Runaways: S1 finale - Jan 18

So, ‘Runaways’ have reached their S1 finale on TV this week, so let’s talk about it freely. Karolina’s mama is a llama!

…No, but Jonah does come out as her father instead, edging out Darth Vader (from the initial trilogy) as the father of the year material. Seriously, even Vader and Palpatine did not eat people to survive, (though no one would put it past Palpatine), but Jonah does. Jonah and his team are evil, it’s just that the cast and crew of ‘Runaways’ were that good in presenting them, including Jonah, (at least to a point), as sympathetic all the same, and now-

And now Leslie is setting up the rest of team PRIDE to kill Jonah instead, and the Yorkes think that they might have an idea as to how to do it, but-

But Yorkes are already suspect because they’re evil, and had had Gert and Molly run rings around them with minimal effort, plus there’s no indication that Jonah’s magical cure-all for Victor had any connection to him, biological or otherwise-

Wait. Let us rewind a bit. Firstly, Jonah is the ‘angel’ of the church of Ghibborim of the Dean family. (Leslie, Karolina and, maybe, Frank). Jonah even had his own mural in the church, where he was depicted in a typical angel fashion, complete with wings, but also with his color scheme, revealed in the S1 finale, when he and Karolina had their face-off and tested each other’s mettle. Jonah won, but seeing how he needs a new sacrifice soon, it was close and it took a lot of out of him – but that is not the point. The point is that Jonah, (and to a different extent – Karolina), is a being made out of pure energy, (remember the X-Ray look made by Chase in the S1 finale episode?), so whatever he gets out of those sacrifices is what makes him look human on one hand, and on the other, he doesn’t have any biological processes that earthlings, (whether human or not), have. Whatever the Yorkes will cook up won’t truly work on Jonah because he has no veins, no blood, no organs as Earth-native lifeforms have, so the children will probably have to save Earth in general and their parents in particular, because it’s doubtful that Jonah will enjoy treason lightly, the Yorkes’ concoction will piss him off and make him crazier than before, and, well, the Runaways’ parents did die saving them from the aliens, the Ghibborim in the comics, so the odds are stacked against team PRIDE here. Anything else?

…Old Lace is stealing the show; she is as good as any of the dinosaurs in the JP-franchise. Alex made a deal with Darius, who actually saw the big parents-children confrontation through a hole in the fence in person, and has apparently forgiven Alex for shooting Andre in an earlier episode, (did the latter have any particular importance, or was he just a foil for Alex?). This can be important, because for the titular heroes? Their parents’ shadows are never far behind; of all the supervillain brands, the Wilders’ were good old-fashioned criminals, and in the comics they were all the most formidable of the Runaways’ opponents, including, well, Alex, who seems to be walking his own path in the S1 finale…as do his parents. This brings us back to PRIDE, and how they all appear to be angry with Jonah for treating their children so roughly and it is important. In the comics, the Deans were an equal part of the PRIDE alongside everyone else, working for the Ghibborim – but here Jonah appears to be THE Ghibborim, and everyone is apparently working for him, and he has reached the final stretch of his plan, and he’s about done being nice with everyone because he doesn’t need to anymore. Villains can be nice, villains can be redeemable, but at a certain point of their lives, they either stop being redeemable or stop being villains, and it is anyone’s guess where the various families of PRIDE will end up.

…In other news, the children are finally running and living up to the show’s name, Jonah’s endgame seems to include an earthquake and some sort of a kaiju monster that has been living beneath LA, and things are getting closer to the initial comic canon. So far, now, this is it. We will just have to wait and see as to who will make it.

This is it for this time; see you all soon!

Runaways: Metamorphosis - Dec 21

Marvel’s ‘Runaways’ continue to live up to being ‘a hulu original’. Period. They also continue to be a soap opera, which is only loosely remains tied to the original comic plotline. That is no problem either, as Marvel comics have made ‘Runaways’ their new darling in place of the previous favorites – ‘the Defenders’ and ‘the InHumans’, and ‘the Defenders’, at least, are a mess.

Spoiler alert – read on at your own risk.

