Wild Zone - July 23

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, but it does not stop Mr. Nolan from making an epic of a movie – but we talked about it the last time. Right now, though, I want to talk about Mr. Riordan’s franchise instead.

No, I mean yes, the 3^rd season of PJO is coming in November 2026, but so far, Disney+ and Mr. Riordan are keeping their mouths shut about what will change there from the book, so it is too early to tell as to what will happen there. What I want to mention here is ‘the wild zone’ – the latest project of the Riordan Man! Pause.

Here, I somewhat just wanted to go and rant about him, just because he turned his name and brand into an enormous moneymaking machine, but what is the point? He turned the Riordan name and brand into an enormous moneymaking machine, after all. He is a success! There are dozens of books, audiobooks, and comics claiming him as their author-

-and they are sitting on shelves, or just being sidelined otherwise. ‘Rick Riordan Presents’ has umbrella’d at least a dozen different authors under its brand, but… that is dying down too. Fewer novels are released under RRP umbrella, or are they?

Well, I have no idea – does the fact that Mr. Riordan is being a co-author more and more often lately counts? The two books dealing with Will and Nico, aka ‘The Sun and the Star’ and ‘The Court of the Dead’ are co-authored visibly, and ‘The Court’, in particular, was re-setting the Roman aspect of the PJ narrative quite subtly – but still re-setting. ‘The Wild Zone’ is being set up in the same vein, most likely. What next?

Well, the first book of the series is released at the end of September 2026, but there are still no particular details – though this time, Mr. Riordan is writing the first book with Ms. Jo Whittemore – or is it Annabelle Oh? Well, regardless of her trying to reinvent herself to become more politically correct and sellable, she is a woman of many hats – she wrote everything from fantasy to humorous contemporary, so she should have no problem in co-writing a YA/children’s fantasy novel with Mr. Riordan. It will probably be a success, who knows? Mr. Riordan will certainly make money from it.

…And all he had to do was to sell his soul (hopefully, metaphorically) to Disney. Real life feels especially sucky sometimes.

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

Dinosaurs and PJO - March 09

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, but sometimes it is just weird. A while earlier this year, I found several Montoy™ Toy Dinosaurs down at the recycling room; they were in good condition, so I took them. (Childish, I know, but they are still good, my life sucks, and so I took them). There were five of them – a T-Rex, a Dilophosaurus, a Triceratops, a Velociraptor, and a Pteranodon – I was really lucky, for once.

This is when things got odd. Most of the dinosaurs, (yes, I know that the Pteranodon was not a dinosaur at all, but their cousin, but those are toys, so this doesn’t matter), are realistic enough, and looked just how they were depicted on the box… except for the T-Rex, which is built much… less robust than the Dilophosaurus and the Velociraptor; his head and torso are horizontal, parallel to the ground, and it doesn’t look much like a T-Rex… or how it is depicted on the box.

How do I know how it is depicted on the box? I went looking for the Montoy™ toy block dinosaurs at the local dollar stores… and I found them. I found the Dilophosaurus, the Velociraptor, and the Pteranodon easily enough, but the Triceratops and in particular the T-Rex – with much more effort. Why?

Because those dinosaurs are depicted much less realistically, I guess. They both are smaller than the Dilophosaurus and the Velociraptor… but they are toys. ‘Assemble yourself’ toys for preteen children. Realism does not have anything to do with them, so why Montoy™ is apparently ashamed of them, and is calling them back, I do not know. Real life sucks… but it is also weird.

Another manifestation of this weirdness involves the cobra snake. The YouTube search engine is not very different from an A.I. – it runs on human algorithms… so when you put down just ‘cobra’ you get many videos of… people who give themselves that name as their moniker or something similar. Fair enough, so you put in ‘cobra snake’ as your search and what you get are videos… of king cobras, either by themselves, or as parts of videos that talk about venomous snakes in general, including king cobras – king cobras are still representatives of the elaphid clan of the snakes, it just that now the videos talk about other snake clans as well.

