AoS: more S6 spoilers - March 30

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, and you can always count on your family members’ to make it work. Sometimes, separately, in modest doses, they can work, but put them all together, and they do not, yourself included. What had Gollum (in ‘Hobbit’) say? “Baggins, Baggins, thief! We hate it, we hate it, we hate it forever!” Yeah, that. The old hobgoblin knew what he was talking about after all…

Now that that is out of the way, where do we stand with AoS? To my embarrassment, I hadn’t learned in time that AoS was bumped to May 2019, (aka the last month of spring), nor that there’s going to be a seventh season on top of the earlier-promised sixth, but…

But the truth is that AoS is being ‘cute’ again. The truth is that their seventh season is going to be 13 episodes long too, just as the sixth is, so odds are is that it and the sixth season are really a single season, cut into two. This tendency was evident even way back in AoS’ S1, and by S3, we had a nameless first half, and ‘the fallen agent’ story arc in the second. In S4, there were really three mini-seasons – the Ghost Rider, the LMD and the Framework, and though by S5 that approach was abandoned, the first and the second halves of S5 were once more two related, yet separate, story arches. And now, it seems, AoS S6+7 took this approach one step further, by making each half-season into a ‘proper’ season. Whether it will work, we will have to see.

And as for the latest AoS clip, one that features Coulson’s look-alike, cough? Yeah, Gregg could always play his character in a ‘tough guy’ persona, no doubt about it. Here, he seems to be delivering it again, so yay. Whatever problems AoS had in the past, the actors’ acting was not it. The script was often reset and recycled, and the characters were often disrespected, (as opposed to ‘Blindspot’ and even ‘Reverie’), but that wasn’t really the actors fault, now was it? Fitz’s stranded in space plot – yeah, it was probably originally intended to be Lincoln, (possibly as a bridge to introduce the Kree that in RL came in S5), but because Luke Mitchell quit AoS and went to ‘Blindspot’, Lincoln just died instead. Pity, and it cost AoS in the long run, as Lincoln’s fans joined the fans of HuntingBird and Ward as they stopped watching the canon and went on to develop their own fanfics, fanvids, and so on. Probably not the best idea of AoS, but it never could fully hide its real-life problems from the audience, and yes, this is one of those problems that plague the show. Plus, as Jeff’s statement at CM premiere indicated, the actors do not get along with each other too. What is next?

We’ve began to tentatively play the new ‘Tyrant’s Grasp’ adventure path; we may or may not move past the first (out of six) installments, and we’ve started to play ‘Dead Roads’ only because of nostalgia regarding us playing ‘Mummy’s Mask’ campaign. The reason for nostalgia is two-fold. One is the psychopomps that are appearing in ‘Dead Roads’ – we’ve encountered them in the past in ‘Empty Graves’, when a necromancer began to bring all sorts of undead creatures to life. This was when we have properly encountered the nosoi, the vanth and the esobok psychopomps, in various ways. (We also acquired the ‘summon psychopomp’ spells too on that campaign). And the second are the shabti, whom we have encountered first in the Mask bestiary as a PC race, so it is interesting to deal with them as proper opponents, as well as revisit the psychopomps as well. Hence, we are currently playing ‘Dead Roads’, what happens next is anyone’s guess.

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

Shazam and Dora - March 24

…Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, and some things appear to be unavoidable in their mass; all you can do is edit the details, so to speak and to soften the blow. The blow will still come, but at least you will have the knowledge that you did what you could, as much, you could, to avoid it; the failure is on you, but unless you want to break the laws of God and Man, you are stuck with what you have. Now where were we?

Ah yes, the new trailer for the new ‘Dora the Explorer’ movie. It works. It already promises to be quite delightful and guarantees the same atmosphere as the new ‘Shazam’ film, so let us talk about it too.

‘Shazam’ might be a part of DCEU, broadly speaking, but it is a very different movie from the previous films: it is a children’s movie. That is natural, since the titular character’s secret identity is that of a high school student, but that is only one element. The other is that like the previous ‘Aquaman’ film, ‘Shazam’ shows a clear departure from the initial DCEU films, directed by Zack Snyder, and has a much more joyous (and less solemnly Gothic) atmosphere in it. The fact that DCEU seems to be finally moving away from Marvel’s ‘Avengers’ formula also plays a role – it is about damn time that DCEU found its’ own voice and stood on its own two feet, so to speak. And ‘Dora’?

