Jab’s Builds! (Miss Piggy! The Swedish Chef! Sweetums! Gonzo!)

Where in all of your character write ups will go.
Jabroniville
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Re: Jab's Builds! (Sleepwalker! Stalker! Snowblind! Spider-Ham!)

Post by Jabroniville »

Doctor Malsyn wrote:I must've missed it somewhere, but what exactly is a "jobber"? Is that like a mercenary?
Check my Glossary here: http://roninarmy.com/threads/149-Jab-s- ... #post23207

"Jobber" is a pro wrestling terms for sucky guys who lose all the time. I translated it to comics (given the tremendous genre crossover between the two) for all of those terrible villains who are ALWAYS seen losing.
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Doctor Malsyn
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Re: Jab's Builds! (Sleepwalker! Stalker! Snowblind! Spider-Ham!)

Post by Doctor Malsyn »

Ahhhh, I see. I'm not a fan of wrestling, so I'd never heard the term before. Thanks for clarifying
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Spectrum
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Re: Jab's Builds! (Sleepwalker! Stalker! Snowblind! Spider-Ham!)

Post by Spectrum »

Shellshock- a guy that looks like he stepped out of GI Joe, the later, stranger years.

And wow, you're doing a killbot? Anything that makes this one stand out other than the letter S?
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Re: Jab's Builds! (Sleepwalker! Stalker! Snowblind! Spider-Ham!)

Post by Ken »

Doctor Malsyn wrote:I must've missed it somewhere, but what exactly is a "jobber"? Is that like a mercenary?
It's a slang term that comes from professional wrestling. In pro wrestling, a jobber is someone who basically has the job of getting into a match and intentionally losing it, because the popular personalities are expected to win.

Basically, there are certain villains who are pretty much there to get beaten up by the hero. As opposed to the villains that, at least in theory, might actually beat the hero. No one expects Batman to lose to the Signal Man. Signal Man is a Batman jobber. Joker, might actually eke out a tie against Batman, and escape to return another day.
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Jabroniville
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Re: Jab's Builds! (Sleepwalker! Stalker! Snowblind! Spider-Ham!)

Post by Jabroniville »

Spectrum wrote:Shellshock- a guy that looks like he stepped out of GI Joe, the later, stranger years.

And wow, you're doing a killbot? Anything that makes this one stand out other than the letter S?
I'd statted him before, so it wasn't that much work to fix up an old build. Plus he was actually a recurring character with a few unique attributes. AND had a Marvel Card! You get a Marvel Card- you get statted. Simple as that.
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Re: Jab's Builds! (Sleepwalker! Stalker! Snowblind! Spider-Ham!)

Post by FuzzyBoots »

Jabroniville wrote:I have no idea what that is. And you ran out of "Request Points" when you made me stat that damn WWE Immortals game :p.
:) It's a fanmade fighting game where you play various horror movie slashers. There's a download link here or you can find various playthroughs on Youtube.
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Re: Jab's Builds! (Snowblind! Spider-Ham! Shellshock! Shiva!)

Post by bsdigitalq »

Hooboy, that'll be fun for Jab. :P
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Re: Jab's Builds! (Snowblind! Spider-Ham! Shellshock! Shiva!)

Post by Doctor Malsyn »

Personally, I'd love to see some Skullgirls stuff, since I'm actually aware of it.
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Jabroniville
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Sundown

Post by Jabroniville »

Image

SUNDOWN (David Patrick Lowell)
Created By:
Kurt Busiek & Tom Lyle
First Appearance: The Untold Tales of Spider-Man Annual 1997
Role: Forgotten Hero
PL 12 (153)
STRENGTH
0/12/14 STAMINA 0/12 AGILITY 1
FIGHTING 5 DEXTERITY 0
INTELLIGENCE 6 AWARENESS 0 PRESENCE 0

Skills:
Expertise (Botanty) 8 (+14)
Technology 2 (+8)

Advantages: 
Inventor

Powers:
"Flying Brick" Enhanced Strength 14 & Stamina 12 & Protection 5 (57) -- [58]
  • AE: Growth 12 (Str & Sta +12, +12 Mass, +6 Intimidation, -6 Dodge/Parry, +1 Speed, -12 Stealth) -- (48 feet) (24) -- [25]
Solar Blast 15 (Feats: Accurate 3) (33) -- [34]
AE: Teleport 11 (22)
Flight 7 (250 mph) [14]
Regeneration 8 [8]

Offense:
Unarmed +5 (+0 Damage, DC 15)
Flying Brick +5 (+14 Damage, DC 29)
Solar Blast +6 (+15 Ranged Damage, DC 30)
Initiative +1

Defenses:
Dodge +6 (DC 16), Parry +6 (DC 16), Toughness +0 (+12-17 Flying Brick/Giant), Fortitude +1 (+13 Flying Brick/Giant), Will +2

Complications:
Motivation (Working With Plants)
Relationship (Ex-Wife)- David's wife henpecks him constantly, and is a source of great annoyance.
Relationship (Mary Kelleher)- Young Mary liked David's talks about plants, and forgave him for his part in blowing off her right arm. He likes her enough to be concerned when she's taken hostage.

