The epic conclusion! Jean-Paul Valley has it all: a cool new suit of armor, a reputation as a hero, and a girlfriend. After taking over as Azrael from the Order of St. Dumas, breaking from the Order, and defeating Bane, it seems finally Jean-Paul is living his best life. So it's time to start tearing it down!
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We start at some warehouse in Gotham (or wherever) where some lowlifes are doing criminal stuff. Suddenly a figure bursts in with a flaming sword. But it's not Jean-Paul Valley. This dude is wearing white armor with a red cross that looks sorta like the Assassin's Creed guy:
He kills the guys and leaves a token of St. Dumas so the cops will think it was Azrael.
The next day, Jean-Paul is moving his stuff into his girlfriend Becky's apartment. They're having fun until the news comes on with a report about Azrael killing a bunch of people. Becky asks Jean-Paul, but he says it wasn't him. So who was it?
That night, Azrael goes out in his cool armor to try to find someone who might have information. He finds some homeless guy or something who says he saw a dude in white armor with a flaming sword. While he might not be the most credible witness, Jean-Paul is pretty sure he's being framed.
He's spotted by a couple of cops and has to escape without killing them. He gets back to his apartment and hides the armor. On the news, the police are saying that Azrael has killed a bunch more people--some of them not even criminals!
As Jean-Paul & Becky consider what to do next, the new Azrael bursts into their apartment! Jean-Paul tries to fight the guy, but without his armor, he's not a match for the guy. He manages to get one of the dart throwers and the new guy retreats--taking Becky with him! He says if Jean-Paul wants to see her alive again, he'll go to an address that Jean-Paul realizes is an Order safehouse.
He armors up and then goes to the safehouse, where Sister Lilha is there along with the new Azrael and Becky. She says if Jean-Paul goes back with them to face judgment then they'll let Becky go. After exchanging some words about what kind of monster Sister Lilha is, Jean-Paul agrees and takes off the armor. He gets to say goodbye to Becky and then the new Azrael knocks him out.
He wakes up on a plane with his hands and legs shackled and the new Azrael watching him. He tries to engage the new Azrael in conversation and the new guy finally takes off his mask and hood to reveal he's a black guy. He says his name is Michael Lane and he was a cop until Jean-Paul killed his wife. Jean-Paul protests his innocence and Michael reveals his wife was killed in one of the attacks by Bane's henchmen. So even if Jean-Paul didn't kill her directly, he's the reason. And then the Order gave him a suit of armor and sword to take down Jean-Paul and get revenge.
Michael doesn't look great and when Jean-Paul mentions this, Michael tells him to mind his own business. Jean-Paul asks him about "the System" or the training protocols installed in him when he was young, but Michael has no idea about that. He was not brainwashed into serving the Order; he is doing it willingly for revenge. Sister Lilha shows up to knock Jean-Paul out again.
When he wakes up, he's back in the Order's lair, again chained and facing some old white guys. They're the high priests or whatever of the Order. They accuse him of abandoning the Order, stealing its property, and deviating from its ways. They ask him to respond to the charges and he says he's guilty and basically gives them the whole, "You're out of order! The whole system is out of order!" type speech, though probably less Al Pacino shouty. But he wants a chance to clear himself the old-fashioned way in a trial by combat. If he wins, he's innocent and can go free and the Order will leave him (and Becky) alone. If he loses, then obviously he was guilty. The high priests agree and so Nomoz appears with Jean-Paul's armor and mentions they will probably need a third Azrael soon because the cursed "Suit of Sorrows" is killing Michael.
So then Jean-Paul and Michael have to face off. Cue the original Star Trek duel theme! Jean-Paul gets some good shots in, but he's been knocked out twice and so is a little off his game while Michael is full of rage and fury. He overwhelms Jean-Paul and gets him on his knees. Jean-Paul takes off his helmet and tells Michael that if he truly believes Jean-Paul killed his wife, then he should strike him down. Then he can be satisfied until the "Suit of Sorrows" finishes poisoning him and he joins his wife.
Michael hesitates. He finally drops his sword and falls to the ground. Fighting the "Suit of Sorrows" has only accelerated the poison. The high priests call in some other assassins and guards to kill both Azraels. Jean-Paul incapacitates them and then grabs Michael. He finds a weapons locker or something to set off an explosion that will destroy the Order's lair.
On his way out, Nomoz stops Jean-Paul and slips him an antidote for the Suit of Sorrows poison. Then he sarcastically wishes Jean-Paul luck before disappearing. Jean-Paul carries Michael out into the snow, where he removes the Suit of Sorrows to give Michael the antidote. There's a big explosion, followed by an avalanche as the Order's lair is blown up and covered in snow. The Order of St. Dumas is gone and now Jean-Paul and Michael can begin the long journey home.
In the epilogue, Jean-Paul is back with Becky. She's counseling Michael on overcoming his grief. Michael has taken a job as a security guard at Jean-Paul's college while he recovers from everything. Meanwhile, Jean-Paul is still fighting crime in his Azrael suit. And they live sorta Happily Ever After...
In a cookie scene, we see Sister Lilha has survived and is building a new Order and vowing to destroy Azrael once and for all!
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So there we go, an epic saga that uses a lot of parts from the Azrael mythos. This third part includes some stuff from the second Azrael series, the one featuring Michael Lane. I hope I didn't stray too far from his character, because I'd hate to do to him what DC has done to Jean-Paul.
Anyway, tomorrow begins the A to Z Challenge of DC Multiverse action figures. Gee, who do you think is the A entry? I'll give you three guesses and the first two don't count.
In my previous post, I challenged myself to write a decent Azrael story, something DC Comics has failed to do for about 25 years--if not longer. Part 1 has college student Jean-Paul Valley finding his father was an enforcer called Azrael for the Order of St. Dumas. Jean-Paul takes up the mantle to find his father's killer, Carlton LeHah. After LeHah dies, Jean-Paul returns to Gotham (or wherever) to resume his life and fight crime in the guise of Azrael. Meanwhile, Bane and his henchmen Bird and Trogg have escaped from prison in Santa Prisca (somewhere in Central America) and are headed to Gotham.
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So we begin with the docks of Gotham (or wherever) with Bird or Trogg talking with a drug dealer. Basically, Bane needs someone with the equipment so he can make his Venom and also wants a piece of the action in Gotham--or wherever. While Bird or Trogg negotiates, Bane and the other henchman are hidden somewhere dark to watch and wait.
