Sometimes Boundaries Provide More Freedom

 My favorite episode of MTV's Daria series was the one called "Write Where It Hurts," where she's assigned to write a story by her English teacher Mr. O'Neill.  As part of the assignment, she has to use people she knows in the story.  When she struggles with this, he adds that the story should include a game of cards and says that paradoxically, sometimes adding boundaries provides more creative freedom.

And I got to thinking, sometimes that really is true.  At this point no one assigns me boundaries with my stories, but there are boundaries set by the marketplace.  Some are set by Amazon and their Terms of Service--whatever it is--and some are set by the consumer.

Amazon says I can't write age regression stories anymore--though apparently everyone else in the known universe can, but that's a gripe for another time.  I also can't include things like rape, incest, and bestiality, not that I would really want to do those things anyway.

As for the consumer, they don't explicitly tell me, but I know from experience and the sales numbers that they want a gender swap.  And they're going to want at least one sex scene.  And most of them want a happy ending.

So in coming up with stories, those are the things I have to keep in mind.  And in a way it does help creatively because if someone tells you to just write a story about anything there can be so many things that you don't know what to do.  When you add a few boundaries, it starts to focus the creative process.

And let's face it, a few boundaries make it more challenging.  Maybe I make it look easy, but it can be difficult coming up with story after story without making them too similar.  I've learned to take inspiration wherever I find it:  other books, movies, TV shows, comics, and so on.  I've used a lot of my favorite toy properties like Transformers, GI Joe, He-Man, and Voltron.  Each time the challenge is how to convert it into a story that fits within the boundaries.

Next time you're having trouble with thinking of an idea--or you just find you can't focus on one idea--try setting yourself some boundaries and maybe you'll be able to find the right idea after all.

Too Lazy to be Lured

On Michael Offutt's blog a couple weeks ago he mentioned season 2 of some Locke & Key show on Netflix and I said (again) I still don't have Netflix.  I keep thinking about signing up for Netflix or Paramount+, but then I keep blowing it off.  It turns out I'm too lazy to be lured in by a show or movie.  Maybe even several shows or movies.

A few years ago I got rid of Netflix and signed up for Hulu, mostly because Hulu got a lot of the shows that were abandoning Netflix like Archer, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, American Dad, South Park, and Robot Chicken, though the latter two have since moved to HBO Max.  And I think Hulu was cheaper.  Other than a couple of documentaries I haven't watched much of the original content on Hulu.  I liked the book of Handmaid's Tale but it seemed like the show would be depressing and I just haven't felt like watching it.  None of the other original stuff really pulled at me.  Maybe Season 3 of The Orville whenever that would come out.

As far as other streaming services I hadn't really planned on getting Disney+ but then they bundled it and ESPN with Hulu so it's less than $5 a month for all three, though the ESPN app is pretty useless and any games I watch are usually through Hulu anyway.  Still, it was a good enough value to cut through my laziness.

I didn't plan on using HBO Max either until I found out I could use my HBO login for it.  But then I got rid of HBO, so now I don't use it and don't really miss it much.  I'd already caught up on DC animated stuff, South Park, WW84, and Godzilla vs Kong so there didn't seem like much else I really cared about.  I did have HBO on demand/HBO Go for years so I'd already watched HBO originals I wanted to watch like Game of Thrones, Westworld, Watchmen, and Arli$$ and none of the HBO Max original shows sounded interesting to me--I can't even name one besides the former DC Universe ones Titans and Doom Patrol I didn't really like anyway.

As far as other ones, I see commercials for Apple TV and Ted Lasso and whatever but I never seriously consider it.  I'm not sure I could even get it on my Roku or if I have to have an Apple device.  Since it's Apple it seems like it'd be a big hassle just to sign up for it.

The one I'd be most likely to sign up for is Paramount+ because of the Star Trek shows but whenever I think about doing it, I end up watching Battlestar Galactica on Peacock or the Robocop series on TubiTV or rewatching The League on Hulu or Mike Tyson Mysteries on Amazon/Hulu.  When it comes to original, exclusive shows I'm not really willing to go to a lot of effort for them.  The Star Wars/Marvel shows on Disney+ I watched because like I said I could bundle it with Hulu for pretty cheap.  I watched The Boys, Invincible, and some other shows on Amazon but then I already had Amazon Prime so I didn't have to do a lot to access that.  Amazon Prime does lots of other stuff so it's different than these other streaming services that are just TV/movies.

The only streaming service I really went right out and got was when I found out about the Rifftrax app.  That was something I had been wanting because it was annoying trying to watch them with Amazon Prime and Pluto TV and I didn't have Xumo and they weren't really on TubiTV yet.  So I guess I can be motivated, but it takes a lot more than one show or movie.

Months ago, they announced that Butler Blue III and Butler Blue IV would be on an episode of Netflix's Dogs series starting in July.  I thought, "I should go get Netflix to watch that."  I figured I'd wait until it came out in July though.  But as July came around, I still didn't sign up for Netflix.  I never even seriously considered it.  If cute bulldog mascots won't get me to sign up, what will?

The strategy for all these streaming services is offering exclusive content usually with some big stars--or formerly big stars.  But as I've said, I've never really signed up for anything because of that.  The effort it takes to download the app, sign up, verify with my email, and pay with my credit card rarely seems worth it just for one thing or even a couple of things.  I can usually find something else to watch that's easier.  

I was thinking that probably the future for these services will be bundling them like with Hulu/Disney+/ESPN.  Right now the bundling seems to be just with ones owned by the same company like I saw Paramount+ and Showtime you can get bundled for $10 and both are owned by Viacom.  But with the competitive marketplace, you might eventually see non-affiliated brands bundling.  Like maybe Paramount+ and Apple+ could get together to make an offer to try to boost sales.

And then the irony is eventually everything could get bundled to the point you're basically back to cable TV with its packages.

(Of course after I wrote this entry, I decided I had run out of excuses and got Paramount+.  Lowering the price $1/month probably helped a little.  Still almost no interest in Netflix or Apple+ or restoring HBO Max.)

Why Was Canadian TV Better At Making Robocop Sequels Than American Movie Studios?

 About a month ago I was on TubiTV to check to see if they had any "new" Rifftrax and stuff and then I saw they had the Robocop TV series from 1994-1995.  I remembered I'd watched a few episodes back in the day when it aired in syndication on the local Fox network (Channel 66 out of Flint), probably at like 4pm on Saturday afternoon before they reran the prior week DS9 or whatever, this being before Fox had college football and NASCAR and all that stuff.

I hadn't watched the whole series and I had nothing else I wanted to watch, so what the hell, right?  I binged all 22 episodes over 3 hot, humid days and found it highly watchable and fun.  The show was made in Canada for Canadian TV in the 90s so obviously it didn't have the effects budget or notable actors of the movies and since it was on TV they couldn't have as much graphic violence, blood, and gore.  Still, it was better than the two American studio-made sequel movies and the godawfully dull 2015 reboot.

