Original fiction 1 - Dec 6

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. So, here's something completely different: a piece of original fiction. Do tell me how it goes, would you? Let's begin:

…When it all began, I ran into Essa back in the corridors of ChronoDune™ Inc. as I was walking along to my port, and Essa was just…running. Whatever it was that has happened to her, back in the sector of Peryton, it was enough to get even through her seasoned skin.

Make no mistake, I have views about Essa – for someone from Peryton she is certainly subdued, but then again, it is a practical view to take within ChronoDune™ - we tend to conflate our seasons together: one moment it’s winter, the next – summer, then it’s autumn, and finally we’re back to winter again. What has happened to spring, where have we misplaced it, I do not know, and I am afraid to write to the upper management to ask. Actually, we are all afraid – unlike our counterparts from Peryton, who actually dwell close enough to the actual Olympus to learn what rumors are coming down and who sometimes can actually ask the upper management to learn as to what is going on down, or rather – up there for real. Hm. Maybe I could ask Essa about spring? But first-

“What got you so worked up?” I asked even as I helped her up: she was not running this fast, and she did not smack into me that hard, but she still lost her footing and almost fell; certainly lost her tablet and almost smacking her head against the wall… “Hunting wolves are on your trail or something?”

“More like a swarm of smarmy vultures, ravens and magpies, making all the noise,” Essa replied bitterly. “There are five major tears in the narrative that we can determine, and a big metaphorical grizzly bear sniffing around one of them already, and what do they do? They dismiss me!”

“Well, naturally,” I pointed out. “You’re a lab worker; you do all the theory and everything else is done by other people – field agents, mostly, but still. The end. You rang the alarm bell, your hands and conscience are clean, what is missing?”

“I don’t know,” Essa said bitterly. “Maybe it’s the matter that Shawn has given me an exercise bike for a birthday gift-“

“Wait,” I raised my hand. “Your birthday? It was yesterday or tomorrow or today or in the recent chronological vicinity?”

“Yes!” She said excitedly. “It was! It was my birthday, and I wanted us to go to Kims’ department to petition us for a baby – instead, he got me an exercise bike!”

I thought this over. On one hand, I barely knew Shawn – I barely know Essa, and I knew Shawn less than that, on the other hand, male solidarity and all, and I barely knew Essa, so why should I get involved in their mess? Essa – and Shawn - did not have a child yet. Bully. As a determined bachelor this was one topic that I had no qualifications to discuss; plus, when I received my appreciation award it was a treadmill of some sort, and I certainly got my mileage out of it until time had run out for it – literally – and I had the option to apply my superiors for higher-ranking missions to receive enough of… everything that I needed to fix the damned device and give it a new life. I am a chaotician. I do not do predictable and straightforward, and I work at the Xaos sector of ChronoDune™ because it suits me – and vice versa. My superiors can certainly foresee what choice I make and can try to influence me… or not. Case in point – my defunct treadmill. It makes a most formidable conversation piece ever.

…Oh wait, I do not do conversations, outings and innings, and so on, and so forth. Long live the treadmill, put otherwise, and I continue to do my missions as I always did – for the sake of chaos rather than money or other manifestations of order…

“Right,” I told Essa. “An exercise bike? One that’s got a limited amount of life, or existence, or something-?”

“Yes,” Essa nodded solemnly. “It just eats all those credits-“

“You’re coming with me.”

Essa stared. She never looked particularly owlish – she did have contact lenses rather than spectacles, for example – but right now she did do her best to look like an owl right now.

“Why?” she finally managed.

“Well, how are you going to start maintaining your new acquisition?” I raised an eyebrow. “I know a bloke who got a Peryton-level TV – it was dead before the year was out and he needed to acquire a lot of things to resurrect it – and it cost money, and it means working overtime, emphasis on working.”

“Which is what I do,” Essa snapped.

“Yes, but field work costs more,” I did not back down. “Think you will be able to keep it running on your current salary? And for long? Or are you just going to throw it out once it dies?”

Essa stared at me for a good long while. “You’re from the Xaos sector, aren’t you?” she muttered. “I cannot see the future… the time lines are all tangled…”

“Is it one of the five tears that you’ve been talking around?” I produced the address of my destination – the one that I have been assigned to earlier today. I should have been getting there by now, but time has a very fluid meaning in the corridors of ChronoDune™, even moreso than space does.

Essa took a good long look. “Maybe,” she drummed her fingers. “Perhaps. Can we go there and see for ourselves what does it look like?”

And so off we went.

/ / /

…Now, as far as my missions go, this one started at a fairly mundane place – a garden enclosure of some rich- someone rich, (and did I mention that I really do not like the rich?), complete with a pond. The pond was huge, with reinforced walls and appropriately oversized lily pads floating on top of the water, with large, pale pink flowers blooming alongside them. Very lovely.

I pulled out my packet, one that was given to me for the mission, and scattered its’ contents into the water. I beckoned to Essa, and she followed suit. Where did she get her packet? I always have several spares, whenever I get a partner. I would like to claim that I am an incredibly complex and unpredictable character and what else have you, but the fact is that ChronoDune™ demands that everyone and everything, (we have some odd types working here, I can promise you), has it in extra – just in case a mission that is supposed to be solo becomes, well, not a solo one. Have I mentioned that me working at ChronoDune™ is based largely on the benefits of me being an agent of chaos, not on any other reason? No? Well, here you have it, then – I work at ChronoDune™ because it permits me to be an agent of chaos, not for any other reason. Remember that!

…Meanwhile, Essa just mutely followed my lead – first with the packet, and then-?

Then we just sat down and concentrated. Yes, slipping into a trance is not easy, even when you got your helmet on your head, but we managed. The miracle! We managed, and followed the flakes as they sank into the water and dissolved there – with our minds. And then we got contact.

A pair of eyes set in striped black and yellow armored skull blinked, and a crocodile-like reptile began to rise to the surface even as its body began to be subtly restructured, albeit temporarily. The second reptile in the pond – bigger and heavier, clad in duller scutes of dull and light grey – also blinked and followed its neighbour, flicking its tail almost lazily but catching up to its’ smaller neighbor almost instantly, shifting and transforming bodies irrelevant.

Slowly, we surfaced to the surface, amongst the giant lily pads. “Now what?” Essa muttered to me via telepathy.

“Now we chaos-“ I didn’t finish, as one of the locals – a human, thank Chaos – stumbled through the trees, visibly bleeding and collapsed, fading fast.

“Casey!” Essa yelled out to me, even as we broke contact with the nano-modified reptiles and raced to the victim. “He’s dying! Please help-?” she trailed away, seeing the first aid kit in my hands. “Um-“

“You’re so lucky that Chaos is benevolently inclined towards him,” I muttered as we dragged our saved person into our time-travelling apparatus.

“Of course-“

“Plus, it’s one of us – there’s no orderly reason as to why a person with a wound done by an Austro-Hungarian Hussar saber has ended up here, in a completely different time and place.”

