FH: Zealot - July 24

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, and your family often makes it worse. Oh, they are trying to make it better, probably, but they make it worse instead, even though it is completely unnecessary.

No, seriously, judge for yourself: in the U.S., Mr. Muller is finally testifying, (or is he testifying again?) and everyone is abuzz, (and is already making new plans in case the testimony doesn’t go the way that they want it to go); in the U.K., Boris Johnson is elected the new PM and plenty of people have ideas as to how this will go – either really bad or really good. He’s rather the Great Britain’s version of the Donald…but USA isn’t calling them out, not after their ‘original Donald’ opted to open his mouth and start a racist mess of things…until today, now that Mr. Muller is testifying in court, and everything previous is apparently put on hold.

RF, of course, is a breed apart from the West. The initially civilized elections in the Moscow municipal council became the 21^st century version of the pre-1905 Russian revolution; there were two Russian revolutions: the 1917 one, which succeeded, and the 1905 one, which failed…if taken by itself, since it was the precursor and something of a test run for the 1917 revolution, it was more successful.

Yet even the 1905 failed revolution forced everyone in the Russian Empire to realize that something was rotten in the state of Denmark…not that it was enough. Whatever it is that is currently going on in Moscow…we will see. RF always has some disaster or another occurring on its’ territory; there had been a fire at another children’s summer camp, and some sisters have killed their family, literally drowned them in blood, apparently…but we digress. Where were we?

Oh yes, FH has revealed its’ new Viking hero/anti-hero, the Hulda. Admittedly, it is hard to pin down just what has inspired her, but, firstly, she is holding a war hammer, and secondly? There is the imagery of Jormungandr. And Ragnarok.

There are several versions of how to say the name of the Norse World Serpent, so let us call it just the World Serpent from now on, and yes, in the Norse myths it was the arch-nemesis of Thor the Thunder God for reasons unknown. It is featured primarily in three myths. In the first, the original Loki, who was more of a fire giant-god than a frost one, met an ogress, or a witch, or some other dark entity named Angrboda, (but yes, there are different version of the name again), and together they had three children. One was Hela, (yes, the Hela from the Thor 3 movie), who was humanoid in shape, but was half and half otherwise – alive on one half and dead on the other… or half black and half white… or half red and half blue… the accounts vary.

The second was Fenrir or Fenris wolf, the biggest, baddest wolf of them all, one who needed an impossible chain to hold him, who bit off the arm of Tyr, another Norse god, who was the son of Odin and a brother of Thor… and who was going to swallow Odin whole during Ragnarok, while yet another son of Odin that wasn’t Thor was going to kill him.

And finally, there was the World Serpent, a sea snake so large that it encircled the world in the Norse cosmology, dwarfing everyone, god and mortal, dragon and giant… you get the picture. It lived on the bottom of the sea and never ventured onto land… supposedly. And then, one day – and here we come to the second story – the giant-god of the sea, Aegir, had a party for the Asgardians, but did not have a cauldron big enough to make mead for all of them. The only cauldron big enough for that belonged to a giant named Hymir, who was Tyr’s maternal grandfather and who was not on the best terms with the Asgardians.

An aside: Odin’s own grandma was a frost giant’s daughter; whereas the Greeks made some sort of a division – here are the Olympian gods, who are not Titans, and here are the Titans who are not the Olympian gods, though the latter are their descendants, but the two groups are separate, the Norse didn’t. Asgardians freely intermarried with frost and stone giants, though the fire giants, led by Surt or Surtr were not a part of it, and so it was really hard to make sense of their feud with the giants – it felt more like a great big family quarrel than some sort of a life-and-death struggle that went down in the Ragnarok proper – but we digress.

Anyhow, Thor and Tyr came to Jotunheim, the land of the giants, and Tyr’s grandfather took Thor fishing, and Thor caught the World Serpent on his hook – intentionally, most versions say. He began to pull it out of the water, when the line snapped, or Tyr’s grandfather intentionally cut it, because, hey, the World Serpent, and so Jormungandr escaped. Thor thrown Mjolnir at it, and the hammer that never missed scored a hit, but the World Serpent survived that experience – this time.

And finally, we have the big Ragnarok face-off, as Thor and his reptilian arch-nemesis went at it, well, hammer and tongs. Eventually, Thor would break the Serpent’s skull with his hammer, and die from its’ venomous breath – in the Norse myths, all dragons are venomous, just as the real-life snakes from which they are derived. Even the most infamous dragon of them all, Fafnir, (or Fafneir), was toxic – but we are not talking about him. The point is that unlike Hela, who was a deity of the Norse, (and so was Loki himself, of course), neither the World Serpent nor Fenrir were – they were monsters. By combining Thor’s war hammer with the World Serpent, the FH team combined the incompatible, and made something of a mess of symbolism, again.

…Yes, FH is a game. Yes, it appears to be more interested in symbols and symbolism and symbolic representations of the samurais, knights, Vikings – and the ancient Chinese, the Wu Ling team. However, Hulda somehow feels especially experimental and strange. Vortiger – we have discussed before – is Vortigern, a controversial – but not necessarily evil – character in the Arthurian legends; he is a Black Prior, which only confuses things further. Sakura is Hitokiri, which is an executioner. Marvel comics aside, in real life executioners were hated in Middle Ages, they wore their hoods to protect their anonymity so that they would not be further boycotted in real life, and they were certainly not fighters or warriors, especially in their depictions. And Hulda? She is a zealot.

No, she is not a minor villain from the Marvel comics, who fought Magneto and died for his trouble; nor is she a part of a different group of Marvel villains, who work for the dread Dormammu and might be really just variant Mindless Ones; FH defines her more as a ‘real life’ religious zealot, so let’s talk about that.

In real life, the zealot movement was established by Jews in the 1^st century A.D.; they sought to incite their fellow Jews to arms, to rebel against the Roman empire and to drive its’ forces out of the Holy Land. That didn’t happen, and actually the Holy Land vanished from the face of Earth until the post-WWII 20^th century…but what does it have to do with the Vikings?