The thing about it is, I think while they didn't have the budget or the R rating, they still kept the same basic premise and tone of the original.  There were serious parts, but it was never too serious and unlike the crappy reboot they didn't change things in ways that didn't work.

It starts with a 2-hour episode, or I guess you could say a TV movie to introduce the situation and new characters.  This in theory takes place after the third movie because Robocop's partner/friend Ann Lewis is dead and the Delta City project is a reality.  The rich and middle-class live in Delta City while the poor still inhabit "Old Detroit."  Robocop, formerly Officer Alex Murphy, works from the Metro South precinct that's run by a Sergeant Parks, which doesn't make much sense since in reality shouldn't there be a Captain or Lieutenant or Chief to run the show?

Instead of Ann Lewis, there's a female cop named Lisa Madigan who similarly figured out Robocop's secret identity and works with him.  There's also an engineer named Charlie Lippincott who keeps Robocop running and a little girl named Gadget who frequently shows up to annoy Parks until, seeing the crappy conditions she lives in, he finally adopts her.  Those characters along with the chairman of Omni Consumer Products (OCP) remain in the place through all 22 episodes.

Another character is added in the opening TV movie when a young female secretary named Diana is murdered by an OCP exec and a mad scientist to use her brain to power a computer called "MetroNet" that is supposed to run all the utilities and stuff in Delta City.  Diana remains as sort of a ghost in the machine and she can access machines and computer systems--including Robocop.  She becomes a secret ally and a special friend for him because they share a common bond of having human memories but not human bodies.  Though Robocop is not supposed to lie, he does hide Diana's existence to make sure she doesn't get wiped out or used as a lab rat or anything.

The show retains a lot of the snarky stuff from the original movie like the MediaBreak newscasts that are often filled with propaganda for OCP and outrageous stories like a wall being built in Beverly Hills to keep out the poors.  Instead of the goofy commercials for things like the "Nuke 'Em" home game there's a series of animated commercials with OCP's hero Commander Cash who pedals dangerous products like "Sterettes" anabolic steroids for kids and a "Nite-Nite" doll that doubles as a hand grenade.  Those things helped to make it a lot more fun than the dreary reboot and the two sequels.

As I said since it was on TV there was a lot less violence, blood, and gore.  Instead of shooting everyone or stabbing them with his computer hacking spike, Robocop will shoot the gun from someone's hand or punch them or something less R-rated.  And to my relief no goons get mutated by toxic waste, though one of the recurring villains named Pudface Morgan does have a kind of nasty-looking face.

Besides the characters I mentioned, Alex Murphy's wife and 13-14-year-old-ish son frequently appear along with his parents.  His father, a former cop, works with him on a couple of cases and eventually realizes his son is still alive--sort of.  But Murphy's wife and son don't find out his secret identity.  Maybe that would have happened if there were a season 2 or more but there wasn't.

About 5 years later, the same production company and Canadian TV network did 4 TV movies under the banner Prime Directives.  I watched them on Netflix years ago but after watching the TV show I decided to rewatch them on Amazon Prime.  These were more R-rated with more blood, gore, and graphic violence, though still not as much as the movies.  They aren't connected to the TV series, though they use footage from that show in commercials for "Robocop's Greatest Hits."  The biggest difference is that Murphy's wife died two years after he became Robocop and their son James grew up in an orphanage.  There were still the Media Break inserts but less goofy commercials; instead there's a Bill O'Reilly-type talking head.

Like the TV series opening movie a lot of the story revolves around a computer system that's going to take over all the utilities and stuff.  In this case it's called SAINT and a dipshit exec at OCP is rushing it into production.  There's also a bad guy in Old Detroit who wants to use the program to distribute a computer virus called Legion that can infect people.  Meanwhile after 10 years on the job, Robocop is feeling his age and then has to shoot his old partner John Cable to stop a madman.  Cable's ex-wife, the head of Security Concepts, resurrects Cable as a second Robocop who has darker gray armor, a mirrored visor, and two guns that are stored in his thighs.  Cable's ex-wife is also using Alex Murphy's son, a junior exec at OCP, to do some of her dirty work.

Everything comes to a head in the final movie as Robocop, his son, and a renegade who's like a combination of Trinity from The Matrix and Darth Maul head for OCP headquarters to deactivate SAINT before it can spread Legion.  In the end Cable dies to stop Legion and SAINT but before he does so, he wipes all the prime directives and stuff from Robocop's system so he's free to do what he wants.  The Legion/SAINT debacle destroys OCP while Robocop finally reveals his true identity to the world and works with his son to rebuild Old Detroit.

Getting back to the question in the title of the entry, it is strange that Canadian TV with a much lower budget and no big name stars managed to deliver stories that were more fun and far less stupid than the American studio sequels and definitely the reboot.  It's hard to say why this is except maybe they had less expectations and thus more freedom for their stories.  And they didn't have Frank Miller writing.  That probably helped too.  I'm not saying the Canadian show and movies are great but they are better and fun binge watching.

Between the two, I liked the TV show better.  It was more fun and less grim-and-gritty like the movies.  And also I think Richard Eden was a better Robocop/Murphy than Page Fletcher.  Fletcher looked too old for the Murphy flashback scenes and sometimes his voice would sound like Tracks on the old Transformers TV show or Judge Whitey on Futurama.  That's probably just me, but it is my blog, so there.

Fun Facts:  Not surprisingly since they were made in Canada, the show and movies feature actors from other Canadian-made shows like Due South, Earth Final Conflict, and Red Green.  In the TV series, Sergeant Parks is played by Blu Mankuma, who voiced Tigatron in the Transformers Beast Wars series that was also made in Canada.  Former WWF wrestler "Rowdy" Roddy Piper plays the creator of Commander Cash, who goes crazy because OCP stole the property from him.  The irony is that the episode is about a company using hidden messages to brainwash kids and Piper played the hero in They Live, which similarly involved hidden messages brainwashing people, but sadly he doesn't say anything about being out of bubble gum or kicking asses.

Like the original movie, the OCP Chairman in the TV show and later the female CEO in the TV movies is never referred to by name but simply as the Chairman/CEO or "the old man/woman."

In the original movie Robocop drives a Ford Taurus, which in 1987 looked pretty futuristic.  In the TV show he upgrades to a Mustang, which had just undergone a redesign so it looked a bit more futuristic.  The funny thing is early on they took the iconic pony off the front of the car but later the pony reappears.  In the TV movies, he kind of downgrades to a Chevy Impala, which was a souped-up Chevy Caprice like normal cops drove at the time.

The opening credits of the TV show reshoots some bits from the original movie with the replacement actors, but in the first episode it shows a clip from the original movie of Alex Murphy being shot by Clarence Boddeker (Kurtwood Smith) and his goons.  The same clip is also shown in one of the TV movies.

