When the Whales Walked - Dec 23

It so happened that I came across Dougal Dixon’s book, ‘When the Whales Walked’. It is a book for children, with little text but plenty of illustrations, and it talked about evolution. Again, it is a book for children, with little text, but plenty of illustrations, but as it usually happens with Mr. Dixon, the text there could have used some work.

What are the problems of WWW? Firstly, an overly basic reduction of the terms. What is evolution in child-friendly terms? There is a population of fuzzy (or fluffy) woobies, where all look the same. Eventually, a mountain range rises up and splits the wooby population into two. One population eventually ends up living in a savanna, where it evolves longer legs to further and faster cool down in the warm climate, and also to better attract mates with the coloration of their legs. The second population ends up living in a tundra, where it evolves shorter legs to preserve more of its’ body heat, and also tusks or claws designed to scratch out worms and other invertebrates in the harsh and hard tundra soil, upon which it feeds. As enough time passes the two wooby populations change enough so to become two different species instead of a single one, the end.

Sounds simple, right? Team Dixon tried to go one further, by reducing the population by just one. Namely, there is a single new island in the sea, with a single food source – some sort of shrimp. Some sea birds can survive on it, but only those that can eat shrimp. Those who cannot leave or die, with the remnant eventually forming a new species. Straightforward? Yes, but also unrealistic. In real life, there is never a single food source in a new place, such as a new volcanic island in the sea. (To those people in Indonesia who died in the tsunami – our hearts go out to you). There are always several, (even now, with human overfishing and environment pollution), and there are always several bird species on any island. To reduce them to a single one is too much, too absurdedly much.

Secondly, there is the use of the word ‘mutation’. Broadly speaking, ‘mutation’ means ‘transformation’, ‘change’, but due to various modern mass media influences, (especially Marvel and DC comics, movies and TV/online series), these days it is usually associated with a physical change – say, male birds, such as the fowl, sprouting new features, such as tails and head crests, or male elephants keeping their tusks, while the females – not so much. (Female Asian elephants usually lack them). In reality, however, evolutionary changes can mean not only physical changes, but also behavioral ones – i.e., sea otters learning how to use rocks to smash shellfish and sea urchins, Galapagos woodpecker finch using cactus spines to catch grubs, or Homo Erectus, a human ancestor, learning how to utilize fire.

…Okay, true, at least 90% of the WWW book is dedicated to the various animals evolving into new species by acquiring new physical traits – i.e., whales going from the Indohyus, an animal more similar to the modern mouse deer, to the modern species, such as the blue whale. Fair enough, but even that has went somewhat wonky, at least once: when the book talked about crocodile evolution raising a suggestion that once upon a time, (in the Triassic), crocodiles were very different animals and even warm-blooded – unlike today, when they are cold-blooded. This is an interesting topic, so let us elaborate on it.

Firstly, the crocodiles belong to the archosaur family, which also includes pterosaurs, non-avian dinosaurs, and birds. Kudos to WWW for uniqueness by pointedly not mentioning non-avian dinosaurs, BTW – you do not often find this approach in a paleontology book, especially one for the children.

Secondly, modern crocodiles and their cousins are only distantly related to the Mesozoic species that are featured in WWW and similar books. ‘The Complete Guide to Prehistoric Life’, which featured prehistoric animals that were chosen to appear in the currently defunct ‘Impossible Pictures’, ‘Walking with…’ series. Among them were four extinct cousins of the modern crocodiles: Proterosuchus, Postosuchus, Metriorhynchus and Sarcosuchus. All four of them were different from each other, and while at least one of them – Sarcosuchus, (which also appeared in WWW), was physically similar to the modern crocodiles, ‘Guide’ made it a point to say that the modern crocodiles, caimans and alligators were only distantly related to their extinct cousins, which is true – if you put a modern species, say the saltwater crocodile, next to one of their Triassic cousins, you’ll get two different animals.

But what does their Triassic cousins look like? Postosuchus, Saurosuchus, Carnufex and co. looked like a cross between a modern crocodile and a mammal: they walked on all four legs, and those legs were directly beneath their bodies, as they are in mammals and archosaurs, (including birds), not splayed to their sides, as they are in lizards or tortoises, or even modern crocodiles. That is because they are only distantly related to them, and may be actually more closely related to the ancestors of the dinosaurs proper instead.

…Dinosaur phylogeny is confusing by itself; there are three main groups – theropods, sauropodomorphs and ornitishchia – aka the meat-eaters, the long-necked plant-eaters, and every other species. As a rule, the carnivores and the long-necked herbivores form one main dinosaur group – the lizard-hipped dinosaurs while the other dinosaurs form the second – the bird-hipped. Now, however, there is a suggestion that the carnivorous dinosaurs were more closely related to the bird-hipped herbivores, while the long-necked herbivores more closely related to the initial species, such as staurikosaurus, herrerosaurus, eoraptor and etc. It is a mess, and so far, there is no final verdict on it – and the same goes regarding whether or not dinosaurs were warm-blooded. Birds are, of course, while the crocodiles are not. Yes, the American alligator can handle cold temperatures, including cold snaps, which allows it to move further north in North America than its’ main rival, the American crocodile can. (Yes, there are two different species of the crocodilian reptiles in the modern North America). However, it is still very much cold-blooded, and it is not really related to birds either. (Aka the modern dinosaurs). Even the scientists who use alligators and crocodiles for models for dinosaur behavior do not deny that these reptiles are not real dinosaurs either, not literally.

In other news, as far as scientists are concerned, that when it comes to the archosaur family tree, the crocodiles derived first, followed by the pterosaurs, and finally the avian/non-avian dinosaur split. This means that the whatever evolutionary factors allowed some dinosaurs, (primarily birds), to become warm-blooded as the mammals are, (and mammals are a completely separate branch of the tree of life, BTW), never appeared in crocodiles, especially the modern species, but ditto for the extinct ones. The Triassic was marked, in the end, by a mass extinction, but it was not due to an Ice Age, but to a volcanic eruption instead and a prolonged drought, oxygen level loss, etc. Unlike the birds (and their ancestors) that appeared during the Cretaceous, neither crocodiles nor their ancestors had to deal with cold temperatures when they were evolving per se, and as such, they never did. This is why in the modern times crocodiles are restricted to the tropics, while the birds are not. They are warm-blooded, (as were their ancestors, apparently), while the crocodiles never were. To call the ancestral crocodiles ‘warm-blooded’ is doubly wrong. However…

However, aside from this gaffe, and the previously mentioned two mistakes, WWW is a good book for children. It tries to be both entertaining and educational and it does a good job at succeeding. True, the stories go all over the place, but so did R. Kipling’s ‘Just-So-Stories’, and they work well enough to become a classic in their own right, (cough Mowgli cough). Who knows, maybe one day WWW or one of its book fellows will become a classic in its’ own right. We will just have to wait and see.

This is it for now; see you all soon.

PS: And to all of you, a Happy Christmas for tomorrow

M: ALOTJ - Dec 17

Now, a brief word about ‘Mowgli: A Legend of the Jungle’, because real life…doesn’t exactly suck, but sometimes? It rather does, regardless of any details. What about M: ALOTJ then?

The crux point here is not the presence of Tabaqui the hyena – in the original novels it was a jackal. Yes, a jackal is very different from a hyena, but this is creative license to you – even in the original novels, Tabaqui was a minor character, and he got killed…behind the scenes by Grey Brother, one of original Mowgli’s original wolf cohorts. Kipling did not even show that scene, Grey Brother mentioned to Mowgli (and in ‘Mowgli’, I suppose), because the latter was worried, that Tabaqui would tip Shere Khan off about Mowgli’s trap. To that Grey Brother implied that “Oh, don’t worry, I found Tabaqui earlier today and broke his back, so he’s dead now, don’t worry about him’. The end of the jackal/hyena/period. Not that Shere Khan’s death was much more dignified – in the canon, Mowgli trampled him to death with a buffalo herd, (something that was homage in Disney’s Mowgli remake – remember it?), the end of the tiger.

Yes, in the original novels Shere Khan wasn’t really scaring anyone in the jungle – they hated, despised, and reviled him; eating people was against the Jungle Law, (Kipling even included this statement in one of Mowgli’s poems) and it just asking for trouble – sooner or later colored people would come, and white people would come, and there’d be fire, elephants, torches, firearms – this is where Lockwood can come it, probably.

There are British character in the ‘Jungle Book’ – both novels, actually. The thing is that those stories are not Mowgli stories; in ‘Mowgli’ proper, the British exist somewhere behind the scenes, in a good way, but kind of…nebulous. ‘Mowgli’ stories are about India, its’ animals and people – no British are required, thank you very much. In the ‘Mowgli’ movies, of course, the situation can be very different; the British can play a prominent role, and Shere Khan is always someone to be feared… as, say, Megatron from the ‘Transformers’ franchise is. That is Western prejudice, pure and simple!

And Serkis did precisely that, (though not with Shere Khan’s character) – he presented the Western prejudice in the other, earlier Mowgli movies. Lockwood acts as a typical macho man, defending the weak, (whether they asked him or not), but caring only about strength and solving everything only through strength and violence. Mowgli – in the canon – had the smarts too – which brings us to the dholes.

