Jab’s Builds! (Beaker! Sam Eagle! Miss Piggy! The Swedish Chef!)

Where in all of your character write ups will go.
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HalloweenJack
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Re: Scar

Post by HalloweenJack »

Jabroniville wrote: Sat Sep 22, 2018 12:34 am [

-Scar is tough for a Disney villain, but less powerful than Simba- in their fight, Simba clearly has the advantage, and Scar only does well thanks to trickery
I dunno about that. I mean he's a coward and shirks away at first, but when Simba gives him the same line Scar gave him earlier, you can see the rage build up.

Then of course it's the burning brush to the eyes, which gives him an advantage.

As they fight, it looks pretty comparable with trading advantage in a short but awesome little fight scene.

I loved that as a kid: the music, the stakes, the slow motion.
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HalloweenJack
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Re: Bonkers

Post by HalloweenJack »

Jabroniville wrote: Sat Sep 22, 2018 5:11 am Never mind that a TOON interacting with HUMAN BEINGS doesn't actually seem like a novelty in a 100% animated TV show.
yeah...that always struck me as odd. Especially that arc with the Toon Collector who was actually a human in 'toon clothes' so to speak. I mean I knew what they were getting at there, but it was kind of jarring all the same.
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HalloweenJack
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Re: Simba

Post by HalloweenJack »

Jabroniville wrote: Sat Sep 22, 2018 5:19 am
Woodclaw wrote: Fri Sep 21, 2018 11:10 am
Jabroniville wrote: Fri Sep 21, 2018 6:00 am

... I've never actually heard of that :).
You've never watched LadyHawke?

This is a really big loss of nerd-cred, my friend.
Is it? I mean, I've never seen Willow, either, but I've at least HEARD of that. I've literally never seen nor heard anything about LadyHawke in my life. I mean, never!

I wouldn't say it's a must watch though I liked it pretty well. I had never seen it until after college to be honest, but I knew of it at the very least.

As for Willow....well...I like it but it's not the greatest thing in the world.
Jabroniville
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Pocahontas (Film)

Post by Jabroniville »

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POCAHONTAS (1995):
Written by:
Carl Binder, Susannah Grant & Philip LaZebnik

-And NOW WE COME... to the END of the Renaissance.

The most hilarious thing about this is that Disney thought this was going to be their MAGNUM OPUS. Like, after Beauty and the Beast got some Oscar Cred, they were like "THIS TIME FOR SURE!" and put everything into pushing this as some kind of dramatic spectacle. The Lion King was thought of around the offices as a lesser work with THIS ONE getting the big push from behind the scenes. So when Lion King made ALL THE MONEY, and Pocahontas turned into a punchline that is universally considered to be the "End of the Renaissance", the irony was just amazing. I mean, you can't write stuff like that.

Seriously, this movie has gone on to become Disney's most infamous film EVER. While there are bigger flops (in fact, this one MADE money- way more than company-ruining movies like The Black Cauldron did), NOTHING did more damage to the Disney BRAND than this one. And if there's one thing worse than losing money... it's losing CREDIBILITY. Before Pocahontas came out, Disney was on a hot streak the likes of which no studio has ever seen, pumping out hit after hit. It seemed Disney could do no wrong... and so ONE BAD MOVIE was all it would take to break the illusion. There is absolutely nothing more disastrous than this one- you need 2-3 good movies to make up for one dumpster fire, and this one made nearly the entire world sit up at once and go "WELP- Renaissance is over. I guess we're back to crappy movies again". It was so bad that it actually made the NEXT bunch of movies seem worse, simply by being on "the tail end of the Reinaissance".

I actually remember seeing it in theatres and thinking it bit. I remember looking at just how GENERIC everything was, and being annoyed- the Animal Sidekicks were more cloying than ever. And even worse- the PROTAGONISTS were boring! This movie was totally a disappointment given what was happening before. Part of the issue is that it's a bit of historical fiction, meaning that people are going to read into the "Disneyfication" of things EVEN MORE THAN NORMAL, as if Disney didn't do that with EVERY STORY EVER.