Though I'm too lazy to check for sure, I'm 99% sure the exterior they show of the police station--"Metro South" in the TV show and something else in the movies--is the same one they used the exterior of in Due South, only I think they changed the cars in front and shot from a different angle.

For about half the TV series the end credits used a bastardized version of the original movie theme song.  Then it changed to a song by 80s rocker Lita Ford and Eagles guitarist Joe Walsh.  The last few episodes even featured part of a music video for the song.  It seemed like kind of an unnecessary waste of money but whatever.  I have no idea if you can find the song on iTunes or not.

A not-so-fun fact about watching the TV show on TubiTV is they had a couple of episodes in the wrong order.  In one episode the OCP chairman is intent on getting a lung transplant for a little kid, which seemed really out of character for him.  It was in the next episode shown that you find out the kid's parents saved the Chairman's life so to repay them he wanted to make sure the kid got a lung transplant.  The last two episodes were also in the wrong order, so the series finale was actually the penultimate episode.  They were listed under the wrong names so someone got their wires crossed.  It was probably the same for those earlier two episodes too.  Season 2 of the original Battlestar Galactica  had a similar problem, but I guess it is free so you get what you pay for, right?

The Comics Costume Question

I don't know how I got started on it, but at some point I got thinking about costumes in comic book movies/TV shows.  In the beginning--more or less--costumes in movies/TV were pretty similar to the costumes in the comic books.  Like in the old 1949 Batman serials--one chapter of which is on Rifftrax and the whole thing is on the Roku Channel--the Batman and Robin costumes are pretty close to the 1939-1940 versions.  The George Reeve Superman costume was also pretty similar, though originally it wasn't the same colors because the show was in black-and-white--at least that's what they said in Hollywoodland.  The Batman '66 costumes were mostly bad cosplay versions of the comic book costumes but pretty similar.  The Lynda Carter Wonder Woman was pretty accurate and I suppose the Hulk was too--I mean, it's just tattered pants, right?  The Christopher Reeve Superman costume was pretty accurate to the traditional one.  Other than Lex Luthor having hair I'm not sure what you could really compare any of the villains in those movies to.  

The late 70s Reb Brown Captain America movies, though, were pretty comic book inaccurate.  As were Thor and Daredevil in 80s Incredible Hulk movies.  The crappy 1990-ish Captain America movie was more accurate, but not completely.  The Punisher movie from that time might also  have been less accurate; I've never seen it.  Those were all pretty low budget affairs and I'm sure Marvel/Disney would like us all to forget them.

The trend to get away from accurate costumes really began with the 1989 Batman movie by Tim Burton.  Batman's costume still had the same basic look but instead of blue-and-gray like in the comics of the time it was all black, though it retained the yellow oval with the bat symbol.  It was also rubber instead of fabric.  The Joker was more accurate in that he wore purple, green, and orange most of the time.  In Batman Returns the Catwoman and Penguin costumes were similar but definitely not exactly like those in the comics.  In Batman Forever the Riddler had various costumes with the question mark on them and they were green so they were somewhat accurate.  Two-Face had a suit with two different styles and color schemes so it was fairly similar.  Robin's costume, like Batman's was rubberized but it at least retained the traditional color scheme--but not the tiny green shorts.  In Batman & Robin, though, Robin's costume changes to black-and-red with a different symbol so it was closer to a Nighwing costume than a Robin one.  Mr. Freeze being played by Ahh-nold Schwarzenegger meant his armor was a lot bulkier than the Mr. Freeze of comics and cartoons.  Bane was pretty close to the comic book one in appearance, though that was just about the only similarity.  Poison Ivy was I guess somewhat close.  Batgirl's costume was similar to Batman's, which was similar to some later iterations in the comics, but not really ones in use at the time.

I'm not sure how Wesley Snipes's Blade compared to later comics versions but it was a lot different from the original comic book one I remember from the Marvel Ultimate Alliance video game, which looked kind of like Robin Hood.  The Spawn costume in the 1997 movie looked pretty close to the comic book version.

Then with X-Men they really got away from the comics.  Cyclops even says snarkily to Wolverine, "What did you expect:  yellow spandex?"  Most of the costumes for the characters weren't really that close to the traditional comic book ones, opting for the good guys to mostly wear black leathery stuff instead, though at least Magneto wore red and had a special helmet.

Spider-Man's costumes in the Sam Raimi movies were similar to the traditional comic book design but the villains were not really.  Willem Dafoe's Green Goblin wore a green armored suit instead of a purple leotard or whatever, which is probably a change for the better.  Alfred Molina's Dr. Octopus wore a trench coat and normal pants and shirt instead of green-and-yellow spandex--again a change for the better.  The black Spider-Man costume in the third movie was not all that similar to the black suit from the 80s while Venom and Sandman looked much closer to the comic book versions than the villains in the previous movies.

In a similar fashion, the Christopher Nolan Batman movies didn't often make much effort to make costumes comic book accurate.  They were more tailored for realism.  The Joker and Catwoman are probably the closest to their comic book versions while Batman has a design more like the other movies than the comics and the other villains bear only vague resemblances to their comic book versions.

The Green Lantern movie infamously used a CGI costume instead of fabric or rubber or anything like that.  I didn't mind it as much as other people--including Ryan Reynolds.

Fox's Fantastic Four looked fairly similar to the comic book costumes, albeit a bit toned down.  Dr. Doom was pretty similar and the Silver Surfer was still a silver dude but Galactus was a lot different.

The MCU started out with costumes that followed more that Raimi/Nolan design aesthetic.  Iron Man was obviously kind of similar and the Hulk was the Hulk but Captain America, Thor, and Hawkeye had much more practical designs than their traditional comics versions.  Black Widow was pretty similar but a black catsuit is a black catsuit so whatever.  I haven't read enough early Marvel comics but I think Obediah Stane's machine (whatever it's called) and War Machine were a little different.  Whiplash I'm pretty sure was a lot different.  Loki was a lot more realistically designed than the comics version as was Red Skull.  Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver looked pretty different from their comics versions while the Vision was similar though toned-down sort of like Robin in Batman Forever.  Sam Wilson's Falcon was pretty different from the comic book version--which was probably a change for the better.  The Winter Soldier looked more or less the same, I think.  The Ant-Man and Yellowjacket were similar to comic book versions but made to look more real.  The Wasp I think was a farther departure from the comics.  I'm pretty sure Star-Lord was a lot different but I can't really say about the others in Guardians of the Galaxy because like most people I hadn't even heard of it until they announced the movie.  I think in the comics Rocket usually wears orange but otherwise I'm not sure there are huge differences.  Groot is still a tree, Gamora and Drax are greenish, and Thanos is purple with gold armor.

