VQ eps 5+6 - Oct 28

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about the fifth and sixth episodes of VisionQuest instead? Fair enough, though from Vision’s point of view (pardon the pun), the situation is not much better – Ultron and Jocasta are tangibly in love. Pause?

No, not particularly – Vision might be the titular character of the show, but the show is about Ultron too – the original MCU synthezoid/robot/A.I./whatever is learning how to be more humane too. He is learning what it is like to have family and friends (tentatively, with many caveats, despite his intentions, but still), and now he is learning what it is like to have a love interest…while remaining himself. At least that is what I am assuming, ‘cause we still have two episodes to go, and maybe Ultron will end up a toaster instead. Who knows?

Well, not Vision (White Vision) – the younger synthezoid is flying blind, he’s one step behind the good ship Ultro-Jo, and he’s kind of almost constantly flat-footed here, even as the other villains of the narrative are getting their own things together. On the human half of the VQ, the Paladin just cannot catch his own break, no one seems to like him, and the sixth episode of VQ introduced Raza, a member of the 10 Rings, as ‘the bloke who would replace Paladin’, so the latter is on the run himself.

…We talked about the Shang-Chi movie on its own merit, I hope. That was not a bad film, and it should be noted that the 10 Rings acquired new management at the end of that film, so there is that also, which makes me wonder about Raza’s place in this organization. However, right now, Raza and the 10 Rings serve as an extra tie of VQ into the greater MCU, and that is important.

…Yes, again, AAA (or WonderMan, for that matter), had no particular tie-ins to the MCU – you could watch it or you could skip it, and there would not be problems in understanding further MCU material. VQ is different – there are connections to MCU, and there is no homosexuality or any sexual minorities at all; all of the relationships we saw (so far) in VQ are between males and females, both human and A.I. Pause?

No, not really – for the moment, Disney is done with sexual minorities (in all their versions) in all of its branches. VQ is an important part of MCU? (Let us assume so). Then there will not be any sexual minorities. AAA has to have sexual minorities as ‘gender-bending’ Wiccan could cause its own fall-outs? Then it is not an important part of MCU. (Neither is WonderMan, BTW). It is like a hole in a wall – it is either there or not, and WandaVision & VisionQuest on one hand and AAA & WonderMan land on two different sides of it. Anything else?

Anything else? Not particularly, though this is not happening just in MCU – look at Disney’s other properties. I.e., Mr. Riordan finally released a new book, ‘The Wild Zone’, alongside Ms. Oh. It is the same story as in MCU – Will and Nico’s novels, ‘Sun and Star’ and ‘The Courts of the Dead’ were all about a same-sex couple – Will and Nico. Now, in ‘The Wild Zone’, there are no couples, and the potential couples are heterosexual, with few nods and winks in the background to keep the alternate lifestyle people appeased - allegedly. If they do not, well… too bad for someone – ‘The Trials of Apollo’ pentalogy really wrapped all up, and Riordan-verse is de-facto done. Will and Nico tried to push it forwards, they succeeded, but since they are a same-sex couple existing in a Republican USA, Disney decided that the situation needs to change, and just re-set the Riordan-verse instead. Disney already did it with SW, and now that universe is just stuck in a dead end. What will happen to Riordan-verse is not known yet. Moreover, MCU is moving forwards – in a decidedly heterosexual direction. Real life really does suck sometimes.

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

VQ Eps 3+4 - Oct 21

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, and when you look at VisionQuest eps 3&4, the situation does not appear to be better – the dastardly Ultron took advantage of Vision’s weakness to take over Vision’s physical body! Le gasp! Quelle horreur! Le Bastille!

…No, wait, there is not any French in VisionQuest (so far) – this is just real life elements bleeding in: the French riots. In fact, they were all over Europe, but in France, they are especially prominent because of 1789. 1776 is the beginning of the American Revolution and beyond. 1789 is the beginning of the French Revolution and beyond. The two revolutions had completely different outcomes, but one theory says that if the French kings had not supported and helped the proto-colonists win their independence during 1776, then their own revolution of 1789 might have been avoided, or at least delayed – who knows? Until the shadow global government allows the broader public to behold the wonder of a time machine and to use it travel to the late 18^th century, we will never know.

What we do know, though, is that Monseigneur Macron and his cabinet are truly lucky that no one among the rebels/proto-rebels had risen to the occasion and proclaimed himself the new Napoleon, promising change and relief to the rebel masses. They do not need to appeal to everyone, just to the more powerful faction, and then they will rise – in a coup, of course, but that is how it worked from the second half of the 18^th century to the mid-20^th century at least; perhaps now too, now that the global democracy is floundering, thanks to the Donald. The RF president Putin is a formidable adversary of course… but in large part to the American internal weaknesses – but America does not appear to be doing anything about them, so there you go. The global democracy is floundering – but we were talking about Ultron? Or Vision?

Well, Ultron taking over Vision is not too new – in the S1 finale of ‘What if?’ (Remember the series? It was MCU’s first attempt at a multiverse, and it worked), Ultron already did this – took over a Vision body… and began to destroy the multiverse, forcing the Watcher and the Strange Supreme to make their version of the Avengers to end the ‘Ultra-Vision’ for good. They succeeded, of course, but in VisionQuest we have no signs of the multiverse, so we probably will have the other A.I.’s as well as Tommy/Speed and Lucy/Coat of Arms, maybe, to get Ultron out of Vision – or not, as we’ve no idea where the MCU is taking the synthezoids in general. For all we know, the ‘Ultra-Vision take 2’ will be essential for taking down Dr. Doom for good, eh?

On the other side we got the MCU Jocasta who herself seems to be a female version of an Ultra-Vision – Vision’s skills (plus her own, of course), but Ultron’s values. ‘Our’ Ultra-Vision was flirting with her, sort of, by ep 1x04 already. Since they are artificial lifeforms, nothing should come out of it, plus-

-plus Ultron is capable of cooperating with other A.I.’s against Jocasta, especially. We still have no idea of what he will do now that he is charge of the mutual body. Maybe he will go back to his ‘Age of Ultron’ schemes ASAP – or maybe not. Jocasta might vex Ultron in her turn – or she might not. In addition, Paladin, of course, is still a wild card – an apparent baseline human in a series about synthezoids, A.I.’s, and the like. (He is based on an older Marvel comic character, BTW). Who knows what he will do? Pause.

In fact, this seems to be a good point to stop the rant as any. In real life, Monseigneur Emmanuel Macron caught his break – now he has to do something to save his regime and France, (and perhaps the rest of the EU – if France collapses, the rest of EU will follow soon). Good luck to him – perhaps Madame Macron can get his arse in gear as she might be in charge of the family, eh? (Circumstantial evidences, but still). We have to wait and see, again, while in VisionQuest – Ultron did catch his dream. What will he do with it? Will it succeed, or will it turn to ashes in his metaphorical mouth? Who knows…?

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

VQ series premiere - Oct 14

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about VisionQuest instead? Maybe? Pause…

So far, VQ evokes contradictory feelings in me; in fact, the entire trilogy does. Why? Because Wanda is not coming back. In theory, this trilogy – WV, AAA, and now VQ – should be about a family broken and re-connected to each other, Wanda and Vision as a couple were about a bond between a magical witch and a scientific not-quite-a-robot, who couldn’t be together despite all odds – but they did.

Then Vision died, of course, and Wanda went insane; she drew an entire New Jersey town into her crazy mindscape, and Agatha came along to make it worse. Of course, she was handled, the town of Westview was freed from Wanda’s mind and mindscape, and-

-and enter the ‘Dr. Strange 2’ movie, where Wanda was the main antagonist and she died, leaving the further family narrative described above completely redundant. Without a mother, a family can be, yes, but it is not the same, plus there’s the matter of generations – without a parent, actual or surrogate, it all falls apart. Re-Enter Agatha Harkness?

Well, as we saw in AAA, Agatha remained lazy and irresponsible even after Wanda had her way, and she was in no way fit to be Wiccan’s surrogate parent or mentor. The latter is especially pointed, as the duo were accompanied by other witches, or would-be witches, and almost all of them died, (except for one… who hadn’t appeared in MCU ever since). Agatha just is not good for any sort of leadership or responsibility, I would say, but she and Wiccan keep on together, even if Agatha pokevolved into a ghost now, and is sort of mentoring Wiccan in his new role as a witch (warlock?). So?

