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Nitpicking:The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time pt 1

The_Dark_Mike
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Nitpicking:The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time pt 1

Welcome to Nitpicking: The series that un-photoshops super models.

For those of you who don’t listen to podcasts, or know me at all, here’s a little factoid about me: I will straight up get into fights over LOZ:OOT. It is the best game ever made, it’s a simple as that. The game has the honour of being absolutely pivotal role  in not only the Zelda game  series but also its (sometimes rather convoluted) Timeline. I love it, but it is no way perfect. In playing through this masterpiece recently, I’ve noticed a few…flaws. Such as:

Navi: The Give-A-Shit Fairy

At the very start  of the game, we witness the Great Deku (pronounced Dee-Kuu, or Dai-Kuu? answers on a postcard) Tree send Navi the fairy to aid young Link on his quest to save the country of Hyrule (more on that later). “It’s time for the boy without a fairy to begin his journey” He says. So Navi (clumsily) makes her way to Link’s house. We have seen  her relationship with the Great Deku Tree to be one of great respect and maybe even love.Her Zeldapedia entry describes her as “one of the Great Deku Tree’s fairy children. Remember that.

So blondie kills the spider (with 4 legs…wha?) which inexplicably kills the GDT, even though it was supposedly the curse that was killing him. After a lengthy, unskippable  cutscene, he goes grey and leaves this mortal plane. Navi’s reaction to this?

“Come on Link, let’s go!!!!”

This response completely  lacks the shock or sadness one would associate with the death of a loved one. Add this to her constant nagging and interruption to your play throughout the game and we can only logically conclude that Navi just dosen’t give a a flying shit about your quest, your friends and your experience. She will be heard and that’s all that matters which makes her a borderline sociopath. And at the end of the game she leaves, for no other reason than to break your 11 year old protagonist’s heart. There is literally no reason for Navi to leave. At all.  She’s the reason Link gets lost in the forest and has to go through the terrifying ordeal of Majora’s Mask. It’s entirely her fault. and does she care? does she fuck.

No. You listen.

That “New Song” Derp Face

I’m a drummer of 10 years. Sometimes I will come across something incredibly complicated that I think “gosh, I hope future Mike nails this, ‘cos there’s not a snowballs chance in hell I’m gonna crack this doozy!” Then , eventually, I get it. When I finally master said beat, or song, or technique, I smile, or laugh, or cheer, happy that managed it.

What I, or any of my musician friends, don’t do, is this:

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He’s dead? My bum?

Seriously? what the Jesus-on-a-space-hopper is he doing? Link learned the song, his limbs didn’t just become independent of his body. He’s looking at his instrument like it’s just simultaneously told him the twist ending of The 6th Sense and where the G-spot for guys is.  It makes no sense for Link to make this face. There is no reason for this, I mean the guy is supposed to be The HERO OF TIME. I don’t want to entrust my fate to a guy that is that surprised by an ocarina.No sir. Nuhuh.

Darunia the emotionally unstable king

You first meet Darunia, King of The Gorons, after saving (murdering) the GDT. You’ve met the lovely princess Zelda, and she’s sent you off on a merry quest. She’s given you a signed letter, allowing you to go all the way up to sunny holiday destination Death Mountain. Then after playing a song ONLY THE ROYAL FAMILY KNOWS to open the door to the Goron King, he completely rejects you. He’s grumpy because there’s a dinosaur in his rock cave ( and fair enough too, I fucking  hate dinos in my rock cave) and purely based on a) your size and b) the fact that he is in a shitty mood he won’t speak to you and refuses to believe you are the royal messenger. That is until you play him another song.

In the space of around 15 seconds Link ( a person he loathed 16 seconds ago) manages to lift his depression, change Darunia’s  mind about him, and give him a sacred Goron gift of the bracelets, which allow you to lift bomb plants and blow a hole in the cave to lay the smack down on some pesky Dodongos.

