Quarantine entry #7 - March 28

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, and your family, alongside you, are stuck right in the middle of it, and if you do not try to fight- do not want to fight- then your life sucks – see before. Now onto the show?

Sadly, because real life sucks, we are all stuck inside, not just because the weather was nasty all night and all morning, but because COVID-19 continues… just continues. So, to do something about anything and to stop the fighting, I got into the 2001 film, ‘When Dinosaurs Roamed America’, and so, on this particular day, we will be talking about the Apatosaurus.

Why? Because of the Brontosaurus. The two names and the two dinos had a very tangled relationship – first one name/species was on top, then the other, until, finally, from 2015 onwards to the present it was described that Apatosaurus and Brontosaurus were two different genera, albeit the ones who were the closest relatives to each other, (with Diplodocus and the diplodocids being the next closest). What next?

Well, what was WDRA? For the beginning of the 21^st century it was very impressive, a movie stitched together out of five segments, something of a responsa to the BBC’s WWD, released in 1999. Only, whereas the U.K. released a six-part mini-series, (re-released and re-edited a couple of times in the future), the US released – in this case – a single film, each one dealing with a separate time in the Mesozoic. The Apatosaurus appeared in the Late Jurassic segment, (aka 150 MYA), and after the Tyrannosaurus, was perhaps the movie’s biggest showpiece.

Here is the punchline: in each of the five segments, the movie’s scriptwriters tried to make a coherent story, but it was a mixed bag; the Early Jurassic bit was especially lackluster, but the Late Jurassic? It was much better.

Well, for one thing, the Late Jurassic segment had much more dinosaurs to work with than the Early Jurassic segment did. The latter only had Dilophosaurus (yes, that one), Megapnosaurus, (another carnivore, which may have been related to Dilophosaurus), and Anchisaurus – a prosauropod, a more gracile and smaller version of Plateosaurus that appeared at the end of the first episode of WWD, (‘New Blood’). And WDRA used the Anchisaurus as a springboard to introduce its’ sauropods – the already-mentioned Apatosaurus and the Camarasaurus.

…It is also worthwhile to mention that WDRA was good enough to depict the two sauropods differently from each other – Apatosaurus might be longer, but Camarasaurus is taller. Moreover, to be honest, sauropod dinosaurs came in three main varieties: those that were long, such as Diplodocus and Apatosaurus; those that were tall, such as Camarasaurus and Brachiosaurus; and those that were just large, such as Argentinosaurus and the rest of the titanosaur sauropods. …Ok, but what about WDRA?

Well, if we get back to WDRA and its’ Late Jurassic segment, then it features more dinosaurs than just the two sauropods, including the already mentioned dinosaurs – Stegosaurus, Allosaurus, Ceratosaurus – and the much smaller Dryosaurus; Dryosaurus was a much smaller bird-hipped dinosaur, one that get eaten by a Ceratosaurus, which got killed by an Allosaurus later. Whether or not this happened in real life no one knows, but I suspect that this was the inspiration behind one of JFC’s episode, where an Allosaurus fought and killed a couple of Ceratosaurs. Another segment, one where an Allosaurus pack harasses an Apatosaurus herd and eventually finishes off a hurt sauropod, inspired – or influenced an episode in the ‘Dinosaur Planet’ mini-series, named ‘Alpha’s Egg’. It is all interactive, baby!..

That said, WDRA was a generally good movie, complete with ‘talking scientist heads’ interrupting the dino action, and semi-interactive CGI graphics, helping to get the point across. It was very impressive, truly, especially for the year 2001. It had certainly lifted my spirits up, however briefly as well, COVID-19 or not, and that is it.

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

Quarantine entry #6 - March 27

Obligatory disclaimer: real life continues to suck as more and more people are getting sick each day. Seriously, this is getting truly intolerable even by my standards, so this time, instead of watching JFC, I went back to DW. For a change, I watched a modern face-off – the ‘IRA vs. Taliban’ episode, and-?

