Comics & RL - rant

And so, yet another Marvel story arc has ended – the Secret Empire where Steve Rogers turns evil Hydra one. And?

And nothing. A new story arc – ‘Secret Empire Omega’ – is already in the works. MCU and co. are making more money, at least theoretically. The end. Anything else?

Nothing except the entire tyranny/anti-tyranny note that MCU (and to a different extent, BtVS) was singing ever since the Donald became POTUS. For a while now it was the talk of the year as to how he is going to end the democracy in the U.S. unless the good American people unite and end him instead. Well, months went on, democracy has not ended yet, and neither has the Donald’s tenure as POTUS despite everything. Why?

Because everything has went down in opposition to whatever comics are preaching. In them, (i.e., MCU) the heroes (and even some anti-heroes/villains) have united to end a threat – a very real threat, BTW. In RL, on the other hand, the politicians are still fighting each other as well as the American president, or rather – they are mocking him and doing it as part of their own conflicts. The Daily Beast site has pointed out back earlier in 2017 that Trump’s U.S. is no Orwellian nightmare, (‘1984’, here), so some re-evaluating might be done. But no – full steam ahead, and now we got an anti-Russian investigation that is going nowhere but deeper into itself and the messy underbelly of U.S. own politics, populace that is continuing to be divided between itself from top to bottom, both in D.C. and beyond, and nothing that is being down elsewhere, (beyond the American borders). Never mind Russia; North Korea is continuing to go forwards with its’ bid to rule the world and/or start WWIII, and the U.S. does not do nothing, it is too divided to do anything concrete without causing more internal divisions in itself.

The comics themselves…yes, this is just like Hollywood. U.S. was founded on European Protestant principles of individuality, entrepreneurship, self-sufficiency and initial equality and rights – and now the rights are being slowly replaced by privileges, and the other values are being sharpened up to, or into, the zone of absurdity, and just don’t work as they used to anymore. The Americans should take a breather and figure out where they are heading next, but they do anything but that; in particular, they are using the election and the reputation of the latest POTUS to further their own schemes. Al those Hollywood marches and demonstrations and statements were like that – the people there got their shares of political capital, got sated, the end. Only ‘the ship of state’ got rocked further, so really, the American people should either start solving this problem for real, or stop pretending that it exists and go on with their lives. Otherwise, their battle against this imaginary bugbear will transform into something real, much more so, something that will not be stopped by comics.

End rant? Pretty much, this particular comic story arc is over, people are getting over Hydra-inflicted damage, but wait, there is more to come! MCU has abandoned those pithy RL topics- very nicely, as people come together in a community to get over the Hydra-related and –inflicted damage, but still. The end. It is off for another adventure, this one of recovery and rebirth! Yay! ...You cannot sit on two chairs, you can either educate or entertain, and making money from either of them is something else. If the comics do not understand this, if America does not understand this, then it really is in trouble, without any political involvement from RF or anyone else.

End rant. (Sorry about incoherency, I just was not in the mood to be coherent).

Defenders - August 20

Marvel’s ‘Defenders’ got released on the Netflix earlier this week. And-?

And so far reviews are somewhere between ‘fair praise’, ‘damning’, and a cross between the two limits. Basically, ‘Defenders’ was a good show, but kind of rushed, since the first season was only 8 episodes long, and you cannot go too far or too complex with this sort of thing.

Yes, the ‘Gilmore Girls’ revival was only 4 episodes long…but, honestly, most people agree, that this revival wasn’t all that good in itself, and if ASP & husband have another go at it, they have a hard road ahead of them, too.

Longer seasons are not a solution, of course, and ‘Fuller House’ has its own problems, but its’ reviews are more mixed, FYI.

Back to ‘Defenders’. The show does work – as a part of a greater whole, in tandem with the rest of the mini-series, including, yes, ‘Punisher’, whose first season is coming some time in the future, and all the others, including ‘Iron Fist’. People still did not warm-up to the Flower Knight in this incarnation, but you know, give them time – Ser Tyrell is not going anywhere, you know? So let us just enjoy the show – and the audience/viewers, in general, did.

What else? Well, the plot was not that complex, and the villains did not appear to be up to speed with the heroes, not even Alexandra, (played by Sigourney Weaver, BTW). Electra/Black Sky appeared to be the ‘Big Bad’ at the end, and there were dragon bones, so yes, there were some issues in integrating NYC with the Orient – something that caused problems with ‘Iron Fist’, but now there was an added challenge of much more characters appearing in fewer episodes – just 8, to be more precise. Yes, everyone got a piece of screen time, Misty Knight even got set up to be potentially a superhero known as the ‘Bionic Woman’ – just kidding, but she does end up with a bionic/cybernetic arm in the comics, and she gets to be both a hero and a villain there too… where were we?

