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etatmagique · 5 years

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❝ when anger turns to honey. ❞

( adelaide kane, cis woman, she/her ) · you know, the gossip in new york city is insidious and gossip about a half-blood like aliénor barbeau seems to constantly be afloat. what i know for a fact, though, is that they’re a twenty-seven year old curse-breaker who graduated from beauxbâtons. apparently that inclines them to be a bit disorganized and ardent when she rolls out of bed in the morning. as a member of the resistance (vetted member), i feel bad that they’ve resorted to taking up the moniker dahlia. ( the feeling of joy you get when you see someone you love a long time after seeing them last, hanging out at the versailles gardens when there are only a few tourists there, both the colour and the scent of lavender, the crackling sound of a campfire & doing what’s right no matter how difficult it might be / sam )

— ♡ CHARACTER PARALLELS ( MOST LIKE ) :: Anna ( Frozen ) + Lorelai Gilmore ( Gilmore Girls ) + Judy Hopps ( Zootopia ) + Sam Wilson ( Marvel ) + Fred Weasley ( Harry Potter ) + Ginny Weasley ( Harry Potter ) + Gloria Delgado Pritchett ( Modern Family ) + Jake Peralta ( Brooklyn Nine-Nine ) + Paige Halliwell ( Charmed ) + Luke Skywalker ( Star Wars ) !!

— ♡ CHARACTER PARALLELS ( LEAST LIKE ) :: Fitzwilliam Darcy ( Pride and Prejudice ) - Sadness ( Inside Out ) - Elsa ( Frozen ) - Miranda Priestly ( The Devil Wears Prada ) - Hit-Girl ( Kick-Ass ) - Fear ( Inside Out ) - Beast ( Beauty and the Beast ) - Bruce Wayne/Batman ( DC Comics ) - Rosa Diaz ( Brooklyn Nine-Nine ) - Nina Sayer ( Black Swan )

TRIGGER WARNINGS THAT CAN BE FOUND BELOW THE CUT: Alcohol (Brief mentions of the job of sommelier & of vineyards), Death & Grandparental Death.

STATS PAGE + CONNECTIONS + PINTEREST BOARD

a lil summary can be found at the end of the intro !

backstory.

Aliénor was the first and only child of a couple that broke up only a little while after she was born. Her father was a French-Canadian sommelier who had fallen in love with France and moved there after making a name for himself, and her mother worked in French haute couture. They were an odd mix, more so due to their personality than their jobs, and everyone around them expected to break up after having a kid. They were both in their late thirties, both wanted a child, and mostly used each other as an excuse to get that child. Then, when they had her, their need for each other was pretty much gone, and they broke it off.

Aliénor was born in Versailles, where her parents lived together before they broke up. Then, she spent half her time in Paris with her mother, and the other half in the Loire Valley with her father, who worked at a famous vineyard. He eventually fell in love with the man in charge of the vineyard, and were together ever since Aliénor was five years old, though they only just got married. Really, she considered her father’s husband a parent of hers just as much as her biological father and mother, and since her dads don’t have any other children, she’s pretty much the apple of their eye. Aliénor’s mother, on the other hand, only got married when Aliénor was ten years old. She married a rich man who made his fortune in real estate, and though he wasn’t a bad person or anything like that, it never really clicked between him and Aliénor. He had children of his own, and Aliénor’s mother grew quite attached to them, leading to some jealousy on Aliénor’s part. At one point, though, she just stopped caring. She loved her mom, and really appreciated the time they spent alone together, but apart from that, she had her dads, and they were more than enough for her.

What her dad never told her was that he was a wizard. He had come from a prominent wizarding family in Canada, from whom he’d distanced himself after seeing their stance on certain things that really mattered to him. After that, he used magic from time to time, but almost completely renounced it. He honestly loved living as a muggle, and only ever told his daughter about it all a little bit before she got invited to go to Beauxbâtons. She was shocked, to say the least, but having always been a wildly imaginative child, she was honestly pleasantly surprised, although a bit made about the fact that her father didn’t tell her about it beforehand.

At Beauxbâtons, she had quite a couple of friends, but didn’t exactly fit in with the vibe of the place. She was a lot more relaxed about some things than others, and yet way more intense about things most other people there didn’t seem to care about. She had inherited her father’s temperament, and though she loved it, her mother’s would have been a lot more useful for that school. Still, she LOVED learning about magic, and honestly looked forward going back there after every vacation, no matter how much she might have missed her parents.

She moved to New York City a few months after graduating from Beauxbâtons, along with a friend who has now moved back to France, whereas Aliénor remained in the United-States. There wasn’t any specific reason for the move; Aliénor felt like going outside Europe, and since she wanted to practice her English AND had a maternal grandmother who resided in upstate New York, she thought it’d be a good move.

In the first four years after she moved to NYC, she spent as much time as possible with her grandmother upstate. Though she had always assumed she’d be more like her own mother, having only met her a couple of times briefly, she was actually a very interesting person in her own right with whom Aliénor immediately clicked. They discussed art, fashion, gossip, curse-breaking, politics, muggle discoveries and tons of other things together; never getting bored of one another’s presence.

( TW: Death & Grandparental Death ) Then, Aliénor’s grandmother died, and it was the first time Aliénor ever experienced grief, and it was extremely difficult for her. Her parents all came to the States for the funeral, though, which meant that she didn’t have to go through all of it alone. Her mother even came over without her husband (he had to work) and his kids, which Aliénor thought kind of sucked for her mother, but which she lowkey appreciated because it meant they could accompany each other through what had happened. Plus, her dads were there, which meant that Aliénor had a very good support system.

She took about six months off work after that, and sublet her apartment in New York City whilst she moved back in with her dads for that time. She did see her mom a lot during that time too, but mainly stayed with her dads in the Loire Valley.

After moving back to New York, Aliénor took back to her work with a little bit of difficulty, but after settling in, found herself enjoying curse-breaking just as much as she did before. She loves the thrill of it, and always has.

A year later, she bought herself a place in Brooklyn with some of the sizeable amount of money her grandmother left her. It’s a pretty roomy place with three bedrooms, and she shares it with one roommate (who there’s maybe still a wanted connection for), as she missed living with someone when she lived on her own.

present day.

Still living with her roommate, Aliénor’s life didn’t change much when it all went down, but as someone who had always been quite passionate about social justice, and who had a no-maj parent, it was clear in her eyes that she had to do something, which was why she ended up joining The Resistance and becoming a vetted member.

She tries to do everything she can, and sometimes puts herself second or third after this and work. Thing is, she wouldn’t be happy if she didn’t do everything she could to help out right now.

personality.

Aliénor’s quite outgoing, but kind of a mess when it comes to romantic relationships, which is why her one (1) serious relationship has been on-and-off for the last two years (the other person in that relationship is on the main’s wanted connections page and this blog’s connections page for Aliénor).

Fun to be around, Aliénor will almost always find a reason to smile. She can get quite intense and passionate, yes, but that doesn’t mean that she takes everything too seriously. In fact, she could do with taking more things more seriously.

Loves work, but also loves having fun. Probably enjoys having fun and letting loose a bit more, but work is a close second, as it is fun for her.

Loves a good joke, and a good prank, and will often try to use one of these to alleviate the tension in a difficult situation.

TLDR: the french daughter of a french-canadian sommelier and a french woman who worked at a high-paying job in fashion. loves both her parents, but is closer to her dad and his husband. grew up in the loire with the two of them, at her dad’s husband’s vineyard! currently lives in nyc in a roomy three-bedroom apartment with a roommate. having always been quite passionate about social justice, it just made sense for her to join the resistance. tends to put herself second, or even third. outgoing! but messy when it comes to romantic relationships. always finds a reason to smile, and tends to find humour in most things! lets loose a lot, although she knows where to stop not to put her work and what not in danger. often tries to find a way to alleviate the tension in a situation.

#macusahqs.intro #( aliénor barbeau | introduction. )#( aliénor barbeau | character development. )#( aliénor barbeau. )

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faveficarchive · 5 years

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In Sorrento

By Vivian Darkbloom

Pairing: Francesca/NotMel

Rating: Mature

Synopsis: After Mel dies, Francesca is left to her own devices in Sorrento, and meets another American tourist. If you don’t know who Francesca is, introduce yourself by reading Venezia and Coup de Grace, I swear you won’t regret it.

You look at me as if you love me, but I know you do not.

In Sorrento, the first words of the book—her book—come back to haunt her. Not unlike the clouds that roll over the distant Vesuvius.

Francesca sips an Americano, watches another fat, happy cirrus cloud float ever closer to the volcano, and wonders if that was not what she was doing all along, in writing the book—obscuring the obvious, clouding over a dormant and distant empty wound.

In the hotel balcony overlooking the cliffs, Carlo, her publisher, rushes up the lobby steps with unexpected, joyous vigor, in his hands the book —fresh out of the battered brown envelope decorated with colorful rows of stamps, not unlike a weary wartime general arriving with news of impending victory. Greedily he had opened the package first and now, as he sits opposite her, he opens the book and almost immediately breaks its spine with the gentle reverence of a priest sacrificing a bull to Apis.

She knows about Apis now, had read those mythology books that she had inherited—or plundered, as some of the less tactless estate executors had implied. You said I could take as many books as I wanted. I wanted them all. I took everything. I took them because they meant everything to you and I thought if I owned them I would own you the way you owned me—but I was a possession you never intended to buy. I thought then I would mean something to you, more than a lengthy, comforting footnote. I have low expectations.

Carlo smirks in his wily old man fashion. "Ah, Francesca," he coos. "If I cannot make love to you, I will make love to your book." He is a book man to his bones and his attentions, more fickle than those of any woman he ridicules, now focus on the book: the splendid font that indelibly anchors her words with their preening serifs—he chose it himself, Bembo of course, that venerable type first created for a Venetian printer—the thickly luxurious paper sibilant and alive against his dry fingertips, like the dress of a beautiful woman that begs for removal. In the end he praises not her, but her words: "Even in English, it is perfect. That first sentence, always—there is an undertow to it, like in the sea. It seduces and warns all at once. It—" He stops, shakes his head, looks at her. His mocking lust is gone, and with solemn, fatherly pride he hands the book to her.

She is 32 years old. One year short of crucifixion, as Carlo had said recently.

The town does not smell of lemons, as he had had promised. Instead the scents of beer, money, tourists, escape, destination, the sea—real and imagined, pungent and ethereal—crosshatched the air's dense, humid weave. She is a tourist in her own country, a fair-haired northerner to be mistrusted, as foreign to them as an American; her accent, a Venetian's cold and calculating tongue, bewilders them. It does not stop them from looking at her, as both an affluent mark and an object of desire.

But whenever she goes on walks away from the town—following the gradual ascent of the main road that lifts into the hills, into a winding pilgrimage to the cliffs, the moneyed hotels, the remote villas—there, with the sun warm along her bare shoulders, she takes pleasure in the smell of the olives, silvery green and hard, easily within reach.

She thought that once the book was finished, printed, bound, and out into the world, it would be done. Here, in Sorrento, she wants to become another woman.

In Mykonos, you said, you became another woman. The sea made you wild, your hair was loose and rough from so much swimming, your body tighter. Your lover, who had fallen into complaisance, wanted you as much as she did when she first laid eyes upon you.

In the Piazza Tasso she sits, mimicking the life she normally leads: Sitting alone in a café with a book—this time her book—under a golden awning, surrounded by local men arguing, playing chess, reading newspapers, slurping soups and cappuccinos, trying, always trying, to claim her attention. Only the sun's memento-mori caress is different; after so many days her shoulders finally loosen under its blazing constancy. She tries to pretend that she is reading the book she wrote for the first time. In a manner, she is—this is the first time she has read it in English, and under the shimmering Sorrento sun.

It's when she looks up that she notices the woman, or at least, aspects of her: a lovely neck craning, a serious face parallel with her pages, tendrils of espresso-colored hair touching the edge of the book with an odd, proprietary intimacy.

Their eyes meet. The woman offers a broad, sheepish grin and the one word known to all tourists: "Scusi."

"It's okay," Francesca replies softly. In English.

"It's been a while since I've seen a book—well, anything, in English." She sits at the empty table next to Francesca.

"Perhaps it's been a while since you have spoken English?"

"That too." The woman laughs nervously before her face falls in comic shock. "God, do I sound that bad?"

This confession and its subsequent horror unleashes the floodgates; the cappuccino Francesca buys her no doubt aids and abets the English tide. Francesca discovers that the woman—American, of course—has been traveling the continent for nearly a month now and, having lost her traveling companion to an infatuation with a boy in Prague, alone for over a week.

"Maybe I need an infatuation of my own," she muses quietly, and gazes into the now-empty cup as if the rich black grounds and milky dregs serve the same oracle-like function as tea leaves.

"An infatuation?" A smile threatens to break Francesca's reserve; only momentarily she fights the persuasive pull of her facial muscles, before surrendering to the flush of amusement, of pleasure.

"Yeah. Sounds very quaint, very Henry James, doesn't it?" She pauses and looks at Francesca intently, with genuine curiosity. "Have you read any Henry James?" The question lacked the usual American imperviousness.

Which pleased Francesca. "Yes."

"I'm being practically Victorian. An affair, if you prefer." A blush darkens her tan. The tiny table she's sitting at is dominated not by food or drink but a frighteningly large canvas bag brimming with sunglasses and maps, sun lotion and a bottle of iced tea, a book and a sweater. Her tanned thighs press into the metal frame of the chair. She seems one of those impetuous types, the one who scrambles to jump on the bus at the last second and only then gazes at the map to realize oh shit, I'm heading the wrong way. She is curious about every little thing in this sad tourist town, even the dreary little museum that Francesca could not bear to enter, even on a boring rainy morning—in fact, so bountiful and infectious is her enthusiasm that Francesca is not entirely surprised that the woman has utterly, completely convinced her that they must see the museum immediately.

Fortunately, it is open. At least the guard decides to amuse them and opens the door.

