Skunks and Asteroids part II - April 14

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks; the initial dead striped skunk was removed from the spot where it’d died on the road, but now there’s a second one, maybe a cub of the first deceased one – I don’t know, and I don’t particularly care, but what affects me is the fact that no one cares to do anything about the dead animals; the remains of the first skunk are still lying close to the curb, and the second skunk is lying not far away from the first – but since it is a public road, they’ll probably lie there until they break down completely – and can you imagine the smell? No, you probably cannot. Where are we?

Well, I’ll be absent from my blog for the next two or three weeks, maybe even more; the skunks will probably be still lying there when – and if – me and mine will get back home; and the PJ Masks?

Again, yes, obviously that the genre of the PJ Masks’ show is such that who cares about realism there – ‘the asteroid of badness’, or whatever it is called, is a plot device almost completely… to do what?

Again. The cartoon aspect of the ‘PJ Masks’ franchise was almost purely fable, with little personal development on the characters’ side, and almost equally little amount of interconnected continuity. The bad guys appeared to be incapable of learning anything from their misadventures and the good guys… would learn from their episode of the week/day/whatever… and that was it, they never implemented that knowledge in the future episodes… especially in the earlier seasons; later on, there would be some references to previous episodes in the more up-to-date ones, but not too much. And now?

And now, again, ‘PJ Masks’ seem to be stuck between genres; aware or not, but they’re moving away from their fable origins into a more generic superhero show; there are already clips showing all of the show’s villains getting new looks, and the heroes probably won’t be too far behind. Ergo?

Ergo, it is a soft reboot, not unlike the ones AoS went through in the latter seasons, (around their S4 and S5). On one hand, the old cast is present, on the other, this does not mean anything, as there is no character development, again. We have talked about how Luna Girl (and Mothsuki) had been all over the place, alignment-wise, but the same now can be said about other characters, such as the Ninjalinos, Pirate Robot and his mate Sally, and the Speedy twins. They used to be allies of the PJ Masks, but now they are back to being villains with nary a regret – but it is not their fault, it is the asteroid’s fault. Right. I did not do it, the robber sock did it. That sort of thing. The ‘PJ Masks’ is aimed – supposedly – at educating children (and their parents?), how to be good and proper, but…

…But the show itself is caught on a cultural crossroads that is affecting the entire USA, (and maybe the rest of the Western world) – whether they will stay monotheistic, (officially – Christian), or polytheistic, (aka pagan, by the modern terminology). The ‘PJ Masks’ cartoon is trying to teach its’ audience ‘the good old-fashioned Christian values’ (or whatever they’re called), but-

…But any ideology is costly, and the current American culture hates paying, as simple as that. Earlier in spring 2023, the team behind the Budweiser beer got an LGBTQ+ spokesperson to represent them. Immediately, some straight celebrities went hostile and proclaimed that they will never have to do anything with Budweiser again. Now what?

Now everything comes down to money, whether or not it is better financially to associate with the sexual minorities or not. I am certainly not saying that faith and religion are good, they are not – they are as flawed as the rest of humanity’s inventions, money included, but without them, there is no ideology, no actual reason to decide anything, and nothing that you do matters. In RF, the local cultural elite – some of them – tried to defy Putin’s government in relation to ‘the special military operation’ on the Ukrainian soil. Because the West did not support them, this defiance came to nothing. Go West!