True, they know in which general direction they are going – to an eventual confrontation with Kingpin, Wilson Fisk, who became the mayor of NYC in the past comics, but the details? They are a mess. Blade, Deadpool, the Hood – they come and go without contributing much to the general plot; ‘the Defenders’ seem to be largely about, well, the Defenders as they try to prevent Diamondback from becoming the new Kingpin of crime, (since they don’t know that he’s being actually backed by Fisk here, it seems)…and getting nowhere fast. They seem to be defeating Diamondback on a regular basis, but the man just comes back – and he already beat the stuffing out of the Punisher, (who seems to have his own agenda and be a bigger jerk than he normally is), and shot the Black Cat, (and in a different universe the Black Cat is teaming up with Silk to take down the Goblin King and co., so there’s that). ‘The Defenders’ just don’t know how far they want to go and how they will get there and how fast…

On the other hand, ‘Runaways’ don’t seem to have this problem – but then, this incarnation of the series is a TV/Web TV series, and have figured the problem of pacing beforehand. Of course, so has AoS for S5, (hopefully), but so far they aren’t doing so good – they got some of the lowest numbers ever so far, and the fact that after this week they are taking a mini-hiatus isn’t going to help them either – ‘Lost Girl’ (LG) had a stronger standard and history than AoS had, in proportion, but it still ended on a whimper, rather than a bang. True, LG played hard and fast – unnecessarily so – with its’ backstory, but AoS…has done the same thing, though not to the same extent, as it was discussed earlier. And the ‘Runaways’?

And the ‘Runaways’ have it easier – they have a baseline from the comics and they continue to do their own thing. Like the dinosaurs from the JP-franchise, they are a hybrid, and not unlike the I-Rex from the first JW movie, they appear to be quite successful – and there is no metaphorical Rexy to challenge them, no TV (or Web TV) canon. There are ‘Runaways’ comics, but while Marvel isn’t as bad as the Archies franchise is, their canon is often fragmented and revised itself…but it is different for comics than it is for TV (+Web TV) or the movies.

Yes, this is a reference to the latest SW movie. SW7 was designed as a rework of SW4. This is more of a rework of SW6, and now the plot of the future SW9 movie is hanging in the air. On one hand, this is good – SW7 was one of the weakest movies of the SW franchise; on the other – the fans, (and to the lesser extent, the critics) are divided about whether or not SW8 was a good movie or a bad one, and while the SW franchise still has enough momentum from its’ past achievements to weather this, this really isn’t where it wants to go, (and the news suggest that it has problems of its’ own) – but that is a story for another time.

And as for the ‘Runaways’ they keep on going and they remain strong. Good luck to them. See you all soon! 

For Honor: Aramusha and Knight - Nov 9

FH has finally released its latest heroes, the Aramusha and the Shaman, fully. What can be said about them?

As we have talked about them the last time, the ‘Aramusha’ means a fierce warrior, which is a fairly basic description, when you think about it: which warrior, especially in FH, isn’t fierce? Today, however, we heard the full promo – and now we know that for FH the Aramusha is a ronin, aka a masterless samurai.

To elaborate, in RL history samurais were knights of ancient and Medieval Japan, serving a noble lord – in theory. In practice, most of them ended up unemployed for a part of their lives at least, and were named ronin – masterless. Such masterless or unemployed samurai wandered the lands of Japan, ready to work for anyone for money or food and board, doing anything…but usually something military, because the samurai were the professional military class of the feudal Japan, just as the knights were of the feudal Europe.

So far so good, but if the European kings, emperors, lords and popes usually sent their knights, (especially the poorer ones) to fight abroad, especially in the Crusades in the Middle East and in similar undertakings in eastern Europe, keeping them under control, and their numbers down, their Japanese counterparts…didn’t, and as a result feudal Japan had plenty of professional warriors in its lands that were ready, eager and/or desperate to join in any civil mischief/uprising and make it worse/more intense, because professional warriors, remember? Consequently, feudal Japan was much more tempestuous and unpredictable than feudal Europe was…for a time. Then it all changed…and it can be noted that the European system of dealing with unruly and sometimes landless knights didn’t always work – from the Middle East came the Templars – yes, those Templars, which caused a lot of trouble in western Europe…and might’ve become the Illuminati…but we’re going conspiracy theory here, which isn’t good or healthy.

