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popculturebuffet · 2 years ago

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Into the Spider-Verse: Spider-Ham (Marvel Tails #1 and Peter Porker, The Spectacular Spider-Ham #15) (Comissioned by WeirdKev15)

Hello all you happy webheads and welcome back to Into the Spider-Verse, my look at the origins of every webslinger from the landmark film in the build up to Across the Spider-Verse. And it's bittersweet to be this close to the end of the web here: i'm proud of myself for this project and kev for having cooked it up as it allowed me to really dig into my love of spider-man, and comics in general, with new ideas and even possible new retrospectives wholesale coming out of this.

But before we can end this ride, we still have one Spidey to cover, who after our previous spider-persons adventures with crackers and milk, their predecesors literal oppisite sex clone, mob goons without fear, rock n roll pop art halluciongens in your giant spider mecha, and giant spiders stripping you naked, one man comes along to say..

Yes it's time for the debut of Peter Porker, the Spectacular Spider-Ham a

And i'm sure many of you, both those familiar with the comics and those who just watched the movie, are asking the same question: why. The answer is simple. Way way back in the 1980's, Marvel had a new animated arm, Marvel Productions, which was a massive deal, producing both GI Joe and Transformers, which both started as comics first to promote the upcoming toylines, as well as Dungeons and Dragons, My LIttle Pony Tales, Muppet Babies, Jem and the Holograms, Kid N Play and the Biker Mice From Mars. There were also of course marvel cartoons like Spider-Man(the 80s one), Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends, The Incredible Hulk, the more popular Incredible Hulk and the infamous and destined to be covered Pryde of the X-Men Pilot.

So naturally Marvel wanted more ips to feed into the almighty merchandising machine, because shockingly, companies have ALWAYS wanted every dollar they can get out of making more and more adaptations as long s they can afford it. So two writers set to work to spitball this: They were Tom DeFalco, a longtime spider-man editor who would go on to write the guidebook I had as a kid that really got me into the comics and taught me a lot about his rogues gallery and more importantly would write the book himself briefly, being the one to crystalize Mary Jane's tragic Backstory and her knowing Peter Parker is spider-man all along. WIth him was the wonderful Larry Hama, at the time writing GI JOe for marvel.. and at the time of this writing STILL writing his continuation of that continuity for IDW as he should. Hama deserves all the credit for setting the foundations of the GI Joe universe most adaptations follows and for writing one hell of a comic in the process, and not one to rest on his laurels would later have the defining run on Wolverine's solo book.

So as you can imagine when these two legends get together.. they created a simple but enduringly weird joke that has lasted decades. It's a concept that just works: Spider-Man.. but he's a funny animal. Weirdly though Marvel Animation passed on it, not wanting anything to do with it despite the fact that in a time when Garfield was at the peak of his powers and they'd be making muppet babies, funny animals were a VERY easy sell. Seriously why Marvel Animation was so stupid is a riddle for the ages but Marvel liked printing money, so they put Porker in a one shot, Marvel Tails, parodying the marvel reprint mag marvel Tales. That said DeFalco didn't expect much from it and was suprised months later when the higher ups asked for another issue. He explained it was a one shot.. and then they asked when the next issue was and he got the memo. While DeFalco wrote the one shot that launched the character he freely admits he's not the one who made him a star. That honor goes to Steve Skeates. Skeates had been a mainstay in the industry, paticuarlly having a run on Aquaman i've been trying to read for some time that really launched the character to new heights before Superfriends would shove him back to the depths for a while. He was burnt out on the industry and freely admits he wouldn't of done the book for Larry Hama if it was any other book, but felt the format allowed him to do a throwback to the kinds of books he liked writing while still throwing in plenty of comedy to keep it fresh. The result was pretty great, with Skeates wisely having Porker's various foes not be the obvious joke of being the animals they resemble, for instance the Vulture being a possum in a buzzard suit instead of a vulture.

And we'll be seeing that contrast between Porker's humble one shot joke beginings and evolved more nuanced parody as unlike most of the characters featured... Porker didn't get his origin story for a while. While most of the spider-persons got there's in their very first appearance or arc, Porker's origin didn't come about till late in his solo books run. So today we'll be looking at both his first appearance in Marvel Tails, and his origin story in Peter Porker the Spectacular Spider-Ham #15 under the cut!

Spider-Ham begins his career in a typical spider-man setting: stopping a typical gang of thugs with ease and some quips. But it's not long before we get into one of the weird things about this story, something that just dosen't really work with it: Captain Americat. Cap is pictured here as Peter's steadfast partner and a reporter at his paper and none of this works. Now this is an AU, it COULD work and the idea of steve and peter being closer partners and steve mentoring him is great, just as the idea of Tony mentoring him was a brilliant one the movies captalized on. But here it's just treated as a normal thing without really being used for a joke that this is so unusual. A large part of this is something that's easy to forget as it hasn't been true about the character since the early 2000's. Spidey.. used to be a bit of a loner when it came to the rest of the Marvel Universe. Granted he was the kind of loaner who had an entire ongoing dedicated to him teaming up with other heroes and a tv show where he had two super college roomies he'd fight crime with, but when it came to consistant teamups his only real super friends were the fantastic four and in a few years Daredevil. Spider-Woman existed, but Jessica was largely her own thing by design, with only the name in common and wouldn't really become an ally or even friend of peter's till they were in the avengers together. Peter would have team ups but he really wasn't super close with the rest of the marvel universe. This changed in the early 2000's as his joining the new avengers gave him a lot of new allies in the marvel universe: He'd be on the new avengers until Brian Micheal Bendis left the book, he joined HIckman's avengers for the first arc, with Doc Ock taking his place, and joined the Mighty Avengers and Mark Waid's avengers afterwords, only in the last few years taking a break from the group entirely, ironically as his MCU counterpart became heavily associated with them himself. Not only that the dawn of the spider-verse and miles migrating to become the 616's second spider-man, meant peter soon had a spider-family.

Even now in his current tirefire of a solo i've been purposfully avoiding but suspect i'l lhave to confront some day, he has Ms Marvel, soon to be thrown in the fridge, Norman Osborn, long story, and his current girlfriend the black cat. Peter's no longer the solo operator he once was.. but back then it's very weird fo ra parody of the character to just.. casually hang out with Captain America regularly and this angle was wisely dropped.

This isn't the only weird thing in this issue either. For some reason rather than pulling from peter's many rogues, the issue has him face the Masked Marauder, some punk ripping off a super high tech arcade. It comes off more like a Scooby Doo Mystery complete with various red herings and the actual culprit showing up early on. He's not even the main threat as the everlovin hulk is also shoved into this issue. His origin is a little neat, with Bruce Bunny being an arcade game maker who gets shoved into a cabinet.

The result though just isn't that funny. Ther'es a good joke about steve stashing his shield in his coat

But otherwise i'ts just kinda.. there and didn't leave the best first impression back when I first read it. It's nicely drawn, but dosen't have much actually to say or any really satire of the character. It's clear they had the name but no idea what to do with it. THe backup is pretty funny though, the weird Goose Rider, take a while guess, who just.. spends it riding around, thinking about grabbing a burger, and dealing iwth shouty civlians and some random doofus called chainsaw. This satire.. actually works as from what I can tell Ghost Rider's early rogues gallery before his reinvention in the 90's wasn't all that impressive with few exceptions. It's more what I wanted. Thankfully when Peter got his title shot, things perked up and by the time we get to his origin... we get something delightful.

As you can tell both by the cover used for this review and from the title, this one's a parody of spider-man no more. Even if you haven't read the story (I've only read the iconic issue iwth the cover), you've doubtlessly seen it's cover, and the various homages to both that and the shot of peter throwing his costume in the trash and walking away, both by spider-heroes and the rest of the marvel. It helps that Sam Rami choose it as the backbone of Spider-Man 2 and ended up making an even BETTER version of the story in the process. Even Miles had his own version of it after his mom died and he blamed himself for it since the second ultimate venom was the reason she died. If you've read more recent comics and seen Rio alive and well that's because Miles befriended the Molocule Man, a very shy man with the power to control molocules... which shockingly for comics has been treated every bit as horrifyingly powerful as it should since his introduction, with MM's only real wekaness being his crippling neurosis. So when the universe died and was put back, Molocule brought her back as a thank you present. I had a point here.. ah yes.. I love the Molocule Man and feel he's a highly underated character. Oh that with the severe stress and sacrifice of being a spider-man, it's not a huge leap to have that moment of doubt. And it's an even shorter leap to take that moment and parody it and Peter's angst for all it's worth. We open with J Jonah Jackal hooking himself up to an idea machine while his three young wards, the junior newsboys watch. They are Jermiah Jackal, JJJ's snooty nephew, Bunson Bunny, our resident nerd who talks in big snetences and Upton Adam Stray, a combination of a black sterotype and

If your getting some deja vu from a rich magnate having three young sidekicks who both acompany him and try to steer away his worse instincts, one of whom is jonah's literal nephew.. GOOD. It means you have good taste and also get the bit. Spider-Ham has a bit of the old Scrooge McDuck stories in it's dna, simply adding spider-man and his rogues to the mix, and really JJJ is such a perfect fit for scrooge and Peter for Donald, that I can't blame both writers for dipping into this formula when it fits spider-man shockingly well now he's a pig.

This issue is written by steven Mellor, who took over the title later in his run, but like Skeates does a really fun job with it.

With Jonah having peter come to the clubhouse to view an idea he came up with that involves the kids

Peter deals with typical spider-man things. That is trying to get a date with his ex Betty Bat. It goes about usual for peter

Also as you might have noticed, hilariously, Peter Porker looks a LOT like John Mulaney, despite having been created only one year after John was born. I mean he's also a talking pig but the hair is distractingly like his future voice actors and I love it.

Baby P decides to handle this like a mature, rational young swine

Before bemoaning that he's still single.. what I like is that Mellor both really gets how Peter Parker Mopey Rants work, and milks it with everyone starring not sure what to do as peter ineternally rants and the janitor eventually asking him to leave as he's getting his tears on the floor. Peter then reflects back to his origin, the reason we're here. And even for a talking pig.. peter's origin is hilaroiusly bizzare. It's my kind of weird shenanigans. Okay so in this version Peter.. was a spider, which is clever enough.. but May was a mad scientest who befriended peter and showed him her new invention: a fission powered hairdryer. It made her radoactive, it wasn't good.. and well... I can't say what happens next and have most of you belivie it actually happened so here's photographic evdience.

This.. this is comedy gold, and clever as all hell. Just deciding to have may be radioactive nad bite peter. It's as nuts as it is brilliant and I love it. So we get the standard origin moments of Peter testing out his powers.. and we also get a nice gag out of him bending a pipe in the original amazing fantasy #15

Peter returns to find may basically the dodering old lady sterotype she was in earlier spider-man comics, and decides to look after her and not tell her the truth, as well as put his powers to use. Peter's genius in this version is also from the bite and thus Spider-Ham is born

After running into flash thompsons counterpart, who sadly isn't named flash beagle, we get jonah's meeting where he's dressed himself and the boys up in superhero outfits and ...

To become Black Beagle and his beagle brigadeers. Peter is dragged along for this and this.. is easily the weakest part of the issue. While the idea of Jonah becoming a hero himself is great and has been used well, here it's just kinda there and is mostly a setup for them to befriend "Andy Warthog" and see a bunch of celebrity pastiches. It's a boring page or two

Thankfully it picks up with a delightful parody of one of my faviorite spider-man rogue as the Hobgobbler crashes the party! God bless this pun. He kidnaps one of the celebrties and we get a ncie character moment. Despite how silly this character and his origin are... it's still neat to see the core of spider-man.. is still present.

No matter the universe, no matter who wears the mask... they can't turn down responsiblity. Try as he might.. Peter just can't let someone else get hurt if he can help it and that's what makes spider-man the hero we love so much: that drive to help people no matter what it takes. It's what makes a spider-person what they are wethere they be man, woman, ham or nb.

So Peter naturally wins, in a nicely drawn fight, cooks the turkey and drive sJonah home. He WANTS to just get some deserved sleep but Aunt May has other plans.. thankfully said plans give our hero his much deserved happy ending. Action is already his reward.