Getting back to mass media, does anyone here remember ‘The 10 Commandments’ film, since Easter-2023 has been only recently as of this moment. No, not the sanitized Disney-tired ‘Prince of Egypt’ film, which wisely stopped just after the Hebrews finally came from of the Egyptian yoke – the much older version, with live actors? There, the final act went down as follows: Moses goes up the mountain and receives the titular commandments from the Lord. Meanwhile, some of the film’s last villains stage a coup and create ‘a Golden Calf’ complete with a good old-fashioned pagan cult, complete with free booze and free sex. When Moses comes back, he goes berserk, smashing the tablets with the commandments on the ground and sending the last of the movie’s villains into – a fiery pit. Impressive, but in the actual Bible Moses rather summoned the Levite tribe, the tribe of which he was a member, (the Bible presumes so), and they slaughter the opposition, several hundred people – and then Moses keeps the Hebrew people isolated in a desert for several decades, for the rest of his life, to keep them isolated from the temptations of the decadent pagans. It… works, sort of, for even now, centuries, (if not more), after those events the Jewish faith has kept its’ identity and allowed the Jewish people to endure centuries of prosecution, including the atrocities of WWII. That said, that faith and those people turned out quite different from how Moses intended them to be, so Moses’ way is not a panacea either, no matter how much Putin seems to be trying to imitate him those days. Back to the West?

Now, ‘PJ Masks’ do have a pharaoh-style villain among their number, true, but the monotheistic world isn’t Jewish, rather it is Protestant Christian, meaning that the ‘Moses incident’ doesn’t apply. See, whereas in Judaism it is admitted that ‘you can’t serve both God and Mammon’, (aka greed and money and the Golden Calf from the previous paragraph), Protestantism increasingly tried to do both; especially once the Europeans arrived in North America and began to colonize it. Unlike other versions of Monotheism, Protestantism is much more individualistic and de-centralized… not unlike the country of the U.S. itself. The result?

Well, take a look at ‘PJ Masks’, for example – their morals/lessons are rather Christian in outlook, (rather than of any other faith), but because a good deal of their franchise comes down to them all being sellable, the impact of those morals/lessons is diminished and what the audience gets is a series of toy commercials, where the (pre-teen) heroes and villains battle it out episode after episode, going nowhere… at all. Just as the dead skunks on the road are here to stay, until they decompose completely, that is. But then again, all things, including TV shows, have to end some time or another.

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

Skunks and asteroids - April 6

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks – just ask the poor striped skunk that ended up as roadkill not too far from our home building. …Mind you, the skunk in question was a wild animal, not an escaped pet, so the rest of us are not much better off – we may be alive, but we now get to smell the smell of both decomposing carrion and the smell of the remnants of a skunk’s trademark stench, you know? This is one bouquet of aromas that we all can live without – but because the dead skunk is lying in the middle of the city’s roads, aka public property, no one is doing anything about it, just because… Where were we?

Well, better off than the actual road devil that had ran over the skunk in question – they’d received the most of the skunk’s final blast and now have to clean it off their car one way or another, and that just isn’t fun; not to mention it might not be legal. See, the government of the GTA may not want its’ citizens to become too friendly and familiar with the urban wildlife – raccoons, coyotes, red foxes, etc. – but it doesn’t mean that they want to run them over with cars either. Especially the proverbial skunk, whose means of self-defence are well known, especially in North America.

…Incidentally, did you know that there are species of skunk in South America as well? Genetics aside, they look largely like the northern striped skunk, and probably smell just as bad. In Africa, there are local weasels that look like variant skunks, and they self-defend like variant skunks, but the honey badger is in a league of its’ own and doesn’t like to make a literal smell.

All mustelids, up to the wolverine, the biggest member of this group on land can make a bad smell, but the skunks are mustelid cousins instead, a closely related, but separate group; their only relatives are the so-called stink-badgers of the Asian tropics, but this is neither here nor there – let’s go into space instead.

Why go there? Because of PJ Masks, as a matter of fact. In their upcoming season premiere, the titular characters, and their arch-enemies, are going into space, each group with their respective allies, because of an asteroid that can turn heroes into villains, (and maybe vice versa? Who knows? Who cares)? Fair enough, but I would rather talk about celestial bodies instead.

What is an asteroid? It is a space rock, or, if you want to get professional, a minor planet. That said, they vary in size from a 1-m rock to a dwarf planet almost 1000 m in diameter, so space rocks they are.