Meanwhile at Fox, Wolverine never got the yellow spandex.  Except for Mystique being blue and Professor X in a suit and wheelchair, they really never did any in the first three movies like their comics versions.  Sabertooth in the awful prequel movie looked nothing like the traditional version.  The First Class suits were similar to what the original 60s X-Men wore but the other costumes, not so much.  At the end of Apocalypse they had sort of 1992 costumes but then in Dark Phoenix they were more like the 2000s Grant Morrison-era ones.  Deadpool looked pretty close except the red was more muted while Colossus looked better though still a lot more muted compared to the comics.  Domino and Cable in Deadpool 2 really only bore passing resemblances to the comics versions.

In Sony's Spider-Man reboots the Spidey costume looked mostly the same and I guess the Lizard was a lizard, so whatever.  The Green Goblin again didn't look that close, nor did Electro.  The latter it's not just that he was played by Jamie Foxx but because in the comics Electro wore a green costume with yellow lightning bolts on it whereas in the movie he was blue and in more or less normal clothes.  The Rhino similarly looked nothing like the comics, where he was a big dude in a gray costume, not a shrimpy dude in robot armor.

The Fox Fantastic Four reboot the characters looked nothing like the original versions (except Thing who's an orange-ish rock monster) but they did I think look closer to the Ultimate version from the 2000s.  Dr. Doom was pretty fucking lame though. 

In Civil War the MCU got more comic book accurate with the Spider-Man costume again looking more or less like the comics and Black Panther looking like later versions of the comics, not really like the original.  Though Zemo was just some regular guy, not wearing a purple ski mask and stuff like in the comics.  Dr. Strange looked more or less the same as the comics but I have no real idea about the villains.  Captain Marvel looked pretty similar, albeit designed a bit more realistically than the recent comics.

The MCU Spider-Man movies the Spidey costumes (original and Iron Spider) looked pretty close to the comics while the version at the end of the second one looked more like the Superior Spider-Man, albeit without the extra spider arms. The Vulture in the first movie did not look like the comics but like the first two Raimi movies it was for the best.  I mean in the comics the Vulture is an old bald guy in green spandex with feathery wings so the Michael Keaton version in a helmet, oxygen mask, leather jacket, and robot wings was a lot better.  Mysterio looked pretty similar, though a bit more muted than the comics version.

The recent TV shows have changed the costumes more towards the comic book versions.  In WandaVision they even dress in comics accurate costumes for Halloween.  The Scarlet Witch's costume at the end is far more like the comics version than the original.  In Falcon & the Winter Soldier, Sam Wilson gets a pretty accurate version of his Captain America costume while Zemo gets his purple ski mask and John Walker gets a pretty accurate US Agent costume.  In Loki he goes around in a TVA uniform most of the time but in the fifth episode the other Lokis he meets are all patterned after versions appearing in the comics.

Not the Snyder version

Meanwhile, in DC's Snyderverse, most of the costumes were designed to be more realistic versions of the comic book costumes.  Starting in Watchmen, most of the characters have the same general look but the colors are toned down and the materials are more padded or armored than fabric.  The Superman costume looks pretty close to the New 52 comics version, albeit with muted colors, while the Batman costume is more like The Dark Knight Returns--except black instead of blue.  Wonder Woman's costume loses the star-spangled shorts (which didn't really make sense) to look more like old-fashioned Greek armor.  Aquaman and the Flash have more armored looks.  Cyborg probably looks the closest to his comic book version, albeit more recent ones rather than the original Teen Titans version.

In Suicide Squad, Deadshot's costume looks pretty similar, especially when he's wearing the mask over his face so you don't know it's Will Smith.  Most of the other characters, including Harley Quinn don't look that similar to their comic book/animated versions, not even Killer Croc, who looked more like a lizard alien from a crappy sci-fi show than the giant man-croc from the comics.

But in the non-Snyder movies they get closer to the comics as Aquaman gets the orange armored shirt and green pants and the Shazam costume is pretty similar to the more recent comics versions.

As for the DC TV shows, Smallville never really broke out the Superman costume until the end.  The short-lived Birds of Prey also stayed away from costumes except to flashbacks of Batgirl.  Arrow and The Flash started out with more Nolan-inspired versions of the character costumes.  Over the years they graduated to more comics-looking designs.  Supergirl and Superman looked pretty similar except again the colors were more muted.  Titans, Doom Patrol, and Stargirl all fairly well resemble the comic book costumes for the most part, though the colors of the Robin costumes are still muted and other small things like that.

I'm sure I'm leaving some stuff out.  Anyway, I think especially with Fox under Disney control now, Spider-Man still in the MCU, and the Snyderverse all but gone, the future is probably that comic book movie costumes will continue to largely echo the looks of their comic book counterparts but still with more muted colors and realistic-looking materials.  You'll probably never see Wolverine in bright yellow spandex, but a muted yellow-and-brown leathery-looking suit is more likely.

If someone ever made a movie or TV show of The Scarlet Knight, I don't think the costumes would be hard to design.  Emma wears red plate armor.  The Black Dragoon wears black plate armor.  Seems pretty easy, though for practical shooting reasons they'd probably want to use less heavy materials than real plate armor.  The Girl Power and Gender Swap Hero costumes would far more resemble real superhero costumes, so probably with more muted colors and leathery padded materials.

Anyway, should comic book movie costumes be comic book accurate?  I don't think they should be 100% so.  I think it is better to take the basic designs and make them more realistic.  But what do you think, true believer?

Religion & Fandom Inspire the Same Fervor

A couple of months ago my frenemy John Oberon had a post debating someone on some Bible stuff.  I didn't have a dog in the fight, so I didn't really care.  I did note that the way he was trying to explain this stuff was like how sci-fi fans twist themselves into pretzels to explain plot holes in their franchises.  Like how Star Trek fans spent years trying to explain why Klingons in the original series didn't have ridges and ones in the movies/later TV shows did.  Eventually they tried to make up some bullshit answer on Enterprise to explain it when really it was because the original show had almost no budget for fancy makeup effects.

And then there was another of those lame ScreenRant clickbait posts that seemed to fit right into that.  It was a post talking about how season 7 of The Clone Wars series retcons some stuff in Episode III.

The headline they used on Facebook though complained about her not being referenced in Episode III.  The obvious explanation (one me and others pointed out) is she didn't exist at the time of Episode III's production.  It came out in 2005 and the Clone Wars series didn't begin until the movie in 2007.  So barring a Special Edition-type edit--like the one that inserted Hayden Christiansen into the end of Return of the Jedi--there was no possible way she could be referenced.

But some fans of course need to create some explanation the way people like Oberon need to invent some explanation for the inconsistencies in the Bible.  So like Star Trek with the Klingons, Star Wars with season 7 of Clone Wars had to invent reasons why she wasn't around for Episode III.  This was something I talked about in a recent post about how with all these prequels Star Wars keeps opening up new holes in its continuity even as they try to close others.