Nothing. FH’s zealot is a completely fictional creation; this character is supposed to cull the weak to reveal the strong in face of the upcoming Ragnarok, and as it was said earlier, the most notable thing about her is the fact that she, (or he, there’s a male version of this character too), seems to be wielding a war hammer.

…Yes, in real life, this is how you write it, to differentiate from Warhammer the game franchise. Unlike games and game-related fiction, the real life war hammer was not widely used; the closest I can remember was in DW S1, where Walter Wallace used it against Shake Zulu’s battle-axe, well – the Zulu Axe, in one of the least satisfying episodes of DW S1 – but again, we digress.

Let us wrap things up. Real life sucks, and your family may make things worse, accidentally or on purpose. In AoS, Lincoln apparently left behind a sister, and Daisy sends her some moneys for some reason or another – to assuage her own conscience, probably. (How big those sums and what is the state of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s finances are one of those things that will be never addressed). And FH continues to haphazardly throw together symbols and images from various aspects of samurai, knight, Viking and ancient Chinese cultures, hoping that they stick.

This is it for now; see you all soon!

S.H.I.E.L.D. 'Leap' - July 19

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Sometimes you seem to get what you want, but the price is not what you have expected; karma just might be real, and if you try to play it…it will be played, but so will you. There is a reason as to why Gandalf tended to downplay his magical skills, and he was a Maiar, i.e. – not a human at all, more like a demigod that inhabited a human shell – but more on that later.

As we suffer from family problems and other issues, we turn to the magical world of make-believe to make us feel better, and what do we discover there? Disney is owning a large part of National Geographic franchise, which is why the latter is advertising TLK-2019, a movie so…unsatisfying, that there’s a man on YouTube, who made a video about 30 minutes long if not slightly more so, just ranting about how bad TLK-2019 is.

…TLK-2019 is not the best movie of 2019 so far, but neither is it the worst; it certainly does not deserve a 30+ minute rant either. If you do not like it, that is fine; the fact that the bloody Disney owns a large part of NatGeo franchise – not so much. Seriously, what does the House of Mouse want? To become real life’s analogue of the SW empire? Yeah, not cool, not cool at all.

Looking away from TLK-2019, which is an inferior remake of the 1994 film with some variant dialogue that doesn’t do anything, we see… the trailer for the upcoming ‘Cats’ movie… and what in seven Hells did we see?

Well, from a literal P.O.V. we have seen a number of famous actors and actresses singing around in digitalized anthropomorphic cat suits, singing and dancing. And why were they singing and dancing in digitalized anthropomorphic cat suits? Only the Lord knows. Well, maybe Nick Fury – the original Nick Fury – also does, but we’ve been already subjected to the above-described spectacle, even if in the previous incarnations of ‘Cats’ the cast wore real-life, regular cat suits and make-up, and it was just fine. ‘Cats’ is a musical, after all, so who the Hell cares about the suits, beyond their basic function of them?

…As for the main plot of ‘Cats’… listen. It’s a bunch of cats – literally speaking – who come together as a single tribe and debate via song and dance as to who will ascend to Heaven (for that is what it is, even it’s called differently here), and be reborn into someone new. Guess all of them are out of their nine lives or something, because otherwise? It makes even less sense than it does in the canon – but that is okay. It is a musical. It does not supposed to make sense! There already was an attempt to adapt it into a movie format, and it was not very successful – it was a direct-to-video format, and that never really works. Why should Cats-2019 be better? As TLK-2019 shows, a movie cannot get ahead on CGI alone; TLK-1994 is still the better version out of the two, (so far; maybe in another 25 years we will get TLK-2044 or something).

In addition, you must remember that ‘Cats’ is a musical, and they don’t transform into movies too well from the start. Does anyone remember the latest one, not a biopic of Barnum Brown or someone like that? Judging by the crickets chirping – no. There is no indication that Cats-2019 will endure any better, ‘Cats’ or no ‘Cats’.

I remember when Cirque du Soleil made a film, about human life from birth to death. The first dance was depicting the – fertilization of an egg by sperm; then the protagonist’s childhood; his first love, depicting by two statues dancing, (we’re talking a heterosexual couple here, BTW); then his maturity; then the scene where a bunch of proletarian types (the turn of 20^th century, here), confront the protagonist in his mansion; and the final scene, our protagonist, now an old man, leaving with a crowd of children for Heaven or someplace similar. All of the above was executed by nothing but dance and music. After going through it, I promptly went to the radio and listened to contemporary pop songs (J-Lo – at that time she was more of a singer than an actress unlike these days) until I returned to normal. There’s only so much edgy progressive culture that I can take – and movie musicals like that Barnum Brown piece, ‘Rocketman’ (sort of), and the upcoming Cats-2019 (we’re talking December of this year), have all that plus singing. What joy. Not. It’s really almost enough to make a blogger return to real life… just in time to see and hear POTUS the Donald open his maw and emit a series of racist insults that have no business being emitted by a POTUS; you motherfucking Yankees, impeach him now!

Try to escape back into mass media? To AoS, to be more precise? Oh wait, AoS is being cancelled at last – the upcoming 7^th season will be its’ end. So far, AoS is trying to give all that it has…more recycling, this time of the Ghost Rider plot arc. Further compounding the situation is the fact that Gabriel Luna does not appear to be returning to AoS, especially for the finale of S6 – he is busy preparing for his own ‘Ghost Rider’ TV series… Gregg is doing the best he can, playing a Coulson clone that has Ghost Rider powers… AoS has officially jumped the shark. It made sense for Luna and his character – Robbie Reyes – to return to AoS back when a fear dimension that is not a fear dimension after all, but he never did. Rather, Deathlok made his obligatory appearance – one per AoS season or even less – and that was the end of that. Only it is not, and Izel is about to take over the world via her alien space bats…sorry, shrikes. In real life, shrikes are carnivorous songbirds with some rather gruesome and disturbing feeding habits: when they catch a small animal, they impale it on a thorn, and strip flesh from the impaled corpse at their leisure. Real life can be stranger than any science fiction, and for North America, there are two main species of shrike, the loggerhead and the northern shrikes – but we have digressed.