Also funny is... Native Americans HATE this movie. They think it embodies all of the worst traits of "Injun Cinema" (the documentary Reel Injun shows a lot of positive and negative portrayals throughout history, and pretty much shits all over this one), with the Brave White Explorer being entranced by the otherworldly exotic beauty of the Magical Indian Princess. Never mind the fact that the myth of Pocahontas is basically just Self-Insert FanFic by John Smith (a short, portly guy), who invented a story where he used the love of a twelve-year old Indian girl to stop a potential war between their tribes. Basically, Natives even acknowledge that this story is bunk, but the myth kind of swirled up around it because it sounded so rad (with the girl's age usually being whitewashed). So the very people the film was supposed to be all "Yay, you guys!" about were not only hateful of it, but were never going to like it in the first place.

It's easy to see where the hate for this movie comes from, though- everything about it is weak aside from the animation (which is uber-pretty, but often merely serviceable and fails to REALLY show off the way other films have). The suckiness is as follows:

* The main characters are very dull- Pocahontas, John Smith & Ratcliffe are horribly unmemorable.

* Most of the characters are merely tangential, and offer nothing to the plot (Pocahontas' friend, Ratcliffe's assistant, those two guys at the camp who are always talking). Even Kocoum, actually an important character, has about as many lines as Prince Charming in Cinderella.

* They settled so deeply into the generic "Formula" with the characters that the movie felt cookie-cutter and dull. Especially bad are the little jerk Meeko and the pointless hummingbird- this was when people had finally gotten tired of the generic "Mascot Animal" and "Animal Sidekick" characters. Like... why does Pocahontas have a Hummingbird Sidekick? And then you have a Princess that "Wants Something More" than her life- something Disney had done about THREE TIMES immediately preceding this (Ariel, Belle, Jasmine). It got so obvious that Animaniacs wrote a song about how cookie-cutter the Princesses were getting: Gaze upon the Warners' resplendence here. They even use Just Around The Riverbend as the basis for the number.

* The whole story is just so... un-epic. It's basically one tribe of Indians versus a boatfull of failures and bums. The story's "climax" is a chick jumping in front of an club meant for the guy she just fell in love with last week. Compare this to nearly every other Disney movie and it just falls flat. There's just no major story to it.

* Jim Cummings plays both male Indian roles in Savages, despite his voice sounding nothing like Chief Powhatan's, and his voice not really changing between roles. Less obvious than when he did Scar's lines in Be Prepared.

* The whole "Fall in love with the chief's daughter and fight her betrothed" thing is a little old. People accuse James Cameron's Avatar of ripping this off, but honestly, that story's a bajillion years old and probably crosses every culture's radar at least once in history. Cameron was just using the same old tropes everyone else does :).

* Ratcliffe was one terrible villain. He has the effeminate mannerisms of Scar & Jafar (or y'know, the female villains), but lacks the sheer evil or great lines of any of them. He's just a big fat ponce of a man who doesn't really accomplish anything. He's just greedy, then decides to wipe out the Indians because... because. His Mine Mine Mine song is okay, but makes him seem juvenile and wimpy instead of something like Be Prepared or Poor Unfortunate Souls. This is arguably the movie's greatest flaw- Disney stuff is often MADE by an epic villain, and this guy seems to be just thrown together from leftover scraps of other villains.

* The songs aren't really up to Disney's Renaissance standards. With Howard Ashman dead, and no Celebrity Musician this time around, there was no big-time showstopper that would get endlessly repeated for all time. Some of the songs are catchy, and none are really BAD, but Just Around The Riverbend and Colors of the Wind are just never gonna hold a candle to Be Our Guest and Part Of Your World, y'know?

I mean, the movie isn't a giant turd or anything- Pocahontas and her Fluorescent-Coloured Leaf-Field (did she beat up Wood Man and gain his Robot Weapon or something?) are well-animated, despite her facial features being a bit screwy, making her look odd sometimes (her mouth is too small for her face, especially when combined with her Playmate Lips). Some of the songs are pretty good (Stephen Schwartz of Wicked fame was involved here as well), particularly Colors Of The Wind and Mine Mine Mine, but in general, nothing ever really hits big, and it's a bunch of "meh" stuff throughout. On a scale of 1-10, the movie's a 5.5 or something. Not a complete waste of time, but easily the worst of the 1990s for Disney.

