FH: Sohei - July 24

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, but at least there is entertainment, on the other hand.

First, there is the ‘Despicable Me 4’ film. It… is not bad, but it is still apocrypha: see, the first three films were about Gru changing from an anti-social villain into a more social anti-hero. Then there were the Minions’ movies, which acted as something like a prequel to those first three films, explaining the Minions’ general history and their shared history with Gru. Now, the DM4 film seeks to reset the timeline, by introducing Gru’s new son, by introducing Gru’s history with him, and by rebooting the Minions and their new employers, (cough). It is not a bad strategy, just a weird one, and given that the DM4 is a less than a successful film, (by the critics’ standards, anyhow), I guess we know as to which side the coin has landed.

Second, there is, well, the second season of Hulu’s ‘Hit-Monkey’ series. It is based on a Marvel comic line, but it is not a part of MCU, which might be why such sites as the Marvel comic database are downplaying it in favor of the D3 film, which we will discuss at another time. ‘Hit-Monkey’ S2, meanwhile, might not be something epic, but it is still worthwhile to watch, you know?

Finally, we come to FH (‘For Honor’) newest hero, the Sohei. In RL, they were warrior monks of the Buddhist variety, so GM has never utilized them in his ASOIAF, at least not in the canon, or even the GoT, versions. FH, again, created something, or someone else entirely, armed with seven different weapons of all things, and the primary one appears to be some sort of a glaive – aka a variant lance. Again, FH’s PC has little in common with their RL counterpart other than their name, but that is par for the FH’s course. Pause.

Now, here is probably when you expect me to rant about something or other, but the truth is I have no energy to do so, no motivation. I watched recently a YouTube personality rant about the Megalodon of all things, how is has most definitely not surprised. Now, I agree – the Megalodon has died out, if only quite recently, but ranting about this fact? It will not affect anything at all, by now there are two Megalodon, in a manner of speaking – the RL fish that died out, and the imaginary sea monster that continues to exist, and the two entities are both separate and combined at the same time… The point here is that ranting about things is never helpful; fun, but never helpful, and besides, I just do not have the energy, given how things are going on in my RL: yes, Marvel’s treatment of its’ not-MCU-properties is bad, and FH is something else, but it does not matter – things will change soon… or they will not.

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

Marvel & PJ take 2 - Jan 25

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about the FH game and its’ new character instead.

First, however, here is an honorary mention of MCU’s previous Disney+ TV shows – the ‘She-Hulk’, in which the titular character became a ‘legal eagle’ version of a Mary-Sue. This is not particularly good or healthy for any character, even a Disney/MCU backed one, and so ‘She-Hulk’ is as good as cancelled, the word on the street is. Will ‘Miss Marvel’ be the next to good? This show’s titular character, Kamala Khan (KK) was redesigned in ‘The Marvels’ film, so the jury is still out. What next?

Right, the 1^st season of the PJO TV series is ending, (next week). It was ok, though it can be pointed out that unlike in the original novel, (‘The Lightning Thief’, cough), PJ and Annabeth are an interracial couple now, (with Grover being the obligatory non-human sidekick). This is not too new, admittedly – first there were Ron and Hermione in J-Ro’s ‘Cursed Child’ piece, and while it may have been something of a reason as to why that piece failed, it was not the most important one.

Second, there are Tom Holland’s PP and Zendaya’s MJ in MCU (/not in MCU?). Between this MJ, and the Black Cat from Tom Holland’s first Spider-Man film, so Disney/MCU was making inroads into this sort of scenario before the adaptation of ‘The Lightning Thief’.

(Keep in mind that Disney/MCU also was trying to making it in AoS, but it failed, and it might be part of the reason why AoS characters have vanished from MCU for good).

Otherwise, the 1^st season of PJO is a dutiful and solid faire, and it has went down with minimum fuss and commotion, with no one caring about the interracial couple at the heart of it, (myself included). What I want, (in a manner of speaking), to point out, is that the Greek satyrs weren’t really good-like; instead, they had horse-like ears and tails, while being otherwise human; the ‘great god Pan’ and his children were the half-human half-goat hybrids instead; in the Roman mythology, they were Faunus and the fauns, but we’re getting sidetracked from the FH.

Today on FH (Jan 25, 2024), we were introduced to a new Viking character – the Varangian. They are swinging a mean bardiche battle-axe, so is there anything to say?

Yes, the Varangians were the elite guards of the Byzantine Empire, (aka the second Roman Empire, though this statement is debatable). They were mercenaries, and they were good old Vikings, just under a different moniker. In the FH game, the Varangian… is an independent agent, on a collision course with their treacherous uncle, if you care about this sort of thing. Put otherwise, once again, FH pulled a ‘cool-sounding’ name out of a hat and tried to make it work. It did work, too, in a manner of speaking. Bully for them, I daresay. At least this time the moniker is appropriate for the character.

Well, this is it for now, however. See you all soon instead!

SI & FH - July 22

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, but SI does not fare much better either.

…Now, some of you are raising a point that while AoS was a show about a group of people, (i.e. the titular characters), SI is a show about Nick Fury and his entourage, just as the ‘Hawkeye’ Series had been about Hawkeye… and the other Hawkeye, (you decide which is which). This is reasonable, but, again, if you look at ‘Hawkeye’, it was more than just about Hawkeyes one and two, it was also about their families, (especially about Kate’s), and about Echo, (another Marvel character who may or may not getting their own series in the future). In other words, ‘Hawkeye’ was part of MCU’s zeitgeist of that time, that of transitions: the title of ‘Hawkeye’ passed from Clint to Kate, and the landscape of MCU itself changed: NYC got a new vigilante, Echo, while Fisk was on the out, (supposedly), and Yelena Belova got further established in MCU than compared to her MCU debut in the ‘Black Widow’ film. SI does nothing like that, it is just Nick Fury running around, trying to save the world, while his few allies are just dying, and he’s blithely ignoring them: ‘Jeeves is dead? Thanks for the update, bye!’ There is no hook to capture and hold the audience’s attention, no nothing.

…AoS had the same problem, as a matter of fact, even from the start, but because they had several core characters who didn’t die in the initial episodes, for example, this show began to generate plenty of drama by the second half of the first season, and that was what kept it going, especially in the first three-four seasons. SI doesn’t have that either – the characters are both new and forgettable, and the new ‘Marvels’ trailer only further emphasized that SI is less of a milestone for MCU, and more of an aside, forgotten as quickly as possible. Why? Because that movie is about the Kree, not the Skrulls, as villains.

The fact that SI has evil Skrulls for villains, (rather than plain-mundane Chinese, North Koreans or Russians – thank God for that), is also a problem: by now MCU has established that Kree are the bad guys out of the two, and the Skrulls are allies of Fury and Earth’s humans; to have them suddenly become evil has made things even more convoluted and uncomfortable for MCU and its’ narrative, so the odds of SI being shoved aside and forgotten after its’ run ends is perfect.