And ever since I have watched it for the first time, I am being constantly struck by how openly prejudiced DW hosts had been on that episode. More specifically, this episode matched the Taliban’s trophy AK-47 vs. the IRA’s AR-15, and the show’s hosts twisted themselves into some amazing knots to justify giving the edge to the IRA’s AR-15. Why? Because on the earlier S1 episode, the Russian Spetsnaz actually took down USA’s Green Berets, fair and square, and the show clearly hadn’t recovered from this – ever. True, they tried to keep their future pro-American bias subtle in S2, but in S3? It came to the fore, and as I have written a long time ago, (when the DW S3 episodes were aired in real life and we were discussing each one individually, as each one was ‘piping hot’, pardon the clumsy pun), it was one of the reasons as to why DW went down for good after the S3. USA isn’t RF, (and even so, the Russians are becoming clearly against Vladimir Putin ruling them until 2036 unopposed, good for them), and for them such blatant propaganda, pro-US or not, was too much. …And yes, there were other reasons as to why DW was cancelled, but still…

…But why was I watching DW to begin with? Somehow, JFC became even more intolerable than when I saw it last, and so instead of it, I watched something else – DW ‘IRA vs. Taliban’ as I said earlier, as well as Impossible Pictures’ ‘Chased by Dinosaurs: The Giant Claw’ episode, and – ‘Mulan-1998’.

What can I say? Ming-Na Wen was already awesome as a voice actress, (and these days she is an actress-actress, staring as Melinda May in AoS, though at the end of S6 finale she got temporarily killed-off or at least – incapacitated). That said, the Shan-Yu and his horde were some of the least impressive villains of animated Disney. Why? In the movie, none of the Shan-Yu’s lieutenants really had names; yes, the various Wikis who specialise in this sort of thing, have their names, but the movie never acknowledges this. Harsh!

Moreover, the Shan-Yu himself… It seems that he had invaded China because he decided that the Great Wall of China is an insult to his manhood or something. Seriously? What is this? A reality show, ancient Chinese version? The Shan-Yu and his horde serve no other function than to be the distraction; the real adversary, of course, were the gender roles and norms in the society, and Fa Mulan proved that a woman could do a man’s job easily, etc. etc. How very 20^th century of her! (‘Mulan’ was released in 1998, remember? Technically, it was the 20^th century still, rather than the 21^st). It will be interesting to see how ‘Mulan-2020’ stacks up against this film.

…Yes, it was evident – Hell, Disney outright told its’ viewers that this was going to be more along the lines of the new ‘Dumbo’ film than TLK-2019 or the rebooted L&T. Fair enough, and hopefully the new villain, Borikhan or whatever his name is, will have a better motivation than his 1998’s counterpart did, but for now, it is too early to make premonitions – or too late, but in any case, thanks to COVID-19, now isn’t the right time. Moreover, what about ‘The Giant Claw’?

Not unlike JFC, this was a mix of education and entertainment, but more honest – it involved Nigel Marvin travelling through time – literally – to the Late Cretaceous Mongolia, 70 MYA, or so, in search of the titular creature. Spoiler warning – it was Therezinosaurus, one of the biggest purely herbivorous theropods, whose cousin the Nothronychus was mentioned earlier, when we were discussing Tyrannosaurus Rex.

And where was this dinosaur in ‘The Giant Claw’? Why, nowhere at all – it had not evolved in Late Cretaceous North America yet. Instead, this 30 minute special featured its’ cousin, Tarbosaurus bataar.

…Ever since this dinosaur was discovered, there was plenty of discussion, as to how it was related to Tyrannosaurus. These days the scientific community believes that while the two species were cousins, Tarbosaurus was more distantly related to Tyrannosaurus than some other North American tyrannosaurid species, such as Albertosaurus, Daspletosaurus and Gorgosaurus; Tarbosaurus’ bones, especially in its’ skull, prove that. That is fair, but ecologically wise, Tyrannosaurus and Tarbosaurus played the same role – that of an alpha predator; not even Velociraptors stood up to the Tarbosaurus.