As you can probably figure, this issue is a massive improvment and it's clear even with two diffrent writers, the full ongoing got the concept better and more importantly had more fun with it. The result.. is fucking great. Also the puns. Dear lord the puns. And that's not getting into the backup which has the scavengers fight kangaroo the conquerer. Who damn well better be among the council of kangs. At any rate this issue was greatr and even with the brief slowdown, is a great issue, not only getting me reintrested in this run, but also showing off just what you can do with a parody: have it be both heartfelt and clearly get what it's making fun of while still being great.

Next Time: The web ends as we look at the movie itself. Anyone can wear the mask but is one Miles Morales up to the task? Can he fill peter's shoes? Well yeah, I mean there's even a sequel, but it's still one hell of a ride.

#spider-man #peter porker #spider-ham #mary jane waterbuffalo #john mulaney #into the spider-verse #across the spider-verse

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anhed-nia · 2 years ago

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BLOGTOBER 10/9/2022: THE HIDDEN (1987)

I'm gonna say something contentious about this great movie, to my own detriment, but I think it's the truth: Boys love THE HIDDEN. I mean, I also love THE HIDDEN. Everybody who loves a good movie loves THE HIDDEN! It's a huge party with great performances, cool images, and non-stop action. Bitchin' car chases, sick guitar riffs, sci-fi weapons, fucked up parasites, and gun-toting strippers are not inherently gendered fare; they are for everyone. But I think that the way I watch THE HIDDEN is fundamentally different from the way that, say, my husband watches it. He grew up in the New Jersey suburbs in the '80s and '90s, raised with a sense that his natural, god-given culture was cool cars, hot chicks, shootouts, explosions, secret agents, alien invaders, and all this macho material that blasts out of the screen when you watch THE HIDDEN. When my husband and I watch this movie, we may experience a similar level of pleasure, but not for the same reasons. He sees a great movie, but he also sees the greatest expression of what he was raised to believe is an inherent part of his being. He gets a sense of ownership, a feeling of having his own true nature acknowledged, that I can't really touch as a cis het girl who was raised as such—and I've noticed this every time I watch THE HIDDEN with the dudes in my life. They get a sense of social patriotism from it, a feeling of unity, and an affirmation of the most basic tenants of their cultural identity. And I think that's totally great.

So anyway, THE HIDDEN is the best movie by director Jack Sholder, unless you understand that WISHMASTER 2 is the greatest movie ever made, or unless you are doing contrarian hot takes on the quality of NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 2 just to point out that it's not as bad as its homophobic haters insist that it is. Without knowing for sure, I'd bet it's also the best movie from Bob Hunt, who also wrote THE BOOGENS. THE HIDDEN is a buddy cop movie in which hardboiled cop Michael Nouri and obvious space alien Kyle MacLachlachlan and hunt an intergalactic parasite with a taste for fast cars, rock'n'roll, and ultraviolence. It resembles ELM STREET 2 in its focus on male bonding and male fears around bodily vulnerability. It resembles WISHMASTER 2 in being an uninhibited, imaginative, balls to the wall good time. THE HIDDEN is fun, funny, and oddly moving, and it's basically only going to put you off if you hate joy.

It's easy to be distracted by the high octane spectacle of this movie, but it is also beautifully cast and performed. Kyle MacLachlan is typically wonderful and he has great chemistry with Michael Nouri, but the parasite also gives us a string of great performances from its hosts. My personal favorite is William Boyett, a lantern-jawed square who usually showed up in movies and shows about cops, cowboys, spies, and other GI Joe types, and his straight-laced appearance is a perfect foil for the extreme antisociality of the parasite, who totes around a boombox blasting shedding rock music on its relentless crime spree. Other standouts include Twin Peaks alum Chris Mulkey, Claudia Christian from MANIAC COP 2, and last but not least, Jake the dog from NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 4.

I don't really have anything deep to say about THE HIDDEN besides the sociological observation that I led with. But, even though I maintain that it offers a delightful and, all things considered, not particularly toxic reflection of American masculinity, I should underline that THE HIDDEN is definitely for everyone. Watch it today to turn off your brain and boost your mood.

PS Here is my husband's hilarious photo of us watching THE HIDDEN on my laptop during our recent road trip. It really says how we feel about William Boyett.

#blogtober #blogtober 2022 #the hidden #1987 #jack sholder #kyle maclachlan #michael nouri #claudia christian #william boyett #jake the dog #horror #sci-fi #sience fiction #body horror #parasite #action #buddy cop #bob hunt

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redsamuraiii · 3 years ago

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What You Didn't Know about Ninjas

The West

(Pic Source : SEGA Screenshot)

The first time I knew about Ninja was from my childhood SEGA game, Revenge of the Shinobi. After that I love watching the 80s Hollywood films like Sho Kosugi’s Revenge of the Ninja and Michael Dudikoff’s American Ninja.

Lucinda Dickey’s Ninja Domination used to freak me out as a kid with those “black magic” scenes. And in the 80s GI JOE cartoons, Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow were my favorite characters because they’re Ninjas!

So I became curious to know what are Ninjas? Where do they come from?

The East

(Pic Source : Trip Savvy)

Apparently, Ninjas existed since Ancient Japan but only became popular during the Warring Period of Sengoku Jidai due to their prominent roles as spies and assassins that affects the war that will forever change the course of history.

Without spies, Daimyo (Lords) will not be able to make critical decisions that will affect the outcome of the battle and without assassins, key Samurai like Kato Kiyomasa, the guardian of Toyotomi Hideyori will still be alive.

There were a few failed attempts in assassinating Tokugawa Ieyasu. Can you imagine if he actually died during Sekigahara? Kobayakawa Hideaki will not be influenced by Tokugawa and remained with the Toyotomi ensuring their victory.

The Ninjas continued to exist during the peace time of Edo Period, acting as spies for the Tokugawa Shogunate, to keep an eye on the Daimyo (Lords) across Japan to prevent potential uprising that will disrupt the peace.

Types of Ninjas

(Pic Source : Japan Travel)

There are 2 types of Ninjas :

Mie Prefecture's Iga-ryu ninja

Shiga Prefecture's Koka-ryu ninja

From what I understand is that, Iga Ninjas are famous for the legendary Hattori Hanzō, who served Tokugawa Ieyasu and Iga is known for their highly trained and proficient Ninjas that could sneak in anywhere and anytime undetected.

Koka Ninjas are not as highly trained or highly equipped as they are mostly farmers and merchants. They served Toyotomi Hideyoshi, (who used to be a peasant) acting as his spies and keep an eye on Tokugawa and his Ninjas.

Cool eh?

Ninja or Shinobi?

They were known since Ancient Japan as "shinobi". The term "ninja" was only popularized in the Taisho Period (1912 - 1926).

Speaking in terms of eras, the ninja were called "kanja" in the Warring States Period, and "onmitsu" in the Edo period.

Looking by the region, they were also called "suppa" in Kyoto and Nara Prefectures, and "shinobi" in Fukui Prefecture.

Today

(Pic Source : Nindo, Ninja Academy)

Do they still exist?

Jinichi Kawakami, the head of Banke Shinobinoden, is the second last sōke and only heir to authentic ninjutsu. He is said to be the 21st head of the Koga Ban family, a mercenary, and the honorary director of the Iga-ryu Ninja Museum.

He appeared in You Tube channel, Asian Boss and has his own channel, Nindo Channel. One of his apprentice taught Keanu Reeves for his film, John Wick 3 where his character fought with a Ninja (Mark Dacasacos).

The child in me would like to believe they still exist, continuing their shadowy works to this day, in places that we can hardly see or imagine.

Like in the recent movie, Snake Eyes where the Arashikage Clan is said to have been keeping the country in checked for generations, to ensure peace.

More info about Ninjas can be found here.

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krinsbez · 5 years ago

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GI Joe: Remixed, Viper Leaders 1

More OCs by Night_stalker, in this case, the bosses of various Viper cadres

(It was very fun trying to make it fit when we found out one of the Viper-types already HAS a boss)

TELE-VIPER LEADER:

Name: Kyu-Hwang, along with many usernames online. Codename: Gwisin DoB: Unknown Former Affiliation: Bureau 121 Orientation: Het Bio: Little is known about Kyu's past, but given his past affiliation, one can make some guesses. The fact that he also has a fondness for snapping to attention whenever a superiro comes by, and is a bit rickety makes one suspect North Korea was involved in some way. That said, he's not your sterotypical nerd. Suave, charismatic, ruthless, bit paranoid.... Kyu is one part hacker, one part cat manager, as having to run a department of IT personnel in a terrorist organization does tend to turn off the actually qualified people from turning up in person. Hobbies: Movie pirating, Coffee roasting, Cooking, and Tai Chi.

LASER-VIPER LEADER:

Name: Adrian Townes Codename: Rytov DoB: April 28th, 1965 Former Affiliation: US Army Corps of Engineers ERADC Orientation- Homosexual Bio: Born into a family that had lasers in their blood, Townes was fascinated by them. In fact, he could say he was all but in love with them. Getting appointed to the Army Corps of Engineers was his dream, where he started looking at the applications of lasers on a smaller scale then his comrades. While they tinkered with making lasers able to shoot down Ivan's ICBMs, he looked at fitting them inside tanks, if not smaller. However, finding funding for laser armed tanks and such, even in the 80s was difficult, to say the least. Matters were not helped considering that while he was incredibly gifted when it came to developing lasers, he was less then skilled at interacting with others, or with what he termed "Petty minded bureaucrats seeking only to further their own power". When the 90s came around, he found himself out of a job, the laser projects all being put into cold storage. Faced with the prospect of his life's work being left to rot in some musty filing cabinet, Adrian started making the rounds of the Pentagon's higher ups, as well as the GAO. His arguments, while very technically impressive and certainly promising quite a lot of things, well, were considerably out of touch with fiscal reality, as well as the political realities. Left fuming in a dead end post, mostly being spent watching over the laser projects in cold storage, Townes heard of Cobra's announcements, and decided this was the means to affect revenge, while also finally vindicating himself. The fact that, as an added bonus, he could likely turn his weapons against his hated rivals in the Pentagon was, in his mind, icing on the cake. Hobbies: DiY Electronics, 3D Printing, Caligraphy, and Kombucha brewing.

RANGE-VIPER LEADER:

Name: Venus Callahan Codename: Ishtar DoB: Asking a Lady her age isn't polite. Much less a ex SF Lady with more guns then employees. Former Affiliation: Canadian Airborne Regiment Orientation: Hetero Bio: Venus had a relatively normal life in Canada. Growing up in the frozen wilderness, Venus learned how to clean a rabbit before she could walk, and viewed icy temperatures as "Bit nippy". Shockingly to literally nobody, she signed up to be a officer in the Canadian Army, where she rose up the ranks due to her jocular personality, as well as being able to set a personal example for many of the men to live up to. That said, she was given one of the tougher assignments in the army, namely, the famous, or depending on who you asked, infamous, Canadian Airborne Regiment. Unfortunately for her, she was assigned to it barely before the infamous Somali Affair occurred, which meant that when the resulting inquriy occured, she was one of the victims. Naturally, being the most junior officer present who could be held accountable, she was thrown under the bus as much as possible. Being "suggested" that she resign in order to avoid a lengthy court martial that would probably lead to a lot of unsavory details being outed, well, it doesn't inspire loyalty in one towards their government. Holding a grudge against the government and establishment that had tossed her aside so easily, Venus signed up with Sandline International. When that was shut down in the early 2000s, she signed up with MARS Industries, but didn't quite fit in. Her once jocular personality had turned acidic over the years, and while her skills hadn't degraded any, well..... There were certain topics one didn't bring up around her. Or in earshot. Or someplace gossip might reach her about it. So when Cobra started headhunting, HR for MARS pitched her over so fast it was a miracle she even realized what was happening. That said, she seemed to fit in like she'd been born for the role. Her skills, combined with a refusal to take shit from literally anyone, and backing up that stance with the threat of stranding them in the middle of the Arctic, buck naked, well, it got results. Hobbies: Archery, Stamp Collecting, Gardening, Latin Dancing, Trainspotting, and Hunting.