On the third floor of the Museum Correale di Terranova —they had decided to work their way down from the top floor—they walk gingerly among porcelain and majolica, a dance of dullness to Francesca, who thinks of the grandmotherly collection of knick-knacks she had inherited from Sofia and that now sit in a box in her dusty Venetian flat, but the American woman scrutinizes nearly every piece with the solemnity of the museum-going tourist. On the second floor they make fun of the Rubens paintings and the woman tantalizes with crumbs of information: "Sometimes my ex would tell me I was Rubenesque—I was bigger then, I grant you, but I swear I wanted to kill him every goddamned time." And Francesca decides that perhaps the artist was trying—and failing spectacularly—to capture the beauty of someone not unlike the woman who was standing next to her.

On the ground floor they look at a death mask of Tasso the poet, and Francesca's skin goosebumps with delight when the woman's knuckles brush her forearm, even though ostensibly the caress was meant to direct Francesca's attention toward one of Tasso's handwritten manuscripts—predictably, her gaze falls on lines of provocation: And now he sees a woman's face arise / and now her breasts and nipples, and below / where modest eyes would be ashamed to go. / So would a goddess or a nymph arise / from the stage in the theater at night.

On the way out they look at archaeological artifacts, both Greek and Roman in origin, and Francesca confesses that she once loved someone who would have loved this—both the artifacts and the manuscripts, the past alive in things and words. This she confesses, and not that she has written an entire book centering around that certain someone. Not to mention her former occupation. Nor that said book has been banned by the Vatican—a sure guarantee of success that had thrilled Carlo. No, that would be skipping too far ahead in the plot.

"Someone?" The woman's lips pucker playfully, mocking this attempt at gender neutrality.

The game is on. It has taken Francesca a long time to adjust to this: Sex not as a business negotiation, not as a bargaining chip with someone—yes, someone, yes you, Melinda—with whom she wanted so much more, but sex as pleasure, pursuit, acquisition.

"A woman. Much older than I."

"Ah." In one agonizing syllable she leaves Francesca hanging as she walks away, her index finger performing evenly spaced arabesques along the metal edge of a vitrine case. But when Francesca catches up to her—with a perfectly formed, lighthearted retort at the ready to put the woman at ease, and in English so disarmingly smooth because she had spent months and years perfecting it to please someone incapable of love, to mirror her beloved's flawless Italian and flawless fucking—the woman's smile is, this time, quick and shy: "So we're on the same page then?"

"Oh, yes." Francesca pauses, disquieted at her lack of self-possession, evident in this breathless oh-yes. The book of disquiet. Which she had never finished. The book of breathlessness. This she was about to begin. She imagines the pages of her own book fluttering, marking the passage of time: A girl, a whore, a woman in love, a notorious writer. Now this—a tourist in her own country, wondering about the many shaded meanings glimpsed in the smiles of one American woman. What page was she on, really?

Outside, the disorienting sun burns away the musty aura of the museum. "I'll buy you a drink," the woman says, as she slips behind the mask of her sunglasses. "To thank you for playing tour guide. Or tour follower, as the case may be."

"And what else?"

"Dinner?"

Francesca presses her advantage. She feels blood beating through her veins. Or perhaps it is just the sun pounding down relentlessly on her bare head. "And what else?"

They stop meandering through the piazza.

An appraisal takes place behind the dark sunglasses—if Francesca learned nothing else from years of being a whore, she knew that calculated look of desire held in check. "You know, before I left for this trip, my friends who had been abroad warned me about how pushy and charming Italian men were."

"And my friends would assure you that, in comparison to them, I am as decorous as the mother of God."

"Why didn't you just say the madonna?"

"I did not want you to think of that terrible singer."

"Ah. Thanks."

They walk again, this time with a heightened sense of purpose.

There are no good trattorias in Sorrento; there is, however, enough wine to make one forget lumpy gnocchi and oily sauces. After that, after all the drinks that framed the flirtatious discourse in a bar that alternately blared disco music and a Manchester United game, Francesca pulls her into the dank, desolate bathroom and kisses her. Sorrento finally, begrudgingly unravels in their kiss, in the overpowering taste of limoncello—lemons sweet and strong, right there in this stranger's mouth, caught in the gossamer of alcohol fumes, the scent coexisting in the dark fine netting of her hair and the nape of her neck, in the tantalizing descent to her breasts.

Her hands fill themselves with flesh, every desperate motion dictated by the treacherous curves of hips and thighs. Desire again, she thinks. An undertow that seduces and warns.

The woman breaks the kiss. "Can we get out of here?"

Francesca laughs nervously, presses her flushed face against the woman's shoulder—as firmly unyielding and tempting as an underripe peach, so much so that she bites into it, then feels a burst of movement along her hands. "No," she murmurs into broken skin. "Yes."

"Indecisive, aren't you? If I wanted to do this in a bathroom stall, I never would have left Newark Airport."

"So who is waiting for you at this Newark Airport?"

She laughs. "No one."

"Why did you come here?"

"I don't know. The usual reasons—I needed a break from my life, I wanted to not be myself for a while. The usual reasons people run away on sudden vacations. I guess that's all a way of saying I don't know." Again, that beautiful grin. "But aren't you glad I did?"

In the dark of Francesca's hotel room the romantic view of the cliffs is a mirage, a blackened monolith only hinted at in distant, distinct moonlit etchings—like a nocturne that the artist abandoned in favor of the warming flames of absinthe. The perfect backstage for Tasso's theater at night. No nymph or goddess arises, however—just a woman, and for Francesca that is more than satisfactory.

Desperation, typically not a quality never worth seeking, takes on a different aspect in bed—that of distinct, heightened advantage: She fucks as if there's no tomorrow, as if daylight will not arrive, and welcomes every kiss and touch and fumbling entry, every thrust into her body that threatens to break her, but doesn't. It only makes her wetter, open and aching for that long-awaited moment when the woman presses her face between Francesca's legs, inhaling the salt of the sea, drawing her in and devouring her. In Sorrento, she becomes another woman.

In the morning Francesca awakens to find the woman still there, sitting naked and cross-legged upon the bed, nibbling at a thumbnail and reading her book. She greets Francesca with a sly ghost of a smile that, Francesca hopes, encompasses desire and affection, perhaps even expectation.

The ghosts will be there, always, in every woman. Francesca returns the smile.

"Tell me your name," she says.

End

#xena #xena warrior princess #mel/janice #mel/janice fanfiction #author: vivian darkbloom #mature #fanfiction #femslash

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wernerhaggai · 3 years

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remriearrie · 4 years

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The Best Tenant Won’t Save The Worst Landlords and Investors From Themselves

Remrie Arrie - TLOATL “Total” Newsletter

A Real Life Lesson

A good tenant who is kind to a property, timely with their rent, is often times more difficult to find than one would hope, and likewise tenants struggle to find a good landlord or property owner. Imagine visiting a property you own and having the tenant tell you, or the owner of the property management company you hired this: “Lets reverse the situation, imagine I am your only daft tenant, but all of your other tenants know what I know, you would be in a lot more trouble with all of them than you would be with just me”

What can create that kind of situation?

If you are new to real estate, there are two situations that are common events that happen with a tenant/landlord relationship that has gone south, or a bad investment that simply hasn’t panned out. One that is very common are rental units trashed out of spite, sometimes a little here and a little there, sometimes all at once through an eviction process. Other times the tenant calls their lawyer. In some cases, real estate investments and property management presents a Catch-22, you either rent lower quality homes to lower quality tenants and risk having to sue them, or you rent a higher quality property to a higher quality tenant, and risk being sued. But the situation is oftentimes completely avoidable with enough due diligence and preemptive measures one would take who is both respectful and proactive. If a landlord, investor, or property manager fails at this, nothing will save them from themselves. “But It Wasn’t My Fault!” The issue of blame is sometimes funny, ironic, and complicated, but oftentimes the burden of responsibility falls upon either the owner, or whoever calls the shots; typically they are the same person. Imagine you were a fly on the wall at that tenant’s home they had been renting. They have been renting for more than 4 years, all of their payments have been on time, and their maintenance requests consisted of fixing the storm door that broke before they moved in, a drafty old wooden window that wouldn’t seal, and a leaky roof. The investor I know bought the house for $10,000 in 2011, invested $30,000 in rehabbing it, he was all in at $40,000, and had an after repair value of $70,000. These are rough numbers of an actual property from an actual owner and property manager. And the example tenant was their tenant at the time who paid $800/mo. After 3 years, that tenant paid $28,800 in rent payments. On paper, this isn’t a bad deal, but it’s that 4th year where things hit a snag. The roof repairs were neglected and not properly fixed for years. The property manager on a rare occasion would have a “contractor” show up with a caulk gun looking for holes and spots to patch, but to no avail. In reality, the owner exclaimed in grandios fashion how the roof was new, but the 12 leaks that frequently migrated would suggest he got scammed. Which presents a major risk for out of state landlords as he was one from California, and they are sometimes preyed upon by unscrupulous contractors and property managers. But alas of who is at fault, after multiple years of complaints, the tenant opened up a rent-escrow account with the small claims court, and there they kept paying their rent to the court - for an entire year -. It is difficult to say what happened on the owner/manager side of things after this happened. The owner runs his own commercial roofing business (ironically), and the property manager failed to remedy the situation. After many months the owner visited the tenant for the first time ever to remedy the situation themselves, they met in person, got dinner, and had a cordial and respectful encounter; but the problem persisted and it went un resolved. Of course there will always be more to both sides than what will meet this page, but ultimately the tenant made a bold move even without the help of an attorney. They filed a motion to have the entire balance of the escrow account which had grown over an entire year to be refunded back to them. And they won! But how can that be? Believe it or not, there were two hearings. On the first hearing, neither the owner, nor property manager attended. The tenant most certainly did, and the judge rescheduled a second hearing to give the hearing a second chance. At the second hearing, the tenant arrived prepared, ready to make their case, but the property manager was a comical bumbling oaf who was asked by the judge to demonstrate proof that they could represent their client (the owner/investor). He couldn’t, and he offended the judge in the process. As a result, the hearing ended with almost no contest, and the court cut the tenant a check for the entire escrow balance, less the court’s fee, resulting in the tenant getting a check of more than $7,000, and the owner and landlord nothing. Needless to say, shortly after the tenant moved out and for all the better. The owner on the other hand now had multiple dilemmas, a year’s worth of loss income, a property manager who may have been scamming and neglecting them, and a vacant property with now 5 years worth of normal wear and tear which would cost at least $5,000 to turn over. There are countless stories out there, of terrible tenants and terrible slumlords. As well as wonderful tenants and incredible landlords. I present the above example because it’s a lot more tangible than most because I was there, and it was an unfortunate situation for everyone involved. Generally speaking, nobody wants any trouble, and many people will go to great lengths to avoid it. When you own a rental property, in part or in full, you have an obligation to step up to the plate to make sure it is well taken care of. Even if it’s a vacant property, if you don’t, and a crime is committed on the property, the police may go after you and any other owners. This can result in fines and charges being pressed due to negligence. If you actively manage your own properties, or hire a landlord, you need to be extremely careful to not expose yourself and others to liability risks, or potential lawsuits, one detail that wasn’t mentioned about the above example, the tenant was married at the time, and their spouse fell through porch step that had rotted away. Had the spouse been injured, they likely would have been able to sue for the full value of the property and then some. Which is a major reason why asset protection strategies are important. Whether you become an investor or landlord on purpose or by accident, it is important to take responsibility and do things by the book. If you fail to do so, then you will learn first hand that the best tenant won’t be able to protect you from yourself. Your assets will rot, they will be exposed to risks, someone will get injured, and there will be lawsuits. Always do your due diligence, always have insurance, always seek professional council, conduct regular inspections. There is a wealth of information online and in libraries, books can be had used for less than a take-out meal. In order to have the best returns possible, you need to be the best that is possible. Happy and safe investments to you and your family.

Remrie Arrie - [email protected] - www.Remrie.com

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twogargs · 7 years

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How To Make Your Comic Better - 1

I want to start sharing some of the stuff I’ve picked up along this journey of creating comics. I’m no master, and so I must eagerly recommend you check out such amazing resources as Words for Pictures by Brian M. Bendis and Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud and basically every resource you can get your hands on– always read, always learn, always strive to improve!– but even so, I think it might be of some worth to share some real, on-the-ground indie comics experience with my readers.

At the Panel One convention this year, I was privileged to have a table beside Steve Colle, who among other things is an editor for comics. He had a great set-up on his table with laminated, published comic pages and a grease pencil- and invited folks to circle what they thought was wrong with the comics pages. It was a great game designed to help us see the page better, to really understand what we were looking at. I felt like I learned more listening to Steve in one day than I had absorbed in a year!

As a writer, I have to plan a page in my mind, see the flow of action and ensure that what I write is going to make sense visually. However, I don’t control the outcome as such: that’s the artist’s purview, and hopefully they and I have reached that magical telepathy that lets us each understand what the other meant. In a best-case scenario, the page I get back is a wonderful fusion of what I intended blended with the artist’s unique flavour and vision.

Sometimes though, it needs tweaking. I need to stress that this is not a failure on anyone’s part– it’s a progression. It’s step three of the process: Write, Draw, Edit. If you don’t think your work could benefit from editing, you’re fooling yourself.

Let’s look at today’s Hello, Punch! page. Here is the script I wrote:

As you can see, my panel breakdowns (in blue) are minimal. Because Jeremy and I have worked together for a long time, and because he knows the character of Punch, I only use a very light amount of “stage direction” for the purpose of narrative flow.

“Punch dodges the bullets.” As the writer, I don’t need to obsess over how he does it. I’ll leave that up to the artist to decide. I have faith in my partner – my ARTner- to deliver something suitable and cool.

“Punch’s eyes glow and his hands light up with magical energy.” What’s that look like? Who knows? All I care about is that his eyes are magical, and his hands are the direction and focus of what’s about to happen on the next page.

As the writer, I know I will be referencing Punch’s eyes a lot throughout his story; he’s the type of character who talks directly to the audience, looks directly at the camera, hypnotizes with his eyes. They’re important, they’re core to who he is. His hands are the device that directs what he’s thinking into becoming reality, and the way the audience sees how things happen, how they begin with Punch and end up with an effect. So: eyes and hands are mentioned, but the execution of them is up to the artist.