Essa just stared – this is no lab work, of course, but this was also the deep end, true – and followed my lead.

TBC?

Mulan trailer 2 - Dec 5

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about yet another movie trailer – this time, it is the upcoming ‘Mulan’ remake. And? What can be said about it? Looks like it is going to be ‘woke’.

…You know what; let us talk about what this term means in relation to movies, starting with the upcoming ‘Mulan’ remake. In the original ‘Mulan I’ movie, there were two specific characters that were particular: the matchmaker and Chi-Fu, aka the clerk that was there with Li Shang’s secondary army. The Matchmaker was a fat mountain of a woman; Chi-Fu – a skinny weasel of a man; both were minor antagonists, and both were physically unattractive, in a comic way. From what the remake’s second trailer shows us, ‘Mulan-2020’ will have none of this.

Is it a good thing? On one level – yes. Already, Disney/Marvel is catching flack both for the upcoming Red Guardian in the ‘Black Widow-2020’ film: not unlike Thor in ‘Endgame’, he is something of a fat funny drunk, not unlike John Falstaff from Shakespeare’s ‘Henry IV’ plays, but enough of modern people found neither Thor in ‘Endgame’ nor this version of the Red Guardian particularly funny, and they made it known to Disney. True, Disney is still going forth with this version of the Red Guardian in the ‘Black Widow-2020’ movie, as they did with the fat Thor in the ‘Avengers: Endgame’ film, but-

-But here real life sneaks in, and brings forth – the Peloton. However correctly it is spelled, earlier this week, (Dec 4, 2019), it brought forth its’ own shit-storm regarding WG and WL. To wit, sometime in November 2019 it released a short ad, which goes like this: A husband gifts a wife a Peloton for holidays, she begins to workout on it, and it changes her life somehow – because she loses weight or whatever. The end.

Let us call upon Captain Obvious, and he states that, firstly, the wife in question – ‘Grace from Boston’ – was never that fat to begin with. Yes, compared to the Kardashians she may be plain, but not everyone is a Kardashian yet, thank you very much. She may have weighted, say, 52 kg at the beginning of the ad, at the end – around 50, but then again, she was supposed to have worked-out on the Peloton for an entire year. (What is a Peloton? A souped-up exercise bike, essentially, with its’ own Internet or whatever. Where were we?) This is kind of lackluster, but to be honest, the entire ad is vapid and empty – it tries to present itself as sincere, authentic and deep, but in reality it’s lackluster, its’ actors don’t look like people that need exercise for weight loss to begin with, they don’t look like average Americans (or Canadians) who watch such ads very much, and so those average Americans (and Canadians?) tore down Peloton’s real-life stock by… 9 or 10%. Considering that an average Peloton is a luxury item, that is not such a small deal. However – what this got to do with Disney?

To begin with, a Peloton is a luxury item, just like a movie – you do not need either of them in real life, you can spend money on them if you want, but this money can always be spent somehow else, on something more necessary, and since a Peloton costs somewhere between $2000 and $2500, you better get most of your money’s worth from it…and be ready to spend more money on it, both for electric bills, (because it runs on electricity rather than on solar or wind power, from what I can understand), and for maintenance; even an ordinary exercise bike or treadmill need this sort of thing every once in a while, and if you don’t maintain them, they die, with or without electricity. 

Considering that a Peloton proportionally is more complex than an average treadmill… yeah, maintaining it is probably more expansive than an average treadmill too. What next?

Next, Captain Obvious points out that no movie – Blu-Ray, DVD, ticket, whatever – ever cost a four-digit figure. True, and you don’t have to maintain it as you do a Peloton, an exercise bike, a DVD-player or any other device, but again – it’s luxury, you can get along in your life without it, and so movie companies like Disney and Sony spent a lot of time trying to get you to spent money on their movies all the same, just as Peloton does for ads that advertise their products – and what do you assume all of those trailers are-?

Since we are back with Peloton, what was its’ problem? Why are people so angry at it, hating it, mocking it? Because Peloton’s approach with it backfired – its’ actors are unrealistic, (Grace from Boston is shown wearing pink-colored high-heels in winter, which is just is not right, because while Boston is a more southern city than Toronto is, its’ winters still get very snowy – not the best weather for high heels). They are already trim and fit, they do not relate to an average viewer of the ad, who probably is not as trim and fit – and this brings us to Marvel and Disney.

Listen: before Thor in ‘Endgame’ and now – the Red Guardian in ‘Black Widow’, there was Maui in ‘Moana’, (2016). This is notable because, firstly, ‘Moana’ is a less asexual version of ‘Frozen II’ (2019): both movies talk about ecology, both movies have female leads, (though Moana is more like Anna than like Elsa), neither movie has a definite villain: though ‘Moana’ does have a certain, cough, ‘Shiny’ crustacean, but if you compare him to someone like Jafar or Ursula, let alone the original Maleficient he isn’t that bad, and both deal with ecology: in ‘Moana’, the world is experiencing a magical analog of global warming, while Elsa’s is more of a would-be ice age – but that’s only the dressing, the underlining message is the same. Yes, Maui is acting much more morally ambiguous than Kristoff does, but that does not matter, Moana may actually be smarter than Elsa and her sister, and in the end, she does save the day… largely by herself, whereas Elsa and Anna actually need each other and to lesser extent – other people to do that.

Is ‘Moana’ a more derived and complex movie than ‘Frozen 2’? Hard to say, but it certainly is than ‘Frozen 1’. Where were we?

Ah yes, Maui. He does not look like a typical Disney male lead, now does he? And from what I can remember, when ‘Moana’ was released in 2016, Disney did catch criticism about Maui’s looks – and then people began to defend Disney’s choice, and this brought controversy, something that Disney is trying to avoid.

Disney/Marvel went on ahead with the fat Thor in ‘Endgame’? Yes, but Thor was only one character out of many in that movie, and Disney/Marvel’s approach to controversy was to do its’ best to kill it, especially after the Tony/Steve rivalry began to get out of hand and the Marvel fandom was already semi-split and divided as to whether or not Hydra was Nazi or only evil? In SW, Disney did its’ best to plough over the fans’ complains, so ‘Solo’ made only millions of dollars in cash, not billions, because enough people had enough of Disney/SW, so now Disney is spending a lot of money to make a lot comics, animated series, series like ‘The Mandalorian’ and etc., to turn the public opinion back in their favor. This brings us back to ‘Mulan 2020’.

Firstly, ‘Mulan 2020’ already had had controversy, when earlier in 2019 the movie’s female lead, Liu Yifei, made an anti-Hong Kong statement; whether she was right or wrong is another question, but many people became genuinely angry at her statement. The result? Neither she nor anyone else of ‘Mulan 2020’ cast and crew made this sort of statement ever again for the rest of 2019, Disney wants to make money, damn it, not to cause controversy!

