Rick Riordan, 'Wrath of a Triple Goddess' - Dec 11

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about Mr. Riordan’s 2024 novel, ‘Wrath of the Triple Goddess’, instead. In this novel, Percy, Annabeth, and Grover encounter the titular goddess – Hecate – and she’s… not being very wrathful, in fact. Rather, she wants Percy, (with Annabeth and Grover helping him, for it is a big job, even for Percy), to look over her house and her pets while she goes out of the US to celebrate Halloween all over the rest of the planet (Earth). Pause.

Here is the thing. The first novel of this trilogy, ‘The Chalice of the Gods’, (2023), had Percy, Annabeth and Grover undergo some pointed personal development; Percy, in particular had to literally wrestle with (the god of) old age, while earlier in the novel Hebe the goddess of youth turned the trio into preteens and they had to outmaneuver her to get their actual ages back. Conversely now, in the ‘Wrath’, while the novel is about the trio, and they do get transformed – Percy into part octopus, Annabeth into part (barn) owl, and Grover becomes a human – ‘Wrath’ isn’t as focused on them, and the readers constantly get glimpses of the stories of Hecuba and Gale, (aside from the more minor characters too).

On its’ own, it is not really a problem either. Indeed, since those two characters were mentioned, we might as well discuss who they were. Hecuba was the queen of Troy, described in the ‘Iliad’, wife of king Priam. Their children included Paris, who kidnapped Helen and instigated their entire war, Hector, Troy’s greatest hero, Anchises, the father of Aeneas, who instigated Rome, and Cassandra the prophet, whom no one believed. After the fall of Troy and the death of her family, Hecuba went mad, and in some versions, transformed into a black dog. Mr. Riordan adheres to this version.

Gale is more obscure. Her claim to fame is being a lascivious witch, (aka sexually active), who turned/transformed into a weasel/marten for her troubles. More often, she is conflated with Galinctis, who was the midwife for Hercules (and his twin brother); either Hera or her daughter, the goddess of childbirth, tried to prevent the birth – literally; an act that would have killed all three. However, the cunning midwife figured it out; she confronted the disguised deity and made the latter laugh, breaking her concentration and allowing Alcmene to give birth. The midwife transformed into a weasel for her decision and was forgotten by the myths – until now.

Oh, wait, the weasel in ‘Wrath’ is actually Gale the witch turned polecat. Mr. Riordan gave Gale a brand new backstory (or at least the rough draft of one), and as for the polecat aspect…

A ‘polecat’ is a layperson’s moniker for the animals known as ‘ferrets’ in the American English instead. Compared to weasels, polecats and ferrets are bigger and proportionally more muscular; unlike martens and fishers, they hunt on the ground and in the burrows rather than in the trees. Gale, then, can be safely called a ferret, but-

-but this brings us to J-Ro and Hogwarts; Draco briefly turned into a ferret in book 4. These days, J-Ro is under a cloud for her politically incorrect statements, but her franchise is still going strong and may yet return as a TV series of all things, and so Mr. Riordan and his allies dance around the HP franchise; they don’t call it out directly, but Hecate, at the end of ‘Wrath’, is going to restart her magic school, because both she and the demigods need it.

So far so good, but where does it leave Hecate’s own demigod children? We met a few of them in the novels by now: Alabaster Torrington, Lou Ellen Blackstone, Lamia etc. Why, we actually meet another one of them, Pete the ghost in the novel, but still, ‘Wrath’ conveniently downplays this aspect of PJ-verse, plus what about continuity? ‘The Chalice’ and ‘Wrath’ and their sequel take place before ‘The Trials of Apollo’ series, and the latter had no mention of a magic school for demigods. Yes, Apollo may not have known about it – he was in some sort of a time-out before appearing in the first novel of ‘The Trials’, Percy mentioned it, but the point is that neither Hecate nor her school played any role in ‘The Trials’; Mr. Riordan and his team are trying to reset the PJ-verse in mid-stride – with mixed results.

Getting back to Gale… listen. Polecats, ferrets, weasels, mink and co. are mustelids, true carnivores. Voles, which Percy and friends mention in association with the polecats, are rodents; they are relatives of mice, but more closely related to the lemmings and the muskrat; the polecats actually eat them. To conflate voles with polecats is no more sensible than conflating the latter with moles (self-explanatory), or dholes, (Asian wild dogs, look a bit like wolves, but not very). Hell, polecats are more closely related to dogs than to voles, but that is another story. What is left?