‘Defenders’ tried to do too much in too little time, that’s what. Hence why the story feels incomplete, (in a bad way), rushed and not quite satisfactory. Yes, the future seasons of the other shows, (including ‘Punisher’) will fill the gaps and move the plot forwards, and this is actually impressive: this little corner of Marvel (MCU?) has, at last, created an interconnected… ‘mini-verse’ (for the lack of a better term), one that works – the rest of Marvel is not as good, although FOX and X-men and the associated mutants seem to be heading in this direction too, (especially the X-men movies and co).

No, seriously, they do – and very smoothly too, from one ‘universe’ to another, but ‘Defenders’ aren’t a part of it, they belong to a different corner of Marvel and are here to stay. You may like them, you may dislike them, but ‘Defenders’ got staying power, and unless you replace Rand with Jake Paul (or someone like that), stop complaining about him! ‘Iron Fist’ is here to stay as well.

For Honor - Gladiator & Highlander

It happened that Ubisoft and co. have finally released the promo videos for Gladiator and Highlander, and etc. Yay! But what can be said about them?

The Gladiator, as I might have mentioned in the past, is armed with a trident and a small shield – I believe that it is a buckler, rather than a net. This makes FH’s Gladiator their own creation, (sort of), rather than a take-away copy of one of RL gladiators, such as the Retiarius, (armed with a trident and a net), or the Murmillo, (armed with a shield and a short, stabbing sword). And? It is no big deal.

Let me elaborate. Ever since ‘For Honor’ became available, I had a strong suspicion that it’d been influenced, no matter how bigly or smally, by ‘Deadliest Warrior’, both the TV series and the video game that it tried to sell as part of its’ franchise. The former was discussed repeatedly in the past; the latter was one of those one-on-one combat games, where people could play a pirate, a knight, a Roman centurion, a Spartan warrior, etc., fighting each other: this was it. Even ‘For Honor’, for all of its flaws, was more advanced, from the start.

Now, the Gladiator, (and we are talking about DW the TV show here, not the game), was one of the very first two characters introduced by DW. He fought the Apache in the opening episode of the series, and lost. That is not surprising; the Gladiator’s weapons were more ceremonial, while the Apache’s were more practical, but what matters to us here was that DW too had ignored all of those little RL distinctions of the gladiatorial combat, and rather made ‘their’ Gladiator out of everything, and the kitchen sink besides. No style, no strategy, and he still lost. This does, and did, raise questions about the integrity of DW’s rating system…but I discussed this before, and it is not the point. The point is that FH’s Gladiator is built along the same lines as DW’s was, and it works. Hell, in their promo ‘For Honor’ admitted that ‘their’ Gladiators were newcomers to the battlefield, and that it was up to the players to decide just how well the Gladiators will perform.

And the trident itself? Yes, it is more of a ritualistic weapon than a practical one, but ‘For Honor’ is an online game, so such discussions are moot. Except that ‘For Honor’ itself brings it up with Highlander’s claymore sword.

In RL, the claymore was one of the two-handed swords that were invented in Europe; in fantasy terms, GoT’s Ned Stark’s sword Ice was a claymore, or a two-handed sword, or a greatsword – pick your term or make your own, okay? Yes, it makes sense for Highlander’s claymore to be bigger, more massive and more powerful than the Warden’s longsword, because this was how it was in RL, (most of the GoT’s swords, again, can be used by one hand, as opposed to Ice, which was actually re-smithed into two swords in the original novels, but this is another discussion completely, let’s talk GoT another time). Again, since ‘For Honor’ is an online game it is kind of pointless to explain that the claymore is the biggest and baddest sword in the game, because it is all imaginary, (by online games’ standards, anyhow). What are we discussing here, after all? Damage to the hit points of the other PCs?

As for the Highlander himself, I cannot shake away the feeling that he was based, (however partially) on DW’s version of Sir Wallace, also known as Braveheart, when Mel Gibson had played him. (The AWE Me YouTube channel has made a replica claymore from that movie as well, BTW). In DW, Wallace faced against Shaka Zulu, and won…because DW’s cast and crew included – in Zulu’s warchest – a ‘spit of poison’, just as they did with the ninja, (both were DW S1 episodes). Naturally, poison won Zulu no points, and Sir Wallace won by default, if you want to be technical – but yes, his claymore was still cool.

And yes, once again, FH’s crew admit – in the promo video (for the Highlander, here), that the Highlander was not exactly a part of the ‘original’ team Viking; he and his fellows were drawn-in by the war (the original war from S1, maybe?), and now are making their mark on the world….and that, perhaps, brings up to the next topic: there’s bad blood.