‘Dora’ is not a part of a DC or Marvel franchise; it is its’ own game/TV show/whatever, and is basically ‘Lara Croft’ for youngsters. So’s her movie version, which does feel inspired by the last ‘Tomb Raider’ films that feature a younger, scrawnier Lara with less curves than the early AJ versions have. (Jolie killed in those films, pity that lately age seems to have caught up with her at last). That said, there’s proportionally less violence in the ‘Dora’ movie trailer than there was in LC; in fact, the trailer already suggests that ‘Dora’ will be going over the top with gimmicks and physical gags – but there will be some genuine action and adventure as well. For an adult film this could be another Adam Sandler movie, but for children? Yes, it will certainly work, (though for their chaperones, slightly less physical gags might be better). What next?

Boots the CGI monkey rocks, (no real life monkey, New World or otherwise, has this shade of fur), and so do the human actors, it seems. Yes, SJW are going to have issues about the ‘racially diverse cast’, yes, it was probably done to appease the politically correct (or progressive) crowd, but so far, it seems to be paying off, so the critics should zip it, and wait for the movie to come out, (yes, the same goes for us), before complaining about the ‘racially diverse cast’, cough. In canon, Dora seems to be Latino-American anyhow, so here she seems to be cast true to her type. Yay? Yes, probably, but also because her actress can act. Anything else?

Well, the same could be said of Zachary Levi who plays the titular hero of ‘Shazam!’ I am not always enamoured, or trusting, of IGN reviews these days, (their review of ‘Captain Marvel’ had certainly been one big kiss-up), but here they are correct, when they point out that, for example, Dr. Sivana, (the movie’s villain), is a clear demonstration of how parents can shape their children, (biological or foster, it doesn’t matter so much), but it’s up to the child, (at least from a certain age), to make the actual choice and to decide just what kind of an adult are they going to be. Now, Marvel has tried to do something similar in its TV shows, but… AoS’ treatment of Grant Ward, (and also of Kara Palamas, though her case is different in this regard), was all over the place, satisfying no one. He never got to be a ‘true’ villain, (Hive was a different character completely), nor truly redeem himself, (the Framework Ward was also a separate entity, and how did Radcliffe include him into his SIMS, cough, or why?). Netflix’s JJ had Killgrave, who did a better job of the sympathetic villain role, but all of Netflix’s Marvel shows are cancelled now, so that point is double-moot, (because Killgrave himself is dead).

On DC’s side of equation, yes, ‘Arrow’ is cancelled, which is a pity, because it was good, but that is life. Sometimes even good things end, plus DC needs to get itself together as well – there are the movies, the remnants of ‘Arrow-verse’, the ‘Titans’ and so on. At least in Marvel everything is part of the same movieverse, as C&D’s S1 finale said so directly. Of course that was before ‘Iron Fist’ got cancelled, (it was the first to go, ouch), but again, that is life. Very often, it sucks, especially in reality – just look at New Zealand, for an example.

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

Avengers: Endgame and etc. - March 15

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. In this particular case, you can ask the folks down in the island nation of New Zealand – that was just wrong as to what went down, it was just wrong. Admittedly, I do not know as to why Andrew Scheer is under attack – his statement is as politically correct as it comes, but that is real life politics for you. What next?

No, we are not going to discuss the upcoming ‘Avengers: Endgame’ movie, because by now it has been established that people love or hate the MCU films (and associated franchises, aka Sony), but they will still go to watch them, which means that they spend money, which means that Disney makes money, and that, in the end, is what counts for Disney. Disney is not progressive or regressive, it just wants to make money, and it is really good at doing so, and it is almost just as good at detecting factors that hinder it from doing just that, aka controversy. This time, in ‘Captain Marvel’, the only twist was making Skrulls the good guys, but…

But if you’ve watched AoS, you would’ve seen that while, admittedly, in S1 the Kree had been mentioned as ‘blue angels’ and their blood helped S.H.I.E.L.D. to create the GH formula which was an important factor in S1, but from S2 onwards AoS cast Kree as villains, up to S5, where they were the Big Bad in the first half of that season, so here ‘Captain Marvel’ wasn’t exactly coming out of the left field either; we’ll need to see any follow-up to this movie, (and yes, it includes A:E, let’s be honest here), before making any final conclusion as to what goes where in Earth’s position of the Kree-Skrull warfare.