Total: Abilities: 24 / Skills: 10--5 / Advantages: 1 / Powers: 114 / Defenses: 9 (153)

-Sundown is a scientist working at Oscorp who discovered that he could harness the power of photosynthesis in human beings. He then demanded a raise from his boss, NORMAN OSBORN. So you can imagine he was then fired, at which point he injested his own formula and gained superpowers. He went on a psychotic rampage, but was brought back to reality after accidentally severing a young girl's arm. After a divorce and a ten-year stint in prison, he returned to New York, and ended up getting blackmailed by an old prison ally into joining his gang. He's apparently smart enough to build something that makes him INSANELY powerful, able to take on the combined forces of the Silver Age Spider-Man, Avengers, Fantastic Four & the X-Men! This shows itself as a low-accuracy (I mean, he's been in TWO fights), high-powered bit of attacks- he can either grow or be a Flying Brick, plus he Regenerates and can Blast stuff. WHY DIDN'T HE REMAKE THE FORMULA AND SELL IT???

-Naturally, he's a one-off guy because he was in an Untold Tales of Spider-Man story- a series that produced some semi-popular Red Guardian Characters, but nothing that had a lasting impact.
Last edited by Jabroniville on Thu Jan 27, 2022 12:20 am, edited 2 times in total.
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danelsan
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Re: Jab's Builds! (Snowblind! Spider-Ham! Shellshock! Shiva!)

Post by danelsan »

Also got to see Moana recently. It is a good movie. Not on the caliber of Frozen, but good.

I suspect some actual Pacific Islanders will not like it, though. At some points it can be considered pretty culturally insensitive.
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Re: Jab's Builds! (Snowblind! Spider-Ham! Shellshock! Shiva!)

Post by Jabroniville »

Here's a comment I got from Skavenger last time I posted Sundown:
Hopping back a few pages, thanks for the Sundown build. He's essentially my Red Guardian despite only having two appearances (it just meant they couldn't ruin him).

As per his origin, I have the issue in question in a box, but the reason Norman Osborn shut the guy's work down was that his photosynthesis serumathingy was "dangerously close" to his Green Goblin formula. He didn't sell it presumably because he was so horrified over what he did when he was out of control, he didn't want it to even be remembered as something hat existed, much less something anybody could get their hands on. Which is too bad, because I think he had an awesome hero/villain name. I always wished they'd introduce him again in Thunderbolts or Secret Avengers or something.

Here's the thing I don't get:

The Green Goblin formula lets you get beaten up by everyone from Spider-Man to Luke Cage to Jessica Jones to...man, I'm sure he jobbed to other people, I just can't think of who. Sundown made a formula that, after it got dumped on him and oh her bad stuff happened, he was an Avengers-level threat who blacked out the sky from Manhattan in a radius out to Queens.

Let the record show that Norman Osborn let one more chance to be a great super villain slip away by not following up on that formula again later.
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Re: Jab's Builds! (Snowblind! Spider-Ham! Shellshock! Shiva!)

Post by Jabroniville »

danelsan wrote:Also got to see Moana recently. It is a good movie. Not on the caliber of Frozen, but good.

I suspect some actual Pacific Islanders will not like it, though. At some points it can be considered pretty culturally insensitive.
I've heard a handful of complaints, but mostly about Maui being chubby and the usual "cultural appropriation/they didn't get it right" kind of stuff. Most reactions from Pacific Islanders have seemed pretty positive.
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Batgirl III
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Re: Jab's Builds! (Snowblind! Spider-Ham! Shellshock! Shiva!)

Post by Batgirl III »

Jabroniville wrote: I've heard a handful of complaints, but mostly about Maui being chubby and the usual "cultural appropriation/they didn't get it right" kind of stuff. Most reactions from Pacific Islanders have seemed pretty positive.
Maui, in the film, isn't fat. He's a big solid slab of a guy, sure, but he's quite muscular...

I think the perception of him as "fat" stems from the art style (everything is kind of soft and rounded, not quite to the extreme of 'Lilo & Stitch,' but similar). Not to mention most of the marketing material that only ever depicts Maui standing next to Moana, but absent other figures for reference.