There is bad blood between Ubisoft and the players, and there is bad blood between the players themselves. They are divided, and this cannot be good for ‘For Honor’, especially since Ubisoft does not exactly need it, it has other irons in the fire, you know? So far, ‘For Honor’ may not be as wonderful as ‘Injustice 2’ is, for example, but it is still a good game to play. Let us try not to ruin it for ourselves and everyone else.

This is it for this time; see you in the future, soon!

For Honor IX - Aug 6

So, firstly, ‘For Honor’ has once more come back – or is about to come back, I suppose – with new and improved…stuff. As I have written in the past, a big part of their problems is technical, something that can be fixed only after it is uncovered by testing, (and by playing), as ‘For Honor’ has experienced, and experimented with, so – yay. What is next?

Well, by ‘yay’, I mean that the staff at FH has fixed those problems – or at least they think that they have – and we will wait and see how it works out. What I want to talk about here, (but only as a preliminary) about the next two new classes of the game – the Highlander of the Vikings, and the Gladiator – of the Knights.

…As it is evident even at this point, neither combo makes much sense, logically. At least, in the previous update the Shinobi of the Samurai had some connection to them, (and as game testing showed, he and his kusarigama had certainly worked as PCs), but already the Centurion was not exactly ‘knightly’, and now, when the issue of the Gladiator was raced the game crew mentioned the ‘Roman Empire’ and ‘south’ in the same context.

Just what are they going for, here? Europe? I.e. the Vikings are ‘north’, the Samurais are ‘east’ and the knights are ‘west’, let us suppose. However, it is a lot of distance between the Samurais’ Japan and Europe of Knights and Vikings. If ‘For Honor’ was going for realism, then he should’ve – or could’ve – introduced someone closer to home for Knights and Vikings than Samurais – Ottoman Turks, for example – and if it wasn’t going for realism, then WTF with ‘south’? Africa was further down south than the Roman Empire was, ditto for South America (Mesoamerica, if you want to), so this does not make sense.

And this is a problem that cannot be fixed by technical means. ‘For Honor’ does not appear to be realizing where it wants to go, unlike, say, ‘Injustice’, which has it figured out, from beginning to end, and has no thematic issues either.

Back to Gladiator and Highlander. Gladiator is not exactly knightly material; people do not really associate them with knights; the Roman Empire was never big on knights; the knights arose in northern Europe – England, France, Germany; they were individualistic, individual, professional fighters, but unlike gladiators, they were not just free people, they were also nobility, something that remained important even in modern times, when depicting knights.

Gladiators, on the other hand, were prisoners and slaves, something that remained unchanged even in modern times, (when depicting the ancient gladiators, i.e.). True, in regards to prisoners, they were often prisoners – Celts, Gauls, Germans, though the most famous of them all, Spartacus, was actually from Thrace, modern Greece/Balkans, instead. If you look through the Wiki, you can clearly see that knights and gladiators were very different, so how – let alone why – does ‘For Honor’ fit Gladiator into the knightly roster, (so to speak)? This is something that we will see better once Gladiator can be played later this year, and ditto for Highlander.

As any fan of Mel Gibson can tell you, Highlanders were never Vikings/Norse. They were Scots, Celts, and they fought Vikings during the time of the king Arthur instead. Yes, they were barbarians, not knights, but ‘Vikings’ and ‘barbarians’ aren’t synonyms, no matter what you might think by following such modern movies and TV series as ‘Vikings’ on History channel, for example. In ‘For Honor’, Highlander looks like a Viking, but not really; he is some sort of a weird hybrid, so WTF with realism? Are we going for it or not? If we are, some rethinking of the characters, and character rosters, is in order; if we are not, some redesign of the ‘For Honor’ game world itself is in order.

So, as we can see already, ‘For Honor’ has some good ideas, but also some weird ideas, and some lack direction as to where they are going, in the end. I hope that, though, they will get through this muddle, eventually.

See you next time!

Borealopelta, Zuul and NG - Aug 3

And so, it came to my attention that there is yet another new dinosaur discovered in RL – Borealopelta, aka ‘northern shield’. It was an armored dinosaur, and a nodosaur, and… it was related… to Zuul, however distantly.

Wait, to whom?