Humans made the term ‘cobra’, and it applies to several snake groups that are related to each other, but are still distinct. The king cobra, in particular, is separate from the ‘other’ cobras… and there might be several snake species in that genus, and not just the default one. That is interesting, but does not explain as to why the king cobra is the ‘default’ cobra on YouTube – to find any other, you need to be even more specific, it is not a bother exactly, but it is still strange.

(Not as strange as the plaster Dilophosaurus I found – it is not as much a toy as a painting model, it had the feet of a raptor and the front claws of a T-Rex – clearly Dr. Wu and his hybrid dinosaurs are more important than how it comes across). Anything else?

Just a point about PJO S2, two points, even. First, in the novel, young Clarisse commanded a crew of the resurrected… Confederate soldiers – and in the TV series, her crew are anyone but the US. Confederate soldiers – Disney might be progressive, but it has a limit, apparently.

And second, in the original novel, Tantalus is banished to Tartarus and Chiron is rehabilitated – and he’s brought back in a much later novel, ‘The Court of the Dead’, where he’s one of the main antagonists. In the TV series, the Lestrygonians kill him instead. Why – I have no idea again, but, clearly, Disney is taking PJO somewhere, we just do not know where… real life sucks, true, but it is also weird.

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

Story idea 1 - Jan 14

 Obligatory statement - real life sucks, so here's an idea for a fiction story if anyone's interested:

Story outline.

Aphrodite is a schemer, like most other Olympians are, and she planned to make one of her children into something more than just a demigod. Initially, she was going for Silena, grooming and preparing her for her potential destiny discreetly but Silena died during the war with Chronus, and Aphrodite had to start anew.

Not a problem, she has two candidates, the heir – Piper, and the spare – Drew. Well, Drew is mostly out because Piper seems to be perfect, doing exactly what Aphrodite wanted her to do, including saving Olympus from Gaia and the giants, but also a relationship with Jason.

Jason is the youngest son of Zeus/Jupiter, (so far, officially), and the latter has an ambiguous relationship with all of his sons: he keeps a close watch on them, and if they stand out and rebel (by the Thunderer’s standards), he ends them. Initially, Piper’s job was to occupy Jason’s attention and ensure that he did not do that – and in return, both she and her mother were to receive benefits from the king (and the queen) of Olympus.

At first, it worked, but when the pair moved to college, it stopped. The relationship ended, Jason stood up for Apollo, (who was in Zeus’s bad books now), and ended up dead with no chance of coming back, because you do not come back after you argue with Zeus. Hera is not happy and scheming, but Aphrodite and Piper are not a part of it.

Aphrodite tries to manipulate Piper by giving her Shel – who is almost a literal shell of a person, but it backfires: Piper is done with gods, demigods, and monsters, and takes what Shel de-facto offers her – a life as an ordinary mortal. (There is some squiggle room, but since Piper has de-facto renounced her status as the daughter of Aphrodite, none of the options are good). Aphrodite goes to Drew.

Drew knows that Aphrodite came to her only after Piper is done, and knows that for Aphrodite she is the last option. Still, Aphrodite is her mother, and so, when Aphrodite gets her to go on a quest, Drew accepts.

The quest is the first step out of several that are supposed to make Drew into something more than a demigod, almost like a junior partner for her mother. Drew suspects that something is off from the start, and though she loves and obeys her mother, she doesn’t do so without questions and doesn’t do all the right moves fully, and Aphrodite can’t manipulate/force her to do that, because that would ruin her whole plan – so now the mother and daughter are stuck in a very precarious position as both found themselves bound to each other by Aphrodite’s plot.

Add the Egyptian magicians, led by the Kane siblings. They do not know the Greek-Roman world too well, but Drew is helping them learn, (and learns back), and they recognize enough of Aphrodite’s plan to be wary. (Drew wants them to stop it, on some level). The story is set, and many people are going to have headaches before it ends.

This is it for now. 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!

