Avatars

[CX]

It's a Pelican from the end of the live action Halo 3 "Arms Race" trailer.

[Alelou]

It's a Pelican from the end of the live action Halo 3 "Arms Race" trailer.

Thank you...I think. He will be delighted to see that. Then he will probably start brooding about getting Halo on the computer. We're hitting the point where "T" is no longer an automatic rejection, but I don't think I'm ready for "M."

(Why is it M, other than violence?)

[CX]

Blood spatter (human and alien) and some occasional cuss words.

[Alelou]

Oh well. I'm not really too worried about that at this point. I know he's not going to turn into an immoral crazed sociopath. (He just missed half of Batman because he had his eyes shut -- he has an even harder time dealing with suspense than I do.) But I suspect my husband would freak over that M too.

[Elessar]

Oh well. I'm not really too worried about that at this point. I know he's not going to turn into an immoral crazed sociopath. (He just missed half of Batman because he had his eyes shut -- he has an even harder time dealing with suspense than I do.) But I suspect my husband would freak over that M too.

Are you talking about for children or for your husband himself?

[Alelou]

I'm saying for my 13-year-old. It's not really an issue anyway -- he knows better than to even ask for an M-rated game. But he did wistfully say, "I love Halo." He must play it at a friend's house.

[Escriba]

My father never "censured" anything to me. Probably because the "adult movies" were late, when I was at bed. Computers games weren't a problem when I was young (not very sophisticated, you know ) I used to watch "Saint Seiya", that it's quite violent for a child, but my parents never ban it. And I watched "Life of Brian" when I was a child, of course, and loved it In fact, my father encouraged me and my sister to watch it. I remember I could read any book I wanted. In fact, I stopped reading two books he gave me because they had sex scenes: one of them didn't have many but I was 14 (and a little shy as a girl) and the other had a lot of sex scenes (and some of them with a monk as a leading role) and I felt bad for reading it when I was... 16 years old! (I was a good to shoes.) This book, by the way, was "The children of the Grail" by Peter Berling.

[Alelou]

When I grew up there wasn't much need to censor -- there were like maybe five broadcast TV stations and prime time actually meant something, and movies were much tamer than they are today. I didn't get censored EXCEPT my father decided I shouldn't read Our Bodies Our Selves (which had a very graphic illustration or two of sex in the earlier editions). So that was of course the first book in my life that I had to sneak, which I promptly did.

The most explicit box of books I ever got my hands on as a teenager had titles like Slave Master of Gor and they were passed along by my GRANDMOTHER. I'm not sure she'd actually read them, but who knows. Grandma Thelma's definitely not a paragon of female modesty.

Unlike me at that age. Reading was one thing and doing it was another. I was a slow starter. Dad didn't need to worry about a thing. In fact, all the things that could go wrong were so lovingly detailed in Our Bodies Our Selves that it probably slowed me down.

[CX]

I'm not sure if it would actually turn out to be an issue or not because the games are so popular, but you might consider getting the first one before too long, even if you hide it from him until he's older. The second one will probably take a while yet to drop down in price. These are the PC versions, mind. The first one has been holding stead most places at $20. Second one is at $50, unless you get it on Amazon.com.

[Distracted]

In fact, all the things that could go wrong were so lovingly detailed in Our Bodies Our Selves that it probably slowed me down.

Yep. It's an eye opener, isn't it? I basically do the same thing with the Freshman Health classes at the university where I work. Only I have color photographs. You should see their faces when I'm done.

[JadziaKathryn]

So that was of course the first book in my life that I had to sneak, which I promptly did.

Better than when a friend loaned me the entire Flowers in the Attic series, which I hid while reading them. At least yours didn't involved squicky brother-sister incest. (On the plus side, that was the extent of my wildness in high school, and some kids were doing drugs, etc, so I guess reading that series was a lot tamer than what most people were doing. But still.)

Anyway, on the avatar front:
I've used this shot of Trip before, but I like it a lot so I'm using it again.

[Alelou]

Yeah, when I taught 10th grade English a lot of girls used those books for their independent reading. They created quite a furtive little sensation. But I wasn't going to stop them. 1) I hadn't read them myself, so what did I know, and it was called 'independent reading' for a reason. 2) As far as I was concerned, anything they read that voraciously couldn't hurt. I used to argue with the school librarian because she didn't want to buy S.E. Hinton paperbacks because they tended to disappear. I said she should buy extra so some could disappear -- at least the kids READ those, as opposed to the heavy hardcovers about world religion and so forth that she favored.

[Kevin Thomas Riley]

I've made some new Jolene avatars, all from pics in Femme Fatales:

[Kevin Thomas Riley]

And I've made a bunch of new Jolene avatars again...

First from Starship Troopers 3:



And then from Comic Con:



Notice the bum shot avatar!

Also available at my website.

[Asso]