Suddenly, Azrael shows up, flaming sword blazing. Jean-Paul beats up the criminals, but he keeps having flashes of memories to his training in Switzerland. He nearly kills a couple of guys but barely holds himself back from doing so. Bird or Trogg is nearly killed while Bane just watches; when the other guy pleads with him to intervene, Bane refuses, saying he needs to study this new variable.
Jean-Paul goes back to his dorm and stashes his armor. Then he sits there kinda freaked out about it. He decides not to put the armor back on until he gets a better handle on things.
Meanwhile, Bane and his henchmen return to their lair only for someone to be waiting for them. Before Bane can kill the person, they hold up a very large gun. And then explain that they can give Bane the equipment he needs--if he helps them by taking down Azrael. Since Bane was already going to do that, he agrees.
The next day, Jean-Paul inadvertently (or advertently) stumbles into a support group led by a woman named Becky--after the Scarlet Knight's best friend. The support group is for people who have been in mind-controlling groups and Jean-Paul eventually admits that he basically grew up in a cult and is struggling to overcome their mind control. After the session, Becky offers to help as best she can, so they agree to meet up later. (This is something missing from the comics--a love interest!)
Meanwhile, Bane's henchman has gathered a bunch of lowlife criminals. Bane appears and directs the lowlifes to create as much havoc and chaos that night as they can to stretch the police--and Azrael--thin. Those who agree will get a place in Bane's new order and those who don't will get their asses kicked. After one tries to pull a gun and gets his ass kicked, the others agree.
That night, Becky meets with Jean-Paul for dinner and they talk. She was in kind of a Scientology-type situation and struggled to break that programming, which led her to becoming interested in psychology. They discuss strategies and such and Jean-Paul has never been so at ease with a woman in his life.
And of course that's when Bane's minions launch attacks all over the city. Though he doesn't want to, Jean-Paul leaves Becky to suit up and take on Bane's minions. He battles a few criminals while trying not to give in to "the System" or the Order of St. Dumas programming.
Near the end of the night, he's going to stop some crime when Bane appears. Things do not go well. While Jean-Paul is not "broken" like Batman, he's basically beaten within an inch of his life and barely manages to escape. Becky finds him, removes what's left of the armor, and takes him to a clinic to have his wounds treated.
A victorious Bane and some henchmen go to a warehouse to get the promised stuff to begin making Venom. But instead there's an Order of St. Dumas assassin. Bane takes out the assassin and declares that the city is his now.
A few days later, Jean-Paul is a little better off, but obviously not fully healed. Bane's henchmen have continued their rampage with police stretched too thin to completely stop them. He wants to get back out there, but the armor is fucked and he laments there's no way he could beat Bane without giving himself over to "the System," and then he would be lost. Becky helps him to access his memories of "the System" without letting it override his personality. And then Jean-Paul knows what needs done.
He goes to an Order safehouse, where he finds Sister Lilha. She confesses she tried to get Bane to kill him, but now they can't stop him. Jean-Paul says he has a plan, but he needs some stuff from the Order. Nomoz is also there and helps Jean-Paul build a cool tactical battle suit sort of like this one from the comics, but without the Bat symbol:
Later, Jean-Paul goes to see Becky and say goodbye. He thanks her for everything she's done and they kiss. Then he goes to find some of Bane's henchmen so he can find the man himself.
They finally meet in some big plaza or something. Bane is charged up on Venom while Jean-Paul has his armor with dart launchers and flamethrowers. There's a big epic battle and Bane is winning until Jean-Paul manages to break the Venom lines feeding to Bane's body. It doesn't kill him or cause him to shrink or anything, but it's enough of a shock that it gives Jean-Paul an opening that he's able to take advantage of. He pummels Bane, but holds back from killing him. Instead, he lets the cops take Bane away.
Later, Sister Lilha thanks him for cleaning up their mess and asks if he'll come back to the Order, but he refuses. Then he goes to see Becky and thanks her again for all her help. They kiss and then he goes out to fight some crime because a lot of Bane's henchmen are still out there.
In the cookie scene, a black police officer is at the hospital as his wife dies from injuries sustained in one of the attacks. Later, he's confronted by Sister Lilha, who asks if he wants revenge for his wife on the man responsible: Azrael. The man says yes.
Near the end of last year, I started reading Curse of the White Knight, which features a version of one of my favorite characters, Jean-Paul Valley, aka Azrael. And, frankly, it sucked. It was a complete mutilation of the character. Reading the first Tales of the Dark Multiverse story prior to that, it also mutilated the character. I'm not sure about more recent Detective Comics or I guess there was a 2022 series called Sword of Azrael. Given DC's recent track record, though, it probably sucks.
But it made me think that the problem with these stories is they just see Jean-Paul/Azrael as a nemesis of Bruce Wayne's Batman or a lesser member of the "Bat-Family." And they make him a religious nut, which in the 90s only happened after he was exposed to Scarecrow's fear gas--and they needed a poison pill to justify Bruce Wayne returning. Before that and in his own series, Jean-Paul Valley was not a religious nut; he was actually kind of a socially awkward dork.
In general, I don't think modern writers take the character himself seriously as a real person. As I like to do, I challenged myself to find a better way. So of course I came up with a trilogy that could be comics or movies or both. And adding to the challenge, we're going to do it without Batman or any of that. We're going to use 1 Batman villain, but it's one who is linked to Azrael, so I think that's OK.
And, hey, it'll make a good lead-in to my A to Z Challenge. Let us begin with part 1!
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It begins with a rich guy in a penthouse on the phone. A voice tells him to return what he's stolen or face the consequences. When he refuses, a window shatters and in flies a man in red armor with a flaming sword! He says the man, Carlton LeHah, has stolen from the Order of St. Dumas and now will meet the justice of Azrael! Except LeHah is ready and shoots Azrael with a gun using armor-piercing bullets. Azrael barely escapes through the window.
Cut to Jean-Paul Valley waking from a nightmare in his dorm at Gotham University--or wherever. The nightmare is vague snippets of him being trained to use a sword and stuff. He wakes in a cold sweat and decides to go for a jog to clear his head. Suddenly he's grabbed by someone. He manages to escape only to find himself facing his father! His father wearing red armor that has several holes and is splattered with blood.
His father tells him it's his time to take up the Azrael mantle and that he must kill Carlton LeHah for the Order of St. Dumas. Jean-Paul doesn't want to, but since his father is dying, he reluctantly agrees. Then his father dies. Jean-Paul takes the armor to hide it and then buries his father somewhere.