Keep in mind, at this point you’ve had around 5 minutes max contact with the dude, and yeah, you’ve saved his kingdom but what he does next is astounding. In what is a really awkward custcene, Darunia gives Link the spiritual stone of fire, and then becomes SWORN BROTHERS with him. I don’t even. They ( the gorons) then chase our hero down the hill with the threat of rib-breaking hugs. Eesh. The point is Darunia came on way too strong, way too fast; It’s like if the pizza boy proposed after you gave him a tip. You need counselling, Darry.

That fishing guy looks a little bit like Randy Marsh

Pond_Owner_(younger)

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Now you’ll read everything the guy says in Randy’s voice. I’m not even a little bit sorry.

The King Zora is a slow-ass fool

After surviving death mountain, you are tasked with retrieving princess Ruto of the Zora people from the belly of Lord Jabu-Jabu. In order to do this you have to get past the King Zora, who sits at the entrance to where Lord Jabu-Jabu lives. Ruto being his daughter, he is naturally concerned and lets you get past him. This all seems fine but the the major problem is the almost 30 seconds he takes to move his huge ass all of about 4ft. Why did a programmer decide this was a good idea? why do we have to watch it?

Lord Jabu-Jabu is a T.A.R.D.I.S

Once fat-ass gets out the damn way, Link enters (steady now) Lord Jabu-Jabu to find Ruto and act as a little green renny. The only issue is that this dungeon could IN NO WAY fit inside the fish that swallowed Link.Take a look:

JabuJabu
How a fish managed to stay out of water for that long is a question for another day, kids.

 

Now that’s a big fish, nobody’s gonna’ take that away from Jubby. If we use the pots in the picture as a scale then after the rather sloppy application of maths we can guestimate that this fish is around 70 pots long.Ish.  The mouth cavity alone takes up around 1/4 of his body is the first room of the belly dungeon, the 2nd floor of which looks like this:

Twisty.

That starting point and room no.1? That’s the entire mouth cavity. Also notice this is just the 2nd floor?  there are another 3 floors inside. Rooms 8 and 4 aren’t even attached, so there’s only one feasable answer (besides chastising me for over-analysis): Jabu Jabu is a Tardis.

The Well Boss

Finally, and seriously creepily, the Dead Hand  boss is the worst of all the Zelda series. Found at the bottom of the Kakariko Well, there’s about as much strategy as avoiding sexual assault, or an escaped lion; keep away from the pointy bits and don’t let it grab you.

nopenopenopenopenopenopenopenopenopenopenopenopenopenopenope

This all constitutes a rather tough childhood for our green-clad hero. But as the old addage goes “It gets better as you get older” . So at least Link has adulthood to look forward to. Right?

Want more nitpicky goodness? wait around for part two then!  Got a game, movie, song or TV show you’d love to pull apart? get commenting below.

Isometrics: Ride to Hell: Retribution and the bizarre appeal of the giftedly bad

David Rose
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Isometrics: Ride to Hell: Retribution and the bizarre appeal of the giftedly bad
I looked far and wide to find the stupidest looking screenshots. It didn't take long
I looked far and wide to find the stupidest looking screenshots. It didn’t take long

Welcome to Isometrics, a sweeping sibilant stare at the literary world of gaming, although it may take a little time to justify it’s ‘literary’ qualities, simply because I’m talking the worst game in recent memory and what is commonly described as one of the worst games of all time: Ride to Hell Retribution. It is awful in a plethora of blatantly obvious, objective ways and yet at the same time, given the odd symbiotic relationship of game and player, one of the most bizarrely compelling gameplay experiences I’ve ever had (albeit completely unintentionally). So what is the appeal of games so terrible, and what can they teach us about the ways and means in which games try to enrapture the player?

The answer to the first can be traced probably back to the earliest works of art, but the earliest well-documented example is the poet and actor William McGonagall, widely considered to be the writer of the worst poetry in the history of the English language. There was a perverse glee in his poetry, which got him pelted with rotten fish whenever he performed it in public. In the Book of Heroic Failures, written nearly a century after his death, Stephen Pile noted he was “so giftedly bad he backed unwittingly into genius”. The people of Dundee seemed to share that same sense of schadenfreude, and invariably the performances got so wild that they were banned for safety reasons.

