Paw Patrol Movie 2 - October 4

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, while on the imaginary side of the equation, we got… what?

First, there is Ahsoka, or rather – ‘Ahsoka’ the TV series. As some people have suspected all along, at the S1 (?) finale, the titular character and her cohorts got stranded in another galaxy, away from the main scene, leaving the canon plotline free to develop however, it wants, if the setting of the SW films 7 through 9 is the endgame. Yes, Ezra, Hera and Chopper are still free to confront Thrawn, but given that this series is, or was, about Ahsoka, the fact that the Jedi knight Tano is off the main board at the moment doesn’t inspire optimism that this series will continue, (even if Ahsoka herself will). What is next?

In the SW-universe – anything can go, of course, as for us… well, ‘Loki’ S2 is almost upon us, joy, but we will discuss it when it actually starts, airing, (maybe). For now, though, there is also the ‘Paw Patrol Mighty Movie’, and I can only ask: what?

Here is the thing: while ‘PJ Masks’ went all over the place lately, as the show lost its initial successful identity and tries to acquire something new, (rather than keep the old format – that of superhero fables), ‘Paw Patrol’ hasn’t. It is the same as always: Rider and his six pups, (the core characters), go all over their world, exploring new places, solving new puzzles and obstacles, making new friends, and… that is it, really. Aside from the Humdinger people there are few real opponents for the titular characters; everyone tries to get along, (more or less), and there was little superhero-like shenanigans in the franchise.

Then came the mighty meteor story arc, where the pups acquired a meteor – or rather a meteorite from space that gave them superpowers; them, and various another people as well, and so, for a while, the pups did have other ‘real’ foes aside from the Humdinger people: a human woman named Lady Bird, and a housecat named Copycat. For a while, the paw patrol franchise did feel like a good-natured spoof of the superhero genre… and then the arc was over, and the pups moved on with their lives.

And then, in September 2023, the franchise tried to reboot itself with the mighty meteor – what gives? That arc is officially over, and frankly, the new movie feels the worse take out of the two on the bloody space rock; (we have discussed the difference between meteors, meteorites and asteroids elsewhere, remember?). Moreover, what about continuity? The first PP movie – one that introduced Liberty, (a dachshund), had fit into the main narrative quite neatly, as Liberty was installed into the main PP TV series with nary an issue; now she’s been sidelined and the franchise tried to introduce a new villain – Victoria Vance – who feels like a rebooted (and somewhat upgraded) Lady Bird variant. What gives?

…By that I mean with the PP franchise in question: previously, it worked, and better so than the PJ Masks’ one; now… maybe not so much. Ah well, that is real life for you. Did I mention that it sucks?

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

About super-sized sauropods

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so we will talk about a magazine – i.e., ‘Scientific American’ – instead.

There is an article in the ‘Scientific American’ Sep 2023 issue, discussing sauropod dinosaurs and as to why some of them got super-big. The author proclaims that it is a mystery; I am no paleontologist, but I feel that I have a theory, here: it was a number of factors.

Why do animals do anything? Moreover, why do they evolve in the wild? To secure an advantage over competitors and predators/prey; a bigger body size is par de course here.

What are the advantages of being big, (super-big)? You get access to food sources that are unavailable to other herbivores, and predators are not as big of a threat to you, (pun intended). Conversely, though, you also need more food than the other herbivores do, and carnivores will eventually evolve their own adaptations, physical or behavioristic, that will even the score between them and a super-big herbivore. Let us widen the query.

What are the factors that allow the initial growth of super-size? An abundance of food, plant matter in the sauropods’ case. Wait. There is an arms’ race between plants and herbivores, just as there is one between them and the carnivores. In addition, just as some herbivores, (i.e. African [and Asian] elephants), get big to escape predators, (i.e. African lions and tigers), so do some plants get big in an attempt to ‘escape’ the elephants, (such as the baobab trees). The twist? This strategy does not work on all of the levels: under right conditions, elephants can bring down a baobab tree, (literally, topple it over), while a pride of lions can bring down an African elephant, (again under right conditions and circumstances). What is absent here?