The next day he does some research, but there's not much on an Order of St. Dumas. There is more on Carlton LeHah, whom Interpol suspects of smuggling weapons into several war zones around the world. LeHah just so happens to live not that far away, but when Jean-Paul recons the place, he sees a lot of bodyguards. How is he supposed to get in there? He has some flashes of training like in his dream and retreats to go back to his dorm.
There's a woman waiting for him inside! She calls herself Sister Lilha and is part of the Order of St. Dumas. She's there to take him to Switzerland for his training. Jean-Paul reluctantly agrees to go with her. On the flight, she only gives some cryptic answers about the Order and what she does for them. Eventually they get to Switzerland and go up into the mountains to some remote chalet.
There, Jean-Paul meets a weird dwarf called Nomoz who begins his training. And what Jean-Paul realizes is this is the origin of his dreams--or nightmares. He remembers training in this place as a little boy. And then he remembers someone helping him to escape the Order: a woman who looks sort of like him that he realizes was his mother. She was wounded in the escape and died while he was taken in by some cops in Zurich or wherever. But now he's returned!
Soon Jean-Paul finds that old training kicking in, making him a total badass. He also cleans and repairs his father's armor, maybe putting a few new touches on it. With some computer skills he already had, he finds LeHah is on his country estate in England, which no doubt has a ton of guards and stuff.
Sister Lilha takes him to England on the jet. During the trip, he asks her about why she stays with the Order and she says she believes in their mission or whatever. He floats the idea that after LeHah is dead they could both leave the Order and start over somewhere, but she is cool to that idea.
Jean-Paul stakes out the estate and then puts on the Azrael armor to storm the place. Things don't go great, but Azrael's training keeps Jean-Paul in one piece. But LeHah escapes! Worse, his people have captured Sister Lilha!
LeHah sets a meeting on an oil rig he owns in the North Sea. It's obviously a trap, but Jean-Paul has to go or Sister Lilha will die and his father's killer will remain free. So he goes there and uses some of his cunning to get on the rig. There's a big showdown with LeHah and his goons using armor-piercing bullets and rocket launchers and stuff. Jean-Paul is wounded but not too badly.
In the end he saves Sister Lilha but doesn't kill LeHah because he doesn't really want to be Azrael. LeHah repays him by of course trying to kill him and then Sister Lilha kills him with a gun. Jean-Paul asks her again to leave the Order with him, but she refuses. And she tells him that the Order will call upon him again--whether he likes it or not.
Jean-Paul goes back to Gotham (or wherever) and when he hears a scream, he gets out the Azrael armor to go fight some crime.
In a cookie scene, we see an old, scary prison on the island of Santa Prisca. A wall explodes while sirens sound and spotlights wave around. A couple of smaller guys wriggle out, followed by a big guy in a Mexican wrestler mask with some tubes hooked up to him. It's Bane! And some indication that he's going to Gotham.
In the previous "Stuff I Watched" I talked about Black Panther Wakanda Forever, which I really didn't like. The movie was dealt a bad hand when Chadwick Boseman died and while I agreed that they shouldn't immediately recast the role, what they wound up doing was not great. Really it wasn't even good.
As always, I think to myself, "Could you do better?" And because I usually don't need my full brain capacity for doing work at work, I'll roll ideas around in my head to amuse myself. This is another case of that and I'm sure no one will care, but what the hell, right?
The biggest thing that stuck in my craw after I watched the movie was when I realized there was little to no mention of "the Blip" in the movie. That was that stupid 5 year period where half the Earth was "dead" thanks to Thanos, which included T'Challa, aka the Black Panther. As for the rest of Wakanda, I'm not really sure what happened, because there were few mentions of it. Since Okoye was in Endgame, we know she survived, but I'm not sure about the rest. Anyway, the point being that there were 5 years where T'Challa was dead, so the premise of the movie that they were all confused and uncertain without T'Challa was pretty dumb as they were without him for 5 full years already!
My thought then is that we need to lean into this. Which really would have been easier to do if Boseman had lived because they could have made the whole movie about him returning and restoring Wakanda and all that. Still, seeming to pretend "the Blip" didn't happen doesn't make sense. We've got to deal with it--thanks Russo Brothers. [eye roll]
The next big decision to make is what do we do with T'Challa? The actual movie never shows him except in previous footage. I could see where you don't really want to do that whole CGI deepfake stuff like Disney has done a few times in the Star War franchise. It seems kind of ghoulish. And yet just killing him off-screen and showing nothing except previous footage and a coffin seems kind of lame. And killing him off-screen from an unspecified "illness" also seems lame.
The thing is, since as the Black Panther he wears a full-body costume with a helmet, you wouldn't have even needed all the "deepfake." Or even to do a lot of trick shots like they did with Harold Ramis's character in Ghostbusters Afterlife. All you would have needed was someone in the suit, so basically a stuntman, and maybe simulate the voice, which for some reason they didn't even use in previous footage.
So my idea is it's been a few months since "the Blip" and while Wakanda has managed to hold off invaders, things aren't great. Surrounding countries have been trying raids here and there to get into the country and steal its valuable vibranium. And with T'Challa and others "dead," it was hard for Wakanda to mount a big offense.
One of the nearby countries (I have no idea what it'd be called) decides to kick things up a notch in part thanks to some "advisors" who provide them with new weapons probably based on alien technology. They attack a settlement just outside the Wakandan shield and threaten to kill all the women, children, and old people unless they get a specified amount of vibranium.
A group of Wakandan vehicles go outside the shield with the vibranium. They're led by Okoye. Meanwhile, the Black Panther sneaks in to try to rescue the hostages. But things go south and in trying to save a child, T'Challa is hit with one of the new weapons that penetrates his armor and deals a fatal blow. The Wakandans drive the bad guys off, but the king is dead!
And then you can have the funeral and all that. Really you can do the above without showing T'Challa's face and barely using his voice. Maybe a line or two and a grunt or whatever when he's shot. Then he dies onscreen and in a slightly more heroic fashion in trying to save people. I think it's better. Maybe you think different...
From there, Shuri throws herself into investigating her brother's death and blames herself for the armor not protecting him. Meanwhile, in Langley, Everett Ross starts to uncover evidence that the US is supplying weapons to Wakanda's neighbors to try to get in there and claim the vibranium.