This is the first draft of the page Jeremy sent:

As you can see, all the elements are there. Punch dodges the bullets. Runs down an alley, turns with a “ready” stance at the end – and doesn’t it just look like this was his plan all along? Great visual, here. And then- the payoff that is also a cliffhanger. Close-up, his eyes are holding the reader, while his hand floats in the foreground. Love it!

But there are a few problems:

One, this is a black and white comic; we won’t get to use colour to make things pop, fade out the background, highlight, accent, differentiate. We have to deal with what we’ve got right in front of us.

Panel one looked confusing to me. As the writer I knew that Punch was dodging bullets, but that doesn’t come across very clearly from a visual standpoint. There seemed to be TWO Punches, each with an almost equal footing in the visual “real estate.”

I double-checked with Jeremy what his intent was, to see if I was interpreting it correctly: the bottom Punch was actually the foreground Punch, and the top Punch was in the background, and was the Punch from a second ago before he dodged.

I felt that all the action lines were a problem; they created a flurry of confusing motion for the reader (to the point where we almost miss the actual bullets whizzing by his head).

So I tried a bit of a Photoshop edit to see if I could clean up the panel. Here’s what I came up with:

I faded the background Punch, to make him look more like an afterimage; I added grey tones to his make-up to help his face “pop” a bit; I also removed all the lines from the foreground Punch to make him look more solid, more present, more “now” and in the moment. Jeremy came back with this suggestion. Note how the grayscale gradient in the back helps the characters pop and implies motion. However, I still felt that the action lines on the foreground Punch visually confused him with the background Punch. Finally, we decided to use inks instead of grey tones for foreground Punch; I coloured in his hat and Jeremy coloured in his coat and fingernails to give him a strong, anchored, “present and in the now” feel.

Too, the motion lines around his shoulders and under his arms are now more visible.

….and also I realized that the fist behind his right shoulder should be faded as well. Whoops! Editing, kids. Sometimes you get so close to your own work that you stop being able to see things- a second set of eyes always helps!

We gave similar consideration to the other three panels, and we ended up with the page we published today. Here it is again for your consideration:

I think you’d agree that this was worth the journey; visually, Punch is now much more the central character, all in black; the “phantom Punch” in panel one has been relegated to the background (with a bit of narration panel placed over him to further de-emphasize his visual importance); and the all-important fourth panel has a full complement of rich black and intense greys that keep us focussed on the character.

I’m sure there are other ways this could be improved, and perhaps even better ways than Jeremy and I discovered here; but the point of my sharing this with you is to show you my process, share what I’ve discovered, and hopefully inspire you for your own work (which I then hope you will share as well)!

Good luck, and keep creating!

–Michael

How To Make Your Comic Better – 1 was originally published on Two Gargoyles Comics

#comics #how to #twogargs

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guyanthonydemarco · 8 years

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New Post has been published on Guy Anthony De Marco

New Post has been published on http://guyanthonydemarco.com/things-consider-start-writer/

Things to Consider Before Starting a Career as a Writer

Everyone knows it is easy to write novels and short stories. All you need is a pencil and some form of paper or a computer. That’s the only requirements to become a famous and rich author.

OK, you can stop laughing now.

If you’re seriously considering starting a full-time writing career, there are several seemingly unrelated things you will need to know.

Don’t Quit Your Day Job

Seriously, don’t. Getting a regular paycheck is important for paying your bills and luxuries like heat, shelter, and food. If you have medical insurence, that’s something you have to seriously consider losing, especially if you have a family.

Start writing on the side and keep going to work at your day job. You may find that writing sucks, that nobody wants to publish you, or that you just don’t understand why those million dollar checks haven’t arrived. Only quit your reliable but boring day job when you can consistently bring in more than enough to pay the bills and your significant other (if any) agrees. Sock away some of that money for the stretches when the royalty checks are not coming in on time or the publisher goes bankrupt. It happens, and sometimes it’s a disaster when a big one like Dorchester digs its own grave and takes your manuscript with it.

You Have to Develop Those Social Skills

Many writers are introverts. I would guesstimate that it’s more like 80% based on the authors I know personally. To get ahead in the writing field, you’ll have to work on interacting with real (not fictional) characters of all sorts. Yes, it’s possible to live in a walled-off room and write novels that make your estate extremely wealthy, but then again it’s also possible that Milla Jovovich would divorce her current husband and marry you. Theoretically in the realm of possibility in a mathematical sense, but not very likely to happen unless you happen to own a ship called the Heart of Gold with an Infinite Probability Drive.

Nobody Hates You, So Don’t Eat Worms

At some point, you’re going to have to deal with two unpleasant things. The first is rejection. It will happen. Some editor who lucked into several Hugo awards rejects your 680,004 word epic fantasy vampire zombie romance in a post-apocalyptic world. It’s obvious said editor has no clue how valuable your manuscript is after they rejected it without reading even the first page. That’s the last time you send in a submission to Asimov’s.

Normally, an editor rejects a story and NOT you personally. There are exceptions, of course. Maybe you cornered them in a bathroom stall and berated their lack of good taste in epic fantasy vampire zombie romances, or perhaps you threw a glass of (cheap) beer at their face during a convention panel on etiquette. As long as you act professionally and with courtesy, the story you sent in probably fell into one of the following categories:

They just didn’t like the story. Hey, it happens. This is a subjective profession, so what is rejected offhand is snapped up by another editor and it wins a Bram Stoker Award(tm). Thank them for their time and move on. Send your story to another venue and (most importantly) get back to writing.

The story was fantastic, but they already accepted a epic fantasy vampire zombie romance co-written short story from James Patterson and William Shatner.

The story was fantastic, but it did not fit well with the other stories purchased.

The story was good, but it wasn’t up to the quality of the other accepted stories.

The story was awful, poorly conceived, and written in crayon on 4ft x 8ft plywood slabs.

You didn’t follow the posted guidelines. (Wrong genre, terrible formatting with Comic Sans on dark green paper or plywood slabs)

Again, it’s nothing personal. It was a business decision, not a social one. Send it back out to the next venue or do some tweaking and send it out again.

Dealing with Online Characters

The unfortunate thing about being social with people you don’t know in person is you never know what you’re going to get. Most are nice, decent folks. Some are not, and that tiny minority will make your head explode — if you let them.

You need to grow a thick skin as a writer. What some random bozo who you will never actually meet says is not important. Don’t let it occupy your time. You have writing to do, after all. Chuckle, then block them as best as you can. Some will be persistent, trying to get a rise out of you. Do not engage the trolls, lest ye become one of them.

Learn How To Market Yourself

Marketing is a mishmash of exotic fringe science and voodoo-inspired black magic with a dash of hot sauce tossed in for good measure. You’re going to have to get the basics down eventually, so you might as well get some of the learning underway early in your career. There are lots of books, websites, and YouTube videos to look at. My suggestion is to ask a writer or two that you know personally how they market or brand themselves, or if they can recommend a book or three on the subject. You could always take a course at a local community college so you can SWOT with the best of them. (Go look up what SWOT means. Yes, it’s a marketing term.)

Some advice will be worth more than others. Your Uncle Horace did sell nine copies of his boulder erotica, but his ideas aren’t up to par with someone like James Patterson. Keep things in perspective and follow your own instincts.

Nothing Beats BICHOK

In the end, you need to have your Butt In Chair, Hands On Keyboard to become a writer. Your book won’t write itself, unless you’re paying someone to ghostwrite it for you. Celebrities hire ghostwriters all the time. Odds are that you’re not rich enough to hire someone to crank out an 80,000 word novel with the level of quality you need. Ergo, that means you need to work at it. A lot. Expect to crank out thousands of words that will get tossed out in the editing phase. Sometimes you’ll get to the end of a novel and realize that you’ve improved so much that the beginning has to be rewritten.

It’s ok. So are the tears.

If you think you’re ready to dive in, then fair winds and following seas for your new career.

#insanity #you should be writing

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ericxyz · 8 years

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THE DREGS - Page Process

It’s a brand new year, so with that comes new goals, and one of mine is to start blogging more about my art. I’m going to make a concerted effort to blog every Monday about general comic industry stuff, my experiences, art that I love and my personal art process. I’ll be putting some of that up here on tumblr, but most of it will be showing up in my mailing list, which you can sign up for here.

Today is the final order cut-off for The Dregs #1, which is my new comic from Black Mask Studios. So today is a perfect day to talk a little about my process for approaching the creation of a page. (you can order issue #1 at any local comic shop with pre-order code NOV161210)

There are many different steps involved in the process of creating a page and I understand that almost every artist has a step that they favor. Some derive the most enjoyment out of penciling, and some love inking the most. I’m one of those artists that has the most fun when figuring out how to tell the story.

Page 6 of The Dregs, scripted by my brilliant collaborators Lonnie Nadler and Zac Thompson, is the introduction to our protagonist, Arnold. Below is what they scripted.

Lonnie and Zac are filmmakers, so they think very visually and have a very clear vision. Their scripts are pretty detailed and they also conveniently provide a lot of links and reference for me to work with.

This is a 6 panel page. However, because of personal preference, I think one of the panels isn’t necessary. The last 3 panels portray the introduction of a puddle and then a foot stepping into the puddle. The middle panel is supposed to portray the foot falling mid action, which I think creates a bit of a pause in what should be a swift action.

There’s a similar scene in Watchmen.

While I think this panel sequence works in it’s own way, I want a quicker action on my page because it’s the the introduction of someone waking up our protagonist. Portraying it in only two panels creates a more violent action. So I opted to remove a panel from their script.

Below is my initial rough layout for the page. I always do my rough layouts digitally. There’s much more freedom to experiment and play around when you’re figuring out your storytelling digitally. I also like to letter my comics in the early stages because I actually want to read the comic several times before I make any final decisions.

I like Lonnie and Zac’s idea to break up the first panel into a triptych. As they said in the script, the two things on either side of him are “the things that threaten to divide his soul.”

I actually really like this page, but I wanted something bigger as an introduction to Arnold. So I played around and came up with what you see below.

I found myself going back and forth between these two designs. In the end, I think this version has more advantages. I like that this design makes him appears more stationary as his friend tries to wake him up. I also like that this a more grand introduction to our protagonist. And I tried to make it so that each panel is an aspect of his world: his drug addiction, his withering body, crime novels, his shabby home, his addictive personality, the streets, the looming city and his fellow homeless people.

Unfortunately, this page layout made the needle and the book smaller. Zac and Lonnie really wanted a close up of the book and the needle to really drive home their importance. The novel, Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye, is pretty important in the story and this layout makes it too difficult to see the title of the book.

My solution was to give myself more work and add an introduction page prior to this one, in which we have a close up of the objects.

This works specifically because it places even more importance on the significance of the objects by giving it it’s own page, it gives us a place to put a quote (which they had talked about in our previous discussions, but hadn’t quite figured out by this point) and I love credit pages like this in comics. These kind of things are generally not done in comics for budgetary reasons and because page real estate is too valuable to waste. But this is indy comics, so we should be utilizing the freedom provided to us at every opportunity.

I initially pitched it as a one page intro, but that would have messed with Lonnie and Zac’s very carefully scripted page turns. Although this is one of their first published comics, they’ve been studying this craft for quite a while. I was a little surprised that they didn’t fall into any of the many, many traps that newer writers of the medium generally fall into.

After that was settled, I tightened up the page.

I took a lot of reference photos of downtown Vancouver because I wanted the city, a very important character in it’s own right in this story, to feel authentic. (which got me in a little trouble sometimes because the people in the downtown east side understandably tend to feel exploited when they see people taking pictures) I really love getting into the gritty details of drawing backgrounds.

The next stage for me is printing this rough in blue and inking it traditionally. My last four comic projects were all done entirely digitally. Recently, though, I realized that I needed a change. I also think going more towards traditional was necessary for my development as an artist. I’ll talk more about that in future blogs, though.

As you can see, I opted to freehand the panel borders. There’s a very specific story reason as to why I sometimes freehand and sometimes use a ruler for borders on this project. I’m not to going to explain it here, though. I prefer to let some things be left up to interpretation. (and it should eventually become clear later on in the series)

Next up, I scan the page (and sometimes make some digital adjustments) and send it over to the brilliant Dee Cunniffe. I used to color my own work, so I sometimes have a clear vision of what I want. I truly hope that I don’t drive Dee mad with my many notes and requests. But I confess that I never really knew what I was doing when I was coloring. Dee on the hand is a professional and an expert at his craft. And I have to say that seeing someone else take my work and make it better has been a breath of fresh air for me.

Lastly, I bring back the dialogue and it’s ready to go!

I’m playing with my layouts and pacing more than usual with this project. I’ve put a lot of thought into these pages, so I’m planning to blog about that much more in the future. I’ll also be saying a lot about my experiences in the industry and comics art in general, so please sign up for my mailing list.

Issue #1 of The Dregs will be available at the end of the month.

#makecomics #blackmaskstudios #comics #artprocess

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newagesispage · 5 years

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AUGUST 2019

PAGE RIB

*****

They say that iguanas in Florida are out of control. They burrow under roads and savage electrical boxes. They sometimes carry salmonella and there are so many of them. But all in all they are so damn cute that you just wanna forgive them. The locals have reportedly taken to offing them.

*****

Peoria native Betty Friedan now has a bench in her honor in the Illinois town. The bench looks out to her childhood home with the words, ‘Peoria native who changed the world.’

*****

Zac Efron, Haley Joel Osment, John Malkovitch and Kaya Delario are awesome in Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile.

*****

Sometimes I am late to the party but just saw The Most Hated Woman in America with Melissa Leo and Peter Fonda. We should have heard more about those great performances!

*****

Ringo joined pal Paul at Dodger Stadium for a swing at Sgt. Pepper and Helter Skelter in the July 13 encore. Joe Walsh also stepped in a bit for the 3 hour show.

*****

Baskets is over. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

*****

CBS research analyst, David Poltrack has retired after 50 years. The professor at NYU and Steinhardt fought hard against the odds to bring us Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman which was an instant hit.

*****

Joe Crane, who was fired from Springfield’s WICS after criticizing the owners scare tactics has reached an” agreement “ with the station.

*****

The Yang Gang is growing. Andrew Yang is still in the running for President. Buy a MATH hat and support the Freedom dividend. Alaska already gets it and the program was introduced by a republican governor. It is great when we can work together.