Anything else? The ‘Boom Buffy’ comic series have begun to come out already, (I think that this series is on its’ third installment already), and… so what? Yes, the obvious part is that the BtVS-verse was rebooted: Anya, (or rather – Anyanka) is running the Magic Box in Sunnydale already; Drusilla is much less insane than she was in the canon and is more of a straightforward, stereotypical villain; Buffy and Spike got chemistry already, (seriously?); and Willow and Xander seem to be more street-savvy and vampire-savvy to begin with. That is fine, but so what? The previous comic incarnation was working just as well; ‘Boom Buffy’ does not appear to be bringing anything better to the table. 

...Yes, all of those DC and Marvel reboots/re-incarnations that are the same old thing in a new package (and maybe new depictions) are annoying, but ‘Boom Buffy’? This was fixing what was not broken, and kind of reminds of the new ‘Charmed’ reboot – yes, it is going for its second season, but somehow it is not talked too much anymore, and people just are not as excited about it as the big wigs who brought it back to begin with thought that they would. Sometimes reboots work, other times people are just mystified: what was the reason behind this decision? Just ask the Disney/SW merger – that seemed to have backfired in a bad, sad way. ‘Boom Buffy’ is not as bad as that, but neither it seems to be flourishing – the old guard are not exactly happy with the reboot, (or at least – not unanimously happy), and the new aren’t so interested in the reboot to begin with. Whether ‘Boom Buffy’ will flourish or not – we will just have to wait and see.

Anything else…no, this is it, actually. With ‘Captain Marvel’ out, MCU is taking a deep breather before unleashing the next ‘Avengers’ movie, and C&D S2 are coming out only next month. Real life being what it is, there’s no guarantee of steady updates of it – or AoS S6 – yet, and with ‘Aquaman’ being out and ‘Shazam’ only coming forth, the same can be said for DCEU as well. Therefore, see you all next time!

Captain Marvel, AoS and etc. - March 9

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, but sometimes, it is somewhat tolerable, and other times it is downright weird. Now, let us talk now about ‘Captain Marvel’. The movie. Is it controversial?

No. The ‘issues’ have risen because people may have conflated, deliberately or not, Brie Larson and her personal beliefs, the movie, and its’ titular character. Ms. Larson is entitled to her own opinions, but then, she should also remember that not everyone will agree with them, and some people may even do something about them. Of course, those people then should expect their own backlash…and so on. It is a vicious cycle, really.

However, the movie itself? It is a straightforward origin story, not that different from… ‘Venom’ back in 2018. That movie was good, but also divisive, seeing how some people loved it, and some people hated it, and no one could agree on it, but most people enjoyed it, period. ‘Captain Marvel’ is no different, so as long as people remember that Ms. Larson is not her character – any of them in any movies – there should not be any problem. Unless you just straightforward dislike the movie, but that is just a matter of a personal opinion, so it is the turn of Disney/MCU to just buck up, grin and bear it. Instead, there was a crazy-ass story regarding ‘Captain Marvel’, its’ initial reviews, and ‘Rotten Tomatoes’ the site that didn’t do the latest Marvel movie any favors. It takes two sides to tango, and while Disney would love to blame all of the blame on Internet trolls, it does not work like that. At least they are not blaming the Russian Federation for ‘Captain Marvel’ problems.

No, seriously, look at Canada. For a while now, PM Trudeau’s cabinet is embroiled in the SNC-Lavallin scandal, and it is quite intense, quite serious, and no one is joking about it. Proportionally, it is just as bad as any of the messes that the U.S. president has done. The difference? No one is blaming any foreign powers for it, and instead are doing their best to resolve it ‘within the house’; whether or not they’re successful is another thing, but even so, Canada as a whole, remains a more cohesive and politically healthy country than the U.S. Undoubtedly, RF is guilty of many things, but the problem is that the U.S. just blames for anything and everything, for what they did and didn’t do, and that just muddies the picture – unnecessarily – and so, instead of getting anything done, the American people are revving for an All-American fight in 2020 already.

