AoS; S7 spoilers - August 24

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Now, let us get back to AoS. Yes, they are on their finishing line, 2020 is supposedly the last season for them ever, though it should be acknowledged that it is possible that the SM fallout will affect them too, somehow, and they will get a reboot, or a reset or something – but that is not very likely. For the moment, Disney+ and co. are coming forth, and with them come the new TV series, including the Falcon-Bucky bromance, and the Wanda-Vison romance, and a Moon Knight new TV series, and several other, and SW series, (like ‘the Mandalorian’) and what else have you – put this way, even AoS finds itself to be unnecessary, and as for C&D & ‘Runaways’, it’s open end for them too – no one expected for ‘The Gifted’ to be cancelled with a with a whimper for example, did you?.. Of course not, but the truth is that AoS for a long time had been MCU’s main toehold in the TV world once AC got cancelled…and it is just as unlikely that it will return to the big screen, seeing how Captain Roger’s A: E finale had him back with Peggy, abruptly changing the entire minor plotline(s) that had been leading up until the CA: CW film in the MCU. It is not AoS alone that can experience reboots and resets, but in the case of Steve and Peggy it is a relatively minor one…but it cancels out the now-terminated AC the TV series for good, no matter how fun it was. In it, Peggy was moving on from Rogers, and in ‘Endgame’ Rogers moved right back in. For a while, he had a semi-relationship with Sharon Carter, but now she is gone for good, without a trace. Ouch again, unless there was never a Sharon Carter, but yet another one of Fury’s Skrull allies, which raises a completely different line of thought…where were we?

Ah yes, the promo for AoS final season. The bulk of it is taken by the Chromicoms, as they arrive in 1931 NYC, kill two corrupt cops and steal the face of a third one, literally, with a machine of some sort, in a manner that would make Cthulhu be impressed. Not too much, but still impressed. However, this was not what had caught my attention, but one of the lesser shots – in it, Daisy holds a bullet or a similarly shaped and sized object that had a glowing green Hydra logo on it. Oh, bother.

In the second half of S3 S.H.I.E.L.D. and general Talbot supposedly had killed Hydra for good…only for it to start to return in the last third of S4. Then, it was a Framework version of Hydra, supposedly not real, (the character of AIDA took on many roles in S4), but still Hydra. In CA: CW, Zemo tells a man he’s torturing/interrogating, that Hydra is done, gone, in the trash bin of history…and in AoS S5 Hydra promptly returns, this time as an ally of the Kree. S.H.I.E.L.D. defeats them both – again – and this time Hydra is supposedly gone for good, there were no indications of the evil organization in AoS S6, as far as I can remember, so let’s give AoS its’ due – but now, in the upcoming 2020 final season, it might be back. Why?

…Because AoS seems to be recycling its’ old ideas over and over, usually in new ways, but they do not always work well, as I have written repeatedly, discussing AoS in its earlier seasons and episodes. How AoS will handle Hydra’s return (to MCU proper?) this time I do not know, and I am unsure that it will be good, face-stealing aliens or not. Ah well, considering that Disney/Marvel and Sony are at loggerheads in real life, and suddenly MCU’s superiority is no longer assured, it might not matter for much longer – let’s first wait and see as to what happens in the Marvel Cinematic Universe proper by 2020 first and then try to make educated guesses.

This is it for now; see you all soon!

Spider-Man cancelled? - Aug 20

Real life sucks, and in this particular instance it does so because ‘Spider-Man’ is cancelled… wait, what?

I did not expect to return to my blog so soon, but the truth is that this is big news – Sony and Disney/MCU have come to blows at last, and Spider-Man is the biggest loser out of this fight.

On one hand, this is not too surprising: ever since our friendly neighbourhood wall-crawler appeared in the CA: CW movie, it was because of a Sony & Disney/MCU compromise, with neither side being too happy about it. Disney/MCU does not like Sony, and it is reciprocated. For a while – i.e., until now, late August 2019 – the two sides have maintained some sort of a truce, and then ‘Spider-Man: Far From Home’ came out into theatres, and it was a success, including in a financial manner – and it was also one of the few movies of the summer 2019 that Disney wasn’t in charge of, and didn’t get the better deal. Therefore, they moved forwards and demanded a more 50/50 cut from Sony, and when the latter refused, the partnership broke up. Now what?

There are not a lot of options, especially from an external P.O.V. Disney/MCU is the bigger juggernaut out of the two, and they are big enough to weather the fall-out if Spider-Man is gone.