So what does a 19th Century poet have to a 2013 game set in the late 1960s? They're both rubbish!
So what does a 19th Century poet have to a 2013 game set in the late 1960s? They’re both rubbish!

This idea is prevalent in all fiction in one form or another and is probably why there is an affinity for the “so bad it’s good” type of fare, summed up in gaming by the Japanese word “kusoge”. These are badly coded, badly designed games but at the same time have a perverse appeal to the masochist and lovers of irony, since often-times a very terrible game is preferable to a terribly forgettable one. Given the gaming world’s ever omnipresent penchant for trend hopping, this isn’t entirely a surprise. After all, the flavour of the month games are dime a dozen to cash in on a popular trend and pretty much leave no trace in the public consciousness. For example, in the platforming world, everyone and their grandmother has heard of Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog, but how many will know of Zero the Kamikaze Squirrel or Rocky Rodent? Not that many, and not because they were terrible games that didn’t escape the portly and spiky shadows of their more successful brethren and weren’t terrible enough to be morbidly amusing, such as Bubsy or Awesome Possum.

There’s more to this idea of giftedly bad works than just being a terrible example of a popular trend. If that were the case Soldier of Fortune Payback or Raven Squad would have massive cult appeal. Nor can it be based simply on mechanical problems, otherwise games that simply didn’t work at all would be considered the worst games of all time. For a game to be truly terrible there has to be enough talent to get a game to function at all, because then more traditional elements such as art assets, narrative, gameplay, audio and the other checklist elements of your average game review can bring your blood to the boil.

Not Pictured: The appalling animations that accompany this. Or the terrible everything else that lead to this...
Not Pictured: The appalling animations that accompany this. Or the terrible everything else that lead to this…

So where does this leave us with the astoundingly awful Ride to Hell? Well it mostly works, seeming to use as many of the Unreal Engine 3 presets as they could get away with, cannibalising most of the mechanics from the disappointingly morose and drab Dead to Rights Retribution, with its mix of cover based shooting action and generic beat-em-up elements, mixed with some racing mechanics. Eutechnyx were hardly the first and will definitely not be the last to mix genres like this, and what the game is mechanically isn’t why the game is so giftedly, hilariously awful. Oh sure, the mechanics when they don’t work are part of the hilarity, particularly when the end of a combo or a headshot sends a foe flying hundreds of feet into the air for seemingly no reason. Those sorts of gleeful physics bugs are funny but it isn’t merely the lack of bugfixes and playtesting that makes a game so simultaneously hateful and amusing. It would be perhaps the storyline which artificially lengthens with the subtlety of polystyrene and is about as weighty. Or the hilarious direction, which pretty much doomed the game to failure with one of the single most nonsensical introductory scenes in the history of fiction. It was simultaneously over and underdirected, with some cut scenes being lavish monuments to insanity, and others containing some of the laziest quality testing possible, with mouths warping into the faces, textures failing to load and the sound quality changing within single sentences. The same is true of the level design, with some levels being absolute feats of insane logic, using mechanics far beyond the capability of the programmers, and others being hour long walks through previously explored areas being forced into fight after fight.

Then there’s the character you play as too; one of the least likeable in recent memory despite this entire last generation creating the same gruff violent marine type characters in game after game, something not helped by its misogyny, featuring girls either as objects to rescue, object to have sex with, or in some cases both within seconds of each other.

I could go on for hours and hours about the many many crimes against gaming Ride to Hell commits but at the same time it’s not entirely damnable, much like McGonnagall can’t be completely condemned despite being the worst thing to happen to the English language before Yolo entered the public consciousness. It had a rough production history, being cancelled by Deep Silver Vienna only to be continued in bits and release nearly five years later. It’s broken, flawed and ruined, and in a gaming world full of overprofessionalism and teams so large and controlled it’s a wonder they don’t automate the creation process, it’s nice to be reminded of these quirky foibles…

Have any of you been masochistic enough to play Ride to Hell? What did you think? Are there any other Kusoge games you’re as shamefully fond of as I am of this (ie. Any fondness at all)? Drop me a line in the comments below, on the Geek Pride facebook group or my Twitter @HuggyDave. See you next Wednesday!