…We might have already discussed it in regards to ‘Frozen 2’ – around the time it was released, Ms. Jennifer Lee, who was in charge of it, made a statement that roughly amounted to ‘Elsa knows her sexuality best, she’ll tell us who she likes when she decides to’, and this statement reveals, that as far as women go, Ms. Lee has really big-ass balls, because it takes genuinely big-ass balls to make this sort of statement. Listen: Elsa is a fictional character, made by CGI. A live actress voices her, but only because Hollywood has not figured out how to make machines speak as well as real people – for now. Elsa is going to have a relationship with whomever the script tells her to – male, female, human, non-human, etc. Nothing more, nothing less, but-

-But the truth is, whether Elsa will be revealed as gay or as straight, plenty of fans will be upset and angry about it…maybe angry enough to abandon the ‘Frozen’ franchise – something that might’ve occurred to Disney’s SW franchise around the time of the ‘Solo’ film (2018). Not surprisingly then, Disney is trying its’ best to avoid a repetition of this situation from that time and until the present, let alone the future: MCU’s Red Guardian may be stirring controversy, but you don’t hear this about any of ‘Mulan-2020’s characters, now do you? They all appear to be physically attractive at the very least – just as the spouses of the misfortunate Peloton ad are. This also makes them about as relatable as the spouses of the Peloton ad are, and with the removal of such canon characters as Mushu the dragon and Cri-Kee the cricket, Disney may discover that their strategy has misfired instead.

…What strategy, you may ask? Simple: the ‘Black Widow’ trailer has generated plenty of discussion. The second ‘Mulan’ trailer – none at all; in fact, its’ timing may have been deliberate – Disney is burying it under the heap of SW-related news. Disney does not like controversy, especially when its’ ‘heartland’ – the Disney princess franchise – is involved. This brings us back to ‘Frozen 2’. In it, Disney has genuinely made something new – the new ‘Frozen’ film has nothing in common with the first movie save for the main characters – but when it comes to the underlying message, its’ depiction of the new Arendale-world as an ecologically-friend utopia, it falls flat. Even IGN, which these days hates to make negative reviews, admitted that Disney didn’t quite go the distance with ‘Frozen 2’; whatever it plans to do with ‘Mulan-2020’ may experience the same problem, and this brings us back to ‘wokeness’. It may be becoming a term with multiple meanings, but apparently in relation to movies and similar media? It is beginning to mean ‘inoffensive’, ‘vapid’, and ‘bland as possible’, as the characters of the Peloton ad show. They have no personalities, no characteristics that make them unique – and in Western societies, everyone is unique. Just ask Greta Thunberg, would you? ‘Mulan-2020’ doesn’t appear to be as bad as this ad, but neither it is as ‘bland’ as Disney might assume that it would be: for example, the new Shan-Yu still does have a falcon – only it’s no longer a mere bird, but his witch girlfriend, who’s the brains behind this invasion. Pause.

The ‘Mulan’ trailer 2 mentioned a phoenix that guards the imperial throne. This is worthy of a digression: the movie is talking of a Chinese phoenix, which, incidentally, is nothing like the Western phoenix. The latter is a Solar symbol, its’ depiction vary, but usually it is vaguely eagle-like, (because in Christian symbolism, the eagle is connected to the sun, a religious relic left from the pagan times). The Chinese phoenix looks much like an elaborate, more derived version of a rooster, or one of its’ wilder cousins, a pheasant of some sort. (The males of Asiatic species can look even more unusual than the peafowl males do). Why, sometimes it is even used in place of the rooster in the Chinese zodiac – but the point is while in the past there were male Chinese phoenixes called feng, and female, called huang, these days the Chinese phoenix called simply fenghuang and it is baseline female – an opposite to the Chinese dragon, which is baseline male.

Pause. Mushu the dragon exchanges a look with Captain Obvious and leaves to pump some weights: he needs to get into shape with a potentially hot phoenix girlfriend.

It must be pointed out that the Chinese phoenix is just as mythical, imaginary and make-believe as the Western phoenix is; it may be based on a wild pheasant or a domestic rooster, but that is it. Very quickly it became its’ own entity, and it is one that has no literal connotations with reality. There is no fire behind this smoke, no cryptid behind this myth. End of story.

…But the question of whether or not Mulan will learn/figure out as to how to turn into the phoenix to challenge the evil barbarian-witch for the supremacy of the skies has just began. Disney is trying to avoid controversy…but this way lies blandness and lack of interest from the potential viewers; as ‘Frozen 2’ showed, if you don’t go the full distance, you don’t catch the full attention. Yes, by making a concise, intentional statement you, well, officially commit yourself to some cause or another; you will be judged by its’ standards, good or bad. Pause.

…The problem with such state of affairs that it will cost you something or other, no matter how clever or powerful you may consider yourself to be. Fair enough, but remember the parable of the bat: beasts went to war with the birds, the bat tried to sit on the fence, siding with the winner, but eventually both sides caught onto her game and exiled her from both parties, condemning the bat to a life of ignominy and darkness. Disney, of course, is nothing like that, it has its’ own cause and commitment – money. Ergo, any attempts to do something truly radical and progressive will always fall flat, as they did with ‘Frozen 2’, with Marvel’s ‘Black Panther’ (2018), no matter how Disney and its’ associates claim otherwise. Genuine, authentic commitment to anything other than money always costs money. Disney is not ready to lose money for anything, as the events surrounding ‘Solo’ showed. And thus, Disney and its’ movies (in all of its’ incarnations) will never be as radical and new and authentic as Disney always claims and/or tries to make them. The end.

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

Black Widow trailer 1 - Dec 4

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. So we look onto the TV and what do we see there? The ‘Vikings’ season premiere! And-?

And I was wrong – it will not be the Turco-Mongols that the titular characters will be fighting, but the Russians. Oh, for fuck’s sake!

Let me elaborate. These days, the Russia that the West knows is associated with Moscow, or as the Slavic people acknowledge it, (sometimes) – the Moscow Rus. Reasonable enough, right? The problem – the first one – that during the Viking era – the Rus that existed in the world was the so-called Kiev Rus, it existed primarily on the territory of modern Ukraine and the Balkans, Eastern Europe, really – and Moscow was only its’ north-east periphery at best.

…Real life carefully point-out to me that the Donald decided to replace the Democrats fictional Russian interference – the Russian threat to the U.S. regime is quite real, but meddle in the election-2016 it did not – but equally fictional Ukrainian one. Democrats firmly rejected it, Republicans are just as firmly pro-Donald, so now what?

Nobody knows. At least since the year 2016 the West figured out by now that using fictional Russian threats to distract from real-life problems – the Epstein fallout, for example, or the Brexit – just makes it works and have stopped using them. Substituting them with just as fictional Ukrainian threats is worse, since Ukraine is trying to be the part of the Western culture for real, for what reasons, is another thing, but for real. They do not deserve this sort of a backstab… but they are getting it anyways.