…Here is the thing. Disney-Marvel MCU is, well, a marvel, working like clockwork, especially when compared to DCEU proper. As Comic-Con 2019 revealed, Disney/MCU have phase 4 all mapped out and are ready to proceed in 2020 with the Black Widow movie and onwards. The catch is that Spider-Man’s character is clearly an important lynchpin in the upcoming phase 4, as the ‘Far From Home’ movie has set him up: in his final battle against Mysterio, he takes on both Thor’s and Captain America’s characteristics, let alone the Iron Man’s – as the Iron Man’s heir, he may be the one to assemble the next version of the Avengers, and if he isn’t in MCU anymore, it makes ‘Far From Home’ a big fat red herring, and an unintentional one at that. As the ‘Dark Phoenix 2019’ movie has shown, unintentional humor, red herrings and etc., are bad – ‘Dark Phoenix 2019’ in particular is probably the worst X-Men movie ever—but we digress.

Can Disney/MCU make its’ phase four without Spider-Man…period? Yes, but odds are that it will be reminiscent of AoS from the second half of S2 onwards, and in a bad way. AoS constantly re-set and rebooted its characters, changed its’ script, and went around in torturous circles; if it wasn’t Marvel’s main toehold in the world of live-action TV, it would probably have never made it to S6/7, as it did. And now that Disney/Marvel is coming into live-action TV full steam, with Falcon and Bucky adventures, and Wanda and Loki adventures, and what else have you, AoS is quietly being shut down, in summer 2020, the end.

…But AoS is not MCU, and for a while, (especially in S3-4), it was almost a separate universe from the latter, and what it can make work, does not mean that MCU can. If MCU has to change its phase 4 from the plot where Peter/Spider-Man assembles the next Avengers in a post ‘Far From Home’ movie, to the one where there’s no Spider-Man per se, and someone else does his job, and ‘Far From Home’ just vanishes as water in the Sahara desert does, yeah, it’ll be a bigger loss for Disney/MCU than submitting to Sony’s demands – on par with Disney/SW alienating and fracturing its’ fanbase since the beginning…but that is another story.

Put more succinctly, it all comes down to money. Disney is greedy and does its’ best to make as much money for itself as possible. It is very good at doing that, but sometimes it fails – i.e., the ‘Solo’ movie only made millions of money, rather than billions, as Disney/SW had expected – and so they proclaimed that the SW9 movie will be their last movie for a while… and then that statement disappeared, rumors of more SW movies came forth, (though they have also dissipated by now), and also for a while, people were bombarded by SW comics, (though to what effect is debatable). Disney can do subtle and it doesn’t back down without a fight from anything, but in Spider-Man’s case, it isn’t dealing with public in general, or a specific fanbase in particular, but with Sony, which is its’ equal, in a lesser sort of way. Sony knows exactly what it is dealing with, and is not bowing down to the Mouse anytime soon. It knows that it has the advantage – if Disney/MCU decides that it is done with Spider-Man, then it is in a very uncomfortable position, (while Spider-Man can always re-surface in Sony’s own live-action universe, cough team up with Venom to defeat Carnage cough), as it will have to reboot and reforge its’ phase 4…and if it doesn’t, it will have to keep on the wall-crawler on Sony’s terms, so Sony wins again! Facing off with the Disney/MCU juggernaut, Sony became a smart fighter, so there!

…Unfortunately, it leaves us, as well as Tom Holland and his follow ‘Spider-Man’ (the franchise) co-stars hanging in the balance, as it is still not quite known if they will continue working with Disney/MCU in the future or not. Considering that we recently learned that Holland’s movie with Daisy Ridley (aka Rey from the Disney/SW universe) was deemed unsellable, tough break for him again, but that is real life. It sucks. Good luck to Disney and its’ associates: it seems that even nigh all-powerful juggernauts can be defeated on occasion, especially if their opponents are smart and know to hit it where it hurts – in the money.

…This is it for now. See you all soon!

Not quite a rant - Aug 19

Let us start this rant with the obvious: real life sucks. True, it sucks in various ways – in the People’s Republic of China, there is Hong Kong, in the RF – Moscow, and in the US – there is the Donald. It makes one wonder if Mr. Epstein didn’t commit suicide just to get away from it all; makes my problem – the fact that I’ve missed the AoS ‘S6 finale’ look positively pitiful.