‘Agatha all along’, (AAA). That MCU show was about same-sex characters, but also about witches and witchcraft. We have discussed AAA before, but, again, AAA is superfluous to MCU; the latter tried to make money off the same-sex community in the U.S., but nothing more: so far, you can safely exclude AAA from MCU and it will not affect the greater story at all. Yes, AAA introduced Wiccan into MCU, and now he can join the YA as the obligatory male character while his sexual orientation will never be mentioned at all, or he can continue to explore the world as a sexual minority character with Aggie-poo the ghost witch (or the witch-ghost), while never becoming involved with the YA instead. Isn’t progressive political correctness fun?

Into the fray comes Mr. Riordan with ‘Wrath’. Unlike AAA, there’s no same-sex relationships, and the book overall is more for children than for their parents, but just like AAA, it was custom-made for Halloween, apparently, as such American Halloween stables as zombies, ghosts and witches abound on its’ pages. Oh, and there’s Disney (related) product placement, and references to some of the original PJ novels too. Mr. Riordan, you should not have!

However, on a more serious note, ‘Wrath’ is better than AAA is, period. One does not want to rewatch AAA, and no matter how hard AAA tried to make its’ titular character into a tragic heroine, it never quite managed to fully do so. Rather, she came across as an unrepentant murderer and backstabber, Wanda’s attempts to redeem her be damned. (We have talked about it before). The ninth episode of AAA left some open questions, (why had Jen survive, when Davis-Hart, Wu-Gulliver, and Lilia did not, for example), but few people care about the answers for them. AAA is gone, ‘Kraven the Hunter’ film is coming up, and Marvel is doing its’ best to forget about AAA’s existence, at least for a while. ‘Wrath’, on the other hand, is not as bad; whatever else it was supposed to be, it became a PJ-verse Halloween special and should be treated only as such.

For now then, this is it. See you all soon.

Herons, a fanfic - Nov 15

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so here's a brief Tolkien-based drabble instead: 

Across the multiverse…

Once upon a time, there was a war of wrath.

And the Valar burned the strongholds of Morgoth in the North to the ground.

And little was left of it, but ashes. …Ok, ashes, and the survivors, fleeing to all the four corners of the Middle-Earth.

And the Valar, the Maiar, and the rest of their allies were about to pursue them, when something else arose from the ashes: a flock of birds, long-necked, long-limbed, long-beaked, with large wings, clad in feathers of ash-grey. The birds circled once, twice, three times over the remnants of Morgoth’s fallen fortress and flew away, across the Middle-Earth, for they were the first herons of this world.

The Valar and the Maiar, (in particular, the Maia who would be later known as Radagast the Brown), just stared at the open-mouthed and open-eyed, for this was the first good news since Morgoth was defeated for good now. And as they stared and discussed among themselves the new development, someone else made good on their escape – Sauron, (of course).

“Well, this was a lark,” he thought to himself, as he made his own way across Middle-Earth, to his own secret hideout, (unknown to anyone else, good or bad). “Now it’s off to execute my next plan – one to take over the world!

End

AAA, Season Finale - Oct 31

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about the AAA season finale… and what did we just watch?

On the baseline, AAA did what an MCU show (or any other instalment for that matter) does – it moved the MCU universe forwards: now, both Billy and Tommy are alive (in a manner of speaking), and Billy is going forth in order to rejoin/reconnect with his twin. Fair enough, (though I never figured out as to why Wanda v. 2.0 had to be a homosexual male – since the comics. MCU likes to twist things, so it could have made ‘Billy’ into ‘Billie’ – instead it made him Jewish. How clever, really – but we talked about this before, so let us not do it now). Where does it leave the titular character?

Ah yes, Agatha. AAA made her its’ titular character, and it made Agatha even less likeable than before. Again, it all comes down to religious values: in monotheistic faiths, (especially the Abrahamic ones), redemption of a villain is a big deal; in polytheistic faiths – not so much. Witches and witchcraft root in the latter religions, and so AAA was a polytheistic TV show, where redemption isn’t required – and so Agatha remained unapologetically evil, killing Lillia, and Sharon, and Alice – and not caring about these acts at all. Bully for her, but Disney/MCU operates in RL; it sucks, true, but it is also dominantly monotheistic still, and so leaving Agatha a main character and a villain might’ve been too much, so…

…So Disney/MCU downplayed AAA a lot – because of the above, (and the homosexuality theme too, let’s be honest), in favor of the ‘Deadpool and Wolverine’ film, (and rightly so), in favor of the ‘Venom 3’ film now too – even Disney/MCU itself didn’t like AAA whatsoever all this time, and so the only reason they seemed to make it at all is to introduce several same-sex characters – Agatha and Rio, (though as Death, does Rio even have a set gender?), as well as Billy/Willy. Since this is Disney/MCU, this same-sex angle was also downplayed and did not really feature in the AAA S1 either. Disney/MCU managed to annoy both sides of the equation, put otherwise. The last time Disney achieved this was a while ago, with an attempt to reboot the Buzz Lightyear franchise – but this is another story.