Within the Solar System, most of asteroids are found within the so-called asteroid belt, which is located between Mars and Jupiter; there are various origin theories about it and the asteroids, but they’re not important here – the point is that most of asteroids stay within it and don’t crash into Earth.

Then what does crash into Earth? This is where terminology gets tricky, especially if we do not get all scientific. First, we get the shooting/falling stars that do not fall onto Earth, but get burned-up in the atmosphere – they are called meteors. If they do not get burned-up and do crash into Earth, they are called meteorites instead. Both are space rocks, (also called meteoroids), again, just as the asteroids are, but asteroids do not smash into Earth. Conversely, though, we also have comets, that are more like giant ice balls that contain pieces of other substances/materials within their icy bulks, and when they fly close to the Sun, (or any other stars, actually), the ice begins to melt and the other substances burst out, forming the comet’s tail. Meteorites, meteors and most other meteoroids don’t do that… consequently, what is the point?

I honestly have no idea, I confess. The ‘PJ Masks’ are a mess – they started as successful fables, tried to mutate into a variant superhero cartoon and now they seem to be trying to have it all at once – there are villains in the show, true, but apparently most of the episodes will have the heroes solve their own problems rather battling their foes. From what I have heard about the promos for the episodes this is not going to happen, this is standard heroes vs. villains’ scenario instead. Well, more power to them. Maybe the ‘PJ Masks’ will succeed. I am not holding my breath though. Oh, wait; there is still the dead skunk. I guess that I am. We are still better off than it is, though.

For the moment though, this is it. See you all soon!

DW: SS vs. Viet Cong - March 27

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so I felt nostalgic and pulled out the good old ‘Deadliest Warrior’ (DW) out of the storage. For today, I chose the ‘Waffen Nazi SS vs. Viet Cong’ episode, and did not regret it.

…Well, no, I did not regret it in a manner of speaking. This is a controversial episode on a matter of layers. First, the DW team chose to stack the odds in the SS’s favor, as strange as that may sound: rather than some version of AKM, the Viet Cong team here used a MAT-49 submachine gun; I may or may not have written about this earlier, (way earlier), but this was the only time this weapon – or any version of it – was used on this show; whenever else the Viet Cong would appear – as NPCs – they would wield AKM firearms instead.

Second, this was not an episode suggested by any member of the DW main crew – rather there were suggestions that one of the background members of the staff had suggested it, which opens either a realm of possibilities or an assortment of problems or maybe both.

Finally, the DW team was able to depict the final confrontation thusly, that it appeared to be a team of American G.I. is facing off against the Viet Cong, not the SS. That also makes sense, since the American government and society have views regarding the SS and the Nazi regime, so the team SS winning this face-off was unexpected, and may have been one of the secondary factors/reasons as to why the DW show went under, for as I may have written before, (much earlier), DW show had plenty of good points – pity that they haven’t helped the show survive… Anything else?

People showed me an official episode of the new ‘Kiya’ cartoon series. On some level, it is a ‘PJ Masks’ variant with one important difference – and no, it isn’t the musical elements; ‘PJ Masks’ can be overwhelming themselves without it – it is the presence of adults/grown-ups/parents in the show – somehow, their presence keeps ‘Kiya’ grounded and relatively more realistic than the ‘PJ Masks’ are – but ‘PJ Masks’ don’t care about realism, remember?

…In other PJ-related news, the show… still has not gotten its’ act together, it seems. On one hand, there are promo images that show the characters, and especially the main villains, are getting an upgrade and are going against the heroes, in the style of the 1990s’ X-Men cartoon, (remember it? A classic!), while on the other the show tended to have its’ characters pull its’ punches, especially when it comes to physical violence, because It Is A Show for Children! As such, rumors have it that the characters new and old will spend more time getting over their internal issues than fighting ‘external’ bad guys. As I have mentioned before, so far there is no concrete evidence that the ‘night-time bad guys’ are actually real and not figments of the PJ Masks’ imagination. This would make the PJ Masks just a trio of really lonely kids who actually have to imagine people who would interact with them…but I’ve written about this before, and don’t want to get back to it again. Instead, what next?