A dhole is a species of wild dog that is only distantly related to such animals as grey wolves, jackals and domestic dogs. It is a representative of a much-older lineage, and it has no close, immediate relatives. Like many other dog species, (including grey wolves and bush dogs), it hunts in packs and as such, it is formidable. It was also the biggest villain in the original ‘Jungle Books’ – Mowgli had to team up with his wolf pack, Kaa, and a few other jungle animals to defeat the invading dhole pack, or as they were called there – ‘the red wolves’. I think, because it has been a while since I read the novels and so far, almost none of the movies showed the dhole story line. Apparently, Disney did play with it in one of its TV cartoon series – one that was actually based on Kipling’s ‘Jungle Book’ novels, but that was a long time ago as well. Anything else?

M: ALOTJ does not have the dhole storyline either, instead we have Mowgli dealing with both Lockwood and Shere Khan, the former because he had killed Mowgli’s wolf friend, Bhoot.

…Bhoot, or bhut, is a ghost in India’s mythology, and a nasty one. Here, Serkis did not do anything really radical either – in the original novels, Mother Wolf actually had a name – Raksha or Rakshasa, which is a demon in India’s mythology - again. Herein lies M: ALOTJ’s problem. Serkis’ version is actually closer to the original novels, especially in the atmosphere – by modern standards, Kipling’s novels, including his YA novels like ‘Mowgli’ – are not very politically correct or child-friendly at all. Neither is Serkis’ movie, but…

But the sad fact is that movies, mass media, are products for sale, abiding the laws of supply and demand as well as anything else. After the 2016’s ‘Mowgli’ version there wasn’t much of a demand for another ‘Mowgli’ version, so it wasn’t very much demanded, and now that it is released, it still isn’t much demanded, and people are comparing it to 2016’s adaptation and are finding it to be more to their liking. Kipling himself isn’t much in demand by contemporary readers and audience any more, Disney itself took a gamble back in 2016 with its’ remake – and yes, it paid off. Serkis’, well, did not. His twist on the story was the semi-evil Englishman; he possibly stands for something metaphorical, but people do not really care. They are upset that this movie is not child-friendly, and it is their call, and they are right. It is not. Serkis might not have been wrong by showing a ‘Mowgli’ that is not really for children, (Kipling’s novels are not really classified by modern standards easily), but this is not what the audiences demand, and in the end, it is their call. They made it. M: ALOTJ is not the success of 2016’s remake. We can move on.

…This is it for now, see you all soon!

Testament of Loki - Dec 13

To continue the topic about 2018’s novels, let us…not make a stink like a mink, (cough, I thought this was funny), but talk about… ‘The Testament of Loki’, for a change. Written by Joanne Harris, this…actually has nothing to do with Disney, MCU, or Riordan, at least not too much.

What is this novel? It is a sequel to an earlier ‘The Gospel of Loki’ novel. That one was yet another retelling of the Norse myths, just one done from the point of view of Loki, from the beginning to Ragnarok. That is it, really, as far as fantasy novels go, this is as basic as you can get; whereas the Greco-Roman myths never had a proper conclusion, they have sort of faded away by the time of Christ, the Norse myths actually did: the Ragnarok would come, the old world and practically everyone will die – good, bad and ugly – and there will be some sort of a new age, a new world, and everything and everyone will be new. The end, and has vague echoing similarity with both monotheism – Judaism, Christianity, even Islam – and dualism, such as Zoroastrianism. Jolly good, but then we get ‘The Testament of Loki’, and this is where the novels change.

On one hand, ‘Testament’ is a YA novel, not unlike those of Riordan or J-Ro. In the first half of ‘Testament’, Loki escapes the afterlife via a video game of all things, takes over a body of a teenage girl and eventually helps her come to grips with her identity, fix her life, find her backbone, etc. – a not too different story from the other YA novels, even the LJ trilogy that became briefly popular during the summer of 2018 due to the movie made from the first novel. Now, of course, those books can be found in various stores, offered at a discount, but this is how the glory of the world passes.

And on the other hand, ‘Testament’ in the second half is Loki hopping all over dimensions, doing his best to stay ahead from Odin, Gullveig-Heid, Mimir, and even Thor – and he succeeds as he gets to be reborn as a new person at the novel’s end. Here, the tone of ‘Testament’ shifts from a typical YA to something more along the lines of Neil Geiman, with some Lovecraft thrown in, purposefully or not. In the second half, ‘Testament’ becomes one crazy ride of a novel, (on Sleipnir, no less!), and the only thing spoiling it is Loki’s…no, not so much narcissism, as his complete lack of understanding when he should fall silent and not make it all about him.

…Yeah, good luck with that – whether it’s Marvel or not, Loki always makes it about him; in A: IW movie, he dies, supposedly. Cough. He already ‘died’ in various films, including the ‘Thor: Dark World’ movie, so good luck with that as well. Loki has to keep on moving, even if it is just his mouth, because otherwise? He just might stop existing and explode/die/etc. However, in ‘Testament’, this attitude of the Trickster becomes exhausting, and people may stop rooting for him and just wait for the novel to end, which it does, as Loki had tricked everyone, outmaneuvered everyone, and gets to be reborn as a new person in a new world, where he gets a much expected break from activity, because even he as a baby cannot move around much, (well, not at first). Somehow, despite his, and his author’s, best intentions, the readers are not rooting from him as much as they did in the beginning of ‘Testament’ anymore. Ms. Harris, who had created this version of Loki, might have succeeded a bit too well in making him into an anti-hero, and as such, he is hard to root for in the novel’s end.

Oh, and the YA human characters of ‘Testament’? Yes, they get largely abandoned/dismissed by the second part of the novel, which decreases the novel’s impact on one hand, and on the other makes ‘Testament’ almost into two novels – one that is Loki’s adventure among the modern YA Americans, and the other which is Loki doing Odin’s bidding and rebuilding the old world, building a new one from scratch, etc. Yes, this is not unlike Ms. Cervantes ‘Storm Runner’ novel, which is also really two novels stitched into one, and we have discussed Ms. Cervantes’ ‘Storm Runner’ and their relationship with Mr. Riordan and his PJ-verse the last time. Now let’s just admit that ‘Storm Runner’, (and ‘Aru Shah’) is supposed to expand the PJ-verse and bring new literary life into it; whether they succeeded is another story – ‘Aru Shah’ feels completely unrelated to PJ-verse, while ‘Storm Runner’ feels like a weird imitation of the original, and it is not even so very flattering. ‘Testament’, on the other hand-

…On the other hand, Ms. Harris was never a part of Mr. Riordan’s PJ-verse; ‘Gospel’ was a simple retelling of the Norse myths, while ‘Testament’ is a more experimental piece, (which is mostly successful, too). ‘Gospel’ was an alternative to PJ-verse’s ‘Magnus’ subsection, and while it was never as successful as PJ-verse novels, it still worked. So has ‘Testament’ – because it cruised the coattails of its’ predecessor and because it dips its’ toe enough into the YA waters to swim in the wake of passing of HP novels, and PJ-verse novels, and similar novels; what will happen when Ms. Harris decides to write a sequel to ‘Testament’ is another story.

Of course, this in itself is an open question; Patricia Briggs’ novels – Mercedes Thompson and co. – are even more successful and popular than Ms. Harris’ books are, (about Loki and otherwise), but lately Ms. Briggs seems to have gone onto a downswing: lately there are no new novels by her, which is strange, since the last ones were some of the best. Of course, maybe she just does not want to write books anymore, for whatever reasons – in real life she owns a ranch, (or something along those lines), and doesn’t need income from books; she possibly writes (wrote) MT and co. novels for entertainment, and if she doesn’t want to write, she won’t. The end for MT and her universe. Anything else?

…Yes, there is a rumor that a new MT novel is coming in May 2019, but we will have to wait and see if anything comes out of it. For the moment, MT novels are on a hiatus…but we got plenty of other novels, including ‘The Testament of Loki’, to fill in the gap in the meanwhile.

This is it for this time. See you all soon!

Rick Riordan and co. - Dec 12

Now what, you make ask, in regards to our last talk concerning Disney and TLK, about Rick Riordan? While his fellow R-author, J-Ro, is busy with her ‘Fantastic Beasts’ movies, what does he do?

Well, he has written an anthology set in the world of Magnus Chase, about the 9 worlds. And?

And, sadly, it is no cat’s meow, but rather a tangled bag. As I said, it is an anthology, and…

There is Odin’s story, as he tries to figure out what the Valkyries are up, and who is the leader that they need. It comes across as comic relief, with little content beyond humor. When Riordan does humor, it is good and light…but perhaps slightly too light.

Then there is the story of Samirah’s boyfriend/fiancé/etc., Amir. Sabirah and Alex have to rescue him from a necromancer and a pair of evil pants. (Seriously!) So?

Well, the problem is that when Riordan was designing his Magnus characters, he was trying to go for political acumen. In an excerpt from one of his proper Magnus novels, Sabirah flies from her meeting with Magnus as ‘a super Muslima’. Sigh. When Riordan was writing down those lines, he was probably thinking about this joke: ‘What do you call a Muslim woman who flies a plane? A pilot’. This sort of American/Canadian humor was supposed to ease interracial tensions in the North American communities. Here is a hint: it did not work. For as long as there is freedom of opinion, there will be North Americans who will not trust Muslims, and there will be Muslims who will reciprocate in kind, if not up the ante. The governments of Canada and USA as well as their Middle Eastern counterparts can, and should do their best to counter the rise of such negative feelings, but some groan- and cringe-worthy jokes should not be a part of the counter, for they are not helping anyone.