*****

Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris are up about 10 points and Biden has dropped about 10.** Beto has rebooted again? This is getting a bit old. He seems to have worked himself into a frenzy this time as he jumps out onto the stage very excited. He is trying too hard but he should talk more about being a punk rocker in his youth, now that is interesting. As of this writing he is below Marianne Williamson. Ya know she makes a lot of sense, I think it is just the way she says it that comes off a little odd.**Tulsi Gabbard is suing Google after her campaign went offline after the debates.**

*****

The second debates came and went. Marianne Williamson gets more shit than she deserves. Pundits who often say ridiculous things love to belittle her. Pay attention, there are some inspiring thoughts in there. If the world continues to get stay angry and things get more violent, we may welcome a theme of love! Bernie was on fire and he and Warren came off with the best sound bites until night 2. Andrew Yang had his say which is becoming more confident. Inslee got no press from this debate. Tim Ryan caught Hell for not putting his hand over his heart like the rest of the crowd. He seems so sour anyway.. just go!! Nothing seems to be really resonating when it comes to Beto ,Bennett, Delaney, Klobuchar or Gillibrand, I think their time is up. Gillibrand did say she would Clorox the oval office which was cute. Biden did seem a bit out of it when self-advertising but I see that as a good thing but he needs to stop with the ‘malarkey line. . Harris and Biden clashed. Booker said “shithole” and they didn’t bleep it and he used the phrase ‘marijuana justice’. Gabbard took Williamson’s ‘sick care’ thing and Harris took Yang’s math thing so they are all somewhat on the same page.

*****

Animal Kingdom has been renewed for season 5.

*****

T-Mobile has taken over Sprint.

*****

Comedians in cars getting coffee was good this season. Seinfeld toured Big Lots and had some Arby’s and Twinkies to act like a regular guy. Jerry and a guest were bleeped when talking about a comic that Jerry seems to despise. Most agree that is was Bobcat Goldthwaite. There was some joking about other shows that could be interesting like Cougars in cars getting cosmos. I’m in.

*****

Thank you Stranger Things for another great season, well for the most part anyway.

*****

Speaking of comedians that seem adverse, David Spade seemed a bit put out at Conan for some reason when he was on Howard Stern.** Spade also has a new show, Lights Out which will be comics talking about events that are not political.

*****

Days Alert: Please, Please put Xander and Sarah together. The chemistry is palpable.** Please bring back Paul and give him a nice boy to love so that Will and Sonny are not the only game in town. Perhaps Joey could get out of prison and realize he is gay.** The Nicole and other mask and Susan showing up.. oh my..WTF??** Thaao is back!!

*****

It has been reported that 2.5 mil was diverted from the National park funds to pay for Trump’s July 4th extravaganza.** Mayor Bowser has asked the Federal Government to reimburse D.C. millions. The celebration drained the city of their security anti- terror fund.** Folks were not allowed to bring umbrellas for the rain soaked event. The President was in a box. Most of the big draws were cordoned off for the big donors. ** But really media, many say it but can we please quit going on and on about every little thing that Scary Clown does and run this country? How long should we let him keep kids in cages and fill the courts with his judges and lie about, well ..everything?** Rudy does his Trump lawyering for free.** The Supreme Court has decided to let Trump build his wall with 2.5 billion of the pentagon budget while litigation goes on in the lower courts. Just think what that money could do for our vets.

*****

Los Espookys is a fabulous new show!!

*****

Why does the world seem to be full of people with no self -esteem, no inkling to do the simplest research and would rather shoot first, ask questions later? Why are so many fine with letting the dictators take over the world?** TRUMP IS OVER if you want it –Mia Farrow by way of John and Yoko** I am sure even Scary Clown is surprised that he is still in charge what with all the law breaking and the ‘jumping on the plane excuses.’ When will there be accountability?** As Wanda Sykes says: Most Presidents really age fast in the WH. Trump does not seem to but we have.

*****

The whole Mueller thing did not seem to help. Bobby 3 sticks seems to be a slow and steady guy who buckled down, did his work and it should have been a done deal. Some say he was putting on a show, some found him confused and some called him a doddering fool in the hearings. He wasn’t being dramatic, he stuck to the truth and the rule of law. He tried for a year to get Trump to talk to them. People should have read the report, it should not have taken a spectacle to put it out there. I feel a little icky about a country that won’t read such an important document. The Dems say they wanted it all out there on the line so the American people who have the facts and they could move forward. Ok..whatever that means. The Office of Legal Council say they can’t indict a sitting President but isn’t that just an added on memo? They can indict a President after he leaves office. There were so many speaches. There was Republican showboating that would not even let him talk. Texan Louie Gomhert was an exceptional loon who does not seem to give a damn about this country. The shuffling of Mueller’s papers was maddening. Both sides had opinions, both sides put him down and both sides praised him. How can the parties come together if we can’t come together within the parties? There was a lot of “yes” and “no” and there is so much still under investigation that could be talked about.** We do know that Russia interfered, made contact with the campaign who welcomed it and then they lied to cover it up. If the men who lied have been charged and convicted then so should the President. ** less people watched than watched the Comey stuff and the Blasey Ford testimony but that is nt surprising. People who give a shit have read the report and know the answers, the haters only seem to listen to the President and others work or simply don’t care.** John Ratcliffe has been nominated for director of National intelligence.

*****

Kushner’s family real estate company has more than 170 code violations in Baltimore.

*****

Luke Perry’s son Jack is making a name for himself in wrestling as Jungle Boy.

*****

If you want to try a pre mixed old fashioned try Aisha Tyler’s own blend at Courage and Stone.com.

*****

The Intelligence Committee investigation concludes that Russia penetrated all 50 states election systems.** Scary Clown is giving 40 billion in foreign aid to wealthy investors overseas.** Why is Moscow Mitch giving so much support to Russia? He sees that we are at risk and he won’t protect us. It seems that Oleg Peripaska is going to build an aluminum plant in Kentucky.** In God we trust is a must now in Kentucky schools.** By the end of July, the Intel committee has asked to review secret grand jury materials. The impeachment investigation has begun.

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There has never been a democrat running the FBI in its 100 year history.

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The teen summit that Trump presided over was fucked with. Someone put up a fake presidential seal behind him that showed a Russian eagle symbol with golf clubs and cash that read 45 is a hoodlum in Spanish. Tee he he

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The DOJ will not prosecute Barr and Ross for contempt of congress.

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Boris Johnson will be the British Prime Minister for now. What the fuck is becoming of all of us?

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Justin Amash has left the Republican Party.

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Puerto Rico’s pig of a governor, Ricardo Rossello has finally resigned.

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NY Governor Cuomo has signed a bill allowing congress to get Trump’s state tax returns.

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My new favorite animal is the pocket shark. It is very small and glows in the dark. OOOEEE!!

*****

Avengers if now the highest grossing film of all time.

*****

Mad Magazine is essentially over. They will still release previous work and have year end special editions by mail and at comic book shops. I know so many people that Mad influenced, it’s a sad day.

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A 16 year old girl was raped by a 16 year old boy who filmed it and texted, ‘when your first time having sex was rape.’ The judge claimed it wasn’t rape and that the prosecutors should have explained to the girl and her family that the charges could destroy the boy’s life.

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Vogue magazine left out Marianne Williamson when they ran their story on women running for President. They claim it was only about elected officials but that seems a bit like BS.

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“Trump is the greatest President since Lincoln.” –Jon Voight** The average Trump WH staffer earns $99,000.** Let’s not forget that Scary Clown has lost more cabinet secretaries to corruption and ethics concern in his first term than any President in U.S. history.** I seem to remember that before he was our leader, he bitched more than anyone I can remember so why didn’t he leave per his own instructions to the Squad?? His family came from Germany which I seem to remember they denied for some time. ** The house has voted to condemn Trump for his racist comments.** “You might be a racist if”.. sounds like a new take on the Foxworthy routine that isn’t at all funny. A few days after I wrote this, Whoopi Goldberg mentioned the phrase herself. I guess we are all thinking it.** He is now attacking Cummings and Sharpton. Sometimes I think that he is just serving all this up on a silver platter because he wants out so badly. Perhaps he is just showing us how stupid we really are. ** “Trump tower is a crime infested urban hell hole.” –Greg Sargent** “Wear your racist like a badge of honor.” –Steve Bannon

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Now there are recordings of Nixon and Reagan talking some racist shit. Reagan called African delegates, “Monkeys “ that don’t wear shoes. If memory serves me he started his Presidential campaign at a racist college so not that surprising.

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People have started unfollowing Scary Clown on twitter. I’ve said it before.. ignore him and he’ll go away. Don’t ignore the money he is moving around and the way he is fucking up our democracy but ignore all the day to day bullshit cuz he thrives on it.** Some ancestor digging has apparently revealed that his family fortune began in Canada with a brothel.** Dan Coats is out.

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“Our horror only makes him stronger.” – Colbert** His LONG intros to his ‘Meanwhile’ segment are a bit ridic.** Chris Wallace and Colbert kind of got into it on his show, even the hosts are at each others throats. Colbert made fun of Mueller in the monologue but when Wallace said similar things in a serious matter, Stephen got his back up

*****

3 From Hell looks terrifying.

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The debt has grown from 19 trillion (the start of the Trump presidency) to 22 trillion in the here and now.** For only the second time in history, the house voted to hold William Barr and Wilbur Ross in contempt of congress.

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Biden says he’ll do push -ups to prove his stamina and Bernie has challenged Trump to a race. C’mon old white guys, quit the pissing contest let’s move forward or get out of the way.

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Pottery Barn is going to do a line of ‘Friends’ inspired furniture??**The Coffee Bean and Tea Leave co. will have Friends inspired drinks.

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Hooray for Danielle Reno who did her own detective work and stole her car back from the carnappers.

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How will I wait for the last season of Criminal minds?? They have really decided to keep us on tender hooks until 2020??

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The Emmy noms have been announced: Hooray for best comedy noms Barry, Veep, The Good Place, Russian Doll and (woo Hoo) Schitt’s Creek. For drama there is Better Call Saul, Killing Eve. Ozark, Pose and Succession. I’m thrilled for Jodie Comer, Sandra Oh, Viola Davis, Julia- Louis Dreyfus, Natasha Lyonne, Catherine O’Hara, Don Cheadle, Michael Douglas, Bill Hader and Eugene Levy. Some categories are so hard to route for because there so many talented people. Limited series has given us Hugh Grant, Niecy Nash and Patricia Arquette in lead and supporting. Other supporting and guest noms are Fiona Shaw, Jonathon Banks, Peter Dinklage, Giancarlo Esposito, Anna Chlumsky, Tony Hale, Sarah Goldberg , Tony Shalhoub, Henry Winkler, Ben Whishaw, Laverne Cox, Jessica Lange, Pater Macnicol, Stephen Root , Rufus Sewell and Michael McKean. SNL has many nominations with Adam Sandler, Emma Thompson, Sandra Oh, Robert DeNiro, Kate McKinnon and John Mulaney. Variety shows include The Daily Show, Full Frontal, Jimmy Kimmell Live, Last Week Tonight. The late Late show and The Late Show. Structured reality is a good category with Drunk History, At Home with Amy Sedaris, Who Do You Think You Are?, Documentary Now and I Love You America. Informational will pit Comedians in Cars against My Next guest needs no introduction. Game of Thrones gets the most noms with 32.

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Good for Disney for their spotlight on real lions for their release of The Lion King. In the 25 years since the animated version, the lion population has dwindled by HALF.

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Storming Area 51? What? Civilians are not allowed to storm ANY military base. ** Budweiser is offering free Bud Light to any alien that makes it out.

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ICE is also picking up some American born Latinos. 18 year old Francisco Galicia was released after 3 weeks and while in custody he lost 26 lbs.

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Judy, the biopic of Judy Garland with Renee Zellweger, Finn Whitrock and Rufus Sewell looks promising!!

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A skull found in Europe shows us that homo sapiens were there 20,000 years ago.

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The top money makers in today’s thriving for profit prison industry are: Henry Cuellar, Marsha Blackburn, Charlie Crist, Marco Rubio, Lamar Alexander and Mitch McConnell. The Government pays them $250 a day to house the caged kids!

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Go Coco Gauff!

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Rand Paul tried to stop the 9-11 victims bill it went thru.** The GOP blocked election security and cyber security bills as the Mueller hearing played out.

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The 25 WEEK mug was on Seth’s desk again on the July 18 show.** Seth wonders why reporters are still asking Trump questions? It gets us nowhere. The Michael Moore appearance began the new phrase, ‘Orange Crush’ as a call to arms to beat Trump.

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In sexual predator news: The Jeff Epstein case is really heating up. It seems his fortune is sort of a mystery. He seems to have come by most it from Victoria’s Secret and Bath and Body works owner Les Wexner. ** The department of Justice has now shaved down the definition of domestic violence. It was sort of an all encompassing definition which included: patterns of deliberate behavior, dynamics of power and control, physical, sexual, emotional, economic and psychological abuse. But now they have trimmed that to be simply felony or misdemeanor crimes.** Epstein was found in his cell unconscious with neck injuries. Suicide?** New reports are saying that Epstein spoke to scientists about his plan to impregnate women in at a New Mexico ranch.

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Morton, Il. will ban the sale of legal marijuana when the state starts legal sales in January 2020.

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Dem presidential wanna be news: Swalwell is out. Tom Steyer is in.

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In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. – Martin Luther King

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Look for the impossible burger coming to Burger King next year. Testers are saying it tastes like the real thing. The inventors use a fake out of heme, the part of blood that gives meat its flavor. There are also some promising meat subs being grown in labs but they are still a ways away. We must evolve the meat biz. Why wouldn’t we want to stop killing animals if we could? Like coal, it should become a thing of the past. And let’s grow some trees while we are at it and have real solutions for climate change.

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UT Austin will now give free tuition to undergrads with family income below $65,000 in 2020.

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Federal executions are back.

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Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker was ranked #1 in Governing magazine of thriving Gov’s elected in 2018.

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Hooray for the US women’s soccer team. Let’s pay them what they are worth, they actually win. Megan Rapinoe deserved kudos for her fab speech about the diversity of her team.