Space. The more space there is, the more individual specimens of any given species occupy it. True, it does not necessarily mean getting big: a pine tree in a forest grows tall and thin, with its’ top high above the ground – a pine tree in a clearing grows shorter and squatter, with its’ top spread out wider than its’ crowded counterpart’s… but we digress. The point of this discussion is that just as modern elephants, (and baobab trees), got big because of several factors, so did the prehistoric sauropods…and trees, (or tree-like plants), that they ate. What else?

Right, not all of the sauropods evolved into super-sized plant eaters, some remained smaller. What about it?

First: sauropods evolved as bulk-feeders: their teeth and jaws were not designed for chewing, but for stripping foliage from branches, and for uprooting other plants whole. Another part of the reason as to why sauropods became the largest of the dinosaurs, extinct and modern, was because they had to become big to accommodate large and massive digestive systems that were almost constantly busy, because foliage, (as well as grass), isn’t very nutritious at all, and it has to be consumed in large amounts to satisfy not just hunger, but nutritious requirements of an organism.

Well, yes, but again, not all of the herbivorous dinosaurs got so big: even Jurassic ornithischians, such as Stegosaurus, never got as big as the sauropods did. That is correct, and it is competition again: by becoming big, the sauropods overshadowed their competitors: they could feed in places unavailable to the bird-hipped herbivores, and they were relatively immune to attacks to such theropods as Allosaurus, Torvosaurus, and Saurophaganax. That said, there was differentiation between the Jurassic sauropods themselves: some, like Diplodocus, were longer than they were tall, and their hips were taller than their shoulders – these dinosaurs could sit down on their hind legs alone, (forming a tripod with their tails), and be, well, construction cranes.

Other sauropods, like Brachiosaurus, were taller than they were long, and their shoulders were taller than their hips. They probably could also form a fulcrum tripod, but less well than Diplodocus and its’ relatives could, not that they needed too – they already were tall, taller than Diplodocus normally was.

Finally, there were less specialized sauropods, such as Camarasaurus, which were neither too tall nor too long, but just big, and fed on whatever Diplodocus would feed, but less well, and on whatever Brachiosaurus would feed, but less well. What is the moral?

We move on from the Jurassic to the Cretaceous and the world of the dinosaurs’ changes. The single super-continent of the Triassic and part of the Jurassic is gone, there are now two landmasses, Laurasia in the north and Gondwana in the south, and they are splitting as well. In the north, sauropods are practically gone, with some singular generalized species, such as Alamosaurus, remaining. In the south, they are flourishing, however…

However, Gondwana would eventually fall apart, as did Laurasia. The latter formed Eurasia and North America; the former – Africa, Australia, Antarctic, and South America, and it is in the last continent that the sauropods would reach their last peak of variety. Why? Because there were fewer bird-hipped dinosaurs in South America than elsewhere. In Africa and Australia, for example, there were such dinosaurs as Ouranosaurus and Muttaburrasaurus, smaller plant-eaters that were intermediate between the earlier iguanodonts and the true hadrosaurs, (like Edmontosaurus). If the sauropods depended on their guts to grind down and digest their food, the bird-hipped dinosaurs, (and especially the hadrosaurs and their kin), had more effective chewing systems than the sauropods did; they were better adapted to digest the new plants, (the first flowering plants appeared in the Early Cretaceous, just as the sauropods began to disappear), and they were able to outcompete the sauropods – just enough for them to die-out first, before the theropods and the bird-hipped herbivores, and before the K/T extinction.

In South America, it was slightly different. There, the sauropods remained dominant herbivores, and they began to compete with each other. As a result, some became extra-large, just as the African bush elephants are today. Others remained small; some, like Amargasaurus developed spiny crests, while others, like Saltasaurus, evolved bony armor, reminiscent of Ankylosaurus and co. These adaptations were defense mechanisms against their predators – carnosaurs, (Giganotosaurus and co.), and abelisaurs, (Abelisaurus and co.). Did they work…technically they did, though most paleontological texts give-off a feeling that the South American sauropods died-out before the K/T Extinction, again. Also, the biggest sauropods of them all, such as Argentinosaurus, never developed any bony armor or spikes or anything – it was too big to need this sort of armor, and not even the biggest South American theropods, (Mapusaurus, Giganotosaurus, etc.) were able to take it down…unless the circumstances were just in their favor.