…As for Samirah and Alex’s stories, they are set in Jotunheim and Muspelheim; the latter gets an especially bad rep because apparently Riordan considers it to be sort of a Norse Hell, while Asgard’s Heaven. This not so, not exactly – when it came to life after death, the Norse had only two destinations: Asgard, and Hel. Asgard was the destination of all of those heroic warriors that fell in battle; Hel was where everyone else ended up at, regardless of their lifestyle during, well, their lifetime. Norse pagan values had nothing in common with Christian; the Norse were among the last of the Europeans to convert to Christianity, and Muspelheim was no Hell, but rather the embodiment of the destructive aspect of fire, period. The exact details are unknown, but as their myth of Ragnarok shows, the Norse believed that their world – actually, their entire universe – would be destroyed by fire and ice, but especially fire, as embodied by Muspelheim and its’ king, the first giant Surt or Surtur (Surtr). He would inspire Tolkien’s balrogs, which, in turn, would inspire Marvel’s version of Surtur, (as seen in the ‘Thor: Ragnarok’ movie) – but Muspelheim was no Hell.

In the ‘9 worlds’ anthology, Alex is the one who went down there, where he defeated and embarrassed Surtur, and-

And the thing is that Alex is the gender-fluid character of Riordan’s multiverse. That is very commendable, the problem is that gender-fluid people aren’t very overt and you don’t see them very often in real life, and if you do, you may not realize it, especially during a Canadian winter, when all people, regardless of their gender, tend to dress in thick and warm clothing, preferring practicality over gender-specific clothing. If they speak, it is another thing – to hear a man speak in a woman’s voice and vice versa can be startling and surprising, but again, these are not occurrences that happen very often in one’s life.

So, where does Alex fit into this?  In ‘9 worlds’ he is depicted as…a boy, with nothing specifically gender-fluid about him. In real life, this is not a problem – a person with sexually alternative lifestyle can look as regular or irregular as they want; in Riordan’s books, where Alex is a representative of sexual minorities this depiction feels like a letdown instead.

Speaking of sexual minorities, what is going on with Hearthstone and Blitzen? (Aside from the fact that Hearthstone got depicted as a variant Draco Malfoy for his part). Hearthstone in particular got to rescue Inga the Huldra (a Norse nature spirit, sort of intermediate between a rusalka and a troll) in a very old fashioned way in a very old fashioned story – the rescue of a damsel, (here from a troll, mostly). Couldn’t Riordan design a better adventure for the elf? Blitzen in particular got to rescue Thor from an evil (eviller?) dwarf named Andvari instead…

…Yes, in my opinion, those are the same symptoms that are developed further in Riordan’s Apollo series – either Riordan or Disney, (who is sponsoring Riordan or whatever) had had enough of political correctness, progress and etc., and are just trying to write regular YA novels without much sexual minorities, racial minorities and such similar political progressives. Samirah, (getting back to her), went to Jotunheim to check on an egg of a magical oversized chicken and had to outmaneuver a giant; to Helheim went TJ, who had to restrain Garm the Norse hell hound, and both of those adventures were ok, but kind of underwhelming, restricted. Riordan had some good ideas in ‘9 worlds’ the anthology, (the last ones are Halfborn in Vanaheim and Molly in Niflheim, built along similar lines as Samirah and TJ’s adventures), but due to the specifics of ‘9 worlds’ they never got fully developed, remaining more of a disappointment instead…

But then – on topic of Riordan – is Jennifer Cervantes’ ‘The Storm Runner’ novel. Just like Roshani Chokshi’s ‘Aru Shah and the End of Time’ novel, this is a novel that is associated with Mr. Riordan and his universe and is built on the same lines that his YA novels are built: a teen – or a preteen – discovers that one of their parents is a god and hijinks follow. The two novels are different – Chokshi’s ‘Aru Shah’ is very dialogue heavy and description heavy and while it has some references to Riordan, it has some Rowling references as well and comes across as somewhat silly. It is good for a laugh, but its’ humor is kind of immature, and in general Ms. Chokshi just tries to hard to shoehorn her YA novel as a teenage/pre-teenage girl read.

Ms. Cervantes and her novel are different; it is more mature, edgier, and it feels like two novels stitched into one – her own novel about acceptance, (here the differences are physical deficiencies rather than sexual or racial minorities), including Mesoamerican mythology, and a Riordan-imitation novel, also regarding Mesoamerican mythology. To compound matters further, she used Riordan’s ‘Lightning Thief’ novel for plot and plot points, with variations; i.e. it is not the hero’s mother who gets taken to the underworld, but his dog, (so the entire novel takes on a very weird tinge), Grover the satyr’s role is taken over by Zane’s – the titular character’s – wrestler-wannabe uncle, and the entire novel begins to feel like an imitation of the aforementioned ‘Lightning Thief’, with the injected story of team Zane confronting a pair of selfish twins, (Jordan and Bird). They are supposed to help Zane save the world from the god of death, Ah-Puch, (whose name serves as a recipient for some jokes that again come across as immature rather than funny), but just eat-up Zane’s time and pad-up Ms. Cervantes’ novel instead. While both novels promise sequels in spring and autumn of 2019, it is anyone’s guess as to whether this will happen.

And where’s Rick Riordan in all of this? He is the one writing the introductions to those novels. Why? Probably to show that both Ms. Chokshi and Ms. Cervantes have his stamp of approval and are a part of ‘his’ universe rather than independent works. Ms. Cervantes’ novel comes off as a professional imitation of ‘the Lightning Thief; it is professionally distorted – dog as opposed to mother, the issue of appearances, (good vs. ugly, inside vs. outside), but still, is it flattering? …And on the other hand, we have Ms. Chokshi’s ‘Aru Shah’, which succeeds – as an amateur – where Ms. Cervantes’ professionalism fails: ‘Aru Shah’ is a completely independent novel that has nothing to do with Mr. Riordan’s works as such Ms. Chokshi may have had to insert some concrete references to Mr. Riordan’s works, however oblique they were; as a consequence, they stick like sore thumbs in her novel.

Therefore, this is the current stage of Mr. Riordan’s input into the Western literature: the Apollo series, (that feels as if it is on hiatus while Mr. Riordan and co. hammer out the kinks), a couple of anthologies, (‘9 worlds’ and a ‘Kane Chronicles’ one that feels like a mix between an anthology and an activity book…with a throwaway to a semi-bisexual Setne, a villain – ouch!), and the above-mentioned novels of Ms. Chokshi, (an independent work, basically), and of Ms. Cervantes, (an on the nose imitation of ‘Lightning Thief’). Not something to be proud about, one suspects.

…And then there is J-Ro, who is not doing so hot either. Yes, by now she has three illustrated novels (re-editions, with Jim Kay), as opposed to Riordan’s only one, (Chad Rocco), but they all are selling the same way – badly. There is the release of the ‘Crimes of Grindelwald’ script released in a book form, but it is going the same way as ‘Cursed Child’ did – badly. Regardless of the movies’ success, and of the fact that ‘HPGF’ is being remade into a concert, the sun is setting upon J-Ro, as it does upon Rick Riordan.

…Well, this is it for now – see you all soon!

Dynasties - Dec 11

Obligatory disclaimer: sometimes life sucks, but right now? It is more tolerable. Let us move on?

‘The Gifted’ are on a hiatus until January 1, 2019. This is a doubtful move by the TV show in question; they tried this strategy back with their S1, and it wasn’t really successful, in regards to the numbers; right now, S2 is longer – 16 episodes vs. 13, but they already played about 55% of them, 9 out of 16, so it’s anyone’s guess as to how they will arrange the last 7. What is next?

DC’s ‘Elseworlds’ ‘Arrowverse’ special was aired this and last week, and it works. It introduced a new villain – the Monitor – and eventually Super-Girl, the Martian Manhunter, and the rest of their people will need to battle an evil Super-Man. Very exciting! However, there are plenty of people discussing this story arc, no doubt, so let us talk about something else.

…No, it is not the excitement of breeding the various breeds of goldfish, or domestic turkeys, or whatever. I am sure that it is very exciting from the inside, but again, not the topic I want to discuss now – rather, it is yet another TV show that went down lately: BBC’s ‘Dynasties’.

No, it is not a yet another GoT rip-off, well, not really. Rather, it was yet another David Attenborough’s special – a five-part series about various animals around the world.

Well, not really – the lion and the wild dog came from the African savanna, and the chimpanzee – the common chimpanzee, not the bonobo – is living right next door to them in the African jungle, so it’s not much of a stretch, (some chimpanzee populations actually venture into the savanna, but unlike the human ancestors they still give its’ predators – lions, wild dogs, leopards, hyenas, etc. – a wide berth. They have not mastered fire either, though they still have tools. Technically, that is not a big issue: humanity had mastered fire only at the Homo Erectus/Homo Ergaster level, so chimpanzees have some time yet… unless humanity drives them to extinction first.

Now, this brings us back to the ‘Dynasties’ proper – they, this TV series, was about conservation of wildlife, especially the last episode, about the Bengal tigers. …Yes, according to some data, there are only two species/subspecies of tigers – the island tiger, (the Sumatran tiger), and the mainland tiger, a single species/subspecies, from India to Siberia, but I am not so sure that that P.O.V. is correct; and I reckon that this last, tiger episode was the weakest among the entire series. That is not surprising, many of American, (Western, actually), books, TV series, etc., the conclusion is often the weakest chain in the link. However…

There are rumors that clouds are gathering over Sir David himself. If that is so, then it sucks, because Sir David had been one of the best people that had ever come from the British soil, and his TV series, specials, nature documentaries, etc., were some of the best that had ever come to TV and the Internet. However, it is always possible that times are moving on, and Sir David is being left behind. This sucks, a whole lot, but real life sucks as a rule. Period.