And now we return to the ‘Vikings’, where the Vikings will be fighting the Russo-Ukrainians, even though…

…Even though in reality they were the ones to establish the state slash kingdom of Rus – the Russians themselves accept it. The first Russian dynasty were the Ruriks, whose founder, Rurik, alongside with his brother, Sinehus and Truvore, was a Variag/Varangian – a Viking. The Russian name ‘Oleg’, and its’ female counterpart, ‘Olga’, are Russified versions of the Norse ‘Helgi’ (male) and ‘Helga’ (female). Far from fighting with the Rus, the real-life Vikings colonized and began to civilize them. …Yes, they were still Vikings. …Yes, in real life their version of colonizing meant that for about half a year they would plunder – but increasingly systematically – their Slavic subjects – and the rest of the year was spent by their journeys back and forth, as well as by other interactions, with the Byzantine Empire. These days, the geographic West took the place of the Byzantines, but otherwise? The ethnically Russian spiritual heirs of Russia, Ukraine and probably Belarus too follow the same model: they plunder, however systematically, their subjects and live-off on their spoils in the West, literally a distance away from their subjects – and the West largely has no problem with that. The 90s could have been a literal new leaf in the Russian history as the pro-Western faction of its’ society assumed that it would – instead this period became known as ‘The Big Grab’ and ‘The Cut-Throat Nineties’: neither name is particularly positive either in English or in Russian… where were we?

Ah yes, for a show that is a part of a History channel, the ‘Vikings’ are a great big pile of pseudo-history crap, as it was pointed out in the past seasons. They also discard a potentially very positive propaganda piece by having them arrive on the Rus territory and bringing to the latter the light of the true Western civilization – instead, we got some sort of a ‘cold war’ that we know that they are going to win; in reality, of course, the Kiev Rus actually became superior to the Viking Scandinavia by the XI century and it was only after the Scandinavian Vikings converted to Christianity and became a part of the European culture properly did they begin to catch up. But until the Kiev Rus succumbed to the Turco-Mongol yoke, it and Scandinavia were very close to each other – politically, socially, dynastically and so on. To see the ‘Vikings’ go the way it went is just sad. What next?

Next is the new ‘Black Widow’ trailer that came out recently, (Dec 3, 2019). Supposedly, it will take place in Budapest, Hungary, because in the very first ‘Avengers’ film, (the one where Loki’s loaned alien army invaded NYC, remember it?), Nat and Clint mentioned some sort of a Budapest incident in their past. Maybe we will see it; yes, Jeremy Renner, who plays Hawkeye in MCU, has had his own #MeToo moment, but maybe we will still see him and Samuel Jackson’s Nick Fury star against ScarJo’s Black Widow in her 2020 film. What next?

I cannot shake the feeling that this movie include plenty of time jumps, simply because it will take place in the past, as in the ‘present’, aka the ‘Endgame’ film, the Black Widow is dead and probably won’t be coming back. Since even the trailer already introduces us to Yelena Belova, who is one of the ‘other’ Black Widows of Marvel comics, the odds of her becoming the next Black Widow of MCU is quite high.

Next, the trailer introduces us to the Red Guardian, in his Alexi Shostakov avatar, (because there was many Red Guardian characters in the Marvel comics). In the Marvel comics, Shostakov is Ronin these days, but in MCU, it was Renner’s Hawkeye who got to be Ronin, while a much older Shostakov version is the Red Guardian. ‘Much older’ because in the comics he is actually Natasha’s ex-husband; here, he seems to be more of a funny crazy old drunken uncle figure to Nat and the girls. ‘The girls’, because it brings us to the final new character introduced in this trailer – Melina Vostokoff. In the comics, she became the Iron Maiden… who is a Black Widow villain, not an Iron Man one, connotations be damned. In Marvel’s Mangaverse, (Earth-2301, I have no life, sue me), this is the superhero name of Tony Stark’s twin sister, but so far there is no evidence of such character in MCU, so let’s assume that the Iron Maiden will be the superhero or supervillain alias of Vostokoff…or she can become the new Task Master. In Marvel comics, the Task Master is an ex-S.H.I.E.L.D. agent named Tony Masters – aka a man. This is also how the Task Master has appeared in Marvel cartoons, but as people pointed out, it is always possible that MCU will do a gender bender on this character instead. What next?

Well, let us give a shout-out to the new ‘James Bond’ movie trailer that came out today, (Dec 4, 2019), and move onto ‘Kings of Pain’. Why? Because the double-oh trailer reveals that the titular character of this film will just be running around, hitting and gunning down people, while saving either the world or his own skin in the process. Fun! – but nothing to discuss, however; even ‘Kings of Pain’ have more context, so let’s talk about them instead. Seriously, double-oh movies are pure suspense/action/adventure flicks with some romance and porn thrown in, so let’s give credit to ‘Kings’ – whatever they are, this isn’t them.

…No, actually, let us talk about the ‘Kings’ credit in this week’s episode – how does it fall?

In the neutral field, we got the velvet ant portion of the episode: this week, the not so dynamic duo went to Africa because of the Nile monitor. (Think a much smaller version of the better-known Komodo dragon). Why Nile monitor? Because ‘Brave Wilderness’ had a Nile monitor episode, as well as a velvet ant episode and a hippopotamus one.

…Getting back to the velvet ant, listen: there are 400 species of these insects living in the U.S., so there was no need for the ‘Kings’ cast and crew go to Africa to catch a couple of them. However, the velvet ants, (who really are wasps, whose females are wingless), probably live in Africa, so it evens out.

Next – the bad: the hippopotamus encounter. It was completely unconvincing: the duo’s boat was shaken around in the dark supposedly by a hippo…that is it. The camera stayed mostly on the show’s leads, we never got a glimpse of the hippo, and everyone made it to shore safely.

Listen: the hippopotamus is one of Africa’s Big Five, i.e. it is one of Africa’s biggest animals. It is also one of Africa’s most dangerous and ornery animals. Why? Because the first modern humans appeared in Africa, and they stayed in Africa, and the modern African animals evolved in co-existence with humans and human civilizations, and they know that humans aren’t their friends, but are dangerous, and tend to attack them – to attack us – with the slightest provocation because this knowledge is almost instinctual by now. The hippos’ twist – we are talking about the common hippopotamus here, not its’ pygmy sibling – is that it is an amphibious animal: like its’ cousins whales, dolphins and porpoises its’ skin does not endure well the sun, but unlike whales, dolphins and porpoises hippos can move on land just fine. Indeed, they do not really swim – more like walk along the bottoms of rivers and lakes, surfacing for air. Did not prevent them from colonizing Madagascar in the past, yes, (they are extinct there now, though)… where were we?

Ah, yes – hippos have explosive tempers and know how to use it. They are not as fast on land as rhinos and elephants are, but they still can run, and they can trample, and their jaws with tusk-like teeth are huge and strong enough to tear apart canoes and smaller rowboats, as well as lions and Nile crocodiles, so if the cast and crew of ‘Kings’ have encountered a genuinely upset hippo, odds would be that this ‘river horse’ would not only took bites out of some boats and what else have you, it could’ve also followed them to dry land, (actually, at night hippos prefer dry land to water – they forage there) and had a rematch. Nothing of this sort happened, so excuse me for being sceptical.