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GOP candidate Robert Foster would not allow a female reporter access to the campaign ride along unless she was accompanied by a man.

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So, Once Upon A Time in Hollywood.. Sort of a mind blow and after digesting and thinking on it.. My favorite Tarantino film. I have read a few reviews, one saying it was such a film for the guys. I say wrong on that. My sister and I thought this was one for the ladies. To watch that eye candy of Kurt, Brad and Leo on the screen was a nice gift. This is my favorite kind of film even though I usually can’t put up with historical fiction. The vibrancy of the beautiful people, the old look of the western and the filth of Spahn Ranch made everything so clear. This so made sense for myself and my sibling’s particular life because of our Father and the respect he showed us about movies. If he were still with us, he would have loved the reverence for Sergio Leonne shown here. To show the progression of how somebody may end up at the ranch was real in this imagined scenario. All these things were really blending in 1969 and there was not a lot of shoe wearing. The best part was the new way to see some old songs which other reviewers mentioned and movies can be so great at. The words of Manson’s little ditty always get stuck in my head as they do here. I always wonder if it is the haunting acts or the song itself. Stepping into California in 1969 was also an exciting . For the first time, I actually felt I was on Cielo Drive and at the ranch. The driving sequences were long but that is what California is about. Many are going on about the ending which I won’t go into but I can see both sides. Hooray for the self- indulgent but brilliant Tarantino!!

R.I.P. Gene Gerdom, Luis Alvarez, Ross Perot, Martin Charnin, John Paul Stevens, victims of the Kyoto animation studio attack, Lane Lindstrom, Art Neville, Russi Taylor, the garlic fest victims, Rutger Hauer and Rip Torn.

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swipestream · 6 years

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Capers Review

If you are like me, you have probably shot straight up in the middle of the night, sweating, thinking, “what if Johnny Dangerously or Crimewave happened in the same universe as the X-Men? What if anyone other than me had actually seen Crimewave?”

If you aren’t like me, this has never happened to you, so please disregard. However, since I am me, I actually received a response to my fever dream in the form of Capers — a 1920s based roleplaying game about the clash between law enforcement and organized crime, with superpowers thrown in for good measure.

What Kind of Glad Rags Are These?

This review is based on the PDF of the product. The game comes in at 165 pages, including a one-page rules summary, an 8-page appendix, and two pages of Kickstarter backers at the beginning.

The book is full color, with various headers and sidebars to call out new sections and to highlight optional rules and intent. The chapter heading and sidebars use lettering and flourishes that are reminiscent of the time period, and do a good job of setting the mood for the material in the book. There is also a four-page inset between the Player and GM sections, with a full-color comic depicting a typical sequence of events in the setting, which is a nice nod both to the time period and the comic book inspirations of the game.

A Word About Setting

Capers is set in a world where many NPCs are a different gender or ethnicity than the historical figure that inspired that character. Given the world of 1920s organized crime and law enforcement, you aren’t going to see much in the way of diversity without taking a step like this. Despite these changes, the only real historical divergence is the emergence of super-powered individuals after World War I, and many references are made to the existing tensions of the time regarding race, ethnicity, and religious intolerance.

As a cis white male that cares about diversity, I like this on the surface, but I also worry that just because it makes me “comfortable” with the era as a setting, that may be allowing me to live in a comfort zone that I should instead be examining. I’m not saying this is a good or a bad thing, just that it’s a complicated issue that I don’t have an answer for, and I’m not factoring in this choice as a good or a bad thing overall. It is something I want to spend more time exploring and discussing in the future.

Player Section

The Player Section is broken up into smaller chapters that cover The Game, Character Creation, Rules System, Perks, Powers, Goods and Services, and Trembium.

The Game

The Game is really a section on what the game is about. What is the setting, and what are characters expected to do? In this case, the focus of the game is on the Prohibition Era, and playing either law enforcement officials or criminals in this time period. There is a nice bullet-pointed list spelling out the kinds of actions that PCs may take, as well as how the core mechanic, which is resolved with cards instead of dice, plays into the feel of the game.

I really like that the game is deliberate about its scope, explaining that it’s very focused on 1920s “Cops and Crooks” gameplay. I also really appreciate that this section introduces a sidebar on safety very early on. It’s easy to fall into the over the top action of the setting and then trip over concepts like gang violence, racial tensions, and addiction. The sidebar doesn’t dive deeply into any one of these topics, but does make it clear that difficult topics should not be introduced if those topics push anyone’s boundaries at the table, and it mentions the importance of having discussions and safety tools available.

Character Creation

Character creation is the next chapter, and the process is one that should feel familiar if you have played any traditional roleplaying games. Characters are either Regulars, Exceptionals, or Capers, although PCs are most likely Exceptionals or Capers. Exceptionals can pick up perks that aren’t available to Capers, but they fall short of being superhuman abilities. Capers don’t get access to perks, but they get to choose powers.

Characters pick three anchors — an identity, a virtue, and a vice. These all have triggers written into their descriptions for gaining moxie, a currency in the game that has multiple effects. If you don’t have anything in mind, there are card values assigned to these anchors to allow for random draws. Characters then pick traits and skills, which are added together to determine the number of cards a character can draw when they attempt an action. The next step is picking perks and powers (and with the GM’s permission, access to special gear that simulates powers).

Characters are assigned a level, but the main function of level is to summarize how many advancement points the character has. After spending initial advancement points, each time a character levels up, they gain two more advancement points.

The Rules System

The Rules System chapter delves into how to make those things you picked in the last chapter work during the game. Character creation feels a lot like what you might do in a dice pool style game, adding skills to traits to determine how many randomizers are used in a pool for that action. The difference is, instead of using all of your randomizers, you choose how many of your card draws to use, one at a time. The value of the card will determine the success or failure, but the suit of the card will determine if there is an ancillary good or bad side effect to that success or failure. You might draw a high-value card that is likely to give you a success, but you may still be tempted to draw another card to attempt a success without a complication.

Some powers are passive effects that modify other aspects of the character (like having superhuman strength, bypassing the normal limit on the trait), while others have their own power level that determines the number of cards a player can draw when attempting to activate or use the power.

Moxie can be spent to increase card counts, reduce damage taken, use a previously drawn card, add an element to the narrative, reshuffle the deck (normally done at the end of a scene), or to take damage for another character.

Initiative is a fairly standard skill test, with ranked results determining order, and held actions triggering a change in the order. There is also a special section on how to resolve a standoff, that uses a three-round game of “keep or draw” with the cards to simulate a tense situation before the action breaks out.

Perks and Powers

The next two chapters are on Perks and Powers, but the Perks chapter is only a single page. Perks are simple mechanics that let a non-powered character be a little tougher, more skillful, or resistant to superpowers, without being super-powered themselves.

If you have seen a wide variety of games with superpowers, you may have seen that some games favor discreet rules packets similar to spells in a game like D&D to describe powers in the game, while others, like Champions or Mutants and Masterminds, include game effects that can be slotted together to assemble a recognizable superpower. Capers leans towards the former, with subsections explaining powers like “Cold Beam” having its own set of rules, as well as some upgrades that can be purchased later. Some have persistent maintainable effects that cause a character to reduce their card count while the effect is active.

The powers touch on a lot of comic book staples, but definitely stay grounded in what sometimes gets categorized as “street level” powers. Picking up a car is impressive for super strength, and mental powers lean more towards “super short term hypnotism” rather than a deep exploration of telepathic abilities.

Goods and Services

Goods and Services is another short chapter, coming in at two pages. It gives the most common prices for 1920s goods that would matter to a game centered around law enforcement and organized crime, and gives stats for items like explosives or weapons. It also covers the price of real estate, for when you need options for a new safehouse or expanding your business holdings.

Trembium

Trembium is the final chapter in this section, and it’s about three pages long. Trembium is the element that has caused the upswing in superpowers. It can be used to create gear that mimics superpowers, and can be used in experiments to make super soldiers. While it is the default origin of superpowers in the setting, the rules surrounding it are optional, so it feels a little odd to have it in the Player’s Section. It’s an understandable compromise, however, since if it is allowed in the game, a lot of player options need to reference the rules.

In particular, the idea of nullifying or granting powers via direct injection of Trembium got a lot of creative juices flowing in my mind, and Trembium in general has a lot of potential if the Capers world opens up to other historical periods.

GM Section

The GM Section contains chapters on GM Guidelines, Backdrops, Law Enforcement, Friends and Enemies, and a GM Toolbox.

GM Guidelines

The GM Guidelines section has advice on how to structure adventures and encounters, player agency, and examples of encounter difficulty. There are also rules for advancing NPCs, statting out animals, designing your own powers, and a whole host of other eclectic, GM specific items that might come up in a campaign.

What I like best about this section is that encounter and adventure building is very much focused on having an idea of why you want to include something, and the structure for how to move from point A to point B. It’s not deeply philosophical, as games go, but it is very functional, and a clear indication of how the game is expected to run.

Backdrops

The Backdrops section is one of my favorites in the book, because it does what I wish a lot more books that include a setting would do. It gives you the basics of what makes an area unique, summarizes the important people and things, and then gives you sample adventure starters and rumors that are in line with the setting that has just been presented. It is very focused on how to use the information at the table.

Atlantic City, Chicago, and New York get the deepest treatment, with several pages of setting information and adventure ideas, city maps, and a few pages for stats of unique NPCs. Atlanta, Boston, Cincinnati, Detroit, Kansas City, Louisville, Miami, Milwaukee, New Orleans, and Philadelphia all get single page treatments, which save space by cutting out maps and suggesting “generic” NPC stat blocks for notable NPCs that are mentioned.

I like the degree to which all of the backdrops are “table ready,” and I enjoy seeing the subtle differences in the interplay between law enforcement and criminal elements in all of these mini-settings. Knowing how it works in one place helps to reinforce an intentional tone for other settings. If anything, it feels like more of the larger setting NPCs could have been summarized in a similar manner to the smaller setting characters, but that’s a minor quibble.

Law Enforcement

The Law Enforcement chapter goes into about two pages of details about how federal and local law enforcement is organized in the 1920s, then presents some NPC Feds for use in the game. Friends and Enemies follows, and presents a stat block and a descriptive paragraph for various NPCs that the PCs may encounter in the game. For the most part, there are about four stat blocks to a page, starting with unique NPCs that can be inserted anywhere, then moving to more general stat blocks like “Cop” or “Gambler.”

GM Toolbox

The GM Toolbox has a lot of wide-ranging material that might be of use to a GM that is looking to throw another curve into the standard campaign expectations. There are guidelines for alternate Earths, super-powered animals, and “events” where the number of people with superpowers around the world spikes, shifting the assumptions of the setting for a period of time.

I’m a comic book geek, and I love alternate reality tropes, so that’s my favorite section in this chapter. There are outlines for a world where robots are commonplace, a “mirror universe” style Earth, and one where Earth has suffered from an alien invasion, with stat blocks of example NPCs, and even some guidelines on playing characters native to those worlds.

Reference Section

The Reference Section includes appendices that cover a wide range of materials. This includes 1920s slang, a power index, common names in the 1920s, an NPC index, a list of inspirational material, a full index, and a one-page rules summary as well as a character sheet.

Like much of the rest of the book, this material is very functional. Having slang and names handy for improvisation is great, and I really like the one-page rules summary, as it manages to hit on some of the biggest items that would normally tempt players and GMs to halt the game and look up how a given rule works.

It takes a fairly standard structure for how to resolve actions, and swaps in the card-based resolution that shifts expectations of how and when you should keep pushing your luck.

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The card-based mechanics add an element of gambling to a character’s actions that trigger a different risk versus reward evaluation than simple numbers can evoke. Using the suit to add dimensionality to success or failure is a great use of cards as a randomizer. The various settings for the game are summarized in a manner that makes them very useable at the table, and manages to bring out some of the differences between these regions as settings for different ongoing games.

It’s a Raid!

In a game where the actions flow freely without a lot of granular tactical movement or tracking, listing movement rates and ranges of powers in absolute feet feels strange to me. Initiative order and how readied actions work also feel like holdovers from older game design that doesn’t highlight the best aspects of the system. I like the anchors, but some of the items that trigger gaining moxie feel a little soft — I personally like more pointed, yes or no questions when it comes to awards based on character traits.

Recommended — If the product fits in your broad area of gaming interests, you are likely to be happy with this purchase.

The strength of Capers is that it pushes just enough to make something familiar into something fun and new. It takes a known time period and genre, Prohibition-era cops and crooks, and adds in superpowers. It takes a fairly standard structure for how to resolve actions, and swaps in the card-based resolution that shifts expectations of how and when you should keep pushing your luck.

In a few places, I feel like it played the traditional structure a little too safe, but overall, it has a great dynamic energy that is engaging. Not only am I interested in this particular implementation, I want to see how this world develops, and how these rules can be used to express other genres in other points in history.

Have you been a fan of Prohibition-era gaming in the past? Are you a fan of adding superpowers to different time periods? What are your favorite games that have done this? We would love to hear from you, so please leave a comment below. Thanks!

Capers Review published first on https://medium.com/@ReloadedPCGames

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accessgrantedremax-blog · 7 years

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Meet Steve Hull!

What is your name? My name is Steven Thomas Hull. But please call me Steve. A lot of people feel the need the call me by my full name Steven. Hakuna matata, call me Steve.

Briefly describe yourself. I am a down-to-earth millennial with a passion for impressing upon people. I enjoy the foundation of building relationships with people and seeing how that develops over time. I was born and raised in this beautiful city of Philadelphia, which I am proud to call home. I have been exposed to the various neighborhoods that make up this city, including growing up in the Northeast in Mayfair & Holmesburg, and then recently making the move to live near Fairmount Park. I love all the nooks and crannies that make up this wonderful city. Sorry for the getting off track. I am full of soul. I enjoy many different things, but specifically the concept of going on adventures and traveling this vast world, nerdy comic-cons and anything nostalgic, but most importantly I enjoy anything that brings my senses alive. Oh, and I love coffee and hanging out with my close niche group of friends.