Pause. We have come full circle. A learned person, a publicator in ‘Scientific American’ proclaimed that there is no idea as to why some sauropods became super-sized. For the same reason that some of the mammals did during the Cenozoic – to get advantage over their competitors, over their carnivores, and over their food source… and at the same time, to keep themselves alive and breeding, because bulk-food feeding comes with its own catches. Not such a mystery after all.

End

 

Tatzelwurm

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Now, that that is out of the way, everyone, let’s have a brief word about the tatzelwurm.

…What exactly is a tatzelwurm? That is a good question, as no one has a specific answer, or maybe everyone does. The first tatzelwurm depiction I saw had been from the 19th century or so; it depicted a black cat/snake ‘hybrid’ attacking a hog while some panicked people stood in the background. The swine looked monumental, a pinkish-white block of muscle and fat, and it clearly was the stronger beast out of the two. True, tatzelwurm might be venomous, but in RL, domestic slash feral swine eat… rattlesnakes, among other creatures, and it is doubtful that the tatzelwurm is more toxic than a rattlesnake is, even if it is real… so what the point is?

Well, first, I always felt that in a minute or two the swine would shake-off the cryptid, and launch its’ own counterattack, which would result in the cat/snake hybrid being badly outmatched here. The second, if the tatzelwurm is a cat/snake hybrid, then it isn’t real at all, right? …Yeah, about that. There is no standard depiction of this beast, period.

Leaving aside all the RPGs, which do not care if there is any basis behind a cryptid’s supposed existence; the tatzelwurm’s images go all over the place. There’s a snake with a pair of muscular forelegs, a critter with a body of a skinny lizard (with all four legs) and a head of a cat, albeit one with a crown, there’s a snake with a head of a mouse or a weasel, a fat lizard with a head of a rooster, (the basilisk, take two), and one from 1887, which makes it look like a skink. Wait, what?

That is a good question. Skinks are not cryptids; they are a group of RL lizards that are usually found elsewhere than Europe, though. In addition, the tatzelwurm is supposed to have only one pair of legs – the front one. Think the skullcrawlers from the latest Kaiju-verse, just much smaller, (but possibly venomous). Therefore, what is the point?

First, the venom aspect of the tatzelwurm might be the most suspect of it all – people, especially Europeans and their cultural colonial descendants, tend to associate venom with almost every reptile that isn’t a tortoise or a crocodile, (and there’s some justification, too). Leaving venom aside, the tatzelwurm abruptly looks like a snake-lizard hybrid, and a single pair of legs is quite acceptable. Why?

Because there are legless lizards and lizards with just a single pair of legs, aside from the regular four-legged types. The skinks in particular have short fat legs that can be easily overlooked if a person is frightened enough, and some species of skinks, when cornered, can put on quite a scary show, (though they usually lack the bite to match the bark). Otherwise, well, there are legless lizards, but tatzelwurms usually shown to have the front limbs, so what we are left with?

…There are the sirens, which are mythical monsters, yes, but also a group of North American salamanders that have no hind legs, but have external gills, which can be confused for a crest or a crown if seen suddenly. Still, there is no indication that sirens ever came to the Old World, (and their distribution in North America is quite limited), so we go back to reptiles.

There are lizards, (or lizard cousins, classification can be tricky), that have only front legs – the worm lizards. There are over 200 species of them, and they are found in Europe too, as well as in North America, for example. They are no more venomous than many other lizard species are, but as I said before, fear is a powerful magnifying glass, so it is quite possible that an unassuming reptile, a lizard or a lizard cousin, got transformed into a new version of the medieval basilisk that no one took serious in the 19th century – and that is what the tatzelwurm actually is.