No, not really. Not unlike S5 and especially S4, AoS is trying to combine several plot lines into one, just in time for the explosive mid-season finale. Yes, it is supposed to be the season finale, but this is just AoS being cute, among other things. They are losing cast members again – agent Davis has apparently died for good – and the numbers still are not so high, and the enthusiasm is on the decrease, now that the cast and the crew know that the gravy train has almost ended. Will AoS end up in an equally big mess as the last two seasons of GoT did? Since this week’s episode – ‘Leap’ – forgot/ignored about Snowflake’s existence completely, odds are that yeah, they will be, forgotten coffee cups and water bottles aside.

…So, for now, this is it. See you all soon, people!

PS: Do not try to play the karma, please, unless you are that sort of a wizard/cleric/theurge. If you are – go ahead; if you are not – eventually you will lose control and then it will be really bad for everyone.

Now – see you all soon!

MCU Spider-Man - Lion King with thumbs? - July 16

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Otherwise, where are we?

…Apparently, as we put ‘Spider-Man: Far From Home’ behind us, and TLK-2019 is in front of us, now we are in the perfect time to proclaim: the current incarnation of Spider-Man, the Tom Holland version, is TLK, just with opposable thumbs and different hairdos. Let us begin!

Peter Parker is Simba, with Tony Stark being Mufasa; previously, it was the late uncle Ben who’d been Peter’s father figure, but in the MCU, it’s more of Tony’s job; so far, the closest we came to Ben Parker is the BFP suitcase that Peter took upon his European vacation; we don’t even know how he looks.

…This isn’t actually such a great deviation: we still know next to nothing about Peter’s actual parents: his uncle Ben and aunt May had been present with us, alongside Peter, in all sorts of incarnations, but the actual Parker parents? Not so much. Adding Tony into the mix did change the balance…but not as much as it appears at a first glance. Tony is still Peter’s mentor and father figure, and he rescues Peter from the Vulture, (at first), just as Mufasa rescues the young Simba from the hyenas. Young Simba and Peter even have similarly optimistic and carefree attitudes pre-Vulture and the elephant graveyard, respectively – Peter may not have a musical number similar to ‘I just can’t wait to be king’ of Simba, but I kind of got a feeling in ‘Homecoming’ that if he could he would.

Same for the women – Simba got Beyoncé… that is to say, Nala, and Peter got Zendaya… uh, MJ. Yes, them. Do not know if that is woke or just personal preferences, but there it is, and both Nala and MJ are presented as having similarly spunky personalities, so to say. Yay?

Timon and Pumba in Africa and by Betty and Ned in NYC/Europe round up the entourage of our titular heroes. Zazu (Oliver) is balanced by Happy (Favreau), who, yes, got May to balance him out for further MCU romance, but honestly? That romance was the weakest of the three in ‘Far From Home’ and rather reminiscent of Ned & Betty back in Europe.

Both fathers die and are succeeded by villains, Scar and Beck. Both of whom are hypocrites, liars, and are especially successful at misguiding the titular heroes, in different manners but with similar results – Scar becomes king on one hand, and Mysterio gets the unlimited access to Stark’s technology on the other. Hyenas assist Scar, Mysterio got his own minions; hyenas turn on Scar, Mysterio’s minions just outlive him as Spider-Man defeats him for the final time…supposedly.

And then there are the sagely old advisors that take shit from no man or lion, Nick and Rafiki. Rafiki is more polite and subtle than Nick is, but conversely, he is more physical with Simba than Nick is with Peter.

Pause. Yes, Nick is actually Talos, while Maria is Soren, or is she?

Let us look away from Spider-Man to ‘Captain Marvel’ and one person that you do not see there is Maria Hill. At all. Maybe she was just busy elsewhere, or maybe she just had not been hired by S.H.I.E.L.D. in the 90s, or something else, but maybe there is no Maria Hill, but only Soren, pretending to be human. If so, then you have to admit that she is one kick-ass S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, is all that I am saying.

It also alters the disposition of both the initial two seasons of AoS and the very first Avengers movie, (aka the one where Loki invades Earth with Thanos’ army). As humans, Fury and Hill may have had only the slightest idea, as to what the GH formula will do to Coulson, (it was made based on Kree blood, remember?). As Skrulls, Talos and Soren may have had a much better idea, and then there is the issue of how does the rebooted post-Hydra and cap revelation S.H.I.E.L.D. fit into the entire Kree vs. Skrull conflict. At the end of ‘Far From Home’ film, there are mentions of Kree cells on Earth. Sigh. Looks as if Kree will be replacing Hydra as the main secondary villain in MCU and possibly AoS.

…Here is the thing. From AoS S3 onwards, Hydra and the Kree were increasingly mashed together, until the final quarter of AoS S5, where the Hydra were revealed as being the minions of the Kree. Yes, it contradicts the second half of AoS S3, where Hydra was supposedly founded by Alveus, who was an InHuman or an alien space worm, rather than a Kree, and who really didn’t like them, but that’s AoS for you: it had its’ back story broken and reset about as many times as ‘Lost Girl’ had, only ‘Lost Girl’ was finished after five seasons; AoS is currently in its’ sixth. Yay, really.

That aside, at that period MCU and AoS were in a bad place, as their fan base were divided over whether Hydra was Nazi or only evil, whether S.H.I.E.L.D.’s treatment of Grant and Kara was justified, who was in the right – the Iron Stark or Cap’n Rogers… wait, sorry. The Iron Man and/or Captain America – there, that is the correct versions, right? Anyhow, the Hydra issue proved to be much more divisive than MCU imagined it to be, so around the time of CA: CW movie they retired it from MCU as well as from AoS – we are talking the S3 finale here. Only by the second third of AoS S4 Hydra came back in a different incarnation… as opposed to the second half of S5, where it was in its’ classical depiction instead: apparently, MCU cannot really function well without Hydra, yet with it, the old controversies come back. Whereas SW tried to just steamroll over them and it backfired, MCU is trying to fix them – first it tried to get rid of Hydra, and now it is trying to replace it with the Kree. Squee, and let us see as to how it will work out for Marvel. Back to the main topic?