Pause. Going back to the new ‘Marvels’ trailer, we also see Fury there, but no other member of the SI cast, including Ms. Sonya, who is just a variant of countess Val, of whom there’s no sign, which is proof that SI is about to be done and gone in MCU. True, the first ‘Captain Marvel’ film also starred Phil Coulson, who ended his AoS run being more live than dead, and the ‘Marvels’ trailer ignores that as well, but AoS is apocrypha of MCU on one hand, and on the other, MCU is restructuring itself even regardless of AoS by now. Is that it?

For SI – yes. For FH – not so much. This week the game has released a depiction of a new PC character, the Ocelotl. Succinctly put, this character is based on a RL and fantasy versions of the Aztec Jaguar Knight caste, but because of copyright infringement, or because FH is trying to be fancy, the character is named after the ocelot wildcat instead.

An ocelot is a sizeable feline, true, after the jaguar and the puma it is the biggest cat in the American tropics, but the jaguar could easily have an ocelot for breakfast if the latter got unlucky on one paw, and on the other, the North/Central American bobcat could probably overpower it as well. There is no idea as to why FH ignored the jaguar, the American biggest cat, in the favor of the ocelot, but it still did.

As for the new character’s weapons… He wields a Macahuitl and Tepoztopilli. The first is a wooden sword/baseball bat studded with sharp shards of obsidian. The second is a wooden spear with a wide head, also studded with sharp shards of obsidian. In the original Mesoamerica, which had no metal armor, such weapons were formidable, tearing at a human body, and obsidian shards could and would splinter on impact, further hurting the human. Against metal, (ok, steel), arms and armor, however, as well as firearms, the Aztec weapon proved inefficient, and the Natives would acquire those weapons and armor quickly enough, though it wasn’t sufficient to save their empire from collapsing… from several reasons, actually, but none of them are relevant to FH. What is important, supposedly, is that the Aztec Jaguar was already featured in S2 of Deadliest Warrior, (DW), where he faced a Zande warrior of Africa, and lost. Now, under a new name, he is returning to mass media – it will be interesting to see how the ‘Ocelotl’ will fair in the game.

This is it for now. See you all soon!

PJ Masks & FH - June 18

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us briefly talk about the new FH development instead.

Ok, no, first I need to address the issue of why I am not talking about the current PJ Masks’ development. To this, I reply: real life sucks already, so why should I talk more of the same? In greater detail, listen: here, Disney Junior is trying to softly and slyly reboot the PJ franchise, just as Disney/Marvel is rebooting AoS via the upcoming ‘Secret Invasion’ series, and Disney itself is rebooting its’ animated movies as well – just look at the TLM-2023 version and compare it with the original 1989 one. However, in the case of PJ Masks, the soft reboot ran into a specific problem – the lack of continuation. Seriously, look at the previous seasons, as I’ve written before – there’s no consistent character development either among heroes or villains; neither side seems to learn anything from their repeated clashes, or they do, but never utilize it – and thus, all of them are caught in an endless loop of fights, night after night. You could really write a dark story here, about several children who are caught into some sort of a crazy Groundhog Day – pardon, night-like – scenario and cannot escape it unless they do something drastic…

Ok, this will not happen because the titular characters – the PJ Masks – have daytime/civilian identities and their nightly emergencies have something to do with their daytime issues. That is fair, but sadly, the series reboot seems to have gotten rid of this, now there is even more nighttime action and even less daytime, making the cartoon series even less realistic than it was before… Yes, I do understand that ‘PJ Masks’ was never about realism, but still, this is depressing, so I’m ignoring the series for the moment, and am not commenting on it either.

As for Ubisoft’s FH property… yes, they seem to be going Mesoamerica now, and are introducing a new named character Vela the conquistador. Yes, the conquistadors were the initial conquerors of Mesoamerica for the Spanish empire. For me, though, they strike closer to home: one of their most famous members, Hernan Cortez, appeared in the third and final season of DW, where he faced-off against Ivan the Terrible.

I have written before that the match-up didn’t make historical sense: like many eastern despots, Ivan IV the Terrible stayed safely behind the front lines… of course, so did the king of Spain during Cortes’ times… so the point here is that in this episode, DW had a Russian/Eastern villain defeated by a Western/European anti-hero! How novel… not. Still, DW is done and gone now, and what is left is… FH, for as we talked before, the creative team behind FH has plundered DW for ideas a lot, and the new conquistador character is yet the latest example – with one difference.

For the melee weapons, Hernan Cortes used a halberd, (which became a trademark weapon of one of the original team knight characters – the Lawbringer), as well as the ‘espada rapera’ – the Spanish rapier. However, since FH’s new character is based on their previous Warmonger character, their weapon is the Warmonger’s old weapon – the flamberge sword. Essentially, this is a rapier/sword combo, with a wavy, stylized blade, a la a tongue of flame. Put otherwise, the FH team also seems to be running dry, Mesoamerican styles or not.

…So, what we got here is the ‘PJ Masks’ show, which has transformed from a relatively decent pre-teen superhero fable show into its’ flawed imitation, where style is more important than substance, and conversely, we got the latest FH update, which has delivered – so far, but still – another update, also on style, nothing more. That is flat-out depressing. Have I mentioned that real life sucks? It does, and one can always count on oneself and one’s family to make it worse.

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

Elemental - June 15

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. This is all I want to say about it right now, so let us move onto the ‘Elemental’ movie instead. Regrettably, ‘Elemental’ is much of an improvement, topic-wise – it also sucks, not unlike how ‘Doolittle’-2020 sucked, only moreso.

Let us elaborate. Superficially, ‘Elemental’ isn’t too different from Disney’s ‘Zootopia’ film (2016), save that in place of anthropomorphic mammals we got anthropomorphic elements instead – air, earth, fire and water. No, the ‘Avatar/Korra’ franchise had people who could control such elements instead, (and they had people who had no such powers too). The world of ‘Elemental’ is more restrictive than the world of Aang and Korra is, as well as the world of ‘Zootopia’ – there are only four main elements, (any ‘crossbreads’ such as mud or steam embodiments don’t appear in this film), and nothing else. In fact, at least some critics are asking why are there sentient/self-aware elementals, of water, for example, and then there is just plain water, which is neither sentient nor self-aware.

Next, we got the actual plot. In ‘Zootopia’, we got a love story between a red fox and a bunny rabbit, an unintentional and flattering parody of Harry and Megan. They have to solve a mystery of the night howlers, figure out who is trying to set carnivores and herbivores, (well, ‘predators’ and ‘prey’) against each other, as well as deal with prejudices, biases, preconceptions and superstitions against each other. In ‘Elemental’, we got a female fire elemental named Ember and a male water elemental named Wade who… pause.