Nothing, except that the ‘PJ Masks’ show seems to have gotten itself into a corner and is aware of it – the show stalled its’ new release since the beginning of 2023; the first episodes are supposed to be aired starting April 19, 2023, but so far there’s no information as to what they will be about and etc. Clearly, the franchise has ran into problems. Anything else?

Regrettably, no. ‘Kiya’ in itself is not that great; the music content has gone past saturation point and sometimes it makes it hard to make out what its’ characters are saying, but, hey, the children love it. They also appear to like ‘PJ Masks’ as well, of course, but that is children – their tastes are very different from the grown-ups’, but that is another story.

See you all soon!

Honor Among Thieves and Co. - March 23

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us try to find some different topic of discussion. Pause.

Sadly, there does not appear to be any; ‘The Mandolorian’ is already being discussed to death, while ‘Dungeons and Dragons: Honor among Thieves’… ok, let me rant.

‘Honor’ may be a D&D film, supposedly, but it is set in a very specific setting: The Forgotten Realms. Initially, The Forgotten Realms were just one setting within the broader D&D spectrum, but now, apparently, they dominate it, with their rivals, such as Eberron and Pathfinder, seem to have fallen by the wayside.

…Actually, that may not be really fair: the RPG sector began to suffer, just as many other luxury goods and services, ever since the COVID-19 outbreak, and it has not really recovered from it. However, the decline of some of its’ aspects, such as Pathfinder, began pre-COVID-19, and so I’m not fully sold on this state of affairs being the pandemic’s fault alone – something else might’ve worked behind the scenes, but what? Who knows…?

Anyways, ‘Honor’ is set in The Forgotten Realms’ setting, something that has not been openly/officially acknowledged so far. That is one. Two, is that it is a relatively conservative movie rather than a progressive/liberal one: a person of color plays the barbarian character, (so’s the paladin, but he’s more a temporary character in this film), and the druid character is a tiefling rather than a human or an elf. Second pause.

…Since this is a rant, may I point out that lately RPGs have this weird issue regarding tieflings. In fact, tieflings are only one out of several ‘planetouched’ races, a group of humanoids that have extradimensional ancestors… think the InHumans of MCU – initially regular humans with alien DNA, they became a brand new separate species by the time of them being featured in the MCU. The planetouched are similar, save that, the tieflings have demon or devil genes, (to use the term incorrectly, but still), while the descendants of the various celestials are called, the aasimar… and they are represented much less often than their tiefling counterparts are. I have no idea as to why, but this is how it rolls at least since the 3.5 D&D edition. Weird!

Getting back to the film, let us note that the tiefling druid here is a tiefling because the party needed one non-human character, to pass as a fantasy racial minority, probably. Again, this is not exactly new – Pathfinder, for example, tended to stick with human NPCs, when regular old monsters would not do; oh, it had its’ dwarves, elves, half-orcs and so on, but humans dominated. Since Pathfinder takes place on imaginary planet named Golarion, I do not know whose issue this was and why and how it was addressed, if it ever did. Still, Pathfinder 2^nd edition is a lot like D&D 5^th edition, so we do not care about Pathfinder as much anymore. Where were we?

Right. So, ‘Honor’ is peddling a specific setting as a general one, and it is quite conservative with its’ PCs, and it took its’ plot straight from the SW – Forge is a discount Palpatine, (“I cannot bare to see you die, so I’ll leave”) while his ally Sofina the Red Wizard is a discount Assajji Ventress. More precisely, Neverwinter and its’ lords are Coruscant and its’ Jedi, while the Red Wizards are Sith, with Thay being their home country. So what?