Both Peter and Simba struggle with their fathers’ death, both Scar and Mysterio try to make them worse with verbal bullshit, and both times it backfires – Simba learns that it was actually Scar who had murdered Mufasa and is able to overpower him and throw him off the Rock where the hyenas turn on him and tear him to pieces, while Peter gets his own shit together, gets to Mysterio, and overpowers him, even as the latter’s handgun misfires and he dies. What next?

Simba gets to be king. Peter gets to be a true hero slash Avenger for real, finally. Of course, nothing good lasts forever and Peter know gets to deal with the new incarnation of the Daily Bugle, as well as any other shite that comes his way, (such as MCU’s version of the Scorpion), while Simba will eventually have to deal with Scar’s widow and children in TLK2 movie, (which hadn’t been re-worked with CGI yet). Go them, I say!

What next? Hard to say. No Marvel movies are coming in the next 10 months or so, and AoS is being all over the place; plus real life sucks, so it’s doubtful that we will be able to discuss AoS in the upcoming weeks, especially the end of July and the beginning of August, but what can’t be cured, must be endured, right?.. And Disney in general is in a similarly confused place, seeing how it is has driven itself in a difficult situation with those remakes of its old classics, rather than making genuinely new movies, as it has done in MCU and SW. At least Spider-Man has returned to his roots, faced his fears, and became a hero after trying to avoid it, just as Simba did in his movie. Hakuna matata!

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

Crawl - July 14

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. That said, this goes for everyone, and everyone is connected to everyone else in proportions, and thus, no matter how much my life is bad, the life of those people in the apartment building down the street that caught fire earlier today is probably worse than mine is, right now. Now onto the movies!

This time, since we are talking about life, its’ unpleasantness and disasters, let us talk about ‘Crawl’. It was released in theatres on July 12, 2019, and we have talked about it earlier, when the trailer had been released. It is possible that people forgot about both our discussion and the movie – unlike ‘Spider-Man: Far From Home’, for example, it never made much of an effort to catch the attention of potential viewers, who knows why…

As for the plot, it is a disaster movie: the main character goes home to check on her estranged father, and the two of them end up trapped in their house, as the hurricane brings the flood – and the flood brings at least two American alligators. And?

And this is it, actually – ‘Crawl’ is a horror movie, not that different from ‘The Shallows’, for example, and many other films, except that its’ monsters are American alligators, not sharks. Hence why it is worthwhile to be mentioned – you do not get too many movies that feature alligators (or crocodiles for that matter) these days.

As for the American alligator these days… First, we have discussed it not just as the monster of the ‘Crawl’ movie in question, but also as one of the contestants/combatants on AFO, remember? On that show, the American alligator fought the American black bear and lost. Why it lost specifically is a different question, but what interests us right now is that it was depicted very accurately, from a scientific point of view; before it faced-off with the black bear per se, the two animals were compared and contrasted to each other very succinctly, and we saw the differences between these two carnivores shown to us professionally. To be more precise, like its’ crocodile cousins, the American alligator (or the American caiman, in Spanish), is a crusher: unlike carnivorous mammals, (or sharks, actually), crocodiles, alligators and caimans slam their jaws shut on their victims, and then shake their heads or even go into death rolls to rip smaller chunks from their meals – if they can’t swallow their prey whole from the start, that is. Next?

Aside from AFO, the American alligator has also appeared on the ‘River Monsters’ TV series, on the episode 1x03, aka ‘Alligator Gar’. This episode, not surprisingly, was about the titular fish, but the American alligator appeared there too, as part of JW’s effort to clean-up the alligator gar’s reputation as a man-eater and a river monster. It worked, at least as far as JW and his show were concerned, but what is important to us is that the American alligator can, and does, (or did), attack people, contrary to its’ reputation as a meek and mild-mannered creature, as compared to its’ cousins, the Nile and the saltwater crocodiles. No argument here, the American alligator is smaller than those two, but it is still the biggest member of the alligator and caiman side of the crocodilian family and must be treated with respect. When compared to another one of its’ crocodile cousins – the so-called American crocodile, the American alligator is bulkier, more angular, less streamlined, with a proportionally shorter and broader muzzle. As such, scientists have determined that that means that the American alligator eats less fish and ambushes more animals from the shoreline than the American crocodile does. I.e. the stereotypical crocodile lies in wait in the water and waits for animals to come to the river to drink, after which it strikes. This happens in real life, but there are always other options – sometimes the Nile crocodile, (which is the stereotypical crocodile, FYI), hunts fish in the African rivers; other times it lunges at birds that are skimming the water surface instead; and so forth. However, its prey of choice are land animals that come to the water edge to drink and therefore the Nile crocodile has a large, broad, almost angular head that has plenty of anchoring space for muscles and has a very powerful bite. The skull of the American alligator is smaller, (because it is smaller than the Nile crocodile is, period), but it is built along the same lines, much more so than the American crocodile or the alligator gar skulls, so yes, the potential for the American alligator to be a man-eater is there.

…That said, ‘Crawl’ is still a fully fictional movie, as we’ve discussed it earlier: American alligators may be aquatic reptiles, but their eggs – unlike the eggs of frogs and newts – need to stay high and dry, and not be water-logged; this puts the reptiles at something of a disadvantage against fish and amphibians; if it hadn’t been for the smaller mass extinction at the end of the Triassic period, the world might’ve been a very different place from what we know it to be. (Or not, given that the Mesozoic, the Age of Reptiles, ended on a much bigger mass extinction event than the Triassic did). Where were we?

As a movie, ‘Crawl’ is a decent horror movie, and it is certainly worth going to it once – by itself, with your family/friends/significant other/etc. to enjoy it. Otherwise, you might as well watch ‘Stuber’, or re-watch ‘Spider-Man 2019’ movie instead, period. The conflict feels forced and contrived at times; the half-assed basement of the protagonists’ family home may be the least realistic element of the movie; and the character development is pointless and distractive, not unlike what we have seen in ‘The Shallows’, but this is neither there nor here. Go to the movies and enjoy it. Or not. It is your call.

This is it for now; see you all soon.

PS: And in conclusion, here is a couple of customized carnivorous plants from Pathfinder First Edition RPG, (just because). Enjoy!