…Of course, AoS in itself has become rather pitiful: the final two episodes – a double feature! – received some of the lowest numbers there were in AoS history, and that considering that on average AoS S6 did pretty good in its’ run. True, the fact that its’ other half – the so-called AoS S7 – will be airing only in summer 2020 – doesn’t help in the long run, but that is how life works. Anything else?

Officially – on 2019’s Comic-Con and the like – AoS did its’ best to pretend that Jeff Ward (Deke Shaw on the show) is one of them, possibly to counter the damage presented by him, when he stated on CM movie premiere back in spring 2019 that he and Iain hate each other; it was a better job than the one done by team Marvel, when they had Tandy and Detective Mandy appear on the ‘Dark Phoenix 2019’ premiere to pretend that it was a part of the Marvel crew; that was simply sad – but Jeff Ward’s status on the show isn’t much better. Due to me missing the final three episodes, I do not know if he is with Snowflake or not, but if he is, it will certainly be a good and a convenient way for AoS to take him out of the picture without much of an effort.

No, seriously, while it is sad that May has died, and Yo-Yo may have died, and some other people have died, the truth is that people have died on AoS all the time, but as long as they were needed, they came back. And if they weren’t – they were gone, just ask Blood and Palicki; Blood did return for a S5 episode, but his role was perfunctory there, and when the old Marvel website published Blood’s interview for Marvel, it was also perfunctory and short – clearly, things weren’t as rosy there as Marvel wanted people to believe. Ah well, now that version of the Marvel website is gone, and so’s that interview. Life goes on.

And so do the characters of AoS – they constantly die and return. Coulson’s death was so tragic because he was supposed to stay dead, (CM the movie took place in the past of MCU-verse, so Coulson there didn’t really count, his role was more secondary to Fury’s, anyhow), but first we got ‘Sarge’, who was something of a faux-Ghost Rider, and now Coulson/not-Coulson is coming back for real in S7. Yay?

No, not exactly – yes, AoS as a whole retained a healthy fanbase, but the actual TV series has less and less to do with it, as the fans continue to ignore it more and more. Once the TV show is gone in 2020, the fanbase will go on, as it had done with GoT in 2019.

That deserves a mention of its’ own. GoT was also supposed to be present on Comic-Con 2019, but given its’ rocky finale and its’ now-damaged relationship with its fanbase…it did not. Seriously, its’ (former) cast and crew appeared on Comic-Con 2019 in a much abridged group, and then they quickly left altogether, leaving the fans behind. Yes, that was obviously intentional, seeing how the show and its’ fans parted ways badly – the fans almost practically demanded a remake of GoT S8, and the cast dismissed it very brutally, maybe unnecessarily so – behold the power of Internet, where you can talk flak about other people and they cannot do anything about it! …Oh wait, they can always confront you in real life, face-to-face, on such an unconventional place as a Comic-Con, and then what do you do? Apparently, you talk between each other, and eventually reach a conclusion that while you do not care about them, you are make sequels and spin-offs, and what else have you from GoT, so you actually do not want to alienate your fans further, lest they decide to abandon you completely in favor of something else.

This probably brings us to Martin-man himself – recently he claimed to be relieved ‘to be free’ of HBO and GoT or whatever. Jolly good, but we’re living in an age where printed media is on the downswing – I come to a bookstore, and find it full of unsold books – Riordan, and J-Ro’s HP, and even Martin’s ASOIAF sitting on shelves in various, glorious recent editions, unsold. In fact, some of the bookstores themselves are closing and are remaking themselves into Internet stores or something similar. By contrast, comic book stores and the like are going on strong, which rather brings us back to AoS: in the past, they tried to launch a comic series reminiscent of the series, but they couldn’t make two full volumes of their comics – that’s less than 12 issues, i.e. Given how AoS is relatively successful on TV, this is just sad. What next?

The other point of contention as to why my life sucks right now is the Pathfinder RPG. It had rebooted itself into a second edition, which is very much like the fifth edition D&D. D&D itself seems to be going through some redesigning crisis, but we have largely dismissed it since the fifth edition version took off. Are the two events connected? Hard to say.

…And getting back to our earlier discussion to the printed media, it should be noted that in the 3.5 edition D&D, there were two series of magazines, ‘Dragon’ and ‘Dungeon’. Actually, they were around since the first and second editions of D&D, so they were formidable! And then, when D&D switched from 3.5 to the 5^th edition, those magazines became completely online – you still had to buy them, of course, but it was all done through Internet, and PayPal, and what else have you – and its’ old website (from the 90s) became practically a paysite with minimum free features. D&D attempted to do something similar in the past, true, but that transformation was still unexpected, and not entirely welcome.