What about the Velociraptors? They were depicted in ‘The Giant Claw’ as well, but they were much smaller and proportionally more realistic than they are in the ‘Jurassic Park’ franchise – turkey-sized predators, rather like modern coyotes with an attitude. They were shown hunting other smaller dinosaurs – the herbivorous Protoceratops, which about the size of a modern sheep, but had attitude of their own, and a powerful beak to back it up. (Something of the Protoceratops-Velociraptor interaction was shown in ‘The Giant Claw’, FYI).  Put otherwise, all of the Impossible Pictures’ series did their best to educate, or at least to inform, rather than to entertain – and did a much better job than the JFC did, in my frank opinion.

By the way, JFC did not have Velociraptors to begin with – instead, it had three of their cousins: the Deinonychus, the Utahraptor, and the Dromaeosaurus. The first two were bigger than the Velociraptor was; alongside the lesser-known Dakotaraptor, they were the biggest members in their family, comparable in size to their fictional counterparts from the ‘Jurassic Park’ franchise. By contrast, the Dromaeosaurus was the Velociraptor’s counterpart in the Late Cretaceous North America, but as I said earlier, it was not the contemporary of the T-Rex, so here the JFC lied…but we talked about it last time, so let us drop it.

Anything else? COVID-19 continues to march across the face of the planet, more and more public figures are continuing to get ill, and I have no idea as to when it all will end. The Donald is not entirely wrong when he is focusing on the economical aspect of it all, but he is not truly right either. Did I mention that the real life sucks? Because it does. Sad face emoji.

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

Quarantine entry #5 - March 26

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. It seems that there is a cat in the neighbourhood, whether stray or not, I do not know – who is keeping all the birds away. Probably. Ah well, this is their business, and I do not really want to mess with Mother Nature. Where were we in terms of JFC?

Today let us try to talk about… the T-Rex. Yes, it is a stupid idea, because as the archetypical theropod dinosaur, everyone knows the T-Rex. Nevertheless, because the lockdown sucks, we are talking about it. First, though, yes, I will acknowledge that other stegosaurid dinosaurs aside from Kentrosaurus lived in what is now modern Europe - Miragaia and etc. Fair enough, my bad, let's try to move onto the Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Where do we begin to talk about it? In JFC. Where JFC did began to talk about it? Right in their second episode, where a Tyrannosaur family faced against a Nanotyrannus. Pause.

Yes, that already is a loaded topic, because these days everyone is certain that the Nanotyrannus is a nomen dubium, or whatever – several Tyrannosaur juveniles with deviations – physical, oncological, and otherwise. Essentially, variations on the already-mentioned Tyrannosaur standard. Maybe so, but the problems with JFC’s depiction of the Nanotyrannus – and of the Tyrannosaurus itself, and of the rest of them – were rather anthropomorphic; the narrator, Dinosaur George Blasing and his cohorts – attributed distinctly humanoid motivations to the prehistoric animals that they were depicting, and this isn’t very good.

…Of course, JFC had plenty of other problems – for example, in their penultimate episode, ‘Raptor vs. T-Rex’, we were shown the T-Rex co-existing with dromaeosaurus and edmontosaurus. The punchline is that the T-Rex appeared on Earth when both of those other dinosaurs died out already. Yes, the final episode of ‘Walking with Dinosaur’ showed the tyrannosaurus coexisting both with duckbilled dinosaurs and with raptors, but the former were Anatotitan, different species from the Edmontosaurus, and the latter were Dakotaraptors, (acknowledged in hind sight), rather than the dromaeosaurs; the Dakotaraptors did coexist with Tyrannosaurus Rex, actually, so there.