For now though, this is it. Of all the Disney/MCU pieces that I have seen so far, AAA was the worst one, (for me, at any rate). See you all soon – and hopefully with a different, (preferably better), subject of discussion as well!

Venom 3 - Oct 25

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about the ‘Venom 3’ film at last.

The movie works. It primarily aims at the feelings, the emotions, and the such, and since this is the third (and final?) film of the series, it works. More specifically, it works because both the Sony studios in general and Mr. Tom Hardy in particular, did their best to make Venom likable and approachable, and so on. Whereas in AAA we’re dealing with an almost complete set of strangers that don’t appear to matter to the greater MCU at all, (aside from the titular character, the Teen Willy/Billy, and Rio the Grim Reaper), in ‘Venom 3’ we’re dealing with characters who became well established in that universe (Earth-688B, apparently), instead.

Moreover, the plot itself had been built up from the start – this movie series was about the titular character, and how the latter becomes from just one of the symbiotes (the Klyntar), into Earth’s defender from king Knull and his forces.

The King in Black, incidentally, is more than just ‘one movie villain’ himself: contrary to expectations, and to the Marvel comics, here, Venom and Knull never had a personal confrontation, and now, it seems that Knull might be this universe’s main Big Bad.

The other candidate for that role are ‘the Imperium’, mentioned by the late Strickland. In Marvel, this is assigned to the Shi’Ar aliens, who are usually associated with the X-Men, and who have already re-appeared in the ‘X-Men ‘97’ cartoon, however briefly. Since the ‘Sony Universe of Marvel Characters’ is mostly about the wall-crawler and his cohorts, the odds of the Shi’Ar appearing there are low, but not impossible – if Sony and Disney/MCU make an agreement, who knows what can happen?

Well, a confrontation between Spider-Man and Venom did not happen, for a fact, and the wall-crawler himself appears to be absent from ‘his’ universe. There was a Parker baby in the Madame Web movie but how the latter is related to the ‘Venom’ series is still unknown. In addition, it takes place during the 1990s, so at best it would be in Eddie’s past, no?

More importantly, the ‘Venom 3’ film moved this universe forward, as we now have the universe’s (potential) big bad, as well as new developments, such as the fact that the Venom Symbiote is gone. Ish, because Sony isn’t beyond hedging its’ bets, and ensuring that the VS might have survived, (the cockroach scene), plus VS left another part of it in the MCU, remember? Therefore, it can come back, but whether or not Tom Hardy will, is another matter.

Without Venom, however, the SUMC will suffer, as both ‘Morbius’ and ‘Madam Web’ films fell far short of the series, and Miles Morales’ animated movie series are separate from the SUMC (in a matter of speaking, but still). Put otherwise, for better or for worse, SUMC still has progress and development, while MCU, (as depicted by AAA), appears to have stalled.

Does ‘Venom 3’ have its flaws? Obviously – as you get past the emotional manipulation (by the movie itself), the plot is thin and simple, but then again, as MCU showed, you don’t need a complex plot to succeed or a simple plot to fail. ‘Venom 3’ succeeded where AAA is failing, and that is what matters.

For now, though, this is it. See you all soon!

AAA 'Death' - Oct 24

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, while I do want to talk about the ‘Venom 3’ film, we will need to postpone it for a few days still, because of spoilers and similar issues. Onto AAA’s episode 1x07, ‘Death’.

First, ‘Death’ is the other identity of Rio Vidal, it looks like. In the Marvel comics, Death appears often enough, and the comics have plenty of death-related deities too. In MCU, however, the Grim Reaper didn’t really make an appearance, so Rio Vidal being one of its’ incarnations… well, why not? Weirder things have happened in MCU, not to mention that this is progress and innovation, things that had been missed in AAA until now.