Rick Riordan, 'Wrath of a Triple Goddess' - Dec 11

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about Mr. Riordan’s 2024 novel, ‘Wrath of the Triple Goddess’, instead. In this novel, Percy, Annabeth, and Grover encounter the titular goddess – Hecate – and she’s… not being very wrathful, in fact. Rather, she wants Percy, (with Annabeth and Grover helping him, for it is a big job, even for Percy), to look over her house and her pets while she goes out of the US to celebrate Halloween all over the rest of the planet (Earth). Pause.

Here is the thing. The first novel of this trilogy, ‘The Chalice of the Gods’, (2023), had Percy, Annabeth and Grover undergo some pointed personal development; Percy, in particular had to literally wrestle with (the god of) old age, while earlier in the novel Hebe the goddess of youth turned the trio into preteens and they had to outmaneuver her to get their actual ages back. Conversely now, in the ‘Wrath’, while the novel is about the trio, and they do get transformed – Percy into part octopus, Annabeth into part (barn) owl, and Grover becomes a human – ‘Wrath’ isn’t as focused on them, and the readers constantly get glimpses of the stories of Hecuba and Gale, (aside from the more minor characters too).

On its’ own, it is not really a problem either. Indeed, since those two characters were mentioned, we might as well discuss who they were. Hecuba was the queen of Troy, described in the ‘Iliad’, wife of king Priam. Their children included Paris, who kidnapped Helen and instigated their entire war, Hector, Troy’s greatest hero, Anchises, the father of Aeneas, who instigated Rome, and Cassandra the prophet, whom no one believed. After the fall of Troy and the death of her family, Hecuba went mad, and in some versions, transformed into a black dog. Mr. Riordan adheres to this version.

Gale is more obscure. Her claim to fame is being a lascivious witch, (aka sexually active), who turned/transformed into a weasel/marten for her troubles. More often, she is conflated with Galinctis, who was the midwife for Hercules (and his twin brother); either Hera or her daughter, the goddess of childbirth, tried to prevent the birth – literally; an act that would have killed all three. However, the cunning midwife figured it out; she confronted the disguised deity and made the latter laugh, breaking her concentration and allowing Alcmene to give birth. The midwife transformed into a weasel for her decision and was forgotten by the myths – until now.

Oh, wait, the weasel in ‘Wrath’ is actually Gale the witch turned polecat. Mr. Riordan gave Gale a brand new backstory (or at least the rough draft of one), and as for the polecat aspect…

A ‘polecat’ is a layperson’s moniker for the animals known as ‘ferrets’ in the American English instead. Compared to weasels, polecats and ferrets are bigger and proportionally more muscular; unlike martens and fishers, they hunt on the ground and in the burrows rather than in the trees. Gale, then, can be safely called a ferret, but-

-but this brings us to J-Ro and Hogwarts; Draco briefly turned into a ferret in book 4. These days, J-Ro is under a cloud for her politically incorrect statements, but her franchise is still going strong and may yet return as a TV series of all things, and so Mr. Riordan and his allies dance around the HP franchise; they don’t call it out directly, but Hecate, at the end of ‘Wrath’, is going to restart her magic school, because both she and the demigods need it.

So far so good, but where does it leave Hecate’s own demigod children? We met a few of them in the novels by now: Alabaster Torrington, Lou Ellen Blackstone, Lamia etc. Why, we actually meet another one of them, Pete the ghost in the novel, but still, ‘Wrath’ conveniently downplays this aspect of PJ-verse, plus what about continuity? ‘The Chalice’ and ‘Wrath’ and their sequel take place before ‘The Trials of Apollo’ series, and the latter had no mention of a magic school for demigods. Yes, Apollo may not have known about it – he was in some sort of a time-out before appearing in the first novel of ‘The Trials’, Percy mentioned it, but the point is that neither Hecate nor her school played any role in ‘The Trials’; Mr. Riordan and his team are trying to reset the PJ-verse in mid-stride – with mixed results.

Getting back to Gale… listen. Polecats, ferrets, weasels, mink and co. are mustelids, true carnivores. Voles, which Percy and friends mention in association with the polecats, are rodents; they are relatives of mice, but more closely related to the lemmings and the muskrat; the polecats actually eat them. To conflate voles with polecats is no more sensible than conflating the latter with moles (self-explanatory), or dholes, (Asian wild dogs, look a bit like wolves, but not very). Hell, polecats are more closely related to dogs than to voles, but that is another story. What is left?