Shuri, Okoye, and Ross then have to work together to find out what's going on and stop the flow of technology. Meanwhile, the neighboring country steps up its attacks with more alien weapons. And they probably eventually take down the shield or convince someone to let it down so they can get inside. The queen is killed and the people have to take refuge in the higher elevations and so on.
Shuri is bummed when she learns her mother has died too. And Okoye blames herself for not being there. They find whoever in the US government is supplying the weapons and stop the flow. Then they have to head back to Wakanda to try to liberate the place. Along the way, Shuri has a dream and her mother shows up to tell her that she must be the Black Panther now. When she says she doesn't have that heart-shaped herb, her mother tells her the real strength of the Black Panther is in the heart of the person, not the heart-shaped herb. And so she makes a suit that's probably more basic than that one in the movie. And maybe Okoye gets the "Midnight Angel" thing since I guess you need to sell toys, right? Hell, give Ross some kind of armor too while you're at it. Toys!
The bad guys are threatening M'Baku and his guys and then Shuri and Okoye show up in their new duds and turn the tide. Shuri rallies her people to fight back against the bad guys. Then there's a big battle and they drive the bad guys out and threaten that if the neighboring countries try to get in again, they'll pay bigly for it. Then Shuri visits the graves or burial places of her family and vows to keep on the Black Panther tradition.
And in cookie scenes you can have Shuri introduce a new suit (to sell more toys of course) and Julia Louise-Dreyfuss or whoever meets with some captured bad guy to have him killed or otherwise silenced. Or whatever stupid MCU servicing you need to do. I would not introduce a secret son of T'Challa because that was lame.
Maybe there needs to be more to it to make it 2 1/2 hours but I tried to streamline it. I suppose if you really want to you could use the underwater place and Namor, but I didn't really like it that much.
So anyway, maybe that's better. Or maybe it's worse. You decide! Or don't.
(PS: If you hate this post, you're really going to hate the last 3 before the A to Z Challenge.)
The final stuff I watched before the A to Z Challenge begins!
Vengeance (Not A Love Story): I added the subtitle to differentiate it from the Nic Cage movie a few years ago. This 2022 movie starring The Office's BJ Novak is about Ben, a New York guy who gets a call one night from the brother of a girl Ben hooked up with. He says the girl died in her hometown in Texas and wants Ben to come out for the funeral. Since he doesn't want to tell the brother that it was just a meaningless hookup, Ben goes to Texas. While the death was reported as an overdose, the brother thinks it was murder and wants to avenge her. Ben starts to make it into a podcast called "Dead White Girl." But as he spends time with the girl's family and friends, he starts learning more about the culture down there. There's some comedy, but probably not as much as you might expect. There are also some poignant moments and kind of real talk about the divide between red states and blue states. Ashton Kutcher's soliloquy about that old trope of the hero getting the villain on tape rings pretty true when you consider we had someone elected president who was caught on tape saying he grabbed women by the pussy. It's just another reason that trope needs to be retired from movies, TV, and books. (3/5) (Fun Fact: Talking about blue states and red states made me think of this Dan Bern song: )
The Old Man, Season 1: This FX series stars Jeff Bridges as a former CIA agent who disappeared after the first war involving America in Afghanistan--the one where Osama bin Laden was a "good guy." About 35 years later he's widowed and living alone and at first you think the show will be about him struggling with dementia or something. But soon he and his two Rottweilers go on the run from his former handler John Lithgow. And at that point you might think the show is about him trying to get away and rid himself of his former bosses like the Bourne movies. But wait, there's more! There's unfinished business with a guy in Afghanistan and a daughter who it turns out is a daughter in a way to three different guys in the show. By that I mean one is the biological father, one raised her in her early years, and the other mentored her during her career. Who is who? Watch to find out! There are a lot of twists and turns and there's some action though it's not as frantic as a Bond or Bourne movie, because these main characters are in their 70s, so come on, what can you expect? There are a lot of plot threads and I was surprised when it ends on a cliffhanger because I just assumed this was a one-off. But FX is gambling that its elderly stars will still be alive this year for another season.
The thing that most annoyed me (besides the cliffhanger) is that it often switches place and time without telling you where or when things are. While the first episode is mostly in the present, subsequent episodes start flashing back to Afghanistan in the 80s and about the only clue you have is there's a younger guy who obviously isn't Jeff Bridges. They couldn't just pop some text on the screen saying, "Afghanistan, Then" or something like that? Otherwise it can be disorienting for a few minutes, especially when they don't show characters up close at first. I'm just saying. (3.5/5)
Black Adam: I finally watched this when I accidentally got a Vudu gift card from the Movie House app instead of an Amazon one. So this was only $1. It was worth that at least. Actually it wasn't bad. It might have been better if it had focused on Black Adam instead of shoehorning the Justice Society in there. (Like Eternals, putting the JSA in there just makes you wonder where the hell they were during all the other stuff of the DCU.) But Pierce Brosnan as Dr. Fate does lend some gravitas to the thing. The two kids (Cyclone and Atom Smasher) were underdeveloped while they hardly did anything with Hawkman's backstory, which since he's existed since the 40s is pretty intricate by now.
When they get to Black Adam's real origin story it was a good and touching twist that made me think they should have focused more on that kind of material than setting up sequels and crossovers that likely will never happen. It also explained why he was so protective of the one kid. Most of the plot is about Teth Adam being awakened after like 4600 years and fighting Intergang, who have taken over the country of Kahndaq. There's also a crown that creates the demonic creature Sabbac, who's like an evil version of Shazam. While the JSA at first try to arrest Black Adam, they have to team up against Sabbac--your basic Peter Griffin Bigger Jaws plot. If you like superhero movies you'd probably like this and if you don't then you probably won't. (3/5) (Fun Facts: I was surprised to learn Aldis Hodge plays Hawkman because in the crime caper show Leverage he was always the dorky computer hacker who can't fight and in this movie he's all buff and stuff. He also has a mansion with an underground lair that a cool plane rises up out of like Charles Xavier. As most people already know, the cookie scene was the final appearance of Henry Cavill as Superman. The scene then really contributes nothing; really they should have done something with Zachary Levi's Shazam since he's Black Adam's traditional rival and his movie is the next one up. They could have done both with the Shazam one as like an end credits cookie scene where maybe he--or Billy Batson--sees something on the news or gets a message from the wizard or something like that.)