The main conflict in ‘Elemental’ is that Ember had blown stuff up, and Wade has to report her to the city hall. Since that would put the kibosh on Ember’s entire family and their dream, done in the ‘Straight-off-the-boat’ style, Ember has to persuade Wade that she isn’t so bad and he shouldn’t report her – and when she does achieve it, in a manner of speaking, (among other things), she loses her temper shortly afterwards once more, and creates another explosion that she and Wade have to solve together. Fair enough, but the plot of ‘Zootopia’ is simply better and more complex out of the two.

Then we come to romance. As it was said above, in ‘Zootopia’, romance is only a part of the movie; the mystery of the night howlers is just as big a part. In ‘Elemental’, there is only romance… wait, what do I hear? It is an interracial romance and therefore it is more important? Right, once again, from the topic.

As TLM-2023 showed, racial issues are still big and thorny in the U.S. society: after TLM-2023 aired, I saw many videos and read fan reviews that – while claiming that they were not racist, certainly made a lot of noise about H.B. and her race. The fact that TLM-2023 is a bad movie on its’ own merit does not help the situation either. However, what matters is that TLM-2023 is one side of a coin – a film that brings out a lot of race-based critique in a manner that helps no one.

…Meanwhile, ‘Elemental’ is the other side of the same coin: it is supposed to be a responsa to the interracial relationships’ critique, but it does so smoothly and glibly that it helps no one.

Again, the U.S. society, or at least its’ elite, don’t deal with interracial relationships very well. Look at Disney/Marvel, for example: in AoS, there were no WASP/POC relationships; in ‘Avengers’ – ditto, and SW did not do any better. TLM-2023 handled this sort of thing very, well, heavy-handedly, pardon the pun, but at least they tried – and ‘Elemental’ doesn’t do the interracial relationship any better, certainly worse than how ‘Zootopia’ did it.

Put otherwise, ‘Elemental’ is ‘Zootopia’, not only simplified to just four races/species, but with all the rough edges sanded and smoothed out, which only hurt the film. In ‘Zootopia’, characters had to deal with real prejudices and outright segregation – tall, small and short characters were often treated differently from each other and without any political correctness either. ‘Elemental’ does not really have that; yes, Ember and Wade come from different social classes, but ‘Elemental’ does not explore that either; the main conflict here is that Ember and Wade are fire and ice…I mean, fire and water, ha-ha. Couldn’t they make them earth and air instead? Are earth and fire, for example, all that compatible?.. Never mind, where were we?

Flat-out, by smoothing out any controversies and conflicts, the creative team behind ‘Elemental’ has decreased its’ value, has decreased the value of Wade and Ember’s relationship… period. Tom Holland’s Peter Parker and MJ have value as a couple; Sony’s Miles Morales and Gwen, (as well as Peter B. and MJ Watson) – ditto. Ember and Wade – not so much. You want to see a fictional interracial couple that works as a team, defeating enemies and overpower obstacles? Go and re-watch ‘Zootopia’ once again. ‘Elemental’ is just a faded copy of it.

Anything else? Yes, Ubisoft’s FH franchise seems ready to go Mesoamerica soon – already there is a conquistador-like character in the works. There was a conquistador – Hernan Cortez himself – in the third and final season of DW, but that is another story…

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

FH: Afeera - Jan 27

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about something else. The latest FH character – the Afeera. No, I do not know what meaning this term/label/name has in RL – from what I have seen, this is a fully Ubisoft invention – and it shows.

How so? Let me be straightforward here: the Afeera is generic. And it shows.

Let us start again. Throughout the game’s existence, the PC characters of FH had flavors – knights, Vikings, samurai, and so on. Lately, however, this state of affairs began to change with the appearance of the ‘Outlanders’; until now, there were only two of them: the Pirate, (think 17^th-18^th century here than anything more modern), and the Medjai. The latter was clearly inspired by the characters in the Mummy franchise, the non-Tom-Cruise one, that is.

…For their part, the Medjai were based on the Western depictions of Ancient Egypt, and while that is neither here nor there, what matters is that while the Pirate was more modern, (proportionally), than the rest of FH heroes, the Medjai was more ancient instead, even moreso than the Gladiator and the Centurion were. This could be gleamed from the appearances of the two characters alone. The Afeera on the other hand, is different.

Officially, this character hails from ‘the kingdom of Arabia’, which is self-explanatory, but otherwise, there are few details that make them specific; even their weapon – a heavy mace – is generic, there’s nothing about it that is associated with an ‘Arabia’ of any kind.

A brief aside: as a weapon, (there are various meanings behind this word), a mace is a club, that has a big iron head with spines, or flanges, or so on, and a tough, stout handle, also made from iron, or from wood, with which to swing the head. Unlike a Morningstar or a flail, there are no chains to connect the two pieces; they are connected directly to each other.

Also, a mace is a weapon that a) inflicts mass damage – a direct or a glancing blow can easily rupture organs and break bones if there’s enough force behind the strike, even if you have armor on you. And b), a mace is not a precision weapon; while you certainly need to train with it, it is a different training from training to fight with a sword: to kill with a sword, you need to land a blow/strike at just the right place, (and if you don’t, your opponent just might survive…at least long enough to kill you), while with a mace or a club – not so much. It is proportionally easy to kill a person with a mace (club), than with a sword; as such, at least during WWI there were trench clubs as weapons… where were we?

Ah, yes, alongside the sword and the spear the mace is a standard RPG weapon these days, whether it is a LARP or a tabletop game – you can be certain that one of the less monstrous foes will use a mace or a club against you. Put otherwise, there is nothing special about a mace, and while, yes, one can argue that there is nothing special about the other weapons in the FH game, well… Somehow, the FH staff managed to make swords, axes and the other weapons unique and individual in the past, each PC had something unique and unusual, even the Pirate and the Medjai have… the Afeera doesn’t. Ah well, this is how the cookie crumbles, and also, you can always count on your family to make everything worse – but that is another story.

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

FH: Medjai - July 22

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks; sometimes it sucks so badly, that you cannot sleep at night, but just lie there and wonder – just what are you doing, and where are you going, and where, and when, are you going to stop and get out of the groove – and go on from there to where?.. On a more lighter side, the ‘For Honour’ (FH) game has introduced the new character – the Medjai.

…Oh yes, undoubtedly, the Medjai – or rather, the Medjay, were a real-life organization, actually: first, they were a tribal group from Nubia, (a region located alongside the Nile river), and later on – something of a police organization during the existence of Ancient Egypt – something that the second incarnation of the ‘Mummy’ franchise used quite a bit. Yay?

Well, maybe – the Anubis-based armor used by FH’s Medjai clearly comes from that franchise, (as opposed to the aborted Tom Cruise one, eh?), as does this warrior’s double-axe, (double battle-axe, maybe)? There’s nothing original about the new guy, put otherwise, and what’s more, whereas its’ predecessors were taken – at least – from the now-defunct ‘Deadliest Warrior’ (DW) franchise, the Medjai doesn’t even have that – this is fiction at its’ purest. Ouch!