SNOW SERPENT LEADER

Name: Otto Koskinen Codename: Wendigo DoB: November 11, 1975 Former Affiliation: UTJR Orientation: Bisexual Bio: Formerly a Finnish sniping instructor, Otto ended up leaving the army under circumstances he's refused to reveal. That said, people suspect it's tied to his fondness for eating almost anything, and a shrink's diagnosis of him basically being a sociopath with some severe mental hangups. Shockingly, he seems to get along well with the Snow Serpents, which has helped make him the leader of those frosty psychopaths. Hobbies: Skiing, Trail Skating, Ballroom Dancing, Model Trains (N Scale), and Sewing.

EEL LEADER:

Name: Ro Yun-Soo Codename: Selkie DoB: November 18th, 1984 Former Affiliation: Republic of Korea Navy Special Warfare Flotilla Orientation: Asexual, formerly heterosexual Bio: Ro grew up in a small fishing village on Baengnyeongdo Island, the only child of a fisherman and his wife. A few years into her young life, her mother died from a North Korean artillery barrage, leading her father to bring her along on his fishing vessel to keep her safe. There, she grew to love the ocean, and hate North Korea with a passion. These passions led her to join the Navy, where she excelled in diving and swimming, leading to her transfer to the Special Warfare Flotilla. She had a promising career ahead of her, even had a fiance who was an RoK Marine assigned to the Flotilla as a liason. Then it all fell apart in a manner of weeks. Her fiance was struck and killed by a drunk driver, at first. Then she was discharged from the Navy due to what she has described only as "office politics". The final straw was her father dying in yet another North Korean artillery barrage, just a week after her discharge from the Navy. Furious at the world, and the Norks most of all, she joined Cobra, where her talents had her assigned to the Hydro-Viper program. Hobbies: Rowing, Wrestling, Chess, Starcraft, and Fishkeeping.

MORAY LEADER:

Name: Secondina Vespa Codename: Lemure DoB: December 12th, 1982 Former Affiliation: COMSUBIN Operational Raider Group Orientation: Bisexual Bio: Growing up in Sicily, Vespa learned to take crap from nobody, and that above all else, family came first. Unfortunately for her, this proved to be a dangerous combo when, years into her naval career, her brother was revealed to be a member of the infamous Motsi Mafia Clan. This naturally sank her career faster then a crash diving submarine, but thanks to her brother's career, some doors were opened up for her. Turns out the Mafia saw some benefit in a diver who was combat trained and would have no qualms helping to smuggle cargo or loot shipwrecks. Though after awhile, her brother vanished. Well, to be fair, depending on who you asked, he said he was going off to the cafe with some friends, and would be right back, or said something like "I gotta get out of town, they're after me man". Shockingly, without a brother who was a Capo, people who are openly bisexual don't tend to last long in the Mafia. That said, she wasn't stupid enough to be unprepared this time around, and on her way to the local airport, swung by the local Carabinieri ROS office to drop off a thick file of evidence for their perusal. Her bridges by now more then thoroughly torched, she fled to the Florida Keys, doing mercenary diving work for local OC. This came to the attention of a Cobra headhunter, who also saw that she had no quarrels with body alteration, or at least didn't totally read that employment contract well enough, and she was slated for the Moray program in no time at all. Hobbies: Wine tasting, Audiophile, Magnet Fishing, and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

HYDRO-VIPER Leader:

Name: Brad Thor Codename: Leviathan DoB: August 21, 1969 Former Affiliation: USMC Force Recon Orientation: Het, married to a Nitro-Viper. Bio: Once a Marine Force Recon captain, Thor ran into hard financial times. Desperate to earn money to pay off some debts, he made a deal with Destro. Unfortunately, Destro didn't show, but rather a NCIS team, who arrested him. While enroute to his new prison, he reached out to Cobra, and requested a job. This was granted, and before long, he was assigned into the Hydro-Viper program. Of course, he requested it on the grounds of it being the one he was least likely to interact with Destro with, and also suited his talents the best. As luck would have it, he even met his future wife while in the basic Viper program's bootcamp. Of course, she was a Nitro-Viper, so it turned out great for all involved. His loyalty was cemented, and she got a loving husband to help get her over the last husband's untimely demise at the hands of faulty Destro merchandise. Hobbies: Fantasy Basketball, Glass Sculpting, Poetry, and Drama.

#GI Joe #GI Joe: Remixed

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fulltimereviewer · 5 years ago

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Top 50 Best Transformers Fanfiction Stories 2020

Best Transformers Fanfiction Updates That You Must Read

Since Childhood, I am watching transformers and looking forward to becoming a transformer one day, Grew up by Reading Transformers Fanfiction Stories and was always amazed by the fictions that used to pop out from such inspiring Fanfiction Lovers. Also liking the Transformer Fanfiction Crossover a lot.

If I Start Giving my Opinions about Transformers Fanfiction Lemon and Transformers Crossover fanfiction, I don't think so that I won't end the topic of Transformers Fanfiction Stories even in 24 hours. Lukas Schimik Agreed ! Don't know why everybody hates it, I think it's still my number 1 TF movie! Optimus new look, Lockdown & Galvatron, KsI (bots), Dinobots, cast ( HATED this Sam & Mikeala ) and the TF/human conflict. Still love it. Miguel GC Gamer Age of Extinction is the only film that entertains that I don't skip any parts of the movie and I like all the characters in this film and the transformers designs are great, dino bots are Awsome. Vincent H well....bad taste is also bad taste at the end of the day. I know you younger kids think that everyone is supposed to have an opinion and everything is subjective blah blah blah but if you're a cinephile than the Transformers are objectively bad films. They are cynical cash grabs made to make money in China. Bay and the producers have said as much. I mean you can like whatever you want. If you wanna listen to Teletubbies soundtrack all day that's your right....but that does mean you have shitty taste. It's okay. Not everyone has good taste. urtpro 2 I'm not hating I'm genuinely curious. I certainly like it more than Last Knight but barely lol. I'm curious the reasons why AOE fans consider it one of the better Transformers movies. I will say it was nice to switch up the protagonist and all that since Sam Witwicky had worn out his welcome by the third film. And the actress who played Wahlberg's daughter was smoking hot, so that was a plus too. Oliver Parker I thought the premise of the world hating and hunting the Transformers(regardless of Faction), cuz of what happened in Chicago(in DOTM), was kool, MW was a refreshing Main Hero over Shia tbh, and Lockdown was Badass! Honestly kinda just laughed off the whole Romeo and Juliette law thing as being just a bad movie joke! I’m mean honestly I know there’s no such law, and as such it didn’t really bother me! Just rather thought it was somewhat silly! Yann Labeille Well Lockdown was a pretty good villain for once in the movies. However Galvatron went nowhere after this. Anthony That isn't true. I saw Bumblebee yesterday and I find it Like watching E.T., the movie is just on Charlie, not really much on Bee. The only g1 part is the first 5 minutes of the movie. Too much 80s references. Sometimes is even boring for me. It Was a cute movie but absolutely not my favourite. I still prefere the first one. Aron T-900 I'd rather get vibes from ET and Iron Giant instead of witnessing stupid humor, unnecessary hot shots, dogs humping each other, unrealistic explosions, parents acting like they belong in a cartoon, patriotism and confusing slo-mo action sequences. Cam Rich I preferred the first and third ones as they have so much more action in them making the films actually entertaining, when most of bumblebee is almost like a compilation of ‘cute’ little clips of bumblebee and that annoying girl taking up almost the entirety of the movie. Max Ramirez Personally prefer the 2007 movie because it's just overall more entertaining to me. Also, you can pretty much tell Bumblebee was a movie that was directed towards kids so 2007 wins for me So Sit back and enjoy reading my favorite transformers fanfiction lemon and Transformers fanfiction Crossovers Collection. That I have collected for you guys. I Hope You Guys liked our collection of the best transformers fanfiction stories and updates that we have presented above for all fanfiction lovers out here. Transformers Fanfiction Crossover Stories 2020(Updated) Transformers is America based Franchise that was first seen in the 1980s globally. So the first five transformers Films was directed by Michael Bay. I really believe that this was the boost up for the Transformers Fanfiction Crossover stories that I really liked about among the whole and sole of the transformers fanfiction stories including the lemon version of the franchise. Minaya Rojas Tony: We have a Hulk! Optimus: We have a Grimlock! Porg King VII Bee is here what would Optimus want with that what would he take her hostage IT SOUNDS LIKE HE HAS BEEN BRAIN WASHED BY DESEPTAGONS Siidimus Prime! Except they transform their aliens they have Real blasters Different Voices blood Etc. arfhanisbest The interesting thing is that transformers would actually make for good marvel villains. dave tasca The original transformers comics were made by marvel and marvel had to do with the original transformers tv show so they really should try to get the rights back jovinprime Poop soc This would've been more awesome if gi joe, rom the spaceknight, M.A.S.K., micronauts and the other properties interfere with the whole marvel universe and the transformers both. That would be, not only a big, giant, massive crossover event, but a... gigantic, space-involving, multiversal collusion as well Darkknight329 yes megatron hack the armor with Soundwave and turn it off then they all just step on them but they will throw hulk to cybertron and leave him to the toxic oxygen Dr. Nobody Celz On they are robots what is a snap gonna do I know buckys arm was turned to dust but still they have weapons that can make thanos cheese agnas yes because they’re alive. They go to the allspark when they die, they are alive just like us, just made of metal. Bee is here Tony: We have thanos Optimus: We have your mom Tony:0_0 ok you win now give me my mom Hoping that you guys liked our collection of the topmost fanfics about the transformers fanfiction crossover flavors that we have published above this.