So flash forward to now, to VQ, where Vision is on a quest alongside his estranged son, Speed, (Wiccan’s twin), and his even more estranged father, Ultron. For some reason MCU decided to make Ultron’s human incarnation look Jewish. How lovely. First Mephisto played by Sacha Baron Cohen with his specific appearance, and now Ultron (“Mazel Tov!”). Someone in MCU has rather particular ideas, I would say.

That said, this bit aside, VQ is shaping up as a family quest, a parallel to AAA and its… not-a-family quest. Agatha might have her own partner and child, but their role in AAA is more secondary, in the end, it is her and Wiccan, and neither is clear how they feel about each other. In VQ, it is going to be Vision and Speed and Ultron tagging along, a trio of neither human nor robot men, trying to bond and outrun their enemies. Pause?

Here is the thing. There is no reason why ‘the trilogy’ of WV, AAA, and VQ have to come to a shared end. However, without a shared end, there is no point to a trilogy. Just like the unrelated (for the moment) ‘Wonder Man’, AAA can be safely removed from the MCU timeline without any ripple effect – you want to watch a MCU show with sexual minorities here you go, you don’t, then you won’t miss on anything. Disney has mastered this sort of a corporal fence-sitting by now – for example, in the ‘Frozen’ franchise, Elsa swung from being traditionally heterosexual in the first film, to cautiously homosexual in the second, to… the unknown in the upcoming third. Disney are almost honest to admit that they don’t want to ruin their blue-eyed blonde franchise, by alienating either the hetero- or the homosexual crowd, so odds are that in the third film Elsa will be just a bachelorette, and the new characters from ‘Frozen 2’ won’t appear in ‘Frozen 3’ at all. Pause.

Let us start again. With Wanda around, the WV, AAA, and VQ trilogy would have been a workable cinematic trilogy with connected characters who eventually re-form a family. Without Wanda, the trilogy begins to unravel, and MCU’s decision to replace her with Agatha is not really a replacement, it is a placeholder, and an intentional one. Consequently, this makes the would-be family trilogy… not a family trilogy, effectively derailing this train, but so what?

That you cannot have it both ways, that is what. VQ is shaping up to be a series about family values, that has a direct connection to WV, but not to AAA. It is intentional, as Disney/MCU made AAA so that people who dislike same-sex values can safely skip it and go on enjoying the MCU… but it unmakes WV, AAA, and VQ as a trilogy, no matter what Disney/MCU proclaim. VQ is not a bad show, not at all, given how much trouble Vision already is, and how masterfully the cast do their part, but it is not a part of a trilogy. It is a part of a duology, with AAA tacked on as a compromise that probably won’t affect the events of VQ or anything else that comes along in MCU (cough, Doomsday, cough), but wait, egad, gadzooks! Speed and Wiccan are the next generation of the Maximoff twins! They have to be together, right? …Well, we have not seen them in the Doomsday-related material, so we will have to wait and see, pardon the pun, what happens to them in VQ and beyond. After all, it is not real life, so it possibly will not suck.

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

SM: BND

 

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. So, let us talk about SM: BND instead.

I watched it. I liked it. I… feel that there is something too much, or not enough, in it.

Let us expand. In Nolan’s ‘Odyssey’ we got to see an almost 3-hour-long film about Odysseus and his entourage – namely his wife Penelope, his son Telemachus, his nemesis Antinous, and his therapist, Calypso. Everyone else was an episodic character, including Athena, and some characters, like Odysseus’s parents, who played important parts in the original epic, are absent entirely.

Conversely, SM: BND is a pageant of Marvel characters, as Tom Holland’s Spider-Man films are since the very first movie, (remember it?). Here we see the friendly neighborhood you-know-who deal with the Scorpion, the Hulk, DODC, and the Hand ninjas controlled by the new Jean Grey, while dealing with his increased loneliness from Ned and MJ. Pause.

Right, this is a good point to start. In SM3, Peter parted with Ned and MJ on a tearful, powerful note. Here we see him still single, but still hanging around Ned and MJ even as they are becoming different people who have no attachment to him, no connection. So why is he not moving on?

Well, for one thing, I suspect that Tom and Zendaya are in love, and they do make more money as a package than separately. Oh, they appeared separately in all sort of films… just not Marvel ones, and so Sony/MCU did not intend to buck the trend, especially a successful one. Pause.

In the SP4 finale, we learn that PP is going into space… and without MJ and/or Ned, so there is that. Maybe PP is moving on, and outwards. After all, MCU never likes making aromantic movies, so, who knows? Maybe PP can find happiness without MJ after all.

…Given that Tom and Zendaya are in love and a successful team and Zendaya comes across as the one in charge here, I am not so sure. What else?

Jean Grey is introduced to MCU in a bright new way, since it is a ‘brand new day’. Since the upcoming Doomsday film is bringing the X-Men back as a group, this raises questions as to what happened to the other Jeans. Hey, we had several SM, Lokis, and few other characters – why not several Jeans at once? Sophie Turner might be willing to make a toehold for herself in MCU, eh?

The plot itself… it works, obviously, as do the visuals. This is important, as a plot, is well, important, and so’s the delivery. ‘Stuart fails to save the universe’, for example, has a decent plot and delivery, and… that is it. Right now, the support is highish, but people are still cautious about committing to it, it looks like.

‘Surviving Earth’, on the other hand… it was a beautiful mess whose supporters lost interest midway through. The episodes feel out of order; the season-long ode to motherhood was something else; and I really want to talk about it some other time.

For now, let us just accept that SM: BND is a good film, but not unlike Nolan’s ‘Odyssey’, it has its flaws and doubtful moments and move on. Real life sucks, eh?

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

Endlings S2 premiere - May 14

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, but I am just beginning to master it. Maybe. Where were we?

Well, let us see. DDS2 is done and gone. The ‘Punisher: One Last Kill’ – ditto, and both left me feel… just as the new, second season of ‘Endlings’ left me feel – uninvolved. Pause.

Here is the thing. The A.I. is getting everywhere, short of YouTube and TV, and it is beginning to be felt. It is just a tool that ought to be mastered, and so it is – it is being mastered, but that means that, yes, the old crafts of painting, writing, etc., are being pushed out, but also the tense is important. The A.I. has not been mastered yet, so there are many crappy works out yet, or at least – soulless ones. DDS2, ‘One Last Kill’, and ‘Endlings’ S2 (so far), all feel like they were made with the use of A.I., perhaps masterfully, perhaps not, but also – soullessly. They hit all the right notes, but there is no music.

Of course, on the other hand, there is the individualism and the digitalism of the modern world. The first means that there is a market/audience for everyone, but it is a relatively small and select one – you need to know which notes to hit. It is a hit and miss game, and not everyone is winning.

The second means that it is easy to find what you are looking for online in general, and you can order it online too, rather than buy in a bookstore or wherever. The bookstores that I know in Toronto sell office supplies, tableware, and similar paraphernalia and not just books and magazines & newspapers anymore. They are trying to survive – just not as bookstores. Fair enough.

A special call out to the various RPGs – they are going especially digital especially fast, and the physical aspect of their franchises, such as books (rulebooks, modules, etc.) are fading. Well, they are a specialist luxury market, so is anyone surprised here? Given that the world economy itself is going through some tough times? I am not.

Where does this land the ‘Endlings’, S2? The S2 premiered with an episode about Japan’s wolves – they were specific subspecies the grey wolf species that lived only in Japan, and now one subspecies is gone for good, and the other… may or may not be surviving, in fact – people aren’t sure, and they may not be looking on purpose – some things are best left alone for everyone’s sake…

My point here, meanwhile, is that Ms. Suta and her cohorts just might have downloaded the wolf articles from Wikipedia, fed them to ChatGPT, and Ms. Suta just narrated the resulted, uh, result, in her trademark tone of voice. There were hardly even any theatrics that ‘Bizarre Beasts’ (BB) are famous for – this time, apparently, team BB had a contract to executive, an obligation to fulfill, a job to be paid for, and they are beginning to do it – the ‘wolf’ episode is just the premiere of S2. S1 of ‘Endlings’ had variety in it, as team BB authentically explored the themes of extinction, de-extinction, and conservation… with limited success, but they still did it… probably without the use of A.I. Now… I am not so sure; where BB will go with ‘Endlings’ S2 from here is an open question (besides the obvious). Since this is real life, however, it just might suck…

This is it for now – see you all soon!