Again, MCU movies, TV series, and so on, always did their best to move the entire universe onwards, though, admittedly, since the end of Phase 3, this become more erratic and less efficient than before. Possibly, it would be better for everyone if MCU ended then, on a high note, than wherever it is going now – and enter ‘Agatha All Along’. So far, this show had little else going for it save for Agatha’s misadventures; yes, it is her show, but she herself had been for too little in MCU and played a specific and a small role for her to matter all that much.

…And maybe she does not. We already got Billy, Wanda’s son, possessing Willy the Teen here, and Billy/Wiccan is quite an important character, even though Marvel comics and MCU are different. Therefore, there is already a good chance that he will ‘eclipse’ Agatha after all – Western media are good at this sort of thing, this gradual transference from one main character to another – and the show will end on a different note from which it started. Pause.

Ah yes, Madame Lilia. She came back to life once more, and she died once more, and AAA the show used her and her life to progress TT/Willy’s/Billy’s story some more, albeit in a non-linear fashion. How clever, neuvau, and innovative! For real. Cough.

However, on a more serious note, AAA is turning out to be banal, rather than zany, about TT than about the titular heroine, and with more distractions than with the actual content. Here, MCU is trying to use atypical approaches and images to tell a typical story and while it is succeeding, the people are not being too impressed – or too invested; they will not be too upset if Rio/Death takes away Agatha after all, that is.

For now, though, this is it. See you all soon!

 

AAA ' Familiar' - Oct 17

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. In addition, what about AAA? Oh, bother…

First, TT is Willy Kaplan rather than Billy Maximoff; apparently, the spirit of Billy has merged with Willy (William) and now the MCU Pokefusion is searching for Wanda’s other boy, i.e. Tommy. (Speed in the comics). Such a twist, such brilliant writing!.. But, seriously, the way that AAA has been connecting and attaching itself to WV, showing itself to be WV’s sequel now, rather than just a spinoff, is impressive – one of the more impressive bits on this week’s episode, ‘Familiar’. Not that the bar is very high, either, but still…

Aside from the tie-in to WV, ‘Familiar’ reveals that – drumroll, please – MCU’s Willy/Billy is not just homosexual, but also Jewish! Given that Judaism is treating its sexual minorities not as favorably as the modern Western society does, this is ambiguous, and might be one of the reasons as to why AAA isn’t being showcased by the news/media too much, unlike how WV had been.

Willy/Billy himself is ambiguous as a character, but this is not too new – in DC, the Penguin is sometimes shown to have Jewish roots; Kaley Cuoco’s ‘Harley Quinn’ cartoon and the live-action ‘Gotham’ TV series had been some of the more prominent ones. The current ‘Penguin’ TV series does not go there too much, which is fine – it is a crime drama first, and everything else, including the DC comic elements, second.

In Marvel, meanwhile, we had the M.O.D.O.K. of Earth-1226, who was also Jewish, and who is a villain too, not unlike the Penguin, (but in a different style completely). As it was written before, (now this show ended, after a single season), does the global Jewish community really need to have ambiguous or outright evil, characters featuring their faith? Given the RL events in the Middle East right now, (October 2024), probably not.

…Mind you, what is happening in the Middle East right now has nothing to do with the post-Protestant neo-pagan Western society of our times; it is Eastern monotheism, pure and simple: the descendants of Abraham’s sons, the legitimate Isaac and the discarded Ismail are going to war once again, and the West… doesn’t really want to get involved; the U.S., whose own geopolitical interests are at stake there, probably has to do something, but the elections-2024 are prioritized, and so it doesn’t do anything. The other Western countries do not even try.

Is what Israel is doing in other countries, (such as Lebanon) right and proper? Possibly not, but they do not care; their government certainly does not. Can the other – Western – countries interfere? Quite so, but it would cost them, and the consequences would be unpredictable as well, and so they do not. Especially when there is money to be made off the RF/Ukrainian conflict instead.

Back to AAA, it also… serves as a mirror of the contemporary Western society, discussed above. The rest of Agatha’s new coven are gone, one-way or another, (Rio does not count, she got plot armor, most likely), but neither Willy/Billy nor Agatha herself care about it; they are going on their journey together regardless.

One might say that TT does not care about Alice and co. because he only wants to find Tommy. Jolly good; now re-watch the ‘Dr. Strange 2’ movie to see how well this mindset served Wanda herself in her quest to find her twins; now, to add insult to injury, AAA shows that at least one of her own twins has been on the same Earth and plane of reality as she was, and her entire mess with America Chavez wasn’t as necessary as it appeared to be. Yay.