Transformers Fanfiction Lemon Version 2020 Funny Part of the Franchise is that the transformer's movies, on one hand, was loved by the fans and on the other hand there were critics about the direction "Worst Director of all Time". Still, there are some dirty minded people who are always in search of the Transformers Fanfiction Lemon and some people also call it Transformers lemon Fanfiction. Night light I really want to be apart of one of micheal bays movie of transformers Flo Parsons see this is why I love transformers, because the actors ACTUALLY seem like they are having fun, and they are such fun films to watch obert Delgad Even though the movie sequels are not that great, but you have to give Michael Bay a lot of Credit for what he does. fake lol Bay is a genius I mean, I wouldn't be able to figure out the scale of you know the explosions Like the layout nig*a LOL, lol or as you typed if, Lol: an acronym for laugh(ing) out loud or lots of laughs, some say it is Lots of love, is a popular element of Internet slang. It was first used almost exclusively on Usenet, but has since become widespread in other forms of computer-mediated communication and even face-to-face communication. Alex Bruh Bumblebee knows how to pick up ladies more than Sam 😂 lala I remember being a kid and having the biggest crush for Megan. Good lord she was so hot Michael ceasar Back than I thought Sam was looking at her belly and so was I saying "Hot belly I guess." hotman 280 Michael Bay while directing: Yeah Megan arch your back, perfect perfect. Get a good shot of her sweat glistening tanned bronze body. Yeah just like that. chief ada Yeah right. That engine is a big block. Fuel injected side draft 8 barrel carburetors. Hell even the headers are up and over side mount. And the damn engine is worth more then the car. As he only paid $4500.00 That damn engine alone cost $20,000.00! Leave the critics aside all I want to know is: How did you people find our transformers fanfiction lemon version? comment down below if you guys liked this collection on some of the best lemon flavors of transformers fanfiction stories. Transformers fanfiction Bumblebee Stories Updated The best part of the Transformers franchise is that bumblebee is the only character that got most of the positive reviews. This can be a reason that people Love Transformers Fanfiction Bumblebee Version a lot. No worries because we have provided some of the best Bumblebee fanfiction stories that you will enjoy reading. Master Yoda "Wasp", "Stinger" or "Hornet" would be appropriate Decepticon sounding names as "Bumble Bee" sounds too friendly. ron 1j2j barricade is a ford mustang and bee is a Chevrolet camero trust me they will not be friends pro gmer yes i do lol they killed ironhide and ratchet and jazz and sideswipe is already missing dnt know if hes alive but hes my favorite hari bhaskar I'm Bumblebee was a Decepticon he'd be dead like the other Decepticons, because boi they sure kill Decepticons like it's nothing. mighty raju Blackout had skills. Shockwave had skills. The Fallen had skills. Yet they all died like they're nothing. Why? Cause they're Decepticons lol. It's simple rlly, they kill off Decepticons like they're nothing that's just how it is lol. habob What about “what if sentinel prime didn’t betray the autobots” I think age of extinction and beyond wouldn’t have happened since sentinel basically destroyed N.E.S.T. And also Rachet and Ironhide wouldn’t have died so the Autobots would have had a great advantage, and then Sam would still be with the autobots since he disappears after DOTMBasically, I’m saying that the Transformers franchise would have dramatically changed if Sentinel didn’t betray the Autobots. ShyGuy 15 In the movies, technically Megatron is an anti-hero. The first movie makes an acception bc he was using the allspark for pure evil, also in Aoe no reason told us what he was trying to accomplish other than detonating the seed. So 2, 3, and 5, he has reasons to his doing Rotf: using the pyramid to kill the sun and repopulate cybertron. Dotm: rebuild cybertron. TLK: kill unicron using cybertron. This is all in my own mind, not sure if anyone else agrees with me Simon Tyson I forget what it was called, but there was a comic book series where Megatron was an Autobot. It basically swapped all the characters so that Optimus, Bumblebee, Iron Hide, etc. were bad guys. Megatron, Starscream, etc. were good guys Dank Starscream If Bayformer Megatron's history is similar to the IDW comics Megatron's history...then that would mean the Autobot government was not all that good, and would be directly responsible for why Megatron turned out the way he did. Because he was a slave to their functionalist system of control, and he would have remained a slave worker miner if he didn't rise up from the lifestyle forced on him and formed the Decepticon faction... Though it seems to me that if this were the case, Bayformers Megatron would still have become a gladiator before forming the Decepticons...and then eventually he found his way into more of the politics of Cybertron after one day meeting with Optimus Prime (Orion Pax at the time) and then they became brothers/friends. In that sense...it would be similar to how the history of the two were from the show TF Prime. They could still keep the part with the whole Optimus being a knight too, somehow... So in short...Megatron really did not start out as a bad guy at all, it was the way in which he reacted to everything that made him turn out a 'bad guy'. She-Venom What if Megatron is a good guy in the movies? Simple answer is right here becuse Optimus accepted become a Prime if he didnt accept Optimus and Megatron wouldnt fight each other and best brothers it was Optimus fault he started the war i think Megatron is a good guy Hoping that you guys liked our collection of the topmost fanfics about the transformers fanfiction crossover flavors that we have published above this. People Love Bumblebee! i love him/her because bumblebee is cool, let me know why do you love Bumblebee and more importantly why do you guys love Transformers fanfiction on Bumblebee. Transformers Fanfiction OC Version Earning a total amount of $4.3 Billion, transformers became the 13th highest-grossing film series in the world. The Transformers Fanfiction Fans Should be happy to know that the Transformers franchise grossed a total of $1 Billion each from two superhit blockbuster movies. Comment Down the names of those movies if you know them. Jack R I think the first one was more epic just cause the fight scenes were cool and it was the first time we saw something like that. But the writing and characters were absolutely horrific. Bumblebee had much better writing and characters especially the character relationship between Bumblebee and the girl which is much better than the relationship between Sam and bumblebee. Dotm Shockwave Yeah I dont know how he put tlk over revenge and extinction. The last knight is incredibly boring and the only remaining aspect left to enjoy (the action) is incredibly dull in it compared to all the other films. There are no good fight scenes. Which is likely why it bombed so hard Ur mom Gai Ok imo the last knight is my fave AND I ONLY like TF5 is cuz bumblebee new form looks good as hell and Optimus prime vs bumblebee AND there is explosions. EVERYWHERE Boss I definitely didn't think it was my favorite. It depends on what you are looking for in a movie. If you like character relationships and a girl and her problems trying to find her way, then you'll like it. If you like transformers actions and interactions, you may not like it as much. Even though the Bay movie didn't focus enough on the transformers, this one did even less The Burden of Bordem I'm a decepticon fan and none of the main decepticons were even given a name in the movie. They were just there to be bad. The Burden of Bordem For me I think this film would have worked much better if they just had Starscream as the main villain, and maybe Barricade hunting bumblebee and give them a more personal relation ship as enemies. But like I said, it end up being a movie about a girl and her relation ship with Bumblebee and enemies getting in their way. bandwon he main character is more fleshed out than the others, Bumblebee I guess is as well, but he can't talk so it isn't by much, the story is standard E.T./Iron Giant, the acting is fine, the directing is probably better than the others, the action is good when it happens, but there is far less than the others, and non of the action reached the peak of the Bay movies. and if it wasn't for the fact there were transformers in it I probably wouldn't have really liked it, but it's enough to get you invested and entertained imo. luke jack You really think anyone's gonna take you serious after you typed "Bumble" Haha the 2007 film and DotM were pretty decent films and satisfying in the end. lisa Speaking as a male, it always annoys me, as a child, that certain plot-line of every terribly written sci-fi (mainly Transformers): "main character is a dick=likable guy" "he has 'relatable' problems, that are only explored in the first 15 minutes of the film" "He start having an abusive/creepy relationship (because that's how well written romance works, right...), with the love interest (they barely explore her name)." "1+ hour action scenes" "world is gonna explode (not really)" "Main Character and Love Interest hook up". People always call me "a pussy", because i want equal rights, and then they go make a video about "how everything is now pandering to women, and everything is Woke"... By your perfect logic... most movies are "pandering to males, and straight people only" imo not like super duper mad, but kinda upset. It was actually kinda funny. But dude, I love what you said about Man of Steel in your DC ranking video. I love that you love Man of Steel. Not many do, and it's seriously awesome! IMO I hope You Guys Like our Collection of the best Transformers fanfiction stories along with transformers fanfiction lemon and transformers fanfiction crossover collection. We know that people will like the Transformers Crossover fanfiction and transformers fanfiction bumblebee version stories. If you like These Transformers Fanfiction Stories make sure you share this on various social media, and you can also give credits to our website. Thank You Also, read Star Wars fanfiction Updates 2020 Read the full article

#transformerscrossoverfanfiction #transformersfanfic #transformersfanfiction #transformersfanfictionbumblebee #transformersfanfictioncrossobver #transformersfanfictionlemon #transformersfanfictionnightmare #transformersfanfictionoc

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britesparc · 6 years ago

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Weekend Top Ten #375

Top Ten Games That Could be Films

Well. Sonic. That’s a thing, yeah? The last couple of weeks, when not consumed with Avengers-related news and emotions, have seen people on t’net talking about Sonic, and his weird human legs and nice set of teeth. It’s certainly an odd design, although I sympathise with the creatives involved, even the executives who (I’m presuming) were the driving force behind Sonic’s movie look, okaying what the artists and animators were producing and steering them towards something that, I’m sure, they thought would sell. It’s a tough business and, to paraphrase William Goldman, nobody really knows that much when you think about it.

Among the many think-pieces that have sprung up, however, there is one point I disagree with: that it’s pointless to adapt a game into a movie at all. Certainly there should be no attempt to “legitimise” a gaming property with a film adaptation; games are great and will always be great, as games. But there are games with an iconography, storyline, or set of characters that could translate into movies. As it happens, Sonic the Hedgehog is one such game. He’s instantly familiar both to old farts like myself who remember the nineties, and also to the young folk who will be the film’s target audience. As it happens, I think the rough plot of the film – Sonic and Robotnik enter the “real world” – is probably the best storyline to tell, rather than adapting the game’s plot; it gives us a recognisable world, allows for some A-list casting (Jim Carrey as Robotnik, James Marsden as Sonic’s human pal), and following on from the likes of Alvin and the Chipmunks, The Smurfs, Christopher Robin, et al, the notion of CGI characters interacting with humans is a familiar movie trope, so much so that it’s practically a sub-genre of kids’ films (and can end up getting lampooned in adult-oriented films such as Paul or Ted).

No, I think a much worse decision is to try to adapt a game’s plot; to straight-up cart it across from console to movie screen (or, if you’re watching it on DVD, from, er, Xbox to Xbox, I guess). The first generation of game adaptations were especially guilty of this, often trying to graft a more realistic plotline, with character motivations and whatnot, onto games where “story” should really be read as “objective”: Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Super Mario Bros, Doom, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. Whilst some of those films still retain a goofy charm (I will go to bat for Street Fighter being an absolute camp delight), they’re not good, not really. Far better, in my opinion, to take an existing world, one with deep and familiar iconography, and tell stories within it: sort of what the Sonic movie is doing, which we can almost assume is in continuity with the previous games. The best example of this, I think, is Halo; there have been a number of shorts and TV series based on the Halo games, set in the same world, often serving as prequels to the games themselves. And whilst they rarely go beyond a spot of pulpy fun, they do feel of a part with the games themselves. What they don’t do is re-tell the story of the games, and in that, they succeed where other game adaptations have fallen down.

There are examples of games with strong storylines that could be adapted, I think, but they would need care and attention, and should avoid being straight-up ports of the games. Use the storylines, if strong enough, but feel free to chop and change to make it work on film.

Another thing that some games have going for them, that makes them difficult to translate into movies, is that they’re really just film adaptations anyway. I think this is why the Doom and Tomb Raider movies have been less successful than perhaps you’d think; Doom is a sci-fi horror film, not too far away from Aliens (and especially quite close, even though it pre-dated it, to Event Horizon); Tomb Raider is basically Indiana Jones with a woman. The same is true for Red Dead Redemption, which I’m sure has Hollywood types arranging meetings as we speak; it’s a blockbuster, a game with instant name-recognition, a built-in audience, and strong iconography. The problem is that iconography is adapted from dozens of Westerns from The Searchers to Unforgiven to Deadwood to Bone Tomahawk. Quite frankly, we’ve seen that before.

Anyway: here are ten games (or game franchises, I suppose) that I think could stand to be adapted. Some of them are strong stories, some of them are great worlds. Hollywood, feel free to get in touch.

The Secret of Monkey Island (1990): despite banging on about adapting worlds not stories, Monkey Island has a story worth adapting. Sure, it needs adapting, but it has characters, a beginning, middle, and end, and a world that could be seen on the big screen. Pirates of the Caribbean probably stole a bit of its thunder, but that franchise looks like it’s sinking at the moment (no pun intended), so doing a much wackier, almost ZAZ-style take on the pirate movie could be really good fun. My advice would be to put Guybrush and Elaine together for much of the narrative and give them some screwball dialogue.

Command and Conquer (1995): hear me out… the C&C games have a seam of mythology richer than a source of Tiberium, and could lend themselves to a sci-fi war epic. There are characters in there worth adapting – well, Kane, at least – and whilst the risk of it turning into a GI JOE movie is great, if they keep their tongue slightly in their cheek it could be a really good, fun action movie that harks back to ‘80s genre classics. I mean, the C&C cut-scenes are famously hammy, and whilst I don’t think they should quite dial it up to eleven, maybe keeping it a good seven or eight would be good fun. Also: Red Alert, which arguably is funnier (and funner, if that’s a word), but at the moment “comedy Russian bad guys” isn’t quite so benign a concept.

The Legend of Zelda (1986): either as an animation or live-action, I could definitely see a Zelda movie working. For a start, every game is sort of a reboot, a brand new story but still set in the same world as tropes, characters, and events repeat themselves. That means you could tell a story right from the start, drawing on the best plot elements and pieces of iconography from across multiple Zelda games, but it could still be in-continuity with the game series itself. A sprawling fantasy epic but skewing younger than the likes of Lord of the Rings, it could be an absolute winner. Like Monkey Island, I’d keep Link and Zelda together for much of the narrative, however.

Mass Effect (2007): this one might be cheating a bit, because I think there actually is a film in the works (I mean, there’s probably a film in the works for half of these games…). Also it might be cheating a bit because in this case, I don’t think you’d adapt it into a film, but rather a TV series. I’d adapt the story, roughly, but give it a direct narrative thrust. I think if it was a film you’d have to cut too much; it’d feel too propulsive, and risk becoming just another sci-fi action movie. But a series – maybe a 12-episode Netflix affair or something, with a big budget – could allow room to linger, to have the odd episode go off on a tangent to explore the Geth or Rachni or whatever. I’d also look at both men and women for the lead, and cast whoever was best, in a nod to the gender choices of the game itself.