So nothing, especially since The Forgotten Realms’ setting itself has changed a lot in passing from the 3/3.5 edition onto the 4/5 one. Not sure, if it was for the best either – but while the different editions of D&D differ quite a lot, none of those changes came into the movie because of reasons. Where we are left with them/without them?

Again, with a conservative film that has several heterosexual couples – Forge and Sofina, Edgin and Holga, and Simon and Doric. This is never emphasized, of course, but it is there; Edgin and Holga, especially, are the Not-A-Couple of the film, as Holga tends to rebuff Edgin’s advances, (at least some of the time), but at the end of the film, Edgin, (and his daughter, who’s a minor character in the film – at least this one), choose to resurrect her than his late wife – symbolism is hitting the audience on the collective head here.

Again, there is nothing wrong with the good old classics, but could you acknowledge it, at least? In Pathfinder – at least the 1^st edition, not certain about the following ones – there were plenty of sexual minorities, (since it is a different world altogether and our rules don’t apply to it) – and so it seems to get cancelled, as I, for one, no longer can find much of it aside from the Internet, but the same can be said about many other RPG rulebooks and the like… Where were we?

Ah yes, the conservative values disguised as progressive ones. It isn’t just RPGs, you know? For a while, I was invested in Mr. Riordan’s PJ novels, as well as those spun-off/inspired by him. On some level, they were progressive as they utilized various racial and sexual minorities, but then-

But then I realized that it was ‘The Whale’ scenario – you remember our discussion of ‘The Whale’ as in the 2022 movie? In the discussion of it, it was pointed out that ‘weight’ and ‘race’ were window dressing for the actual movie message, (such as it was), and the same can be said for the latest novels of Mr. Riordan both about Magnus Chase and Apollo, as well as for the spin-offs.

Take, for the example, Mr. Yoon Ha Lee’s ‘Dragon Pearl’ novels, (there are two of them so far). They’re chockful of sexual and racial minorities… whose gender and race don’t play any role in the series, they’re just window dressing, and the main characters are a gumiho (fox spirit) from ‘the wrong side of tracks’, and a tiger spirit from a noble clan that’d disgraced themselves by treason against the emperor, or whoever. I.e., they are variant Skye and Grant from AoS, (I am going down with that ship). Ergo, does it matter if the supporting cast are not heterosexual? Hint: it does not… and the same largely goes for the rest of the spin-offs. There are some divergences from that mould, for example the ‘Tristan Strong’ series, but they are the ones that I cannot find on shelves anymore since the pandemic ended. Gee, I wonder why… What else?

Ah yes, one final part regarding the ‘Honor’ film – its’ main cast are a bunch of misfits that make a regular experienced N/PC face palm. No, wait, there are two – the team’s sorcerer is a descendant of Elminster. If anyone outside of the RPG community, (especially the parts keyed to the Forgotten Realms) know and care who Elminster is – good for them. They can go back watching ‘The Whale’ – the two sets of media are equally good. In addition, as for the misfit part, now this fossilized cliché is almost a requirement that you need to succeed in a film… unless you are in something akin the SW films seven through nine – but that is another story.

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

TLM trailer 1 - March 14

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, and you can always count on your family to make you feel worse, so let us talk about something else – the upcoming ‘Little Mermaid’ film, perhaps?

The movie itself is shaping to be fairly typical for Disney – not unlike the ‘Pinocchio’ reboot, where the film was mostly like the original animated version, save for minor details there and here, and as for the details themselves…

Do you remember us discussing ‘The Whale’ recently? It was pointed out, that the excessive weight of the main character – Charlie – as well as his homosexuality were only ‘window dressing’ to disguise the fact that Mr. A has depicted a thoroughly miserable and lonely man, who was also a deeply flawed individual; in fact, it can be argued that Charlie’s supposedly defining features are actually flat-out redundant and unnecessary for the movie’s narrative. The trick here is the same can be said about the female lead of ‘The Whale’ – Liz the nurse, whose defining trait is her race – she is played by a P.O.C., but, unfortunately, her race never plays a factor in ‘The Whale’, even less than Charlie’s traits do. Still, politics of the day must politic, and so ‘The Whale’ had a token P.O.C., even though Liz’s race never played a factor in ‘The Whale’… Now what?