‘Agatha all along’, (AAA). That MCU show was about same-sex characters, but also about witches and witchcraft. We have discussed AAA before, but, again, AAA is superfluous to MCU; the latter tried to make money off the same-sex community in the U.S., but nothing more: so far, you can safely exclude AAA from MCU and it will not affect the greater story at all. Yes, AAA introduced Wiccan into MCU, and now he can join the YA as the obligatory male character while his sexual orientation will never be mentioned at all, or he can continue to explore the world as a sexual minority character with Aggie-poo the ghost witch (or the witch-ghost), while never becoming involved with the YA instead. Isn’t progressive political correctness fun?

Into the fray comes Mr. Riordan with ‘Wrath’. Unlike AAA, there’s no same-sex relationships, and the book overall is more for children than for their parents, but just like AAA, it was custom-made for Halloween, apparently, as such American Halloween stables as zombies, ghosts and witches abound on its’ pages. Oh, and there’s Disney (related) product placement, and references to some of the original PJ novels too. Mr. Riordan, you should not have!

However, on a more serious note, ‘Wrath’ is better than AAA is, period. One does not want to rewatch AAA, and no matter how hard AAA tried to make its’ titular character into a tragic heroine, it never quite managed to fully do so. Rather, she came across as an unrepentant murderer and backstabber, Wanda’s attempts to redeem her be damned. (We have talked about it before). The ninth episode of AAA left some open questions, (why had Jen survive, when Davis-Hart, Wu-Gulliver, and Lilia did not, for example), but few people care about the answers for them. AAA is gone, ‘Kraven the Hunter’ film is coming up, and Marvel is doing its’ best to forget about AAA’s existence, at least for a while. ‘Wrath’, on the other hand, is not as bad; whatever else it was supposed to be, it became a PJ-verse Halloween special and should be treated only as such.

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

'The Chalice' Rick Riordan - Aug 2

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about Mr. Rick Riordan’s YA novel ‘The Chalice of the Gods’ (2023). It had been rather overshadowed by everything else that had been associated with this author in 2023-4 (and beyond), but it is a good novel in its’ own right.

What it is about? Percy Jackson is moving on from high school to college/university (eventually, hopefully), but he needs three letters of recommendation from the Olympian gods to achieve this. ‘The Chalice’ deals with the first letter that PJ receives from Ganymede, the cupbearer of the gods, (also the constellation Aquarius), for retrieving the titular chalice, so there are probably another couple of novels in the works still.

‘The Chalice’ takes place before ‘The Trials of Apollo’ series as well as Nico and Will’s standalone adventure in the Underworld, as PJ’s baby sister is nowhere near even being born, (unlike the first novel in ‘The Trials’). (Also, Jason is alive and perhaps even with Piper still). Fair enough.

The plot of ‘The Chalice’ deals with PJ’s, Annabeth’s, and Grover’s… well, quest to find the chalice. They also deal with the fact that they are changing – both literally aging, (because they are mortal, unlike the Olympian gods), and by developing and transforming socially as well: they are growing more apart now than how they were before, when they were younger, and so they need to deal with it.

Two of the entities that the trio meets in ‘The Chalice’ are literally connected to age: Hebe, the goddess of youth, and Geras, her opposite, the god of old age. Spoiler alert: the latter is the main antagonist of the novel, but PJ is able to defeat him, with some help from Annabeth and Grover, by figuring out that aging is not so bad and that the Olympians’ immortality is a rather crummy deal after all.

…Yes, PJ had to deal with this sort of thing at the end of the first series – the Chronus’ war - already, but overall ‘The Chalice’ also feels like a soft reboot of the PJ franchise – it even talks about nostalgia and a brief, temporary rejuvenation of the trio. Clearly, unlike the original films about PJ and the lightning thief and the sea of monsters, the new TV show is here to stay and prosper, and Mr. Riordan intends to benefit from it.