However, what has happened in real life was the Nile monitor biting the show’s main leads. That certainly was not fake, so kudos to them for this. While nowhere as large enough as the Komodo dragon, let alone the probably extinct Australian Megalania, the Nile monitor is still a very large lizard, with powerful jaws, claws and slapping tail; I don’t know if the duo’s interactions with the lizard took place in Africa or on a set, the monitor did bite them, and for the record? The teeth of the monitor lizards are serrated and sharp, they rip their prey, not crush it as the crocodiles do. Pieces of meat often get caught in their teeth, where they rot, giving the monitors – even the Komodo dragon – a very potent and atypical venom: Komodo dragons kill water buffalos with it, and let us be fair: a water buffalo’s immune system is much more robust than a human’s. True, a Nile monitor is also much smaller than a Komodo dragon is, but it still got powerful jaws and a toxic bite, and it showed. Coyote Petersen on ‘Brave Wilderness’ didn’t even try to have the Nile monitor bite him. So yes, here ‘Kings of Pain’ certainly broke the mould and showed that they are capable of something real and not staged. This certainly puts them ahead of the ‘Vikings’ and their messed-up world history.

…Yes, it’s kind of dramatic and strange that the official History channel in Canada airs mostly reality shows that don’t really have anything to do with History; the ‘Vikings’ are historical fiction, but at least they’re historical. That is real life for you, though. It sucks. I hope that when the ‘Black Widow’ movie comes out in May 2020 it will be good and a welcome distraction from real life instead.

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

JW: Motion Comics part 1 - Nov 29

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. An extra notification: whatever you do, do not buy a reindeer donut, because it is a donut with eyes. It just is not right eating something, anything, that looks back at you while you eat it. It may not be animated, or sentient, or whatever, but it still got eyes and is looking at you while you eat it. Do not buy it and do not eat it – it is not worth looking at it looking back at you while you eat it. What is next?

The Jurassic World franchise released a new ‘masterpiece’ – a motion comic, a first part of a sequence, which deals with the mosasaur that was introduced back in the first JW movie. Ok, and?

Well, most important part that got overseen, most likely, is that this motion comic is ‘woke’ – its’ main character, the news TV host, is a part of an interracial family; essentially, it is a drawn animation version of the family that we’ve seen in the ‘Battle at Big Rock’ live short film – but because BBR and this mosasaur-featuring motion comics are about dinosaurs, so no one seems to be all that concerned about the human side of the pieces… So what?

Good question – for example, people on both sides claim that ‘wokeness’ is affecting mass media, especially cinema movies. Just look at latest failure of the CA-2019 reboot. It didn’t succeed, but not because of wokeness, and judging as to how quickly Ms. Elizabeth Banks stopped complaining about this, (for whatever reasons), she recognized, or was forced to recognize, this as well. What next?

The mosasaur? Yes, it’s the big one, and JW was working towards it since the closing scenes of JW: FK film; even the aforementioned BBR short feature had a shot of this sea reptile swallowing a great white shark not unlike how it swallow a sea lion, but-

On average, a modern great white shark is about 6 m long. This is a big fish, but even so, it does not really swallow its prey whole; it tears it into chunks with its’ cutting teeth and swallows those chunks. The mosasaur – well, all of the mosasaur family – belonged to the group of reptiles that includes modern snakes and lizards, the Squamata; the mosasaurs’ closest relatives were the shared ancestors of snakes and monitor lizards (think the Komodo dragon), and so the mosasaurs were aquatic relatives of both. (Both the modern marine iguanas of the Galapagos Islands and the modern sea snakes of the tropical seas are not very close relatives of the extinct mosasaurs).

How big were the mosasaurs when compared to a 6-m-long great white shark? The North American Tylosaurus, the biggest of them all, could reach 12 m in length, twice as big as the modern fish in question. But! It was not a swallower like a modern crocodile, which prefer to swallow their fish prey whole. Instead, mosasaurs essentially had a second pair of jaws inside the first pair to better rip and tear their prey into pieces.

The JW mosasaur isn’t ‘real’ or even ‘realistic’ and might be more than 12 m long by now? It is not about size alone, in the first JW when we saw it for the first time feeding on a great white shark; it still tore it into a couple of pieces, before swallowing them. After it attacked and killed the I-Rex in the end of the first movie, the beginning of the second film showed the bones of the I-Rex just lying around in a jumbled mess. Size-related issues or not, the JW mosasaur is realistic, maybe not quite on the level of BBC’s ‘Sea monsters’ (2003) mini-trilogy, but still close enough. So where does it leave us?

It leaves us with a first part of a multiserial motion comic that shows, or will show, how the modern world will coexist with prehistoric animals. This is the movie that the JP/JW franchise wanted to make in place of what we now know as the JW: FK film and it will probably be done with a much more genuine, heartfelt effort than the JW: FK film, which is essentially two movies stitched into one. This isn’t a trait unique to JW: FK; the SW8 film had the same problem, fundamentally speaking, but in case of JW: FK, this was done because it became a filler between the first JW movie and the upcoming new JW franchise creations, such as BBR and this motion comic. Both are variations on the same theme – humans interacting with dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals, both even feature interracial families – how progressive! Moreover, the truth is, if a movie is good, then wokeness will not hurt it at all, just look at BBR, and the same goes for the other mass media mediums, such as this motion comic. Ergo, let us just enjoy it and see what the future brings us in this medium of mass media, because real life sucks, (see above).

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

Ocean's 8 and co. - Nov 28

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, which is why I went forth and watched what else but ‘Ocean’s 8’. Why? Because I already re-watched ‘Charlie’s Angels 2000’ once, and don’t want to do it again – somehow, whenever I watched CA2000 it feels exhausted as shite, as if an experienced hooker tried to be an innocent virgin instead; the movie did it very convincingly, but it was still only an act; CA2003 was… a template that Elizabeth Banks built her own CA2019 movie; no one has called her out on it officially, but it can be noted that she very quickly turned tail and stopped bitching after the initial salvo. So, where does ‘Ocean’s 8’ fit into this?

Very much right there next to CA2019. Just as CA2019 has borrowed heavily from its’ 2003 predecessor, so O8 was very much a rip-off of the original O11 film, though out of the two, O8 was more derived than CA2019, because of the gender flip. There is no gender flip in CA2019 because of reasons, but that just makes its’ similarity to O8 more evident. Both films featured strong female characters who were superior to their male counterparts, with the latter relegated to more supporting roles, if any; both had various action sequences, though O8 was more high-brow and less fisticuffs’ than CA2019; both had their female leads dress in very revealing, sexy clothing, because you know what? Their audiences might be ‘woke’, but not that woke apparently; and both movies are so slick that they entered through one ear and exited through another without making much an impact on the audience’s hearts and minds; there are fan works about the characters of the CA2019-verse, but you know? There usually are fan works; you will need to be especially stodgy and stiff, such as the ‘Ad Astra’ film, to not have any. CA2019 is not anything like ‘Ad Astra’; it is a derived variant reboot of CA2003 film, and even though most of their target audience had not seen this movie, it tells.