Finally, we return to MM for one last time – somehow we forgot to comment that MCU’s version KK is a mutant instead. Fancy that! In the original comics, MM was an InHuman instead, so now we got a flat-out switcharoo! Yay! Just kidding, but this is also one of the factors as to why the MM finale was about as bad as AoS’ had been – it is just flat-out incompatible with the rest of the show, just as AoS’ had been. However, AoS’ problems aside, in MM, the finale has rubbed-out the rest of the season – pause.

Let me start again. Throughout the first season of her show, KK was introduced and developed not as a mutant, or an InHuman, or some other Gifted, but as her own person, an independent and competent young woman, who has her own thing, and who does her own thing too. Great! She was also shown to have both her own allies and enemies, which is also wonderful – and then came the final scene, and all of this was flat-out removed, as not only Kamala was revealed to be ‘something else’ instead – i.e. a mutant, regardless whether a regular or an irregular one – but she has also found herself in an entirely different, non-connected situation from what she’d experienced so far…

…Something similar has happened to the Scarlet Witch too, in fact. Throughout WV, she has grown and changed as a character, and at the series’ finale, she actually began to return to her superhero roots – and then came the ‘Dr. Strange 2’ film, and all of that got thrown out of the window, with Wanda being reduced to someone not unlike the Wicked Queen from Disney’s original ‘Snow White’ animated movie. There is a reason as to why people are accusing Disney/MCU of mistreating their female characters, and this is a part of it. I do not know what will happen to Kamala next, has she just switched places with Carol Danvers, or if the two of them have switched their minds instead, but I really hope that she will get a better hand than the one that Wanda has received…

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

DW, 'Lawrence vs. Teddy' revisited - May 2

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so today I have re-watched the ‘Lawrence of Arabia vs. Teddy Roosevelt’ DW episode. And-? And nothing.

Should I elaborate? More precisely – can I elaborate? When I have watched it on TV for the first time ever, I was struck by the similarities between this fight and the fight between Napoleon Bonaparte and George Washington in the DW S3 premiere… and in hindsight, this is not too surprising: the S3 premiere was supposed to have the U.S. defeat the French, while ‘Lawrence vs. Teddy’ had the U.S. beat the British instead. It worked too, but…

…But at the end of the day, the fights were clumsily done, (when compared to the first two seasons of DW), leaving the viewers feeling cheated; there were other factors that contributed to DW’s demise, and we’ve discussed them back in the day; and now all that is left are clips and recordings of the old series, hardly a worthwhile repast for a person who’s down on his luck, and may be hearing the ‘call of the void’ whenever he goes out onto the balcony to chase the pigeons (feral-domestic rock doves or whatever), but still, it is better than nothing…

…Better than FH, at least. Yes, it is not quite right to compare FH to DW, as the latter was a TV series, while the former is an online game, and the former is still going strong, while DW was cancelled, but as we have discussed in the past, FH has noticeably relied on DW for content…which has grown to be little more than a list of moves, emotes, and the like. The last character that was added to the roster was the pirate, a character that was taken directly from the DW S1, as we’ve talked, and since then there apparently was nothing new – apparently, the imagination of the creative team behind FH is running dry. Anything else?

Not much; MK is almost out, but we got ‘Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness’ coming up on May 6, and the Internet is already abuzz with the discussions of the movie, so maybe it’ll be able to liven things up – but given that the RF-Ukraine’s military conflict is turning RL is even more stupidly monstrous and violent, I wouldn’t bet on it; oh, and the Donald still isn’t down & out, and may return to the U.S. politics for the 2024 elections. Fun! Did I mention that real life sucks? – Because lately it feels like a real understatement. Still, we have our moments; lately, we got out this 3.5 D&D Dungeon magazine #136, and are playing one of the game scenarios presented there; reluctantly, I have to admit, that the old scenarios are sometimes to be the more fun ones than the new ones are; maybe there’s a point in it somewhere…

Moreover, as for ‘Lawrence vs. Teddy?’ Yeah, I still got nothing. I have enjoyed it – in a manner of speaking – back when DW was fresh and new, (ok, relatively fresh and new, but still), watching the show was fun, but now – not so much. Guess everything fades with time and you need to move-on into the future… Yay, I guess… Still, real life sucks in my opinion…

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

FH: Gryphon - Dec 1

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Second, non-obligatory disclaimer: I am not dead yet. I just did not feel like writing much, not with real life being so, well, sucking. And real. And everything else in-between.

…Yes, things are not being so bad as I make them sound – I found the full episodes of AFO on YouTube, and they’re in English rather than in Spanish, (as I had them earlier), so this is important, so yay! Real life does deliver us some gems in all of the dung, after all.

…AFO is a mere one-season TV series, done by AP, which has moved on and beyond it? Fair enough, but I have been looking for it for years, and so it is a pleasant breakthrough in the entire morass of misery and bad weather and what else have you. COVID-19 maybe. Real life sucks, and lately I am grateful for anything that I can come across, and this includes the latest FH update. Pause.

Now, FH has been going through various updates lately, but ever since the Warmonger and their flamberge sword, they had no new characters. The flamberge, if anyone has forgotten, is a ‘flame-bladed sword’, aka… any sword whose blade is not straight, but wavy, to inflict greater damager. The sword types vary from the rapier, (self-explanatory), to the Zweihander, a two-handed sword, (a sword that you need both hands to wield, that is). Frankly, the two blades represent two ends of a wide spectrum of sword blades, yet both can have wavy- or flame-shaped blades. FH was scraping the bottom of the barrel here, not to mention that the term ‘warmonger’ is extremely generic in and of itself, (I do not have to explain it, do I?), but then they turned around – or did they? Let us talk about the gryphon.

…The ‘gryphon’, of course, is primarily just an alternate writing of ‘the griffin’, which is an eagle-lion hybrid that had its’ start in the Ancient Greece and Rome, but somehow survived through the Medieval times and beyond. Secondarily, of course, it is used as a name for various businesses, organizations, movies, art pieces, and even a mud volcano in geology, a parachute system in the military, (and also an American military rocket), and an asteroid, (6136 Gryphon, FYI). What do they have in common outside of their names? Absolutely nothing!..

…That is because the gryphon – or the griffin – itself is not so much generic, as it got a very specific appearance, as it is lackluster, unlike the dragon: the dragon has plenty of mythos to go on by, while the gryphon – doesn’t. In the ancient times, it pulled chariots of gods, (sometimes, when gods needed chariots that needed pulling and regular winged horses weren’t available, I guess), and it also guarded gold out in the East from the one-eyed Arimaspians, or Arimaspoi, a fictional race.