…Wait, did we skip over something or other? Kind of, yes. Aside from the various references and flashbacks, JFC featured the Tyrannosaurus in three episodes. The first was the one with the Nanotyrannus. The last was the one with the dromaeosaurs. And the middle one was an atypical episode – instead of a face-off, this was a discussion of five of the theropod dinosaurs featured in JFC, to wit Allosaurus, Utahraptor, Majungasaurus, Albertosaurus and Tyrannosaurus. And again, the sensationalism and the flawed information delivered in every JFC episode largely did any educational value that JFC might have had, or intended to have, at the start.

…Do I sound bitter? Yes, well, I am in a bitter mood, and even after watching another three of JFC episodes, my mood is not alleviated much. Everyone is largely stuck within his or her home for at least another week, and no one is getting out. This makes it boring as Hell, even with the availability of JFC to watch – JFC can be outright inane, I am afraid.

‘Allosaurus was the T-Rex before there was a T-Rex’! No, it was not – Tyrannosaurus was a much more derived carnivore than Allosaurus and the rest of its’ carnosaur cousins were. Because carnivorous dinosaurs were bipedal, (except for Spinosaurus and the rest of its’ cousins, maybe), the tyrannosaurs got rid of their forelimbs, (almost), and instead invested in their heads and jaws, making them true killing instruments. On the other end of the scale, we have Nothronychus and the rest of therezinosaur theropods, who went the other way – huge forelegs with massive claws, and tiny heads on long necks, a parody of prosauropod and sauropod dinosaurs, i.e. Sadly, none of the therezinosaurs’ ever appeared on JFC… oh well. Anything else?

Everything is getting delayed by at least another week because of COVID-19, which is proper. Of course, people are getting fed-up with everything COVID-19 related already and are testing the water…and are also getting into fights with one another, primarily over COVID-19…but also about anything else, really. I hope that things will change by the end of the next week, just change, because people cannot remain cooped-up forever in limbo, no matter what the world governments suggest. Until then, we will just have to wait and see, Tyrannosaurs or not. (Life in general is going on as usual, COVID-19 or not – the spring flowers, etc).

…This is it for now, (sorry that it turned out to be so brief, but I am in a curt mood today). See you all soon!

Quarantine entry #4 - March 25

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, and yes, I have written about the STVI episode earlier in my blog’s history, and roughly in the same vein. Yes, that is my bad, and no, you cannot really invent my themes and plots about DW episodes, especially if you are talking about them one at a time. So, let us put DW aside, and talk about another blast from the past – ‘Jurassic Fight Club’.

This was a weird one. It was like AFO, but with (mostly) dinosaurs and some other prehistoric animals as well. Not unlike AFO, it authentically tried not just to entertain, but also to educate, or at least – to inform, via CGI, true, but all of AFO’s showdowns were done in CGI too, so you cannot blame JFC for CGI, (aside from the obvious reasons, of course).

What can JFC be blamed for? Good question and part of it is the amateur plot – literally. Somehow, all of JFC’s episodes came down to two CIG dinosaurs, (generally speaking), fighting each other. There was variation too, as it was in the fourth episode, where there were four dino species, rather than the usual two.

As it was, the episode began with a Stegosaurus mother and child going down to a semi-dry lake to drink during a drought and became stuck in the mud. Pause. Here is my true subject for today’s entry:

Stegosaurus. It was a remarkable dinosaur. It is one of the thyreophores, dinosaurs with armored backs and armed tails, and Stegosaurus was the best of the Jurassic variety – the stegosaurids, (duh!). The intriguing part here is that most of the stegosaurids were Asian dinosaurs; there were quite a few dinosaur families that did originate in Asia during the Jurassic, but then moved to North America in the early Cretaceous and flourished there instead. Not so the stegosaurids, however – none of them really made it into Cretaceous, as they were outcompeted by their ankylosaur cousins and died-out… The point is that aside from Stegosaurus, Kentrosaurus, and the much more obscure Hesperosaurus, all of the stegosaurids remained in Asia.

