think the hype being artificially manufactured related to this film is going to leave a lot of folks frustrated. The last trailer that was released makes it seem like this is the beginning of a brand new era for Marvel and that “everything changes”. On some level this is true… but on other levels, the film itself is a really good character-driven story about three generations of heroes at different steps in their journey. I feel like this is going to be a film that the folks like me who enjoyed Thor Ragnarok and Love and Thunder will greatly appreciate. I feel like the folks who trashed those films… will not and will probably be overly vocal about it. Ms Marvel is one of my favorite characters in Marvel comics, and I loved the Disney Plus Mini-Series. This movie is more a direct sequel to that than anything else, and it does a fairly good job of wrapping up some loose ends surrounding Captain Marvel and Monica/Captain Rambeau. I feel like it also makes some effort to try and set up events for future movies to explore… with a post-credits scene that finally begins to make good on a whole slew of teasers that have been not so stealthily inserted into a lot of Marvel media of them finally making good on the Fox Studios acquisition. More than that however it lays further groundwork for the Young Avengers… a project I am entirely here for.

As stated in the first paragraph, I wrapped up the second season of Loki this morning. I really hate the Disney Plus standard now of airing shows at a fixed time, because it ultimately means I always watch something the day after it comes out. This season admittedly was a bit of a mess and I spent most of the episodes uncertain of what I thought about the journey we were taking. The art direction of Loki is phenomenal, as is honestly the acting… but the tale that was woven felt a bit unsteady at times. However I am happy to report that the series as a whole sticks the landing, and I think we will probably be closing out this chapter of the MCU and opening a brand new one thanks to this series. I think that has been my frustration with Marvel over the last few outings… we’ve been on the cusp of something greater but never quite getting there. It is a series of media telling us that something is coming, but never quite stepping over the threshold and out into whatever this new reality is. Multiverse of Madness, Quantumania, The Marvels, and the Loki series… all have been playing around the periphery of things to come and I feel like finally we are beginning to get somewhere worth going. After a lot of floundering and a few just plain awful series like Secret Invasion, I am hoping that maybe just maybe Marvel is beginning to coalesce into something better. All of that said… Loki as far as a standalone series goes… has enough internal continuity to be universally good for even someone who knows nothing about the Marvel Universe. I would legitimately recommend this series even if you have never darkened the door of any superhero properties. I am hoping however it leads to more interesting things that do finally begin to factor into the larger picture. I think it has to… there is no way this series and the others I mentioned before are not leading to a Multilateral war that will carry us forward into the second culmination event for the MCU. Anyways! I hope you all have a wonderful weekend. I highly recommend all three of the pieces of Media that I talked about this morning. The post Bookshops, Marvels, and a couple of Lokis appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.

AggroChat #248 – Apparently Skywalkers

May 21, 2019April 14, 2019 by AggroChat

Featuring: Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo and Thalen

Going into the show we had what seemed like a pretty slim set of show notes… but somehow we actually ended up bumping topics. We start off with a discussion of Grim Dawn since Bel and Grace have been playing it. This leads into a talk about loot generosity spawned by the loot filters in both Grim Dawn and Path of Exile and that ends up going off in its own direction. We talk a bit about the Star Wars Episode IX trailer which spawns a discussion about the Star Wars Cinematic Universe… which winds its way to the Marvel Comic Universe… which winds its way to a general discussion about Comic books. Finally a brief topic about a Warframe learning from its mistakes and trying a do-over on the Hildryn event.

Topics Discussed

Grim Dawn
Loot Filters
- General Loot Generosity
- Loot Management in Games
Star Wars Episode XI Trailer
- Star Wars Cinematic Universe
Marvel Cinematic Universe
- Marvel Comics
Comic Books in General
Warframe Hildryn Event Redo

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Week in Gaming 12/13/2015

December 13, 2015 by Belghast

Blogging is Hard

I’ve been in a bit of a relative funk this week, and found it extremely hard to get started writing most mornings. It is like for whatever reason my will to put fingers to keyboard and make important sounding things happen… has been drained out of me. At this point we are a few months away from going three whole years worth of blog posts, and I guess in a way it is having its toll on me. At this point I have far more regular readers than I have ever had at any other point in the blogs history, and that is freaking awesome. The fact that I have so many supportive people with my back… is ultimately the thing that keeps me moving forward on days like today. We recorded this insanely huge podcast last night where we took the normal crew of myself, Grace, Kodra, Tam and Thalen… and included some other friends InkyBrushes, Nephsys and Pizzmaid. Sadly we were missing Ash but he had his own version of a really rough week. Combined we focused a single topic… and recorded for over two hours… which compressed down to just under it. The problem being… by the time I did even the most basic editing pass… it was around one in the morning.