Agatha, meanwhile, is reprising her role in WV – a witch-opportunist. She, apparently, had buried the rest of her new coven, and is now doing with Willy/Billy mostly the same thing that she tried to do with his mom in WV – stringing him along while waiting to backstab him as well. Character development for Aggie-poo? That is so funny!

Oh and we have to see Ralph Bohner again, albeit in a flashback. MCU is really trying to tie AAA to WV. In this, they are succeeding. What will they do with this success is another question.

For now, however, this is it. See you all soon!

'Joker 2' and AAA - Oct 10

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so I watched the ‘Joker 2’ movie, and it might have given reality a run for its’ money – in a bad way. Compared to it, the AAA mini-series is merely hollow and pointless instead. Pause.

Taking a breath. The first ‘Arthur Fleck-Joker’ film was good. It was about a marginal member of the American/Western society who got his hands on a gun/handgun/firearm with bullets and suddenly his demands for respect couldn’t be dismissed out of hand, without consequences – the modern Protestant society hates that, and fears that, and so the Gotham society split into two by the appearance/manifestation of the Joker – the patricians (or the elites) hated and feared him, while the plebes (or the proletarians) made him their banner. This resulted in a social eruption in Gotham quite comparable to what happed in real life NYC during the 19^th century during the American civil war… and ‘Joker-2’ completely left it behind.

No, seriously, what the ‘Joker-2’ is about? ‘Joker-1’… see above, plus the titular character’s interactions with the Wayne family, which resulted in the tragedy that would enable Bruce Wayne, (just a child in the initial film) to become Batman and the Joker’s arch nemesis. More specifically, Batman and Joker are two halves of a whole, they work best when they’re dealing with each other, and when they don’t – say, the first Suicide Squad film – then it’s something else, and not for the better, either. The first Suicide Squad showed this, and so does the second JP Joker movie.

To make matters worse, it is a musical. Musicals – singing and dancing and what else have you – do not combine with live-action movies too well. Those who work are usually animated, as ‘Encanto’ was, or are just tolerable, like the ‘Mean Girls’ reboot. Most others, even such magnificent ones as the ‘In the Heights’ or the ‘West Side’ reboot, fail, and ‘Joker 2’ is certainly not ‘In the Heights’. Rather, it is a love story of Arthur Fleck and Lady Gaga’s character, who is not Harley Queen; rather, she is Lee.

Yes, the two women share a name – Harleen Quinzell, but nothing else. There is a saying: ‘How you name a boat, that’s how it will float’. Names do matter, and since Lady Gaga’s character was not named Harley Quinn, she did not become Harley Quinn, and so JP’s Joker fell in love with an OFC.

Let us elaborate. JP’s Joker himself is something of an OMC, but the truth is that there is no canon Joker origin story; the closest we have is ‘The Killing Joke’ story, a one-time comic book story, but even that is not always accepted by the DC-verse as the one true origin. More precisely, no one – not even the Joker – cares about the Joker’s origin story; he just is and that is it. He can both be and not be Arthur Fleck at the same time, it will not matter.

Conversely, Harley Quinn is Dr. Harleen Quinzell, the female psychologist, who fell in love with the Joker and became a Gotham Rogue herself. Her origin story is well established and well used, and so for the ‘Joker-2’ scriptwriters to reject it out of hand, it smarts, and it shows that whoever Lady Gaga’s character is, she is not Harley Quinn. In addition, for most DC comic-book fans to watch a variant Joker flirt with an OFC (and little more happens in this film), it just is not kosher, and so they turned on the film, just as the critics did, (though perhaps for different reasons). The result is a flop… onto AAA?

…What about AAA? This week’s episode, (‘Hour/Power’) is yet another episode where another OC dies; we are introduced to Agatha’s mum; and in general are we supposed to care for those people? The witches, starting with Agatha, are turning upon each other, and are killing each other…big whoop. This is the modern post-Protestant/neo-Pagan society, concisely. The Teen is Billy Kaplan the Wiccan, Wanda’s gay son… people suspected it all along. The miniseries are only halfway done, so Agatha and Rio should survive for a while yet, everyone else is up for grabs… who cares? ‘Joker 2’ came out, and it makes the remake of TLM look almost palatable. Sad, given just how good the first movie was. Ah well, real life sucks, just ask the barred and the spotted owls – but that is another story.

For now though, this is it. See you all soon!