…The same can be said about the upcoming ‘Little Mermaid’ reboot. OK, Ariel is going to be played by a P.O.C., of an Afro-, rather than of Asian-American origin, but so what? What exactly the role that her race is going to be playing in the film? None whatsoever, and given the fact that it is a movie about mermaids and other mythical beings, the arguments that are being raised both pro and contra Ms. B’s role as Ariel are ridiculous and stupid. Both God and Caesar must have their dues, for TLM reboot to lift-off there must be some POCs in the cast, and so there are. Why does TLM need a reboot in the first place is another story, but it is going to get one regardless. Anything else?

Yes, getting back to the film’s trailer, I just want to talk about the bird – it has changed species completely. In the original movie, it was a gull – just a generic gull, starring in a magical animated film, nothing more. Now, however, Disney is going for realism, and so the bird… turned from a gull into a gannet. Despite being seabirds, gannets do not have any connection to gulls – they and the booby birds are related to frigate birds, cormorants, and darters, and beyond that – to bustards and storks. They do not even look like gulls, and the two bird groups do not act too similarly either, so I do not know why the film’s cast decided to do this. Ah well, human logic does sometimes manifest in odd ways.

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

The Whale - March 11

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about something unusual: the 2022 movie ‘The Whale’.

Where to begin? Ah yes, ‘The Whale’ is 2023’s ‘Velma’ more obtuse cousin, geometrically speaking, and I feel like I can prove it. Let us start.

MK’s ‘Velma’ was a cartoon TV show aimed to irritate everyone in general… that is it. MK felt that this is the right way to stir controversy and discussion… and she was right, to a point: for a while, ‘Velma’ was the talk about the town, until it stopped, and everyone is doing their best to forget that it’d even existed: i.e., Ms. Ming-Na Wen, who is usually trying to milk every teat – from AoS to ‘Mulan’ to SW and beyond has never mentioned that she was a voice actress in ‘Velma’: the cartoon was that bad! Where were we?

Ah yes, Ms. Wen’s presence in ‘Velma’ – I have been honestly shocked to learn that that is the case – ‘Velma’ might have been renewed for a second season, (why, for the love of God?), but Ms. Wen still is not mentioning her presence on that show. Bully! However, what about ‘The Whale’?

One of the differences between the two is in the degree of their approach to controversy and co. – whereas ‘Velma’ aimed at everyone, and so her contents were diluted… period, ‘The Whale’ tries to talk about one specific group: the overweight people. Right.

Zoom out, and you can see that the issue of weight has always been ambiguous in human history, with each of the biological sexes reacting to it differently. For a start, being overweight slash fat meant that you are successful enough, socially and financially speaking, to afford being so – a peasant and a soldier/warrior were two different social strata themselves in the past, (up to the WWII period), but both were lean; Hell, by the time of the first half of the 20^th century the human society had evolved enough to move past such social labels as ‘peasant’, ‘soldier/warrior’, ‘merchant’, but extra weight was still equated to social success, as it can be a liability, illustrated clearly by Charlie, the main character of ‘The Whale’. Regardless, extra weight is usually tolerated in human men… in human women, not so much. Indeed, most of the discourse regarding weight that arose in the 1980s and 90s up to now, (the early 2020s - and beyond?) is usually dominated by women… and men who love them, of course. As a result, a lot of such discussion is sexualized, fetishized, and so on.