I’ve been fighting what I think is largely sleep deprivation most of the week, and it has ended up with me falling asleep as early as 8 pm on a couple of the nights. Well granted I went to bed at 8pm… and read comics on my new kindle but still I ended up drifting off to sleep about 30 minutes to an hour later. I have been getting a lot of use out of my Marvel Unlimited account, and largely using it to read the backlog of awesome Star Wars comics. At first I went through what was available of the modern series, namely Star Wars and the Vader series. I started on the Princess Leia series but struggled with it, mostly because I simply was not a huge fan of the art style. Recently though I have been running back through and reading the Knights of the Old Republic series from the start. I am maybe a dozen episodes in at this point and I am loving it… this totally feels like I am consuming comics in the same way I binge Netflix shows. I just wish the lag between print and them showing up on Marvel Unlimited was not quite so great. The latest issues of the modern Star Wars comic to show up are from August of this year, but what I am really hoping is that they release the issues on a semi-monthly basis just with that lag. I can totally deal with reading comics late… I just want to be able to read them with a certain regularity.

World of Shipyards

This week has largely been about reconciling my differences with the Shipyard system. I commented last week that they were essentially a worst possible version of the Garrison system…. and in many ways I don’t have a significant change in that opinion. What did change however is that I realized that after so many of you told me about it… the Garrison addon I was already using had built in functionality to automate a good deal of the shipyard bullshittery as well. The end result is that I have somehow managed to learn to live with the Shipyards and they have rewarded me well for my blind submission. At this point between the three characters that have them… I have earned a hippo mount, a bunch of hellfire citadel gear caches, and more left sharks than I could ever have a use for… I seriously have three sitting in the inventory of my MooCowAdin. The problem with all of this of course is the fact that I now need to feed the beast that is the shipyard, and the only reliable way of doing this… is schlepping out to Tanaan jungle and completing the daily mission. Now some of my characters have been stockpiling oil from Garrison missions for along time now and won’t really have this problem… but Belghast is constantly struggling to pay his daily upkeep.

Other than this I have been slowly inching up my gear levels on Belghast and Belgrace, and attempting to run the Timewalking event on my alts… that can actually benefit from the 660-675 gear that they can drop. The funniest part of the week however has been learning that I don’t simply remember the BC era content as being significantly rougher… that it actually really is. PUG groups are simply not prepared for mobs that crowd control and fear the hell out of players… and are in no way ready for just how hard everything hits. There have been more wipes from the party finder than I have had in ages… and I am really enjoying every minute of it. The alliance side… has been a colossal mess of chain group joins and splits until finally we push through the dungeon. Horde side on the other hand.. people just buckle down and pick themselves up after a wipe and keep pushing forward. I guess when you have to wait through a thirty minute dps queue… you are significantly less likely to abandon ship at the first sign of trouble. Alliance will always be my first home because that is where my army of alts lives… but I have to say Horde is growing on me really quickly.

Fabian Strategy Lives

I know I spent a good deal of my post yesterday gushing about the new and revised Fabian Strategy… but seriously I am in love with this gun. It had been roughly a month since I had seriously spent much time in Destiny, and yesterday I poked my head back in. Apart from being woefully out of practice, I am still amazed at just how fun the moment to moment play is in this game. I spent a bit of time yesterday trying to play Battlefront, and the gameplay just doesn’t hold a candle to just how good Destiny feels. Now that I have this weapon that allows me to abuse all of my instincts, I can see myself really settling on it as my main gun. Now I have said that numerous times… and I know I said it recently with the Xhalo Supercell… but seriously…. this gun is amazing. I will always be a Titan at heart, because I want to play like a tank in most games. This gun makes me FEEL like a tank, because the chance of regeneration upon kill ends up firing a lot more frequently than I think most people realize. There have been several strikes that I survived entirely because of this weapon constantly triggering my shield regeneration. It is my goal this week to pop in periodically, and not go quite so long between play sessions.

Media Consumption 11/28/2015

November 28, 2015 by Belghast

Rainy Morning

It’s been a good morning, albeit a cold and rainy one. I got up and made a beeline to the kitchen to fix some breakfast. We’ve recently had a renaissance with the little triangle sandwich maker thing that became popular during the 90s. Recently we started playing with making pancakes in it, and the resulting tiny triangles of pancake goodness are awesome. So I fixed pancakes and sausage and my wife and I nommed happily. From there I ended up popping into World of Warcraft for a bit to do some garrison stuff, and shortly thereafter found The Goonies on cable. Around about this point my wife and I decided it was a good idea to go lay down and snuggle with the cats. It was around this point where my wife asked me… if I had already done a blog post. It had quite honestly slipped my mind. I live my life based on a sequence of rituals, with each one kicking off the next ritual… and if any of them happen out of order all sorts of mayhem occurs.