The Arimaspians themselves are gone, (since they were just smaller versions of Cyclopes, really), but the gryphons have survived in various fantasy RPGs, novels and comics, eking out some sort of a living as steeds for various characters…though the hippogriffs do a better job of it, apparently, and now, we got this. The Gryphon character in the FH.

Sadly, the man in question, (in the promo video this character was male, so I will be referring to the Gryphon as such), doesn’t look very eagle-like or lion-like – rather, he is just a man, armed with a bardiche.

Now, a bardiche – there are several ways of spelling it, but we will be calling it just a bardiche – is a poleaxe. If it sounds familiar, that is because the Lawbringer of the Knight version is already using a poleaxe in FH. Unlike this basic version, however, a bardiche is more elongated vertically with a crescent moon shape, and it has no spikes on top or in the back, unlike the halberd.

…The halberd brings us back to DW proper, because this show put the halberd against the bardiche in the ‘Ivan the Terrible vs. Hernan Cortez’ episode back in S3. We’ve discussed this episode when it first came out, and, admittedly, I don’t want to discuss it again – it had its’ flaws, it had its’ prejudices, but it was never truly bad or anything like that; but then again, DW had never been intentionally bad or stupid or prejudiced; now unintentionally is another story, but DW is gone, and we won’t be talking about it anytime soon, not for a good reason. That said, it had been a good show, just as good as AFO had been, for AFO, unlike of the later AP series, aimed to both entertain and educate, and its’ CGI wasn’t so bad for the early 2000s period…. Where were we?

Ah yes, the bardiche. It is a battle-axe, a poleaxe, or what else have you. It does not have two blades as the hitokiri’s weapon does, for example, though the FH version also has a stabbing tip. Neat. Anything else?

Sadly, no. I just wanted to remind everyone that I am still alive and kicking, at least for now. See you all soon instead!

Quarantine entry #53 - May 13

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, and on this particular day, there is nothing going on in real life that is exceptionally noteworthy, the rant of a certain musician on Twitter aside. People are falling apart, as simple as that, and the fact that such captains of industry as the aforementioned Twitter, Google and Facebook are allowing their workers to work from their homes even in the post-lockdown world doesn’t help. Working from home means co-existing with your family 24/7, and this is what the lockdown has already exposed as overrated – you need to have some space from your family, some time off, and if that isn’t happening, then it isn’t happening, and you got an unavoidable meltdown instead. What else?

…People have been asking me as to why I have not been discussing Ubisoft’s latest ‘Assassin’s Creed’ installment – the one with the Vikings. My answer is plain: I do not do ‘Assassin’s Creed’ as a rule, and this version is essentially ‘Assassin’s Creed’ meeting the ‘Vikings’ of History channel, and in case you have forgotten, I wasn’t impressed with that TV series either. Frankly, I’m going to call a spade a spade and call out, saying that if it wasn’t for the lockdown, the ‘ACV’ wouldn’t receive as much publicity as it did, but this is the hand it was dealt instead, the end.

…As for ‘Stargirl’, the latest darling of the DC TV-verse, I’m not going to touch it right now either – I’m not a big fan of DC TV-verse, ‘Stargirl’ may be superhero drama meeting a teenage rom-com, or sit-com, or whatever – don’t care. This is not my TV show for now, the end. What is left?

…I feel like talking about lions, actually. Of course, we have talked about them repeatedly in the past, so let us do this now once more – I am feeling sufficiently nostalgic, here and now.

So: the lion is the king of the beasts. People claimed that it could stare into the sun without blinking. However, so can the other cats – the anatomy of their eyes permits that. ‘Tis just that the lion is so regal-looking, so majestic! It appears that a lion is never looking at anyone directly, but only at some point in the distance, as if it does not notice you. And its’ roar is something else – it isn’t roar, it’s thunder!

When it comes to strength, the lion does not attack only the African bush elephant, (namely, the fully-grown animals), the African rhinos, (ditto), and the polar bear, (because the latter is never found in the African wilderness). Anything else is fair game. The lion’s strength is such, that it can break a bull’s back with one paw strike. However, more often, the lioness will jump onto the prey’s back, grab the muzzle with its paws, and by jerking around, it either suffocates the beast or breaks its’ neck, whether it was a wildebeest, some other antelope, a zebra, or even the African buffalo.

…Yes, there are several subspecies, or even species, of the African buffalo, which is only a distant relative of the American buffalo, aka the bison that we have discussed in the past. However, right now, we are talking about the lions, which is the only species in the Panthera genus that hunts in packs, as the wild dogs do – aka in prides. All the rest of the ‘roaring cats’ are solitary hunters. Beyond them, we got the cheetah and maybe the cheetah’s South American cousin the jaguarundi, which also live in family prides, especially the cheetah. Too little is known about the jaguarundi to make a concrete statement.

Finally, the lions used to live beyond Africa – in Eurasia and even in North America, (which used to be connected to Eurasia via a land bridge in the past epochs). As you know, those beasts were called cave lions in Europe and American lions in North America. Whether they actually lived in caves, or were only depicted there by the Stone Age humans, is another story. These days, lions live only in Africa, and in the Gir Forest in India, Asia, and their status slash well-being is contradictory and worrisome. A sad end for the king of the beasts there!..

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

Quarantine entry #3 - March 24

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, and in this instance because it is just the third day of the lockdown/quarantine. So far the highlights of my day were 1) seeing a white-breasted nuthatch, (much bigger and chunkier than its’ red-breasted cousin is); 2) seeing a junco, (at least I think that it was – I don’t have access to my guidebooks for the moment, and without them identifying birds is harder than with them); and 3) seeing someone’s cat wander by, (and possibly scaring away the local birds and squirrels – you can never tell with cats, after all). Not exactly the heights of excitement, so I went back to DW, and this time I chose the ‘Sun Tzu vs. Vlad the Impaler’ S2 episode. And-?

…And it had never struck me before that this episode is not too different from the RCRW one, (see the entry from 2 days ago). Vlad came across as a fighter/barbarian combo, while Sun Tzu was more of a strategist. Fair enough, but the truth is, DW was about the weapons, rather than the warriors, at least in the first two seasons. In the final third season this got less clear-cut, but STVI was an S2 episode, so it was still all about the weapons, and Vlad’s weapons were more advanced than ST’s were.

To elaborate, ST’s weapons were from before the firearms were invented, and Vlad’s – from after. It can be argued that Vlad’s hand cannon – a primitive firearm – did not make too much difference in the final simulation, but the simulations are based upon the numbers derived from the earlier tests, and on that occasion, Vlad’s hand cannon proved to be a more efficient weapon than ST’s incendiary arrows were, and in a way that made sense too. Sometimes, TV can suck as much as real life does, only differently.