When and why did you become a realtor? I love marketing, I always have and always will. The idea of creating content to move people to an emotion is simply amazing. Throughout my entire professional life, I have worked tirelessly in and of different hospitality and entertainment environments, including Lincoln Financial Field and the Valley Forge Casino. During the springtime of 2017 I made the grown-up decision to begin the journey toward buying my own home. I eventually came across a condo building that fit my needs and chose a unit there as my home. Fast forward to 2018, I am a proud home (condo) owner whom wants everyone my age to experience the home buying experience. It is an emotional rollercoaster, but it has been one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve yet to endure. I can’t wait to share this experience with my buyer clients.

What neighborhood do you sell and why? I have an extended knowledge of Northeast Philadelphia, including each of its sub-neighborhoods. I’ve spent most, and still do spend time, in the northeast. I consider myself very geographically inclined, as if I have a built-in GPS. I spent four years in Montgomery County, specifically the area of Gwynedd Valley, North Wales, Ambler, and Blue Bell. I went to college in that area and have developed a sense of awareness of that area and all that it offers. Every day I am continuing to sharpen my knowledge of Philadelphia and its neighboring counties.

As a real estate professional, I provide for my clients. I will give them all the knowledge I have gained during my professional career. I will hone in on my customer service skills and pair them with my schooling and knowledge I have of real estate. But most importantly, I will provide my clients with my personality. In my eyes, being true to who you are is the best thing you can do for your clients.

Name 3 things you love about Philadelphia. I love the culture. It’s rich and vibrant throughout each street. It sometimes feeling electrifying to me. I enjoy how accessible the city of Philadelphia is. It’s accessible to quickly walk to a different section of the city, or train ride for that matter. Also, you can hop in your car in be a completely different city or state within minutes. THE FOOD SCENE IS OFF THE CHARTS GOOD. The food is diverse and ranges from your corner dive bar to high class steak and potatoes. I love how welcoming each of these food scenes are as well. Welcoming in the sense that you can walk into a bar and immediately click with another foodie who’s just as hungry as you are.

Describe your perfect meal. Ugh. Where do I start? I am a foodie at heart. I love how the culture of food has been taken to a new level. Half of my Instagram feed is food pages, it becomes addicting after a while. I bookmark almost every place that is within a decent driving distance for me and my brother to road trip to. But if I had to choose, it would be a huge NY strip steak with a blue cheese crust, roasted potatoes, and asparagus. Oh, and bread and butter!

What are your favorite activities outside of work? I have a lot of hobbies that I try my best to find time for. I love to exercise and eat healthy. When I’m in the middle of a good exercise/food balance streak, I feel like I’m on top of the world. I also love to read, play video games, and reminisce on anything nostalgic. I am a huge nerd at heart, so naturally I am attracted to going to comic-cons and meeting every Power Ranger actor and actress there.

Anything you want to add. I am 100% dedicated to becoming the best version of myself. This includes bettering both my business mentality and mentality as a human being. I am constantly searching for ways to better myself.

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rebeccahpedersen · 7 years

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The Three Selling “Strategies” Being Employed This Fall

TorontoRealtyBlog

Under-pricing, setting an offer date, and having no idea what price to expect? You call that a “strategy?”

That’s what my cynical side would say, after reading the title of today’s blog.

But if you’re a buyer, or a seller, in this Fall 2017 market, you need to understand that there are currently three pricing strategies being employed by sellers.

And if you happen to be that seller, about to list, you had better make sure you think long and hard about which strategy you’re going to use…

Alright, so maybe that’s not exactly the right photo for this blog post.

A guy at a whiteboard, in front of charts, graphs, stacks of money, and buildings with rain clouds over them?

Wait…..he’s also wearing a suit, so provided he’s also got a pocket square, and shoes with no socks, he might be your typical 2017 real estate agent…

Perhaps my choice in photo this Monday morning isn’t perfect, but if you’re a seller in the fall 2017 market, you had better make sure your listing strategy is.

Despite what you read, or want to believe, the Toronto real estate market is still hot……in some areas……in some price points……at certain times of the week…

It’s a mixed bag. There’s no other way of stating it.

In this market, I’ve seen properties sell for far less than they should have, and I’ve been thankful to represent the buyer in a few of those transactions. And then I’ve seen some properties sell for far more than they ever should have, with 12, 15, or 18 offers – reminiscent of the spring.

I’ve also seen comical pricing “strategies” blow up in sellers’ faces, and sometimes, work like magic.

Case in point, there was a house listed for sale in the west end for $1,089,000, with a “hold back” on offers. The house did not sell, and was re-listed at $1,299,000. The house didn’t sell at that price either, and the seller decided to employ the under-listing “strategy” once again, and listed this time at $1,049,000.

The damn house sold for $1,330,000, with 13 offers.

It made no sense.

I want to find that buyer and say, “Hey, do you realize that when the house was listed for two weeks at $1,299,000, you could have probably bought it for like $1,270,000? You just paid $1,330,000 for no reason.”

Well, there was a reason, I suppose, and that was the presence of 13 offers.

But that never should have happened. Never, ever, ever.

Are buyers’ memories that short? Do they not ask their agents, “Has this house been listed for sale before?”

How can you take a house that was sitting on the market at $1,299,000, list low at $1,049,000 and hold back offers, and then produce 13 offers and $1,330,000? It defies logic. It can only be the result of uninformed, untrained, buyers and buyer agents.

That, and a lot of emotion on offer night.

While there are isolated cases like this one, for the most part, I’m not seeing the whole “re-listing” thing work.

Recall that in the spring of 2017, when the market began to slow in late-April, and through May, and June, probably 40-50% of houses that were under-listed with an “offer night” were re-listed at a higher price after a failed offer night.

I would like to think we’ve learned from our mistakes, and so far this fall, we’ve seen different strategies employed.

While any seller, can take any number of different paths in this market, I’m seeing three distinct “strategies” for pricing and attracting offers in this market.

If they seem familiar, it’s because we’ve discussed them before.

But let’s look at all three in the context of a seller choosing from the set, and then look at ways in which the strategies have worked, and haven’t.

–

1) Holding Back Offers

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Right?

That’s what a lot of listing agents, and sellers, are thinking in this market.

But a lot of listing agents and sellers felt that way in the spring market, and got stung.

We’re still seeing most freehold properties listed with “offer dates,” and the degree of under-listing varies.

So we can basically divide this #1 strategy into (a) and (b):

a) under-price and hold back offers b) price at fair market value and hold back offers.

Why the two different strategies within a strategy?

Well it’s simple: you’re hedging your bet.

Many sellers in this market are dead afraid of under-pricing and holding back offers, like was done in the spring.

Tell a seller of a house worth $1.2M that you want to price at $969,900 and set an offer night for next Wednesday, and many of them don’t have the stomach for it.

But tell a seller that you know, unequivocally, that the house is worth exactly $1,200,000.00, no more, no less, and they’ll have a hard time accepting that.

Then when the seller received a full-priced, unconditional offer for $1,200,000 only three hours after the property hits the market, and the most natural reaction is to ask, “Did I under-price this house?”

Most sellers will think, “Am I leaving money on the table?”

How can they not!

Most sellers are pessimistic by nature. Instead of saying, “Oh goodie, I have a full-priced, unconditional offer for my home, I’m so happy,” the average seller will undoubtedly wonder, “Why is this happening so fast? What’s wrong here?”

And it’s for that reason that many properties are being listed at fair market value, with a hold-back on offers.

As I write this, I’m discussing a particular house with a client, listed at $1,399,000, that I don’t think is worth a penny more than the list price. Offers are due tomorrow night, and I’ve told her – this house isn’t going to get five offers. If the house receives, say, two offers, it doesn’t mean it’s selling for $1.5 Million, like it would have in the spring.

Listing at fair market value and still having an “offer night” leaves the door open to potentially getting multiple bids, just in case the seller is always going to wonder, “What could have happened?” but more importantly, it means if you don’t get any offers, you don’t have to re-list 10-15% higher after your failed offer night, and signal to the market that you’re “one of those sellers,” and risk having the market ignore your home.

So, what then of strategy 1(a)?

It’s still happening, a lot. More so than 1(b), but 1(b) is something new and different, and 1(a) is just the same-old, same-old, from the past decade.

I’ve seen two properties so far this fall break the 150% sale-to-list barrier, but both were comically under-listed, and I suspect the listing agents had no clue what the properties were worth, so they didn’t even bother trying to figure it out. Both properties were fixer-uppers, and those are hard to price. So both agents said, “Screw this,” and simply picked a price that wasn’t in the same realm as any reasonable estimate, then picked an “offer night” from the calendar, and sat back and let the market price the home for them.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

There are still a lot of houses and condos that necessitate the “list-low, hold back” strategy. But there are a lot of properties that don’t, and they’re being re-listed higher. We’re also seeing houses listed artificially low that do get offers, but where the seller doesn’t get enough, and those houses too are being re-listed higher.

I recall a house in Bloor West that was listed at $1,089,000, and then was re-listed at $1,349,000. But the rub here is – there were six offers on this house! They just weren’t high enough. Imagine somebody showing up with an offer for $1,275,000, and a certified cheque for $80,000, and being turned away?

That house has now been on the market at the “new” price for a month…

–

2) Offers Any Time, With Extended Irrevocable

I suppose we could break this down into an (a), (b), and (c) as well.

24, 48, or the dreaded 72 hours irrevocable.

I wrote about this on my blog a while back, and interestingly enough, an agent I ran into last week had read it.

I was showing a house to clients that had no offer date; we saw it the same day it hit the market.

We walked through, dodging 2-3 other groups of buyers, and kept looking at each other saying, “Is this too good to be true?”

Listed at $1,149,900, this house was a true “box-ticker,” since it checked all the boxes, and more. Everything my clients wanted, this house had, but it also had two-car parking, even though they only needed one, and a host of other features that we didn’t think we’d find in this area, at this price.

I called the agent around 7pm after our viewing and said I was bringing an offer, and asked if she could work with the offer that night, and she said, “I need 48 hours irrevocable – I know, your fave, right?”

Another loyal TRB reader, what can I say?

I told her, “The listing doesn’t say anything about 48 hours! What’s up?”

She said the listing was supposed to say “48 hours,” and she changed it on the spot.

Now I’m not blaming the agent here. I know this agent, she’s a very high producer, and is truly “one of the good ones” in our industry. She told me she had the sellers sign the “Seller Direction Form” along with the listing, so it’s not like I could force the sellers’ hand here and push a full-price offer with a 4-hour irrevocable here. This listing did require a 48-hour irrevocable, as per the seller’s instructions, even if it didn’t specify that on the listing for a couple of hours.

Sometimes, you just don’t have a move.

So my clients agreed to submit an offer, good for 48 hours, knowing full well we’d be in competition at some point.

The next morning, there were two other offers registered, and the agent said they would sit down to look at them on Friday night.

By Friday night, there were nine offers in total, and the house sold for $200,000 over asking.

Was this planned all along?

Was this the strategy by the listing agent and the sellers?

Probably. And maybe not at the same time.

There’s absolutely nothing to suggest this house was worth the eventual sale price; not a single comparable sale from the last six months that could point to this value.

So were the sellers expecting this sale price?

I don’t think so. I think the plan here was to avoid the hoopla of an “offer night” a week after the listing, and avoid sending a message to the market that the sellers are looking for a bidding war. So put the property on the market, ask for two days for a “marketing period” if you want to use that term, and then see what’s what.

In the end, the strategy worked, and you could argue it worked better than an offer night would have, since interested buyers could have found other homes over the next 6-7 days.

–

3) Offers Really, Truly, Any Time

Imagine that!

What a novel concept. Are we pricing at fair market value too?

Well, I suppose it depends on the property.

Throughout the GTA, in every area, and in every price point, you’re going to see just about every strategy you can think of, and hybrids of those as well.

I’ve seen a lot of condos in the downtown core listed low with “hold backs” on offers, but I’ve also seen a lot of those properties re-listed higher a week later. I think if you have a 2-bed, 2-bath with a terrace at the Candy Factory Lofts, then the strategy makes sense. Otherwise, I don’t like it.

I’ve told you this a few times throughout the fall market, but my strategy when it comes to listing condos: price high, offers any time.

Price high?

Does that really work, you ask?

Yes. Yes it does.

In fact, I’ve used this strategy for most of my smaller condo listings this fall, and it’s worked to perfection.

Three times now, I’ve set a new price-per-square foot record in the building, which you might say is the market, and you might say is the strategy.

But either way, I believe there are so many buyers who don’t want to wait for an offer night, don’t want to be in competition, or don’t want either, that when they do see a condo listed for sale, with offers any time, they basically decide in advance, “If I like this in the first thirty seconds, I’m buying it.”

And that’s what’s happened.

Take a $485,000 condo, price it at $529,900 with “offers any time” and don’t ask for a 24-hour irrevocability, and you truly are employing the “catch more flies with honey” strategy.

Sure, an agent might call you and ask, “Where the hell did you get this price from?”

But five minutes after that, another agent is going to call and ask you, “Are there any offers yet? Can you work with an offer tonight? Can you send the Status Certificate over so I can have an unconditional offer prepared in advance?”

Just as the bully offer was all the rage in the freehold market in the spring, the “first horse to the trough gets to eat” school of thinking is dominating the 1-bedroom condo market.

And I truly believe that you can over-price, advertise “offers anytime,” and do better than you ever would with an offer date.

–

So there you have it, folks.

This is a complex market, and it’s even more unpredictable than the spring.

In the spring, we had trouble predicting how high a given sale price would be.

This fall, we’re trying to make sense of whether a given property will sell the first time around or not.

And I believe it all comes down to the strategy employed for pricing and offers.

All three of the above strategies can lead to success, and all three can lead to failure.

It’s up to the seller, and the listing agent, to ensure the right strategy is employed…

The post The Three Selling “Strategies” Being Employed This Fall appeared first on Toronto Real Estate Property Sales & Investments | Toronto Realty Blog by David Fleming.