…Going back in time, you can see that while a man was expected to be lean, (unless he was a successful merchant, or moneylender, or something), a woman was not. Rather, she was expected to be robust… why? Because both biology and gender politics: for a good long time, until the second half of the 20^th century, a woman’s worth was most often that of a mother and a child-bearer, which meant that a certain amount of ‘extra weight’ was the norm, actually – if a woman lost too much weight her worth as a mother and a child-bearer was jeopardized, which was bad. It was also sexist and patriarchal in the worst meaning of that word, so when in the second half of the 20^th century women finally won their equality with men officially, they began to slim down – and then the models arrived, women who slimmed themselves down to a point that they began to resembled animated trophies – you know like the ones presented at the Oscars and similar ceremonies – another case of a good enough idea taken to excess. As a result, the human society again began to discuss just what was the norm of a woman’s weight, a discourse that continues into modern times (2020s) and will probably go on beyond.

And now we got ‘The Whale’, whose main character is a notably overweight man. In addition, the issues of sexualisation and fetishisation of weight are nowhere near in sight in the film. Therefore, there was some controversy and discussion about ‘The Whale’, but very little, and the film mostly got accolades rather than criticisms, but…

…But they ring hollow and most critics seem to admit that it was BF’s acting as Charlie that kept the film together, and that is not really good news for the film. See, just as ‘Velma’ has nothing going for it beyond mockery of… everyone, ‘The Whale’ is in the same boat, only while ‘Velma’ went for everyone, ‘The Whale’ tried going for the overweight – on one hand. On the other, while ‘Velma’ didn’t hold any punches, ‘The Whale’ didn’t have any: whereas ‘Velma’ was acute and angular, ‘The Whale’ had all of its’ angles ground down. Pause.

What exactly ‘The Whale’ is about? It is about Charlie, an overweight English professor who hates himself, does not do anything about it, and lies, claiming that he has not had any money to do anything, while he actually does. He also does not appear to be leaving his apartment – in part because he is overweight, but it part because he does not want to – he has no life. The problem with that is that it is his choice. The problem with the problem is that he is overweight and some people are upset about it, i.e. how ‘The Whale’ represents the overweight people. Mr. A, the movie’s director, flat-out dismissed it, but…

…But the thing is that ‘The Whale’ is about a man, depicted actually in a bland, non-controversial and uninspiring manner, which is why most ‘social justice warriors’ (or whatever the proper term currently is) have ignored it – as have a lot of other people, both associated with the WG/WL communities and not. Yes, Charlie is overweight. Yes, his last relationship was with another man, (though he has an ex-wife and a daughter). However, both of those factors are tacitly underplayed, leaving Charlie mostly as a depressed anti-social loser who doesn’t want to leave his apartment and whose only friend is a female nurse named Liz. Next?

Here is the thing. Mr. A is not wrong when he rebuffed his critics – ‘The Whale’ is not entirely about the weight. Only in a certain way it is – the movie is named ‘The Whale’ for crissakes, therefore the excessive weight should play some sort of a critical role… otherwise, why include it? ‘Waiting for Godot’, for example, is minimalist to an extreme, but you do not have actors in fat suits in it either, because it would just distract from the rest of the movie/play/etc. Mr. A tried to play it smart regarding any controversies, (in a manner not unlike Disney/MCU post the first seasons of AoS and the CA: CW film), and he succeeded: ‘The Whale’ of his film’s title doesn’t apply just to Charlie, but to the entire film, as just like the metaphorical whale and Charlie, it is big, grey, and doesn’t go anywhere. But, hey, accolades galore! Yay, really!

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

Train ride - Feb 20

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Sometime earlier this year, I pulled a Sheldon Cooper, (no this is not going to be about TBBT and its’ fandom), and rode an express train rather than a bus, through the GTA. The impression? The express train was fast, naturally, and quite comfortable to sit in; but the view outside was something else: I never realized just how downtrodden the GTA, and especially its’ outskirts, can be. Everywhere I looked, there was desolation, emptiness, and graffiti; the latter were certainly colorful, but there was no one and nothing to appreciate them, and given their proximity to the railroad tracks, I wonder if the graffiti artists were paid to draw the artwork in question, in order to decorate the scenery around the tracks. If so, it did not exactly work, as for such a desolate place, the tracks certainly had a lot of garbage around them.