Like the clickbait article, a lot of this is to make money, but also because too many fans take this shit way too seriously, as if it actually is a religion.  Because they take it way too seriously, they consider it to be all-knowing and infallible, so when people point out inconsistencies, it threatens their beliefs.  They can't stand the idea their favorite property isn't perfect.  So there has to be some way to explain any problems so they don't feel threatened.  

Is it a bad thing?  As we've seen with religion, it can be a bad thing when people take it too seriously, like people in a cult who kill themselves--or kill other people.  I'm not sure how many times a Star Wars or Star Trek fan has murdered someone who disagreed with them, but the number is probably low.  Still, there's a lot of vitriol on the Internet from people who take this shit way too seriously.  The world would be a better place if we didn't take our addictions quite so seriously.

Legendary Game of Heroes & the Need for a Stable Platform

For the last couple of years, I've played Empires & Puzzles a lot on my phone, but there were times when there wasn't much to do in that game.  Because it's an RPG-type game there are times when you don't really have quests or objectives and stuff and yet there might not be much other stuff to do in real life either. 

So eventually I downloaded a similar game that had been advertised in Empires & Puzzles called Legendary Game of Heroes.  It has a similar sort of RPG setup and matching colored tiles to launch attacks but whereas in E&P you build a town to train your people and make items to help your teams, Legendary Game of Heroes is set up more in a Magic the Gathering style with just cards of characters and items.

I never really liked LGoH as much so it was just the game I'd play when I was bored with the other one.  There were some fun things to do like the "bounty hunt" where you use special bounty hunter characters to kill bad guys for points and prizes.  Like most things in that game it got repetitive but at least it was fairly easy once you could build up your teams and you got decent rewards if you made it all the way.  Completing the 20 basic levels got you 10 million gold pieces, which is really helpful in the beginning when you need gold to level up people and items.

Besides the rules I never really understood fully, there was something else holding LGoH back:  the platform was never stable.  There were always problems with it crashing or freezing up.  It was really annoying with things like the bounty hunt where you only have a limited number of keys because then you'd lose a key and not be able to get another one for 4 hours.

I put up with the issues for over a year but then last month in 12 hours it crashed 4 times!  I lost 3 bounty hunt keys!  One crash in that amount of time is tolerable, maybe two, but 4?  That was it.  I quit the guild I was in and deleted the game from my phone.

I mean really, I played that stupid game over a year and the people who made it never really seemed to do anything to make it run better.  They were too focused on pumping out one "event" after another to get people to pay money for gems and stuff to take the time to actually make the game's platform stable.

Before anyone says anything, I don't have problems like that with E&P very often.  And other people in my guilds over the last year or so complained about crashing issues too, so it was a widespread problem and I'm sure it was known by the company too.  They just didn't give a shit.  Why should they?  There's no money in making the program stable; it won't get people to spend money to buy shit.  Most players will just put up with it because they have time and money invested, so why worry about it?  Just tell them it's their fault and keep pumping out events that mostly get boring after 2 days, long before they expire.

The obvious parallel to writing is that your story needs a stable platform.  If your grammar and formatting and all that basic stuff aren't up to snuff, then it doesn't matter how good the rest of your story is; it'll be too annoying to read for anyone to bother with.  Unlike a video game, it's unlikely readers will have invested enough to plow through a lot of bad grammar and poor formatting.

So really, don't neglect the basics.  You need a stable foundation to build your story on.

Paperbacks!

 For those who want a paperback version of some of my gender swap stories, 8 new paperbacks are now available on Amazon!

Pool Hustle Swap (Swap Games #1) $5.99

Mulligan (Gender Swap Games #3) $6.99

Reunion (Gender Swap Warriors #1) $6.99

Derelict $5.99

Hero to Shero $5.99

Hitchswapper $5.99

Presto Change-O 3 $7.99

Shrinkage $6.99

What Is The Latest Trend In Lame Clickbait Articles?

A couple months ago I talked about how lame clickbait sites like ScreenRant would try to get people to see their articles by stuffing the headlines with goofy phrases like "Marvel's Superman" instead of "Hyperion" and "Marvel's Justice League" instead of "Squadron Supreme."  I think that story ended, so now they have to find a new trick.

In the last month they've been posting a bunch of headlines that say, "The MCU Did...something" or something else relating to "The MCU."  Just one problem:  these articles all relate to the Disney+ series, What If...? which tells half-hour-ish alternate history stories like, "What If Peggy Carter took the super soldier formula instead of Steve Rogers?"

When they started to do this, people like me said, this show is NOT "the MCU" and some fanboy would say, "They" (whoever "they" is) said it is.  Which, OK, technically these stories are offshoots of the MCU continuity, so they are tangentially "the MCU" but the way ScreenRant phrases these headlines is like they're talking about the actual continuity of the movies and recent live action TV shows.  That way when people search for "The MCU" they might click on these stupid things that don't actually relate to the MCU.

This article was an especially lame clickbait article.  The MCU Just Made Bucky's Winter Soldier Story Darker!  Except if you actually read the lame article you realize "the MCU" did nothing at all.  It's just this asshat speculating that in episode 3 of What If...? the Winter Soldier killed Hope van Dyne when she became an agent of SHIELD.  But there's absolutely no proof of this.  There's nothing shown or said to corroborate this.  It's pure speculation by the author with a headline designed to entice people. 

Like "Marvel's Superman" shit it's designed to entice gullible people but also people like me who are like, WTF?  Because a click is a click, right?  It's all pretty sad that people do this.  Maybe I shouldn't throw stones considering the stories I write for money but I don't call my stories, "Marvel's Superman" or say "The MCU Just Gender Swapped A Hero!" so people might read them.  Maybe I should try that.  The MCU Just Gender Swapped Marvel's Superman!  Probably get a ton of sales--until the book gets pulled for violating copyrights.

Mercari is in Some Ways Better Than eBay (A Not-Sponsored Post)

Since I started seeing commercials for the Mercari selling app a couple of years ago I've tried it as an alternative to eBay, but only recently have I started seeing results.  In the last month I actually sold as much on Mercari as eBay and I finally bought a couple of things too.  So now I can do a little better comparing the two.

eBay has been around since the late 90s or so and thus is the old guard in online auctions and for listing and buying second-hand stuff that can range from cars to brand-new electronics to toys from 60 years ago.  The first time I used it was around 2001 when I bought a 1984-ish gray Pound Puppy with brown spots and ears to replace the one I lost on a trip to Florida back in like 1987.  In the ensuing years I've bought some other stuff, mostly action figures and occasionally electronics or movies or something like that.

I started selling a few years ago after trying to sell stuff on Amazon got too fucked up.  I mean Amazon let some clown buy a brand-new laptop, use the thing for days (as evidenced by the default language being in Spanish), and then return it for a full refund with some bogus excuse about the mouse button not working--which wasn't true.

Anyway, unfortunately eBay's return policies haven't been much kinder to me as a seller.  I mean I've had one person lie about an item being "broken" because they couldn't figure out how to get it to work.  Instead of contacting the company to ask for help, they just lied and sent it back to me--and of course eBay let them.