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever: The Black Panther franchise was dealt a serious blow when star Chadwick Boseman died in 2020 from cancer. Some people suggested they just recast the role, but I agreed with the other side that they should continue--for at least one movie. Unfortunately that movie was this movie. What was probably needed was a serious meditation on what the Black Panther means to Wakanda and how they can go on without it. And how T'Challa's family can go on without him. But that wouldn't sell much merchandise, would it? So we have to cram a bunch of stuff in there to move the Marvel agenda along. There's the unpronounceable underwater kingdom ruled by a mostly unrecognizable Namor. And there's Riri Williams, aka "Ironheart" who has existed in the Marvel Comics universe for about 5 minutes but for some reason needs crammed into an already packed movie. This really fails to invoke the hope, optimism, and just outright coolness of Wakanda in the first movie. Shuri is especially done a disservice as instead of the smart, sassy sidekick of the first movie she's shoved into the spotlight but mostly mopes around first because of her brother's death and then her mother's. The whole thing is a dreary slog that mostly fails to connect on an emotional level. Probably the most emotional moment is when instead of the self-indulgent Marvel logo they use entirely footage of Chadwick Boseman's T'Challa. There's another decent moment later when again they show T'Challa as his sister grieves for him. But for some reason they never use his voice.
I have to say that even the unpronounceable underwater kingdom isn't as good as what DC did in Aquaman, which itself was largely creating an underwater Wakanda. And there's something kind of disturbing about Wakanda going to war with essentially an underwater counterpart full of blue people. If you think about it, they've never had Wakanda fight white people. First it was essentially a civil war. Then against Thanos's monsters. And now against the less rabbity Na'Vi people. Kind of think someone at Disney is concerned about offending racists by having white people be the villains against black people. Or maybe concerned about giving black people the idea they could defeat white people. Maybe I'm overthinking it.
And something that occurred to me later: what about "the Blip?" T'Challa was "dead" for 5 years already when Thanos killed him and billions of others at the end of Infinity War. So in that 5 years, Wakanda would already have been without him and the Black Panther. So why is everyone acting like this is a new thing they're totally unprepared for? Why doesn't anyone lament how unfair it was that he came back to life only to die again? It makes no sense! (2/5) (Fun Fact: the mid-credits cookie scene decides we need to cram in a secret son of T'Challa with Nakia. I guess they just didn't feel the need to mention this at all in essentially 2 movies. Yeah, sure, real believable. Eye roll.)
Babylon: the more apt title might have been: Degradation in Early Hollywood. If Marquis de Sade had been able to write about early Hollywood, it might have looked like this. In the first half-hour we have elephant diarrhea, a golden shower, a pile of coke, tons of nudity, a woman singing about stroking her lover's pussy, and lots more debauchery. This is in 1926 and we meet the main characters at a movie studio head's party: Jack (Brad Pitt) is a big star, Nellie (Margot Robbie) is a girl from Jersey who wants to be a star, Manuel immigrated from Spain to work in the magic of movies but is only an assistant, and Sidney is a black jazz musician yet to make it big. Manuel helps Nellie into the party, where she winds up getting a part in a movie while Jack hires Manuel as his new assistant. Soon Nellie is a silent movie starlet and Manuel becomes more involved in the business. But the "talkies" ruin Jack and Nellie's careers while Manuel becomes a studio exec and Sidney becomes a star. But even success kinda sucks. At one point, Manuel has to convince Sidney to basically wear black face for the movie he's working on. The idea being that even though minorities could have money and a title, they still didn't have respect. The very sluggish ending kills two characters while the other two sink back into obscurity. For all the debauchery it gets pretty dull. Not a lot of new ground is covered unless you're not really familiar with Hollywood history. (2/5) (Fun Fact: Tobey Maguire produces the movie and appears as a drug kingpin near the end.)
Downsized: I had this on my Hulu queue for a while but never got around to watching it. Then I saw it on Paramount+ and gave it a look--and wished I hadn't. The concept is the sort reserved for wacky comedies like Honey I Shrunk the Kids: a Norwegian scientist invents a device that can make people 5 inches tall (about the size of an action figure) and so Matt Damon gets this done. Hilarity ensues? Nope. Instead we're treated to a lot of ham-fisted social commentary about class warfare and climate change. You know something is up when early on Matt Damon's wife (Kristen Wiig) bails on him when they're supposed to get shrunk. So instead of a couple trying to navigate this new world, we have Matt Damon moping around until we awkwardly introduce the love interest: a shrill Vietnamese house cleaner with one leg. Yay? Anyway, while well made by Alexander Payne, who previously made movies like About Schmidt, Election, Sideways, and Nebraska and with a good cast also including Christoph Waltz and Jason Sudeikis, the movie takes a fun idea and then mutes it all to dull gray sludge. It reminded me of Being John Malkovich that had a fun concept but immediately took it to the nasty sex stuff and so wound up not being as fun as you'd think. I have to partially blame myself for not looking close enough but also probably the film's marketing that probably just used the few fun parts in the trailers. (2/5)
Mayor of Kingstown, Season 2: The first season introduced the city of Kingstown, Michigan, where incarceration is a big business and Mike McClusky (Jeremy Renner) takes over his family business of doing favors for family and friends of those inside the prisons. But things start going south until there's a riot that basically destroys one prison. Season 2 picks up after that with the prison inmates being cooped up in tents while violence floods the streets. In a desperate attempt to restore order, Mike has the leaders of the main gangs in the city go to prison to work out a peace. But when the leaders aren't released like they're supposed to, things start going south again. Meanwhile, the evil kingpin Milo is out and looking for millions he hid before going to prison. And Iris, the hooker Mike loves, dumps him to go work in one of Milo's brothels. It's not as good as the first season but still has plenty of twists and turns with a lot of gunplay and other violence and gritty drama. I'm not sure if or when a season 3 might happen since Renner's real-life injuries in a snow plow accident. If it ever happens, there are still loose ends that can be tied up. (3/5) (Fun Fact: I think the writers must have listened to people like me saying there's no death penalty in Michigan because there are no mentions of Death Row or anything in this season.)