Originated from http://ift.tt/2zWVkT4

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rowbeana · 7 years

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sometimes i have dreams and then remember them post #16

hoo boy...

so i think the very start, the original premise, was that my dad and i and my uncle and someone(s) else were taking evan back to school basically? but as always, he went to a diff made up uni in my dream. one of the other people with us was a former (again, probs fictional) snl cast member bc....ok

anyways along the way we stop because my dad has to go get something?? idk, he’s acting weird, but whatever. there’s this fancy little gelato shop where we parked and my uncle is like well i’m going to go get some gelato and i was like ME TOO THEN?? so me, him and evan go and i’m looking at cones and fsr chris parnell is there? i know it’s bc my mom and i were just talking about him before i went to sleep but still

i say something really weird to him as he’s leaving, like “good work, parnell!” and he stops bc that was weird and i get all stressed i’m like sorry that was-- it’s just like i know someone-- i’m unable to form a sentence but it’s okay bc the snl cast member who is either in my fam or a family friend comes in and suddenly there’s a big snl reunion bc there are all these other cast members there?? makes no sense ur right

this is important to note: this town is fuckin weird ok

then, and idk how at all, but our car is just a bunch of people, mainly muscly type guys, hanging out waiting for my dad. suddenly it’s a convertible so this is somewhat feasible. but eventually like two hours pass so i’m concerned and we gotta go.

i call my dad and i don’t really hear anything so i’m like dad?? dAD????? and i’m stressed. suddenly i can hear like. sketchy sex noises and i’m like wtf but i can tell something is super wrong so i’m not like grossed out i’m just scared. then i can hear my dad way way in the bg like someone else answered his phone to creep me out bc he’s being held captive!! and i’m like DAD...WHERE ARE YOU. and i hear him say something but it’s so quiet i dont really make it out then the person hangs up. in the dream this took a lot longer which was stressful.

so omfg i literally call back LOL so i can hear the name again then i hang up. i still only remembered the last name and i knew what it meant but i was hella stressed so i forgot. i end up asking someone in the town like “idk where my dad was all i heard was the last name newman” or s/t and she’s like. oh he lives at the horne mansion

and yes, the horne mansion is literally where benjamin horne from twin peaks and his fam live and he is as sketchy and bad as in the original run. there are a lot of villains in twin peaks but he’s the one who owns the hotel/lodge and the sketchy strip club with underage girls. so i’m like. fuck! i’m really dumb bc this house is literally across from where we are parked. i gather my new muscly male pals and tell them we gotta save my dad.

BUT THEN, ELSEWHERE, I HAVE A SIMULTANEOUS DREAM. where, while we were still innocently waiting in the car, this guy i used to have a crush on and is kind of like a family friend comes by to say hello and i learn he’s recently married and he has a daughter but i think she’s his step daughter bc she’s like four or five. and i’m like (: that’s great

idk how but now jacqui has a crush on him and i was supposedly over him so i’m like hey whatever + he’s married anyways + jac has a bf lol. and, again, this bf is fictional. can’t really remember but i think he had dark curly hair and a beard? he was like a young oscar isaac maybe.

anyways, fsr we are just pretty sure his marriage won’t last so we don’t really care. idk if jac said something to him at some point but we are at this comically large department store and i see him at the register so i tell jac and she runs away and it’s my job to keep tabs on him, although he is literally just gonna buy his thing and leave. also jac’s bf was in line for the register too which i suspect was the real issue of running away but it was still weird

so i gotta go track down jac and tell her he’s left now. not sure when other than car, but i guess i talk to the guy at some point bc cut forward to me receiving a letter from him. it’s like three pages front and back but in my dream i only have time to read the first page. i remember the beginning of the letter kind of but um it’s embarrassing lol so.

i don’t read any farther bc i only notice the other pages after, like they weren’t originally meant to be part of the letter? i don’t read them bc jac walks up and i’m like oh i got this letter from him it’s super long and jac is like oh (: i think i said his marriage seemed rocky or maybe i kept that to myself bc suddenly we were walking down some stairs and i could tell jac was annoyed/upset and i was like. well, just as a reminder, this dude kissed me ages ago while i was dating someone else which i think we can all agree is bad. so he’s not like That great

but by this point i’m ofc like well i’m single NOW lol so boy should date me. i guess that’s the more complicated backstory we had, like we mutually were interested but at the time i also loved the bf i had so????

anyways, somehow i think this is where the other storyline converges. i go to the creepy big ass horne estate and there’s some kind of party happening but i’m just here to rescue my dad. as i only vaguely know, my dad and mr. horne have some kind of beef or shady history together. i guess he came here willingly to talk about something but then he was taken prisoner pm

there’s kind of a reception area at this place lmao but i ask a lady who seems to be a nanny or a maid if audrey is home and she says yes. and i’m like well i’m a friend (this is true. how did i become friends with benjamin horne’s daughter if he hates my dad? idk!!) and i want to see her so nanny lady goes up the stairs but when she comes back she says audrey wasn’t in her room or she’s not coming down or w/e and i’m like. fuck bc she could help me the most but. i just smile and i’m like well that’s okay i’ll wait for her. at this point she’s def my best bet for a) finding my dad and b) successfully helping his escape

meanwhile, darren criss (why not) walks out from between these curtains that lead to a theatre bc in my dream the hornes own a theatre that actual famous people perform at sometimes. and rn darren is there for a few weeks but he doesn’t seem to love it (bc this place is sketchy as hell) bc he walks out looking at the ground with like his face covered maybe people are always wanting to get his autograph or whatever.

so i’m like. “darren. Darren. daRREN” bc off camera we have met and we have a past where we get along and are pals so i’m like. practically forced to body slam him so he looks at me and i’m like “great i need your help” and i loop my arm through his and pull him towards, somehow, a little gift shop type store that exists at the front of the house. previously, when i stormed in i didn’t have my muscly guy but some gals my age and i had a sweater and something else i was looking at and they hid them??? they’re bitches as if i need this rn when i’m just trying to save my damn dad. idk, it was weird, darren was helping me look although this was clearly not the priority of the moment. i’m also like forgetting about that other guy bc darren is right there and would be much easier to date

anyways, did we find the sweater? did we save my dad???? who knows bc it was 3pm so i woke tf up.

#row row dreams.

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danschkade · 7 years

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ANALYSIS -- PETER PARKER: SPIDER-MAN, VOL.2, #13 (January 2000)

SCRIPT: Howard Mackie

PENCILS: Lee Weeks

INKS: Robert Campanella

COLORS: Gregory Wright

LETTERS: Troy Peteri for RS & Comicraft

EDITORIAL: Ralph Macchio, Bob Harris (EIC)

PETER PARKER: SPIDER-MAN #13 is an interesting parallel to last week’s BATMAN: GOTHAM ADVENTURES #17. It was made at roughly the same time, and occupies a similar place in its series run (the series’ second years, after the look and feel of both books had been established). This leaves both issues to preform similar duties — not to open up new ground or bring everything to a close, but to keep the ongoing macronarrative afloat with exciting, well-made, meat and potatoes storytelling. Both series are secondary titles, rather that the AMAZING SPIDER-MAN or BATMAN books that serve as the flagship titles of their respective lines, and therefore they have a certain latitude to explore different stories those main books don’t or can’t. And like Scott Peterson, Tim Levins and Terry Beatty, Howard Mackie, Lee Weeks and Robert Campanella are lean, dynamic storytellers with intimate, hard-earned understanding of the technology of comics.

The differences are few, but significant. GOTHAM ADVENTURES is a publication explicitly targeted at younger readers, while PETER PARKER is aimed at the slightly older mainstream Marvel audience — its storytelling is meant to be denser and more interconnected to ongoing story threads. GOTHAM ADVENTURES is drawn from animation-informed character models, while PETER PARKER is drawn in the more illustrative Marvel house style. Which brings us to a final, somewhat abstract but sometimes very important, difference; GOTHAM ADVENTURES is a DC Comic, where PETER PARKER is very much a Marvel Comic.

With that, let’s get into 2000’s PETER PARKER: SPIDER-MAN #13 — “LIVING IN OBLIVION!”

And please, feel free to check me on any mistakes I might have made, add your own commentary, or share similar examples of good comics done well.

PETER PARKER: SPIDER-MAN #13 and all characters contained therein are property of Marvel Comics, reproduced here solely for educational purposes.

COVER

This cover is not only powerfully simple, it also sets us up for a gutpunch visual at the end of the issue. Note the great anatomy on the crumpled Spider-Man at the bottom, apparent even with half of his costume reduced to matte black. The sketchy black in the Carnage face is a little messy for my tastes, but the face would’ve been too insubstantial without it. Maybe if the Face had been expanded to huge, nightmarish Jack O’Lantern proportions, it could have stood better on its own.

PAGE ONE

This opening splash is great. The dialogue clearly introduces all three characters by name, and the staging immediately shows how powerful Carnage is. The absence of background is compelling — we want to know who’s saying these things, and to see how Spider-Men gets out of this mess. The barely hinted-at grass they’re kneeling in give the scene just enough of a sense of place to make the it feel real.

PAGE TWO-THREE

POW! What a followup splash! Only it isn’t actually a splash, is it — it’s a five-panel page, expanded to twice its normal size by stretching it across the real estate of a double page splash. Such a power move... you can only pull this kind of thing off every once in a while before it gets gimmicky, and they decided to come out the gate swinging with it. The way this forces you to physically rotate the book even ads impact to Carnages laterally sweeping blow, which your eye immediately goes to, since it’s aligned with the fold of the page. Weeks made sure the blow wan’t QUITE centered on the page, however, since that would make it disappear into the fold, defeating the whole point. With one move, Carnage knocks Venom away from us while sending Spider-Man sprawling towards us, making him seem even stronger. The double-sized page also allows the scene-setting panels one and five, which would come across as tiny on a normal page, to seem wide and immersive. We also get our first close-up of the issue in panel two — Carnage, establishing this as HIS show.

The one weakness of the double-page format is actually evidenced in my scattered commentary above — because your eye is drawn immediately to the center of it, you end up reading the page in pieces rather than the top to bottom, left to right manner pages are drawn to facilitate. Fortunately, the action on this page is really less sequential than it is scene-setting, so nothing is really lost. This time.

PAGE FOUR

I love the little circuit of panels one though three. Introducing the incongruous element of the baton hitting the fence in panel one sticks in your reading flow, twisting your understanding of the space and adding to the weird atmosphere of the scene. More glamour shots and close-ops of Carnage — we start getting the inkling that this might not be his show so much as his fantasy.

PAGE FIVE

Panel one repeats the pose of the close-up in the last panel of the previous page, indicating the shift from fantasy to reality. We now see the face was Carnage’s — aka Cletus Kasady’s — weird tech-inflected jail cell. Weeks consistently stages Cletus in the background, making him smaller (and implicitly weaker) than the guard at all times. This does a couple of things for us; 1) it shows us the cruelty of the guard in charge of Cletus, giving us a nice mini-boss for his part of the story. 2) It catches us up on why Cletus doesn’t have his alien costume anymore (and if you didn’t know what that was when you picked up the comic, you can intuit everything you need to know from what you saw in his fantasy). 3) It establishes an enmity between Carnage and Venom, which may come into play later. And finally, 4) even without his costume, Cletus Kasasy is clearly dangerous, unhinged, and patient.

PAGE SIX

This page is… muddy. Weeks and Campanella do a good job of setting up the geography of May’s apartment, but Wright’s colors make it difficult to delineate between middle and background. The BING of the elevator is way too dark, disappearing into a tangent with the ceiling. Jill and Arthur aren’t well established until we see them in panel five, which makes Jill’s crying seem even more sudden and forced, and the phone-drop in panel six is really over the top. It’s possible the script for this page was re-worked after the art came in for some reason or another, but the end result is just not that great. Totally kills the momentum from the previous pages.

Now, you shouldn’t point out a problem if you don’t have a solution, so here’s an easy, non-structural fix for at least some of this: put the phone in May’s hand in panel two, and then move May’s first two lines from panel three to panel two. In script form, it might look like this:

PANEL TWO — MAY answers the phone, glancing over at the door as she hears the elevator bing.

MAY: Hello! Parker Residence. May Parker Speaking. MAY: Oh my… someone’s coming up in the elevator, too! MAY: Could you hold on for one moment, please?

PANEL THREE — JILL and ARTHUR STACY enter the apartment. MAY looks over at them as they enter, covering the mouthpiece of the phone.

MAY: JILL and Arthur STACY! What a pleasant surprise. I’ll be with you in a second. I just answered the phone and—

I think this is more natural, and gives the vaguely useless panel two some activity. It also makes the whole point of panel three “Jill and Arthur enter the room,” which does a better job of introducing them.

PAGE SEVEN

Weeks employs one of my favorite tricks here — conveying the physical freedom of a character by having them slightly overlap the panel boarders. You can see it in Spider-Man’s figures in panel two and four. Four is especially effective — having Spidey partially outside the panel helps give us the feeling that he’s dropping into a scene in progress. Note also how Weeks slowly brings Spidey closer to us throughout panels one and three, ending in a nice juicy close-up. We’re nearly a third of the way through the issue and this is the first time we’ve actually met our hero, so this is a good way to get acquainted with him this late in the game. Some nice relatable internal thought also helps us get on the same page as the titular Peter Parker; imagine this scene without any lettering and see how cold and remote our faceless hero becomes.

PAGE EIGHT

Mackie give us a fun superhero take on the “daydreaming about your vacation at work” shtick. Weeks maintains a nice rightwards line of motion from Spidey’s dive in panel one, tearing off the door in panel two, the look over the shoulder and down the right-reaching arm in panel three, and then changing course by having Spidey run towards us in panel four, away from the rightward trajectory towards danger in the first three panels. An annotated version of the page to demonstrate what I’m talking about, just in case I’m describing it clumsily:

Spidey’s lean in the last panel is dynamic as hell.

PAGE NINE

The large black expanse of the bridge might seem like a waste of space at first, but it’s actually a way for Weeks and Campanella to stage the teetering bus high up in the panel and page, helping to sell the precarious verticality of the soon-to-fall vehicle. It’s kind of a static panel, which makes me think there might have been some more rubble and activity in the pencils that got lost in the inks. The ‘Department of Corrections’ label in panel four is a nice, natural way to establish the prisoner transport element of the scene without relying solely on the expository dialogue in panel five. It sets us up for the revelations of the rest of the scene and keeps the plot moving — another way in which this sequence is playing catch-up for being so relatively late in the issue. It’d be nice if Wright had used different colors between the uniforms of prisoners and the guards (established in the Kasady scene as grey and green, respectively).