Almost immediately Pocahontas and her best friend get into a water-spitting girlish tickle-fight underneath an upturned boat. Well now you're just catering to the Slash Shippers.

Reception & Cultural Impact:
-Pocahontas made money, for certain. But OH MY GOD it was disastrous to Disney's brand name in a way that I don't think any other movie has ever been. I mean, they've laid bigger turds. Movies whose failure has nearly killed the studio, too. But none of them got called out on Frasier for being historically inaccurate and bad. Nothing hurt the BRAND like this very big, public turd. It's not for nothing that this movie stained the "Renaissance" and made people discount later films, too. Basically... this movie is Disney's 32X.

Let me explain- Sega during the '90s was on a HUGE hot streak. They were kicking Nintendo's ass in a way that nobody thought possible. But when their much-hyped Sega Saturn was a while in coming out, they decided to create this "stop-gap" between the 16-bit Genesis and the 32-bit Saturn. The "32X" was an add-on to the Genesis that let you play some more graphically-intensive games. Except it licked ass, everyone hated it, and it failed. It didn't KILL Sega or anything, BUT... it hurt their image. Their BRAND suffered. Because after a couple years of non-stop hits, suddenly they laid a giant egg and everyone knew they weren't untouchable.

And this is what Pocahontas did to Disney. After a five year period in which we saw The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and The Lion King... in comes this piece of crap film and everyone goes "AHHHHHHH... well, I guess it couldn't last". In this sense, the movie did a HELL of a lot of damage to the Disney Legacy- though it did well in theatres, it's creative and public failure basically hurt the Disney BRAND, which is something you can't really put a dollar sign on. That it was so soon after Howard Ashman's death didn't help- it was the sign that Disney was faltering, and WAS made up of humans after all.

So you still see SOME stuff from the movie. Pocahontas is a Meet & Greet Character at Disney Parks, usually portrayed by anyone who looks "non-white" ethnically (a lotta Asian & Latina Pocahontases...). Princess performers actually say that she gets hit on by male guests the most, as she bares the most skin out of the girls. But otherwise, you don't really see much of this. Pocahontas 2 was a straight-to-video release, and had a SUPER-rare thing... a Princess BREAK-UP, as Pocahontas and John Smith realize they've grown apart, and she falls in love with the more human and less alpha John Rowlfe. I found it actually a bit better than the original movie (Rowlfe being shocked and embarrassed by her "underwear", which covers more skin than her traditional outfit, is funny), but it's still pretty lame.
Last edited by Jabroniville on Sun Sep 23, 2018 6:24 am, edited 2 times in total.
Jabroniville
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Pocahontas (Character)

Post by Jabroniville »

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POCAHONTAS (Matoaka- Pocahontas means "Little Mischief" and is a nickname)
Played By:
Irene Bedard (voice), Judy Kuhn (singing)
Role: Disney Princess, Nature-Loving Woman, The Chief's Daughter
PL 5 (89), PL 6 (89) Defenses
STRENGTH
1 STAMINA 3 AGILITY 5
FIGHTING 4 DEXTERITY 0
INTELLIGENCE 1 AWARENESS 4 PRESENCE 3

Skills:
Acrobatics 2 (+7)
Athletics 8 (+9)
Expertise (Survival) 4 (+8)
Expertise (Singing) 9 (+12)
Insight 2 (+6)
Perception 2 (+6)
Persuasion 3 (+6, +8 Attractive)

Advantages:
Attractive, Evasion, Great Endurance, Ranged Attack 3

Powers:
"Disney Princess- Friend To the Animals"
Comprehend 2 (Speak To & Understand Animals) [4]
Movement 1 (Environmental Adaptations- Mountainous Virginia) [2]
Immunity 5 (Falling Damage) (Flaws: Limited to When Falling Into Water) [2]
Features 1: Magic Leaves Can Boost Her Speed or Leaping In Important Moments [1]
"Weird Language-Learning Hand-Holding" Comprehend 2 (Languages) (Flaws: Limited to After Holding Hands & Some Weird Magic Crap Happens) [2]