ERUPHYTE ASSASSIN VINE CR 4

XP 800

N Large plant

Init +0; Senses blindsight 30 ft., low-light vision, thoughtsense 60 ft.; Perception +1

DEFENSE

AC 15, touch 9, flat-footed 15 (+6 natural, –1 size)

hp 30 (4d8+12)

Fort +7, Ref +1, Will +2

Immune electricity, plant traits; Resist cold 10 and fire 10

OFFENSE

Speed 5 ft.

Melee slam +7 (1d8+7 plus grab)

Space 10 ft.; Reach 10 ft.

Special Attacks constrict (1d8+7), entangle, thoughtspear (2d8; Will DC 18 half).

STATISTICS

Str 20, Dex 10, Con 16, Int 6, Wis 13, Cha 9

Base Atk +3; CMB +9 (+13 grapple); CMD 19 (can't be tripped)

Feats –

Skills -

Language telepathy 60 ft.

SQ bardic knowledge (CL 2^nd), camouflage

ECOLOGY

Environment temperate forests

Organization solitary, pair, or patch (3–6)

Treasure incidental

SPECIAL ABILITIES

Camouflage (Ex): Since an assassin vine looks like a normal plant when at rest, a DC 20 Perception check is required to notice it before it attacks for the first time. Anyone with ranks in Survival or Knowledge (nature) can use either of those skills instead of Perception to notice the plant.

Entangle (Su): An assassin vine can, as a free action, cause plants within 30 feet of it to animate and grasp at foes. This ability is otherwise similar to entangle (CL 4th, DC 13). The save DC is Wisdom-based.

RAMPANT BASIDIROND CR 6

XP 1,600

N Medium plant

Init +1; Senses low-light vision, tremorsense; Perception +0

Aura growth

DEFENSE

AC 18, touch 11, flat-footed 17 (+1 Dex, +7 natural)

hp 80 (7d8+49)

Fort +8, Ref +3, Will +2

Immune cold, plant traits; regeneration 5 (negative energy)

Weaknesses cold lethargy, negative energy

OFFENSE

Speed 20 ft.

Melee slam +10 (1d8+7 plus spores)

Special Attacks hallucination cloud, spores

STATISTICS

Str 20, Dex 13, Con 20, Int —, Wis 11, Cha 1

Base Atk +5; CMB +10; CMD 21 (25 vs. trip)

SQ verdant genesis

ECOLOGY

Environment any non-cold underground

Organization solitary, pair, or grove (3–8)

Treasure incidental

SPECIAL ABILITIES

Hallucination Cloud (Ex) As a standard action once per minute, a basidirond can release a cloud of invisible spores in a 20-foot radius. All creatures within the area must succeed on a DC 16 Fortitude save or be affected by powerful hallucinations as long as they remain in the cloud plus 1d4 rounds after leaving the area. A new save must be made each round a creature remains within the affected area. A hallucination cloud persists for 5 rounds before dispersing—a strong wind causes it to disperse immediately. The save DC is Constitution-based. To determine what hallucination is suffered each round, roll 1d6 and consult the following table.

d6 Hallucination

1 You're sinking in quicksand! Fall prone and spend 1 round flailing your arms and legs as if trying to swim.

2 Attacked by a swarm of spiders! Spend a full round action to attack the floor near you with your weapon.

3 An item you hold has turned into a viper! Drop it and flee from the item at top speed for 1 round.

4 You're suffocating! Stand in place, hold your breath, and clutch at your throat for 1 round.

5 You've shrunk to 1/10th your normal size! Take no actions for 1 round and monsters won't see you.

6 You're melting! Grasp hold of yourself in an attempt to hold yourself together, and take no actions for 1 round.

Spores (Ex) Any creature struck by a basidirond's slam attack is coated with spores. The creature struck must make a DC 16 Fortitude save or these spores take root in his flesh, and particularly in his lungs. The save DC is Constititon-based.Basidirond Spores: Disease—inhaled; save Fort DC 16; frequency 1/round for 6 rounds; effect 1d2 Con damage; cure 1 save.

Cold Lethargy (Ex) Although a basidirond is immune to cold damage, any cold effect it is exposed to slows it for 1d4 rounds. During this time, the basidirond cannot use its hallucination cloud or spores.

Any comments? Criticisms?

S.H.I.E.L.D. 'Collision Course II' - July 12

‘Collision Course Part II’ is over. And?

First, the obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. It can suck for many reasons; one of them is that you may have a mindset just cannot enjoy the present as it constantly remembers the future just lurking around the metaphorical bend; your life, and your time, start in the future, become present for a brief moment and then vanish in the distance of the past, of what-have-been, and there’s nothing that you can do about it. Well, nothing that is not stupid or illegal, anyhow. Where were we?

Sarge’s plans have failed, his crew, except for Snowflake, are dead, though given how AoS treats its’ guest stars, it’s only a matter of time until she’s dead one way or another. Moreover, agent Davis seems to have succumbed to something at the end of the episode, and since Izil doesn’t appear to be dead, (Hell, spoiler alert – she’s coming to Earth proper in the next week’s episode), odds are is that he had been infested by Izil’s alien space bats back on the space ship. On one hand, it is sad, Davis has grown on the audience, some, since his appearance in the S3 (or 4), but on the other…see Snowflake above. Odds of him and Kim dying as AoS S6 is coming to yet another climax are good, ‘good guys’ need to lose some people to make the show look real, or whatever. What next?

Well, there had been ‘Stranger Things’ S3, which introduced the Russian/Soviet threat into the mix, because of course it did. Modern incarnation of Russia, the Russian Federation, is trouble whatever way you look; the problem is that USA seems to be looking at it through some sort of a history lens full of Cold War semi-nostalgia, and it’s a wrong approach on top of everything else.

What is going on the RF? Putin worked in the KGB, in Eastern Germany; his training was oriented more outwards than inwards, and it shows: he works RF’s foreign policy very well, but what is going on in the country is something else, and that something is bad. However! Since US is also treating it as some sort of an inconvenience or a distraction, (not unlike how they are currently using Epstein, the bastard), Putin can get away with anything – for a while. Then, when his time is up, anything can happen; for example, ‘his people’ can rip him apart as they did with the Imposter in the 17^th century and scatter the pieces all over Moscow, as they did in the past. USA has its flaws, but it is very much a more civilized country than RF is, so USA! USA!