Reboots are among the less successful films to begin with – CA2019, O8, the latest Terminator film, any recent ‘King Arthur’ movies, the latest Robin Hood movie, and so on. Regardless if they are woke or not, if their leads are male or female, they usually fail, justly or unjustly, because the latest Terminator film was quite good, and Gabriel Luna was a very impressive villain.

…Does this steer us away from the movies and onto TV series and comics? (Luna’s version of the Ghost Rider appeared in both). Yeah, probably. Maybe. Some of the current ‘Avengers’ comics do a better job of helping to escape reality… only not. In those comics, our titular heroes got replaced as America’s number-one superhero team by the latest incarnation of Squadron Supreme, which seems to embody Trump’s current foreign policies, and who are revealed as false puppets of the false Phil Coulson, who is probably the Red Skull (the comics’ version) or some similar villain.

…Yeah, I must admit that I kind of enjoy this story arc – I never stopped disliking Phil Coulson as a character since AoS’ S2 for reasons that I talked about regularly in the past… so here I want to point out that this strategy – Trojan horse of false S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, or in this case, false Avengers, has been used on TV before – and not just in MCU, but also in an Avengers’ cartoon series, where the Red Skull had imitated some U.S. senator and tried to poison the Avengers; in particular, he turned the Hulk into an evil version of the Red Hulk, and did other mischief before captain America exposed him. Yay, but it also means that again, Marvel is reworking its’ old material, however masterfully, rather than making something genuinely new… under the guise of old and tested, as Disney is doing with the ‘Frozen’ franchise, (maybe with ‘Moana’ as well). Next?

…As for the real-life connections of Marvel comics… this happened in the past too, for example, when Copperhead used the word ‘hombres’ in an indirect dig at Trump. ‘Indirect’ is the key word here, because…

Well, let us look at the ‘Avengers’ again. In this incarnation, everyone is getting into a team – the Avengers, their Russian counterparts, the Squadron Supreme, Namor of Atlantis and his people, Dracula and his, and so forth. In the previous plot arcs, it was Avengers vs. the Russian counterparts…until it was revealed that Dracula played them all, so now Major Ursa is reaching out to the Black Panther and his Agents of Wakanda because reasons, the fake Coulson and his best friend Mephisto, (Marvel’s Mephistopheles, whose name got abbreviated because… copyright infringement, maybe?), talk about ‘red’ as opposed to ‘red, blue and white’. Hence my suspicion that it’s the Red Skull who’s behind the fake Squadron Supreme…and then there’s also the Red Widow, a new member of the Russian not-Avengers; maybe it will be revealed that it’s a latest version of Hydra who is trying to keep Russia (well, the Russian Federation) and the U.S. at loggerheads. Does it remind you of something?

…What it does not remind you of is real life, wherein on one hand we have president Putin, who, apparently, is genuinely interested in bringing the American way of life and democracy down for purely ideological reasons with not a whit of common sense and right now? He is unstoppable, both within and without his country, because on the other hand we got the Donald, whose take on ‘making America great again’ seems to be smelling strongly of isolationism. In real life, America had had bouts of isolationism before; the most notorious is the 1920s-30s, where at first everything in America was great and wonderful and constantly improving and glorious – the Roaring Twenties. 

And then it all fell apart and collapsed into the Great Depression – the Depressing Thirties. These days, the Western mass media does not really talk about those decades anymore and would rather have the American masses forget about it. Why? Because the man who pulled the American society out of the Great Depression is the same man who got them to win in WWII – Franklin Delano Roosevelt, one of the greatest U.S. presidents. The twist here is that he used decidedly semi-socialist methods and means to achieve that success, by dismantling the U.S. Capitalistic utopia of that time, something that Bernie Sanders, and AOC and her squad, and some other people, are trying to implement… and they are being opposed by the current generation of political American utopists, most of whom are also in the Democratic party, whereas the Republicans-

-the Republicans are keeping it together. While the Democrats are fighting between each other like a horde of angry bears that are stuck in a single cavern, the Republicans remain solid. Oh sure, they have their own problems, starting with the Donald who is marching to his own drum and ignoring everyone else, but they intend to stay in power for as long as they can, and God-damn everyone else – and this brings us back to Russia.

Alternatively, if you would like it, this brings us to the Roman Republic – the very first one. In the older history books it was proclaimed a democracy, but in reality? Before long, it became a reign of oligarchy very much in the same sense that the modern Russian Federation is. In the ancient times, the Roman Oligarchical Republic became a Roman Empire and it was nowhere as bad, especially at first, as George Lucas depicted this process in the original SW trilogy; in the modern times, the fate that will befall the oligarchical political style of the modern Russian Federation is still undefined, but keep in mind that history showed that went the temper of the Russian plebeians (aka the proletariat) ends, it does so explosively; and the U.S.?

…And in the U.S. we got the Republican oligarchs facing-off the Democrats who are divided between utopists and pragmatists, (with the latter having a strong socialist tinge, true), while there’s a swarm of third parties and other people who want a chance to steer the ship of the American state. The results are unpredictable, and possibly a part of the reason as to why Ms. Nancy Pelosi did initiate the impeachment process was to prevent the Democrats from splitting into several factions that wouldn’t, or don’t, get along with each other: if that had happened, that would’ve been the true end of the American society as we know it, that started with the 13 colonies that faced-off with Great Britain and led to the modern American culture & society. Therefore, instead, we got the impeachment that is going nowhere fast, but at least the Democrats have stopped their infighting instead. Sometimes the only choice is between a pair of evils, and hopefully Ms. Pelosi chose the right/the lesser one after all.

And does the mention of evils bring us back to Marvel and Mephisto? Kind of sort of, because the Avengers’ last completed plot arc has Robbie Reyes face-off with Johnny Blaze in a Ghost Rider showdown, which takes the Avengers in a different direction entirely – it belonged to a time period where it seemed that Gabriel Luna’s Robbie Reyes would become a part of MCU for good – instead he followed the paths of Hunter and Morse for example and is fully out of it, at least for now. Consequently, now the Avengers’ comic puts them into space, a very different medium from Hell – but this is neither time nor place to discuss it; for now, let’s just admit that when it comes to real-life political savvy, Marvel’s comics isn’t any better than CA or O-franchise movies, and leave it at that.

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

Crown-of-thorns starfish - Nov 27

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Just ask Toronto’s police force, which was currently on the manhunt for a man who was walking around throwing feces, (hopefully, not his own), at other people. Considering that he is an Afro-Canadian, this is really a PR disaster for everyone involved. What is next?