Now, as for the ‘X-factors’, they did not really make a difference, and this is where the reference to the RCRW episode comes in. Not unlike his Roman counterpart, ST was a more detached leader, he preferred a hands-off approach, and was not really big on battles on a personal level. Yes, he was much smarter and sneakier than Vlad was, but because this was a one-on-one fight, in the end, Vlad’s superior strength and military equipment were able to carry the Impaler through. Hooray!

…And yes, you cannot call STVI a prejudiced episode – Vlad’s weapons slash equipment were genuinely better than ST’s were, they were more advanced and derived too, and his armor was tougher as well. Therefore, he won fairly. Anything else?

Sadly, no. I do not feel like ranting about anything DW related here and now, and as for FH, I must admit that I care for the proto-Chinese faction, the newest faction, the least of them all. In addition, Ubisoft itself seems to be putting FH on the backburner as compared to its’ other products, such Assassin’s Creed or the Tom Clancy based one. Maybe that’s justifiable, a crossover with the Prince of Persia or not; frankly, the latter’s heyday was probably in the 90s, and now I’m not so certain that a fusion with him will give FH any sort of a boost at all, but maybe that’s just me. It is hard to stay positive, when there are little to none people on the streets and the only sounds are birds, planes, trains, and the occasional car. COVID-19 is not as bad as people are making it out to be, but because the key word here is ‘people in charge’, the results are bad all the same. It is hard to say if the old dream of the ‘global village’ will die, (hint: not too likely), but people are using COVID-19 as an excuse to push their plans and progress their plots all the same and things are changing, period. Where will we end up when this is all over? Who knows; what I know is that I will probably not be talking about DW tomorrow – just to spice things up.

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

Quarantine entry #2 - March 23

It is the second day of the quarantine, and real life still sucks more than it usually does (obligatory disclaimer, this is). I am still going through the DW episodes; this time I stopped on one of S1’s last episodes – ‘William Wallace vs. Shaka Zulu’. This episode is not prejudiced, just faulty. Why?

Well, for most of the weapons, the two contestants went neck to neck, practically – Wallace’s claymore sword, (used by the Highlander in FH, remember?) wasn’t really superior to Zulu’s sword-like spear, and the Scottish chainmail wasn’t too different or really superior from the African shield.

The ranged weapons – ditto. Zulu had a glorified throwing stick, while Wallace had a ball and a chain combo – neither weapon was very effective.

The mid-range weapons: Wallace had a war hammer, (just as the Shaman in FH does), and Zulu – a battle-axe, (FH’s Hitokiri, I suppose). Both weapons are similar in design and function, neither gets a real edge.

Finally, we get special weapons, and Zulu has a spit of poison. Here where it falls apart for him, as this poison is not really a weapon at all, does not get him any kills, unlike Wallace’s targe and dagger combo. Whatever else you can say about them, they kill, and so Wallace killed Zulu in the episode’s stimulation face-off. It went just under 2 minutes, making it one of the shortest fights in the DW’s entire history – but DW S1 was weird like that, this is why I continued to watch it even in the more formalized S2 & 3 – but we talked about it before. Anything else?

Just one more thing – Wallace’s war hammer, (in real life that is two words, unlike the game franchise, where it is just one), reminded me not only of the Shaman, but also of Robert Baratheon from the Martin-verse.

Here is the thing. I do not care for Cersei, either the novel or the GoT version, but Robert Baratheon was not too sympathetic either. Frankly, I suspect that GM based him on real life Henry VIII, (maybe influenced by Shakespeare’s depiction of that monarch), who used to be a valiant knight and warrior in his youth, but became a tyrant as well as monstrously fat in his later days. The main difference between Henry VIII and his GM counterparts, (there were more than a few of them, including several Targaryens), was that Henry VIII also actively influenced U.K. economics, changed the country from being Catholic to Protestant, (and this trait remained after his death), and was in general a much more active and pro-active king.

Pause. Yeah, if you ever read GM’s books, (especially before his Targaryen love fest), then you would notice that there was little progress, social or otherwise. Yes, ASOIAF/GoT is fantasy, but a relatively realistic one, more so than LotR is, for comparison, and in real life, once people get fed up with how things are made, they try to do their best to change them – even Shakespeare’s plays about English history, (as well as others, such as ‘Coriolanus’, for example), reflect it.

Not so in GM’s novels – the world of Westeros doesn’t change too much, even after losing their dragons and becoming much diminished, Targaryens continue to rule, everyone else – to obey, and nothing changed until that ill-fated tourney, when Rhaegar absconded with Lyanna Stark and jumpstarted the entire Robert’s rebellion. When Robert killed Rhaegar at the Trident, and the Lannisters finished the job at King’s Landing, the world of Westeros did change…and then it stopped. GM doesn’t appear to be too interested in change, the entire ASOIAF novel line – at least until the final seasons of GoT derailed everything – was about the return of Targaryens, as represented by Jon and Dany. Yes, the king would have been a former ranger of the North… I mean, a Night Crow, one of the black-robed folk at the Wall, cough, and the queen wouldn’t have been a virtuous elven maiden, platinum hair and lavender eyes or not, but a much more experienced and jaded woman, (in theory). Instead, however, we got, well, GoT S8, where Jon killed Dany, and the throne went to Bran, even though ‘the Wise and the Crafty shouldn’t rule’, according to the late and lamented Terry Pratchett. Plus, the North did separate from the rest of Westeros – this would be as if Scotland won slash seceded from the rest of the U.K…. wait, are we talking about the real world again?

Back to Westeros and Westeros v. 2, because in real life the U.K. is still united. Everyone was aware, consciously or not, that the last two seasons of GoT went against the grain of GM’s novels, but they were still aired anyhow, and GM endured it…why?

Because whereas now the hoopla associated with GoT and GM has noticeably died down, back then, right after GoT was finished, there were a lot of plans for sequels, spin-offs, prequels, what have you – and GM was probably going to get at least a part of the financial plenty from all of this bounty. But! If he confronted the HBO and co. regarding his disapproval etc. regarding the last GoT seasons, his relationship with HBO and co. would have deteriorated no matter what the outcome was, and then he would’ve had problems, especially if GoT was cancelled, and it would be his fault, even if just in part. GM may look like someone atypical, but he certainly loves his money, I would bet!

…And yes, people are aware by now that his views regarding his fans are not very flattering for the fans, but the fact is that GM’s novels are products that people need to buy…at least from his POV. Otherwise, if his works will remain on the shelves, he is in trouble, and since they are, odds are that he will not go to confront HBO, (or didn’t, in the past tense), because GoT and co. are his ‘other’ source of income. Fair enough, especially since by now the world of Westeros does not appear to be coming to the big screens anymore, and GM may be in trouble nevertheless.