Mike N’ Nick’s Gentlemanly Chats ep 4: Anime

The_Dark_Mike
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Mike N’ Nick’s Gentlemanly Chats ep 4: Anime

This is the next one.

 

It’s about anime.

 

Cheers.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/mwttog5d900m7o8/Mike%20N%20Nick%20Pod%204%20Anime%2C%20Kids.wav

Mega Man Boardgame on Kickstarter – now available in the UK!

Bevan Clatworthy
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Mega Man Boardgame on Kickstarter – now available in the UK!

Anybody else remember Mega Man, the little blue robo-fella with a blaster for an arm and a difficulty curve that could only be described as ‘hairpin’. Protaganist of numerous sequels, gaming platforms and interations, this little guy (and his cadre of heroes like Mega Man X and Mega Man Zero) would go into battle with a basic laser, then as he defeated bosses would gain new abilities like chain whips and boomerangs.

Perfect material for a boardgame? You betcha, and the clever bods at Jasco Games (owners of the UFS card fighting system) thought so to! Preliminary looks show a game that follows the boss-bashing and upgrading integral to the video game franchise. The graphics look crisp and vibrant, and the miniatures look decent, although it is a shame they aren’t pre-painted (unless they hit the $500K mark that is!).

It’s already funded, and what’s more has now been opened up to the UK (the initial Kickstarter was only available in the US). I’ll be watching this one with baited breath, and really hope Jasco Games have pulled off a winner with this iconic video game franchise.

You can find the Kickstarter for this project HERE

Q&A with Taylor Grant of Evil Jester Comics

Andy Haigh
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Q&A with Taylor Grant of Evil Jester Comics

Evil Jester Press and its new imprint Evil Jester Comics are a small publisher set on publishing the best in horror from well known writers to the best of the new blood. EJC ‘Deaditor in chief’ and co-founder Taylor Grant took some time out of his busy schedule to talk about horror comics, the reality of being a small publisher and a few other things.

First of all can you give us an insight as to how Evil Jester Press and Evil Jester Comics came together, where did the idea for branching out into the comics medium originate from, was it something that had been planned from the beginning or more of a recent development?

Comic book publishing wasn’t planned from the beginning. However, Charles Day (my business partner) and I have a lifelong passion for the medium and a lot of our Evil Jester Press readers have expressed their love of graphic novels and comics too. It seemed like a natural progression. The support we’ve received from the horror community in general has been incredible.

Your recent successful Indiegogo campaign referred to the anthology horror comics of the past: Creepy, Eerie, Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Horror and The Haunt of Fear were pretty controversial for their time ultimately falling victim to the Comics Code Authority which demonised them, especially in the case of E.C’s output. What is it that made you look to these titles as an inspiration?

I loved the wonderfully imaginative, twisted parables of EC comics–filled with vengeful ghosts, cool monsters and poetic justice for evil-doers. I think the best stories were dark morality tales that had great twists and beautifully creepy artwork. For me, they were like mini-horror movies on paper.

In recent years horror comics have had a resurgence, with 2002’s ’30 Days of Night’ from Steve Niles, Ben Templesmith and IDW publishing seemingly opening the floodgates for modern horror comics. Now there are ample titles for horror fans to choose from, Garth Ennis’ shock horror ‘Crossed’ being one of the most controversial and Robert Kirkman’s ‘The Walking Dead’ even inspiring a hit TV show. Horror master Clive Barker recently returned to Hellraiser for an on-going canon comic

alongside a new title named ‘Next Testament’ for Boom! Studios. Would you agree that the advent of mature oriented comics has resulted in a fertile environment for horror comics in the modern age?

We’re experiencing a new age of intelligent and sophisticated horror in comics, and much of that is due to the quality of the properties you’ve mentioned. Vertigo Comics in particular has always respected their reader’s intelligence–and I admire that.

 There’s major crossover potential for getting fans of writers to pick up a comic for maybe the first time and for comic fans to track down writers books, was this an idea that you were aiming for?

That wasn’t a specific strategy we planned, but crossover appeal would be wonderful for many reasons.

Jack Ketchum, Jonathan Maberry, Joe McKinney and Ramsey Campbell are some big names for a new venture. How did you get writers on board with EJC?