Moana, herself, is a very realistically proportioned teenager (albeit with pretty buff biceps for a Disney heroine). But she's a good deal shorter and smaller than the adults of her village... But if you don't know that and think she's the same scale as Disney's other princesses (Belle, Aurora, Cinderella) then comparing her to Maui makes Maui look fat.

There's also the visual language of film (esp. animation) that we have to consider. There's a reason characters are designed to look a certain way... Stephen Spielberg's 'E.T.' and H.R. Geiger's 'Alien' are both communicating something VERY different to the audience just on visual look alone.

Maui's entire physical design is "larger than life." His hands are big. His feet are big. His hair is big. His chin is epic. His chest is a mile wide. This is all visual reinforcement for his "larger than life" personality.

Maui is quite tall, because we all visually read stature as heroic. But he's also proportioned in such a way that visually reads as stocky... Because we associate stocky with tough.

Really, if you adjust for the respective art styles of the films, Maui is pretty visually similar to Disney's Hercules. Fitting given the similar niche the two have in their culture's mythologies.
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Batgirl III
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Re: Jab's Builds! (Snowblind! Spider-Ham! Shellshock! Shiva!)

Post by Batgirl III »

Image

Modern western culture has also become obsessed with muscle tone. We seem to forget that strength and fitness are not necessarily linked to .0001% body fat and perfectly sculpted muscles.

I mean, I don't want to sound like one of those nutters on Tumblr that always goes on rants about how the morbidly obese are perfectly healthy... I'm just saying that someone like 1880's era heavyweight champion Mike Conley (the "Overly Manly Man" meme guy) wasn't the lean, sculpted sort of Adonis we expect in today's athletes.

Moana's Maui is a big dude, but he's not a flabby big dude.
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Batgirl III
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Re: Jab's Builds! (Snowblind! Spider-Ham! Shellshock! Shiva!)

Post by Batgirl III »

Now, I'm not Polynesian myself. I won't pretend to be an expert on Polynesian cultures not will presume to speak on behalf of Polynesian people. They're perfectly capable of doing so on their own... But, in the opinion of this haole I think there is as little reason for the Polynesian community to be "offended" by Moana as there was for the Scots to be offended by Brave or the Chinese to be offended by Mulan. In other words: none at all.

The film is an intentional amalgamation of the histories and cultures of all of Polynesia, all rolled up into the fictional island culture of Motunui... In more or less the exact same way that Frozen used its kingdom of Arendelle as an amalgamation of northern European history and folklore to tell a tale inspired by multiple northern European sources or that Princess Aurora's unnamed kingdom is an amalgamation of south-west Europe.

Moana's principle voice actors are a young Hawaiian woman ( Cravalho / Moana), a Samoan man (Johnson / Maui), several Māori (House / Grandma Tala; Morrison / Moana's dad), a woman of mixed Fillipino and Hawaiian ancestry (Scherzinger / Moana's mom), another Samoan (Polamalu) plays a fairly big supporting role too. But the bulk of the movie is really just Cravalho and Johnson alone together on their boat. Heck, the largest role played by a "white" actor is Alan Tudyk as Hei-Hei: The World's Dumbest Chicken.

The initial story treatment was written by Taika Waititi, a Maori himself, although as is typical of these long multi-year projects, the script was revised and edited several times. Still, the general idea that the story was supposed to be broadly encompassing all Polynesian cultures was present from the start.

One of the two men responsible for most of the songs, singer and songwriter Opetaia Foa, has a Tokelauan father and a Tuvaluan mother, and now leads a band that performs songs in Tokelauan, Tuvaluan, Samoan, and other languages. His group, Te Vaka, consists of members from all across the Pacific and their songs intentionally invoke a pan-Pacific sound... Which is exactly what he did for Moana.

In short, you've got a whole lot of talent from a group that isn't too often seen in Hollywood responsible for creating what is sure to be one of the most watched films of the year. Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is already a mega-star, sure, but the rest of the cast have just been elevated significantly. Auli'i Cravalho has the potential to be the next Emma Watson (who herself seems destined to be the next Audrey Hepburn).

Are we really to believe that this tremendous assembly of talent from all across the Pacific islands didn't notices during the five year production process that "Oh, hey, this is offensive!" No. Of course that never happened because there is nothing offensive in the movie. Yes, Maui is an actual figure in Polynesian mythology. Yes, Moana plays him for humor... But as a charming roguish braggart, not as a figure of mockery.

It is a fantastic film.

People should stop worrying ourselves to death on behalf of a hypothetically offended third-party. If the Polynesian community has any serious issues with the film, I would be surprised. I can see some grumbling about the amalgamation and adaptation... But that's par for the course for any film of this type. See my earlier comparison to Brave.

If you haven't already: Go see it.
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