And in eastern Europe? The knights failed there too, though perhaps not as spectacularly, and vanished without a trace from history again. At least the samurai left a spiritual legacy to their descendants, which has caused no end of trouble for the Sino-American relationships in WWII and beyond – the two countries do not always get along, no matter what both of them would say…

However, this is RL. What about FH?

In FH, the question here is why the ronin is called an Aramusha instead? A rose by any other name and all that – but before get into it, let us talk about the Shaman also.

…As it was said before, the Shaman may be a part of the Viking faction, but in FH, s/he is also a Native North American stereotype, and the weapons do not disavow this motion either. The Aramusha is armed with two katanas – the Japanese version of the longsword that requires just one arm to wield, unlike the nodachi or the claymore, for comparison, which require two. This puts the Aramusha right next the Orochi, who, admittedly, uses only one katana, a fact that is so convincing to players, undoubtedly.

…And on the other hand, we got the Shaman, who is armed with a dagger and a hatchet/hand-ax, more similar, especially in size, to the ones used by the Berserker than the Dane-ax used by the Raider. This is not the worst idea the game designers could have come-up with, but-

Why a Shaman? A Shaman is a religious person, a priestess or a priest, in a non-European tradition, (especially of Native Americans and Asians). So how exactly did the Shaman in question become a ‘Viking assassin class’? Leaving aside the fact that contemporary Native Americans tend to view this sort of their depiction with dissatisfaction and are able to protect their legal rights quite well, where exactly, in what imaginary depths, did a ‘Viking assassin’ become associated with a Shaman?

Here is the thing – imagination, especially when it comes to mass media – online games, TV series, movies, etc., can be tricky. Just look at the ‘Dark Universe’ – it was supposed to be some sort of a response to MCU & DCEU, but with movie monsters, (including Frankenstein, Dracula and the Wolfman). Sadly, after the first movie, (yet another ‘Mummy’ reboot), this idea half-stalled and recently has fallen apart completely. There will be other monster movies, (a ‘Creature from the Black Lagoon’ reboot is in the works), but they will not be a part of a shared universe, that is shelved, for now. Minus one for imagination, here.

Or take the upcoming SW8 film. The previous, SW7, was already rather lackluster by SW standards, ‘Rogue 1’ was the better film out of the two, but the point is, SW8 will be introducing yet another ‘new’ character, Rose Tico, as a possible love interest for Finn.

Here is the thing – Rose is Asian, Finn is Afro-American, whereas Rey and Kylo Ren are WASPS – and the last two are supposed to be/become a couple. Unfortunately, as far as many people are concerned, Kylo and Rey showed zero romantic interest in each other, (though plenty of the other sort), while Rey and Finn had plenty of romantic interest between each other. The problem is, Rey is the female lead, while Finn is a sidekick, plus there is the entire racial issue.

To clarify: the racial issue exists in Hollywood, whose inhabitants ruminate on it long and hard, about as much as politicians from D.C. do. In real life, there is no issue, aside from what some morons make about it. One of them may have become the current president of the U.S., but so far, there is no indication that even that character is actually racist, because if he was, the press would have ferreted it out by now – but no, he is just an overly horrid person, it seems. However, SW has nothing with RL, (duh!), so there are issues; there is already an Afro-American actor playing a role of importance, (does anyone remember Lando Calrissian, anyone?), so let us give him an Asian-American love interest as well.

The problem here is not just racial, it is the cliché – in movies and on TV WASPs tend to get paired-up with other WASPs, and POCs – also with each other. When there is an exception to the rule, such as on ‘Remedy’ as an example, they do not always last, (the couple on ‘Remedy’ broke up by the end of S2, and the show itself got cancelled not long after). Basically, when it comes to relationships, Hollywood and co. (‘Remedy’ was a Canadian show, actually), are clichéd and unimaginative – kind of how the FH creative team was with the Shaman. With the Aramusha, they might have gotten ‘too clever’ instead, and unnecessarily so: when push comes to shove, ‘Ronin’ can be as good as a label as ‘Orochi’ is, for example.

