OOTS #1269 - The Discussion Thread

[arimareiji]

That may not be an SMBC joke, but I definitely remember reading a comic about superman working as a cancerologist who keeps finding tumors wherever he looked at in his patients.

That sounds like a lovely twist on what I'm sure is some form of fallacy, "my experiences are universal".

(Edit because I didn't properly connect the below thought train...)

Although I guess a more-accurate joke would be a guy complaining to his friend about how all women are [terrible trait], while his friend rolls his eyes and imagines two guys in lab coats:
The first complains, "All day long, I deal with a*****es!"
The other replies "Maybe you should go into another specialty, instead of proctology."

[Riftwolf]

Ignoring that sufficient amounts of anything would be bad for your health, doesn't kryptonite cause cancer in humans with long exposure. Or was that just JLA?

It caused mutations to the villains-of-the-week in Season 1 Smallville, but I don't think that's canon to anything (a problem to pretty much everything attached to DC*)

*Yes this is a Marvel problem too but I can keep track of most of the MCU canon and thanks to the multiverse, all of it's now canon

[bunsen_h]

(Googled, and it appears to bear out - this property is mentioned on wikipedia, but there are far more mentions of all the various permutations of kryptonite that have been similarly contrived as plot devices.)

I'd heard of about half of them. Pink kryptonite is one that I'd missed. That is a joke that has aged poorly.

[Eric the White]

{scrubbed}

[Riftwolf]

I'd heard of about half of them. Pink kryptonite is one that I'd missed. That is a joke that has aged poorly.

It appears you've successfully checkmated the forum.

[Fyraltari]

I'm more surprised that the pink one is the only one bunsen_h hadn't heard of before. Of all the alternate kryptonites, I feel like it's the one that gets mentioned the most. Hell, it's the only one I could tell you the effect of without having to check first.

[Peelee]

After some quick and dirty googling, it looks like pink kryptonite is not a real kryptonite in Superman's universe and was only referenced one time in one panel in one comic satirizing Silver Age Superman comics. Apparently he married Supergirl like two pages later.

Besides, rainbow Jewel Kryptonite is better.

[Laurentio III]

Speaking of, superman's vision sounds carcinogenic.

Often considered part of the explicit-but-not-explicitely-stated psionic set of powers of Superman.
It's a long, nerdish discussion.

Besides, pink Kriptonite is non canon, unless you are Flex Mentallo.
And, if you can, you should always be Flex Mentallo.
Even when Batman is a choice.

[bunsen_h]

I'm more surprised that the pink one is the only one bunsen_h hadn't heard of before. Of all the alternate kryptonites, I feel like it's the one that gets mentioned the most. Hell, it's the only one I could tell you the effect of without having to check first.

As I wrote, I hadn't heard of about half of them. My knowledge of the Superman lore is spotty and goes back a ways; I'm blank on most of the last couple of decades. My brother was a much bigger fan than I am/was. To give you some sense of things, I vaguely recall reading a comic in which white kryptonite was used to save a planet that had been infested by some kind of plague. Doing the digging, I find that that was Superman Family from June, 1978. And I remember having read two or three stories that involved red kryptonite. The others are fuzzier in my mind.

[Blue Dragon]

I hope the story doesn't get stuck in this meeting for too long.

[KorvinStarmast]

We are back to telling D&D jokes, but the art style is much improved over strip 0001.

[brian 333]

D&D jokes?

A dwarf, a human, and an elf walk into a bar and order drinks. Before the first sip of elfwine a bar-fly lands on the rim of the elf's drink.

"It's ruined, I can't drink it now," complained the elf.

The fly flew over and landed on the human's glass of meade. The human waved it away, saying, "It's just a fly."

The fly landed on the dwarf's beer stien, and the dwarf grabbed it by the tail and squeezed, shouting, "That's mine! Spit it out!"

[PontificatusRex]

I hope the story doesn't get stuck in this meeting for too long.

Some meetings seem to drag on for weeks, don't they?

[danielxcutter]

Anderson! It's only been two days but it feels like years.

bonus points if you get the reference

[arimareiji]

Going back and thinking about how close things came to a train wreck between Serini and the Order (if either side had been a little less able to stop and consider why things weren't going the way they wanted), reminded me of one of my favorite quotes (no D&D pun intended):

"Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind."