…Yes, technically speaking, during the Jurassic, Eurasia and North America belonged to a single continent – Laurasia, while Africa and South America and Australia formed the second continent – Gondwana. Nevertheless, not only did Stegosaurus was practically the only stegosaurid dinosaur to end up in North America rather than Asia, but its’ cousin Kentrosaurus was also pretty much the only stegosaurid dinosaur that ended up in both Europe and Africa rather than Asia. Weird, eh?

Speaking of Kentrosaurus and Stegosaurus, the two were not too closely related to each other, and they even looked differently: Stegosaurus had more of its’ trademark diamond-shaped plates on its back, while Kentrosaurus had more spikes, and on average was smaller than Stegosaurus was; Stegosaurus wasn’t only one of the last stegosaurids, but it was the biggest – about 9 m in length. Kentrosaurus was notably smaller than that. Pause.

…While the stegosaurid species differed from each other by having differently shaped plates and spikes on their backs, all of them had thagomizers – tail spikes, very large and sharp ones. They were their primary weapons, though unlike the dinosaur Fantasia segment, Stegosaurus and Tyrannosaurus never met – Stegosaurus lived in the end of the Jurassic, while T-Rex – at the very end of the Cretaceous, just before all the non-avian dinosaurs died out. What next?

Well, who would have won if T-Rex went against Stegosaurus? Hard to tell. Unlike the theropods that co-existed with Stegosaurus, namely Allosaurus and Ceratosaurus, Tyrannosaurus’ teeth and jaws evolved not to slice flesh, but to crash bone, it evolved to go against such dinosaurs as Ankylosaurus, whose arms and armor were superior to Stegosaurus, but on the other hand, Tyrannosaurus and its relatives (such as Tarbosaurus) did die after fighting Ankylosaurus and its relatives, (such as Tarchia).

Now, Ankylosaurus’, Tarchia’s and co. tails were designed to smash bone rather than to pierce flesh, as Stegosaurus’, Kentrosaurus’ and co.’s tails did, but that is something of a semantics issue – which sort of damage would be worse? My point exactly, so Fantasia is unrealistic because of that angle too – after a couple of slaps in the face, Tyrannosaurus would lose enthusiasm, as well as blood and other parts, and back down. Of course, if it did get a good grip with its’ deadly jaws and teeth, Stegosaurus was dead for certain, but in Fantasia we had a long, drawn-out fight, which is a different situation.

And back in ‘JFC’, the situation was different once more: Ma Stegosaurus and her offspring, (there’s no indication whatsoever, that Stegosaurus had parent-child bond; other dinosaur species did, but not Stegosaurus and its’ closest relatives) became stuck in the mud, where a Ceratosaurus ate them, and an Allosaurus stepped on them, and then they died from bloodloss and dehydration, but not before killing one of the Allosaurus with its’ tail spikes.

…And how do we know all of this to be true? We do not; it is all speculation. Dinosaur George Blasing seemed honest enough in his enthusiasm in the show, but apparently, this was not enough – ‘JFC’ ended after one season and twelve episodes, but that is another story…

This is it for now – see you all soon!

Quarantine entry #3 - March 24

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, and in this instance because it is just the third day of the lockdown/quarantine. So far the highlights of my day were 1) seeing a white-breasted nuthatch, (much bigger and chunkier than its’ red-breasted cousin is); 2) seeing a junco, (at least I think that it was – I don’t have access to my guidebooks for the moment, and without them identifying birds is harder than with them); and 3) seeing someone’s cat wander by, (and possibly scaring away the local birds and squirrels – you can never tell with cats, after all). Not exactly the heights of excitement, so I went back to DW, and this time I chose the ‘Sun Tzu vs. Vlad the Impaler’ S2 episode. And-?

…And it had never struck me before that this episode is not too different from the RCRW one, (see the entry from 2 days ago). Vlad came across as a fighter/barbarian combo, while Sun Tzu was more of a strategist. Fair enough, but the truth is, DW was about the weapons, rather than the warriors, at least in the first two seasons. In the final third season this got less clear-cut, but STVI was an S2 episode, so it was still all about the weapons, and Vlad’s weapons were more advanced than ST’s were.