Stuff like that had me again looking for an alternative and so when I saw the commercials for Mercari, I thought, What the hell?  

Mercari is foremost an app but there is a Web version too.  Since it is foremost an app, the listing process is streamlined for that.  Which I find annoying for most things because you only get 40 characters in your heading and like 1000 characters in your description.  That's fine if you're just listing an action figure or dress or book or something simple.  It sucks when you're listing electronics and want to provide as many details about what it is as you can.  eBay lets you put in a lot more detail--at least the web version.  They recently added tools when you load pictures so you can crop or rotate or brighten or sharpen the pictures right on the site, which is nice.

But I will say sometimes eBay has too much detail.  If you list a smart door lock or something like that, it'll have drop boxes for everything from the brand and model down to the color or which side of the door it goes on.  If you haven't actually used the thing or even opened it--the only way to sell it as New, as I learned from that stupid laptop on Amazon--that can be hard to say.

Where I really like Mercari is the offer system.  In eBay's system, someone can make an offer on something of mine and then I have to accept, decline, or counter.  If I accept, then that person gets an email--and I usually send an invoice--and then I have to wait to ship until they pay.  Which can take days, or in some cases people will ghost me entirely.  Which doesn't make sense.  You came to me with an offer, so why aren't you ready to pay?  If you change your mind, be grown up enough to say something and cancel instead of just running and hiding like a little kid would.  With Mercari there's none of that shit because when I offer, I have to include payment info.  If the seller accepts, the payment is done and they can ship right away.  If they decline, I don't get charged anything.  It's much better to avoid delays or ghosting.

In shipping, I still like eBay because it has better specific options.  Mercari's options are too broad.  Basically they go by the weight and give you a general label.  For USPS it might be up to 2lbs if you're using a small or medium box.  For a larger UPS item it could be up to 60lbs.  eBay's system is more specific so you're being charged more or less what you would at the counter of the UPS Store or post office.  Maybe a little more because it's better to fudge your numbers on the high side so your item isn't returned to you.

Another good thing about Mercari is after the sale.  I've sold lots of stuff on eBay but hardly anyone takes the time to give me a rating.  On Mercari, the buyer has to inspect and rate the item before the seller gets paid.  As a seller it kinda sucks to have to wait but on the plus side that means the buyer can't open the item, use it for days, and then return it.  Because after you inspect and rate the item you can't return it.  I haven't had it happen yet, but assume after the 3 days the buyer gets to rate the seller the seller gets paid even if they aren't rated.

Mercari also tells you when you sell the item how much they're taking in fees, whereas eBay is still not very transparent about this.  In the past they would take their cut the next month, which was always annoying.  In the last year or so they switched to taking it at the time they pay you, but they don't really tell you upfront what they're taking.  Then like last month, after you sell stuff they take more money for...reasons.  You can go on the site to find a PDF, which again is not very upfront.

This is one of those situations where I wish I could combine the two companies into one and take the best from both.  I know that won't happen, but it would be nice if they could learn from each other and make the process better as both a buyer and seller.

If you haven't checked Mercari out, they can have some decent deals.  The search function isn't all that great though.  I'm not sure why it brings up items that have already sold except maybe to give you an idea of comparative pricing.  The filters are pretty wonky too.  When trying to filter a search, I noticed a lot of stuff drop off that should have still been included--and stuff stay on that really shouldn't have stayed.  And you can't really seem to sort the results by price.  In the end you have to do more work than searching on eBay but occasionally it can be worth it.

I haven't used it but I assume Mercari has better support than eBay, because eBay really has none.  I mean the last time I needed help all they had was some phone number.  I thought that was pretty lame for a company that does all its business online.

If you've tried Mercari and eBay, let me know what you think.

One Man's Silly Idea Becomes The Same Man's Marketable Story

 On Monday I mentioned I might do a soft reboot movie idea for the Oblivion movies I first saw on Rifftrax a couple of years ago.  I started thinking of the idea while doing boring shit at work, which besides using the bathroom and driving in the car is where I get most ideas from.

Not the Final Cover

I started thinking up an idea where the marshal from the first movie's daughter would be out on some other planet.  Her mother would be killed and clues would lead to the desolate planet of Oblivion.  There she'd have to work with the few remaining people willing to stand for justice to stop an evil gang and avenge her parents.  In the end she'd probably wind up taking up the mantle of the marshal from her father the way he took it up from his father in the first movie.

Then I got thinking about things and thought:  the core of this idea would make a decent gender swap book!  Like an Old West version of Chance of a Lifetime.  Or The Lone Ranger.

The gist is there's a Texas Ranger in the 1880s who's tracking down some evil gang.  But whilst trying to apprehend them, he's killed instead.  A Native American shaman then brings him back to life--only he's a woman now!  Then like Chance of a Lifetime he has to find the members of the gang who killed him and kill them.  A Native American would come along with him as a sidekick and maybe they'd fall in love along the way.  There'd be some final confrontation with the power behind the evil gang, some big-shot businessman or something, and then our hero would ride off into the sunset to continue avenging evil with her Native American pal.

Something similar happened a few days later.  I had been watching the Battlestar Galactica reboot on Peacock and wondered how I could do a gender swap story with that.  And then I was thinking since you have Cylon robots who can look like humans, you could have a male Cylon become a female for whatever reason.

But then I got thinking that this could actually work for a sequel to Reunion: Gender Swap Warriors #1, aka my Voltron/Power Rangers-type story.  I had been thinking since there were two Voltrons in the second one they could make a second Voltron thing and for that they'd need pilots.  But the gender swap angle wasn't really working.

Then I got thinking that the evil witch (like Hagar in Voltron or whatever) could turn an enemy pilot into a human-like female using a piece of hair or something from one of the good guys.  The pilot would infiltrate the second Voltron project in the hopes of learning its secrets and delivering them to the enemy. But then she'd bond with the good guys and decide to join them instead.

Like most ideas there's stuff that needs filled in before these really go from an idea to actual stories.  But as you can see, sometimes an idea that seems like a total throwaway can actually be useful.

Battlestar Galactica, The Walking Dead, The Stand, etc Show the Fragility of Civilization

Recently I watched the reboot Battlestar Galactica series on Peacock (and before that the original on TubiTV) and it got me thinking how fragile society actually is.  And likewise shows like The Walking Dead and The Stand also make the same point.

In Galactica the 12 colonies out in a galaxy far, far away are destroyed by the robotic Cylons.  A group of survivors aboard a fleet of mostly civilian ships heads out into space to try to find a new home.  Besides the Cylons there are a lot of other problems, like critical shortages of food, water, fuel, and medicines.  There are also shortages of specialized personnel like pilots, soldiers, and doctors.