Moreover, as for the weapons… The Aramusha has the same katana(s) as the Orochi does – this is the first time FH repeated a weapon; it might be a landmark but not a good one – and the Shaman’s weapons are a part of the character’s image problem, which was discussed earlier…

So, there you have it: a ronin by unnecessarily different name, a Native American/Asian mystic that has even less ties to Vikings than a Centurion and a Gladiator have to the Knights, and a possible creativity problem in FH in general. See you all next time!

Pre-New Year Rant - Dec 26

And so, 2016 is almost coming to an end. Odds are, we will be celebrating New Year in the USA, where I will not be able to regularly access the Internet, most likely, so first, let me wish everyone a happy New Year beforehand.

Secondly, let us wish good luck and good riddance to 2016. With less than a week to go, we had a major airplane crush in Russia, (no survivors), death of George Michael in the U.K., and the fallout between U.S. and Israel in the U.N. The last is particularly WTF-worthy: throughout its existence, Obama’s administration, (and the man himself), was very slow-mo. Now, with less than a month left, it, including Obama itself, is trying to compensate for 8 years of missed chances and opportunities, by running around like some crazy chicken making one mess after another. (The only thing different between now and then is that now Obama is making his usual snafus at a breakneck speed, rather than slowly, as he did back then). Either way, I feel sorry for Obama; I am not the biggest fan of the Donald, but I can see why the Americans have voted for the latter: the man is an unknown entity, while Hillary would have just continued Obama’s plotlines and strategies, and the Americans had enough of this for the last 8 years.

…The problems is that Obama himself just continued the strategies of the Republican president George Bush Jr. in those last 8 years, so regardless of what the president-elect has promised has electorate, there is no guarantee that things will be fundamentally different after January 20^th, 2017. People want variety, but they also want stability, and democracy is not very stable, (just ask the ancient Greeks – in Sparta they invented communism instead). With the election of Trump, the American society has once again put the plebeians/proletariat against the patricians/elite, and now both sides must figure out where to go from here. In Ancient Rome, it can be seen even in plays of Shakespeare – ‘Coriolanus’, ‘Julius Caesar’, ‘Anthony and Cleopatra’ – this conflict brought the end to the Republic, and paved way to the Empire. George Lucas, your Star Wars franchise says hi to the real world…maybe.

SW, incidentally, have developed its own issues: they do not know how to move forwards, now that the old canon has been declared apocrypha and redubbed ‘Star Wars: Legends’ instead. SW7 was very good, but it heavily relied on SW4 in terms of the script; ‘Rogue One’ is even better, but it is still set in the past, in the realm of the movies 4 through 6, (and it isn’t much different from some SW novels set in the ‘Legends’ universe. Still better than the real life U.S. politics, though).

Back in real life, there are not any breakthroughs or major shifts of the happy variety; in my own life…ditto. The TV and the like? Well, we have to look forwards the rest of ‘The Librarians’ S3. They seem to have conflated Horus and Ra – or confused him, but so did the ancient Egyptians. Ra was a sun god and the creator of the ancient Egyptian world. Horus was the brother and/or son of Isis and Osiris, (and just a brother of several other Egyptian gods); he was more of a war god instead. But! Both of them had the falcon as their sacred animal. Both of them had solar qualities in their divine portfolios. And! For a while, the ancient Egyptians worshipped both of them in the figure of Ra-Horakhty, so the differences between Ra and Horus are not important. What is important, (relatively speaking), that in S3, ‘The Librarians’ are faced with Apep, a snake-demon of darkness and night, and they are bringing a magical artefact of a sun god, (or the sun as a god) to challenge him. Frankly, they could have done the Greek version with Apollo and Python instead – it would be really similar, and as the S3 episode with the oracle has shown, they are keeping/have kept it in mind already.