To elaborate, ST’s weapons were from before the firearms were invented, and Vlad’s – from after. It can be argued that Vlad’s hand cannon – a primitive firearm – did not make too much difference in the final simulation, but the simulations are based upon the numbers derived from the earlier tests, and on that occasion, Vlad’s hand cannon proved to be a more efficient weapon than ST’s incendiary arrows were, and in a way that made sense too. Sometimes, TV can suck as much as real life does, only differently.

Now, as for the ‘X-factors’, they did not really make a difference, and this is where the reference to the RCRW episode comes in. Not unlike his Roman counterpart, ST was a more detached leader, he preferred a hands-off approach, and was not really big on battles on a personal level. Yes, he was much smarter and sneakier than Vlad was, but because this was a one-on-one fight, in the end, Vlad’s superior strength and military equipment were able to carry the Impaler through. Hooray!

…And yes, you cannot call STVI a prejudiced episode – Vlad’s weapons slash equipment were genuinely better than ST’s were, they were more advanced and derived too, and his armor was tougher as well. Therefore, he won fairly. Anything else?

Sadly, no. I do not feel like ranting about anything DW related here and now, and as for FH, I must admit that I care for the proto-Chinese faction, the newest faction, the least of them all. In addition, Ubisoft itself seems to be putting FH on the backburner as compared to its’ other products, such Assassin’s Creed or the Tom Clancy based one. Maybe that’s justifiable, a crossover with the Prince of Persia or not; frankly, the latter’s heyday was probably in the 90s, and now I’m not so certain that a fusion with him will give FH any sort of a boost at all, but maybe that’s just me. It is hard to stay positive, when there are little to none people on the streets and the only sounds are birds, planes, trains, and the occasional car. COVID-19 is not as bad as people are making it out to be, but because the key word here is ‘people in charge’, the results are bad all the same. It is hard to say if the old dream of the ‘global village’ will die, (hint: not too likely), but people are using COVID-19 as an excuse to push their plans and progress their plots all the same and things are changing, period. Where will we end up when this is all over? Who knows; what I know is that I will probably not be talking about DW tomorrow – just to spice things up.

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

Quarantine entry #2 - March 23

It is the second day of the quarantine, and real life still sucks more than it usually does (obligatory disclaimer, this is). I am still going through the DW episodes; this time I stopped on one of S1’s last episodes – ‘William Wallace vs. Shaka Zulu’. This episode is not prejudiced, just faulty. Why?

Well, for most of the weapons, the two contestants went neck to neck, practically – Wallace’s claymore sword, (used by the Highlander in FH, remember?) wasn’t really superior to Zulu’s sword-like spear, and the Scottish chainmail wasn’t too different or really superior from the African shield.

The ranged weapons – ditto. Zulu had a glorified throwing stick, while Wallace had a ball and a chain combo – neither weapon was very effective.

The mid-range weapons: Wallace had a war hammer, (just as the Shaman in FH does), and Zulu – a battle-axe, (FH’s Hitokiri, I suppose). Both weapons are similar in design and function, neither gets a real edge.

Finally, we get special weapons, and Zulu has a spit of poison. Here where it falls apart for him, as this poison is not really a weapon at all, does not get him any kills, unlike Wallace’s targe and dagger combo. Whatever else you can say about them, they kill, and so Wallace killed Zulu in the episode’s stimulation face-off. It went just under 2 minutes, making it one of the shortest fights in the DW’s entire history – but DW S1 was weird like that, this is why I continued to watch it even in the more formalized S2 & 3 – but we talked about it before. Anything else?

Just one more thing – Wallace’s war hammer, (in real life that is two words, unlike the game franchise, where it is just one), reminded me not only of the Shaman, but also of Robert Baratheon from the Martin-verse.