Big cats and Daredevil - April 1

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks – I just lot quite a bit of important data; it is important to me, anyhow, so its’ loss is being felt. By me, but still.

What is next? ‘Daredevil’ S2 is proceeding apiece; yesterday, two episodes aired. Fancy that! Looks like MCU might be in a hurry to get through their latest show; I wonder why.

The ‘Supergirl-2026’ movie is a strong contender; so far, it shows itself to be a thorough adaptation of a Supergirl comic book arc, one that was a one-time rather than a part of a greater continuum. In this one, Supergirl is not as wholesome as she usually is, but perhaps her newfound heroics, newfound friend, and the need to save Krypto before the latter dies, will change her outlook. Given how DCEU/whatever already tried to introduce a Supergirl in the Ezra Miller ‘Flash’ film, I am thinking that the odds of it are quite good.

The trailer itself… it is what it is, apparently. The other characters are one-shot themselves, the odds of them dying by the end of the movie (antagonists), or just vanishing afterwards (protagonists) are quite high too; the creative team here brought Lobo along for the ride; the main man of the DC comics appeared in various DC-based media since Superman/Batman Animated Series of the 1990s, so by now he’s tested and relied upon, at least in a certain sense of word. He just might liven up the movie and make it into something more than a by the numbers antihero journey, where Kara becomes a hero, or at least begins to become one. Pause.

In S2 of ‘My Adventures with Superman’, Superman, Lois and Jimmy had to deal with a Kara/Supergirl who was manipulated by Brainiac into becoming an oblivious villain, and who remained one for a long time – and that was only a part of Brainiac’s greater plan. Put otherwise, Supergirl is known to be going dark in the DC multiverse by now, eh? This version of Supergirl is relatively mild still. What next?

Well, I wanted to speak about the upcoming (Christmas-2026) HP TV series, how people are wound up about it, and perhaps – even the racial issue.

…And then I looked at the Nat Geo Animals YouTube channel, and what did I beheld? An ‘episode’ where Mr. Boone Smith held a ‘sport competition’ between African lions, tigers, and cheetahs. Pause.

First, the monikers. Modern DNA analysis showed that the Asian lion is a part of the same lion subspecies that still lives in Western and Central Africa too. (The lions of Eastern and Southern Africa are the other subspecies). Tigers, on the other hand, are divided into two subspecies, with both the Bengal and the Siberian tigers being a part of the same – the mainland - subspecies, and the cheetahs are tentatively partitioned into several subspecies, one of which lives, or lived, in Middle Ease, or Asia, rather than in Africa. So, if the lion is the African lion, then so’s the cheetah, while the tiger is something of the odd one out.

From the genetic/biological/evolutionary p.o.v., however, the cheetah is the odd one out. From the human p.o.v., the big cats – the ‘roaring cats’ – are the oldest modern cats, (as opposed to Smilodon and other alternate models that are not around anymore), while the ‘newest’ models are the domestic cat and its’ immediate kin; the cheetahs are not close relatives of lions and tigers, but proportionally are closer to them than they’re to the housecats. However, lions do kill cheetahs when they can, while the tigers… they and the cheetahs live, or lived in different parts of Asia… where are we?

When Mr. Smith compared lions, tigers, and cheetahs, he compared two close relatives, and an outright outsider. Lions and tigers are not as closely related as they look, (the same under the skin), there branches are separate – one is lions, leopards, and jaguars, the same is tigers and snow leopards, and the third is clouded leopards. The cheetah is related to the puma and the jaguarondi instead; the latter looks like an anti-cheetah, but that is not the point – the point is that the comparison was flawed: the cheetah’s too different, the lion and the tiger – too similar to each other, so the show just was not too satisfying to watch. (The tigers won, BTW). What else?

For the moment – nothing. DD is still a technical masterpiece, but so are Ms. Haynes’ books, as I wrote before. They are enjoyable to read, but nothing more, and DD S2 is enjoyable to watch, but nothing more. The data that I lost… might be recovered, in part, but nothing more. Real life sucks, eh?

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

Medea and Daredevil S2 - March 25

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Several of my documents were lost and I cannot recover them, I almost missed the Daredevil S2 premiere, and people are bothering me about the latest Ms. Haynes novel – ‘No friend to this house’ – that I should read it. Let me start with that one.

Am I going to read ‘No friend’? Well, eventually, maybe. Again, the reason why I’m not the biggest fan of Ms. Haynes is because she’s not the radical firebrand she’s assumed to be, it’s quite the reverse, (usually).

What does Ms. Haynes do? She re-tells the Greek myths, both as fiction and not. As not-fiction, her works are one thing, but her fiction – it is what it is. The Greek myths had been public property for a long time now, and people in general know how they go – Perseus will defeat Medusa and marry Andromeda, Atalanta will kill the boar and lose the race because of the apples, Odysseus is going to get to Ithaca and save his house, etc. Those stories are read, known, remembered, de-facto etched in stone. They can be re-worked, of course… and then they become something else entirely.

Let us get back to A.I. When I experimented with it to write fiction, I quickly uncovered that the fiction it writes follows certain guidelines – couples are heterosexual (unless made otherwise), social strata fall into the strata of priests, aristocrats and peasants, (no workers or entrepreneurs unless made otherwise), characters choose to remain themselves than to change to please others (unless made otherwise)… Pause.

Here is the thing. If you are using A.I., you are free to use it or not. No one forces you to rely on A.I. alone, even if you are commissioned to write something, it is you who is commissioned, not the A.I. You are free to write your own things, not follow the A.I.’s guidelines if you do not want to. Fiction?

By now, there is plenty of fictional novels that feature Greek mythical characters, including the Argonauts. They do not claim to be ‘a mixture of dark tragedy and witty satire’ as Ms. Haynes’ take on them is, supposedly, is, but they were often quite derived from the original Greek myths, much more so than Ms. Haynes’ novels are; she just tries to add the feminist angle to the myths; as a rule, her female characters are positive (unless otherwise), while her male characters are negative, (unless otherwise). Nothing exactly radical here. Yet she is praised for her derivative works so much that I wonder if her political progressiveness is a neophyte’s zeal… or a masterful plan of playing the political progressivity system for personal gain… just as the system is beginning to break for real thanks to the Donald’s meddling… where were we?

In her non-fiction book of essays on the mortal women of Greek Myths, (‘Pandora’s Jar’, PJ), Ms. Haynes talks about Medea and Jason, comparing them to a modern divorcing couple, save for the murdering of the children. Therefore, I am betting that this is how she is depicting them in ‘No Friend’ – as a modern couple, (where the wife is smarter than the husband is, just not that much smarter), save for the murdering of the children. Therefore, I am willing to wait a few months until the excitement dies down, (such as it is), and then read about a modern divorce dressed in ancient Greek trappings, such as the murdering of the children. Ms. Haynes does not really try to justify Medea’s actions, she just re-tells them in her own language, maybe dumbed down for her audience, maybe not, and moves on. (To Penelope of Ithaca, but that is unimportant). What else?

The Daredevil S2 premiere. From the technical P.O.V., it is stunning, but the content… MCU itself had Matt Murdoch point out that the Sokovia protocols are dead in the ‘She-Hulk’ the series, so why is Fisk running NYC as if it is? The AVTF (or whatever they are abbreviated to), may be his personal army, but how is he getting away with it? During the Donald’s first 4 years, Marvel comics tried to reflect reality, but the Joe Biden became the 46^th U.S. president, Marvel comics and MCU had to redirect themselves or whatever, and now, unlike Thanos of MCU, the Donald is back and is causing the U.S. and the cause of democracy a lot of damage, and MCU is going for Fisk in NYC instead. Bravo! Innovative stuff here indeed! Real life sucks!

No, wait, that’s probably Tom Holland’s fourth Spider-Man movie, as it has the Punisher in it too. That deserves its’ own discussion, and we will have it some other time.

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

PJO S2, take 2 - Jan 13

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us return to PJO S2 once again.