End

 

SI & Eric Flint

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, and SI is no escape.

First, about real life: Eric Flint is dead. The man – the author – died in 2022, last year, and the world has become a poorer place without him. His 1630s series was a fun AH series of books, novels and story anthologies, even if they weren’t the most politically correct – i.e., in the last few novels, the new USE – United States of Europe – and their Swedish allies are fighting the ‘upgraded’ version of the Ottoman Empire. This could have been quite appropriate in the 1990s and especially early 2000s, when the U.S. has invaded, (for a lack of better word), Afghanistan and Middle East, but now, when U.S. has lost all of its’ earlier gains, (especially Afghanistan), not so much. What next?

SI offers little succor, save that it is over, and as people have noticed, the series’ finale redeeming feature is the abrupt change of tone in this particular episode. This is not neither new nor surprising: this has happened already in AoS, ‘Ms. Marvel’, and ‘She-Hulk’, as we have discussed previously, and indicates that regardless of whatever these shows have shown previously, in the future, this information will not be utilized, but be discarded instead, and moreover, MCU is starting anew with them.

…Aye, AoS was rather discarded completely as an alternative, and so far there’s no sign of ‘She-Hulk’, but MM the character is going to be important in the upcoming ‘Marvels’ movie – and so SI concluding shots are tied into it; the rest are just a rip-off of the Sokovian accords, which are done and gone and forgotten by MCU. Anything else?

About SI – not really: it was full of forgettable, surrogate characters, just as MM had been, and just as MM has, it is going to vanish into nowhere. About Eric Flint – I do not know, maybe his novel series will continue, maybe not. Real life sucks, eh?

This is it, then. Talk to you all later.

SI & FH - July 22

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, but SI does not fare much better either.

…Now, some of you are raising a point that while AoS was a show about a group of people, (i.e. the titular characters), SI is a show about Nick Fury and his entourage, just as the ‘Hawkeye’ Series had been about Hawkeye… and the other Hawkeye, (you decide which is which). This is reasonable, but, again, if you look at ‘Hawkeye’, it was more than just about Hawkeyes one and two, it was also about their families, (especially about Kate’s), and about Echo, (another Marvel character who may or may not getting their own series in the future). In other words, ‘Hawkeye’ was part of MCU’s zeitgeist of that time, that of transitions: the title of ‘Hawkeye’ passed from Clint to Kate, and the landscape of MCU itself changed: NYC got a new vigilante, Echo, while Fisk was on the out, (supposedly), and Yelena Belova got further established in MCU than compared to her MCU debut in the ‘Black Widow’ film. SI does nothing like that, it is just Nick Fury running around, trying to save the world, while his few allies are just dying, and he’s blithely ignoring them: ‘Jeeves is dead? Thanks for the update, bye!’ There is no hook to capture and hold the audience’s attention, no nothing.

…AoS had the same problem, as a matter of fact, even from the start, but because they had several core characters who didn’t die in the initial episodes, for example, this show began to generate plenty of drama by the second half of the first season, and that was what kept it going, especially in the first three-four seasons. SI doesn’t have that either – the characters are both new and forgettable, and the new ‘Marvels’ trailer only further emphasized that SI is less of a milestone for MCU, and more of an aside, forgotten as quickly as possible. Why? Because that movie is about the Kree, not the Skrulls, as villains.

The fact that SI has evil Skrulls for villains, (rather than plain-mundane Chinese, North Koreans or Russians – thank God for that), is also a problem: by now MCU has established that Kree are the bad guys out of the two, and the Skrulls are allies of Fury and Earth’s humans; to have them suddenly become evil has made things even more convoluted and uncomfortable for MCU and its’ narrative, so the odds of SI being shoved aside and forgotten after its’ run ends is perfect.

Pause. Going back to the new ‘Marvels’ trailer, we also see Fury there, but no other member of the SI cast, including Ms. Sonya, who is just a variant of countess Val, of whom there’s no sign, which is proof that SI is about to be done and gone in MCU. True, the first ‘Captain Marvel’ film also starred Phil Coulson, who ended his AoS run being more live than dead, and the ‘Marvels’ trailer ignores that as well, but AoS is apocrypha of MCU on one hand, and on the other, MCU is restructuring itself even regardless of AoS by now. Is that it?