Nothing much, just a brief admittance that ‘Kings of Pain’ are beginning to grow on me. In this week’s episode, the not-so-dynamic duo continue to follow in the footsteps of ‘Brave Wilderness’… sort of. Coyote Petersen got stung and bitten by harvester ants, (Pogonomyrmex species, but there are several ant genera which are called ‘harvester ants’ by lay people), and so did the ‘Kings of Pain’. Coyote Petersen got stung by a tarantula hawk, (a common name for two genera of so-called solitary spider wasps, family Pompilidae), and so did the ‘Kings of Pain’. Coyote Petersen encountered a crown-of-thorns starfish, and- wait. Here is where the two shows diverge: Coyote Petersen, in fact, was not stung or stabbed by the venomous starfish, while the ‘Kings of Pain’ did. And-?

…Well, geography has gotten the best of the ‘Kings of Pain’ again. See, the crown-of-thorns starfish lives in the Indo-Pacific biogeographic region. ‘Brave Wilderness’ had their venomous starfish encounter off the coast of Hawaii, which is within the eastern end of Indo-Pacific, but ‘Kings of Pain’ caught their specimen, supposedly, off the western coast of Mexico, which… isn’t a part of the Indo-Pacific biogeographic region – in the east it ends around the central Pacific Ocean region, which does include Hawaii, but not Mexican western coast. Put otherwise, ‘Kings of Pain’ have staged their starfish hunt in a way that ‘Brave Wilderness’ didn’t, but-

-But on the other hand, the crew of ‘Brave Wilderness’ didn’t get stung by the crown-of-thorn starfish. The leads of ‘King of Pain’ did, and the look on Alleva’s face after Thorn got stung first – it did not look staged. Last week’s episode, one that featured two scorpion species, (we have discussed them earlier this month, remember?), and a lionfish, (species not established), felt staged, especially at the end, when the not-so-dynamic duo had their banter at the end of the episode. This time, after the starfish encounter, felt more genuine. Maybe the show’s cast is warming up to each other and making it more authentic, simply by default? If so, good for them, because as I said, I am beginning to warm-up to this show and am actually rooting for it to finish its’ first season at least, before it gets cancelled, because so far? Given the lack of authenticity that stuck to ‘Kings of Pain’ as a bad smell, it might well happen.

Speaking of bad smells… yeah, the impeachment keeps on going, the American government remains divided, and the American enemies keep on winning, even though they have their own problems, but they also got stability and endurance, something that the current version of USA seems to lack – but that is another story.

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

Frozen II - Nov 22

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. That said, ‘Frozen 2’ has arrived in the movie theaters. Yippee! Huzzah! And yay?!

…Let’s from the start talk about the big difference between ‘Frozen 2’ and ‘Frozen 1’: if the latter was loosely based on Hans Andersen’s ‘The Snow Queen’ fairy tale of a novella, the former is a completely original movie; though the plot starts in Arendelle, it quickly dismisses the elements of ‘Frozen 1’ and quickly careen into a completely new land with completely new elements. (Obligatory warning: spoilers are ahead, read at your own risk).

…MCU’s AoS TV series constantly recycled, rebooted and redesigned its’ old elements and never really tried to do something truly new. The Disney movie ‘Frozen 2’ went in a completely new direction, following Elsa’s motto of ‘Let it Go’ and let the old film go. There is some sort of symbolism of Elsa and her team leaving Arendelle behind and going into a completely new land, populated by completely new people, with a completely new set of rules… and no traces of civilization per se. This is the reason as to why the critics are divided already in regards to ‘Frozen 2’ – everyone did expect a straightforward sequel to ‘Frozen 1’ and instead got anything but. Disney’s own logic is understandable here, they did not want to spoil the surprise, but the confusion that results from their surprise might be just as bad, proportionally. We will have to wait and see as to what develops from ‘Frozen 2’ as time goes by.

Back in the movie itself… wait. What is ‘Frozen 2’ about, firstly? ‘Frozen 1’ was about the question of man vs. monster, of humanity vs. coldness (inhumanity), of lust for power, of succession of throne, of confidence, femininity and other traditional values, and by ‘traditional’ I mean ‘well-established and well-accepted in the contemporary Western society’. ‘Frozen 2’ touches upon those issues considerably less so than its’ prequel did, it seems to be concerned with the question of civilization/conquest vs. native ethnic groups, but it is a thornier issue than the ones talked about in ‘Frozen 1’, and so that topic is both downplayed and moved past very quickly in the movie into the next act – and what is the next act? In addition, people may be pointing to the destruction of a certain dam in the last part of the movie, and they are right: the message is of a restored balance, (somehow, supposedly), but in real life, this sort of action has very different consequences; they are touched upon in ‘Frozen 2’, but again, this is dismissed very quickly. Disney is all about making money, and that is the complete opposite of controversial issues, so while Disney may tolerate some controversies in SW and Marvel, at least they did in the past -now they are doing their best to kill them – in its immediate domain, especially the Princess movies, just no.

However, if we move past the more controversial and socio-aware issues of ‘Frozen 2’, (and there aren’t many – Disney is saving them for Marvel, apparently, just look at the upcoming Sam & Bucky show on Disney+), what is there left?

Various mythos and mythologies, that is what. First, in order of appearance, the Northuldra. 

Regardless of what they are in ‘Frozen 2’, their racial designation is a portmanteau of ‘North’ and ‘Huldra’, with the latter being counterparts of elves and fairies in Scandinavia. According to one legend, when the Lord came over to Adam and Eve for a visit, they were able to clean-up and otherwise prepare only some of their children, which they propped for an introduction; the rest they hid. The Lord was not fooled, however, and he made a proclamation, stating that ‘what is concealed shall not be revealed’ or something to this extent; the result were the first Huldra or Uldra. They look mostly human; however, they have hollow backs and animal tails, usually fox, dog or cow. Unlike their troll and Jotunn cousins, they were not as hostile to humans or as physically imposing; however, they were still strong enough to manually bend horseshoes and were often magic-users as well. Most of stories including the Huldra, (or the Hulder) involved their women marrying human men; usually it ended badly, (especially for humans), but sometimes the pair made it work and even had children, who were usually human, (no tails or any other animal features), but who, again, were often magic-users of one sort or another.

Now, you may argue that the Northuldra that appear in ‘Frozen 2’ are not anything like that; rather, they are a more derived version of the ‘noble savage’ cliché that plagued Disney during the 1990s and the earlier periods. Fair enough. Unlike the people of Arendelle, the Northuldra live in a forest with no sign of human civilization or its’ trademarks, (especially by the Western standards) and they seem to be using no steel or other metals and they live in apparent harmony with nature; the old clichés die hard if at all. That said, the same could be said of elves, especially those that are more like Tolkien’s than Disney’s, Marvel’s or DC’s, for example, so there is that.

Beyond the Northuldra, there are the various elementals, one of whom, the fire elemental, is the salamander; Disney’s ‘Frozen 2’ went with a classical depiction – that of a fiery/fire-breathing lizard rather than something D&D. Again, in European history, the salamanders were some of elemental nature spirits – they did embody fire; when it came to the other elementals, then the earth was represented by the gnomes, (think D&D dwarves rather than D&D gnomes), water – by undines, (variant mermaids), and air – by sylphs, which are often depicted as graceful winged humanoids. Here ‘Frozen 2’ shifted from this concept; the air elemental in particular seems to be shapeless and invisible instead; a variant D&D invisible stalker?