We start with ‘the Sea of Monsters’, obviously. Riordan’s novel was one thing, and Disney+ went with something visibly influenced by the PotC franchise – remember the entire Depp vs. Hearst RL story? Yes, that PotC. Disney is continuing to play fast and loose with its properties – guess the Sequel Trilogy of SW did not teach them anything…

No, really, let us expand. In the SW 7-9 films, Disney tried to push female power and other progressive politics onto the movies’ audiences, and failed. The state of affairs where Disney/SW just swung back and forth between bending backwards to appease the viewers to flat-out defying them (Witcher S4 style) to elsewhere made it worse. In PJO S2, this state of affairs is not present, instead we have POCs, especially young women of Afro-American origin, being the main characters – mostly. Circe took over for Medusa here, (sort of – out of the two, Medusa is the more appealing character), and PJ (who is played by an Anglo-American male), and Grover, (who is a POC, but male, rather than female), are still important to the plot. However, otherwise? Athena is depicted here as a POC. Not a problem – she is a goddess; in Homer’s ‘Odyssey’ she tended to alter her appearance constantly whenever she was in the mortal world – she could appear as anyone, male or female, as well as human or bird. Right now, we behold her as a woman of color, just as Zeus is an Afro-American man – but that does not matter at all. Zeus courted Europa as a bull, Danae – as a shower of gold, Alcmene – as her legitimate husband, and Leda – as a swan to name a few; right now he looks like an Afro-American man; in the next moment he can look like an animal, an inanimate object, or, Tartarus, even a woman – he seduced and impregnated Callisto in the shape of his another daughter, Diana slash Artemis of the hunt, so, clearly, the divine equipment is different from the mortal on many levels…

Athena, of course, is supposed to be a virginal goddess. Pause. In the second series, Riordan made it so that Minerva is a virginal goddess, but Athena isn’t – and now, in ‘The Court of the Dead’, there are ‘legacy demigods’ of Minerva too. He is clearly doing his best to adapt to whatever Disney is doing with his franchise, for what else is there?

Calling it quits and leaving with some originality and integrity intact. As king Midas showed, you cannot have all the money in the world, and Croesus showed that you could be rich, but still have an unhappy ending to your life. (Neither appeared on PJO yet). Riordan has 15 books on the Greek-Roman myths, 3 on the Egyptian, and another 5 on the Norse – plus oodles of supplementary books. That is quite enough for a single person; the royalties for them should last him a lot – and then there are the ‘RR presents’ YA novels – but we’ll talk about them another time. Right now we reach the point that Riordan’s characters can be POC or WASP and move to the fact that Disney is trying to pull an ‘Ironheart’ here – Annabeth, Clarisse, even Thalia (in the flashback), all are POCs, and they almost steal the show from Percy, who is not. The show is good, but now the fans have reached the acceptance stage – they do not care about the race bending, (good for them), or about anything else. They just watch the episode of the week, and move on. Riordan and Disney tried to reinvigorate the franchise. It does not appear to have worked. Of course, if they kill Clarisse, (rather than Luke) on the show, I will be sad and disgruntled for one, but that is unimportant. I believe they are trying to make Clarisse almost like a mentor/big sister to Percy and that, again, is original content. Pause.

There is nothing wrong with original content; Hell, Tom Holland’s ‘Spider-Man’ movies are full of it, and if original content is delivered correctly, (in those movies it is), it works. Otherwise, you have ‘Ironheart’ or even ‘Marvel Zombies’, where it does not work. What next?

Clarisse’s heartfelt speech in the scene with Scylla. Of all the depictions they could have taken with the sea monster, this one was disappointing – a watered-down version of the PotC Kraken. Seriously, they just could have made her a giant squid and be done with it, ‘cause why not? In addition, on another note, it is Epic: the Musical. What?

In JRH’s version, Odysseus sacrificed a random half-a-dozen of his crew so that he, and the rest, could get through and to Ithaca, eventually. In Homer, Odysseus prepared to fight Scylla, but since six heads can be smarter than one, Scylla launched a surprise sneak attack and stole six of Odysseus’ crew before Odysseus could do anything. In addition, here, in PJO S2, we have Clarisse and co. doing their best to save Clarisse’s crew (who are not entirely human themselves, but Scylla does not care)… with mixed success, but still. I honestly wonder if the script of Epic: the Musical, (there the Scylla episode is something of a response to the ‘Survive’ song set in Polyphemus’ cave), hadn’t influenced Disney’s PJO script writers and they went the other way…

Polyphemus, of course, is Polyphemus, (just as Tyson is Tyson). Here, the PJO script did something different from the book again – the Tyson vs. Polyphemus fight, for example. Clearly, the PJO scriptwriters felt that they needed to do something different from the book (and the movie) here, and they did. It was certainly dramatic, too. Good for them. Pause.

Do I like the PJO S2? It is not bad. It is full of progressive politics, just like Ms. Haynes’ books, and as I wrote before, Ms. Haynes seems to be doing her best to be noticed by Disney and co. – but she does not appear to have much luck in this direction. As it was written earlier, her writing usually does not have any passion, any investment – it is not written by an A.I., but that is not necessarily an improvement.

What is the advantage of A.I.? It allows you to bounce your ideas around, to see what they look like as a draft.

…Ok, it can enable you to do a lot more – write an official letter, an essay, explain a complex myth to your child and so on. The A.I. is here to stay, but you must learn how to handle it precisely – a slight mistake and the result is nothing that you wanted. If this sounds familiar, it is. It is Athena and her wisdom – she can help you see clearly, (or clearer), what you want, but nothing else. You are in charge, in fact, you decide where to go from there, what to do with this advice, and so on. The ‘Odyssey’ shows this clearly – Athena, disguised as Mentor, (a man – therefore, for all that we know, she was hanging around Annabeth regularly, Annabeth just never knew that it was her mum), helps Telemachus to organize his thoughts, make up his mind, design his plan, and go off to execute it. It is clean, precise, methodical, and not exactly humans – but the gods of Olympus are not exactly human to begin with, and neither is A.I. I am not saying that Annabeth is the daughter of a divine Skynet, but wouldn’t it be cool if it were?

Back to PJO… it was not written by A.I., or at least – not purely by A.I., and neither were Riordan’s original YA novels, and therefore, the PJ franchise feels more emotional than Ms. Haynes’ works. Her non-fiction works are something else, and ‘1000 ships’… well, it has Odysseus and Penelope in it, and so it is a much more interesting read than ‘Stone’; as for ‘House’ (her upcoming 2006 novel), we will just have to wait and see.

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

 

PJO, Riordan, and Ms. Haynes - Jan 11

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. My apologizes for vanishing for the rest of 2025, but real life sucks, and I did not have a regular access to computer until now. I really hate my life, you know? That said, the ‘Endlings’ have ended for now, (and we will talk about them some other time), MCU is about to bring forth ‘Wonder-Man’ by the end of Jan 2026, (and we will talk about it then), so what is left?

The second season of PJO, mostly. After the excitement of the first season, the second is going down much quietly, people have accepted this PJ reality and just go with it – or not. The sirens, for example, clearly designed via 3.5 edition’s D&D Monster Manual II, are just… not working. This probably brings us to Annabeth (and Clarisse). Pause.

Once upon a time, there was plenty of racebending artwork – not just of PJ, but also of HP and the like – and then the first season of PJO came out, and racebending became official, and unofficially? The racebending stopped. Even via the AI, as well as the more traditional artwork. In fact, the popularity of the entire Riordan franchise still appears to be gradually dying down, which brings us to Ms. Natalie Haynes.

Ms. Haynes, judging by her books, both fiction and non-fiction, wouldn’t object being noticed by Disney or someone like that; to achieve this, she’s trying to be politically progressive, especially in ‘Deific Might’ (that features a particularly cheeky goddess Athena on the cover)… just when the progressive politics are dying – thanks to the Donald (at the moment). Moreover, as I wrote in 2025, most of the time, Ms. Haynes’ prose is more mind than passion, more Athena than Medusa (by her standards), and while she does get passionate (say, about Phaedra in ‘Pandora’s Jar’), most of the time she is not. Therefore, it is rather hard to get excited/involved/etc. in her writings as well. You read them, and you are done. Onto Athena?

Athena… is a special case for Ms. Haynes – she is clearly her favorite goddess, she tries to put her into every entry of PJ and DM. Ms. Haynes tends to be long-winded anyhow, (and it doesn’t always work in her favor), but when Athena, (or Odysseus, Penelope, or Homer), is talked about, she becomes especially so. Ms. Haynes has her favorites, and no matter how hard she tries to some across as a politically progressive person, she does not always achieve this. So what does Riordan has to do with this?