For SI – yes. For FH – not so much. This week the game has released a depiction of a new PC character, the Ocelotl. Succinctly put, this character is based on a RL and fantasy versions of the Aztec Jaguar Knight caste, but because of copyright infringement, or because FH is trying to be fancy, the character is named after the ocelot wildcat instead.

An ocelot is a sizeable feline, true, after the jaguar and the puma it is the biggest cat in the American tropics, but the jaguar could easily have an ocelot for breakfast if the latter got unlucky on one paw, and on the other, the North/Central American bobcat could probably overpower it as well. There is no idea as to why FH ignored the jaguar, the American biggest cat, in the favor of the ocelot, but it still did.

As for the new character’s weapons… He wields a Macahuitl and Tepoztopilli. The first is a wooden sword/baseball bat studded with sharp shards of obsidian. The second is a wooden spear with a wide head, also studded with sharp shards of obsidian. In the original Mesoamerica, which had no metal armor, such weapons were formidable, tearing at a human body, and obsidian shards could and would splinter on impact, further hurting the human. Against metal, (ok, steel), arms and armor, however, as well as firearms, the Aztec weapon proved inefficient, and the Natives would acquire those weapons and armor quickly enough, though it wasn’t sufficient to save their empire from collapsing… from several reasons, actually, but none of them are relevant to FH. What is important, supposedly, is that the Aztec Jaguar was already featured in S2 of Deadliest Warrior, (DW), where he faced a Zande warrior of Africa, and lost. Now, under a new name, he is returning to mass media – it will be interesting to see how the ‘Ocelotl’ will fair in the game.

This is it for now. See you all soon!

SI, 'Beloved' - July 12

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, and SI… continues to underwhelm, ditto. This week’s episode, ‘Beloved’, has Talos, (the male Skrull that impersonated Fury in Tom Holland’s 2^nd ‘Spider-Man’ film), killed, and whoever gives a damn about that? Whereas AoS at least tried to build its’ characters up so that their death would matter and/or impact the audience, SI does not. Pause?

Let us try again. As it was said the last time, AoS appears to overshadow SI in quantity at the very least, but still, as Tom Holland’s ‘Spider-Man 2’ movie showed, SI has the advantage of having its’ characters appear in the rest of MCU’s franchise; unlike AoS, SI is an official part of MCU and as such it can use this status to ‘pull out’ characters from other corners of MCU to flesh itself other. Indeed, it appears to do so with the character of Rhodes, (War Machine)… who appears to become mostly AWOL himself since the CA: CW film, (the ‘What If?’ cartoon series do not count, as they are more of an alternative to the main MCU plotline)… The point here is that SI is also underwhelming on top of its’ other issues; it has its’ own advantages vs. AoS, which is does not use, or rather does not use them very well… or very much at all. AoS did not have them at all, or at least – not very many, but it still used them…

Ok, to be fair, what AoS also did was cannibalize/assimilate discarded plots of such discarded Marvel shows as ‘InHumans’ and ‘Ghost Rider’ and ‘Most Wanted’ in order to keep itself going. But, again, both it and SI were TV shows, not RL – Disney/MCU could abort them instead of running them full time, or else get rid of them before they aired – but no. Disney/MCU went through with AoS, even though there were multiple behind the scenes issues in it, and it is going through with SI, even though there are multiple issues with it as well. The result is that S.H.I.E.L.D. is gone from MCU on one hand, and SI is going to join it too, it looks like on the other. Sad, but that is real world politics for you – like the rest of reality, they suck.