Fable (2004): this is one where I think it’s the world rather than the plot that’s worth adapting: a fun, almost Python-esque version of a fictional fairy-tale Britain. A new recruit to the Hero Academy who is trying to prove themselves whilst also battling Jack of Blades. I’d keep the humour and the bawdy tone, and add in characters from across the Fable series, making it much more of an ensemble. Arguably it’s the gameplay and the emergent storytelling that’s part of Fable’s charm, but I do really think there’s enough there to hang an adult comedy fantasy film on.

Duke Nukem 3D (1996): this is one that could go very badly, but I still think there’s potential. Duke Nukem as a character is a boor, an oaf, a misogynistic pig, a relic of a bygone age worth forgetting. Whilst I think exploring this character in a contemporary setting would be more interesting in a game (especially as you could explore the twenty-year-old gameplay differences, too), you could use Duke as an avatar of the ‘80s, almost, to critique action cinema of years gone by. A washed-up sexist dinosaur who has to be pulled out of retirement, I’d cast an older actor with some comedy chops but also a solid physical pedigree: maybe even Arnie?! You’d have to be careful that if you had a redemption arc for him you didn’t end up justifying the crassness of the original game, however.

Another World (1991): this is one where it’s the world and the style that’s the key, although there’s a vague enough story there to adapt. A scientist is transported to, literally, another world, and has to survive, ending up joining a slave rebellion. The game is all funky graphics and cool gameplay (by 1991 standards, at least), but with the right director you could transfer that brilliantly to the screen, and it allows enough room to explore the psychological effects on Lester Chaykin. One of the things I really like about the game, is that unlike other human-transported-to-alien-world storylines, Lester is way out of his depth; he’s not a superhero, not a revolutionary. He is battered by the elements, hunted by animals, imprisoned, beaten, and ultimately (spoiler alert) saved by one of the aliens. You’d have to keep this element of the game to avoid it feeling like too much of a cliché.

BioShock (2007): this one might be a bit more conventional, and risk being another Doom-style adaptation of a game, trying to follow a story that’s more about gameplay than literary flourish. But there is something there, I think; for one, there’s the steampunk aesthetic of a decaying underwater 1940s utopia, all art-deco and brass, the outside world rushing in and laying waste to such finery. There’s the philosophical discussion at the heart of BioShock, giving filmmakers something interesting to hang it all on. There’s the horror element: the creepy Little Sisters, the shock-horror Splicers, the terrifying Big Daddies. Finally, there’s the twist, which – I’m gonna be honest here – would not work anywhere near as well in a film, but all the same, it’s a twist. It is, perhaps, the most vanilla of the options I’ve laid out here, but I’d still like to see it.

Jet Set Willy (1984): there are quite a few relatively obscure (compared to, say, God of War) 1980s games that could make good films. The first Maniac Miner; Skool Daze; Dizzy. But I’ve plumped for the surrealism of Jet Set Willy. Picture it: cast someone who broke through in the ‘80s �� Pierce Brosnan, Richard E. Grant, Adrian Edmondson – and get someone like Danny Boyle or Edgar Wright to direct. The tale of a drunken gone-to-seed former celebrity who starts out trying to clean himself up after one party too many – possibly in some vain attempt at a comeback – only for the film to just get crazier and crazier as he ventures deeper into his bizarre stately home, discovering hidden treasures, secret rooms, occult shenanigans, and much more. Is it “real”? Is he losing his mind? A freakish, twisty, deeply surreal black comedy ensues. It’d probably make no money but be a cult classic!

Worms (1995): most of these I’ve imagined as being live-action, often big-budget affairs; Hollywood blockbusters. But who’s to say we can’t adapt a game into a cartoon? Certainly, it’s been done before, and with degrees of success: obviously on TV, but there’s also the Angry Birds movie, which I’ve not seen and which doesn’t strike me as being overly impressive, but which was clearly a big enough deal to warrant a sequel. There’s an animated Mario movie in the works, animated Pokémon has been a staple for twenty years, and there are those who’d argue that animation was a better route for Sonic, too. So why not apply that logic to Worms, a great British success story? There could be different clans of Worms warring over a piece of land (perhaps a garden that, from their view, is an epic battlefield); that would allow the different Worm voices to come into play. But something means they have to unite for a common cause. Inject it with a dose of British humour, a splash of surrealism, and a some satirical social commentary, and you’re onto a winner.

There you are. Seemingly-obvious suggestions like Metal Gear, Gears of War, or Half-Life I have quietly shifted to one side, and other adventure games with good stories (Grim Fandango, Thimbleweed Park, Life is Strange) I sort of feel had their box ticked by Monkey Island. But somewhere in this list I’m convinced there’s at least one great, great film. In the meantime, I’m off to see Detective Pikachu. Who knows? Perhaps that will be the film that breaks videogaming’s cinematic duck (or at least Psyduck).

#top ten #movies #games #sonic #detective pikachu #game adaptations #videogame movies #fillums

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frederator-studios · 7 years ago

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Meet Rory Panagotopulos, Creator of Thrashin’ USA

Rory Panagotopulos is a Boston native with a Venice Beach soul, whose lifelong love of skateboarding inspired his short “Thrashin’ USA” our 11th Go! Cartoon. When he’s not animating the crowd-pleasing interstitials of MTV shows like Girl Code, Rory is hanging out with his dog Bosco or creating skate-related content such as gifs of the Gundam robots catching phat air—quality content accessible on his Instagram. I caught up with Rory to talk sketch comedy, bad 80s action sports movies, and turning your childhood neighbors into over-the-top cartoon villains.

How did you start animating?

I always wanted to do art—funny art, if possible. I knew I wanted to animate but didn’t really know where to start. The first things I made were claymations In high school—my aunt and uncle were getting rid of their giant 80s VHS camcorder, so I used that and just hit ‘record’ and ‘stop’ really fast.

An illustrious beginning. Where’d that take you?

I went to college for Computer Science. It was back when the belief was that everything was going to be 3D animated from then on. So I started getting into 3D animation, and found that it wasn’t for me. I’ve always loved drawing and making characters, and I was got lost in all the technicality of 3D. So I started focusing on art in college instead, and realized I could easily use a computer to make 2D animations.

Wait, so… you became a Computer Science major just to do 3D animation?

Yeeeaah. I was so mystified by animation that I was like, “3D animation is done on computers right, so Computer Science major it is.”

Oh man.

It culminated with me and my friend sort of tricking our advisors into letting us make a movie our senior year. He was a film major and I was like an Art major, Comp. Sci. minor at that point. Our movie had 3D animations that I did the full animating on - way too much for one person, so it didn’t look great - but it was an animated movie.

That’s cool. Did you submit it to festivals?

Ohhh, yeah, noo, it wasn’t a fit for festivals. But we did meet people from MTV because of it. Randomly, a dude at MTVU reached out to us after seeing it. And oddly enough, the same person I first met at MTV, 10 years later, is the person I work with now at MTV.

What do you do for MTV now?

Technically the gig is with the independent production company that the executive producer of the shows I work on created. But I make the little explanatory animations for the show Girl Code.

Neat! So did you go straight into freelance animating after school?

Actually, no. Me and the friend I made the film with moved to New York and started doing comedy stuff at Upright Citizen’s Brigade. Just to make stuff, we’d make YouTube videos and would put animation in them.

Comedy stuff! Was that acting, writing, stand-up?

Sketch shows, which we did for about 5 years. They have house teams at UCB, so every month we’d host a different sketch show—it was great training for writing. And we did a few big shows, like one called “Dog Fleet”. It was like a live on-stage Saturday-morning Cartoon parody. Sort of like a Ninja Turtles toss-up, but with dogs.

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Actual dogs onstage?

Oh, no, that would’ve been bad, ha—just people. People with very rudimentary dog ears on their heads. And they were obsessed with beans instead of pizza.

Ah, gotcha. So this comedy stuff, it couldn’t have been paying the bills?

Not quite! I was working at a book publisher, Simon and Schuster, doing the #1 most boring job in the arts. I’d go through editor’s corrections for books and make sure they didn’t mess up the page layout too much. So scrolling through books all day adding commas.

And then you’d let out all that steam with the comedy at night?

Pretty much! I liked that job because it ended at 5pm, and I wouldn’t think about it again until the next morning. Lived that double lifestyle for a while. Then the guy I met at MTV started doing Girl Code, and reached out to me and was like, “Oh, do you still do animation?”. At first I was like, “No”.

Ha! Shut down.

I wasn’t exactly like “No” but I was like, “Oh, I dunno, this comedy thing is pretty cool.” But I eventually got too bored of the other job. So I reached out to him and was like, “Hey, are you still doing that?” And he was like “Actually no, I’m not.” But he graciously introduced me to the new person who was running the show. So that’s how that gig started.

Did you dream of making a cartoon as a kid?

Definitely, I was obsessed with cartoons. We didn’t have cable until I was like 12, so any time a cartoons came on TV, I was watching it. It was basically Ninja Turtles and all the action 80s and 90s cartoons like GI Joe and Centurions. And I was totally obsessed with the X-Men cartoon, which I actually re-watched recently and found to have the most insane complicated plot of any cartoon. I definitely didn’t understand what was going on when I was a kid. I guess I was just like “Oh my God! Wolverine!”

So what do you work on in your own time?

The awesome thing about doing freelance is I can take a full month here and there to work on personal stuff. I did an animated web series a couple years ago called “Garbage Time”. It’s about two kids sitting on the bench for a basketball team, something I did a lot of my freshman year of high school. I did everything for it: writing, casting, recording, animating. I learned why so many people work on animated projects—it’s a lot to make. If I’m more busy, I make wacky photoshops that I usually share on Twitter.

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So did you come to pitch to Go! Cartoons?

I knew of Frederator through Adventure Time or Fairly OddParents. I don’t know what landed me on the website... again with the theme of me not knowing what I’m doing. But I saw the Go! Cartoons program, and was like, “Oh, I definitely want to do this”. “Dog Fleet” was originally going to be my cartoon pitch, but my friend wanted to do it as a sketch show, so that’s how that went.

But I still wanted to make a cartoon, so I came up with two new pitches. My girlfriend and I were coming out to LA for a wedding, so I scheduled my pitch for then, and figured if I’m going all the way out there, I’ll wow them with two - not just one - pitches. In hindsight, neither was good. Eric (our VP Development) gave me great notes and a quick class on pitching, and I took his advice home, came up with and boarded “Thrashin’ USA”, and did a better pitch over Skype.

What was the advice you were given on pitching?

Well, because the shorts are only 5 minutes, character is key. You have to get a very good, likable character out to the audience as quickly as possible. And then you also want the story to be simple and to the point. The ones I’d pitched before, nothing really happened. They were kind of like mumblecore. So when I went back I tried to make a very tight story where actions happened in sequence, and you get to know a character, and you actually feel good at the end.

What inspired “Thrashin’ USA”?

I loved skateboarding in high school and college. I was terrible at it, but I’ve always loved it, and skate culture in general. And it was on my mind at the time because my nephew was turning 5 and wanted a skateboard for his birthday. I was like: #1, it’s crazy that you’re 5 and you want a skateboard; and #2, I was remembering how when you’re a kid, it’s so hard to get anything. So I thought about a kid trying to get a skateboard or get his skateboard back, and that’s where that idea originated.

Also, my neighbor growing up was named Mrs. Tracy. And before I had a board, they always had this old 70s banana board in the back of their garage that I would just see. I’d always think, “Oh man… I just want to get that board.”

Were you guys friendly... was she evil? Is she gonna see your short?!

I think she was a very nice woman - definitely not evil. We were always like, losing balls in her backyard, so I think she was more annoyed with us than anything. The way my dad is… I’m sure he’ll see her on the street and try to explain it to her and she’ll be like, “Okay.”

Who were the inspirations for Pau and Gabby?

Pau basically looks a lot like my nephew, so that’s true to life. With Gabby, I wanted there to be a cool skater girl, and to avoid any kind of ‘damsel in distress’ trope. She’s as good a skateboarder, if not better than Pau.

Did you know any cool skater girls growing up?

Not really. Mostly because me and my one friend in high school who also skateboarded were too bad to go to skateparks or anything. But I think some of the reason behind that was that back then, and still now, skateboarding has an annoying "boys club" vibe. I think part of my intention with Gabby’s character was to raise the representation, in a small way, of skateboarding being a cool thing for girls to do. I’d rather paint a picture of skateboarding that’s more open to everyone.