Back with the ‘Dynasties’ proper, one of the weaker aspects it was the composition. As it was said before, the lion and the wild dog are almost two sides of the same coin, the chimpanzee is their neighbour, (a stretch, but not so much), but then we have the tiger, and the penguin.

The emperor penguin is the odd beast out. It is an Antarctic fowl among tropical beasts, but hey – everyone loves penguins, and the ‘Dynasties’ TV crew did their best to sell those flightless birds – and they did. However, the tigers? They were the weakest, and the most intense. ‘Dynasties’ did their best at selling the tigers at their most vulnerable, that it worked…and it was too much. Somehow, if the penguin episode felt like the odd one out, then the tiger episode felt like the weakest. Sorry, but them’s the breaks.

…Yes, the public perception mattered – the tiger and the lion have two very different reputations in the eyes of the public, especially Western public. Why this is, so is a difficult question, so we will not talk about right now. Moreover, it is not the point – the point is that ‘Dynasties’ have fumbled the ball at their last tiger episode, and that’s that. The series is over, (there is no signs of a sequel), so we have to live with that, and we can. Whether Sir David, (who may have his own real life problems), can, is another story.

Speaking of the other stories, there is the remark of ‘The Lion King’ looming in the future. Influenced by the remake of the ‘Jungle Book’, TLK is coming on strong, but-

But while TJB was written by Rudyard Kipling, who didn’t care for political correctness (especially by the contemporary standards) and who tried to include some real life wildlife facts in his books, (initially, TJB was a duology), TLK was, or is, ‘Hamlet’.

No, seriously, by now it is openly admitted that TLK was a remake of ‘Hamlet’, which was never big on real life wildlife, but on many other things. If you google it, you can find plenty of essays and discussions on it, in particular whether ‘Hamlet’ was a Catholic or a Protestant play, in regards to the ghost, because Catholic and Protestant branches of Christianity have two different opinions of ghosts in relation to, well, Christianity and the Bible, and that is important, because it leads to the question as to whether or not the Ghost was a genuine ghost, or an evil spirit who sold Hamlet a load of baloney, and that leads to the question as to whether or not Hamlet was honestly righting a wrong, or just killing many people for the sake of revenge. The truth being is that regardless of the veracity of the Ghost’s info, Hamlet overreached himself; if he had killed Claudius in private, while the other man was praying (and failing) in private, then the play would’ve taken a very different turn; instead, in reality, we had Hamlet killed Claudius as he wanted to – in front of many people, with a large proportion of them also dying. Hamlet did not care about Denmark or its’ people – he just wanted revenge for his father, which, for him, was the righting of the wrong. Bully for him, really.

TLK, on the other hand, tried to be more derived, and as a result on one hand, it isn’t realistic from wildlife’s point of view – since the 1990s, plenty of wildlife scientists pointed out that real life lions and hyenas don’t behave as they do in the initial TLK movie, and on the other? There is at least one theory that equates Zazu with Polonius, the crooked counsellor from ‘Hamlet’, suggesting that he had been conspiring with Scar to get rid of Mufasa and Simba from the start. It is an interesting theory, especially since the original Polonius is not so straightforward a character himself, so it will be interesting to see as to how Disney’s remake of the TLK will come out.

Finally, in summer 2019 the second ‘Godzilla’ movie is coming out. Here, he is facing off with King Ghidorah, and as someone said, ‘what is a king against a god’? King Ghidorah is taller than Godzilla is in this incarnation, but a good amount of his size are his wings, and tails, and necks with heads – he’s tall, not big, so Godzilla has a good chance in a straightforward face-off that we were shown in this trailer.

In other news, in one of the original ‘Godzilla’ movies, the titular character teams up with Rodan and Mothra to defeat King Ghidorah, and this trailer shows precisely those other two kaiju – or titans, in this particular incarnation. Maybe they will work together in the summer 2019 movie too, we will have to see. Of course, the big question is where’s King Kong in all of this, for so far, we have seen no sign of him, but again, we will may learn more about all of this in the future.

Well, this is it for now – see you all in the future!

The Gifted: gaMe changer - Dec 4

The obligatory disclaimer: sometimes real life sucks, and sometimes it does not. Yay, really. Now onto ‘the Gifted’.

…This week’s episode was called the ‘gaMe changer’, and it certainly lived up to its’ name. The Inner Circle has destroyed the control center for the mutants’ control collars, and now many mutants are free. With the ‘regular’ society already inflamed and divided on the mutant issue, Reeva’s plan for taking over USA is beginning to take shape and it is a workable one, too. Whether she will be able to keep the United States once she captures them, is another story, and, moreover, one that we will get to see later, after the winter break, (technically speaking). For now, more new mutant characters will be appearing on the show; whether they will stay, or go, as Rebecca did, is another story.

…Rebecca got killed off in this week’s episode, incidentally. Judging by S1, no return from the dead for her; ‘the Gifted’ are not like AoS in that fashion. (With AC, there is not enough material to make a statement). This brings us to Daredevil, or rather – to ‘Daredevil’, who got cancelled at the end of last month.

Is this noteworthy? Well, yes – ‘Reverie’ might have also gotten cancelled during November 2018, (albeit in the beginning, rather than the end), but ‘Daredevil’ lasted longer – for 3 seasons rather than 1, and it was much more exciting, proportionally speaking, than ‘Reverie’ had been. ‘Reverie’ was not a bad show, but it was very heavily influenced by AoS on one hand, and kind of… not exactly insipid, but certainly lackluster on the other. ‘Reverie’ got cancelled with a whimper; the exit of ‘Daredevil’ was more noticeable.

Yes, in part this is because ‘Iron Fist’ and ‘Luke Cage’ were cancelled earlier in November 2018 too; with only JJ still up for grabs on one hand, and with ‘The Defenders’ proper being the weakest of Marvel/Netflix shows, things aren’t looking up for the Defenders team. However, that is acceptable: right now, the most popular theory is that with Disney establishing its’ own version of Netflix/Amazon/Hulu/etc., and as such, it is no longer too interested in cooperating with Netflix proper. (And maybe its’ counterparts as well).

Of course, until Netflix’s copyright for the Defenders’ team run out, Disney will have to tread carefully here, to prevent any conflicts back in the real world. It is already in a bad place regarding its’ other takeover, of SW, so it does not really need to add any of its’ Marvel properties into the mix. With Sony, (regarding its’ universe of Marvel characters or Earth-TRN688), making its’ boundaries clear and established, it might be Netflix’s turn next – or it and Disney might do something completely different, who knows?..

Back to ‘the Gifted’? So far, it is still going strong, with the ‘gaMe changer’ trying to go for something epic, as the Inner Circle releases captured and subdued mutants, the rest of the Strucker family destroying anti-mutant research, and John, from the Mutant Underground, getting captured by Jace and his Purifiers.

Well, technically, the Purifiers’ are not Jace’s, but are more of a free-ranging secret society, like the Freemasons or the Illuminati, but Jace is shown to be taking charge of them lately. Again, it is a question of just how big the Purifiers are, as a movement, but we’ll probably see more of them in the future episodes; right now, John got captured by probably no more than three or four of them, including Jace. Of course, John’s strategy had been to run at their jeep and hold it in place, until he got exhausted, but John has been in a bad place lately, as he and Clarice constantly fought lately, and Marcos was more of a comic relief than anything else.

Pause. This brings us to the fact that by now episodes of ‘the Gifted’ got somewhat, well, disassembled into separate plotlines; Jace capturing John at the end of ‘gaMe changer’ is really the first sign that they are coming together again, and maybe we’ll get something more along the lines of ‘the Gifted’ S1 in the next episode…

And this is it, for now. See you all soon!

The Gifted: the dreaM - Nov 27

Obligatory disclaimer: sometimes, real life does not just suck, but it also hurts. Like, emotionally. Sometimes, your family members are like emotional/energy vampires, and there is nothing that you can do with them…nothing that is truly legal, anyhow. Any solution that results in a funeral with a closed casket/coffin/call it whatever you will has to be wrong than the problem, it just has to!.. And now on to our feature presentation.

‘the dreaM’ of ‘the Gifted’ shows the continuous issue of this TV series: it is conflict-driven, and primarily – it is mutants vs. Sentinel Services. Whenever Sentinel Services went out of the equation, ‘the Gifted’ suffered. In S2, Sentinel Services around in the equation at all; in this episode, Jace isn’t even in it – instead we got yet another friend of Reed Strucker’s father Otto, who’s got an entire institute, (sort of), and whose goal is to learn how to manage and probably to suppress the X-gene, which makes mutants mutants. Sorry about repetition, but we already had something similar back in S1, so now it feels as if ‘the Gifted’ are going around in circles; it didn’t help AoS, which was notorious in recycling ideas for its’ plot and scripts, and it doesn’t really help ‘the Gifted’ either.

…This is the Strucker plot line, actually – whereas the other two of this episode were Lorna. Her life story, her journey to the current point in time in the world of ‘the Gifted’, and it culminates in her giving up baby Dawn to her aunt, and making Magneto’s token (and yes, this is the first evidence of Magneto/X-Men/Xavier/Brotherhood of Evil Mutants/etc. in the show. Oh, there had been plenty of references, but the token is something different, more real and precise, and Lorna makes into her own headpiece, reminiscent of Polaris – of all of Magneto’s children, she was the one the most like him.