…On the other hand, Georgia (we’re talking the Caucasian country here, not the American state), has come out the loser here: it tried to provoke RF into something stupid, and all it did was cause civil unrest within itself, and sanctions from RF from without – and USA, alongside EU and the rest of the ‘Western world’ promptly ignored it, though it did appear worried that the civil unrest will cause their gay pride parade to be cancelled. RF’s oppression of the minorities is bad; the way that USA aggrandizes them to be used for profit (both private and governmental) is not better.

Back to ST S3? Not really. Aside from them Cold War feels, all it really has is a plot line out of an RPG, and we’re talking Dungeons & Dragons or its’ forgotten cousin, the d20 Modern, rather than Pathfinder/Starfinder. God knows why, but there it is. People seem to love it, but if so, more power to them; we played enough D&D 3.5 to have our fill of mind flayers, and hydra variants, and Demogorgon and his thralls to last us without going back to screens to watch ST instead of anything else…

This ‘anything else’ brings us to TLK 2019, and… it was uninspiring. Both the remade B&B and ‘Aladdin’ brought something new to the viewers; the remade ‘Dumbo’ might have even been too new judging the audiences’ reaction, but TLK 2019? Not new enough. It is the other way around, really.

The problem is that of all Disney movies it is the least anthropomorphic; Disney’s original ‘Jungle Book’ movie had humans to diversity the animal cast, while ‘Robin Hood’ was directly anthropomorphic; really, a direct ancestor to ‘Zootopia’. (And ‘Sing’, I suppose). If Disney tried to utilize the variant ‘Hamlet’ script it wouldn’t really be a problem, and not just because ‘Hamlet’ was about as historically accurate as ‘Robin Hood’ is, you know? However, TLK is about ordinary animals executing a human-level complexity script, and that is already problematic, since ‘Hamlet’ does not really fit African realities, (animal or otherwise), to begin with. When it comes to Marvel, or SW, or even human-based movies, such as TLM, ‘the Princess and the Frog’, and etc. that isn’t really a problem, because there’s only so much realism can be instilled into a world where people turn into animated candlesticks and clocks, beasts, and frogs, but TLK? It was also the most realistic Disney movie to begin with, since – no magic. Oh, Rafiki is clearly a shaman or a witch doctor of the world, but even in the original TLK, his magic was kind of subdued and subtle, especially by children’s standards, (just look at ST and what passes for magic there).

…And now remove the quirks of the old 90s animation, replace everything with the 2019’s computer wizardry, and suddenly you get… real life animals that talk in English (or whatever other language spoke in the countries where TLK 2019 is running), and also acting with human motivations – and it does not mesh. In Canada, the Mirvish theatre performs its’ version of TLK on a regular basis – and we are talking human actors acting on stage in real life, just dressed in various costumes. This works, because TLK characters are driven by human motivations; they are humans in animal skins, and making those ‘skins’ look like their real life counterparts doesn’t help. TLK 2019 is not a flop, but the 90s version was still the better one.

Back to AoS? Not really, it would be nice to think that Sarge and Snow have some sort of an evil Ward and Kara dynamic, but odds are that this was already done in S4 by LMD May and Coulson, so there is that. The show still doesn’t know what to do about Daisy and Deke; it is trying to put them together, but only half-heartedly; if Snowflake dies – when Snowflake dies – it should push their relationship further together, but we have no idea just how much do the actors want this to happen, and what is going on behind the scenes? (Other than Jeff/Deke apparently hating Iain/Fitz). We will just have to wait and see, I guess.

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

Mulan 2020 first trailer - July 7

Now you may ask – and what about the first trailer of the ‘Mulan’ 2020 remake? Since we have already mentioned the upcoming ‘Little Mermaid’ remake and ‘The Lion King’ remake is coming out later this month.

Firstly, the ‘Little Mermaid’ remake. There shouldn’t be a problem having an Afro-American actress being the titular character – as MCU’s ‘Spider-Man’ movies and Disney’s ‘Aladdin’ remake have shown, race is by no means a defining feature of a movie character, but! Then there was J-Ro’s ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’, remember it? Both Hermione and Rose Weasley were played by Afro-American (Afro-British?) characters, and it didn’t work; J-Ro herself has abandoned that aspect of her HP-verse and is currently playing with Newt Scamander and co.; true, both movies had POC as actors, but if you compare it to, say, ‘Crazy Rich Asians’, then you notice that J-Ro’s movies are notably underwhelming in that department. For its’ part – and that is just as important – Disney’s remakes are at their best, when they follow close the original animated movies, with just some differences, as ‘Aladdin 2019’ and the previously aired ‘Beauty and the Beast’ remake showed. When differences are much greater, as they were in the ‘Dumbo’ remake, then Disney begins to have problems. So far, TLK seems to be like the original movie; TLM, judging by the trailers and teasers that we have seen – not so much, (though they were sketchy, fair enough), so we will have to wait and see. This brings us to ‘Mulan 2020’, only not.

First, there is also the honorable mention of the Ghostbusters remake; no, Disney did not make it, but it was a remake, and it failed. It was really quite ironic – there were all those people arguing pro and contra, if the gender-flip of the original Ghostbusters film was worthwhile – and then the movie flopped on its’ own merit, and that’s the end of that aspect of the Ghostbusters franchise, as opposed to, say, the comic crossover between them and TMNT, when the Shredder had killed some rival crimelord, and the latter’s restless spirit returned as a ghost, and TMNT had to team with the Ghostbusters, because their skills aren’t really effective against a ghost… the Ghostbusters’ franchise is working out quite well, thank you very much, movie flop or no flop.