No, seriously, on the Internet, there are people that are planning to vote for Trump no matter what, and there are people who plan to vote against Trump no matter who, and many other people besides those two groups. Internet is awesome, if it was not around, I would not have an online blog, now would I, but it is also ambiguous, and it divides people as well as unites. Even in the last years of Obama’s presidency, the American people were preparing to fight each other, then they fought each other, in the first year of Trump’s presidency they continued to fight, and now they are almost back to it, as the first four years of Trump’s presidency are winding down.

Will Trump go for the full eight? It is very likely. The Republicans do not intend to rock the boat at such a sensitive point in time; they want ‘their man’ to remain in charge for another 4 years, and them to remain on top in D.C. Moreover, the Democrats do not appear to have a problem with it either, since by now, no strong single leader of their party had emerged, and they are just as messed-up as they were before. In addition, since the 1990s the U.S. seemed to have formed some sort of an unspoken agreement that each 8 years the Republicans and the Democrats switch their presidents, and everyone else can go hang. What will happen in the U.S. in 2020 is anyone’s guess right now. Real life sucks, I will say it again.

Back to ‘Captain Marvel’? The reason as to why I’m writing about it, is because its’ connection to AoS and S.H.I.E.L.D. Nick Fury, and to a lesser extent – Phil Coulson, played important roles in this movie and brought us to the beginnings of S.H.I.E.L.D.; AC talked about its initial incarnation as SSR (Strategic Scientific Research or something similar) instead. Between this renewal of S.H.I.E.L.D. in the MCU movies and the changes in the format (sort of) of AoS itself, odds are that S6 will see the show rebooted. Will it work? Since ‘Arrow’ got cancelled, (sob), it just might. 

Alternatively, it might backfire instead: Marvel Entertainment’s YouTube channel uploaded, among other things, a brief interview with Ming-Na Wen (aka May) and Jeff Ward (aka Deke), who, among other things, confessed to really not get along with Iain. The latter plays Fitz, aka Deke’s grandpa-to-be, as well as one of the main characters, (Deke just appeared in AoS S5, so Fitz got seniority easily), and so this got to sting, especially since Jeff the Deke said this on the red carpet for CM. Few people really know as to what is going on behind the scenes in AoS, but you got to admit – none of the actors from ‘the Gifted’ or C&D, for example, ever said anything like this, so the upcoming (summer 2019) S6 of AoS will be interesting…

Anything else? Well, speaking of YouTube, the National Geographic Wild channel released some sort of a ‘Wolves 101’ video, where it claims that there are two species of wolves in the world. One of them is the grey wolf, which is correct – it is the wolfiest wolf that has ever wolfed, aside from the now-extinct dire wolf, (on Earth – on Westeros it is another story).

However, the other wolf, according to NGU? It is the so-called Ethiopian wolf, and here we have a problem. The genus Canis has several members. There is the domestic dog, the grey wolf, the coyote, and coyote’s Old World counterparts, the jackals. There are three or four different species of them, and the Ethiopian species is one of them. It lives a life…similar to a coyote’s or the common jackal of Africa and Asia – it lives solitary or in pairs, in a family group at most, and hunts small animals – in the East African mountains, it’s various rodents – the Ethiopian jackal doesn’t go after bigger animals like the local mountain sheep or the geladas, the mountain-dwelling cousins of the baboons, who have formidable fangs of their own, but who feed primarily on the local grasses instead. No, the other true wolf of our times is the so-called red wolf from the American south; it is somewhat bigger than a coyote is, (though it should be noted that the Canadian coyotes are slightly bigger than the U.S. ones, really), but smaller than the grey wolf is, it doesn’t live outside of the North American continent, and it is more reddish in color than an average grey wolf is, (whose coat can vary from almost pure white to almost pure black and anything in-between). The red wolf’s lifestyle is not much different from a coyote’s, either.

To somewhat complicate the picture there is another species of ‘red wolf’ or ‘red dog’, one that is now known moreso as the dhole. It is also a wild dog, but it belongs to a much more ancient lineage than that of wolves, jackals and coyotes, and it does not have any close modern relatives either. It lives only in Asia and is not really domesticated. It is quite rare too, in modern times too. Now what?

Well, NGU got its’ wolves mixed-up, (it never mentioned the American red wolf at all in its’ video), ‘Captain Marvel’ is a good enough movie to enjoy (or not, depending on whether or not you like this sort of movie), and real life still is much more messed up than any movie is.

This is it for now; see you all soon.