Getting back from the real life to Westeros, what about Robert Baratheon? My point is that his war hammer made him an atypical knight from the start – realism or not, GM’s knights fight with swords, and seemingly – only with swords; even such fairly mundane weapons as war hammers, clubs and spears seem to be exotic weapons in their hands. This was not the case in real life; tourney lances aside, so I cannot help but to wonder if Robert did not win at the Trident, because he was wielding an atypical weapon by Westeros’ knightly standard and because he was also atypically large and strong by Westeros’ standards as well. Quite a bit of imagery associated with Robert Baratheon, (and by extension with Gendry, cough), is reminiscent of storms and thunder clouds and of Thor, the Norse thunder god, whose trademark weapons was the war hammer, as practically everyone knows these days. Where was GM going with this? In GoT it went nowhere, save for Arya and Gendry’s relationship, and GM himself is keeping mum, even before the COVID-19 struck.

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

Quarantine entry #1 - March 22

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about something else – DW, for exactly. Why DW? Because I’m currently in the New York State, which is on lockdown at least for the next couple of weeks, and everything is closed, (well, almost everything), and there’s limited material to go on, so let’s pull out something out of the old dusty closet; might as well be DW.

So, what to talk about in DW? Let us try with another old chestnut – the Roman Centurion vs. the Rajput Warrior. After all of those years that had gone by after this episode was first aired, is there anything new about this episode?

Sadly, no. It is still a well written and an exciting episode, but nothing more. The only notable thing about RCRW is that it is also an honest and a non-prejudiced episode, but we have talked about this problem of the late DW a long, long time ago, so what there is left?

Firstly, yes, the Rajput had the advantage here – the ancient Roman, (as well as the Greek), army often had had problems with one on one fight. Yes, there are all of those one on one battles in the Iliad, aka, one of the first two authentic Western novels, but I must confess I have my own doubts about the novels’ authenticity, some things just don’t add up – but that is another story altogether.

Anyhow, the Rajput here has the advantage because his weapons are not so much advanced as better designed for a one on one fight – in a team fight, the situation would have been reversed. Of course, there is also the question as to why DW had the Centurion team (hey, remember his FH incarnation, incidentally?), bring forth a Scorpion – a stationary oversized crossbow, essentially, but, hey, they had something similar in an earlier S2 episode, when Alexander the Great’s ballista took on Attila the Hun’s Scythian battle-axe. It ended badly for Alexander – Attila won that showdown. What next?

The movies are being postponed, which is good – I was beginning to feel as if my blog is turning into a list of reviews, and I do not want that. I do not know what I am going to do with my blog yet, but it will be more than just a smattering of reviews – of movies, TV shows, Netflix shows, no! There will be something else! Maybe even discussions about something!

…For now, though, the best part of my day so far was that I saw a blue jay through the window in the yard outside. None of us is willing to leave because of the lockdown, unless it is for the grocery shopping or something similar, and the animals know it, somehow. Will they take over the world back from the humans? Probably not, simply because fear fades, and humans get tired of being scared all the time, COVID-19 or not.

To make matters worse, people are taking advantage of COVID-19, and usually for the worse. That is a part of real life, and especially of the American dream, with its’ individuality and entrepreneurship – both direct descendants of the Protestant, (especially the Anglo-Saxon version) way of life. Fair enough, but it means that there isn’t only good things stemming from this root, but bad ones too – and the same could be said about communism, as the Chinese seem to be having their COVID-19 issues well under control…no matter the cost. The Russians, of course, are a different story, but that is because they are a different story – they always tried to be a part of the West, culturally and politically speaking, but because the Russian proletariat and the elite were almost two different cultures throughout most of Russian history…things got muddled, and the West didn’t do anything to help either. The 1990s were just the latest example of that – the missed opportunity for the West to fix the Russian issue for good…instead the West got whatever it got in the person of Putin, and it can’t be fixed; maybe the West doesn’t want it to be fixed, but then all its’ those fiery speeches about the virtues of Democracy begin to seem fixed. What next?

Well, real life still sucks. The COVID-19 is still going strong, but because people are taking advantage of it in different ways, or just reacting to it differently, it is hard to differentiate truth from fiction; in this case, truth may not be subjective, but with everything that is going on around here, it is getting hard to figure out just what truth here actually is, and that is just as bad. Hopefully though, real life will get its’ head out of its’ ass and sort it all out, or else it’s going to be Italy all over again, (and Spain isn’t doing much better either), that’s all.

…And by that I mean that we’re done for now – see you all soon!

FH: Zhanhu - Nov 5

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. In this particular instance, it happened because I myself messed up, and take about 90% of the fault upon me, fairly and squarely. The other 10 go to other people, but this is a hollow consolation for something that is undeniably your fault. Of course, your loving family will make everything to make you feel worse, but that is another story entirely, let us talk about something else.

The movies? The latest ‘Terminator’ film appears to have flopped, though personally, I found it to be rather enjoyable instead – not everything has to have a deeper meaning, no matter what some moviemakers say, but that is real life for you. It sucks on so many levels.

…Also, today was Election Day, and the U.S. state propaganda went into overdrive to educate people about voting, about voting machines, and about the evil Putin. Sigh. This is not how the States will defeat the new incarnation of the evil empire, they need to get their shit together first, and decide, whether the Donald will go or stay, for example. Until they begin to be cohesive, Putin will not have to do anything at all – the American government will do everything for him (and anyone else) instead. Period.

Let us talk about the latest FH character instead – a Wu Lin named Sun Da, and he is a Zhanhu. Regrettably, I have no idea as to what this means; i.e., it is a word from Chinese language, but so far, the searches lead either back to the FH proper, or to de-facto dead ends. On one search, Zhanhu was related to an ethnic Chinese name of some monkey species, (which is irrelevant to this discussion, sadly); in another, it was some sort of a local curiosity in a Chinese town; not very inspiring results, to be frank, but it’s par per course for FH – in this case, they took some exotic-sounding word and adapted it for their own uses. Bravo as always, I suppose.

…However, the new character’s trademark weapon – the Changdao – has proportionally more information about it. Like the Nodachi of Kensei from the Samurai faction, it is a two-handed single-edged long sword. Another oversized saber, really, but this one was used in the post-Medieval China, from the Ming to the Qing dynasties. A bigger cousin of the dao, it was used in elite infantry units, often against enemy cavalry, such as the Mongols. It will be interesting to see how Zhanhu and the Changdao will measure against Kensei and the Nodachi – when compared to the Nodachi, the Changdao had a shallower curve, especially in the real life. In FH? Who knows, and since we are not fully ready to return to real life, let us mention the DW – a S2 episode, ‘Ming Warriors vs. French Musketeers’, the dao was appropriately enough, the short-range weapon of the Ming Warriors; it was less effective than the Musketeers’ rapier & main gauche combo by a considerable margin… but this was still a less prejudiced and a more professional episode than the S3 starter, ‘George Washington vs. Napoleon Bonaparte’ episode. Probably because DW did not have some sort of a stake in ‘Warriors vs. Musketeers’ episode, unlike the S3 premiere episode instead.