Offense:
Unarmed +4 (+1 Damage, DC 16)
Initiative +5

Defenses:
Dodge +6 (DC 16), Parry +5 (DC 15), Toughness +3, Fortitude +4, Will +8

Complications:
Motivation (Free Spirit)- Pocahontas lives her entire life "Just Around The Riverbend", wanting to adventure and explore. She doesn't want to be tamed and give up her dreams, even to obey her father's wishes and marry Kocoum, the super-series Mighty Warrior.
Relationship (John Smith)- John's Aryan Good Looks and Mighty Whitey Nature earn the lust of the Chief's Daughter, just like oh, EVERY STORY EVER.
Responsibility (Torn Between Two Worlds)- The Indians and The British are deadly rivals (killing... one guy), and Pocahontas is now torn between them.

Total: Abilities: 42 / Skills: 46--23 / Advantages: 6 / Powers: 11 / Defenses: 7 (89)

-Pocahontas has the dubious distinction of being the least-popular and least-commonly-seen Official Disney Princess (a group that only contains the major stars of major films, ie. non-"Black Cauldron" ones)- this is in part due to the weaknesses of the film, the blandness of her character (the fourth straight "I want SOMETHING MOORRRRRRRRRRE!" Princess), and the fact that she's probably the hardest Princess to cast in the Parks for Live Action stuff. I mean, she's the toughest of the lot physically, and she's EASILY the most voluptuous and Comic Book-esque of the lot with her figure... which makes her lack of popularity all the more curious. The fact that she's one of the least-common races in the Americas (ironic, given they got here first) probably doesn't help her either, as there's not some giant movement to introduce more Natives into everything the way there is with Blacks and Latinos. Heck, they even get left out of media SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED to have a member of every race in the group. It also probably doesn't help that she's the least-glamorous of the Princesses, wearing bucksin stuff almost all the time (save a mostly-forgotten sequel), so playing "Dress Up" for Princess-obsessed little girls probably isn't as fun with her.

-Interestingly, she's the only Princess NOT to hook up with a Prince at the end (also hurting her "Vicarious Fantasy" image), and even DROPS John Smith in Pocahontas II for John Rolfe, her legit husband in real life. The real Pocahontas- which is a nickname, by the way- was a little girl who may have slept with Smith, but then hooked up with Rolfe in England, having his child and dying there quite young two years later.

-Pocahontas is easily in the best shape out of all the Princesses, being able to tear through the forests of an oddly-mountainous Virginia with great ease, climb clifftops, leap hundreds of feet into water (seriously- that is SO FATAL), jump over giant ravines thanks to the leaves that are really her mother's spirit (apparently), etc. She she's the highest-PL of the bunch, while still packing their trademark Persuasive Attractiveness (she stops an Indian-hating Smith from shooting her by... standing there and looking hot. He's all like "d-uh SHE PRETTY" and drops his rifle).

About the Performer: Irene Bedard has multiple tribes and ethnic groups in her lineage, and Pocahontas is easily her biggest role. She pretty much plays to her ethnicity in various works, which kind of limits her career progression. Her personal history is a pretty rough, as her husband is said to have kept her practically enslaved to his will, being abused frequently and had her finances controlled by him.

-The singing voice, Judy Kuhn, is actually a much bigger name, being a Broadway star from before Pocahontas came out. She hit big in Les Miserables as Cosette, getting a Tony Award nomination- if you have an American album from 1987-1995, it was probably her you heard. She's been in a TON of flops, as she's both highly-sought-after and very prolific, and most Broadway shows don't turn a profit at all. Her Wikipedia bio reads like "a list of failed musicals" after a point, but the handful of solid hits is still in there.
Spectrum
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Re: Jab's Builds! (Mufasa! Hyenas! Scar! Bonkers! Pocahontas!)

Post by Spectrum »

So what's up with the almost anime like no-nose vision of Pocahontas? I'm really curious why they went with that fashion statement.
We rise from the ashes so that new legends can be born.
Jabroniville
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Re: Jab's Builds! (Mufasa! Hyenas! Scar! Bonkers! Pocahontas!)