The water and fuel (tylium) and to some extent food (in the form of algae) they can find on asteroids or planets, but a lot of the other stuff is almost impossible to replace--especially people.  Training someone to fly a Viper fighter or Raptor bomber/transport usually takes months.  So every time a pilot is lost, that means it would take months to replace him/her, if not years.  And we just saw how hard it was to train a decent army in Afghanistan.  And then you have doctors, who are much harder to replace.  When Commander Adama is shot in one episode, the only doctor on the ship is on another ship, leaving a medic to basically patch him up and keep him on life support.  If Doc Cottle had never arrived, the commander would certainly have died because no one else had the expertise to do the necessary surgery.

If Doc Cottle had died, they would have been pretty screwed in that show since he was basically the only real doctor.  They did in one episode introduce a civilian doctor and in another a brain surgeon, but mostly it was Cottle in charge of all medical care for the fleet.  And he was an old guy who smoked so unless he trained a replacement, in years they could have lost their most competent doctor.

This is true in lots of other positions because their world, like ours, is one of specialties.  In The Walking Dead, The Stand, etc you have the same problem.  Because society is a web of specialties, when you start taking strings out of that web, inevitably it's all going to fall to pieces.  Some people, like me, are far less useful.  I mean in an apocalypse you don't really need accountants or writers.  But others like doctors, engineers, mechanics, plumbers, power/water treatment plant workers, are essential to important things functioning.

But even a lot of those people are not 100% experts at everything.  I mean a plumber might know how to unclog your drain, but does he know how to make all his tools?  The same for most everyone else.  A doctor knows how to treat your broken leg, but does he know how to make painkillers?  So many different people and skills are needed that if you start losing big chunks of people, it won't take long for things to start falling apart.

Society probably could limp on in a sort of medieval fashion and for a while we could squat in the ruins of our old glory, but eventually everything would run out or stop working.  It's like in the Warlord Trilogy by Bernard Cornwell that takes place in the late 5th/early 6th Century in Britain.  After the Romans left, the native Britons could live in the ruins, but they really didn't have the skills to keep the Roman technology alive.  At one point Arthur laments that no one in Britain could make a stone bridge like the Romans did, or the paved roads, aqueducts, and buildings.  They could make wooden bridges and buildings and such, but those were not as durable.  In the same way, after some cataclysmic event we might be able to keep our buildings, roads, power plants, and so on working for a little while, but eventually the systems for maintaining and building them would break down and the knowledge would be lost.  Like in Britain we would eventually slip into a Dark Age that would probably last centuries, if not forever.

If someone preserves the books and knowledge then it would help civilization rise again, but even with knowledge it would take resources.  You can read a cookbook and know how to make something, but you can't actually do it without the ingredients, an oven, mixer, blender, or whatever.  And for those appliances you need power, which means you need a power plant, and power lines, and so on.

If you're one of those survivalist or "prepper" types you can probably last longer.  But even they will eventually run out of stuff.  I mean those people might have stockpiled seeds and stuff, but do they know how to make a plow from scratch?  Or an axe?  Or how to domesticate animals?  There's just so much stuff that goes into keeping our society working that while it has endured and evolved, it is really, really fragile.

BTW, the lame thing with Star Trek Voyager vs Galactica was that Star Trek tech makes survival a lot easier even in another quadrant.  I mean you have replicators for food, beverages, and equipment.  You have an Emergency Medical Hologram for healthcare.  You have "sonic showers" so you don't even need water for those.  As long as you keep that stuff working, there would only be minor inconveniences.

Send This Post to Oblivion

 I figured I'd post this on Labor Day since it's the kind of post no one except me will care about.  Basically it's a placeholder post.

When I was writing about my hierarchy of bad movies on MST3K and Rifftrax, a couple near the better end of the spectrum were Oblivion (1994, not the Tom Cruise one) and Oblivion 2:  Backlash.  For some reason I actually like both movies and really think they're "bad" mostly because they didn't have the budget of a big Hollywood movie--like that Tom Cruise one.  That and George Takei and Isaac Hayes and a lesser extent Julie Newmar really hamming it up.

Anyway, these two movies are sci-fi Westerns taking place on the remote, desolate world of Oblivion, which really only apparently has one town also named Oblivion.  They have spaceships, energy shields, and cyborgs, but most everything else is Old West tech for whatever reason.  There's a particular ore called draconium on the planet that's extremely rare and valuable and short-circuits tech like energy shields.

In the first movie, the evil outlaw Redeye shows up and challenges the marshal to a duel.  He agrees thinking the shield in his badge will keep him safe, but Redeye has planted some draconium in the ground to short it out.  So the marshal is killed and Redeye and his gang take over the town.

Out in the wastelands, the marshal's son Zack Stone saves a "native" named Buteo from some "night scorpions" and the native basically swears a life debt to him ala Chewbacca and Han Solo.  Zack is told by the local mortician Gaunt, who has the ability to sense when death is at hand, that his father is dead and so he and Buteo go back to town.

Zack hopes to find enough money to get off the planet, but instead he's drawn into trying to stop Redeye and taking his father's place as the new marshal.  Buteo and the cyborg deputy Stell Barr help him to take care of Redeye and his gang, the former being eaten by night scorps in the wasteland.

In the second movie, Zack is having trouble making it with Mattie, the local shopkeeper.  Meanwhile, Lash, a sorta-dominatrix-looking member of Redeye's gang has found the location for a huge mine of draconium.  A bounty hunter named Sweeney, who dresses like someone from a Jane Austen novel instead of Boba Fett, shows up on the planet to arrest Lash for a crime some years ago on another planet.  And also to hit on Mattie, making Zack jealous.

Lash is apprehended, but before she can be taken by Sweeney, Redeye's brother, who's some kind of general, shows up and wants to also claim her.  At the same time, Zack learns that the crime Lash is accused of was actually committed by Miss Kitty, the local brothel owner.  Miss Kitty challenges Sweeney to come find her and Zack goes with him to make sure Miss Kitty (who unbeknownst to him but pretty much knownst to us is his mother) isn't hurt.  Meanwhile Lash and Redeye's brother are going to head to her mine to find the draconium.

Everyone winds up at the mine with Miss Kitty planning to blow it up.  But when the explosive goes off, it wakes a giant turtle, which I guess the mine actually was.  Miss Kitty is believed to be dead and so Sweeney leaves the planet.  Lash and Redeye's brother go...somewhere else.  Miss Kitty shows up at her own funeral to reveal she lived...somehow.  Zack and Mattie get back together and I guess everyone lives Happily Ever After.

(OK, the second one isn't as good!  Except for the soundtrack.)

I did one of those dumb things where I challenged myself to think of how to continue the story--mostly because I was bored.

So here's my idea for Oblivion 3, though I think it would have to be a comic book or animated movie because too much time has passed.  I mean Isaac Hayes is dead while Julie Newmar and George Takei are really old and who the hell knows what became of everyone else?