Dragon Pearl - March 2

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks…and then you get sick on top of it, making it worse. Now where were we?

Oh yes, back in December 2018 we talked about Rick Riordan as well as some of his new friends/co-authors/etc./whoever. This time, let us talk about yet another suck person – Yoon Ha Lee and his YA novel, ‘Dragon Pearl’. Whereas Cervantes’ novel was on Mesoamerican myths and Chokshi’s – on Hindu, Lee’s is about Asian myths, Korean to be exact, only – not. Her take is different – it is a sci-fi pastiche.

Oh, certainly, there are Korean goblins, and fox spirits (i.e. kitsune) and dragons and ghosts in her novel, but also space ships and laser guns, for example. The great, late and lamented Terry Pratchett once commented how sci-fi is fantasy with literal nuts and bolts put on it, and Mr. Lee must agree with him, since this is what he did.

…What did we find out, back in December 2018, when we discussed Cervantes and Chokshi’s novels in relation to Riordan’s? That Cervantes’ novel feels like a distorted imitation of Riordan’s own ‘Lightning Thief’, whereas Chokshi’s feels like…an independent novel of her own, with just a few homages to Riordan – and to J. Ro. Lee’s novel feels even more so than Chokshi’s, as the ‘Dragon Pearl’ has nothing in common with Riordan’s, not at all. Yes, the main protagonist is a young kitsune woman, who goes on a quest to find her brother and finds much more than what she has bargained for, in a format that is reminiscent of Riordan’s, and of Chokshi’s, and of Cervantes’, but one main element – the gods – are missing. There are plenty of novels, YA and grown-up, that feature deities of one sort or another, and that brings us to Tanya Huff. These days she seems to be fairly obscure, but back in the 1990s, when she was writing and publishing her ‘Blood series’ about a vampire and his detective friend with benefits, cough, she was big, and she was famous, and as a Canadian she had no qualms about writing novels that featured sexual minorities as main characters, so Lee’s take on ‘Dragon Pearl’, with its’ gender equality and the like feels like an imitation of Ms. Huff here – Canadians were here first, (Lee is Korean American). What’s next?

As we said already, Lee’s ‘Dragon Pearl’ differs from Riordan’s, and Chokshi’s, and Cervantes’, period. It has sci-fi elements in it; it has no gods; it has plenty of gender equality elements in it and it does not follow the trend established by Riordan. …Yes, Riordan did begin to work with such elements as sexual and racial minorities in his second story arc, ‘The Heroes of Olympus’, but he seems to have abandoned them in his last ‘Apollo’ book because of reasons, upon which we have speculated in the past as well – but, regardless, Riordan’s logo – two Rs, one of them inverted, is on the jacket of ‘Dragon Pearl’, and…

In addition, Riordan himself is described, however briefly, inside the book jacket, and his introduction is there too, as it was in cases of the previous two novels. This makes ‘Dragon Pearl’ potentially into a shared intellectual property of the two men, and-

And in case of both Chokshi and Cervantes, there are indications…no, not indications, statements and promises, that sequels to ‘Storm Runner’ and ‘Aru Shah’ will be coming…this year, 2019. ‘Dragon Pearl’ doesn’t have it, making its’ future sequels – or is it the future of its’ sequels? – more dubious. Again, we do not know the relationship between Riordan and Lee as the ‘Dragon Pearl’ was written, but seeing how Riordan has abruptly changed his approach to minorities in his last novel (the next ‘Apollo’ novel is also coming out in 2019, BTW), and Lee, well, promptly didn’t and rather went Huff’s route, by making them obvious, odds are that they didn’t get along, hence no promise of Min’s future adventures. (I.e. the main character of ‘Dragon Pearl’, here). We will just have to wait and see.

In addition, is ‘Dragon Pearl’ good? It is certainly no worse than ‘The Storm Runner’ is, and can be enjoyable to read. However, even more so than a TV show or a movie, (cough, AoS, cough), a book is a property slash commodity, it has to appeal to its’ audience or it wouldn’t sell – but it also has to appeal to the sales’ people, and contrary to what many people think, not everything within the U.S. is about the money, it got its’ ideals too – but that is a talk for another time…

For now, though, this is it. If any of you out there have also read the ‘Dragon Pearl’, (or ‘Aru Shah’, or ‘Storm Runner’), feel free to respond and discuss. Otherwise, see you soon!