The problem is that this version of Lorna is nothing like the mainline Polaris; by, well, giving up Dawn and all, Lorna has given up herself – her self that had been building up from the S1 premiere until now. Is this a result of FOX and Marvel (MCU) teaming up now, I do not know; true, there are some similarities now between ‘the Gifted’ and AoS & AC, but few and safely buried, so there.

Finally, there were also Thunderbird and Blink searching for Rebecca/Twist as the latter took a runner from the Inner Circle at the beginning of ‘the dreaM’. At the end of the episode, after sharing her small information dump with the not so dynamic duo, she seems to have been either killed or captured, and while that is bad, (especially for her), why…hasn’t she left D.C. yet? She had an entire day, (though the entire chronology of ‘the dreaM’ went jumping around in a non-linear way, and the various flashbacks did not help either), I guess… script reasons?

And the same goes for the John/Clarice fight/argument/etc. It felt contrived in the previous episode, (two weeks ago), and it feels contrived now. John and Clarice, it seems, just decided to fight, and Marcos…either is fanning the flames or is staying out of it entirely. Ditto for Lauren Strucker, even though at the S2 premiere she was shown to be an integral part of the Mutants Underground team. Now, though, the Strucker family has gone down one path and the Mutants’ Underground people – Marcos, Clarice, John – another. A plot device or a plot hole? Who knows, we can only wait and see…

…Well, this is it for now. ‘the dreaM’ had been a lackluster episode; or rather – an unbalanced one. Most of its’ focus, overwhelmingly so, had been on Lorna/Polaris, and ‘the Gifted’, in the past, didn’t do such character-heavy episodes. AoS, on the other hand, did, especially in its’ first seasons, with various effects, but that did not help it either; the S6 finale found AoS at a low point…but that is another story.

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

The Gifted: no Mercy - Nov 13

Tonight, we are back. Real life still sucks – and that even without taking into account that Mr. Stan Lee is gone: I was never his biggest fan, but regardless, his death is being felt already; what is coming out of it is another story; onto ‘the Gifted’?

Well, let us try. This week’s episode - ‘no Mercy’ – was something else; in S2, ‘the Gifted’ are having issues into combining all of their narratives into one, and it shows.

What has happened in ‘no Mercy’? The Inner Circle robbed a bank. Jace met some sort of an evil politician/TV show host/someone-someone, and is going to star on his show. And the Mutant Underground are dealing with the fact that Reed’s problems are getting worse, and that they suck, at the same time. Let us elaborate?

‘no Mercy’ felt like three or four separate stories with little connecting them, period. The bank story line with the Inner Circle feels completely detached from the Mutant Underground story line, period. At least with Jace, the show’s scriptwriters put in effort to connect his TV appearance with the Inner Circle’s bank attack, and showed his inner struggle. (Hey, it sells the numbers, ratings and otherwise, so there!) The Mutant Underground, on the other hand? We had the Struckers doing their family issues thing, while on the other hand, we had Marcos all but stirring up trouble between John and Clarice regarding the Morlocks. Sorry, I still enjoy ‘the Gifted’, but John and Clarice’s conflict feels especially contrived – it really does. As we have seen in the past, the Mutant Underground, (i.e. Marcos) was aware of the Morlocks before S2, (technically speaking), so what is their problem with Morlocks? This conflict just holds no water, even by AoS’ standards, and that is just sad, because in S1 ‘the Gifted’ were more like AC, than AoS…

Anything else? Rebecca has a bigger chip on her shoulder than the rest of the Inner Circle do, now many people are dead, and Reeva’s true test as a leader has come: how will she handle Rebecca and her disobedience? She did have a plan, she gave Rebecca an order, and it did not work. Reeva will need to bring Rebecca to heel eventually, because if she does not, Rebecca might turn on her, and Reeva’s entire master plan will derail completely.

Here is a fact: as far as leadership goes, Reeva pictures herself more like Dumbledore than Riddle. She is willing to sacrifice anyone for the greater good, (whatever she perceives it to be), but good is the key word here. Rebecca is more like a Death Eater instead – she does not care about who gets in her way, as long as she succeeds. Andy Strucker is currently riding the metaphorical tiger, and it is an open question if he will succeed. (The fact that Rebecca’s character was upgraded is put aside – real life matters, even on a TV show, you know?) What next?

Well, on one hand, ‘the Gifted’ were showing Rebecca to be bad news since she appeared; the question is, is she irredeemably bad? (And what about Andy? Where does he fall here, again?) AoS tried its’ hand with redemption, (especially in S2), and made a hash of it; AC tried something similar…also in S2…but got cancelled after the second season, so that was the end of it; the greater MCU is just meh on it…so it’s anyone’s guess as how this will turn out. The same goes for Jace, though with him it’s more of an open question will he become just a narrative engine to expose the social ills of the world of ‘the Gifted’, or will he come into open interactions with the Mutant Underground (or any other mutant characters on the show) instead.

Anything else? S2 of ‘Runaways’ is coming on December 2018; S2 of ‘C&D’ – in spring 2019, and detective Mayhem will play a proportionate role to Ty and Dy, who are the titular characters after all. Real life does suck, but not always, it seems.

Well, this is it for now; see you all soon!

The Gifted: afterMath - Oct 30

And we are back. More or less, certainly limping, but for now we are back. Yay!

Back on TV, ‘the Gifted’ continue to impress, as the plotlines finally get moving. In this week’s episode – ‘afterMath’ – we have Andy make a new friend, whom they have rescued in the previous episode. Her name is Rebecca, so far, she is not one of the main cast, and her powers are turning things inside out. Her approach appears to be similar to Andy and Lauren, but her attitude is quite different: Andy did hesitate in attacking Lauren and Marcos back then, but Rebecca manifests a vibe that she would not.

…Some people say that there are two approaches to everything, a good and a bad one. The two terms aren’t fully interchangeable with right and wrong, but the fact is that starting with ‘afterMath’, ‘the Gifted’ will begin to show the, well, ‘evil-ness’ of the Inner Circle, as their lofty goals hide some unsavory means of getting there. Of course, the question of whether the game is worth the candle and whether the means justify the ends, will never be answered – at least not in real life – but on TV, as ‘the Gifted’ will continue to develop, maybe we get an answer in that universe at least.

Back to ‘the Gifted’ proper? While Andy was on his date with Rebecca, and Lauren was recovering from their fight with their father, their hospital was invaded by the Purifiers and Jace. So far, Jace had done nothing openly ‘evil’, and in fact is shown to have had more mixed feelings in the past, before his daughter died, about the mutants, but that was in the past and in the present, he clearly is not a friend to the mutants at all. How more can his TV character remain somewhat ambiguous is anyone’s guess, but eventually he will have to make a choice and after the events in S1, when the Frost sisters mind-forced his partner to kill himself, the odds are not in pro-mutant favor.

Speaking of mutants, the last main plotline of ‘afterMath’ was about Clarice and Marcos taking their rescued group of mutants to the Morlocks, into the sewers. The Morlocks’ take on the human-mutant conflict is to stay out of it, by hiding in the sewers, getting by by all sorts of means, including thieving, and generally that is it. They are not fighters, they are hiders. The Inner Circle might be evil, (at least from the P.O.V. of the Mutant Underground), but at least they are proactive. The Morlocks are not evil, but they are escapists, and from the P.O.V. of the Mutant Underground, that is just as bad. The Mutant Underground are good, (well, this is their story and they’re sticking to it, at least for now, even though at least some of their allies left them hanging instead), but they are also fighters, not escapists, and so they and Morlocks are going to clash, especially since the Morlocks don’t like them very much either. They are not looking for a fight, but their leader is interested in Clarice/Blink and her mutant portal powers – and John is not going to swallow that at all, especially since he had spent this episode recovering from his own injuries and growing increasingly frustrated with everyone and everything. Given that Clarice herself is feeling short-tempered lately, this can be very bad, for the entire Mutant Underground – but we will have to wait and see as to what will happen next.

…This is it for tonight; see you all soon! (Hopefully).

Daredevil S3 - Oct 23

The changes come and changes go, in real life they suck, but you can adapt and try something new, just because you do not want to go crazy or worse. On TV, on the other hand…well, ‘Iron Fist’ was cancelled, as we knew even before ‘Daredevil’ S3 was released, and now, it seems, ‘Luke Cage’ is as well.

Still, there are some differences between ‘Iron Fist’ and ‘Luke Cage’ – while theories about the former continue to abound, (most consider the fact that it wasn’t making enough money to be the key fact here), with ‘Luke Cage’ it is more straightforward – differences between Netflix, the crew, and co. It shows too – ‘Iron Fist’ ended with some sort of a resolution, at least; ‘Luke Cage’ – in mid-swing, (so to speak), just as the Deadly Nightshade or whoever was rising to challenge Luke in her turn. Ouch. What next?

‘Daredevil’ S3 has arrived last week, we got introduced to this version of Bullseye, and it was interesting. At least at some point the team of ‘Daredevil’ made Bullseye to be the antithesis of the titular hero – guess Matt really needed it. Of course, with ‘Iron Fist’ and ‘Luke Cage’ gone, ‘the Defenders’ appear to be even less unlikely than they did after ‘Jessica Jones’ S2, where no mention of them really appeared; well, now with the cancellations, they may be the next to follow. Anything else?