As we have seen the goddess Athena in PJO, she too is now Afro-American, as is Annabeth, her daughter. This means nothing, because Athena is a fully blooded goddess and can look like everyone. This is traditional, in fact, because in Homer’s ‘Iliad’ and ‘Odyssey’, (as well as the later works, especially Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses’) Athena was quite fond of disguises and could be anyone, before revealing her godly might and surprising the unlucky mortal. She got it from Zeus, of course – the king of gods and mortals really loved disguises, especially when it came to seduction; he usually didn’t go as himself (unless the other party themselves was divine, like Leto or Maia), but rather as someone else – as the lawful husband when he sired Heracles, as his own daughter when he seduced Calypso, as a bull, or a golden rain, or – you get the idea. How does Athena fit here?

Zeus was worried about himself being dethroned. After all, his father, who was dethroned by Zeus himself, so there was tradition, dethroned his grandfather and since it was in Zeus’s disfavor, he did not like it. Therefore, his Olympian children were rather worried about him whipping out his old thunderbolt and sending them off the Olympus into who knows where. There are actually myths about Apollo (and sometimes Poseidon) having this sort of experience – usually serving mortals as well. Riordan’s TTOA books have precedent on their side.

For Athena’s part, she was the daughter of Metis. Zeus was worried that Metis will bear a son, who will dethrone him, so he swallowed her, and Metis bore Athena, a daughter, instead. I.e., Athena is the son that Zeus always wanted – a daughter who cannot inherit his throne (or deposit him – theoretically). In addition, for her part Athena is always obedient to Zeus in the canon and usually does what he wants and nothing more. That is one.

Two is that Athena is wisdom, true, but… the wisdom she gives is the one that the person already has. Look at Aphrodite. As love, she can be anyone, so all of those depictions of her are all true – she can take any shape, from a skinny blonde-haired woman to a short and busty redhead, to anyone else – and she will always be Aphrodite. Athena, too, can be anyone or anything – an old woman, a bird (and not just an owl), your best friend or even your sibling – and she will always give wise advice. Only… everyone has their own wisdom (and common sense), and that is what Athena does. She tells the person not so much what they want to hear, but rather what they are already thinking; she helps them work through the thinking process and arrive where they want to go mentally – and that can be dangerous. In the ‘Iliad’, for example, Athena pretended to be one of Hector’s brothers (who wasn’t Paris), who promised to help Hector with his fight with Achilles – and so Hector went to fight Achilles, and his brother (let alone Athena) wasn’t there to help him, and that was one of the reasons he died.

The rub there, of course, is that it might’ve been one of Hector’s brothers (who wasn’t Paris), who wanted Hector to die so that he can be the next commander in chief of the Trojan forces, and Athena just helped him figure out how to do it – how to set Hector up. Athena, the wisdom, does what you want to do, she helps you get to your goal without caring about morality, and if you fail, or succeed, and the price is paid – Athena is already gone; she usually does not care about mortals, normally she does not care about the mortals at all…

You know who, or what, this sounds like? An AI or a robot. Athena is almost all intellect, normally; she does not have much emotions. Poor Annabeth has her work cut out for her trying to impress her divine parent – it is not that Athena does not care about her children; it’s that she doesn’t do that emotionally. Moreover, I do not think that she would have children without Zeus’ permission – he is not exactly grandfather material, he is always suspecting that there is a rival within his family and so he keeps his thunderbolt ready and primed. If he suspected that Athena was not loyal to him, he would smite her too – as he did with Apollo, most likely. Therefore, Athena can prance before Ares and proclaim that she is better than he is at war and his domains, but in reality? It is a superiority of a computer/robot over a human being (in a matter of speaking), and we all know how it goes does in a sci-fi movie (or a TV series) – the human eventually triumphs…

It would have been an interesting twist, if in PJO Riordan did not make Ares the villain in the ‘Lightning Thief’ book, but rather Athena: she could have started as this flawless, perfect being, and then gradually the titular hero and his friends realized that this perfection is hollow and that Athena is manipulating everyone without caring about anyone. Chronus, of course, would still be the puppeteer; Athena would be free from his control and would spend at least a couple of books putting her life back together after this disaster. (Instead of Trials of Apollo, we could have Trials of Athena – that would be interesting too). However, no – Ares is a stereotypical villain, Percy defeats him, and Ares recovers his standing by the third book of PJO, the end. Clichéd and boring – no wonder that Riordan’s world is slowly fading into overall oblivion, Disney+ series or not. Meanwhile, Ms. Haynes?

The same thing. Her fiction books, feel like they have been written by an A.I. (or Athena) – smooth, flawless, easily forgettable. Her non-fiction books… Ms. Haynes tries to be politically progressive, but sometimes she sounds like a neophyte who arrived at progressive politics late in her life and who tries to compensate for this fact with extra zeal – and sometimes she sounds more like an opportunist, who doesn’t care about the progressive politics but wants to use them to get ahead… isn’t that Disney? It sure is – no wonder Ms. Haynes is trying to hit all the right notes and be notices – after all, if Disney worked for Riordan, and made him successful and rich, why not for her?

…Because Riordan actually has passion in his writing and emotion. Some of his novels – especially the second pentalogy, where Percy and friends meet the Romans and have to ally with them to defeat the giants – are quite good. Ms. Haynes’ novels are not so much. (In addition, authors are publishing fictive books based on Greek myths quite regularly in the last few years, so Ms. Haynes is also getting lost in the crowd). However, hey, Athena would be proud!

…Athena is not the goddess of creativity or literature – that is the role of the Muses and Apollo. Riordan invested into the latter a lot – five entire books, a whole series. Maybe Ms. Haynes should try to do something similar rather than sticking with ‘girl power’ – something that Athena does not have much in common with anyhow. (Seriously, Athena does not care all that much for mortal women, unlike the other Olympian gods and goddesses). However, hey, it is her call. (The real life sucks, again – unlike the sirens of PJO who are not even good or bad – just bizarre, and looking like some animatronics gone wrong – but that is a rant for another time).

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

Marvel Zombies - Oct 4

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Jane Goodall is dead. Let us talk about something else – say, the now released Marvel™ Zombies?

Yeah, no. Marvel™ Zombies is not bad, but-

-But, first, again, it is a comb-over. Alongside the F4 film, set in an entirely different universe, Disney/MCU released ‘Ironheart’, the adventures of Riri Williams, and it was bad. Politically incorrect as well, and Disney, in all of its’ incarnations, including Marvel, hates this. Therefore, it released ‘The Eyes of Wakanda’, another online miniseries, and they were not bad, just rushed, as we have discussed earlier. Consequently, once the dust settled, and the bad taste of ‘Ironheart’ vanished, Disney/MCU released Marvel™ Zombies, a spin-off of the previously released ‘What if?’ a Marvel universe where everything is as bad as possible, and oh, all that angst! …Somehow, Disney/MCU are in no hurry to get rid of them, and how does this mini-series end? Why, it is with Riri Williams! Pause.

Disney can be stubborn and sneaky – or so it thinks. In the SW universe, the ‘Sequel Trilogy’ (movies 7-9) and how Disney/SW handled them, fractured the SW fan base and caused a lot of damage to the franchise, and what did Disney/SW do? Release ‘The Mandalorian’ series, which were a hit (despite their own problems, cough), and the S3 season of the series? (‘The Book of Boba Fett’ does not count), showed how the SW of the sixth film’s finale became the SW of the seventh film’s premiere. The fan base realized this clearly enough, and the reactions were mixed. Disney/SW did not despair, and are releasing a feature film sequel to the now-finished series in the near with a trailer that is clearly showing that the Empire (aka the First Order) is coming back. How that film will go we will have to wait and see. So how does this connect to Disney/Marvel?

Just as Disney used – or tried to use – ‘The Mandalorian’ to fix the fans’ issues with the Disney SW vision, it seems to be trying to use Marvel™ Zombies to fix the fans’ issue as to how they view Riri ‘Ironheart’ Williams. In SW, ‘The Mandalorian’ did not quite work as how Disney thought it would work, and in Marvel, the same thing can be said about Zombies: they probably will not work as to how Disney wanted them to work. Riri Williams is still disliked by the fans.

Unlike ‘The Mandalorian’, of course, the Marvel fans can easily dismiss Marvel™ Zombies – they are not part of MCU, but an alternate universe, not unlike the 2025-F4 film. In this case, of course, not unlike the AAA series (remember Aggie-poo?) Marvel™ Zombies become just a waste of Disney/Marvel time and resources that would be better used in other means. Ah well, Disney – in all of its’ branches and affiliations always did have more money than common sense… Real life is still worse – just look at the Philippines and their earthquake… Oh, wait, they were overlooked in favor of the Donald’s latest rant – but that is another story…

For now, though, this is it – see you all soon!

