#1: It's Kindom Hearts plus BALLS! (is worksafe)
I've been trapped in DeviantArt for hours, clicking link after link to gallery after gallery and picture after picture... it's like a never ending hamster wheel of awesome...
- CD
ETA: #2: Aww, how sweetSERVO: Loook *deeeeply* into my eyes... Tell me, what do you see?
CROW: (hypnotized) A twisted man who wants to inflict his pain upon others.
For the next 72 hours, Itachi intoned, I will slap you with this trout. - Spying no Jutsu, chapter 3
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

It looks like Iran's leaders are trying to stop thier citizens from getting second opinions on the official government interpretation of things. They have recently created teams of enforcers to search and destroy all the satellite antennas and recievers they can find among thier citizens.
gatewaypundit.blogspot.co...gimes.html
The Iranian leadership may feel the recent war in Lebonon between Israel and it's Hezzbolla forces has put them in danger of finding themselves in much the same position as the US during the Veitnam period or Russia was in in Afganistan with survivors coming home and telling the truth that was being partially hidden by the official news agencies.
Iran's leadership doesn't have to worry about large numbers of survivors returning home so they are taking steps to remove the free press from the equation.
Another thing that probably worries them is that in spite of the knee jerk reply from across the middle east that the catastrophic war in Lebonon is all Israels and the US's fault there has been a worrying number of leaders and arab citizens that privately and in not so private settings laying the blame at Iran and Syria's feet.
Add in persistant rumour that Israel made a major intelligence discovery at one of Hezzbolla's bases during or near the end of the occupation of Lebonon and you have a Iranian Leadership that is getting worried and tightening the screws on thier control.
Alternately Iran maybe preparing to escalate thier actions or envolvment in Lebonon and they are tightening thier control over thier citizen's in preparation for that.
Wonder if we can convince the American military to start rebroadcasting CNN and FOX news on local Iranian TV channels just across the border in Iraq.

howard melton

Members who are security level 30 or higher should dedicate one costume slot to the Legendary's standard uniform.
Note that this is for heroes who don't have as part of their origin a battlesuit or major modifications to the bodytype, like monstrous legs or large robotic gloves. For those, you can simply use the standard SG color replacement and not have to worry about dedicating a costume slot.
Individual tweaks and modifications are encouraged. If you have a particular "schtick" to your costume -- like Evangelia is the wings on the head and the wide curled up shoulder bits -- then keep that and change the rest. If you shoot eyebeams from a visor that you always wear on every costume, regardless of design, then leave that in.
As a general guideline, when designing variants, always try to keep in mind -- the center is blue, the outside is yellow. In other words. Torso and upper legs/arms blue with hands and feet as yellow. Anything that follows that general rule is going to look approximately right.
Key to descriptions:
Color grid is 10 across, 16 Vertical. Anytime there is a reference the color grid, it is given in coordinates starting from the left to right, then top to bottom. For instance, if an element says:
Color: 7/4 (Yellow)
Then that means that you count 7 over from the left, and 4 down to find find a shade of Yellow there.
Costume pieces and patterns are referred to by their names.

Well after going though the list I've found three that we don't have:
Terra Volta
Talos Island
and
Eden
I tried to grab them earlier and they didn't spawn. Someone is going to have to do a sweep of these areas Saturday and get them, hopefully. I know we're doing Delagation with F.O.R.C.E. we should have them all anyway.When I say Jump, I want you out the window, you got that Demon-boy!
What!
*********************
In the epic rage of furious thunder
legends create their tales
when the twilight calls and the dark lord falls
our glory will prevail

...can be found here.
It is by no means close to finished -- I'll be changing the banner text into Legendary gold when I get home and go back to work with a decent image editor, for one thing. But I wouldn't mind opinions and suggestions. I'm following the same basic layout as the rest of my site, with buttons along the left edge.
Oh, and for those wondering where the Vitruvian Man image came from, I stood Eva on the Round Table and did a screenshot straight down into one of those embedded monitors. Then I cropped and cleaned it up a little.
-- Bob
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...The President is on the line
As ninety-nine crab rangoons go by...