Well you know one now! Not sure I count as “cool” though. Do you still skateboard?

Nah; the last time I did was back when I was still doing sketch comedy. I was using a skateboard as a prop in a show, so I skateboarded 5 or 6 blocks from the train to the theater, and my knees hurt so much afterward that I was like, “Ok, well, that was fun while it lasted.”

Where you grew up, was skateboarding a big part of the culture?

I grew up in the suburbs of Boston, and definitely not. The things kids liked were baseball and hockey. I watched a lot of TV shows as a kid about skateboarding and California and it always seemed like this awesome fantasy world where everybody skateboarded. Really I only had one or two friends who also skateboarded. But it was this cool thing where we were from a place people wouldn’t skateboard, but we were doing it anyway. And being from Massachusetts, we had to have a chip on our shoulders because it’s cold all the time. So it was this point of pride like, “Yeah, let’s go skate even though it’s freezing.”

Do you know what you’d do with a Thrashin’ USA series?

Well I’ve drawn a lot from the bad skateboarding movies that were made in the 80s and 90s. There’s one called Thrashin’ that is definitely my favorite of them; it’s basically Romeo and Juliet set against a downhill skateboarding race. There’s a rollerblading one called Airborne. And they make no sense. They’re supposed to take place in the normal world, but it’s all over-the-top and skateboarding is the most important thing in the world for everybody. And I was like, these could be good, if the conceit was that this is a fantasy world where skateboarding is super important and everyone cares about skateboarding, cause that’s just not reality. So that’s the idea: to build that kind of world and treat it as a fantasy.

Have you thought about Pau and Gabby’s arcs?

Well I imagine that this world would have levels of competitions. So I see them both entering the town competition, then regional, state, and all the way up to universal competitions. And it’d become a dynamic where they’re working out whether they have feelings for each other, and whether those will be affected by the fact that they’re both very focused on skateboarding and trying to be the best in the world at it.

Would Mrs. Tracy remain a primary antagonist?

Yeah, I like her as an antagonist because one of the goofiest things about those 80s skateboarding movies is how ridiculous the villains are. It’s (dramatic voice) parents, teachers, COPS. You know, people who are generally just trying their best but because they’re enemies of skateboarding, they’re public enemy #1 in this world. So I like the heightening of strict teachers, crazy neighbors—Mrs. Tracy just trying to get vengeance for her azaleas.

What are your biggest influences and favorite cartoons?

For “Thrashin’ USA” specifically, the title comes from the song “Thrashin’ USA” by The Bones Brigade, that actually took their name from a skateboarding crew from the 80s—so doubly ripping off. They were like a thrash metal band I was really into in college that did a lot of songs about skateboarding and eating junk food.

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Some of my favorite movies of all time are the Bill and Ted duology. I think it’s had a big influence on my humor and ideas. I’m a fan of Genndy Tartakovsky’s stuff - definitely Samurai Jack, but I feel like his Star Wars: Clone Wars cartoon gets overlooked. That was my favorite cartoon for a while. One of my favorite animated movies ever is called Interstella 5555. It’s basically a Daft Punk album that they made an anime over, and the story is of a super popular alien pop group getting corporatized by an Earth record company. I also really liked Daria and Beavis and Butthead. When Adult Swim and Toonami became a thing, I was all about that.

And what are you working on now, as personal projects?

Well I was inspired by the whole Go! Cartoons process, so I’ve just been like, coming up with a lot of pitches and character ideas. One that I’m working on now is about a BMX bike gang—sort of like Daria crossed with Akira.

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I’d watch! Thanks for the chat Rory. I’m excited to see the projects you slide into next.

- Cooper

#The Frederator Interview #Frederator Studios #Go! Cartoons #Cartoon Hangover #interview #animation #cartoons #frederator #Thrashin'#Thashin' USA #skateboarding

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hermanwatts · 6 years ago

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Sensor Sweep: Bruce Pennington, Science Wonder Stories, H. Bedford Jones, Post Oaks and Sand Roughs

Reading (Rawle Nyanzi): By now it is well-known that reading in the US has declined across all demographic indicators. Whether it’s caused by television, the internet, video games, or boring literature classes, the drop-off in reading time is plain and obvious to see. Some even claim that we are entering a “post-literate” period where the written word is actively rejected in favor of images and sounds conveyed by electronic media.

Art (DMR Books): In the process of finding art for my new Gene Wolfe post, I noticed that the artist, Bruce Pennington, turns seventy-five years young today. Bruce has been a fixture on the UK fantasy/scifi scene since the late ‘60s. Check the link here to see what Bruce has been up to for the last five decades.

Science Fiction Pulp (Pulpfest): The first issue of SCIENCE WONDER STORIES hit the newsstands ninety years ago, on May 3, 1929. Behind the dramatic Frank R. Paul cover were included five short stories, the beginning of a serialized novel — “The Reign of the Ray” by Fletcher Pratt and Irvin Lester — a science quiz (with the answers in the issue’s stories), an essay contest, and “Science News of the Month.” SCIENCE WONDER STORIES ran for twelve issues dated June 1929 through May 1930. David Lasser was managing editor and Hugo Gernsback was publisher and editor-in-chief. Each issue had a fantastic Frank R. Paul cover.

History (Running Iron Report): On July 28, 2014, an American expat living in Sweden named Indiana Neidell (for real) launched a Youtube project titled The Great War. Its premise was to cover the events of the First World War, matching up the centennial of that seminal conflict week by week through November 11, 2018. Other segments included technology developed during the war, concurrent events like the Mexican Revolution and vignettes on remarkable personalities.

Pulp (DMR Books): The King of the Pulps died on this date seventy years ago today. Henry James O’Brien Bedford-Jones, better-known to his millions of fans during the pulp era as “H. Bedford-Jones,” passed away in his comfortable Beverly Hills home after forty years of living well off his pulp fiction.

Bedford-Jones was born in 1887 in Canada, though he spent most of his life in the U.S. Before his twenty-second birthday, he had sold his first story to one of the greatest pulps ever, Argosy. He went on to write over a million words of pulp adventure per year for decades.

Radio (Tangent Online): The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939-47) aired “The Adventure of the Dying Schoolboys” on November 9, 1946. During this incarnation of Sherlock Holmes on radio (the first coming in the early 1930s and the last running to 1959), Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce reprised their Universal studio film roles of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson for close to 220 episodes. Afraid of being typecast–and following the cancellation of further Holmes films–Rathbone wanted out of his radio role. Though the show’s sponsor at the time, Petri Wines, offered him a generous bump in compensation if he would continue, Rathbone declined.

Robert E. Howard (REH Foundation): The REH Foundation Press is proud to present Post Oaks and Sand Roughs & Other Autobiographical Writings. Outside of the boxing stories, whenever Robert E. Howard used the name “Costigan” the autobiographical implications weren’t far behind. This volume collects those “other” Costigan tales, including the title novel as well as the previously unpublished early draft. It also contains other items that reveal details about the people and places in Howard’s life, including the “Lost Plains” stories, items from The Junto, personal essays, and more, all restored to the original text, where available.

Popular Culture (Rawle Nyanzi): I believe that all professionally produced franchises are either SJW -converged or soon will be, given enough time.

Let’s run down some prominent examples:

– Star Wars, the biggest name in sci-fi, attacked its own legacy and its most loyal fans to the point where its most recent movie flopped — the first flop in the franchise’s history.

Fiction (John C. Wright): From Book 1: My name is Officer Thomas Nolan, and I am a saint.Tommy Nolan lives a quiet life. He walks his beat – showing mercy to the desperate. Locking away the dangerous. Going to church, sharing dinner with his wife and son. Everyone likes Tommy, even the men he puts behind bars.

Then one day a demon shows up and he can smell it. Tommy can smell evil –real evil. Now he’s New York City’s only hope against a horrifying serial killer that preys on the young and defenseless.

Fiction (Elgin Bleeker): John Buchan’s 1915 novel, The Thirty-Nine Steps, is one of the grand old spy adventures of yesteryear and is still a pretty great read.

Most people will know the plot thanks to Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935 movie version, “The 39 Steps.”

A spy with information vital to the British government is killed in Richard Hannay’s apartment. The police think Hannay did it and hunt him down. The real culprits – enemy spies – think Hannay knows their secret plans, and set out to kill him.

Cartoons (Broadswords and Blasters): As a kid growing up in the 1980s I was naturally attached to cartoons. That’s one of the defining characteristics of late Gen-Xers/early millenials (I’ve seen us referred to as a crossover generation, but isn’t everyone really?). For me, those cartoons were GI Joe, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, and Voltron.

Pulp Awards (Pulpfest): The PulpFest Organizing Committee is pleased to announce that fifteen individuals have been nominated by their peers for the 2019 Munsey Award. The honor is named after Frank A. Munsey — the man who published the first pulp magazine. This annual award recognizes an individual or institution that has bettered the pulp community, be it through disseminating knowledge about the pulps or through publishing or other efforts to preserve and foster interest in the pulp magazines we all love and enjoy. Congratulations to all of the nominees for this prestigious award, presented annually at PulpFest.

Comic Books (Rough Edges): Several years ago, I read the graphic novel GRAVEDIGGER: HOT WOMEN, COLD CASH, written by Christopher Mills, and enjoyed it a lot. These days, Mills is putting together an entire line of comics called Atomic Action, which takes public domain superheroes and puts them in new stories written and drawn in the classic style of the Sixties and Seventies (which means they’re right in my wheelhouse). The first issue of these new comics, SPACE CRUSADERS #1, came out recently, and it’s great fun.

Paperback Horror (Kirkus Reviews): If you’ve spent any amount of time in a used bookstore, you’ve undoubtedly seen the horror paperbacks section. Adorned with decades-old book spines that are predominantly black, they boast covers that are simultaneously creepy, kitschy and remarkably appealing. Those books never fail to evoke a sense of nostalgia and—I’ll admit it—appreciation.

Grady Hendrix shared that same appreciation with readers in 2017 with the publication of the Bram Stoker Award-winning love-letter to 70s and 80s horror fiction, Paperbacks From Hell.

Anime (Karavansara): I have often written in the past about the impact that the first series of Mobile Suit Gundam had on my generation and on me in particular. I think the best evidence of how much it impacted me is the fact that I am still watching the cartoons – no longer as a start-struck teenager, not as an otaku (I never was that), but with an eye to narrative structure, themes, character arcs, patterns.

Gaming (Niche Gamer): One of the hardest aspects of game development is standing out from other games of the same genre. This is further compounded when you are heavily inspired by a particular style of game. Enter Hellmut: The Badass from Hell. A twin-stick shooter like Enter the Gungeon with a style roughly based on a more light-hearted classic Doom. Comparisons to both those games quickly end once you start to play. Does Hellmut evolve from other games in the genre, or is it a mutation better off being sterile?

Sensor Sweep: Bruce Pennington, Science Wonder Stories, H. Bedford Jones, Post Oaks and Sand Roughs published first on https://sixchexus.weebly.com/

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rebeccahpedersen · 8 years ago

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What The Heck Is An “Escape Clause?”

TorontoRealtyBlog

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about RECO’s bulletin on “escalation clauses,” and how they were, in my opinion, illegal and unethical.

I got some push back from some of my readers, but perhaps we can agree to disagree for now.

In any event, a lot of the old-timers were joking that escalation clauses were used in the 80’s when the market was slow, painful, and at times – more creative.

So is it any coincidence that escape clauses are making a comeback?

Please tell me that you know what movie the above image is from?

The Great Escape!

Steve McQueen, Richard Attenborough, James Garner, Charles Bronson, James Coburn – what a cast!

You know how I roll with the feature images: sometimes I’m literal, sometimes I’m about the puns, and then you’ve got the sentimental photos, like the one above.

I figured the ESC key on your keyboard would be a boring photo anyways…

Plus, nobody won my $50 Home Depot gift card from last week’s Pick5, which was the first time that’s ever happened. I guess nobody who watched played with GI Joe when they were growing up? So I thought about doubling-down with the image from above, but that’s just too easy. Right?

Okay, back to the task at hand: escape clauses.