Post by Jabroniville »

Spectrum wrote: Sun Sep 23, 2018 4:57 am So what's up with the almost anime like no-nose vision of Pocahontas? I'm really curious why they went with that fashion statement.
Apparently they went through a lot of design decisions. Some of which ended up making her look even MORE exotic that Irene Bedard did- since audiences read her as too "non-ethnic" at first, they actually added some slant to her eyelids, and made her lips more like a black person's. So the resulting character looks more like a mash of ethnicities than a real Native American.

From Wikipedia: Other inspirations were Christy Turlington,[13] Natalie Belcon, Naomi Campbell, Jamie Pillow, white supermodel Kate Moss, Charmaine Craig, and Irene Bedard, who provided the character's speaking voice.[14][15]
Jabroniville
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Re: Jab's Builds! (Mufasa! Hyenas! Scar! Bonkers! Pocahontas!)

Post by Jabroniville »

EDMONTON COMIC EXPO- DAY TWO:
Fun stuff: got to meet Katie Griffin, the original Sailor Mars. We comisserated over "Mars Hate" from people who just don't GET the character- she still gets girls telling her they hated Mars back in the day :). We could totally tell that her relationship with Serena/Usagi was stronger than anyone else's.

The Katie Griffin/Laura Ballantyne Panel was fun, too- Sailors Moon & Mars talked about the early days of the show, getting hired on (Laura was the THIRD Sailor Moon- one got pregnant with twins early on), and the way anime was filmed back then. Since the show was unknown, you couldn't just go out and watch stuff- there was no YouTube, or much of a pre-set fanbase for the series. They only learned their lines literally right before they had to say them, and didn't even know how the plot was unfolding until much later. Sometimes they had to make noises without even knowing what it was for ("Um, Laura, you're being STABBED right now...")!

Apparently the two are friends (Laura's daughter babysits Katie's), and it was Katie's first voice acting job- she was dating Tuxedo Mask's VA at the time, and he convinced her to try out. She used to do regular acting, but now mostly does VA stuff (she was Clover on Totally Spies! for years, and was most recently the girl on Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs).

Katie told me (and the panel) that she LOVED scenes with Chad, because it showed a different side of her character- she's normally such a grouch with Serena that it was fun to play with a more romantic thing, and she got legit emotional during the character's send-off in one story. "I can't believe they never got together!" she said, saying that was the character saying goodbye (though I think what she's talking about is the Sailor Moon S episode where he leaves temporarily.

Also, I gave Katie "goosebumps" when I mentioned the final episode, where all the girls' ghosts come to help Sailor Moon one final time.

They ended the panel by calling out "MOOOON... COSMICCCC... POWERRRRRRR!!!" and "MARS... FIRRRRE... IGNITE!", because she couldn't remember the other attack names :).

I slipped into Amanda Miller's panel as it was going on right after the Sailor Moon one, and it was a REALLY tiny room with only a handful of people. The new Sailor Jupiter VA explained sort of her origins (acting), and how anime voice acting CURRENTLY works. ie. nobody makes any money (dubbing pays less well than originating; Laura & Katie both said they get paid more for Totally Spies!-type stuff than they ever did for Sailor Moon), and most of them "moonlight" as directors.

She says the "unsung heroes" are the guys who literally go frame-by-frame and time when a VA has to open their mouths to "Mouth-Match" the on-screen character.

She's also in Boruto, which I assumed was a Naruto parody, but is instead an actual SEQUEL to the famous Shonen Manga.

Funny story about her joining the new Sailor Moon cast- she was the biggest unknown out of the crew, with Stephanie Sheh and Cherami Leigh being very experienced and notable (I guess). And for her first introduction, Amanda whipped out a "Sailor Jupiter" pose... and ended up cranking Stephanie in the face with her elbow. Because Sheh is only 4'9"-4'11" and Amanda is very tall, she was EXACTLY elbow height. But Steph shook it off... but being famously blunt and hard to read, was helpful enough to warn Amanda later "I don't want you to get fired- don't act so nervous and unsure of yourself here. They hired you because they want you here- act like you deserve to be here". It helped her quit apologizing so often and got her to just sit down and do the job she was hired for. Plus, working in the booth as a director (the aforementioned side gig), she realized just how much even the PROS screw up, so messing up isn't so bad.
greycrusader
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Re: Jab's Builds! (Mufasa! Hyenas! Scar! Bonkers! Pocahontas!)