The other main non-Olympian deity PJ meets here is Iris. He already met her in the second book of the second series, but now Iris got remade for some reason, possibly to distance herself from the sexual minorities, because of the obvious RL reasons. No, seriously, throughout ‘The Chalice’ there are no mentions of sexual minorities, but plenty of heterosexual couples with children instead – and then, of course, there are Percy’s mother and stepfather, who are having a baby of their own – see above.

…Speaking of Iris? ‘The Chalice’ also introduced her demigod daughter Blanche, who is apparently Iris’ opposite and so the two don’t exactly get along? In addition, Blanche may or may not like Grover, who is already in a relationship with Juniper, so drama! J-Ro, whose Ron Weasley also had a robust dating life says ‘hi’.

No, seriously – PJ, Annabeth and Grover are a variant Golden Trio, but we have talked about it already; anything else?

The way that PJ ‘infiltrates’ Zeus’s impromptu branch feels like an Easter Egg for ‘The Lightning Thief’, but, again, Mr. Riordan isn’t against an occasional throwback or reboot – as it was said above, ‘The Chalice’ feels like a soft reboot of some sort; also, no one gets hurt too seriously, (though yes, Percy may disagree), so this book is decidedly child-friendly too, even though it seems to be more aimed at a young adult audience instead. Therefore, in conclusion, it can also be safely said that ‘The Chalice’ is a good book to read a couple of times, and be left after this – nothing more.

For now, too, this is it for us. See all of you soon!

Sun and Star - March 12

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about Rick Riordan’s latest (last?) PJ novel, ‘Sun and Star’. In this particular novel, Nico and Will go to Tartarus to free… Iapetus/Bob the titan from Nyx, the embodiment of night. Fair enough, but… it is not entirely consistent with the series’ previous installments. In particular, when we last saw Iapetus/Bob, he was not just by himself, (and with Little Bob the calico/sabre-toothed cat), but also with a giant named Damascen, (or something similar). In this novel, the latter is absent.

Moreover, who else is absent? Jason Grace, that is who. Aye, he died in ‘The Trials of Apollo’ series, but that is not the point – most of action of ‘Sun and Star’ takes place in the Greco-Roman Underworld, after all. Jason could have appeared as a cameo, long or brief, nothing more, and that would have been the end, issue solved. Instead, he’s also a complete no-show, and what the readers are left is, are Nico’s ruminations as to how he’s dead, and Bianca’s dead, and Leo’s dead, and Nyx is making cacodemons out of Nico’s grief, and-

Wait a second. Leo did not die.

No, he had not, but Nico thought that he did, and for Nyx, that was good enough – she made a cacodemon out of that piece of grief all the same. However, never fear, gentle reader, but behold and lo – Nico will overcome Nyx’s negativity and make his cacodemons truly his!

Why? Besides the obvious, one of the themes in ‘Sun and Star’ is out with the old, in with the new, out with the stability, in with the change, nothing has to be eternal, everything and everyone can change. Again, not the worst message, but it comes out of the left field, just as the fact that Mr. Riordan had co-written the novel with another writer, something that he never did before, a fact that left at least some people wondering, just how much of Mr. Riordan is in ‘Sun and Star’?

Seriously, since ‘Magnus Chase’ and ‘Trials of Apollo’, Mr. Riordan’s writing regarding his universe was all over the place – if he began those two series by being all for progress and sexual minorities, by the time he wrote the final book of ‘Magnus Chase’, and the 3^rd-4^th books of ‘Apollo’, he was much more traditional and restrained in those areas; and in the final book of ‘Apollo’, he… was still restrained. In fact, some time after this, he wrote a short novella set in ancient Ireland, whose protagonist would eventually come to the U.S. in the future novel (still hadn’t happened), and who talked as to how since English came to Ireland, the original Irish language died as a poisoned tree did. Harsh, not at all like Mr. Riordan’s regular characters and their attitudes, and it makes one wonder if Mr. Riordan wasn’t having some RL experiences to affect his latest character’s attitude. What next?