Anyway, picking up shortly after the second one, Zack and Mattie are going to get married.  A bunch of her relatives fly in from all over the galaxy and of course her parents don't really like Zack.  An uncle of hers has an ulterior motive as he has a claim for some land he wants to strip mine for draconium.  Buteo says that land is sacred to his people and wants Zack to rescind the uncle's claim, which puts him in an awkward position.

Zack, the uncle, and Buteo all ride out to inspect the land and see if it's worth fighting over.  Lash, meanwhile, hears of what's going on and with her henchman goes to follow Zack and the others and see if they have something of value--to then take it from them.

Meanwhile in town, Stell Barr and Miss Kitty are keeping an eye on Mattie.  An old suitor of hers has shown up in town and they try to keep him from rekindling things with Mattie.  Also meanwhile, Mattie's grandma or an old aunt hits on Mr. Gaunt and they have a roll in the hay.  In the morning he senses death and worries she died after their lovemaking but it turns out to be someone else.

Zack, the uncle, and Buteo arrive to inspect the land and find some natives there who know Buteo.  In a tomb or shrine or something, they find some draconium the natives basically used as decoration without knowing it was valuable.  Lash and her henchman show up and there's a fight.  To escape, the uncle has to cut a deal with the natives to not strip mine their sacred land.  They escape and Lash and her henchman are presumed dead.

That night, Zack has a bachelor's party at Miss Kitty's.  Buteo and the uncle have reached an agreement and everything seems on track but Zack is bummed seeing Mattie's family and realizing he has none of his own.  And then Miss Kitty reveals that she's his mother and never told him because she didn't want him to be embarrassed and so on and they make up.

The next day is the wedding with everyone there and they get married and live Happily Ever After.  And then there's some indication that Lash has survived to maybe try to take revenge someday.

The End?

I'm working on a soft reboot idea too, which probably could be a movie.  It won't be, but that's not the point.

Action Figures I Like Slightly Better Now

 Last January I posted some pictures of action figures I bought but didn't really like.  Recently I got around to fixing a couple of them.

The first one I posted about in January was the McFarlane Mikasa Ackerman from Attack on Titan.  The problem was besides not being very poseable, her left arm fell right off!  It was pretty lame, especially for a company that has otherwise made decent figures and the effort it took for me to get the thing.

A couple months ago I got a little glue gun from Amazon Vine and last month I finally got around to using it.  I warmed up the glue and then put a dab in the left arm socket and stuffed her arm in.  It held in place, though the problem then is the arm can't move.  It's not a huge problem considering the figure wasn't very poseable to start with.  So long as I don't drop her too much or anything, the glue repair should hold for a while.

Another one I had a problem with was the Mattel DC Multiverse Kingdom Come Superman.  The problem was really just his head.  It was supposed to look old but it hardly looked any different from a regular Superman.  As a temporary thing I boiled him for a couple minutes to pop the head off and then put on a Dark Knight Returns Bruce Wayne head where I colored the top of his hair black with a marker.  It worked OK but it's not really to scale and the skin tone is a little off.

Original Version

With Bruce Wayne head

At work I saw a bottle of White-Out and thought maybe I could use that to repaint the original head.  And it worked!  Maybe too well because the white is a little thick in places.  But looking at it from the front it does look a lot better, more how it's supposed to.

The problem then was I think in the process of boiling him to pop his head off, the hole in his head to go on the peg of his neck had shrunk!  It was too small to put the head back on his body.  So I had to get out my electric drill and very carefully make the hole bigger.

Except the hole was now too big!  To fix that, I had to get the glue gun back out.  I put a dab in the hole and then put it on the peg and held it a few seconds. The head stuck, but like Mikasa's arm it can't move.  Too bad.

It does look better, though I wish I could maybe add some better lines and wrinkles on his face to go with the hair.  But close enough!

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

 For a long time--I don't know how long really, probably 4 or 5 years at least--along with my various perma-free books, I usually put at least 1 Eric Filler title for free everyday.  For October or December I'd usually put Halloween or Christmas titles on sale for free, but the rest of the year was more of a grab bag that depended on what had days available in its 90-day KDP window.

I really can't say how much that impacted real sales, if at all.  It didn't usually affect ratings much at all, which I thought was a bummer.  But now that people can rate books on Amazon without writing anything at all, I found more often that after I made a book free what I'd get for my generosity was some ass trolling the book with a 1-star to 3-star rating.  Some old books like My Wife Changed Me Into a Geek Girl that had 5-star ratings got dragged down to 3 1/2.

Last month I made a new release, Hitchswapper, free for the first time.  Up to that point it had like 15 ratings for a 4 star average.  I made it free and got trolled with a 1-star rating that dragged it down to 3.5 stars.  That pissed me off, so when August 1 came around and I remembered I hadn't set up any free books, I said to myself, well, fuck it.  These jerk-offs have taken my generosity for granted just a little too much.  So let's not do the extra free books this month and see what happens.

And in the first month...not much difference sales-wise.  It didn't completely wipe out my sales or anything.  It's pretty much the same as the prior months when I gave away more books.  Sales were actually up a little bit over last month.

I think a lot of that is the people who download free books aren't necessarily the type actually reading those books.  Most of them are just filling up their Kindle and Cloud with free books they'll probably never read.

As for the trolls who end up giving the book a bad rating, part of that might be what that Amazon Decoded book was saying about giving books away:  sometimes you can end up giving the books to people who wouldn't otherwise buy them because they aren't your real audience.  So they won't like the book as much.  It has often been a problem with people not seeming to understand what the book they downloaded was before they read it.

Obviously though this won't stop people from downloading the books with Kindle Unlimited for "free" and downvoting them.  There's really not much I can do about that unless I want to stop putting books on Kindle Unlimited.  I'm still not sure about that even though the KU royalty has shrunk from years ago.  It used to be about 50% of my revenue but now it's more like 33%.  I think that trend started when they switched from the "books borrowed" system to "pages read" system.  Someone with a lot of short books like me could benefit more from the former probably more than the latter.  But also there are more authors using it and more scammers scamming it.

Sometimes I think about not including a free book link in my newsletter too.  Years ago I would just pick something that was free almost at random.  But then I had people whine a few times that the book was a Kindle Unlimited promotion so when they finally opened my newsletter, the book was no longer free.  Well, TS, I think, but I stopped doing that and used perma-free books instead.  But the problem with those is there aren't a lot so I wind up using some over and over.  And one time I still had someone whine that the book wasn't free in Canada--like I'm supposed to check the book's link in every single fucking country or something. 

Lately I've tried stretching out a little, like I put a link for a gender swap manga instead of a real book.  I put a link to another author's newsletter so people could sign up for that and get a free book.  And I found another one on Prolific Works.  But still it's hard to find stuff that's perma-free so I might decide to just stop doing it and see if I lose most of my newsletter audience or not.

Anyway, it was IWSG day, wasn't it?  Was that sufficiently whiny?