Here is the thing. I do not care for Cersei, either the novel or the GoT version, but Robert Baratheon was not too sympathetic either. Frankly, I suspect that GM based him on real life Henry VIII, (maybe influenced by Shakespeare’s depiction of that monarch), who used to be a valiant knight and warrior in his youth, but became a tyrant as well as monstrously fat in his later days. The main difference between Henry VIII and his GM counterparts, (there were more than a few of them, including several Targaryens), was that Henry VIII also actively influenced U.K. economics, changed the country from being Catholic to Protestant, (and this trait remained after his death), and was in general a much more active and pro-active king.

Pause. Yeah, if you ever read GM’s books, (especially before his Targaryen love fest), then you would notice that there was little progress, social or otherwise. Yes, ASOIAF/GoT is fantasy, but a relatively realistic one, more so than LotR is, for comparison, and in real life, once people get fed up with how things are made, they try to do their best to change them – even Shakespeare’s plays about English history, (as well as others, such as ‘Coriolanus’, for example), reflect it.

Not so in GM’s novels – the world of Westeros doesn’t change too much, even after losing their dragons and becoming much diminished, Targaryens continue to rule, everyone else – to obey, and nothing changed until that ill-fated tourney, when Rhaegar absconded with Lyanna Stark and jumpstarted the entire Robert’s rebellion. When Robert killed Rhaegar at the Trident, and the Lannisters finished the job at King’s Landing, the world of Westeros did change…and then it stopped. GM doesn’t appear to be too interested in change, the entire ASOIAF novel line – at least until the final seasons of GoT derailed everything – was about the return of Targaryens, as represented by Jon and Dany. Yes, the king would have been a former ranger of the North… I mean, a Night Crow, one of the black-robed folk at the Wall, cough, and the queen wouldn’t have been a virtuous elven maiden, platinum hair and lavender eyes or not, but a much more experienced and jaded woman, (in theory). Instead, however, we got, well, GoT S8, where Jon killed Dany, and the throne went to Bran, even though ‘the Wise and the Crafty shouldn’t rule’, according to the late and lamented Terry Pratchett. Plus, the North did separate from the rest of Westeros – this would be as if Scotland won slash seceded from the rest of the U.K…. wait, are we talking about the real world again?

Back to Westeros and Westeros v. 2, because in real life the U.K. is still united. Everyone was aware, consciously or not, that the last two seasons of GoT went against the grain of GM’s novels, but they were still aired anyhow, and GM endured it…why?

Because whereas now the hoopla associated with GoT and GM has noticeably died down, back then, right after GoT was finished, there were a lot of plans for sequels, spin-offs, prequels, what have you – and GM was probably going to get at least a part of the financial plenty from all of this bounty. But! If he confronted the HBO and co. regarding his disapproval etc. regarding the last GoT seasons, his relationship with HBO and co. would have deteriorated no matter what the outcome was, and then he would’ve had problems, especially if GoT was cancelled, and it would be his fault, even if just in part. GM may look like someone atypical, but he certainly loves his money, I would bet!

…And yes, people are aware by now that his views regarding his fans are not very flattering for the fans, but the fact is that GM’s novels are products that people need to buy…at least from his POV. Otherwise, if his works will remain on the shelves, he is in trouble, and since they are, odds are that he will not go to confront HBO, (or didn’t, in the past tense), because GoT and co. are his ‘other’ source of income. Fair enough, especially since by now the world of Westeros does not appear to be coming to the big screens anymore, and GM may be in trouble nevertheless.

Getting back from the real life to Westeros, what about Robert Baratheon? My point is that his war hammer made him an atypical knight from the start – realism or not, GM’s knights fight with swords, and seemingly – only with swords; even such fairly mundane weapons as war hammers, clubs and spears seem to be exotic weapons in their hands. This was not the case in real life; tourney lances aside, so I cannot help but to wonder if Robert did not win at the Trident, because he was wielding an atypical weapon by Westeros’ knightly standard and because he was also atypically large and strong by Westeros’ standards as well. Quite a bit of imagery associated with Robert Baratheon, (and by extension with Gendry, cough), is reminiscent of storms and thunder clouds and of Thor, the Norse thunder god, whose trademark weapons was the war hammer, as practically everyone knows these days. Where was GM going with this? In GoT it went nowhere, save for Arya and Gendry’s relationship, and GM himself is keeping mum, even before the COVID-19 struck.