'Anaconda'-2025 movie trailer - Sep 18

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, (mostly), so let us talk about the trailer to the 2025’s ‘Anaconda’ movie instead.

The original ‘Anaconda’ franchise was about people who came to the South American jungle for various reasons, and most of them would be eaten by an oversized anaconda (one or several) during the run time of the films, (there are several). Therefore, what makes this franchise better than the ‘Coyotes’ (remember them)?

The movies of the ‘Anaconda’ franchise, (including the one coming up in 2025), do not take themselves seriously and are not going for realism (or social commentary) the way that ‘Coyotes’ (and ‘Death of a Unicorn’) do. Even the trailer shows that the movie is going to be ridiculous and hilarious in a good way, and the completely unreal anaconda is a part of it.

The green anaconda might be the biggest modern snake; only the reticulated python of the Asian tropics might be able to match it; and the king cobra, of course, is always worth a mention, but the king cobra is a venomous snake among its’ other qualities, while the anacondas are constrictors.

‘Anacondas’ are used as a plural because ‘anaconda’ is a name of a genus of constrictor snakes, also known as the water boas. Just how many species of anaconda there actually are, is debated; two are known for sure – the green anaconda (Eunectes murinus) and the yellow (Eunectes notaeus) are confirmed and recognized; the rest are up to debate, (and one is a fossil species anyhow, which just makes everything more complex).

Usually, the people talk about ‘THE anaconda’, or, more precisely, the bigger and more massive green anaconda of Brazil, Peru, French Guiana, Suriname and Bolivia; the smaller yellow anaconda lives mainly more to the east (the two species do co-exist in Brazil), and the rest of the anaconda clan do not matter right now. What matters is that the green anaconda can be big and impressive, yet it is nowhere near the size of the mythical snake monsters that haunt the West imagination ever since the Europeans began to colonize South America. The South American rainforest is larger than life even now, so naturally it has to be inhabited by larger than life monsters. The Native Americans of South America agreed, but their monsters are much less realistic than the oversized anaconda of the European colonists and their descendants is, so let us put them aside too.

Besides the CGI Titanoboa wannabe, the trailer shows the cast handling (and accidentally killing) some other non-venomous snake, probably a boa constrictor. When put face to face, the boa is much slimmer and smaller than the green anaconda is, but like all the constrictor snakes, it has a mouthful of hook-like, needle-sharp, backwards pointing teeth, and it can deliver very painful and bloody bites too, so it should never be taken for granted.

…The cast go to the American tropics with a ‘movie budget’ under 10 000 dollars. Again, there is no realism; they want to make an ‘indie film’ (a movie within a movie – that is quite clever, in fact); so why not go to Florida, (or perhaps California) is unknown. As RL shows, there are plenty of escaped pythons, (some of which are quite large), in Florida, so an anaconda would fit in as well, but no – it is South America or bust. Anything else?

Just that after their boa is lost (it falls in the water, where the piranhas get it, or the boat propeller does, or something), the cast go into the rainforest to find a replacement snake. Suspension of disbelief and all, but the way they were doing it would have resulted in them finding a venomous snake instead, most likely, and most of the South American venomous snakes are pit vipers, too. Just think rattlesnakes without the rattles, really. (In all of South America lives a single rattlesnake species – all the rest are natives of North America instead). A bite from anyone of them would have been bad – period. In a certain light, the cast of the ‘Anaconda’-2025 are lucky that the snake they confronted was a non-venomous type.

And again, given just how unrealistic this movie’s snake monster is, it just as well could have been a giant bear, (the spectacled bear of South America is not as large as the brown bear is, but it can kill adult livestock with blows of its’ paws), or even a horde of orcs – why not? How is a kaiju-sized snake more realistic than a horde of orcs?

It is not, but the cast make it work. Even in the trailer, they are clearly having fun and are not careening all over the place as ‘Coyotes’ script (and cast) do. ‘Anaconda’-2025 does not have any ‘special’ message as the other film does, but I daresay that it will be more enjoyable and fun to watch than ‘Coyotes’ will be.

…And as for ‘Marvel™ Zombies’, coming to the viewers on Sep 24, 2025? Looks as if they are designed to cover up for the ‘Eyes of Wakanda’ just as the ‘Eyes’ did for ‘Ironheart’. Again: ‘Ironheart’ was bad, perhaps not as bad as Disney’s ‘Snow White’ remake, but still bad, hitting all the right notes in all the wrong ways. For Disney, MCU, and the rest, good relationships with Afro-Americans are important, so they covered-up (and replaced) ‘Ironheart’ with ‘Eyes’.

However, ‘Eyes’ themselves were something of a rushed job, and people have felt it. Disney/MCU do not like confrontations, so they are using ‘Zombies’ to cover-up ‘Eyes’. ‘Zombies’ themselves, of course, are strongly reminiscent of ‘Game of Thrones’ series finale, when the heroes of Westeros found themselves confronting the Night King and his cohorts, including the walking dead – but let’s wait until Sep 24, 2025, to see the ‘Marvel™ Zombies for ourselves first).

…And yes, in early 2000s, ‘Animal Face-Off’ had a ‘jaguar vs. anaconda’ episode where the anaconda won. Sadly, it is only slightly more realistic than the upcoming ‘Anaconda’-2025 film will be, so let us discuss it some other time.

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

Hyenas (and Zombies) - Sep 08

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, therefore I was going to talk about the upcoming Marvel™ Zombies special, but then Textbooks Travels YouTube channel presented a video about five hyena species, including the one new species, and I had to watch – hyenas are some of my favorite animals, you know?

Anyhow, after going through about 30 minutes of video footage of the various hyena, team TT finally reached the supposed new species in question – and it is the aardwolf. Pause.

Here is the thing. There are four modern species of hyena, and they are all specialists in their unique ways, all are different from each other in various different ways. In case of the aardwolf, it is the smallest and the weakest hyena species, one that is specialized in feeding on ants and termites, it is an unassuming and nocturnal animal, most people in Africa (especially the not-tourists) are ignoring or just unaware of it, and for the rest of the world, the situation is not much better. That is one.

Two is that there are two aardwolf subspecies. Pause.

Let us backtrack a bit. Out of the four modern hyena species, the spotted and the brown hyenas are monotypic; there is just one species of each without any greater genetic variation. With the striped hyena and the aardwolf, the situation is different. The striped hyena has up to five subspecies, but they all differ from each other mostly by where they live – from northern Africa (the Sahara desert) to Middle East, to Central Asia, to India, (mostly the north-east – like its’ sister species the brown hyena, the striped hyena is primarily a desert dweller/specialist). The aardwolf is less extreme, but it too has two subspecies – one in east Africa and the second in the south Africa – that have some minor physical differences, and thus they are two separate subspecies – but they differ from each other primarily by where they live. Team TT took this concept and proclaimed that no, the two populations are two different species of the aardwolf (aka two different hyena species), but so far there’s no consensus on that, so I’m going to call out them (him) and say that their proclamation about there being five hyena species in the modern world is wrong. Anything else?

…The aardwolf really got the short end of the stick in the TT hyena video – it had the least amount of footage & screen time, it had to share with the bat-eared fox. The two are not related at all, the hyenas are part of the cat half of the mammal carnivore family tree, and the wild dogs are the more ancient clan out of the two. That is part of the reason as to why wild dogs are found all over the world these days, (excluding Antarctica), while the hyenas are not. Just like some of their cat cousins, they tried to imitate the dogs, to try to beat them at their own game – and outside of Africa, they failed. The spotted hyena is as a formidable a pack hunter as any dog, but it is savannah animal, unlike the brown and striped hyenas (or the big cats such as the lion and the leopard); it does not do well in the desert, it cannot cross the Sahara into Eurasia. The brow hyena, of course, is hemmed in by the two oceans on one hand, and it does not enter the savannah, because there it would be outcompeted by the local predators/scavengers before it reached the African east (where Africa is connected to Eurasia). The striped hyena is already there, of course, but it is half the size and muscle of the spotted hyena and just like the brown hyena, it is a desert specialist and does not enter more fertile areas, (such as the Southeast Asian jungles, for example). In addition, the aardwolf is an insectivore, it feeds on insects and as long as they are plentiful, (and they are), it is happy. So is the bat-eared fox, of course, but we are talking hyenas here, not foxes and other wild dogs.