An escape clause, in the most basic term, is a set of circumstances in a contract that allows one party to back out of the deal.

The clause usually has to be triggered – and that can come with its own set of allowable circumstances, and must be done so within a certain time period, and/or allow a certain time period for the other party to make amendments to the agreement.

In real estate, an escape clause is usually used by the seller to get out of an accepted Agreement of Purchase & Sale.

And usually, the seller allows the buyer to firm up the deal – almost containing elements of a shotgun clause.

Here’s a typical clause as seen in an offer, keeping in mind that this clause would be added by the seller, in an agreement that is conditional by the buyer:

Provided further that the Seller may continue to offer the property for sale and, in the event the Seller receives another Offer satisfactory to the Seller, the Seller may so notify the Buyer in writing by delivery to the Buyer personally or in accordance with any other provisions for the delivery of notice in this Agreement of Purchase and Sale or any Schedule thereto. The Buyer shall have 48 hours from the giving of such notice to waive this condition by notice in writing delivered to the Seller personally or in accordance with any other provisions for the delivery of notice in this Agreement of Purchase and Sale or any Schedule thereto, failing which this Offer shall be null and void, and the Buyer’s deposit shall be returned in full without deduction.

Do you see the escape?

So the buyer submits and offer with at least one condition, say they have a condition for five business days on financing.

And the seller says, “I’ll accept your offer, and tie up my home for five business days, but I want to be open to other offers as well. And if and when I get another offer that I want to accept, I’ll let you know – and you have 48 hours to make up your mind.”

So let’s say there’s an offer accepted today – Wednesday, June 21st, conditional on the buyer obtaining financing, or conducting a home inspection, or getting a lawyer’s opinion, and that condition is for five business days – until next Wednesday, June 28th.

On Friday, a second buyer appears, and expresses interest in the property.

That buyer can make an offer, conditional on the seller being released from the Agreement of Purchase & Sale that already exists.

It’s rare for a buyer to submit an offer with condition that the seller must satisfy, but that’s how the escape clause works.

The listing agent would tell the buyer agent how many days or hours the escape clause is for (in this case, 48), and the buyer would submit the offer with that guidance.

So the buyer submits an offer on Friday night with this clause:

This Offer is conditional upon the Seller being released from a prior Agreement of Purchase and Sale. Unless the Seller gives notice in writing delivered to the Buyer not later than 11:59 p.m. on the 25th day of June, 2017, that this condition is fulfilled, this Offer shall be null and void and the deposit shall be returned to the Buyer in full without deduction.

The seller accepts this offer, which is conditional, and then notifies the first buyer that they have 48 hours to provide a waiver, or sign a mutual release.

The first buyer then has to decide, very simply, whether to go ahead with the transaction or not.

I suppose it all depends on what that condition is for. If it’s for financing, the buyer might not chance that he or she doesn’t get a mortgage, and thus could walk away. If it’s for something else, with more discretion, then he or she might sign the waiver, and firm up the deal.

I had my first experience with an escape clause in quite some time, last week.

The process was frustrating, but not just because of the escape clause, but rather because it brought even more fun times into the equation – like out-of-town agents, conditions you haven’t seen in 15 years, and the ever popular “double-ending.”

My clients saw a house two weeks ago that they really liked, and as I always do before I have a showing, I called the brokerage to ask if, a) the property was still available for sale, and b) if there were any registered offers.

In this market, you never know if MLS is one, two, or six days behind reality. Some of the crummy brokerages don’t update MLS in an efficient manner, and while a property says “Available” on MLS, on Wednesday, June 21st, it might have been sold last Friday.

I was told “Yes” and “No” to my two questions, and so I proceeded with the showing.

My clients put together an offer the next morning, and we submitted it to the listing agent.

The agent called me and informed me that the property had actually sold the night before.

He then informed me that it was to his buyer-client.

But all was not lost here – he told me that it was sold conditionally, and they were still showing the property.

That’s what everybody says. “Sold conditionally, still showing” is what you get from the office administrator when you go to book a viewing on a condo, and you know there’s a 99.9% chance it firms up because the condition is on Status Certificate.

But with this house, I soon learned, that it was sold conditionally on financing and home inspection.

And then I heard those words that I have, not once in my thirteen years, ever heard: “It’s also sold conditional on the sale of the buyer’s house.”

No.

No way.

I heard that wrong.

It’s 2017, not 1988.

You’re telling me that this property is sold conditionally on three things, one of which is the sale of the buyer’s house?

Oh, wait – you’re representing both buyer and seller. So as long as you’re willing to screw your seller, you can satisfy your buyer. Gotcha.

The agent also added, “You know we had two offers, eh? Mine was higher.”

Well no kidding. I don’t exactly expect you put them both in sealed envelopes and had your broker of record present them to your seller…

In any event, he told me that the condition on the sale of the buyer’s house came with an escape clause for 48 hours, and we were free to submit an offer after the financing and inspection clauses firmed up.

The clauses for financing and inspection were for five business days, whereas the clause for the sale of the buyer’s property was for thirty days.

So if the deal fell apart on financing or inspection, we wouldn’t have to deal with the escape clause.

So we looked at other properties for a week, and came back to this one after not finding any houses on which we wanted to bid.

We submitted our offer on Wednesday, with the condition on the seller being released from the existing Agreement of Purchase & Sale by the seller, but for some odd reason, the seller granted the buyer a two-day extension on their financing condition. And by “odd reason,” I’m insinuating more pressure from the listing agent, who was representing the buyer.

Our offer went live that Friday when the buyer waived their financing condition, but it was short-lived, as the buyer immediately waived their condition on the sale of their own property, and firmed up their deal.

I know, I know – this story had a lot of hype, and ended abruptly.

But that’s the point, in the end, since the original buyer has all the power when it comes to the escape clause.

Sure, the seller can include the escape clause to ensure that if they see another offer they want to work with, they can try to do so. But the original buyer can always firm up the deal when that escape clause is triggered, and the second buyer to the table can only hope, and wait.

That’s what we did for a week – hoped and waited.

The situation was bizarre from the get-go.

The listing brokerage didn’t have a record of the registered offers.

The listing agent provided both buyer and seller to the transaction.

The listing agent provided both buyer and seller to the transaction, while up against another competing offer.

The listing agent “advised” his seller to accept an offer that had three conditions, including one not regularly seen in Toronto since Brian Mulroney was Prime Minister.

The listing agent advised his seller to extend a two-day extension on financing.

Geez, the more I write, the less this becomes a story about escape clauses!

I guess that wasn’t the point, but as I said, the real estate “fun times” just kept rolling in this experience.

I felt really bad for my clients in all this, since being the brutally honest guy that I am, I told them every single thing I was thinking, from the start. I didn’t sugarcoat it – I told them “this sucks,” and that we found a house we liked, that was listed by somebody who did business………differently.

In the end, we put our best efforts forward, and didn’t come out with the “win.”

Most buyers would have walked away once they found out the property was conditionally sold, but we stuck it out, and kept fighting.

I don’t think conditions on the sale of a buyer’s property are going to make a comeback; at least not in Toronto.

But the good-old “escape clause” seems to be popping up now and again, and it can wreak havoc in a real estate market…

The post What The Heck Is An “Escape Clause?” appeared first on Toronto Real Estate Property Sales & Investments | Toronto Realty Blog by David Fleming.

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randomconnections · 8 years ago

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Henry Mill Village Excursion

It has been tradition for Alan Russell and me to take a photo excursion on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. This time we decided to make the trek up to North Carolina and visit the Henry River Mill Village. This choice ticked lots of boxes – it’s a ghost town, and it served as the shooting location for “District 12” in the movie The Hunger Games. It turned out to be a day that went beyond expectations.

I’d seen plenty of photos of Henry Mill Village. With its recent popularity it has become a Mecca for fans of the film. As such, it’s also become the target of vandalism. I’d heard that most of the village was off-limits, except for what could be seen from the road. I honestly didn’t know what to expect, but I didn’t get my hopes too high. I put together a Google Map with other possible targets. I am completely unfamiliar with this part of North Carolina, so I wanted a few clear options, rather than driving around without a clue should the mill village prove to be a bust.

We had actually planned this trip for election day, when it seemed appropriate to visit the location of a dystopian movie. That trip fell through, so we rescheduled for this week. Again, dystopia seemed appropriate for the week of the inauguration.

And it felt dystopic. Politics aside, it was overcast and misty when Alan and I set out. The two-hour drive up was not inspiring – rather dull Interstates and four-lanes most of the way. As we drove further north the mist increased, but it didn’t rain outright. We took I-85 from Greenville to US 321 in Gastonia, then I-40 back west to Hildebrande. The village itself was just a couple of miles off the Interstate.

Before we get there, though, a bit of history is in order…

Three Rudisills (Michael Erastus, Albert Pinckney, and Miles R. ) and two Aderholdt brothers (David William and Marcus Lafayette) got together and formed the Henry River Manufacturing Company in 1904. By 1905 they had constructed a 4000 spindle yarn mill and a 30 feet dam to provide power to the mill. In addition they built a planned community to house the workers, which included the company store and 35 cottages. The images of the mill are from the “Images of America: Henry River Mill Village” book.

By the time it shut down in the late 1960s, the mill had 12,000 spindles and produced fine combed yarn for lace. The mill closed in 1973, and in 1977 the mill burned, leaving only the cottages and company store. Of the original 35 mill houses, 20 have survived.

The property was purchased in 1976 by Wade Shepherd, who hoped to redevelop the site. In 2010-11 Shepherd allowed Lionsgate Films to use the village as the location of District 12 for The Hunger Games. Shortly thereafter, Shepherd put the property up for sale for $1.4 million, hoping to capitalize on the sites new-found fame. Shepherd had tried to keep trespassers out of the village because of repeated incidents of vandalism, and at the age of 83 he was getting tired of it. In 2015, Wade Shepherd died, and the future of the village is now up in the air.

Back to the trip…

Driving down Henry River Road I was surprised at how many structures were visible from the road. When we reached the company store that marks the heart of the village there were several parked cars. Not know what was really going on, we drove on past first. We crossed the Henry River on a high bridge, turned around, then came back to the store. I decided to pull on in next to one of the parked cars.

Last time I pulled up to a mill store like this the cars were parked outside for a meeting. I didn’t know if this was the case here, or not. A couple approached, and I asked if they were associated with the site. They said they were just there looking around. We figured that’s what everyone else was doing, too, so we decided to explore.

We didn’t see any No Trespassing signs, and since there was a Burke County Museum sign about The Hunger Games, that seemed like an invitation. We started with the house directly across from the store. It seemed to be in the best shape. The door was open, so we went on in.

The upstairs had been heavily vandalized.

Back downstairs it was apparent that this house was supposed to be off-limits. There were multiple padlocks on the door, and it looked like the door had been kicked in – there was another padlock on the floor.

It wasn’t until I got home and re-watched The Hunger Games that I realized this must be the house used for many of the interior shots. Here’s a picture of Jennifer Lawrence, aka Katniss Everdeen standing in front of a set of stairs:

Here’s that same set of stairs in the house we were in:

I read in one account that the houses were already in pretty bad shape, and that the movie studio had to do some rebuilding to make them believable as houses.

This 1966 image identifies the house as belonging to one of the Rudisills, and it looks like it wasn’t in great shape even back then.

We turned our attention to the store across the street. It still had painted signs from the movie advertising Pastries and Cakes.

In the movie there was a wooden porch. I don’t know if that was original to the structure, or an add-on. It’s now missing, regardless. The movie only showed the lower floor. Here’s that shot…

…and my shot from a similar angle.

This was the only image I could find in the Images of America book, and it doesn’t show the wooden porch, so I’m guessing it was added for the movie.

Below the Rudisill/Hunger Games House was a garage. There were two ramps over a steep decline so that mechanics could get under the car.

There was a pool or pond of some type, with various valves and hydrants below.

There were several other cottages, some in pretty bad shape. There were also interesting views back along the row of mill houses.

The street wound down close to the river. We could see the dam and an old warehouse building. There was a sign stating that the building was posted, and not part of the tour. We wondered, what tour?

There was a pickup truck near the warehouse, and we spotted a man coming across the dam, then up to the truck. It could have been another visitor violating the posted signs, for all we know. When he got close, we ask if he knew anything about the old mill. That was our first interaction with Joe Cline, who would be our tour guide for the bit.