Ka-Bluey!: This was I guess you could say an absurdist indie comedy from 2006 I watched on the Movie House app. A socially awkward guy (the writer/director) goes to live with his sister-in-law (Lisa Kudrow) when her husband is sent to Iraq. She has two extremely bratty bordering on psychopathic boys that he sorta helps with. Then she gets him a job at a failing Internet startup. They have him dress up in a mascot costume that looks sort of like if you painted Marvin from Hitchhiker's Guide all blue. For some reason they drive him out by a field to hand out fliers for office space. I mean, wouldn't you want him to stand on a busy corner or something in a city? That's where the absurdist part comes in. Watching this I kept waiting for something to really happen but while his struggles with the costume are kind of amusing, there's not a lot that happens until the end when he teams up with a grocery store cheese mascot to take down Lisa Kudrow's cheating boss (Jeffrey Dean Morgan). Then it sorta ends with a whimper. Some animated segments during the credits are actually a lot more entertaining than the movie itself. I think it's the kind of movie that just needed to lean into something instead of just kind of wandering around for most of the 90-ish minutes. (2.5/5) (Fun Facts: Chris Parnell of Archer and Rick & Morty appears as someone named Frank and a fat Teri Garr appears a few times as a former employee who freaks out whenever she sees the blue mascot by the road.)
Schitt's Creek: I watched the first episode on the CW app a couple years ago and wasn't overly impressed so I never got around to watching it until last January when I just wanted something for about a half-hour that I hadn't seen before. So I started watching it and it was better than the first time. It's like a nicer, Canadian, soapier Arrested Development as the wealthy Rose family loses everything and has to go live in the eponymous town, which they own. They get put up in the local motel and then try to make something for themselves. Some episodes are better than others as you'd expect. There's a little less zaniness than Arrested Development and a little more relationship drama, which usually isn't too bad. A couple of episodes it seemed they had too much going on though. In one the local waitress is holding a murder mystery party but no one wants to go until Moira, the Rose family matriarch, gets people to go. And then...we really don't see anything of the party to know how it worked out. Similarly in another episode Moira is going to do a number to raise money for asbestos removal and eventually her son David agrees to help. They start doing a Christmas number and...the episode just ends. In those cases it seems like a lot of build-up for no real payoff, mostly because they juggle too many plotlines with the 4 members of the Rose family. And when Alexis goes back to finish high school, why would she go to school with the kids and not take adult night classes to get a GED? Even a small place like Schitt's Creek and its neighboring Elmdale probably have adult ed classes. I thought at the end they would sell the town or maybe find a buyer and keep it or maybe sell it to the townspeople, but instead there's no mention of them owning the town after season 1. Really after the first season it becomes less about their struggles to survive in the small town and more about the relationship drama of the two kids. (3/5) (Fun Facts: The show was created by Eugene Levy and his son Daniel, who plays his pansexual son David in the show. Moira is played by Catherine O'Hara who besides the Home Alone movies also appeared in a few Christopher Guest movies with Eugene Levy.)
Animal Control: I'm not sure if this took Flatch's time slot, but I think it's on the same night Flatch was. Anyway, this show stars Joel McHale, who I've liked since The Soup days on E! but he's never really found a good starring vehicle for his talents. Even Community, which was supposed to be built around him, he got upstaged by Abed and Troy. This still might not be that starring vehicle but it's not a bad show. As you'd expect, it's about animal control officers in Seattle. McHale is the grizzled veteran who gets a new partner in "Shred," a former snowboarding champion. There are some funny encounters with wildlife and office pranks. It's one of those shows that's probably not as good as it could be just yet. Like Flatch, Schitt's Creek, or Ghosts on CBS it's the kind of show I'll just watch if I need something to fill a half-hour here or there but wouldn't really make the time or effort to watch it live. (3/5)
Happily: Speaking of Joel McHale, he stars in this indie light drama. McHale and his wife are a couple madly in love with each other even after 14 years. It really pisses off all their "friends." Then one day a weird guy (Stephen Root) shows up with a briefcase containing two syringes and claims he's going to make them "normal." Instead, the wife kills him and they bury the guy in the woods. Then they go to a rich guy's house where they and their friends are going to spend the weekend. Some mild mayhem ensues. The end is pretty disappointing as it doesn't really tell us a lot about who Stephen Root's character really is or what the deal with the syringes is or anything. And there are a bunch of guns shown in the house but only one gets any use, kind of bucking that old adage. Anyway, I guess this wasn't a great star vehicle for McHale either. Or anyone else. (2.5/5)
Lies & Illusions: I guess the other title could have been: Gender Swapped True Lies On 1/1000th the Budget. Shot in Spokane, Washington, it stars Christian Slater as a self-help book writer whose wife seems to die. A year later he finds out she was a thief and a bunch of bad people (including Cuba Gooding Jr) wants some diamonds and a list of bad guys she has hidden in a safe deposit box. Some cheap mayhem ensues! It was about as good as your average Nic Cage or Bruce Willis straight-to-streaming/Redbox movie only it mostly predates those as being made in 2009. (2.5/5) (Fun Fact: I went to Spokane in 2014 but I think I missed a lot of the locations in this movie.)
MST3K Season 13: After 2 seasons on Netflix, Mystery Science Theater 3000 Kickstartered its own streaming service called the "Gizmoplex." Which I really had no interest in. I mean they were doing 13 episodes but otherwise the classic episodes are on Pluto TV, Tubi, or other places and I own a lot of the really good ones on DVD or streaming through the Rifftrax app. Anyway, this season came to Pluto TV in March and so I watched it free with ads. Instead of one host, this season has 3: original host Joel Hodgson, Netflix host Jonah Ray, and recent live touring company host Emily Marsh. A chunk of the intermission (or before and after) sketch time then is given to setting up the arrival of Joel and Emily, who each have their own SOL.
What really makes something like this (or Rifftrax) are the movies and when it comes to that I'm kind of a snob. I like the ones from the 80s-2010s mostly because those are usually the worst of the worst. I mean a movie from the 50s or 60s (even Ed Wood movies) are of course going to be lame because they're so old. So the ones like Santo vs Dracula (or whatever it was called), The Bubble, and The Mask (1961) were pretty boring. About all The Batwoman (no relation to the 1990s episode The Wild, Wild World of Batwoman) had going for it was the titular character (who puts the tit in titular!) who looked like if Yvonne Craig's Batgirl costume had just been Adam West's cowl and underwear. Gamera vs Jiger was just another Gamera movie; if you saw any of them after the first one you've seen this one. I literally fell asleep during Beyond Atlantis, another early 70s Filipino movie "starring" John Wayne's son. And there were two already done by Rifftrax a few years ago, neither of which was that much fun to start with. The Shape of Things to Come on Rifftrax was mostly funny for a couple of sassy captions, which obviously were not in the MST3K version.