So that folks is how one almost breaks a three year streak of daily posting… not with tragic circumstances… but just a charming morning that made me forget that the internet was a thing. As a result I am getting a really late start at the day, but have now officially had some coffee so I believe I can functional properly once more. I’m back on the sofa wrapped in my blanket cocoon and tapping away on my laptop. Generally speaking Thanksgiving is usually this difficult holiday filled with running around like crazy, but this year a bunch of things have happened ending up making it the most chill and relaxed time ever. Firstly we wrapped up the work on the house just before the extended weekend, and with that there was a flurry of cleaning to make the house feel “finished”. Then we were able to load all of our meals into an evening and a morning… giving us the rest of the break just to chill. At this point we are taking advantage of the constant rain and the cold temperatures to simply stay in doors and hibernate.

Jessica Jones

With the hibernation has come a lot of Netflix or equivalent digital streaming. Over the past week I have been watching the new Marvel Netflix series, Jessica Jones. I have to admit that this is a character that I only know of in relation to the other characters she surrounds. I went through my “Kung Fu” phase where I read a lot of Powerman and Iron Fist, and ever since have had a certain affinity for the characters in that chunk of the Marvel Universe. In truth… after the amazing results of the Daredevil series, I would have watched anything produced for Netflix feature Marvel characters. Jessica Jones however took a completely different tone, but one equally gritty. While Daredevil shows the clear physical toll of being a hero… Jessica Jones does a good job of showing the mental and emotional toll. Jones herself is completely walled off from the world in her own emotional bomb shelter, trying to keep as many people away from her… because she is convinced that is the only way she can actually keep them safe.

The show also digs into a lot of themes of violation and betrayal but does so in a slightly different way than we are used to seeing. The Purple Man has always been such a strange character in the comics, and I was not quite sure how they would end up making it work for the screen. David Tennant’s portrayal does this excellent job of walking this razor line between making him completely horrific and likable at the same time. There are times you think that maybe with the proper role model, he could change and be a force for good… only to get those hopes dashed when you realize that this is a person without any sense of a moral compass. The actor playing Luke Cage also does an amazing job of bringing that character to life, and I am hoping we see a significant big more of him in the future seasons and the supposed upcoming Luke Cage Hero for Hire show. My favorite insider moment in the show was when Rosario Dawson’s Clare Temple, and it is setting her up to be the Night Nurse taking care of all the supers in trouble. I could gush about Ritter, but really without her the show would have fallen apart completely. I highly suggest watching it… and I am trying really hard not to do any serious spoilers here.

Inside Out

Last night I also finally got around to watching Pixar’s Inside Out. I have to say that in all honesty there has yet to be a Pixar film that I have not loved, and that is saying something because in truth… I can’t say the same about Disney animated films in general. There is a certain magic that Pixar brings to the screen, and a certain timeless “realness” that they give their characters. This film was a bit of an emotional roller coaster but I guess that makes since as it is kinda the “Feelings Have Feelings Too” movie. There were so many moments where I laughed out loud, and several moments towards the end of the movie where I failed miserably to fight back tears. Maybe the whole nostalgic binge I have been on served to deepen the experience of this movie. There were so many profound messages like… you can’t really be happy without also feeling sad sometimes. There were moments I related to the dad, especially when he was straight up oblivious… because so often I get lost in my own head and forget that I am supposed to be paying attention to the world around me. One of my favorite bits came at the very end of the movie when it showed the inside of the cats head… I am pretty sure that is exactly how it works inside our cats at least. This morning while laying in bed… every so often one of them would go tearing through the house for no apparent reason… only to come back and snuggle a few minutes later.

Heroes Reborn

Another thing that I started last night was Heroes Reborn, which is the reboot of the much acclaimed Heroes television show from a few years back. I say much acclaimed… and by that I guess I really just mean the first season. The show as a whole went tragically downhill quickly after that, and I blame the writers strike on pretty much killing all hope of that show living up to its full potential. I mean I realize strikes have to happen, but that managed to kill a number of would be amazing televisions shows. This time around we have zoomed forward to several years after the events of the first series, to a time where the “Evos” as they are now calling folks with super powers are out in the open and an act of terrorism has turned the public against them. The show has shades of the Mutant Registration act from X-Men, and the first episode centers on the dad from the first series, who has apparently forgotten any knowledge from the event. The first episode was intriguing enough to get me to start watching it, and I figure at some point today I will continue on that process. Will be interesting to see where they go with this one, and I hope that maybe just maybe they can live up to the promise that the first season started.