‘The Gifted’ may or may not air tonight, due to the World Game (or whatever) it is called – real life sucks, see above. The Americans, of course, and especially their current president are still one-step ahead from the rest of us, in regards to ‘the migrant caravan’ or whatever. In the U.K., on the other hand, no actual evidence of Russian temperance was found, meaning yeah, that all of those cries of ‘Wolf! Wolf!’ were a fabled lie. How will the U.K. get out of this revelation? Ask the wading birds, such as the avocets, in the swamp – they will tell you how!

(Yes, I watched the ‘Miss Peregrine’ movie online. Miss Avocet was not a bad character, but the avocet is a wading bird, built almost like a mini-heron or stork. Rather than short and plump, Miss Avocet should have been tall and skinny instead, but who cares? She was just an episodic character anyhow, and regardless of her appearance? She was still neurotic).

Anything else? Frankly, no. Real life still sucks, and while you can try to manage it, sometimes you just cannot. Of course, on TV, things are not always so rosy either, as ‘Daredevil’ S3, (featuring no mention of ‘Jessica Jones’, ‘Luke Cage’, or ‘Iron Fist’) can attest. Still, let us wish Matt and co. the best of luck and move on.

…This is it for now; see you all soon!

The Gifted: outMatched - Oct 16

The adventures of the mutants continue, but first – the obligatory disclaimer. Real life sucks, change hurts, and I cannot guarantee that I will be able to review ‘The Gifted’ in the following weeks, and not just because our TV set was testy over the weekend. You’ve been worn, and now onto the main topic: in this week’s episode – ‘outMatched’ – the Mutant Underground found themselves, well, outmatched by the Inner Circle once again, while Jace has made contact with the Purifiers, at last. To elaborate?

The entire plotline of Jace in this episode was actually well done and designed. The Purifiers do not appear to be too different in their approach from the Mutant Underground, truth be told. They are not exactly supported or approved by law enforcement either – but then again, neither did the KKK in real life; there probably were supported unofficially by, and even approved by, people, even political people, but officially? They were criminals, hence the whole secrecy, hoods and robes thing.

…And now, in modern times, in real life, we got the Republicans, on one hand, who seem to embrace the alt-right groups, such as the Proud Boys, (whatever their details are), and have candidates who spew racist rhetoric, (well, at least it ain’t Nazist, but this is a small comfort at best, especially by American Integration standards), while the Democrats, on the other hand, seem to be going leftist and socialist – in response? What is next, an all-American version of Hitler vs. Stalin? American Civil War version IV? This is not what USA needs, and it needs division just as little.

Again, the problem is not Russia exactly; the problem is that USA has a very weak state and many very powerful individuals, each of whom has their own idea in which direction to take America to success…and they are all fighting about it and not getting anything done. The result is, well, chaos, and the reason why USA was not toppled yet is either because its’ opponents have its’ own problems, (like Russia), or are not willing to have America dismantled for real, (like China) – yet. In the future, this may change, especially if America itself does not change. The more its’ leadership fights, the more fighting drips down below, and the same goes for fractioning, partition, and separation. If the American society fractions far enough, it will fall apart completely, into, well, fractions. If that happens we’ll end up either with a USA that isn’t too different from the world of ‘The Gifted’, with a distinctly Nazist undertone, (especially in S1, now – not so much), or with n USA at all, but rather a semi-balkanized North American continent, with Canada in the north and Mexico in the south, and how will they fare in such a mess is another question, for another time.

Back to the show? In ‘outMatched’ there was a lot of running, a lot of action, a lot of John posturing very manly with his firefighter’s axe and a machete, (or maybe even a cutlass), but little that actually was done.

Well, no – the Inner Circle, especially Lorna and Andy, have released a crowd of mentally-disturbed mutants, and the Mutant Underground have to take care of them now, especially since the Inner Circle also forced or coerced the asylum’s staff into admitting their guilt – before presumably executing them or something along those lines. As a result, the Struckers…let us recap what the Struckers did separately. We have Andy and Lauren having their first big confrontation and Lauren lost. Maybe she was pulling her punches. Maybe she underestimated just how intensely Andy was training during this hiatus. Regardless, she got knocked out cold. This brings us to the parents. We got Catelyn…sorry, Caitlin Strucker channelling her inner Cersei Lannister by drugging a junkie mutant hacker so that they could help their team and rescue, cough, Andy, and maybe Lorna. That didn’t work, and Graph – the poor sap in question – almost died as well, causing Reed to challenge his wife at last regarding just what they are doing and whom they are channelling, and how they are better than the Inner Circle? And then his powers popped-up again and he got forced to pick-up his pills from the floor in the most pathetic scene of the entire episode; Jaime Lannister pats him on the back sympathetically – he knows both about tricky hands and loss of dignity that is related to them – and suggests that maybe Mr. Strucker should talk to Ser Luke Skywalker regarding prosthetic limbs. Luke is ready and willing to advice, especially since he got killed in the canon. Reed hates them both.

That is the Struckers, really. They are going for some character-driven plot-development here, as do everyone else – Jace and the rest of the Mutant Underground. Jace has finally decided to talk to the Purifiers at last – well, what else can he do? He is on the outs with his wife for real and he just cannot be a civilian and he needs to do something than just stay in some motel and watch TV, not forever, while the rest of the Mutant Underground… Their confrontation with Lorna was more lackluster than Lauren’s with Andy – at least the Strucker siblings talked to each other, while Lorna just stared at John and Clarice and released the patients. That is it. Marcos/Eclipse provided some support to Lauren but got taken out by Andy as well. Not very impressive either. And now the Inner Circle got their new mystery mutant member/weapon and who knows what they will do next? We will just have to wait and see it next week – hopefully. If real life permits.

This is it for now, though – see you all soon!

FH: Shaolin, Tiandi, Jiang Jun - Oct 15

…Sometimes life gives you lemons even though you have no idea as to how to make lemonade. Sometimes it does give you lemonade instead, even though you were not expecting it, (or really needing it, truth be told). But – a silver lining on any cloud and so forth. Where were we?

Ah yes, FH has finally revealed all of its new characters. Let us look at them. We already discussed Nuxia yesterday; today we are beginning with the Shaolin monk – as opposed to a Hungarian short track speeder skater, whose last name is also Shaolin. Yeah, real life sometimes is simply bizarre. We have talked about him yesterday too, in regards to the hook swords – the gun staff was another one of his weapons, though it fell short of its’ Maori counterpart – a staff-slash-club. Seriously, there was no reason as to why Maori should not have won, and yet he lost the fight – but we talked about it yesterday too. The Shaolin monastery is also famous for its’ Kung Fu, but there was little of it in DW, and FH is all about the weapons, so it is doubtful that we will see any especial martial arts in the upcoming update. The Nuxia, of course, had some unusual moves, but then the hook swords are unusual, exotic weapons, so naturally her moves are unusual; the Shaolin’s are more straightforward…

Speaking of swords, next we got the Tiandi and his dao saber. Well, maybe it it’s the dao saber, but that’s what it looks like – the blade that was used by DW’s Ming Warriors, when they faced-off against the French Musketeers – and lost. Were the weapons mismatched? Not exactly; the Musketeers’ had more derived weapons, still not as good as the modern ones, but already more derived, reliable and better than the Ming Warriors’ were.

Any weirdness? Perhaps the fact that the face-off took place on a mountain pass of some sort that the Musketeers were storming, and the Ming were doing their best to hold them off; spoiler alert – they failed. The Musketeers won; their rapier triumphed over the saber, but it should be kept in mind that they also had a parrying dagger with them. Here is where DW would bend its’ own rules some – sometimes one team had ‘an extra’ weapon over the other team. The hosts didn’t really offer much justification, and even if they did, still having the Americans have 4 weapons, while the French had only 3, (the S3 premiere), for example, looked rather dishonest. The Americans love to win, but they prefer if it is done fairly…or at least not by obvious cheating, as it happened on DW. Then again, DW got its’ comeuppance – it is still cancelled these days, and there is no talk of it being rebooted. Pity, for it was a good show despite its’ flaws…but FH is filling its’ gap in the game world, at least.

Finally, we got the Jiang Jun. Apparently that is a literal name, not a title or whatever; it is the name of some mythical Chinese warrior or hero. His weapon is the guandao, which is the ancient Chinese version of the naginata used by team Samurai already – or the western glaive. The glaive’s main difference from a lance is that it was not used from horseback, but more on foot, against cavalry. It has a bigger tip than the lance does, and in case of both the naginata and the guandao, it is curved, more like a saber than a lance, rapier or spear, which are straight, and can stab instead.

This brings us to another Ubisoft game that was launched this year – their latest Assassin adventure. Apparently, Ubisoft hasn’t severed all of its’ ties with AWE Me YouTube series, as it had commissioned them to make the broken spear of king Leonidas, (featured in the 300 Spartans movie), and a khopis. The spear is a spear, save that its’ haft is broken, so it can be used as a sword or a rapier of some sort, while the khopis is a Greek adaptation of the traditional ancient Egyptian khopesh, which was a sickle-shaped blade, and according to some sources, the sharp edge was the inner, not the outer one, meaning that perhaps the khopesh was more like some sort of a military sickle than a saber.

The saber is mentioned here because the khopis was exactly that – a saber of the Antiquity. In DW’s S2, it was one of the weapons of Alexander the Great, put against Attila the Hun’s Sword of Mars, aka a longsword. Just think the Samurais’ nodachi (or katana), put against the Knights’, well, longsword. The difference is still there…and Alexander lost to Attila, but that face-off was one of the worst in DW from the technical point of view, (and that is unusual – usually DW had the technical side of things done completely right), so we will not go into it this time…

And this is it for now – see you all soon!