…The point here is that without humans being in the picture, the hyenas are doing just fine, even though about 87.5% of their global population is in Africa. By living there, they avoid competing for food resources with the wild dogs, and thus both them and the wild canines are satisfied.

In addition, where does it leave the Marvel™ zombies? In their own part of MCU multiverse, of course – they were introduced In Marvel’s™ now finished ‘What if?’ animated series, and it will be somewhat interesting to see as to how Earth-89521 will deal with the undead threat. The hyenas, in fact, should be of little help there – the aardwolf is an insectivore and does not eat carrion to begin with, the spotted hyena prefers to hunt live prey, and the brown and the striped hyenas, while scavengers, are nowhere as formidable as it is. Therefore, the humans of that dimension will have to defeat the zombies one way or another, mostly by themselves – and we will have to wait until September 24, 2025 to see how it plays out…

Well, this is it for now, see you all soon.

Thunderbolts - May 3

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. In part, it might be my doing – but I never denied it – so now let us talk about the new ‘Thunderbolts’ film instead.

First, it works. It works, because it mostly keeps away from politics, whether RL or MCU, and talks about the titular characters dealing, and defeating, their inner darkness, while managing the conflict with Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, or – ‘Don’t call me Val!’ Pause.

…Throughout SW, there was no mention of Val or the Thunderbolts, who are a bit of Marvel’s Suicide Squad, (run by DC instead). Moreover, the DCEU itself is being remade right now, so let us not talk about it, and get back to MCU and the ‘Thunderbolts’.

…Throughout SW, there was no mention of Val or the Thunderbolts, but now, in the post-SW MCU, there is no mention of the Skrulls, the She-Hulk, or the Marvels; MCU is pretending that all of the above haven’t existed, and the CA: BNA movie, the D: BA TV series, and now – the ‘Thunderbolts’ film confirm it; there’s a distinct feeling of ‘in with the new’ with all of them. Even the titular team is named not after the general ‘Thunderbolt’ Ross, aka the Red Hulk, but after some obscure piece of MCU in-verse trivia instead. Fun!

MCU’s Taskmaster/Taskmistress is dead – a pity – and there is no mention of Kate, even though she and Yelena had plenty of chemistry in ‘Hawkeye’. However, the market (and the political climate) directs, and with 4 years of a Republican president in charge of the U.S., Disney and its’ branches, including MCU, are changing. We have discussed it, when we talked about AAA, so let us not repeat ourselves. Anything else?

The special effects were impressive, another one of MCU characters that vanished was Rick Jones or whoever, who helped Natasha in her ‘Black Widow’ film; ah well. ScarJo is going to appear in the next JP reboot now, and it makes the ‘Black Widow’ film appear like a classical masterpiece. What else?

…Everett Ross, who appeared in both ‘Black Panther’ films, was also killed off in the SW; since he was ‘Don’t call me Val!’ ex-husband, this is somewhat important. Only not, since Val is flirting (sort of) with the Red Guardian (Alexei) already. Well, since the Thunderbolts (the characters) are forming some sort of a crazy family, (minus the dead Antonia), this is to be expected. Whether or not this will amount to anything is another story; for all we know, in the next film there will be no mention of the Thunderbolts’ team… just as there was no mention of Sam in the ‘Thunderbolts’ movie, not really, making Bucky’s appearance in CA: BNW kind of strange and unbalanced…

So, in conclusion: the ‘Thunderbolts’ work. They work as a movie, and in particular – as a standalone movie. However, Disney/MCU is a live action Marvel Comics Universe, which means that it all will be interconnected – in theory. In practice, as depicted by the now forgotten AoS, this might not be so. In AoS, the first 3 seasons were sufficiently tied, with ties to the greater MCU. From S4 onwards, however, this was not the case at all, and after the final, 6^th, or 7^th, season, no one is remembering AoS anymore; they didn’t even appear on the ‘What If?’ series, (aside from Coulson, who doesn’t quite count there). Put otherwise, quite regularly, MCU discards characters, plot lines, and more – there is no guarantee that the ‘Thunderbolts’ will be different.

This is it for now. See you all soon!

D:BA S1 finale - April 16

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. The debate about the CB wolves being or not being dire has become more subdued and out of the spotlight, but real life still sucks.

The S1 finale of D: BA is as dramatic and well-made, as one expects from Disney/MCU – quite good. Of course, there is the question as to how Fisk is getting away with a de-facto secession from the rest of the U.S., but who cares? The first season of D: BA is over, and the world is ready to move on.

Also, keep in mind, that CA: BNA film is showing events that are happening at the same time, so the greater U.S. government just might not be finding time to deal with Fisk and his Napoleonic complex or whatever, and the Kingpin/Mayor is bribing people like crazy to get away with it, and MCU wants its’ own version of Gotham, so there you have it, folks! Question answered!

In other news, meanwhile, a rebooted version of ‘Walking with Dinosaurs’ (WWD) is coming to you in 2025! The original WWD series is something of a classic by now, (and not only because it was released in 1999 either). The new WWD has some big shoes to fill – and the viewers will go Snowwhite-2025 on its’ ass if it fails.

Finally, back to PBS Nature show about the female empowerment and nature. Last week, the episode was actually done well – it balanced gender politics and wildlife protection… in the U.S., so what did the YouTube channel do? It downplays them in favour of a nature document about Africa. Maybe it was because of the entire dire wolf excitement, maybe not; this week, the show is about South America instead, and PBS Nature is not downplaying it at all. I wonder why…

…In addition The Weather Network is airing a rather nice documentary series about Canada, its’ provinces, and probably territories. It is quite fun to watch, and I advise you to do so – it certainly is better than just to argue about dire wolves…

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

D:BA and dire wolves - April 9

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, but then Colossal Biosciences Company threw dire wolves at us. Pause.

Initially, I intended to discuss the penultimate S1 Daredevil episode, which had Bullseye coming back, and Murdock (Daredevil) taking a bullet for Fisk (Kingpin) because of reasons? Apparently? Does anyone care about those two anymore anyhow? Dire wolves are more interesting than MCU, these days.

…Of course, these days, at least some news outlets discuss with an authentic feeling, who makes a better jam and/or spread – king Charles III of Great Britain or Megan Markle, his younger daughter-in-law. Seriously, and compared to this sort of news, MCU’s D: BA show is cutting-edge political drama or something along those lines. Nevertheless, what about the dire wolves?

…I am a sceptic when it came to CB’s claims. See, while the RL dire wolf (let us leave Westeros out of this, the topic is already quite confusing), is a true canine, (as opposed to a bear-dog, a bear, or any other kind of mammal carnivore), it also belonged to a completely different genus than the modern wolves do. However, so what?

See, even CB admits (sort of) that their dire wolves – Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi – are not exactly purebred dire wolves, more like grey wolf/dire wolf hybrids. Eh? The problem with that statement that in nature hybrids occur only between animals that share the same genus, albeit belonging to different species. Pause.

Let us try again. We are talking only about mammals here; in other animal groups, such as birds (say, songbirds), or amphibians (such as the tailed salamanders) the hybrid situation might be quite different, but along the mammals? Either it works or it does not.

See for yourselves. On one hand, we have horses and donkeys, whose hybrids are sterile and can’t really make a new species; big cats, whose hybrids aren’t sterile but can’t survive in the wild due to health-related reasons; and the two species of the gnu antelope, whose hybrid offspring also aren’t sterile but have plenty of health defects that they die quickly enough. Pause.