Post by greycrusader »

It actually isn't all that odd Native Americans are so few in number; apparently a plague the equivalent of the European Black Death ran through much of what is now the U.S. Midwest and Great Plains roughly 50-75 years before the arrival of colonists. It ravaged the population, killing over half the Natives, possibly as many as 70% of them. Then the Europeans came over and once they were entrenched...well, let's just see the history speaks for itself. Afrca and South Asia were colonized as well, and while there were campaigns of ethnic cleansing perpetuated, the indigenous populations there are still vastly in the majority.

(Note: I'm not suggesting all the tribes were peaceful or pacifistic-some were absolutely barbaric in their practices, and gleefully preyed on others; just that we can all see what the results were and how the victors treated the losers).

All my best.
Jabroniville
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Joined: Fri Nov 04, 2016 8:05 pm

Meeko

Post by Jabroniville »

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MEEKO
Role:
Thieving Asshole, Toyetic Character
PL 2 (33)
STRENGTH
-3 STAMINA -2 AGILITY 1
FIGHTING 2 DEXTERITY 0
INTELLIGENCE -4 AWARENESS 1 PRESENCE -3

Skills:
Athletics 9 (+6)
Close Combat (Bite) 1 (+6)
Expertise (Survival) 5 (+6)
Perception 5 (+6)
Sleight of Paw 8 (+8)
Stealth 2 (+3, +11 Size)

Advantages:
Close Attack 3, Improved Initiative

Powers:
"Animal Senses" Senses 3 (Acute & Extended Scent, Low-Light Vision) [3]
"Natural Weapons- Teeth" Strength-Damage +1 [1]
Speed 1 (4 mph) [1]

"Enhanced Tactile Senses" Features 1: Can use Touch senses with equal power via Claws, or after soaking paws in freezing water [1]

"Tiny Size" Shrinking 8 (Feats: Innate) (Extras: Permanent +0) -- (1 foot) [17]
(-2 Strength, +4 Defenses, +8 Stealth, -4 Intimidation, -1 Speed)

Offense:
Unarmed +5 (-3 Damage, DC 12)
Bite +6 (-2 Damage, DC 13)
Initiative +5

Defenses:
Dodge +5 (DC 15), Parry +6 (DC 16), Toughness -2, Fortitude +0, Will +2

Complications:
Disabled (Animal)- Raccoons cannot speak to humans, but their paws are more adaptable than most.
Disabled (Poor Long-Distance Vision)
Quirk (Fussy)- Raccoons in captivity are known to repeatedly "douse" or wash food items before eating them. The reasons for this are still under debate.
Relatoinship (Pocahontas)

Total: Abilities: -12 / Skills: 30--15 / Advantages: 4 / Powers: 23 / Defenses: 3 (33)

-Meeko was the Toyetic ("Buy stuffed dolls of THIS!") character in Pocahontas, and is one of the more bald-faced versions of this in Disney's features. I mean, Chip, Flounder and Abu were all this way, too, but they were nowhere near as cloying- Meeko had this giant subplot where he harrasses Ratcliffe's pet pug (Percy), and generally acts... kind of unlikeable. I mean, he's never really shown HELPING the heroine that I can remember, he's a total thieving dick (always stealing food), picks on John Smith, and doesn't even really act cute. He's also famous in the "Plushophile" community of the Furry Fandom, for... well, people want to bang stuffed animals of him. I first heard about this like 18 years ago, and he's still got a WikiFur page for it, and oh my god I searched out WikiFur I cannot un-se what I've seen oh god oh god I will never be clean.
Jabroniville
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Joined: Fri Nov 04, 2016 8:05 pm

John Smith

Post by Jabroniville »

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JOHN SMITH
Played By:
Mel Gibson (original), Donal Gibson (sequel)
Role: Indian Hunter, Adventurer
PL 7 (78)
STRENGTH
2 STAMINA 4 AGILITY 5
FIGHTING 7 DEXTERITY 0
INTELLIGENCE 2 AWARENESS 2 PRESENCE 3