This brings us to ‘Mulan 2020’, to TLK 2019, to TLM, and the abovementioned point – racial issues do not matter, plot matters. ‘Mulan 2020’ is rumored to be very much reworked from the original 90s’ animated feature, meaning that it might have problems in 2020 when it comes to the big screen. Those problems probably will not be exclusive to racial matters or cultural appropriation, but Disney may pretend that they are, as they tried to do with their SW films, and that now will be a bad idea: Disney/SW merger may end at the end of the SW9 movie…or rather, the current incarnation of SW franchise will. The merger itself will go on for a while, as the numerous SW comics are indicating: the juggernaut is intently trying to change the public opinion regarding the rebooted SW before the SW9 film comes out…with mixed success. Of course, Disney princesses as a whole have their own comic series already, but that is different – SW, proportionally, is a much more popular and more bought franchise out of the two… but let us wait first until TLK comes out later this month (July 2019) before we make any assumptions…

This is it for now; see you all soon!

S.H.I.E.L.D. 'Collision Course I' - July 5

…And so, for better or worse, we are back with AoS. Real life being what it is, I can make no guarantees that we are going to make it through the S6 finale – did I mention that I hate my life and especially my family lately? Life itself isn’t so bad, every once in a while you get something unexpected, like an overly arrogant red-winged blackbird male singing almost in your face and almost not giving a fuck about you, but family is something else, something that is much harder to stomach even on a good day; and as for a bad one…

Yes, I am aware that that feeling is likely to be reciprocated – I just do not care. A man has to be honest at least on his own blog, so there is that, and if people have issues, that is tough. Now onto AoS?

…Honestly, I would rather rant some more, maybe even much more, about real life, about how there’s some shaman going across practically the entire Russian Federation on foot so that he could exorcise either a demon from Putin or Putin himself from Kremlin, (the two concepts are interchangeable, really), and how nothing similar in the U.S. regarding the Donald is taking place. The Russians’ claim of a socio-political stability in their country is fake, but they’re doing their best to uphold it anyhow…but the same is going on the U.S.A. – the media might be rocking the boat, the proletariat, (or the plebeians, if you want to go all ancient Roman empire instead), but the patricians, the elite? Yeah, they are about just as detached from the rest of their people as their Russian counterparts are – and that brings to AoS, sort of.

First, let us start with the upcoming ‘Little Mermaid’ remake of Disney, which will feature an Afro-American Ariel. People are divided about this already, but what matters to us is that it brings us to MCU’s Michelle Jones, who is based – partially – on the more traditional Mary Jane Watson, who, just like the 90s’ Ariel, is a Caucasian redhead, unlike MCU’s Michelle Jones, as played by Zendaya. There were many complaints about her playing the new MJ in MCU, but what do you know? People have accepted her, and they will accept the new Ariel too – Americans are good at this sort of thing; the problems of Disney with SW are not really about race or gender, and more about Disney & SW pissing off the original SW fan base from the beginning of their merger – but we have digressed.

One of the reasons as to why MCU is succeeding where the latest X-Man movie – for example – has failed, is because of interconnectivity: where ‘Dark Phoenix 2019’ existed in a vacuum, not connected to any other X-Men films, not really, not even the ‘Apocalypse 2018’ film, ‘Far From Home’ is very much a part of MCU, properly connected with other MCU films, especially the ‘Iron Man’ movies, making ‘Far From Home’ a part of a team, metaphorically speaking. This gives ‘Far From Home’ a greater material range than ‘Dark Phoenix 2019’ had, even though it wasn’t as bad as people claimed that it was – but we’re not talking about it anymore, we’re talking about AoS.

One of the plot lines of AoS’ S6 is that Sarge is really an AU version of Coulson who acts nothing like him, and does not really appear to care about his alter ego’s life – all he cares about his mission to stop Izil, aka the Beast. Leaving aside the fact that this is the most blatant material appropriation of BtVS and AtS, (but mostly BtVS S5 and Glory), this character is supposedly that Meso-American goddess, mostly of war and the like, but here she is utilizing the alien space bats that we have met in the past episodes already. Sarge is planning to stop her, no matter what is the cost, but what is the catch? People, i.e. the audience, no longer appear to care about AoS in large enough numbers, and what is more, the chemistry between the actors appears to be gone too, unless you are talking about FitzSimmons…but for the moment the FitzSimmons are separate from the rest of the crew, acting as an unwitting part of an alien Trojan horse of Izil. It sounds exciting, and yet it appears to have nothing in common with the rest of MCU; at least in S3 the writers did try to connect AoS with MCU, and Coulson’s appearance and (relatively minor) role on ‘Captain Marvel’ the movie was supposedly a similar effort too. Sadly, it does not appear to be working; Gregg’s new character is pointedly detached from Coulson, and AoS itself appears to be equally detached from the rest of MCU again, which is not good. MCU isn’t without its’ flaws, but it still is better, proportionally speaking, than AoS is – and that’s before we’re even talking about the reboot of Deke’s character, for example, or the complete lack of chemistry between Gregg and Chloe Bennett (Coulson and Daisy/Quake), Gregg and Wen. AoS really does not do couples anymore – there are the FitzSimmons, (who are the token couple on AoS these days, really – and to a lesser extent, on this episode, a comic relief), and also Mack and Yo-Yo. At least those two are back together again, yay!

Yes, we have talked how AoS is recycling, with the emphasis on re-cycling, its’ old material repeatedly, so it is a good thing that they are going for something completely new now. Sadly, this ‘newness’ got ruined by the disjointedness of the S6 instead. In S4 AoS showed that they can bring new material and not recycle old one – well, actually, they could do both – quite effectively. Here and now in S6 – not so much, which is a pity. Ah well, real life still has it worse.

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

Spider-Man: Far From Home - July 2

Let us begin July 2019 by stating the obvious: real life sucks. This time I honest-to-goodness missed AoS because we had guests and because someone just has to be a socialite and cannot keep their mouth shut until 11:30 in the evening. Yes, the guests are at fault too – they just had to play along, didn’t they, because of grown-up social obligations or whatever other rot parents shove down their children’s minds and metaphorical throats as they are growing-up – man, but do I hate real live sometimes. …Yes, I got my closure with the garter snakes and the American toads in my park, though the leopard frogs continue to mock me – but their turn will come, believe it!

As for ‘Spider-Man: Far From Home’ the movie… it is everything that ‘Dark Phoenix 2019’ was not: it is solid, it has gravity, it has a realistic plot (for a comic-book movie), and even continuity. Its’ characters are well-rounded and three-dimensional, and the story itself takes place in a larger universe and doesn’t feel disconnected as ‘Dark Phoenix 2019’ was.