No, seriously, I kid you not – everywhere we rode, (in a straight line, true, but still), there was garbage and trash – on tracks, next to tracks, on the streets next to the railroad, there it was. Again, there were no people to manifest it per se, but it was there already. If ‘The Last of Us’ or some similar franchise wanted to shoot a scene there, or even several, the place was right for the shooting: empty streets, dead vegetation, (since it is February – the end of winter), no animal life, and buildings, covered in graffiti by people, who’re long gone from this place, apparently. This scenery goes all the way into Toronto’s downtown, BTW.

Now, the downtown of the city where I live – it is a different story. It is a bustling metropolis, or at least it attempts to – the U.S. cities, such as NYC or Washington D.C. are much grander and bigger than it is…but their outskirts are the same story: see the paragraphs above. It is the same mess, although more spread-out, proportionally. The city of Buffalo, located in the New York state, however, is not in the league of the bigger U.S. cities, and is just as bad as Toronto is, with a greater crime rate, proportionally. Isn’t real life grand?

Back to Toronto… so my family lives in the outskirts of the city, which is proportionally greener than the downtown is… at least during the warmer half of the year. Right now, at the end of winter, there is no greenery at all, and, admittedly, the sight of bare tree/shrub branches, black against the still-light evening sky is decidedly disturbing and scary for the soul. At least the downtown is still illuminated by artificial lights, even though the winter holidays are over. Toronto really does go for the entire metropolis that never sleeps look – good for it. Anything else?

Yes, the wildlife. In Toronto’s outskirts/suburbs, where we live, one can usually see some type of wild/feral animal or bird, even in winter, even if it is just the rock pigeon or the grey squirrel, (which are predominantly black-colored in Toronto). There are also the red-tailed hawks that hunt the pigeons, (though with mixed success), as well as gulls, house sparrows, lately – some of the local songbird species, so there is wildlife. In downtown, there is not even them, just humans, and sometimes their pets, (but mostly not). Again, it is depressing and kind of sterile. No wonder that those American Apocalypse/dystopia stories tend not to show any sort of wildlife in their narrative – the American society does not really have a place for it. Even GM, whose Westeros is notably different from the RL planet Earth, but who is also British rather than American, has some sort of animals in his novels, even if they’re just window dressing at best. The same can be said about another British author – the late and great J.R.R. Tolkien, whose Middle-Earth works – all of them, BTW – are decidedly anti-industrialist. His villains – Morgoth and Sauron - hate everything natural, and their domains – Angband, Utumno, Mordor – are devoid of natural wildlife and vegetation; by contrast, the domains of the ‘good guys’, such as Galadriel, are often lush and green. The dwarves, it should be noted, are more ambiguous: their best kingdom, Moria, fell to the Balrog because the dwarves ‘dug too greedily, dug too deeply’, (or something to that effect), and upset the natural balance.

…Mind you, in the original novels, the Balrogs were depicted differently than in modern culture: rather than stereotypical demons, with hooves and horns, the Balrog from the novels was little more than a featureless shadow, sometimes wreathed with dark fires, sometimes not, but always deadly. Gandalf killed him all the same though, but we digress.

Well no, not really. My point was that Tolkien did not care too much for cities or industrialism, and his Middle-Earth works reflect that. GM is not as extreme in his series, but he also does not seem to be too fond of the cities; whereas American novels tend to be urban, as is the rest of the American mass media – it is a difference. After riding around Toronto outside, the reasons behind that American outlook has become somewhat clearer for me, that is all. Real life sucks, you know?

This is it for now, see you all soon.