Shel. She’s Piper’s new girlfriend. This can certainly work, but… is she also a demigod? Oh, both she and Piper are Native Americans, but Piper is also a demigoddess, a daughter of Aphrodite/Venus, and a hero of New Rome and of Olympus. Does Shel know about this? Considering that Nico and Will contacted both of them via Iris’ messages, (a rainbow), clearly Shel does. There are analogues of Muggles in Mr. Riordan’s world who know of the supernatural – the mortal parents of Percy and Annabeth, for example – so Shel could be one of them too, but we still do not know about her; for all we know, she’s a golem instead, made and gifted by Piper’s divine parent as a sex-toy to get over Jason that much faster. What is her backstory? Disney and Mr. Riordan, we would like to know!

…We already discussed the TV adaptation of ‘The Lightning Thief’ (into a TV series), and besides, ‘Sun and Star’ don’t have much in common with it – Percy and Annabeth make a brief cameo in the first chapters of the novel, but that is it. Instead, we got Dante’s ‘Inferno’ looming in the background as an inspiration for ‘Sun and Star’.

Sigh. Dante’s ‘Inferno’ is just one part of a trilogy of great literary works, but, sadly, somehow it is the best-known out of the three by far. Why is that so, one does not know, but that is the facts. In addition, discussing ‘the Divine Trilogy’ requires a separate discussion, and now is not the time; there is no time, because real life sucks. However, it can be said that when Mr. Riordan had Percy and Annabeth stuck in Tartarus in the fourth novel of the second quintet, Dante’s influence was much less. Guess that is his co-author’s doing, again. (Or not, because people, even authors, can change with time). Anything else?

No, not really. ‘Sun and Star’ isn’t a bad novel, but it doesn’t feel like a good one either; the two authors wrote in tandem quite professionally, but the end result is a one-shot, and not just because the novel is a standalone one; the relationship of Will and Nico is thrust in the face very, very prominently, and it can become overwhelming and obnoxious quickly enough if you’re in a wrong mood; that is the problem of the Democrats’ U.S. overall – but that is another story.

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

Marvel & PJ take 2 - Jan 25

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Marvel & PJ - Jan 7

 

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, and our 2023-4 holidays celebration got carried away, in a weird way. The sudden shift in weather did not help either. Where were we?

Ah yes, the 2^nd season of ‘What if?’. This was a heterogeneous mix, and a change from the 1^st season. How? If the 1^st season was really a series of variations of the ‘Avengers’ theme, the 2^nd season was not. Rather, it was an authentic anthology of stories, most of which done in various genres, and then we come to Captain Carter (and her new friend, Ms. K), facing off the Strange Supreme. The good people won, the bad doctor lost, and it felt… like a reset of the ‘What if?’ S1, and in an unnecessary way: the S1 finale gave him a purpose and a path to redemption after all. Now, however, it all appears to have been in vain, and instead we get, or rather, are going to get in S3, ‘the Watcher’s and Captain Carter’s travel through the multiverse’. This is not a bad thing; when the show went Meta, it really succeeded, but still, the S2 finale left a strange taste in my mouth, (pun unintended).

The other show of the late 2023, PJ & the Olympians… listen: Mr. Riordan has done his characters practically to the metaphorical death… though the fact that the show (the show’s 1^st season?) is following the plot of the initial novel tightly, is a good thing, overall. Mind you, the initial novel of the franchise might be one of its’ weaker points instead; at that point in his literary career Mr. Riordan tried to imitate J-Ro; Percy, Grover and Annabeth were supposed to be the new Harry, Ron, and Hermy, but things quickly began to go in a different direction by the time of the ‘Sea of Monsters’ already; it’ll be interesting to see as to how he and team Disney will handle it. The original two films were flat-out failures after all.

Now, on some level, I want to discuss all of ‘What if?’ S2 episodes one by one, but, alas, real life intrudes. It sucks, after all, and we are getting Marvel’s™ next show – ‘Echo’ – later next week. Maybe we will discuss the ‘What If?’ episodes in that context instead.

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