FH: Nuxia - Oct 14

Firstly, real life sucks. It sucks in different ways, and for those people who died during hurricane Michael it sucks worst of all, because of obvious reasons, but for the rest of us? We got all sorts of issues, each of our own, and they are not very pleasant, because change usually always hurts – someone. On one of the sides, at least…and very often they are unavoidable. You can try to figure out ways to soften the blow, but as often as not they do not work, especially if you do not want to make things worse and to break the criminal code of your country. On the other hand, maybe you do, on both counts – in which case, good luck to you, you are a greater and/or braver person than I am…

What next? Leaving my life/real life aside, (the mess with/in the Saudi Arabia is growing nastier by the day), we got, well, ‘Iron Fist’. The show got cancelled. The end. Moreover, no one really knows why. With P: NW a while back, at least, you got the entire ‘Impossible Pictures’ getting cancelled/annulled by BBC because reasons. Considering that ‘Impossible Pictures’ was good, this was a bad decision by BBC; certainly after the not-very-impressive ‘Walking with Dinosaurs’ movie, they didn’t try anything new with dinosaurs any time lately…

Back to ‘Iron Fist’? We don’t know, again, as why Netflix ended the series; ‘Daredevil’ is coming back for S3 later this month, ‘Jessica Jones’ and ‘Punisher’ seem to be returning too, ‘Luke Cage’ is up for grabs…

Maybe it is just the matter of money – there is just not enough of it to allow Netflix keep all of their Marvel shows…at least for now. Apparently, they made a statement that ‘the immortal Iron Fist never dies’ or something similar. What does that mean I have no idea.

On that note, let us get to FH. Earlier this week they released the Nuxia, one of the new characters. In real life, Nuxia is a genus of plants that grow in Africa, Middle East, and on some islands in the Indian Ocean, meaning that this word does not have anything in common with China or the rest of the Far East region of Asia…

Now, I must admit, I was genuinely surprised – I have never heard of these plants…and given the sparse information about them, I am guessing that this is because these are some of the more obscure plants, not much known to people outside of professional botany, such as myself. Ergo, let us not stay with Nuxia proper for now, and move onto her signature weapons – the hook swords.

They were shown in DW, S1, as one of the weapons of the Shaolin monk, (who is also featured in FH – or will be, soon enough, properly). As it was mentioned before, that episode – ‘Shaolin monk vs. Maori warrior’ – was one of the more bizarre/lopsided episodes: the hook swords were the only Shaolin weapon that were better/scored higher than their Maori counterparts did, and they were the one who won the day for the Shaolin monk via points – they scored higher than any other weapon on that episode, Shaolin or Maori. Why, how so – the field-test of the hook swords was not that impressive, honestly – remained unknown, though on that episode follow-up, none of the team Maori showed up. Again, we do not know what went behind the scenes of that episode, but something certainly did, though it did not affect DH at that time…

Back to FH? Why not. Nuxia uses her twin hook swords very efficiently, and ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’ should be mentioned here too – we’re talking the original TV cartoon series, not the travesty of the movie that Mr. Night Shamalayan did: one of its’ recurring characters, Jet, also used twin hook swords very efficiently, making himself stand out of the crowd, (since he wasn’t a ‘bender’, by the way). So, I guess – go twin hook swords!

Anything else? No, not really. Nuxia does appear to be an interesting character, and FH is clearly upgrading and redesigning itself, doing its’ best to make itself even better, so good luck to them. Ergo, as for us – see you all soon! (Hopefully).

The Gifted: coMplications - Oct 9

‘The Gifted’ continues to try its’ hardest to impress the viewers; ‘coMplications, this week’s episode, is a good example of that.

What is going on in ‘coMplications’? The better question would be – what isn’t? This episode deals with the following storylines: John and Clarice are trying to communicate with the Morlocks’, who are giving them some info on the Inner Circle, but in exchange, their leader wants Blink to spy on the Mutant Underground, such as it is. Secondly, the Struckers, ‘minus Andy’, are getting their act together as Reed confesses that his powers have manifested at last to his wife and daughter. Thirdly, Marcos met his daughter and helped the Inner Circle cure her jaundice, (a real life disease, incidentally). And, finally – Jace is trying to get into the mutant-fighting action again, but it is not easy as he may think.

Where to elaborate? ‘The Gifted’ are setting the Morlocks up to be the anti-Inner Circle: the Inner Circle are the patricians, (yes, the Ancient Rome symbolism is deliberate), while the Morlocks are the lowest of the plebeians, with the Inner Circle being immaculate, prestigious and orderly/lawful, (evil, but still), and the Morlocks are the other way around. Now, nothing may come out of it, but the general opposite symbolism is still there. Are the Morlocks enemies of the Inner Circle/the Hellfire Club? Right now, they are doing their own thing instead, so go them? The Mutant Underground is still in shambles, and though the Struckers are getting their act together, (at least in the short term), none of them have anything real to offer the Morlocks right now; maybe later, but with Marcos/Eclipse on the warpath, and John and Clarice developing relationship issues, because ‘The Gifted’ needs drama!

On a more serious note, Jace’s new problems of fitting in into the ‘normal human society’ of ‘The Gifted’ aren’t unlike what Reed had faced back in S1, when he went against the main mass of the machine: people were sympathetic, but the bureaucratic machine just wasn’t budging, and while it was potentially possible to work the system somehow, he was unable to: he and his family got arrested all the same, regardless of whatever achievements Reed did in the past. Same for Jace here and now, in S2, save that it is not as extreme: he is not arrested, just – rejected. He needs to get back into Sentinel Services, (or into the federal system, period), whether into his old place or start from scratch, (and he is an impatient man, it seems), or else start his own thing; according to the next week’s spoilers, he might try his luck with the Purifiers (basically, a fictional take on KKK) next.

Now, again, Jace was never particularly sympathetic to mutants, but in S1 he was depicted as a sympathetic character to the viewers instead, a more morally ambiguous character than an outright evil one. Ergo, if he starts to flat-out gun down mutants in the following episodes of S2, it will go against his built-up back in S1 and even now, so that isn’t too likely. This does place Jace into something of a limbo – he cannot be good, (not yet, anyhow), but he cannot be overtly evil either, because otherwise he becomes kind of generic and not as interesting as he was before. Since the numbers for ‘The Gifted’ currently are not as high as they were in S1 yet, the show hopefully will not rock the boat yet either – but again, we will have to see.

Anything else? Yes, the Morlocks’ leader in this universe is a gender-bent Callisto, who usually leads the Morlocks in the Marvel comics. Again, this might be some sort of an opposition, (even in symbolism) against Reeva who leads the Inner Circle so far, but we’ll have and see the future episodes to learn if the Morlocks ever take-up arms against the Inner Circle.

Speaking of the Inner Circle? Right now, it is mostly Reeva and the Frost girls, with Andy and Sage only occasionally appearing, (of all ‘The Gifted’ characters who had left the Mutant Underground for the Inner Circle at the S1 finale) to flesh it out. Anyone else is more of a cameo than a character, and Lorna, of course, is out of circulation, being busy with Dawn. As such, so far the Inner Circle may be competent, but it is also underwhelming; of course, so’s the Mutant Underground, but it is supposed to be the underdog, and right now they actually appear to have equal, (if not slightly superior) numbers to the Inner Circle. Yes, Reeva so far seems to have the strongest mutant powers on the show, but if Lorna and Marcos ever get over their tiff and became a couple once more, Reeva may find herself on the ropes instead. And moreover, the point is that the Inner Circle is supposed to be so much more formidable than the Mutant Underground is, and right now, it just seems to have more money, that is it. And money, while important, is not always critically (and exclusively) so…

The other point of criticism are the not-so-special effects of the Morlocks’ sewer lair. The rats that John and Clarice encountered were certainly adorable, but the lighting… it appeared to be more in the fashion of a Halloween funhouse than anything else. Budgetary restrictions or just bad choice? Either way, it did not really work, and just subtracted from the atmosphere of the Morlocks’ lair, and if it is a budget issue, we are stuck with it. Ouch.

…Well, this is it for this time; see you all soon!

Venom - Oct 4

Now then, ‘Venom’.

Straight away, the movie has problems, because it is not MCU per se, but in ‘Sony something-something Marvel something-something’. Doesn’t really roll off the tongue even if you aren’t sarcastic, now does it? And the same thing goes with the movie, literally – it doesn’t quite have the same roll as the MCU movies do…but then again, it isn’t supposed to: it was made by Sony, not by Disney, so to judge it by the MCU standard is just flat-out wrong. To continue.

By now, most people have come to the conclusion that Tom Hardy, who plays the titular role, has largely altered and shaped the movie; ‘Venom’ is all about him…and he deserves it, since he plays both Venom and Brock, who’s Venom’s host. Go Tom! However, it also raises, (sort of), the issue as to why he wasn’t ‘in sync’ with the rest of the cast, and why no one called him out on it, because while he does save the movie, (in a manner of speaking), he’s also the reason as to why it is ‘out of sync’ – because he is clearly moving to a different drum than the rest of the cast.

Big deal? Well, it sort of is, because this ‘dissonance’ is one of the reasons why ‘Venom’ isn’t considered great unanimously, and considering that Sony had had problems with films in the past, (remember the dictator mess?), it’s anyone’s guess as to where it will go now…and yes, the mention of Kasady, (who’s the host of Carnage in the comics), is a great big honking clue.