My business partner and I are both published authors and members of the Horror Writers Association, which has its advantages. We are fortunate to have a lot of contacts in the horror industry. It was just a matter of reaching out through our network. We were thrilled to discover that many of these big names authors also have a deep affinity for horror comics.

 Writing is one thing but in the world of comics art is just as important. You’ve got an impressively ominous cover from artist Richard P. Clark, how did find you go about finding artists to bring the writers words to life?

 Again, we were fortunate to have contacts throughout the comics industry. I was Stan “The Man” Lee’s head writer for his Internet company back in the late nineties, and through that experience I was able to meet some key people I am blessed to call friends.

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EJC is a small publisher, what are the challenges facing a publisher that doesn’t have big bucks to throw around and on a related note how can comic/horror fans get their hands on EJC’s output?

Honestly, the challenges that face small press publishers of comics are too lengthy to mention. Seriously, it would take me hours to answer that question. Comic book publishing is not for the faint of heart, I can tell you that. It has taken a herculean effort to get our company up and running, but of course, is very gratifying as well.

What are the plans for EJC going forward?

Our first comic Evil Jester Presents was just released with much anticipation and the initial feedback has been incredibly positive. People are already demanding the next issue! We have multiple projects in the works for 2014 with some very well-established writers.  We can’t announce them until the contracts are signed, but they are exciting projects indeed!  Make sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter for updates.

At the moment, we’re selling print and digital copies of Evil Jester Presents directly through our website http://www.eviljestercomics.com. However, we will soon be selling through Amazon.com, Comixology.com and other venues. We look forward to sharing our shivery delights!

Cosplay Catch Up – An introduction to madness

Leonie
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Cosplay Catch Up – An introduction to madness

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I decided with the arrival of New Year to start writing a bi-weekly cosplay catch up article for Geek Pride, basically this blog will track my cosplay adventures over the course of this year (I feel big things coming!).

I am a fairly new cosplayer, I put together a vaguely rubbish Hobbit costume for Manchester MCM, it wasn’t any particular Hobbit, just a Hobbit in general. I wasn’t really feeling it at all. I was more excited for my partners cosplay that I had made him, more effort and love went into his Salvador cosplay from Borderlands 2. I didn’t particularly enjoy the day as it was too warm, I felt uncomfortable and other than my partner being stopped every so often for a photo I felt very much left out of the whole atmosphere.

For some reason, which I can’t quite remember I decided to do a Sister Of Battle cosplay from the Warhammer universe, having never played the game I immersed myself in the artwork which was beautiful and bought some EVA foam to start making some pieces of armour. A friend then suggested London MCM in October last year so I rushed to finish my armour. I felt

SOBphoto

like crap the morning I had to put it on and parade around London Comic con in it My confidence has never been great but the first time in a hand cosplay, boy that was sickening…

But slowly, after a while, it occurred to me that I felt so much more a part of it this time! I felt like I could approach people, talk to people and people were stopping me for photos, admiring my handy work. I loved speaking to people who appreciated just how much effort I had put in to my outfit! It wasn’t a perfect cosplay, without flaws, but it was the start of something and it made something click in my mind. I wanted to make things and more so I wanted my cosplay props to make people feel happy when they saw them. Quite selfishly I wanted to feel more pride in the things I could make. (This may sound vain and like I am slightly full of myself but the people who know me closely know that I needed this kick in confidence) So I made a page on facebook, took on the name of Miss Muca for my cosplay stuff and that was that!

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So now it is the New Year and all I have done, so far, is keep a hold of a fraying rope that is stopping me from being completely and utterly possessed by the hobby! New Year’s eve I spent with my rabbit, Rambo, who is also a cosplay fan (he really gets into character!) And together (okay he ran round the room destroying stuff and eating all of the things) we started the construction of a Predator helmet. Nope, I am not going to cosplay this any time soon because of money and a couple of other cosplays which come first in line to be made. But yah know what? I am really really compulsive and the urge to attempt the base of a Predator helmet was far too much to reject.