…But still, this cavalier attitude towards the Egyptian mythology is grating. Rick Riordan and his novels were able to keep it straight; this really bad movie, ‘Gods of Egypt’, was able to keep it straight; so why ‘The Librarians’ cannot? Who knows…?

Then we have ‘For Honor’ game, by Ubisoft. It had appeared earlier in 2016, very exciting, but with flaws. Yet it continues to develop, and so far, it has appeared better than even before – not just with the new characters, but even a new game plan, that of Apollyon the warlord, who has to be stopped with plenty of melee fighting, maybe ranged too.

No, seriously, so far in all the game simulations, the combat was melee – but in the Apollyon promo, there are bows and arrows too, as well as combat-trained animals, maybe? Wolves and at least one war elephant… This game is shaping up to be really exciting, believe it!

The mention of war elephants reminds me of DW – I have been rewatching some of its episodes, the last one being ‘Ming Warrior vs. Musketeer’, which showed DW at its best. The hosts were unprejudiced; the tests showed the relative weaknesses and strengths of the various weapons, and the combat simulation was well orchestrated and interesting. The lack of prejudice really showed, too, as opposed to such S3 episode as ‘Hernan Cortez vs. Ivan the Terrible’, for example. For the first two seasons, DW was a good show, and then in S3 it went downhill so rapidly, that DW got cancelled – no funding, no staff, no anything. Even AoS has done better than DW – it is in its’ fourth season, remember?

…Mind you, for a while probably the entire MCU had problems: not only Luke Mitchell had left, but Jaimie Alexander (Sif) and Hayley Atwell (Peggy Carter) did, as well as who knows whom else. However, MCU – including AoS – survived. ‘Agent Carter’ did not…

Speaking of TW, a new show – ‘Riverdale’ – is coming to the screens in 2017. It is based on the characters from ‘Archie’ comics, but-

On one hand, Archie and his friends are very flexible. There were crossovers with the Predator movie franchise, the Walking Dead TV series, the Ramones’ music group, the Marvel comics (such as the Punisher, who might be getting his own TV series in MCU, BTW), etc. The ‘Riverdale’ adaptation – a soap opera/drama/mystery/etc. – is not very different. But-

On the other hand, ‘Archie’ was very demanding and particular when it came to its’ mark/brand/whatever. It generally took down the smaller folk who tried to use them for its’ own game, but when it came to someone more powerful – like the Marvel comics – it generally backed down first. Now, when faced with the CW and the ‘Archie’-based show, it seems to have reached a compromise with them: ‘Riverdale’ will keep the ‘Archie’-based character names, but the trademarks and everything else? It will probably something separate from ‘Archie’ comics instead. This is how ‘the Cursed Child’ works, after all. It is still a fanfic, but Ms. Rowling endorsed it at least to a point, for a part of the profits at least. Everyone got happy and we will have to see how ‘Riverdale’ works in 2017.

This is the end of this rant, and for now? Have a happy 2017!

PS: Here is a pallid vector ogrekin based on the new ‘Villain Codex’ rules:

OGREKIN (HALF-OGRE) CR 4

XP 600

Male human ogrekin fighter 2

CE Medium humanoid (giant)

Int +5; Senses low-light vision; Perception +1

DEFENSE

AC 16, touch 11, flat-footed 13 (+1 Dex, +6 natural)

hp 25 (2d10+10)

Fort +7, Ref +1, Will +1

Defensive Abilities bravery +1, pale rebirth

OFFENSE

Speed 30 ft.

Melee shortspear +7 (1d6+9 plus disease), bite +2 (1d4+4 plus disease)

Special Attacks disease

STATISTICS

Str 23, Dex 13, Con 22, Int 8, Wis 14, Cha 6

Base Atk +2; CMB +7; CMD 18

Feats Cleave, Improved Initiative, Iron Will, Power Attack

Skills Climb +12, Swim +12

Languages Giant

SQ deformities (oversized maw, weak mind)

ECOLOGY

Environment any

Organization solitary or family (2–6)

Treasure NPC gear (spear, other treasure)