The earth/stone giants, however, bring us back to the Norse myths – they were the Jotunns or the trolls, they are the frost and stone giants of Marvel’s Thor. They are embodiments of a primal, untamed nature, and they did not like humans or their civilization; just watch them demolish the dam at the end of ‘Frozen 2’. They also live in the same forest, past the magic veil, where no civilization exists at all – and they are hostile to Anna and co. for no given reason, straight from the start. True, having stone brains probably doesn’t help, and Anna and co. were able to maneuver them into bringing down the evil dam… that was raised by the grandfather of Anna and Elsa, by the way… but hey, the balance between civilization and nature was restored! Go, Greta Thunberg! Wait, what?

…Since the 1970s, USA tried to make itself into a utopia, and after winning the Cold War, they accelerated their movements, and on some fronts, such as the social integration, they have achieved some success. On the other – such as the environmental issues – not so much. True, without the U.S. interference things aren’t rosy either; just look at Canada and its’ continual mishandling of the oil pipeline; but the problem? During their last peak – the early 1990s – US tried to do and solve everything through sheer physical force. Before long many people, countries and governments were sick of it; president Putin’s anti-US stance is not very healthy or sane…but again, he is an American creation, just as the Taliban had been, that broke free to US’ detriment. These days, many countries are still pro- than anti-US, but they do not appreciate American meddling in their affairs either. Just look at what happened when the ex-president Obama endorsed the Canadian PM Trudeau. The Canadian media were very professional, they freely admitted that this was nothing like the (fictional) Russian meddling in the previous US elections, but they were just as firm at pointing out that the ex-president Obama (and the rest of the US) should stay out of the Canadian elections as it is right and proper. The end. These days, Trudeau is still the Canadian PM, but whatever is going on down in the States, he wants no part of it.

And what is going on down in the States? Why, yes, the impeachment of the Donald, but also the upcoming presidential election. The former is going on more or less; the latter even worse than that. The Donald was never the best president of the United States, but who are the alternatives in the 2020? Fine, he is impeached and out of the way; who is left? Don’t forget, the US is a true democracy, its’ president is elected by all the people, and not a smattering of oligarchs, top army brass and various other strongmen as it is in the RF; in America, the presidential candidates have to win-over their electorate and its’ votes, and right now? The American government is involved in a soap opera called ‘The Donald, his life, family and impeachment’. Once 2020 comes around, both of America’s main parties may find themselves flat-footed and unsupported by America’s proletariat…and that is a problem that will not be fixed quickly or with the blame game on the Russians…

Back to ‘Frozen 2’… yes, at the movie’s end it did become some sort of a utopia, where civilization and nature can coexist. It also features a sea horse called a Nokk. It is better known as Nix or Nixie; it is a water spirit, similar to the Kelpie, as well as to the Grindylow and the Merfolk. Rowling’s Grindylow was some sort of a goblin-like creature, inferior to the merfolk of her universe; in real-life folklore, both the Grindylow and Nokk/Nix/Nixie were water spirits that were man-eaters; just look up Theodor Kittelsen’s depiction of the latter: it is more humanoid than equine, but judging by its eerily glowing eyes, it is clearly unfriendly towards humans.

On the other hand, the same man painted another two paintings, depicting the brook-horse – a subtly different water spirit, one that did usually appear as a white horse on land; it would entice people to mount and ride it, where upon it would jump back underwater, drowning its rider. The Nokk from ‘Frozen 2’ combines the elements of both of those real-life folklore beings: it is shaped like a horse rather than as a merfolk or something anthropomorphic, but it has the glowing eyes of Theodor Kittelsen’s Nokk as well.

Finally, there is Idun, Idunn or Iduna. Yes, this is the name of one of the characters from the ‘Frozen’ franchise, cough, but it is also the name of one of pagan Norse goddesses – she was the divine distributer of Asgardian apples of youth that kept the Norse deities eternally young, and she was the wife of Bragi, the Norse god of bards, skalds, and poets. Neat, hah?

…Trivia aside, what can be said of ‘Frozen 2’ as a whole? It shows a clean break from the events of ‘Frozen 1’, which brings us to Hans. He is not in the script at all. Overall, that is not really a problem; just look at MCU’s AoS (and also AC, especially at S2), where not only the actors had their roles remade and repositioned, but their characters (especially Grant Ward and Kara Palamas, but honestly – all of them) disrespected, abused and discarded. Compared to them, Hans’ fate is mild and perfectly acceptable, except for – Elsa.

Let us recap the first ‘Frozen’ – Hans, regardless his moral compass, was very much a part of the main cast and was a rather more complex character than, say, Gaston from the B&B franchise, (regardless of the version). You would expect him to be back in the second film, simply because he had not died unlike most of Disney’s villains, but instead there is no mention of him at all – and that changed the team’s dynamic; there’s only Anna and Kristoff now, (Kristoff’s relationship with Sven is something else), and Elsa is happily single and unattached – Emma Watson must be so proud! On a more serious note, you can find a video online, where Disney chief Jennifer Lee says that Elsa ‘will ‘tell us’ when she’s ready to explore her sexuality’. Except that Elsa is a fictional character, drawn in CGI, and she will do what the owners of her franchise, (i.e. ‘Frozen’) will want her to do.

In Hollywood, which includes Disney, sexual minorities are treated even worse than racial ones, (unless they are The Rock. As ‘Hobbs and Shaw’ shown us, you do not mess with The Rock) – both OUAT and TBBT rather flirted with having same-sex characters on their shows, but in the end, it had amounted to nothing concrete – and Disney wasn’t even a part of either of those franchises. And here we have Elsa, whose sexuality was hotly debated ever since her first movie was aired six years ago. These days, the initial passions died down some, but Disney is quite sure that by making Elsa officially heterosexual will annoy a large fraction of ‘Frozen’ fan base, and by making her officially homosexual – ditto. So instead they’re keeping her asexual…and now that she’s no longer the queen of Arendelle, but rather the protector of the forest, (what, did the previous one die, or get turned into a tree, or something?), Elsa is no longer a part of the more civilized, humane part of her world, (well, the world of her franchise), but of the primal and less humane one instead. If this is her happy ending, (and we have no reasons to believe otherwise), then it is certainly an atypical one, especially by Disney’s standards. As both the first ‘Frozen’ film and ‘Moana’ showed, Disney is trying to break the mold that it made during the ‘Disney Renaissance’ of the 1990s, but it does so on its own pace and settings. Yes, there is probably wokeness in ‘Frozen 2’, but as Tom Holland’s ‘Spider-Man’ movies showed, if done correctly, that is a good thing, and secondly? If the elections of 2016 showed that mass media’s influence over the American populace is great, but still has limits, then ever since ‘Frozen 1’ and ‘Moana’ showed that while the public opinion over the decisions of media companies such as Disney, (and Sony, etc.), is also both great and finite. What will come out of this is anyone’s guess.

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