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chainsword

As I have proved before with my Sister of Battle Sword, which I produced articles on the progression of, I don’t use fancy expensive materials for my cosplay builds. Mainly because of money but also because I feel like I need to prove to people that you don’t have to spend an absolute fortune to make something awesome. Yes, it might not be film perfect but it does have the potential to look just as epic… If you are willing to put love and effort into it! Which is something I love to see when I go to cosplay events.

I spoke to one guy at London MCM, who was praising me for my Chainsword, he went on to tell me he hoped to work with better materials than cardboard and duct tape at some point to which I just laughed and responded “This is made from cardboard.” He didn’t believe me at first but I explained my process. He then kept mentioning about how his sword looked beside mine (I know that sounded wrong) but I genuinely thought his duct tape and cardboard sword looked amazing! I told him that he had put the effort into making that sword and that was worth a hell of a lot more than expensive material!  More than anything you should be proud with what you have achieved with a crappy material such as cardboard!

Anyway! Returning to my Predator helmet, basically I got out all my scrap cardboard and EVA foam from my last cosplay and put it in a pile on my floor and then stared at it for a good long while, rearranging pieces, trying to work it all out in my head. The only online tutorials I could find  were for pepakura or clay sculpts. Which didn’t suit my needs at all. So I looked at pictures on google and well… did what I do best – made it up as I go along. Hence no tutorial because to be quite honest; I don’t really know how it all came together well enough to vaguely represent a Predator mask.

Snapshot_20131231As much as I know, I started off with the nose bit, getting a rectangle of foam and holding it up to my face while looking in my computers webcam and snipping at it till I thought “Yup, that’ll do.” Next I found a piece of foam exactly the right shape for the rim around the skull piece. Score! Just needed a bit of adjustment. The cheek pieces were a nightmare, I couldn’t get them to shape right so I had to attach additional pieces of cardboard inside of the helmet to bend it into a shape that looked right, so that it bent around my face. The skull piece is simply a piece of cardboard. For now, because I wanted to try it on, I have glued a couple of beautiful pieces of baby blue ribbon to the back so it can be worn on your face. (Considering keeping these, make it all nice and pretty! Haha)

Snapshot_20131231_3

What I will do next is sand down the EVA foam into the shape I want so it looks a bit smoother around the edges. Paper Mache over the cardboard bits, using this to add a curve to the skull bit and coat the EVA foam in glue. I will correct any bits that aren’t quite right and then cover the whole thing in multiple layers of Gesso before Sanding and painting! I also found a simple and cheap tutorial for the dreads which can be found here. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1IR3cDCiww

Can’t wait to have this finished and just hang it in my living room! Hell of a talking point! I also had this fab idea of making an Alien head into a shield that can be worn over my arm… (Which I now feel like I NEED to make!)

The first cosplay I want to do this year is an original version of Fionna from adventure time, with additional armour, I am hoping my materials for my Fionna cosplay comes soon, to take my mind of my crazy Predator cosplay making obsession!

If you would like to check out more photo’s and nonsense visit www.facebook.com/missmucascosplaycorner

See you next time!

 

Mike N’ Nick’s Gentlemanly Chats ep 3: Best Game Evarrrr

The_Dark_Mike
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Mike N’ Nick’s Gentlemanly Chats ep 3: Best Game Evarrrr

MERRY JESUSBIRTHDAY EVERYONE!

I hope you all got everything you want. Unless you’re a douche, then  I hope you get ill. Not like deathly ill (I’m not a monster) , but ill enough that you have a really shitty holiday period. And that you know it’s because you were a wanker.

You may notice the link below has changed. This is due to us having to change providers, as Soundcloud wanted almost £100 of my hard-whored money to be able to put up all the things we wanted to a month.

 

SO

New link, new stuff, good times.

 

This week, we looked at what your favourite games of all time are. Again, you lot got involved and it made my heart grow three sizes that day, like the mufuggin’ GRINCH, bitch.