[danielxcutter]

Serini not bothering to care about their position until the god thing came up was kind of a major point, yes.

[drDunkel]

I hope the story doesn't get stuck in this meeting for too long.

Hey! This way the story will go on for another decade! That said, I hope everything is fine with the Giant.

[Quizatzhaderac]

"Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind."

If your players take this literally, your setting may have too many mimics.

[drazen]

I hope the story doesn't get stuck in this meeting for too long.

I have wondered a bit myself if that title is a bit of author meta commentary on the story getting from here to there. Need to advance the plot somehow... but it's stuck in this meeting!

[arimareiji]

"Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind."

If your players take this literally, your setting may have too many mimics.

Or too many mind flayers wearing rings of invsibility.

[Metastachydium]

Or too many mind flayers wearing rings of invsibility.

That's an unreasonably complicated way of saying "a mindflayer wearing a ring of invisibility".

[Gnoman]

It caused mutations to the villains-of-the-week in Season 1 Smallville, but I don't think that's canon to anything (a problem to pretty much everything attached to DC*)

*Yes this is a Marvel problem too but I can keep track of most of the MCU canon and thanks to the multiverse, all of it's now canon

The 90s version of Lex Luthor was killed because the ring with a gem of cut kryptonite he regularly menaced Superman with gave him turbocancer.

Well, they actually scraped all the cancer off him until he was just a brain in a jar, then implanted the brain into a much younger clone of himself allowing him to return as Lex Luthor Junior, with a good-guy facade.

[Quizatzhaderac]

A mindflayer per each person or one versus everyone in the world?

If the later, has Cthulhu awakened? Was that one of those 2020 events that people were to distracted to notice, like the aliens?

[Brumagris]

Some meetings seem to drag on for weeks, don't they?

I wonder if this meeting could have been a "Sending" spell

[WanderingMist]

I hope the story doesn't get stuck in this meeting for too long.

It's just Rich's way of making us feel we're stuck in the meeting, too.

[elros]

It's just Rich's way of making us feel we're stuck in the meeting, too.

Who do you think can handle the wait the worst: Xykon or Elan?
Neither is patient, but at least Xykon is outside.

[arimareiji]

A mindflayer per each person or one versus everyone in the world?

If the later, has Cthulhu awakened? Was that one of those

Spoiler: THWTEATT

Show

2020

events that people were to distracted to notice, like the aliens?

*panicked shhhh* ...if you speak the name of The Horror With Two Eyes And Two Tails, it may come back. (^_~)

(and thank you)

[georgie_leech]

*panicked shhhh* ...if you speak the name of The Horror With Two Eyes And Two Tails, it may come back. (^_~)

(and thank you)

Haven't you heard? This year was already Two Thousand Twenty, too

[arimareiji]

Haven't you heard? This year was already Two Thousand Twenty, too

Spoiler: replying in the form of 1000 words

Show

ba-dum-tchh (^_~)b

[Breccia]

Speaking of, superman's vision sounds carcinogenic.

I've actually seen that topic discussed, twice, and seen three answers I like.

1) Superman's vision is so strong, his eyes can capture and interpret naturally-existing X-rays as a super-high degree. He's not shooting out X-rays that, somehow, turn around and come back to his face, after all. This means he's not emitting radiation and therefore not a cancer risk.

2) Superman's X-ray vision is a "special form of energy" because it's been shown to go through other things that real X-rays don't go through. Lead's really not that special in this regard. And there's been plenty of times where, for example, Superman's X-ray vision wasn't prismed and diffracted by crystals, or got through gold, back in the day when people who wrote comics didn't do research, but it's canon now. Once you make it a "special form of energy" it becomes impossible to classify with RL science and logic.

3) Yes. Extremely. There's a reason cancer was the trigger in the Watchmen graphic novel. Uh, spoiler warning.

Spoiler

Show

So the villain tricked Dr. Manhattan, a being basically capable of creating and controlling physics down to the sub-theoretical level, into thinking he caused cancer. It was a trick, but the fact that Dr. Manhattan throws out all kinds of crazy energy to maintain his superhuman powers in an otherwise realistic world means that, yes, alpha/beta/gamma side-effects were a completely believable risk, even to someone of his level of knowledge

.