Skills:
Athletics 3 (+8)
Expertise (Survival) 2 (+4)
Expertise (Indian Hunter) 5 (+7)
Insight 2 (+4)
Intimidation 1 (+4)
Perception 4 (+6)
Persuasion 1 (+5, +7 Attractive)
Stealth 1 (+6)

Advantages:
Accurate Attack, Attractive, Equipment (Musket), Fearless, Great Endurance, Improved Aim, Ranged Attack 9

Equipment:
"Musket" Blast 5 (Flaws: Requires Full Round Action) (5)

Offense:
Unarmed +7 (+2 Damage, DC 17)
Musket +9 (+5 Ranged Damage, DC 20)
Initiative +5

Defenses:
Dodge +8 (DC 18), Parry +8 (DC 18), Toughness +4, Fortitude +6, Will +7

Complications:
Motivation (Free Spirit)- Pocahontas lives her entire life "Just Around The Riverbend", wanting to adventure and explore. She doesn't want to be tamed and give up her dreams, even to obey her father's wishes and marry Kocoum, the super-series Mighty Warrior.
Relationship (John Smith)- John's Aryan Good Looks and Mighty Whitey Nature earn the lust of the Chief's Daughter, just like oh, EVERY STORY EVER.
Responsibility (Torn Between Two Worlds)- The Indians and The British are deadly rivals (killing... one guy), and Pocahontas is now torn between them.

Total: Abilities: 42 / Skills: 20--10 / Advantages: 15 / Powers: 0 / Defenses: 11 (78)

-Smith is an adventurous type always looking for a new land to conquer and enjoy, and he's famed as an Indian Hunter, able to deal with the "savages" that for some reason always try to stop the white people from taking over their land and killing the lot of them. It's only when he meets a super-HAWT Native American that he decides his whole schtick stinks, and tries to make peace because they've fallen in love over the past hour and a half. Things go badly, he gets shot, and goes back to England, where he & Pocahontas actually BREAK UP and she gets together with somebody else- therefore it's kinda funny that he's depicted as an official Disney Character still with Pocahontas in the Park Characters. I mean, the Princesses have to be trained actresses so they can improv answers and stuff from kids (I know a guy in San Diego who knows a girl who played Ariel & some others- they double-dip identities)- what do they tell the kids who saw Pocahontas II and ask where John Rolfe is?

-Smith himself is a lot different from the real character, much like how Pocahontas isn't really 12 years old in the movies either. The real John Smith was a short, chubby red-haired guy, whereas the movie Smith is a blond-haired Super-Aryan. The second movie actually features some funny stuff with Smith being SO Alpha that he's doing all these complicated stunts, while poor John Rolfe is as more normal guy, and is stuck taking up the rear in all the big action sequences.

-Determining the damage capabilities of a firearm in the Disney-verse is rather tricky, because it's treated as a one-shot-kill Death Weapon that is totally fatal. But then, even KNIVES are basically "fall over and die" types of weapons in that world. Compare this to comics, where people get cut ALL THE TIME, and guns are pretty much either grazing shots or always miss. In real life, a sword can do just as much, if not MORE damage than a gun can (at close range, a Sword is noticeably deadlier, doing damage over a much larger area than a bullet would), unless you take into account GIANT bullets or the ones that deflect inside off of internal bones & stuff, so I think +5 to +6 still holds up for most weapons.

-In any case, John Smith is in considerably good shape (in the opening scene, he saves the dude who develops a man-crush on him by tying a rope to himself and jumping off a damn boat during a storm over the open ocean), a good fighter and a great shot. His Power Level is tough to determine given the lack of comparable feats to Comic Book characters, but I figure him equal to the DC Cowboy Characters, "Rome" characters Vorenus & Pullo, and other more "realistic" super-warrior types.