PAGE TEN

The bus falling and exploding is a cool, kinetic way to put a button on this scene. I’ve been criticizing Wright’s colors so far, but he does dynamite work on this page. I love the blue figures in front of the brilliant blaze in panel three, as well as the glowing reverse angle on Spider-Man in panel four. Some heavy, but not too heavy, symbolism in panel five — the looming presence of Carnage hovering over a sleepy, unsuspecting city.

PAGE ELEVEN

This page is a fairly flat “people in a room talking in cliches” scene, but Weeks keeps it alive by changing up his camera angles, going from wide shots to close ups, and employing another favorite trick of mine by dropping out the background and panel borders in the panel three group shot. Note the use of the spiky houseplants as the visual shorthand for May’s apartment.

PAGE TWELVE

Weeks and Campanella dwarf Spidey with flaming wreckage in panel one, selling the pressure and anxiety he feels at the prospect of Kasady’s escape. We cut to a relatively close shot of Spidey in panel two to smooth the transition to an extreme close up of Kas(s)ady’s empty prison uniform and cuffs in panel three. Dropping out the background and panel boarder in panel four emphasizes the immensity of the danger Spider-Man, and New York by extension, now faces.

(Trivia: Jack the Ripper’s bodycount is generally accepted to be a horrible -- yet ultimately modest in the grand scope of comic book super villains -- five.)

PAGE THIRTEEN

The close-in anatomy shots across the first four panels builds to a good full-body reveal in panel five. I’m not sure who the uniformed guys on the ground are supposed to be; I guess they’re cops? I can’t see a hardware store having armed security on hand. It’s just weird to use dead cops solely as serial-killer-escape potpourri. It makes the scene feel fake. They don’t even need to be there — the fact that the knife blade is the only part of Kasady that isn’t red indicates he’s covered entirely in paint, not blood, and it’s not like he couldn’t just be ranting to himself. Personal peev, and anyway, it’s very well drawn. I can’t find any one person “J.P. Bradford” might be. Who knows? Maybe it’s Lee Week’s brother-in-law.

PAGE FOURTEEN

Man, maybe I’m missing some context from other Spider-Man comics of the time, but these Aunt May scenes sure feel like a whole lot of nothing. Waiting by the phone in a well-lit apartment is just about the least dynamic thing you can put on a page. She’s literally napping in this scene. That said, panel three is really well drawn, and Weeks nicely ratchets up the intimacy in the last two panels by sacrificing some real estate on either side.

(These Aunt May scenes are the exact reason for Wally Wood’s 22 Panels That Always Work.)

PAGE FIFTEEN

Weeks easily indicates that the vehicle Kasady jumps on in panel two is a limousine just by including those vertical ornaments in between the windows. Wright leaves the blue in his eyes, reminding us he’s just a crazy guy in paint right now, and not the alien death monster he’s still claiming to be. See also: the hair in his face, the wrinkles on his forehead, his toenails.

PAGE SIXTEEN

Probably just a coincidence, but Kasady’s slash in panel one follows the same motion as Carnage’s sweep on the page two-three double page. Very well-drawn Kingpin here, his intelligence indicated with subtle hand motions as opposed to Kasady and turtleneck goon’s broad pantomime.

PAGE SEVENTEEN

Panel two gives us another good look at the environment, making the following action feel more grounded and understandable. It’s generally a good idea to cut to a wide shot at the start of an action scene. Meanwhile, Weeks continues to be a stellar anatomist.

PAGE EIGHTEEN

Including some onlookers in panel one helps sell the moment of Spidey getting blindsided by Kasady. Bit odd that Spidey couldn’t evade a manhole cover when he usually dodges bullets, but that’s a nitpick. The creative team keeps the fight personal by cutting to the closeup in panel two — this sequence is closing out Kasady’s story from the opening of the issue, and this closeup helps keep it his story. For this page, at least.

PAGE NINETEEN

Now the tide turns against Kasady, as it must, and we switch back to Spider-Man’s internal thoughts. Spidey goes from a prop in Kasady’s story to Kasady becoming a prop in his.

I gotta say, Cletus’ short-lived reign of terror leaves me pretty cold. Despite the work done to establish his captivity and his enmity with the blonde guard on page five, we never get any real payoff on it. His escape happens in between pages, and the guard is never seen again (it’s possible he’s supposed to be the guard Spider-man talks to on page nine, but even that’s some poor followup). For all the great buildup of Cletus Kasady as an enemy to make Spider-Man quake in his webs, the confrontation we ultimately get fails to live up to it. It’s shame, because as far as the Carnage stuff went, up to page twelve we were really cooking.

The page ends with this gorgeous montage panel — Venom huge (and possibly even diegetic) in the foreground, while the Kingpin looms in the sky (definitely non-diegetic) like a malevolent blue moon. Spidey’s tiny form shows his childish declaration of independence to be just that; there’s larger forces in play than the desires of Peter Parker.

PAGE TWENTY

Speaking of Peter Parker, here he is at last. It may even be intentional that Peter’s been spending the whole issue as Spider-Man, unable to even end his thoughts without a crisis coming up. Weeks indicates Peter’s feeling of independence of personal empowerment by steadily increasing his size throughout the three panels, culminating in him literally clenching the Spider-Man mask in his hand, symbolically getting a hold of his life. Or so he thinks.

PAGE TWENTY ONE

Lot going on with this page, all of it good. Peter’s graceful, playful jump into the stairwell shows us his frame of mind as he heads into this heavy scene — knowing he’s in a good place will make his imminent descent into a bad place all the more crushing. As Peter enters the apartment, Wright does a good job of drawing our eye to Aunt May in the background with a warm yet menacing gold-orange light. Since we more or less know what Peter’s heading into, Weeks helps us feel the tension of his uncertainly by keeping us close to him in panel five. Great use of black negative space in panel six. Note that the action in the last three panels happens along the same axis, helping to build the tension further.

PAGE TWENTY TWO

Huge, empty splash page; they’re in shock, in pain, all alone, with only each other to hold onto. Like I said at the beginning, I think the cover thematically connects to this final splash page — the dark and bloody Spider-Man moment setting us up for the eventual sucker punch of the big empty Peter Parker moment.

Overall: A very well-drawn comic that suffers from a script that maybe relies a little too much on genre conventions and ultimately fails to pay off on its imaginative first half, as well as a few missed coloring opportunities. A lot to like from all parties involved, though.

At the end of all this, I’d be remiss if I didn’t include the back cover, which is a stone cold comic book classic:

Unimpeachable.

#Spider-Man #Peter Parker: Spider-Man #Marvel Comics #Comics #analysis #Carnage

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aion-rsa · 8 years

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Bringing The Spirit and Dick Tracy Together, For the First Time

2017 marks the Eisner Centennial, as Will Eisner would have turned 100 years old this month. To help celebrate, Mike Curtis, Joe Staton and the team behind “Dick Tracy” brought The Spirit to the comic strip for the first ever crossover between the two iconic characters.

RELATED: 7 Books You Must Read To Celebrate The Will Eisner Centennial

Dick Tracy is one of the last remaining legacy strips, and since the two took over in 2011, they’ve made a point of bringing other characters into the comic. They’ve had crossovers with other Tribune strips that had already ended, like Little Orphan Annie, the supporting cast of Terry and the Pirates, Gasoline Alley and Snuffy Smith, and they even incorporated the Fearless Fosdick parody of Tracy from “Li’l Abner.” They’ve had references to The Shadow and Doc Savage. They got permission to use the likeness of Boris Karloff to introduce the character he played in 1947’s Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome to the strip for the first time.

In short, they’re having a lot of fun, so we contacted the pair to discuss the latest, and perhaps most unexpected pairing they’ve presented to date.

CBR: You guys ended 2016 with one character’s cancer going into remission, a rousing Sunday of the characters singing “Deck Us All with Boston Charlie,” and the arrival of The Spirit. How did this happen?

Joe Staton: It was Mike.

Mike Curtis: Denis Kitchen, too. Basically we had talked to Denis Kitchen before about another crossover when we used Fearless Fosdick [from “Li’l Abner’]. That went well, so we decided to go after The Spirit and Denis made it all happen.

You guys have had story lines with a lot of other comics characters, not to mention characters and real life people from outside comics. It feels natural to include The Spirit in that sense.

Staton: We’ve been doing lots of other people’s characters. Annie and the supporting cast of Terry and the Pirates are “in house.” The Trib owns them. Snuffy Smith is not a Trib character, but he made a short appearance — there was not a long term commitment there, so we could do what we wanted. With The Spirit, the Eisner estate and Denis would keep an eye on us and make sure we didn’t go astray. We had to be very careful, but they were very good with what they let us do.

Curtis: Very much so. One thing I do want to point out is that I write the script and do roughs, then Joe does pencils and Shelley inks and letters it. We had been sending copies of everything to Denis and the Eisner estate in case they had any last minute changes – or better ideas.

Staton: I did a little explaining of my approach to The Spirit before we got into it. I was taking on the Spirit from a specific earlier part of Will’s strips. Because Tracy and Denny Colt have pretty similar hats most of the time, I wanted to make them a little more distinct. Earlier in the run the Spirit had a hat with a wider brim and a taller crown, and sometimes he had a topcoat. I was trying to make Denny Colt distinct from Dick Tracy.

Mike, talk a little about the story.

Curtis: The hard part was finding something that would be of interest and enough of a challenge for both Dick Tracy and The Spirit. It’s like those “World’s Finest Comics” where you have to have somebody who’s tough enough to take on Superman, Batman and Robin. I won’t give away anything in the story, but Perenelle Flammel, who’s the wife of Nicolas Flammel, is auctioning off her immortality formula. The people who are bidding to buy it are Daddy Warbucks, The Dragon Lady, the Octopus, who sent Mr Carrion over to bid for him, and Diet Smith.

I always enjoy when we have Diet and Warbucks together. Back when we did the Annie crossover, there was one daily that I really enjoyed where they were talking about time travel and Warbucks is ribbing Diet Smith and he says, I know you have a Montauk Chair in there. Things you have to look up like that. I think that makes it a more interesting story and a more interesting strip if the reader can enjoy it on one level, but if they want to dig a little bit, they can enjoy it more.

What do you think the relationship is between Gould and Eisner and their work? Both The Spirit and Dick Tracy are both reactive characters.

Staton: Will’s approach to stories, and to life, was more humanistic than the Gould approach. Tracy keeps order, and The Spirit just wanders into life and sees who’s hanging in there. They’re both crime fighters they both can take a lot of abuse, but they are from different takes on the world. There’s a little bit of that in the crossover too.

Curtis: They’re both reactive characters. In the classic Spirit story “Ten Minutes,” the Spirit shows up for three panels, I think, in the whole story. There’s a lot of Tracy stories where he’s not the lead.

Staton: Sometimes the Tracy villains have stories going on for months before Tracy shows up and gets into things.

This year is the Eisner Centennial, as we were saying; who was Eisner to you?

Staton: When I came into comics, I knew that he was always called the Orson Welles of comics. I think it was just for him opening up possibilities beyond just six boxes on a page, both in terms of the graphics and in terms of the characterizations. The humanity of the characters. Will showed that comics could be a little bit more than people generally thought they were. Will is the great popularizer of the graphic novel and now graphic novels are covering all kinds of territories. Will showed up there was more to be done that more could be done.

Curtis: Did you ever meet Will?

Staton: Somewhere along the line, I actually got an Eisner for a “Superman/Batman Adventures.” Will was giving them out that year, and was signing them all, so I have an Eisner, signed on the back in gold pen by Will. The funny thing is, the plaque is actually the wrong title of the comic. [Laughs] It’s supposed to be “Superman/Batman Adventures,” and it says “Batman and Robin Adventures.” I would never turn it back in to get the correct one, because Will wouldn’t have signed that one. That’s the only time I ever met Will.

You guys are wrapping up the story in April, so people can go back and catch up before the finale. This is one of the longest stories you guys have done on the strip.

Staton: Mike will write long stories that don’t take place in one long stretch. We had a story with Mr Crime for a long time, and there would be other stories intervening and I have no idea how long all that ended up being.

I did want to mention the colors you guys have on the Sunday strips, which really stands out.

Curtis: Shane Fisher is our coloring guy on Sundays, and on gocomics.com they have someone else doing the dailies.

Curtis: There are five of us on the team. There’s Joe and myself, Shelley Pleger does inks and lettering. Shane is our colorist, then we have Walt Rymer, who’s our police advisor — he does the Crimestoppers.

That’s as large of a team as any strip right now.

Staton: I think so. Terry Beatty works pretty much on his own on “The Phantom.” Sometimes I’m amazed what he can do on his own. Sometimes Shelly, our inker, can do most anything.

Curtis: We do need to mention that Shelly is going to be doing the main strip for one story while you take a break.

Staton: When I signed up years ago to do “Tracy,” I had some other things I was planning. Between keeping up with “Tracy” and there being a boon in doing cons, I haven’t been able to concentrate on any other projects, so I’m taking off for one continuity and Shelley is going to be doing the whole strip – pencils, inks and letters – and then I’ll be back on. We have no doubt that she’ll do a brilliant job.

What are you doing when you step away from the strip?

Staton: It’s no secret; Nic Cuti I have the character E-Man, a character that actually owes a lot to Will and to Jack Cole. We have this new story of E-Man, and it’s going to run as three parts in the Charleton Arrow, which handles a lot of characters from Charleton, which is where I started out way back when. I’m actually working on an E-man story right now, and Shelly is working on Tracy

Is there a character you really liked in this story?

Staton: I really like drawing The Spirit. I always wanted a shot at Denny Colt. We bring back our character Doubleup, I always like him. The Dragon Lady shows up. She’s much harder to draw than you would think.

I have to ask, is there a chance we’ll see a collection of the strip one of these years?

Staton: We keep on hoping!

Curtis: Joe and I have collected two stories which we give out at conventions. One of them is the Gruesome story with Brois Karloff. The other is Dick Tracy meets the film pirates, which is Silver Nitrate and Sister Sprocket.

Staton: Those are characters we made up. I thought of them and designed them and they’re certainly in the tradition of Gould, but we made them up out of whole cloth.

The post Bringing The Spirit and Dick Tracy Together, For the First Time appeared first on CBR.

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