The standouts to me then are the newer ones. There are two Full Moon pictures, they being the studio who brought me such great films like the Puppet Master, Dollman, and Subspecies series as well as Shrunken Heads and the two Oblivion movies I actually like. The first is Robot Wars, which is like the spiritual sequel no one wanted to the really lame Robot Jox. The effects are still terrible and the story and acting are even worse! Also, like Future War or War for the Planet of the Apes, there's not really much of A war, let alone several wars that would necessitate a plural. The more interesting one is Doctor Mordrid, which was supposed to be a Dr. Strange movie, until the rights reverted back to Marvel during production. Undeterred by this, Full Moon honcho Charles Band just changed the names and stuff slightly and then has the gall to claim it as an "original idea." Jeffrey Combs of Reanimator and various Star Trek shows stars as Strange Mordrid who has to stop an evil wizard and does so in a pretty easy way. In the process he hooks up with a police consultant who was Robocop's partner on the short-lived Canadian TV series.
Another one from the 90s was Munchie, a "family" movie with Dom Deluise voicing the annoying creature Munchie who's like a cross between Alf and the Genie from Aladdin. A bored Loni Anderson co-stars as the mom of a kid who releases the annoying creature. To use a Rifftrax burn, it makes me miss the quiet dignity of Mac n Me.
Those were from the 90s but there are two far more recent ones. Demon Squad is listed as coming from 2019. As I said on Facebook, your movie must suck if it's on MST3K only 3 years later. I mean MST3K and Rifftrax can't afford to shell out a lot for these movies so they mostly use public domain ones. This is the kind of movie you might see on the Movie House app as it's a really low budget urban fantasy about a PI battling demons wearing obvious rubber masks. The ultimate monster actually uses the same mask as the main bad guy in the even lamer sci-fi movie Star Raiders. If it had more money it might have been at least tolerable. The final episode of the season is The Christmas Dragon from 2014 that isn't that bad except for the pretty bad CGI dragons. And obviously there's not much acting talent. Basically a group of orphans rescue a dragon and use it to save Christmas. Hooray!
Overall it wasn't a bad season. The three hosts thing was fine, though it got a little confusing in the first Joel episode because they use Emily's Tom and Crow, who have different voices from Jonah's Tom and Crow and then Joel changes Tom's voice to original Tom Servo voice J Elvis Weinstein. But then it changes back for the rest of the season. For me sometimes it got confusing too in that I don't know all these riffers that well so sometimes I wasn't sure if they were speaking or a character in the movie was speaking.
Looking it up on Google, I guess they have funding for a season 14, so that should probably start this year, though I don't really know who will be doing it. While you don't really have to choose between this and Rifftrax, my loyalty is with Rifftrax because they have a lot of great bad movies and also not having all the skits and stuff makes it easy to rewatch the movies. I mean sometimes I just want to watch a bad movie like Future War without all the sketches and stuff, most of which to be honest aren't that great. The Rifftrax format lets you just get right to the movie, sort of like eating the filling of an Oreo first. Also, Rifftrax doesn't have end credits for itself that go on for almost 10 minutes. (3.5/5) (Fun Fact: The only one from Rifftrax who appears in this season of MST3K is Mary Jo Pehl as Pearl Forrester. She's the only cast member who gets to walk between worlds as part of MST3K, Rifftrax, and Cinematic Titanic.)
Suburbanite: I watched this on the Movie House app one night. It's a lower-than-low budget movie that is actually fairly watchable because unlike, say, Birdemic, Demon Squad, or Jurassic Shark on the Rifftrax app, it doesn't try to overreach and turn into a big-budget blockbuster. Instead, like the much better The Outfit, it's more like a play in that it mostly takes place in one guy's house. One night Guy 1 hires a corrupt cop to kill his wife. Walking home drunk, he's hit by Guy 2, who takes him back to his garage. Guy 1 is still alive but Guy 2 can't bring himself to kill him or take him to the hospital. Then there are twists and turns, most of which aren't that bad. So like I said, it's pretty watchable. It'd be better if it had had the money for big stars and better sets and stuff. (3/5)
Australiens: Another lower-than-low budget movie on the Movie House app. This is sort of like Shaun of the Dead except it's in Australia, involves an alien invasion instead of zombies, and was made for probably 1/100,000th the budget. Basically aliens invade Australia and a band of not-too-bright young people try to foil the aliens. It's funny at parts and maybe more fun if you're Australian to understand some of the jokes like why the main character hates Tasmania so much that she literally has it wiped off the map. If you can ignore the not-great acting and bad effects it's pretty amusing. (3/5)
Displacement: A less low-budget movie also on the Movie House app. It's about an attractive redhead who finds herself unstuck in time. Her boyfriend ends up dead and some other bad stuff and she realizes she's the cause as she figured out how to travel back in time. The "timeslips" keep taking their toll on her and she tries to find some way to stop it all from happening. Unlike the previous two movies the effects were better and there were more professional actors like Bruce Davison, who was in the original X-Men and tons of other stuff. Anyway, it's not bad. Maybe not as smart as Primer but with more action. And it avoids some of the time travel cliches. It'd probably be good to watch it two or three times just to figure it all out. Also, did I mention it stars an attractive redhead? (3/5)
Silver Wolf: This is one of the more professional movies on the Movie House app. It's a 1999 TV movie starring Michael Biehn and Roy Scheider. A teenage boy's father dies in a skiing accident and he moves to upper Washington with his forest ranger uncle (Biehn). There he finds a wounded wolf he calls "Silver" and rehabs it. Scheider is a rancher who wants to kill the wolf, so the boy has to save it with the help of a girl he meets at school who is also Scheider's daughter, though grandfather might have been more appropriate at this point. It's family-friendly wholesome entertainment that unlike a lot of the stuff on that app has pretty good production values. (3/5)
Usually when I complain about Amazon's strongarm tactics, I'm talking about their self-publishing division. But this time the shenanigans are courtesy of their music division. It's something that really pisses me off but it's hard to get people to care. Not that this will help either.
The way things used to work, when you bought MP3s on Amazon, you could listen to them on the Amazon app in the normal order or shuffle them. If you just wanted to pull up a song and listen to it, you could.
But then near the end of last year, things changed. All the sudden you couldn't play music except in shuffle mode. This seemed weird. Then Amazon finally revealed the full extent of their evil plan. Unless you buy a Music Unlimited subscription, you can only play your music in shuffle.
WTF? I get if it's the Amazon Prime music library that I don't own, but they're doing this with music I already own. If I pay my money for these MP3s, why the hell can they say I can't play them in any fucking order I want? It's my property!