About the Performer: He's MEL GIBSON. Easily one of Hollywood's A-List stars of the '80s and '90s, continuing on to be an A-List director later on, he was pretty much exposed as an alcoholic racist. He appeared in Mad Max (his breakout role and an iconic movie to pro wrestlers everywhere), the Lethal Weapon movies (one of the biggest Buddy Cop movies), starred in the Oscar Bait (but fantastic) Braveheart, and directed the controversial Passion of the Christ, which was derided on South Park as a long-form snuff film. As John Smith, Gibson gave the classic "well I'm a REAL ACTOR, but thankfully this is an easy-peasy job you can do in your pajamas" kind of performance, barely inflecting his voice at all.

-Humorously, Mel's younger brother Donal (??) played the character in Pocahontas II.
greycrusader
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Re: Jab's Builds! (Mufasa! Hyenas! Scar! Bonkers! Pocahontas!)

Post by greycrusader »

Yeah, I'm still rather stunned Disney thought the tale of Pocahontas was the stuff of a quasi-historical fairy tale romance, instead of a sad, tragic tale. Then again, the original stories they based the classic films on (Cinderella, for example) were much bloodier than their brightly-hued celluloid creations.

Mel Gibson is undeniably a gifted actor, capable of commanding the screen even without saying much (compare his presence as Mad Max to Tom Hardy's, in the modern day sequel), as well as hell of a storyteller as a director. But I'm still stunned by his comeback in Hollywood. I mean, it was long known he held anti-gay sentiments (Gibson belongs to a very strict Catholic sub-sect), AND he was an often mean drunk (apparently he's an incredibly high-functioning alcoholic), but given the DUI incident (which involved anti-Jewish conspiracy rants, misogynistic remarks, the f*ggot references), then the affair with the Russian girlfriend/out of wedlock birth (which renders his whole super-Catholic thing absolutely hypocritical), THEN the drunken rant with the racial epithets against just about every ethnic group AND the de facto admission he had struck the woman...

SMH.

Then again, a BIG part of Hollywood and European film community excused Roman Polanski, who DRUGGED AND RAPED A TEENAGE GIRL!!!

(Crusader rant over).
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Re: Pocahontas (Character)

Post by brothersale »

Jabroniville wrote: Sun Sep 23, 2018 3:46 am

-Interestingly, she's the only Princess NOT to hook up with a Prince at the end (also hurting her "Vicarious Fantasy" image), and even DROPS John Smith in Pocahontas II for John Rolfe, her legit husband in real life. The real Pocahontas- which is a nickname, by the way- was a little girl who may have slept with Smith, but then hooked up with Rolfe in England, having his child and dying there quite young two years later.
Oh it is so much worst than that. She was actually 10 years old and eventually married Kocoum. Later after John Smith had returned to England to recover from blowing himself up with gun powder, she was kidnapped by another member of the English settlement who was at odds with her dad and shipped off to England. On the ship she was coverted to Christanity, met and married John Rolfe, got knocked up and then when she arrived in England was used as advertisement to encourge more settlers to go to the colonies. She died soon after at the age of 21. See the below link

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EPY1CK ... xC&index=6
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Re: Jab's Builds! (Mufasa! Hyenas! Scar! Bonkers! Pocahontas!)

Post by M4C8 »

An alcoholic racist Australian? :shock:

A very long time ago I watched a documentary on the 'Real Braveheart' and though I don't remember the specifics I do remember coming to the conclusion that the movie had to be one of the most historically inaccurate 'historical' movies of all time.
'A shared universe, like any fictional construct, hinges on suspension of disbelief. When continuity is tossed away, it tatters the construct. Undermines it'
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Re: Jab's Builds! (Mufasa! Hyenas! Scar! Bonkers! Pocahontas!)

Post by HalloweenJack »

Well technically he's American. Born in New York and not moving to Australia until he was 10-12

But yeah, Braveheart was super historically inaccurate. Two things I remember that my English History college professor talking about was the fact his love interest was an infant at the time (huh...that's TWO cases of a Mel Gibson character getting with a lady who in real life was a child) and that one of the battles was totally different than in reality.

To the best of my memory, I think it had something to do with a bog that the Scots used against the English to slow them down and the filmmakers really wanted to emulate it. They started filming it in the same location but the place was apparently still such a mess that even filming battle scenes there was a practical impossibility.
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