I was listening to My Favorite Broadway: The Leading Ladies and an Linda Eder's version of Man of La Mancha began playing (I must say this has become one of my favorite versions of this song.)
Title: Man of La Mancha
Artist: Linda Eder
Album: My Favorite Broadway: The Leading Ladies
Track: 9
Hear me now oh thou bleak and unbearable world
Thou art base and debauched as can be
And a knight with his banner all bravely unfurled
Now hurls down his gauntlet to thee!
I am I, Don Quixote, the Lord of La Mancha
Destroyer of Evil am I
I will march to the sounds of the trumpets of glory
Forever to conquer or die
Hear me heathens and wizards and serpents of sin
All your dastardly doings are past
For a holy endeavor is now to begin
And virtue shall triumph at last!
I am I, Don Quixote, the Lord of La Mancha
A name all the world soon will know
And the wild winds of fortune will carry me onward
Oh whither so ever they blow
Whither so ever they blow
Onward, to Glory I go!
I am I, Don Quixote, the Lord of La Mancha
A name all the world soon will know
And the wild winds of fortune will carry me onward
Oh whither so ever they blow
Whither so ever they blow
Onward, to Glory I go!
I see two possible uses for this song:
1) A "gate" song that takes Doug to a world where he is needed or
2) A "helper" song; it starts out with winds blowing around and fading in to view as if from a distance comes
"a country squire, no longer young... bony, hollow-faced... eyes that burn with the fire of inner vision."
It's "Don Quixote de La Mancha" on his "skinny old horse" with banners unfurled, ready to do battle!
Don Quixote can be used as a serious helper for Doug or for comedy, depending upon what Bob thinks.

I just had one. Since Sasuke's mom never got named officially, as far as I can remember, fic writers have to pull one out of their ... ear ... if they want to use her much - nothing unexpected there, perfectly normal. I did something similar for Sandaime's personal name recently.
The trouble was when the fic I was just reading named her Mikoto.
ARGH! Just THINKING it ... with the evil older brother and everything... ARGH!
- CDSERVO: Loook *deeeeply* into my eyes... Tell me, what do you see?
CROW: (hypnotized) A twisted man who wants to inflict his pain upon others.
A kung-fu nun in a leather thong was no less extreme than anything else he had seen that day. - Rev. Dark's IST: Holy Sea World
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

Well, I've tried to search and make sure that this one hasn't been brought up, and as far as the search function is telling me it hasn't...
"Cartoon Heroes" by Aqua
We are what we're supposed to be
Illusions of your fantasy
All dots and lines that speak and say
What we do is what you wish to do
We are the cartoon symphony
We do the things you wanna see
Frame by frame, to the extreme
Our friends are so unreasonable
They do the unpredictable
All dots and lines that speak and say
What we do is what you wish to do
It's all an orchestra of strings,
Doing unbelievable things
Frame by frame, to the extreme
One by one, we're making it fun
We are the Cartoon Heroes, Oh oh oh
We are the ones who're gonna last forever
We came out of our crazy mind, Oh oh oh
And what a town and a feza, baby
Take a Spiderman, an arachnophobian
Welcome to the toon town party
Take a superman from nevernever land
Welcome to the toon town party
We learn to run at speed of light
And to fall down from many heights
It's true but just remember that
what we do is what you just can to
I know the route of crazyness
A bunch of dots that's chasin' us
Frame by frame, to the extreme
One by one, we're making it fun
We are the Cartoon Heroes, Oh oh oh
We are the ones who're gonna last forever
We came out of our crazy mind, Oh oh oh
And what a town and a feza, baby
Take a Spiderman, an arachnophobian
Welcome to the toon town party
Take a superman from nevernever land
Welcome to the toon town party
You'll think we're so mysterious
Don't take us all too serious
Be original, and remember that
what we do is what you just can do
What we do is what you just can do
What we do is what you just can do
What we do is what you just can do
What we do is what you just can do
We are the Cartoon Heroes, Oh oh oh
We are the ones who're gonna last forever
We came out of our crazy mind, Oh oh oh
And what a town and a feza, baby
There's still more to come,
And everyone will be
Welcomed at the
Toon - Toon
Town - Town
Party
***
Here's a Youtube link to an anime AMV done to the music
www.youtube.com/watch?v=sva1pHOrl30
***
Two possible interpretations that I've thought of...
1) Empowerment of potentially several other people with superpowers based on cartoon/comic book characters of their world - for example, if the "Spiderman and his Amazing Friends" cartoon existed in the Evangelion universe, Shinji is given Spider-abilities for the song, Asuka does Firestar, and Rei as Icegirl just to go with it. Doug as the power source may not be affected, or the song may just ignore him for any other effects (he's already a cartoon hero)...
2) Simulcra. Creations based on cartoon heroes start appearing to aid Doug in battle. The image I've got in my head is Doug being blown into a comic book shop/anime store, standing up and just smiling. The song begins, and the comics start doing the flapping/moving mysteriously, the anime DVDs start falling over and a TV flickers on in the back as whatever villian gets to see the sight of the comic characters crawling out/off the pages and out of the screen around Doug, glaring out the villian.
That'd sure as hell intimidate me if I was the local evil guy and Superman just climbed out of the TV in front of me. Doesn't matter if they might be illusion... I wouldn't know, and probably wouldn't want to find out in case they weren't...
RMH
***
Forsyth's Second Corollary to Murphy's Laws
Just when you see the light at the end of the tunnel, the roof caves in.