This is the next point: so far, Venom’s world is extremely limited, especially by Marvel standards – it only has symbionts and that is it; they did not really make a mention or make a tie-in with the greater MCU. By contrast, ‘Cloak & Dagger’ TV series pointedly did at their S1 finale, tying their universe with both Disney’s and Netflix’s corners of Marvel. ‘Venom’ didn’t do anything like that; so far, this Sony-Marvel universe appears to be self-contained, and while it can be self-sustaining, the audience doesn’t like that. People got used to Marvel movies and shows, how they are all interconnected – ‘Runaways’ S2 is coming in December 2018, so it’ll be interesting to see how it fits in with MCU now – so something different, and not necessarily in a good way, is instinctively raising their hackles, so to speak. So far, there is no indication that Sony-Marvel will embrace the greater MCU – the relationship of Sony with Disney was never very easygoing, and people are instinctively upset about that as well.

Now, there’s no overwhelming reason as to why Sony should throw in with Disney/Marvel, and not do their own thing, for the Spider-Man universe is quite big, Venom is only a part of it, so who knows as to who will appear next – Michael Morbius is the best candidate so far, but still – yet this brings us to ‘Titans’.

‘Titans’ are a DC TV show, not a Marvel, (a fact that probably won’t stop the fans from crossing the ‘Titans’ over with the ‘Avengers’ and who knows who else from MCU, as opposed to DCEU, which is another story), but so far it is shaping to be very interesting – yet already people are unhappy, because ‘Titans’ are splintering DCEU even further – there’re the movies, the ‘Arrow-verse’, (with ‘Black Lightning’ being adjunct to it, sort of), there was ‘Powerless’, (which got cancelled mid-S1, the only DC TV series to become cancelled at all, but that is another story), and now – ‘Titans’. They are coming and not everyone is accepting that they are going to be a separate universe – and the same goes for Sony. Not everyone is happy about them trying to do something separate here; in fact, most people are upset about it; plus…

…when I was younger and did not realize just how much life could suck on occasion, (and on other occasions it actually works – go figure), we had a CD game, Maximum Carnage, in which Spidey and Venom raced forwards and beat down bad guys. Not the most complex of games, but it worked. As a game, that is – in real life, it proved to be not quite compatible to our computers, so we had to give it away to our friends… never mind. The point is that ‘Venom 2018’ here feels like a version of this game, just without Spider-Man – Eddie and Venom raced around, beat down bad guys, the end. The villain, (actually, both of them) look and act generic, Eddie’s love interest – ditto, so at least some people are underwhelmed by the movie, especially after you look past the special effects and Hardy’s acting, and people did. By now, they agree that it is not necessarily a bad movie, but not necessarily a good one either, especially if you look at all of the abovementioned points. But to those who still want to go to the movie theaters and look at it all the same – go for it, Tom Hardy makes a generic, though atypical, superhero, (or rather – antihero) going to save the world look good.

Speaking of anti-heroes? ‘Daredevil’ S3 is also coming to Netflix this October. In it, Wilson Fisk the Kingpin is out of the big house and is poised to take over NYC in a plot… that is already similar to him becoming the city’s mayor in the Marvel comics. That was ‘the Defenders’ comics miniseries, (about a dozen issues or so), where the Defenders fought…Copperhead, or Diamondback, as well as the Hood, as the two villains fought each other, (supposedly), for the title of NYC’s Kingpin, (with Fisk backing Copperhead/Diamondback/etc.). Black Cat had also thrown her hat into that fray, but eventually backed out, after she got killed – and the Hood resurrected her. Apparently, he has mystical powers, and so the Defenders summoned practically every other Marvel superhero that is associated with NYC and – the series ended. Sometimes Marvel is like that – but we got sidetracked, the point is that if Netflix’s ‘Daredevil’ will be influenced by this story arc, then maybe the rest of Netflix’s Defenders will appear in it as well? Yes, Danny Rand is in Asia right now, but he can always come back – TV can be weird like that. We will just have to wait and see instead.

This is it for now – see you all soon!

The Gifted: unMoored - Oct 2

‘The Gifted’ continue to deliver. Yay?

Well, yes. This week’s episode, ‘unMoored’, has delivered to us, its’ viewers, several interwoven plotlines: the Struckers’ quest to redefine themselves with Andy gone, (but still sharing Lauren’s dreams), the Underground’s continued search for Lorna, (and now the baby), as well as for Christine’s sister, the Inner Circle’s own plans, (regarding Andy in this episode), and now – we also got Jace. Applause – pause?

Jace went through just as much as the mutants did in the six months’ hiatus between the events in S1 and now. He put the Sentinel Services behind and did his best to embrace civil life – in his case, he is working in some office now. Not unlike Andy, he tried to go cold turkey on his old life – and it works just as well for him as it does for Andy. Spoiler alert – it does not, and they do not. Until tonight’s episode at least, Andy has been in touch with his mother, sort of, while Jace has kept his old fact files in the attic or wherever. They were unable to move forwards, but after the events in ‘unMoored’, they can. Sort of. At least Andy does, with Reeva’s help. Reeva, of course, has her own agenda, but so far one can get a feeling that for the last 6 months or so it had been put on hold until Lorna’s baby was born…and now she is sick. The baby, that is, not Lorna, though it is anyone’s guess if what the baby Dawn has is contagious. Judging by the next week’s spoilers, it is not.

…In an off-note, apparently both the Inner Circle/Hellfire Club and the Mutant Underground are in D.C. now, technically within the sight of each other, kind of how Aladdin’s regular hovel and Jasmine’s/the sultan’s royal palace were also within the sight of each other in ‘Aladdin’ the movie. Moreover, yes, now the mutants, (and FOX?) are also a part of Disney, just as ‘Aladdin’ is, but still. Weird. Marcos’ version of the bat-signal, shown in the end of ‘unMoored’ is kind of bizarre-looking too, but if it works for him and Lorna, got for it, you magnificent bastard! …The only odd man out so far is Jace, again, who is down in the state of Georgia, (the devil went down to Georgia?), but again, this will probably change – the reason as to why Jace had been such an effective Sentinel Services agent, is that he honestly believed that he was on ‘the right side’, doing the right thing, and the mutants here were the villains. Regarding the Hellfire Club/Inner Circle, he was not wrong, actually, but those people appeared only in the second half of S1, and cannot fully justify everything else that Jace and his team, his people did to the mutants.

…These days, Jace does not have his own team or people anymore. However, this will likely change, because without them opposing the mutants, (and especially the Mutant Underground, but in a pinch, any mutants will do), ‘The Gifted’ don’t work as well anymore; yes, the old black-and-white dichotomy of S1 seems to be vanishing, replaced by the new Mutant Underground vs. Inner Circle rivalry, but with the Sentinel Services, (or something similar) thrown into the mix, the series might come back to their old S1 glory, or be even better, because right now? ‘The Gifted’ feel lost instead. In part, this is intentional – the old mentor of Johnny, (and Lorna, and maybe the others), who got them into the Underground in the first place, has admitted that she (and maybe her own cohorts?) have messed-up, there’s no hope, and the Mutant Underground is going nowhere fast, so what now?

Johnny has no idea, and the show helpfully shares with us his flashbacks of Gus, and Sonya, and Lorna & Andy leaving the Underground, so he is in just as dark a place as the Struckers are, (and maybe Jace – somehow he does not come across as a sincerely happy man in this episode). What will happen next, now that baby Dawn is sick and according to the spoilers, the Inner Circle needs Marcos’ help to cure her? Anyone can guess.

Oh, and one more thing. Apparently, the lawyer’s mutant powers is the ability to turn into a dragon-human hybrid of some sort, both in the comics and here. There is really no rhyme or reason to mutant powers, is there?

…This is it for ‘unMoored’; see you all soon!

Pathfinder: tengu swordmaster - Sep 30

For a change, since this was that sort of weekend, here's a tengu swordmaster, (a rogue archetype):

Tengu rogue (swordmaster) 9

CE Medium humanoid (tengu)

Init +4; Senses low-light vision; Perception +15

DEFENSE

AC 19, touch 14, flat-footed 15

hp 50 (9d8+9)

Fort +4, Ref +11, Will +5

Defensive Abilities evasion, improved uncanny dodge, uncanny dodge

OFFENSE

Speed 30 ft.

Melee mwk rapier +11/+2 (1d6+1/18-20/x2)

Ranged mwk composite shortbow +10 (1d6+1/x3)

Special Attacks sneak attack +5d6, trances (crane trance, leopard trance, tiger trance)

STATISTICS

Str 12, Dex 18, Con 11, Int 14, Wis 12, Cha 9

Base Atk +6; CMB +7; CMD 21

Feats Acrobatic, Aquatic Combatant (B), Empty Threats, Lovable Scoundrel, Tengu Wings, Weapon Finesse, Weapon Focus (rapier)

Skills Acrobatics +17, Appraise +14, Bluff +11, Diplomacy +5, Escape Artist +15, Fly +9, Intimidate +11, Perception +15, Sense Motive +13, Sleight of Hand +15, Stealth +17, Swim +8

Languages Common, Elven, Tengu, Undercommon

SQ gifted linguist, rogue talents (befuddling strike, combat trick, fast stealth, finesse rogue), swordtrained

Combat Gear potion of invisibility; Other Gear +1 chain shirt, mwk composite shortbow (+1 Str) with 20 arrows, mwk rapier, cloak of resistance +1

Comments? Criticisms?