As for Pathfinder, their official website is largely a place to buy slash order their products online, (if you cannot buy them physically in stores), plus a forum, plus a newsboard – nothing so glamorous and encompassing as what the D&D 3.5 edition used to have, but then again, by now they have diversified into Starfinder as well – the sci-fi twin to Pathfinder’s fantasy. Neat! And there are also websites that offer an access to information from most of the core books as well. Go Pathfinder!

…Well, no, since its last campaign path – the one set to set the PCs against Tar-Baphon – had devolved into a hot mess. Thank someone that we did not get embroiled in it. But then again, this was supposed to be a rant about why life sucks, but we have veered into something different entirely, so let us call it a night and let us end here. Aka—

This is it for now, see you all soon!

PS: Here is an alebrije to finish off this rant, (from the Pathfinder campaign path mentioned above):

CROCODILE CR 4

XP 600

N Large magical beast (extraplanar)

Init +1; Senses darkvision 120 ft., dreamsight, low-light vision, scent; Perception +14

DEFENSE

AC 15, touch 10, flat-footed 13 (+1 Dex, +6 natural, –1 size)

hp 32 (3d10+21)

Fort +6, Ref +4, Will +2

OFFENSE

Speed 20 ft., swim 30 ft.; sprint

Melee bite +5 (1d10+8 plus grab) and tail slap +0 (1d12+6)

Space 10 ft.; Reach 5 ft.

Special Attacks death roll (1d8+6 plus trip)

Spell-Like Abilities (CL 3^rd, concentration +3)

3/day—dream, nightmare (DC 11)

1/day—dream council (DC 12), dream travel (DC 12), mind thrust III (DC 10), plane shift (self plus 50 lbs of objects only)

STATISTICS

Str 23, Dex 18, Con 21, Int 5, Wis 18, Cha 6

Base Atk +2; CMB +7 (+11 grapple); CMD 18 (22 vs. trip)

Feats Skill Focus (Perception, Stealth)

Skills Knowledge (arcana) +4, Knowledge (planes) +4, Perception +14, Stealth +11 (+19 in water), Swim +16; Racial Modifiers +8 on Stealth in water; Racial Modifiers +8 Knowledge (arcana), +8 Knowledge (planes)

SQ hold breath

Languages Common; telepathy 100 ft.

ECOLOGY

Environment warm rivers and marshes

Organization solitary, pair, or colony (3–12)

Treasure none

SPECIAL ABILITIES

Death Roll (Ex) When grappling a foe of its size or smaller, a crocodile can perform a death roll upon making a successful grapple check. As it clings to its foe, it tucks in its legs and rolls rapidly, twisting and wrenching its victim. The crocodile inflicts its bite damage and knocks the creature prone. If successful, the crocodile maintains its grapple.

Dreamsight (Su) Alebrijes are able to notice and locate sleeping creatures within 500 ft., as well as creatures engaged in similar rest, such as meditation or resting trances.

Hold Breath (Ex) A crocodile can hold its breath for a number of rounds equal to 4 times its Constitution score before it risks drowning.

Sprint (Ex) Once per minute a crocodile may sprint, increasing its land speed to 40 feet for 1 round.

What do you think about it? How does it look?

FH: Zealot - July 24

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is it for now; see you all soon!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now – see you all soon!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Crawl - July 14

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is it for now; see you all soon.

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

ERUPHYTE ASSASSIN VINE CR 4

XP 800

N Large plant

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

DEFENSE

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

hp 30 (4d8+12)

Fort +7, Ref +1, Will +2

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

OFFENSE

Speed 5 ft.

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

Space 10 ft.; Reach 10 ft.

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

STATISTICS

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

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

Feats –

Skills -

Language telepathy 60 ft.

SQ bardic knowledge (CL 2^nd), camouflage

ECOLOGY

Environment temperate forests

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

Treasure incidental

SPECIAL ABILITIES

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

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

RAMPANT BASIDIROND CR 6

XP 1,600

N Medium plant

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

Aura growth

DEFENSE

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

hp 80 (7d8+49)

Fort +8, Ref +3, Will +2

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

Weaknesses cold lethargy, negative energy

OFFENSE

Speed 20 ft.

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

Special Attacks hallucination cloud, spores

STATISTICS

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

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

SQ verdant genesis

ECOLOGY

Environment any non-cold underground

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

Treasure incidental

SPECIAL ABILITIES

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

d6 Hallucination

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Any comments? Criticisms?