So this is, at least in part, still a work in progress. This started as an idea of mine a few years ago and, well, one thing led to another (the name Godsend was unavailable and I'd accidentally put a character through seven levels on the /wrong/ server) and I decided to try this out here on CoH.
So. A few centuries back a sorcerer rose to prominence in China through heretofore unexplored avenues of research. What kind of prominence? The 'make your own army of demons and a place to house them to boot' kind of prominence, that's what. His servants were known as 'mirror demons' for their ability to enter the world through, well, mirrors. The weaker minions (mirror goblins) could manifest through any reflective surface, while the more powerful ones were restriced in the ways that they could enter. Denouncing his humanity along with his name, he became known as the King of Three Shadows and proceeded to commit the kind of villainy that comes with the territory.
Things were looking pretty bleak until a sorceress (whose name, sadly, is unrecorded: books refer to her as the Jade Maiden) came along and started banishing his demons left and right. As his demons were banished, their mirrors back home would crack, denying them the ability to return to the world save through the direct will of their master. The King responded with a direct assault on the would-be exorcist. The battle was reputed (in the sort of books where this kind of thing is written down) to have lasted for days but ended, finally, in the King's defeat. She banished him (for his efforts had made him, over time, into something akin to his servants) and set his worldlet adrift in the dimensions to keep it from our own world.
Unfortunately, she knew that her efforts were not final and complete: with time (a few centuries, by her estimation) he'd be able to bring his world back into alignment with the Earth and renew his invasion. To this end she invested a measure of power in creating a servant (whose name, in the long form, is Reflected Light of the Jade Maiden) and bidding it to wait until the time was right to grant this power to two humans. The first would become the Mirror Guardian, whose job it would be to banish the demons of the King and hopefully find a way to prevent His return wholesale. The second would be the Mirror Knight, and it would be his task to protect the Guardian and keep her safe.
Enter Yagami Hiroshi, nineteen year old college semi-burnout and his fourteen year old sister Naoko. Descended of the Jade Maiden herself (though they don't know /that/ bit yet), each was spiritually ideal for the jobs to which they would be assigned. Reflected Light knew this and, when he thought the time was right, came to them to bestow their birthrights.
Well, this was the plan. First off, the King's return happened just a /wee/ bit ahead of schedule and he knew the identity of the two who would be chosen. The means by which he returns to the world are slow, luckily, and so the first minion he set loose on the world was not something that could kill them. The being was known as the Duke of Names, and it possessed power over the notion of identity. The Duke used his powers to switch brother and sister between bodies and keep Reflected Light from discovering that this had happened. In this, he succeeded. That he was the first mirror demon that the duo managed to banish was small consolation.
The two have been trying ever since to learn how to use the powers they were /not/, in any way, prepared to have. Well, they've been doing that while they were trying to adjust to each other's lives, too. The real Naoko seems to find the whole affair rather fun, but then she's not the one who's been desperately trying to cram-tutor her in college courses while doing both of their homework.
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So yeah, that's the idea. Now I'm a big fan of the RP, and it so happens that I was hoping this could take off as a basis for this. There's a number of roles that suggest themselves for the purpose:
-The King of Three Shadows is already taken by EML. He's one bad mothe(HOLD THY TONGUE!). Yeah. Evil sorcerer and ruler of a hierarchy of demons.
-Mirror Knight Hiroshi 'him'self. Think of it as an opportunity to play Sailor Moon in the role of Tuxedo Mask. Ability to portray appropriately brat-ish behavior a plus. Magic would be the obvious choice for Origin type, and if you need a suggestion for build I'd reccommend Broadsword and Invulnerability for either Tanker or Scrapper. He's the Knight, after all.
-The Shadows of the King. "And in abandoning humanity his evil became a thing that cast Three Shadows upon the world." They aren't just metaphors: the King's Shadows are his inner council of advisors and his most trusted minions. The idea, again not really tied down, was that "War was his general, Strife his advisor, and Death the shadow that stalked his enemies." Reccommended: Brute, Dominator (or Corrupter) and Stalker, respectively. As I imagine those names are taken, feel free to come up with something.
-Mirror Demons. Ever feel the need to play a Sailor Moon villain? Well, now's your chance. The Mirror Demons come in all shapes and sizes and orders of power and usually have loosely descriptive names: the Duke of Names, the Bone Merchant, Fire's Steward, yadda yadda yadda. Have fun with them! Be evil! Make unlikely speeches! Shout "REFRESH!" Wait. Don't do that. It never helps.
So yeah. I offer this in the spirit of fostering role-playing of a slightly silly and melodramatic vein. If anyone wants to take one of the roles, make sure to say so here. Let the games begin!
(Edit: I need to pay more attention to forum posts: EML already mentioned this idea. Gomen!)

Heh. ^_^
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Epsilon