…Well, this is it for now – see you all soon!

Quarantine entry #1 - March 22

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about something else – DW, for exactly. Why DW? Because I’m currently in the New York State, which is on lockdown at least for the next couple of weeks, and everything is closed, (well, almost everything), and there’s limited material to go on, so let’s pull out something out of the old dusty closet; might as well be DW.

So, what to talk about in DW? Let us try with another old chestnut – the Roman Centurion vs. the Rajput Warrior. After all of those years that had gone by after this episode was first aired, is there anything new about this episode?

Sadly, no. It is still a well written and an exciting episode, but nothing more. The only notable thing about RCRW is that it is also an honest and a non-prejudiced episode, but we have talked about this problem of the late DW a long, long time ago, so what there is left?

Firstly, yes, the Rajput had the advantage here – the ancient Roman, (as well as the Greek), army often had had problems with one on one fight. Yes, there are all of those one on one battles in the Iliad, aka, one of the first two authentic Western novels, but I must confess I have my own doubts about the novels’ authenticity, some things just don’t add up – but that is another story altogether.

Anyhow, the Rajput here has the advantage because his weapons are not so much advanced as better designed for a one on one fight – in a team fight, the situation would have been reversed. Of course, there is also the question as to why DW had the Centurion team (hey, remember his FH incarnation, incidentally?), bring forth a Scorpion – a stationary oversized crossbow, essentially, but, hey, they had something similar in an earlier S2 episode, when Alexander the Great’s ballista took on Attila the Hun’s Scythian battle-axe. It ended badly for Alexander – Attila won that showdown. What next?

The movies are being postponed, which is good – I was beginning to feel as if my blog is turning into a list of reviews, and I do not want that. I do not know what I am going to do with my blog yet, but it will be more than just a smattering of reviews – of movies, TV shows, Netflix shows, no! There will be something else! Maybe even discussions about something!

…For now, though, the best part of my day so far was that I saw a blue jay through the window in the yard outside. None of us is willing to leave because of the lockdown, unless it is for the grocery shopping or something similar, and the animals know it, somehow. Will they take over the world back from the humans? Probably not, simply because fear fades, and humans get tired of being scared all the time, COVID-19 or not.

To make matters worse, people are taking advantage of COVID-19, and usually for the worse. That is a part of real life, and especially of the American dream, with its’ individuality and entrepreneurship – both direct descendants of the Protestant, (especially the Anglo-Saxon version) way of life. Fair enough, but it means that there isn’t only good things stemming from this root, but bad ones too – and the same could be said about communism, as the Chinese seem to be having their COVID-19 issues well under control…no matter the cost. The Russians, of course, are a different story, but that is because they are a different story – they always tried to be a part of the West, culturally and politically speaking, but because the Russian proletariat and the elite were almost two different cultures throughout most of Russian history…things got muddled, and the West didn’t do anything to help either. The 1990s were just the latest example of that – the missed opportunity for the West to fix the Russian issue for good…instead the West got whatever it got in the person of Putin, and it can’t be fixed; maybe the West doesn’t want it to be fixed, but then all its’ those fiery speeches about the virtues of Democracy begin to seem fixed. What next?

Well, real life still sucks. The COVID-19 is still going strong, but because people are taking advantage of it in different ways, or just reacting to it differently, it is hard to differentiate truth from fiction; in this case, truth may not be subjective, but with everything that is going on around here, it is getting hard to figure out just what truth here actually is, and that is just as bad. Hopefully though, real life will get its’ head out of its’ ass and sort it all out, or else it’s going to be Italy all over again, (and Spain isn’t doing much better either), that’s all.

…And by that I mean that we’re done for now – see you all soon!