 

Click it. Hard. Go on… You know you want it.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/j4m37zao6v47f8v/Mike%20N%20Nick%20pod%203%20Best%20Game%20Evar.wav

2013 movies that pass The Bechdel Test made more money…

Becca Harper
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2013 movies that pass The Bechdel Test made more money…

Back in November we brought you the news that Sweden wanted include a Bechdel Test rating to it’s films. For those of you who still don’t know what this is, then simplified, the test evaluates whether a movie has two or more women in it who have a conversation about something other than a man.  Now it would seem that films that fail this test, don’t do as well at the Box Office.

Vocativ took the top 50 movies of 2013 and put them through the test. Only 17 passed outright with flying colours with another 7 dubious, but ‘technically’ passing. Sadly, what they also noted was that every single director was male, which is quite concerning…just think about that – out of 50 films made, not one was directed by a woman.That aside, what they also found when they compared this to the films earnings was…

[quote]The grand total domestic box office number for the movies that passed is significantly higher than the box office totals for the movies that didn’t. We’re talking billions[/quote]

Which they have handily illustrated in this infographic:

bechdel_724196827221

 

So film makers, if you want to earn more money, then make sure your films passes the Bechdel Test.

[via The Mary Sue]

Deadpool is getting hitched!

Becca Harper
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Deadpool is getting hitched!

Marvel, ever the tease, closed 2013 by releasing this image to the media – that’s right we are going to have Marvel wedding in April and if this invitation is to go by, it’s going to be bloody one:

Invitation-1-8c868

Today they have put us out of our misery and announced that the groom will be our very own Merc with a Mouth, Deadpool – which kinda explains the blood splatter.

Nerdist got the exclusive reveal and to chatted with writer Gerry Duggan, who confirmed that it all started as a gag and they just went with it..

[quote]The honest answer is that it was written into a Deadpool story, but more or less as a gag, and Jordan D. White, the editor, was like a dog with a bone. He was like, “No, no, no – this is going to be a big deal.” You know, we wrote it, so it’s not like we weren’t behind it. The fun thing has been – after his misadventures, I guess you’d call them, in North Korea, in the story arc “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,” he learned a lot about himself and why he is the way he is. He doesn’t really have too much of a life. Yes, this is a knee-jerk reaction from a wounded guy to go out there and sort of do something crazy to sort of jump start a life, but there is a real emotional reason for doing it, so I think that will be the part that will resonate. Then the actual gags of the wedding will be fun too, but there is a real grounding to it, and that’s what will make it fun to explore.[/quote]

The reveal was accompanied with this rather amazing illustration filled with every character you probably think of and more; including the creative team behind the comic:

No word yet on who the (un?)lucky girl may be or whether it will stick, but at a Deadpool wedding there is sure to be some blood, fun and mayhem.

Deadpool #27 coming to a comicbook shop near you, this April.

Deadpool-Wedding-Invitation-676x1024

Read the full interview with Gerry Duggan at the Nerdist

Daily Mail Get Sherlock Actors’ Names Wrong

SeanPWallace
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Daily Mail Get Sherlock Actors’ Names Wrong

In some instances, when you mock an editing mistake, you can feel pretty mean: it is, after all, quite hard to rule every mistake out of an article. Cthulhu knows we aren’t perfect here at Geek Pride. But, sometimes, a mistake is just… ridiculous.

Step forward everyone’s most reviled, vomitous ‘newspaper’ the Daily Mail, for whom ‘accuracy’ is just a crossword answer. In their review of last night’s Sherlock episode, they made some… interesting mistakes. As reported by The Media Blog [@TheMediaTweets]:

TimFreeman

Now, I haven’t yet gotten around to watching the newest episode of Sherlock yet, but I’m pretty damn sure that Martin Freeman and Benedict Cumberbatch haven’t been replaced by their evil, identical twins in the series. Someone would surely have noticed by now. Though it wouldn’t have been The Daily Mail.

DominicCumberbatch

I’m not going to link to the Daily Mail website because, as you may or may not know, they are professional trolls: they earn most of their advertising revenue by releasing horrible articles, trolling opinion pieces, and so on, in order to get people to click through to their website. Their attitudes towards journalism aside, this could simply be a purposeful mistake released a day after the first episode of the series to garner more views.

Alternatively, it could be a funny as Hell mistake from a rag. The choice, dear readers, is yours…

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