Zuul, the armored dinosaur, described – and depicted – in the June 2017 issue of NG. It was an armored dinosaur, but unlike, say, Ankylosaurus, (featured in JP franchise and etc.), Zuul did not have a tail club, but it had shoulder spikes – as does Borealopelta. Again, this isn’t a problem, nor a surprise – another armored dinosaurs used to have it, as did other reptiles, like Desmatosuchus, a denizen of the Triassic time period, a distant cousin to the dinosaurs, but a closer cousin to the crocodilians, (although Desmatosuchus itself was a plant-eater, to add further incredulity, just as the armored dinosaurs did). Considering that the two dinosaurs were related, (how closely the paleontologists will figure out in due time), it is not very surprising that the two dinosaurs were physically similar; they did occupy similar econiches, after all. What bothers me is how NG handled them – let us discuss.

As I have written back in June 2017, that issue of NG did not give Zuul the same respect as it did to Spinosaurus in a much earlier issue, and I discussed this issue at length. Now, after reading the online NG article about Borealopelta, I see that NG has added insult to injury – the text of the online article is very similar to the text of the printed (and/or electronic) June 2017 magazine’s article on Zuul. And what is more, the depictions of new Borealopelta dinosaur are exactly that of Zuul (the dinosaur, not the first original Ghostbusters’ movie villain) – NG just recycled them from June 2017 time period and that’s that. Given that right now it is just early August 2017, this means that just about two months passed at most, nowhere near enough time for people to forget about NG descriptive article of Zuul, which makes NG’s decision kind of stupid, not just as in ‘foolish’ and ‘unoriginal’, but also as in ‘unimaginative’ and ‘disrespectful’. Seriously, check out ‘The Making of a Most Extraordinary Fossil’ special feature online, (on NG site), and then seek out the June 2017 issue of NG. The two pieces are similar enough in content and depiction that if anyone else did this sort of thing, NG would be full within its’ right to sue them for copyright infringement; yet when they do it to themselves, it’s fine?

End rant, or at least – put it on hold. NG has and will do ‘bloopers’ in the future; the last was probably in July 2017, when that month’s issue had an article – ‘THE MAKING OF A MASSACRE’. It was written together with ProPublica, ‘an independent, non-profit, investigative newsroom’, and it talked about a massacre in Allende, Mexico. Briefly, DEA got the goods on two drug kingpins, the Trevino brothers – and promptly shared this info with the Mexican police, even though their Mexican counterparts could not be trusted. Sure enough, the Trevinos learned immediately after this that they were sold out – and started the titular massacre.

Honestly, I feel sorry for the people of Allende, and am not impressed by the actions of the Mexican police or the DEA; I don’t know, who there was bribed, and who was just too naïve and idealistic for their own good, but this brings us to NG, who published the article both in paper and online – and then did their best to bury it, metaphorically speaking: the article was quickly made hard-to-access online, (even if one does have an online subscription to the magazine), and the magazine itself was quickly removed from many places where it was sold, (convenience stores, DrugMart, etc.). The online version of the article promised some sort of a supplementary video material to be released online in July – it never did. I do not know what went wrong here, but since the U.S. politics were involved, conspiracy theorists are welcome to make their own theories, of course.

However, as for Zuul and Borealopelta… I think that it was an honest blooper, which is still hard to excuse, as NG is usually a solid and respectful magazine and organisation. Was it really hard to figure out which material belongs to which dinosaur species, and just what the magazine was presenting the first time around (June 2017)? Moreover, once it was done, (the figuring out part), once the initial mistake was realized, how hard would it be to depict Borealopelta anew, from scratch, rather than reuse Zuul’s depictions directly? Apparently too hard, since this is what happened here.

That is it for NG (at the moment); as for Borealopelta itself… Ecologically, it was just like Zuul – a medium to large herbivore that used shoulder spikes to protect itself from various carnivorous dinosaurs; in the Early Cretaceous this meant early raptors (such as Deinonychus and Utahraptor) and carnosaurs, (such as Acrocanthosaurus), carnivores that were more similar to Allosaurus than to T-Rex. Neither group was well-suited to handle an armored dinosaur, as I wrote earlier, (in June 2017), so neither Zuul nor Borealopelta needed a tail club – not yet. Later armored dinosaurs, from the Late Cretaceous, will evolve it, because their top predators will be the tyrannosaurs, including Tyrannosaurus Rex itself…

The point that I am trying to make here is about the camouflage – supposedly, Borealopelta had critical countershading in its coloration; its’ back was darker than its’ belly. I let you in on a secret – many animals have it, from all over the tree of life. The most typical example are fish from the open seas, both bony fish and sharks like the mako and the great white, and somehow no one makes a big deal about this. The land animals too have it, just look at the wild horses and donkeys and their African cousins, the zebras. Their backs are darker than their bellies are, so there is no reason to assume that the dinosaurs did not have the same coloration scheme, but rather than they did.

Well, that is it for now; see you all later!

PS: And as for Killjoys? Let us talk about it for some other time…