On other hand, we have the beluga and the narwhale whales, for example, or the better-known polar and grizzly brown bears, whose hybrid offspring are viable and are increasing in numbers. The wolf branch of the wild dog family, incidentally, is in this boat too, as the various coyote/grey wolf/domestic dog hybrids of eastern North America are growing more numerous and are establishing their own independent populations…

That said, those wild dogs are all in the Canis genus, while the extinct dire wolf is not, not anymore, at least not at the moment. In addition, if you look at the related animals that belong to different genera, they do not form hybrids – just look at rhinos or elephants, for example. African and Asian elephants do not hybridize, not even in captivity, unlike the big cats, and the black and white rhinos of Africa do not hybridize – unlike the feral domestic dogs and the Ethiopian wolf. The latter is a separate, albeit related, species to the grey wolf of the northern hemisphere – the term ‘wolf’ covers almost two dozen animal species, living and extinct, most of whom are related to each other (i.e. they’re canines), but some are not…

Where were we? Right, the DNA of the dire wolf isn’t in as a good a condition as that of the woolly mammoth is – what’s left of the dire wolf are mainly fossilized bones, teeth, and the like. Extracting DNA from them, even if the dire wolf was in the same genus as the grey wolf, doesn’t guarantee success; the fact that the surrogate mothers were domestic dogs, aka a third canine species, separate from the other two (I’m going with this theory), only complicated the situation: how did their pregnancies go? How did the births go? Did the mothers survive or not? However, no, all we get are sterilized reports of a success, and automatic reactions to those reports. Neither is a reliable source of information and so far no one outside of CB has much to go on. Still…

Remember Ms. Nicole from my last week’s entry? Or rant, whatever. As it was said, she was hired by CB, or something similar to make six videos about mass extinctions; so far, two of them were aired, but we talked about this; the point is that one would expect her to jump onto the dire wolf promotion bandwagon, because CB are her employers or something, but no. She is keeping mum about them instead and seems to have outright distanced herself from the CB. Does she know something about this that we do not? Maybe, maybe not, but I, for one, am sceptical of just what CB’s latest wolf pups are. Real life does suck, but sometimes it is less sucky and more complex and complicated instead…

This is it for now. See you all soon!

D:BA 'Art' - April 2

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us… still talk about it, in a manner of speaking. First, in regards to PBS Nature: if their first, rhino-based episode was a product placement without any product, their second episode, which talked about Madagascar’s lemurs was a complete opposite – it delivered. It talked about Madagascar and its’ rewilding programs, in terms of lemur return (to the wild), in general terms – such as the replanting of the bamboo that the lemurs eat (the episode was de-facto about the greater bamboo lemur), and also – about the wilderness education of the Madagascar people. There was very little aesthetics, plenty of authenticity, and the only unnecessary element, in a manner of speaking, was the gender issue – this online show is about women taking care of the wild, but taking care of the wild and humanity’s social gender politics do not really overlap…

Speaking of humanity’s (ok, the West’s) social gender politics? Let us mention Ms. Lindsey Nicole. I’m probably not the biggest fan of her – this driven and determined young woman wants to get ahead of her competition, and remain afloat; in particular, when Biden and the Democrats were in charge, she made a point of mentioning her alternative sexual orientation, (but nothing more, nothing concrete). Now that we got a ‘new’ U.S. president and his Republican political party, all of her mentions of her alternative sexual lifestyle are gone – LN wants to stay afloat… and she’s succeeding: just last week she launched into yet another online series, this one a collaboration with another YouTube channel, a series that deals with mass extinctions… it is essentially a re-telling of Animal Planet’s™ ‘Animal Armageddon’ series. You have to give LN her credit though – she is a great populizator, her aggressive ‘shock and awe’ delivery style works, and she is always open to collaborate with other people – she really wants to be successful, and so she is. Kudos and a shout-out to her.

In addition, what about this week’s D: BA episode, ‘Art’? It works about as well as you would expect it to work: this season’s mini-bad, Muse (a male villain) is dead already since the season is done in another couple of weeks, and on its’ own, D: BA works just fine. As a part of the greater MCU, however…

‘Mayor’ Wilson Fisk has introduced the Anti-Vigilante Task Force, or AVTF. Um. While we acknowledge its’ connections with some RL issues in the U.S., what about the Sokovia accords? In the ‘She-Hulk’, Matt himself says that they are done and gone, so shouldn’t AVTF be outdated or something? As the Kingpin, Fisk did not care about popular opinion, of course, at least not too much, but as a mayor of NYC, he should, and he is intelligent enough to recognize this fact.

Listen, in RL, analogues of AVTF, such as ICE, exist because people – some people, including some of the Americans, and quite a few of them – approve of them and their actions; numbers matter, and if enough people approve of them, these ‘analogues’ will stay and even flourish, and propaganda – especially the mild one delivered by Disney and its’ daughter organizations – won’t be enough to see them off.

…Not to mention that even internal American propaganda has its’ limits, as the outcome of the elections-2016 showed, for example. However, Disney and co. cannot learn, or do not want to learn and accept, or something. Since they do not, their promoted values do not stick, as the companies cannot change and adapt – it could cost them money in the end, and they do not want that. Much better just to do a token service and be done with it. The viewers and the public will not object too much – they can adapt, on the other hand, as demonstrated by Lindsey Nicole… Real life certainly can suck, and it does.

This is it for now – see you all soon!

D:BA SSS - March 19

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about D: BA once more?

Well, no, real life doesn’t always suck; for a couple of days now I’ve been seeing sharp-shinned hawks in my neighbourhood; of course, they can always be Cooper’s hawks instead, but I’m reasonably sure that they’re ‘sharpies’ instead, because of all the red color in their plumage – it is more in line with the sharp-shinned than with the Cooper’s hawks.

What are those avians doing? Hunting, of course – and primarily small birds, songbirds, it looks like, (as opposed to bigger birds, such as feral pigeons or ducks). First, I saw the hawk chase sparrows on a street corner: it came from down low to a tree, flushing the sparrows out – they promptly fled into a bush. The hawk came after them.

A sharp-shinned hawk is one of North America’s smaller hawks, but it is still larger than a sparrow; it could not get into the shrub, so it landed next to it and stuck its’ head and beak inside, trying to flush the sparrows out. It was not too successful, and the neighbourhood’s not-so-friendly Canada geese were not too thrilled by the raptor’s presence either: they promptly made a flanking manoeuver, and began to approach the hawk, hissing and flapping their wings.

The hawk looked at them, decided that it did not like the odds, and left, to the relief of both the sparrows and the local killdeer – they might be shorebirds, but any wet meadow is fine in their books, especially in spring. The Age of Dinosaurs is officially over, my foot!..

And later this week I saw another (or the same?) sharp-shinned hawk in the part. This time, the bird was hunting high in the treetops, but though it is the second half of March, the trees are still bare of leaves, and so the hawk was exposed, and the local songbirds, squirrels (both grey and red species), and chipmunks were avoiding it, easily enough. The local mallard ducks, on the other hand, were just ignoring it, and vice versa. Both events were interesting to see, and so the real life does not always suck; (the Norway rat that was lying dead on a road as roadkill would probably disagree, however. I wonder how long is will remain there, as it is a public road and all. Oh dear, maybe a turkey vulture will pop up too, as it is a big rat, dead or not).

As for D: BA, well, first a reply to all of you who pointed out that ‘YFNSM’ (remember it?) tried to racially diversify its’ characters; of all the main cast, only Peter and his aunt are Anglo-American, the rest tend of P.O.C.s, or else foreign immigrants to the U.S. instead. Pause.

In the current socio-political climate, you think that the U.S. mainstream culture needs more depiction of predominantly Afro-American street gangs in NYC, cartoons or not? In addition, oh, here comes an Anglo-American Spider-Man and handles them easy peasy! Oh, and the Osborns, (who are often Spider-Man’s greatest foes) are Afro-American too now! Hooray! The Green Goblin is going to be actually a different color, cough!

…Well, ok, ‘YFNSM’ might try to do something similar to what Disney did to Will Smith in its’ ‘Aladdin’ remake – make the Green Goblin a different color entirely. Given that Will Smith looked wrong in that purple-indigo shade and that Disney quickly had him walking around in his real appearance, probably not. The Osborns are going to be Afro-American, the Green Goblin – his signature color, and etc. Can we have more Miles Morales Spider-Man films instead?

No, of course not – onto D: BA. In this week’s episode, we get re-introduced to Frank Castle the vigilante, (as opposed to Richard Castle the writer), who claims that he didn’t kill Hector Ayala the White Tiger. We also get to meet Angela Del Toro, who is probably the next White Tiger. The catch here is that Netflix tried to introduce her already in one of the Jessica Jones episodes, but because that show was swept under the rug, (and JJ herself as well), guess that Disney/MCU is rebooting Ms. Del Toro as someone else, not a P.I. as she was intended to be on the ‘Defenders’ shows. What next?

A bunch of new and re-introduced secondary characters, some of whom are actually original, but so far D: BA seems to be going with the reinvention of the White Tiger as its’ main new engine for now – the other heavy hitters, such as the Punisher, Daredevil, and the Kingpin are already established. So far, the show is not bad to watch, and given that MCU aims to entertain first, and everything else second, this is what it planned to do with D: BA all along.

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