No, really, you know what one of the sins of ‘Dark Phoenix 2019’ was? It was disconnected from the rest of its’ world; in ‘X-Men: Apocalypse’ Jean was being set-up as the Phoenix in a very different manner from what we’ve seen in the 2019 film, with very different villains from the D’Bari that we had there. In the comics, Jean the Phoenix went ‘dark’ because of the Hellfire club and their manipulation of it – and something of that place could be seen in the actual 2019 movie, but somehow, for some reason, ‘Dark Phoenix 2019’, scrapped everything of substance from its’ plot, and instead left its’ audience feeling disappointed and empty-hearted. Yes, ‘Venom 2018’ had something similar, but ‘Venom 2018’ itself is the beginning of a new Marvel universe – namely, Earth-TRN688, so the situation is different from ‘Dark Phoenix 2019’ after all.

…Right, now, where were we? Ah yes, ‘Spider-Man: Far From Home’. In many ways, this is still a typical MCU movie – there are twists a-plenty, (but unlike, say, AoS, they work), and the villain dies at the end of it, which is what has happened to Mysterio, (but not his crew).

Let us start with Mysterio – by choosing him to be the villain of the current Spider-Man movie, MCU from the start cast doubt on the entire Marvel multiverse appearing in the MCU theory. It is possible that it will appear for real in the future films, but in this movie? Mysterio was blowing smoke up Fury’s ass all along.

Pause. Yes, as the final scene showed, Fury had had some tricks up his own sleeve – he’s that amazing – but until that happened everyone in the audience was wandering just what was going on down in the film, and JG’s Mysterio didn’t fail yet delivered everything that you expected Mysterio from the comics, and the TV cartoons, to be. He is a master of illusion, of deception; he is also a sociopath who does not hesitate to kill children to prevent the truth from coming out, (and yes, this is what a sociopath should be like, AoS! You did a crummy job with Ward and Palamas regardless from what angle you are coming from), and in the end, even if he’s mortally wounded, he still tries to kill Peter first. The douche.

Peter himself, now, is the hero of the movie, and not just because he’s the titular character, (sorry you Miles Morales’ fans, no Kid Arachnid in this movie!), but because the main movie storyline is about him as he is growing into the hero that Tony Stark had set him to be, regardless of all of Fury’s doubts, cough.

…Yeah, that thing with Fury at the end? People already are wondering if we are looking at a Skrull invasion next or what. Considering that MCU has already cast Kree as the wicked aliens here on one hand, and ‘Captain Marvel’ (the movie, though the titular character herself helps too), showed that the Skrulls in this Marvel universe aren’t so evil, so, no invasion?

…Or maybe there will be a Kree invasion instead, who knows? Between Ronan the Accuser, the AoS S5, and everything else in between, Kree have a very bad rep in MCU, so…let us get back to humans and their romance. There is Peter and MJ, there is his aunt and Happy, and there is Ned and Betty. The last are largely a foil to Peter and MJ, and May and Happy seem to be breaking up at the end of the movie…

Just OT: what is up with the Parkers? It’d been noticed for a while now, that aunt May is getting steadily younger in those films, from an old lady in the original trilogy (and the 90s cartoon series), to MCU’s current version; as Peter is calling her by her first name (and what the fuck is up with that), one cannot help but to think that those two act like an elder sister and a younger brother (or like a pair of cousins at most) than an aunt and a nephew; what’s the logic here?

On a more serious note, did anyone notice that Mysterio seemed to be advocating RL fake news in MCU? Yes, his and Spider-Man’s confrontation in this universe seemed to be about truth vs. lies, reality vs. illusion slash appearance, but the point is that remember that ‘Dark Phoenix 2019’ got dragged through the metaphorical mud because it supposedly tried to be woke, (i.e. Mystique’s confrontation with Xavier post the space rescue)? How’s SM2’s take on fake news is better, worse, or different from that? Yes, ‘Dark Phoenix 2019’ is an inferior film to this one, but ‘woke-ness’ has nothing to do with it, unlike hypocrisy…

Yes, Mysterio seems to be getting the last laugh even though he’s really dead now, (but then again, not only is it hard to tell with him, there’s also the case of Loki, who was also decisively dead in ‘Infinity War’, until he was equally not in ‘Endgame’, so there’s that), by revealing Spider-Man’s true identity to the world, which brought J. Jonah Jameson back into the fold, so fans are ecstatic about that; the movie’s titular hero, not so much. It will be interesting to see how Peter handles Jonah this time around; maybe he will get his friend Miles Morales to stand-in as the ‘real’ Spider-Man? Cough. ‘Spider-Verse’ was an amazing movie in its’ own right, though all the color blips and the fancy depictions of characters, action/fight scenes, etc. sometimes were visually overwhelming in my opinion, but this brings us to ‘Sony’.

…Not only the latest MIB movie borrow the actors of Thor and Valkyrie, and the plot from AoS, but their titular concept is also borrowed from the current Spider-Man movie: International vs. Far From Home. Yeah, no wonder that the current MIB film is getting shuffled into various hellholes and whatever; the relationship between Sony and Disney had never been too easy even before the CA: CW film, when this incarnation of Peter appeared in this Marvel universe, and we can only wonder just what will happen between Sony and Disney next.

Anything else? Michelle remains an original character and not an Afro-American Mary Jane clone – she is not happy swinging with her new boyfriend, (she and Peter did finally hook up in London, England. As opposed to London, Ontario, Canada, for example). Still, hopefully that she and Peter will remain a stable couple, because the two of them work very well together, (though their characters appear to have been reworked, some, since the ‘Homecoming’ movie). Go team PM, I say!

…For now, though, this is it. We are behind on our AoS reviews, and given what my life is right now, odds are that we will remain behind – such is reality in which we live in. MCU’s latest movie, though, is great, because it is not, well, real, but has plenty of everything – parody, drama, teen angst, humor, romance – you name it. Good luck watching this film in movie theatres too.

This is it for now – see you all soon!