I immediately pulled out my audio recorder, mainly because Mr. Cline was giving us information so fast and furiously that I was afraid I’d miss some of it. Here’s a sample of his introduction to us:

My parents worked in the cotton mill. I was raised here…I was six years old…back up the hill, the last house up there on the right. We moved when I was six years old… was in first grade.

My parents continued to work down here for a number of years. People started moving off. Business, I think, got bad, and, Miles [Aderholdt?], that owned it, he’s getting up, probably in his 70s…I don’t know if he got tired of fooling with it, or what…but they closed in early 70s.

People continued to live here – a few couples did – until the early 80s. I think the county condemned the houses they had to move.

Somebody burned the mill down in ’77.

Cline pointed out the original outline of the mill.

He also pointed out the location of the old bridge. Built in 1916, this was a single-lane bridge high above the Henry River. It must have been terrifying.

The new bridge was build in 1960, and this one was torn down. Now there was nothing be a dirt ramp into space, over a deep ravine where people had dumped stuff.

Cline led us down toward the dam, describing features of the mill along the way. He also described how he has been working to take care of the property, and his concern about its future. The areas he led us into were also marked as No Trespassing, but we figured that as long as we were with Joe it would be OK.

We reached the base of the dam and Cline talked about power generation. He said that another company still owns the dam and hope to start generating power again. I confirmed ownership on the Burke County GIS site. The website also shows Wade Shepherd as the owner. I’m sure that means the estate.

But, back to the dam…it was very slippery, and I can understand why they want to keep people out of this area.

Once again I was able to find a shot from the movie that lined up with our current view. Here’s a photo I took…

…and here’s Jennifer Lawrence running across the top of the dam.

We made our way back up to another building near the top of the dam. It had dramatic arched windows, and was used to store cotton bales. Joe showed us where the bales came through a sliding door down a chute.

We noticed that the bale building had large hydrant valves similar to the pond up the hill. Joe said that the pond was used for fire suppression. Rather than a water tower, they had the pond at a higher elevation.

I asked about churches and schools. Joe said that one of the cottages was used as a one-room school. Apparently that didn’t last long. According to a 1919 article in the Charlotte Observer, after the number of students outgrew the one-room school classes were held on the second floor of the company store. Not long after that students were sent to a new school in Hildebrande, just a couple of miles away.

Joe talked about the current state of the village and the amount of vandalism taking place. In addition to spray painting, there had been theft of artifacts from the store and a couple of houses. There had been a large two-story house next to the store that had served as a boarding house. That was burned down either by carelessness or arson a few years back. Joe said that they had to spray water on the store to keep it from combustion. Since Wade Shepherd’s death the site’s status was even more dubious. Even as we were speaking more tourists were arriving and wandering freely around the site, including one family with metal detectors.

We expressed our thanks to Joe for his graciousness and information. I think he would have been happy talking to us about the mill all day. Alan and I continued on our trek, following the loop road that runs behind the houses.

From this angle the number of out houses really stuck out. These houses had no indoor plumbing. Now that I think about it, I didn’t see a sink or bathroom in any of them. According to the Images of America book there was a common well. The book also said that one poor soul’s job was to clean out the outhouses on a regular basis. When one was completely full, they would just dig another hole and move it.

What really bothers me about this is that these houses were occupied well into the 1970s with no modern conveniences. It’s as if the company really didn’t want to be bothered with providing their workers with sanitary living conditions. I think back to the mill villages in South Carolina and I can’t think of any that didn’t provide these services for the mill houses. The last occupant left in 1987, long after the mill had burned.

On the east side of the village there were smaller cottages. These just had a couple of rooms and an upstairs. Most of these were in very said shape. In some cases chimneys and fireplaces had collapsed. Most of the stairs were gone, too, and we didn’t attempt to go upstairs in those that remained.

We continued on up the hill. At the top of the hill on the other side of the main road were two much larger houses. The lower one had what looked like either a storm cellar or root cellar.

We made our way back down the hill toward the company store. Traffic was fairly heavy on the main road. All along the way we took more photos of the village and the houses.

When we got back to the car the parking area next to the store was full. Between the vandalism and being loved to death because of the movie, I had to wonder how much longer this place could survive.

When we set out I thought we would only be here 20-30 minutes, then move on to one of the other places I had marked on the map. We were here for much, much longer. There was more to see and explore than I had imagined, and meeting Joe Cline was like discovering gold. He even gave us his phone number, should we ever want to return. It turned out to be an excellent trip.

Alan and I left the mill village and headed west on US 70, paralleling I-40. Our plan was to have lunch in Morganton, then visit the Burke County Museum and see if we could find out more about the village. Alas, over lunch we discovered that the museum was closed for MLK Day. We headed home down US 64, which took us past the South Mountains. All along the way we saw some very intriguing spots, and were tempted to stop and explore. However, it was couldy and misty outside, and not the best for photography and exploration. Plus, I had to get back for a rehearsal that evening. Those places would have to wait for another day’s exploration.

My album of photos from the trip can be seen here:

Alan’s photos are on his Flickr page here:

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ducks-love-swamps · 8 years ago

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ALLLLLLLLLL

First off, Fuck you. 1: Full nameMatthew Gene Langford2: Age21 holy fuck3: 3 FearsHeights, Aliens, Loneliness 4: 3 things I loveDiner food, Guns, Coffee5: 4 turns onShort hair, Femininity, Machine gun fire, aggressive sexuality6: 4 turns offObliviousness, Politicians, People who are Obtuse, Prius'es 7: My best friendShawn8: Sexual orientationStraight until otherwise noted9: My best first dateNothing comes to mind10: How tall am I6 foot even11: What do I missThey know.12: What time were I bornIdk13: Favourite colorYellow14: Do I have a crushI suppose so15: Favourite quote"Don't quote me boy cuz' I ain't said shit" - Easy E16: Favourite placeThe Desert 17: Favourite foodDiner18: Do I use sarcasmNo, Neeeever19: What am I listening to right nowAesop Rock, None Shall Pass20: First thing I notice in new personEyes21: Shoe size9.522: Eye colorBrown23: Hair colorBrown24: Favourite style of clothingHawaiian Shirts 25: Ever done a prank call?Yep27: Meaning behind my URLI'm Matthew, I like to punch things28: Favourite movieHardcore Henry29: Favourite songPapa don't take no mess by James Brown30: Favourite bandFuck you31: How I feel right nowgood32: Someone I loveI love my dad he the real OG33: My current relationship statusSingle34: My relationship with my parentsRad with my dad, I haven't seen my mom in a couple years35: Favourite holidayHalloween36: Tattoos and piercing i haveI have my spetum pierced37: Tattoos and piercing i wantI want a Chinese food carton on my leg, A nuclear pinup girl on my shoulder, a realistic heart on my chest, the WAFFLE HOUSE logo on my leg, Three birds on my leg38: The reason I joined TumblrTwo ex's ago had one so i joined 39: Do I and my last ex hate each other?Nah, we good friends40: Do I ever get “good morning” or “good night ” texts?sometimes41: Have I ever kissed the last person you texted?I believe so?42: When did I last hold hands?Today I guess43: How long does it take me to get ready in the morning?I roll out of bed and leave44: Have You shaved your legs in the past three days?Nope45: Where am I right now?Home46: If I were drunk & can’t stand, who’s taking care of me?My own self47: Do I like my music loud or at a reasonable level?loud enough to hear all the recorded parts48: Do I live with my Mom and Dad?just my dad49: Am I excited for anything?GUN SAFE AT THE END OF THE MONTH50: Do I have someone of the opposite sex I can tell everything to?Mhmm, One person51: How often do I wear a fake smile?Never, if you piss me off I'll let you know52: When was the last time I hugged someone?Todayyy53: What if the last person I kissed was kissing someone else right in front of me?They do im sure54: Is there anyone I trust even though I should not?Nah55: What is something I disliked about today?I didn't shoot a gun56: If I could meet anyone on this earth, who would it be?I'd wanna see Shawn57: What do I think about most?Guns58: What’s my strangest talent?I can suck my nose together59: Do I have any strange phobias?Not really60: Do I prefer to be behind the camera or in front of it?Behind, none of my friends can film for shit61: What was the last lie I told?That none of my friends can film for shit62: Do I perfer talking on the phone or video chatting online?Videoooo63: Do I believe in ghosts? How about aliens?Nope and nope 64: Do I believe in magic?In a young girls heart?65: Do I believe in luck?Yes66: What's the weather like right now?Dark and cold67: What was the last book I've read?the anarchist red book of explosives and demolitions68: Do I like the smell of gasoline?Love it69: Do I have any nicknames?Not really70: What was the worst injury I've ever had?My eyes have bruises 71: Do I spend money or save it?Save dat money 72: Can I touch my nose with a tounge?no73: Is there anything pink in 10 feets from me?Yes74: Favourite animal?BEARS75: What was I doing last night at 12 AM?Sleeping76: What do I think is Satan’s last name is?Satan77: What’s a song that always makes me happy when I hear it?Curtis Mayfield - Diamond in the Back78: How can you win my heart?Show effort79: What would I want to be written on my tombstone?My name80: What is my favorite word?Dig, as in "I dig it"81: My top 5 blogs on tumblrIdk man, you all are good82: If the whole world were listening to me right now, what would I say?Butts83: Do I have any relatives in jail?Not that I know of, But I know of many who probably should be84: I accidentally eat some radioactive vegetables. They were good, and what’s even cooler is that they endow me with the super-power of my choice! What is that power?Easy, Flashlight eyes85: What would be a question I’d be afraid to tell the truth on?This one.86: What is my current desktop picture?Some default highway art on Vista87: Had sex?Yep88: Bought condoms?Nope89: Gotten pregnant?Multiple scares90: Failed a class?Yep91: Kissed a boy?yep92: Kissed a girl?yep93: Have I ever kissed somebody in the rain?yep94: Had job?yep95: Left the house without my wallet?nope96: Bullied someone on the internet?nope97: Had sex in public?oral98: Played on a sports team?yep99: Smoked weed?nope100: Did drugs?nope101: Smoked cigarettes?nope102: Drank alcohol?yes103: Am I a vegetarian/vegan?nope104: Been overweight?always105: Been underweight?never106: Been to a wedding?yes107: Been on the computer for 5 hours straight?sometimes108: Watched TV for 5 hours straight?never109: Been outside my home country?yep110: Gotten my heart broken?yep111: Been to a professional sports game?nope112: Broken a bone?nope113: Cut myself?on accident114: Been to prom?nope115: Been in airplane?yes116: Fly by helicopter?nope117: What concerts have I been to?good ones118: Had a crush on someone of the same sex?nope119: Learned another language?nope120: Wore make up?yep121: Lost my virginity before I was 18?yes122: Had oral sex?yes123: Dyed my hair?nope124: Voted in a presidential election?yes125: Rode in an ambulance?nope126: Had a surgery?nope127: Met someone famous?nope128: Stalked someone on a social network?nope129: Peed outside?yes130: Been fishing?yep131: Helped with charity?yep132: Been rejected by a crush?yep133: Broken a mirror?yep134: What do I want for birthday?I don't really celebrate it135: How many kids do I want and what will be their names?I either want 2 or 20. all of them named Matthew136: Was I named after anyone?My middle name is my grandpa's137: Do I like my handwriting?God no138: What was my favourite toy as a child?GI Joe Action Figure139: Favourite Tv Show?The News140: Where do I want to live when older?deep in the woods141: Play any musical instrument?Guitar, Bass, Sax142: One of my scars, how did I get it?Salt and Ice chemical burn143: Favourite pizza toping?Pineapple144: Am I afraid of the dark?Nope145: Am I afraid of heights?yep146: Have I ever got caught sneaking out or doing anything bad?Nope147: Have I ever tried my hardest and then gotten disappointed in the end?Yep148: What I'm really bad atDrawing149: What my greatest achievments areI drove cross country by myself for no reason at all150: The meanest thing somebody has ever said to me151: What I'd do if I won in a lotteryRetire152: What do I like about myselfI'm pretty funny153: My closest Tumblr friendEh, I don't talk to most of you154: Something I fantasise aboutMachine gun fire