Moreover, speaking of reality… It is only mid-July here, in the southern Canada, (which may sound like an oxymoron, but is a reality fact instead), and already fruits, berries, nuts and seeds are ripening, the leaves are turning red, and the flowers are going away. The insects are still out in force – we are talking pollinators here – but squirrels, grey and red, as well as their cousins the chipmunks and marmots, are already preparing food for winter. Guess living in the north – and not being a human – has its’ restrictions and rules overall. The local cicadas, however, are singing, meaning that it is mid-summer here after all…

(Oh, and the carrion is all gone now, washed away by the heavy summer thunderstorms – the vultures and condors are out of luck after all).

This is it for now. See you all soon!

SI and real life - July 11

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks… but we will be talking about it regardless, it looks like.

Why, you may ask? Because SI continues to… not deliver: whereas AoS was all about ‘pieces solving a puzzle’, to quote Skye, SI is just mostly about Nick Fury, running around the world trying to stop the deviant Skrulls, yet almost never engaging them directly. Meanwhile, both Talos and Ms. Falsworth seem to be doing their own thing and so does G’iyah the Skrull-girl… who seems to be a rip-off of Skye/Daisy Johnson/Quake. Pause.

Let us try again, without going too far into an AoS-rant. Initially, AoS was supposed to be a big deal, as the above-mentioned character of Quake was an important character in the Marvel comics for a while, she even ran S.H.I.E.L.D., in one of the comic universes. Sadly, whatever the show’s intent was, it quickly went off in a completely different direction and from S4 onwards it became an outlier of MCU; now, there is no mention of S.H.I.E.L.D. or S.W.O.R.D. in MCU – but we have discussed that earlier. Now, let me just stay that it is MCU’s loss, as out of the two shows, SI is the lesser one, and not just because it is 6 episodes long, while AoS had been 7 seasons long instead – both quality and quantity matter here.

AoS issues aside, so far SI seems to be mostly laying a groundwork for the upcoming MCU… elements, making the deviant Skrulls the main villains of MCU to come, as team Fury still doesn’t appear to have gotten their shite together, while the ‘evil Skrulls’ appear to have done just that. Therefore, let us leave them for now, go, and face reality.

What do we have there? As a California condor has proclaimed – “Carrion, of course!” The dead squirrel/skunk is gone from the road, the dead Norway rat/house mouse is… mostly gone from the street walk, but while those remains are few in number, (mostly the tail and some bones), they still fill the streets with the stench of ripe rotten meat… and since we got wild coyotes, (red) foxes and raccoons going around the neighborhood on one hand, and pet dogs, as well as cats, and human children on the other… the locals should really go an extra mile here and get rid of all the carrion, before something bad happens – but that’s just a condor’s perspective.

Done with the dead, onto the living. We have seen a couple of eastern cottontail bunnies feeding around, and they are both adorable and super-fast. However, quite a few people have seen rabbits or hares in their lives, either wild, pet or feral, so let us leave them aside, (for now, maybe). What we have also seen are mergansers.

What are mergansers? They are ducks, just as the mallards are, only not. The mallards are an example of dabbling ducks: they feed on the water’s surface, their bills are long and broad as they filter food from there; the Shoveler duck has a bill that is especially adapted for filtering; maybe not as derived as a flamingo bill, but still there.

A diving duck, on the other hand, dives. A dabbling duck may briefly turn downside up on the water surface before returning into the air, but a diving duck can soundlessly slide beneath the water’s surface just as a loon or a cormorant does. Moreover, just like them, diving ducks, such as mergansers, have long, thin bills designed to catch fish. Unlike loons or cormorants, however, a merganser’s bill, (there are several species, but all look similar enough to each other not to be distinguished without a bird guide), has serrations in it to better grasp and hold onto a slippery fish, while loons and cormorants don’t have them. Moreover, as in all of the ducks, male and female mergansers look different from each other, (though the female mergansers are much more colourful than mallard females are, for example), while loons and cormorants don’t have that. Put otherwise, the mergansers were amazing as they fed in shallow waters, (it was a female with ducklings, though a male was nearby – maybe a father of the family, maybe not), submerging and emerging with ease that a fabricated sub could only dream off. Anything else?

No, not really. The point that is being made here is that while usually real life sucks more and imaginary life sucks less, sometimes the reverse is true.

This is all for now, see you all soon!