What is next? Like the older four characters of the Wu Lin faction, Sun Da has no mask or some other façade/visage as many other characters in the other three factions. It can be played as either a male or a female, but that is not new either – the same story went down since the initial 12 characters, so no shock here either. Put frankly, when FH is forced to do something truly original, they make less of a confusion than when they try to outsource, as they did with the Zealot, for example. However, good for them with Zhanhu! (Real life still sucks though – my weekend was a clusterfuck, period, but this is a different story altogether).

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

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!

FH: Hitokiri - April 27

Let us talk, for a change, about FH, and its’ newest character – Hitokiri. Supposedly, this name/title means ‘executioner’, but even minimal research reveals that rather it means – if translated directly from Japanese – ‘manslayer’ or ‘mancutter’, because of the subtleties of Japanese language (and of Japanese to English translation). Okay. What is next?

So, the FH creative team designed Hitokiri to look like an executioner, or perhaps – THE Executioner from MCU; certainly, Hitokiri confers a similar feel to the MCU’s real life version from the ‘Thor: Ragnarok’ movie; why did the FH creative team decide to make him a Samurai than anything else is another question: there’s nothing inherently Japanese, or even Oriental, about executioners. Yes, they were going for an anti-hero here, just as how they did with Vortiger/Black Prior for the knights, but if with Black Prior that made him/her almost into a specific person, (reminiscent of Apollyon, remember her?), with Hitokiri they went rather the other way and made him/her almost oblique and personality-less. Maybe that was supposed to be intended, but it is still weird.

Now, in regards to the weapon – what is it? It is an ono, a Japanese version of axe or hatchet. Unlike the Vikings’ Dane axe and battle-axe, FH’s ono has two sides; in reality, there had been only one. It was used as a weapon of war, but also for other purposes; in fact, it was only rarely that the Japanese used their axes for war. Usually, it were not the samurai proper who used them, but rather the sohei – warrior-monks, or the yamabushi, (mountain hermits). Does Hitokiri look like a Japanese warrior-monk? I honestly cannot say – in FH, appearances and themes usually did not go past the external aesthetics, for it is the sort of a game where everyone tries to kill everyone else, (or at least – everyone else who is not on their team), so anything past appearances is superfluous.

Getting back to weapons, let us get back to Black Prior. As we have discussed him, he was armed with a sword and a kite shield, and we talked primarily about the shield, letting the sword go, since it looked like a one-handed version of Warden’s sword. Apparently, some people claim that it is different. Warden’s sword is a longsword – a typical knightly sword with a straight double-edge blade and a cross-shaped hilt, built to be gripped and used by both hands, whereas Black Prior’s sword is a broadsword, also known as a basket-hilted sword, because its’ hilt was usually shaped like a basket of some sort. It was a military sword, unlike the rapier, which was used more often in civil duels instead, and was invented later than the longsword did, in the Late Modern period, as opposed to the Post-Classical one. Seriously, the precision of some people is overwhelming.

Back to Hitokiri? Honestly – no; so far, Ubisoft deemed that we should know only little about their backstory – a glorified executioner of some sort. Seriously, this is what FH is coming to? Its’ creativity team could use some work, I am thinking.

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

FH: Black Prior - Jan 24

…With ‘the Gifted’ taking a hiatus for the next week, (dumb idea, but theirs, so there), let us talk about FH once again instead. They are introducing a new character into their mix again, his name is Vortiger, and he is a Black Prior.

Let us start with the most obvious feature of all – his name. If it sounds familiar, it is because it is – it is a variant of Vortigern, who was the king of Britain – well, one of them – before king Arthur, and in the 2017 movie, he was a villain that His One and Future Majesty had to defeat to become, well, the One and Future King. That said, in reality, Vortigern had been just ‘a king’ that reigned before Arthur did; Hell, he reigned before Uther did, (i.e. Arthur’s father), and to be honest, ‘reality’ isn’t the best term to use here – the man was already obscure by the Medieval times, (when king Arthur’s legends began to take shape for real), and the most established version of him is that he was the British king, (or a British king, or a chieftain, whatever) that invited some of the first Saxons, (i.e. Viking invaders) to help him battle Picts and Scots – a very ironic action. Why?

On one hand is that the Saxons themselves took over Britain, (if king Arthur had been real, he would have battled them long and hard and often), and then they got conquered themselves, by their more derived continental cousins, the Normans. Does anyone remember DW, S3? The second episode of the season featured William the Conqueror, precisely the king who had conquered Great Britain, (hence the nickname Conqueror). The result was a culture clash – yet another one – depicted in such literary classics as Walter Scott’s ‘Ivanhoe’ - you should really read it.

And on the other? Those Picts and Scots and co. that Vortigern had Saxons help him battle with, they were here before the Britons, or whatever the proper name of Vortigern’s people was. Vortigern and his people were initially conquerors themselves, just like the Vikings, (who became Saxons and Normans at different times in different planes), and then they were conquered themselves.

…That is it for the historical Vortigern, such as he is. There is even a theory that ‘Vortigern’ is not a proper name, unlike Arthur, say, or Henry, but more of a title, meaning something like ‘the high king’. However, this theory is not very popular or thorough, so let us not bother with it.

Then we come to FH Vortigern’s ‘label’ – he is a ‘black prior’. In real life, a prior is a generic term, or title, for any monastic superior, aka a high-ranking clergyman (in the Catholic Church)…well, one that ranks higher than an average cleric, anyhow. We’re talking monastic orders, here, not some sword-wielding yahoos – but as we’ve discussed on a regular basis in the past, FH often mislabels its’ characters, going for whatever name/label that sounds cool, regardless of what it actually does. In case of Vortigern, (and the entire new Black Prior class) it is swinging a sword, and – a kite shield. To paraquote Captain Obvious, it is a shield that is shaped like a kite… or a leaf… or an almond… or even a raindrop – usually rounded on top and curving down to a point, (rounded or otherwise) on the bottom. FH made it more angular and flying-kite-shaped, as opposed to raindrop-shaped in real life. They were made especially popular by the Norman cavalry in the 1000s – see William the Conqueror mentioned above. Their size and shape made them poor choice for infantry, but unlike the Saxons, the Normans preferred to fight on horse rather than on foot. By the mid-thirteenth century or so the kite shields got replaced by so-called heater shields instead, which were more compact and proportionally smaller and wider than the kite shields were, making them easier to use. The Crusaders, (especially in the First Crusade) introduced this sort of shield to the Muslims… and where does it leave FH?

Being more derived, actually. For a while Ubisoft struggled with making new memorable and interesting characters, and it even went for the ancient Chinese for a while, but now it seems to be coming back to its’ initial stock, which is mainly Medieval Europe. Yay! Yes, the character probably still has flaws, but Ubisoft did get better at ironing those kinks out, so playing a Black Prior, (whether male or female – Ubisoft has both by now) should be fun.

…Well, this is it for now – 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).