That's what's so infuriating about this. This isn't like Netflix or Hulu or whatever where you don't own the content; this is shit I own. How can you tell me that I have to pay extra to listen to stuff I own? What's next, Prime Video is going to start charging me to use fast-forward or rewind on movies I rent or purchase? Is Kindle going to charge extra if I want to highlight or make notes?
This is the kind of bullshit airlines do, like charging you for checked luggage or being too fat for a seat. It's nickel-and-diming users. It's something that really needs to be shut down before all these streaming services start in on it. It's not enough to get users to pay one monthly fee; you've got to get them to pay a bunch more fees even to use their own property.
Anyway, the reaction on Facebook was of course just "meh," most ignoring it. It'd be good if this could go "viral" because I really do think Amazon is way overreaching here. And there's no need to try to "solve" the problem by telling me to not use it and listen to something else. Already doing that.
At the least, if Amazon is going to do this, they should make an app just so I can listen to the music I own and one for all their Music Unlimited stuff. Really the short-sighted thing about this is a lot of times when I listen to something on the Prime Music or whatever it's called and I really like it, I'll go buy it so I can put it on CDs or MP3s or other stuff to listen to it offline. Taking away my ability to do that, makes it harder to discover stuff I like on Amazon and thus less stuff I would buy on Amazon. To which they'd probably say, "Well get Music Unlimited.." But I don't need Music Unlimited. I don't use it that often where I need to pay $9/month for it on top of whatever I'm paying for Amazon Prime these days.
Amazon is doing something similar with TV/Movies. Last year or maybe the year before they bought MGM. So you think, cool they'll add all that stuff like the James Bond and Rocky movies to Prime, right? But then they roll out MGM+, another goddamned streaming service. So I'm supposed to pay for Amazon Prime to watch some stuff AND pay for this MGM+ to watch other stuff? And honestly, MGM doesn't even have that much besides Bond and Rocky and a few other things. There's not nearly enough to justify paying another however much a month for that.
I really think we've reached that tipping point where there's just too many of these streaming things and pretty soon we're going to see the bubble burst and it'll be musical chairs where some will get to stay in play and others are going to be left out. If you want to kill a golden goose, this is how you do it.
Last month I mentioned how I took Sims 3 & 4 pictures and put them in an AI Art generator called Wombo. Previously I'd tried one called Stable Diffusion. So then I had the idea: why not create one in one AI art thing and run it through another? So I wound up putting in a description of Stacey Chance in Stable Diffusion and getting two results that weren't terrible:
And then I used the same description and put the picture in Wombo as inspiration. First I cropped it to do the one on the left and then the one on the right:
If anything, it actually makes it less realistic. They look sort of like Sims 4 characters, though I didn't put a Sims 4 picture in there.
As another experiment, I started with this cute redhead Kari from Perfect Worlds, made in the Sims 2:
Then I put it in Wombo:
And then I put that in Wombo again:
It seems to always put in some weird details, but in some ways it was a slight improvement.
Overall not really great or interesting results, but it killed a few minutes.
I already mentioned my A to Z Challenge topic last year in the Reflections entry. Since in 2022 I did Marvel Legends figures, I figured why not do DC Multiverse figures in 2023?
DC's superhero figures have not had as coherent a history as Marvel's. The Marvel Legends series changed manufacturers once but has pretty much been the same since 2002. Whereas DC's have changed names at least once and manufacturers at least once and besides the DC Multiverse (formerly DC Universe) series there are others like the DC Direct series that could be purchased from the company--or Amazon, eBay, Mercari, etc. And then about 2020, they switched from Mattel to McFarlane. The irony is that McFarlane is owned by and named for the guy who became famous for first drawing Spider-Man comics and then creating Spawn, who was kind of an anti-DC hero.
Besides just changing the packaging, the McFarlane figures are an inch taller than the Mattel ones, 7 inches vs. 6 inches. In a way that's nice as you can put the McFarlane ones on the back of the shelf and the Mattel ones at the front and everyone is still able to be seen. That is if you just jam them all together like I do:
I haven't done an official count, but I'd guess I have more Marvel ones than DC, mostly because they're easier to get. Especially with the death of toy stores, DC figures were harder to find, getting a lot less shelf space than Marvel ones. They probably got more shelf space at Ollie's or Five Below than they got in real stores. Though the McFarlane ones were somewhat more available in Walmart and such--at least some of them. There are still some figures you could hardly ever find if you wanted.
It's always funny to me in Shazam when at one point he's getting thrown through a toy store by Dr. Sivana and you see these rows and rows of DC Multiverse figures, which you'd never see in real life except maybe at a Warner Brothers or DC outlet store or gift shop or something like that.
I suppose it probably wouldn't be surprising that the figures I have the most of are:
Batman
Azrael
Batgirl
Superman
Wonder Woman
That's DC's "Trinity" and two of my favorite characters. Anyway, for this A to Z I mostly took the pictures off Amazon or eBay so they won't be all blurry like some last year. But most of the ones I show I do actually own, except a few entries where I kind of had to stretch to find something.
Anyway, that's next month and since the entries are already written, it should happen even if I'm dead or in a coma or something. So long as Blogger or the rest of the planet isn't destroyed.
A couple of months ago I read this blog article about how with Elon Musk fucking Twitter, people are going to start blogging again. I do not agree. At least I don't think there will be a flood of people doing that. Like how some hipsters have gone back to cassettes, I'm sure there will be some who go back to Blogger or Wordpress, but I doubt it will be a lot. But it got me doing some hard thinking about blogging in general.
Here's my first reason I don't think blogging makes a comeback: it's completely different than social media. Social media posts are short; on Twitter you only have 256 characters. Not words, characters. If you want to say something longer you can add more posts as sort of a thread, but still. Facebook you can write more, but you can't write as long as a lot of blog posts. Then you have TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat and others that barely use words at all.
Starting a blog because you're pissed at Elon Musk is like going back to cassettes or if you're pissed at the cost of gas you buy a horse. It's really a whole different thing and not all that practical. Sure, you can write more, which is kind of an issue. I mean maybe with all this space you feel compelled to write more because a 256-character blog post would look pretty lame. I mean that's basically one paragraph. From that article above, here's what it'd look like at 256 characters (counting spaces):
I know how it is: your readers started fading from Facebook
all through 2022, disgusted by invasive advertising and slimy tactics that spy
on your every move. They are also fed up by those bizarre, arbitrary algorithms
that send you to Facebook jail for po
Yeah, that's barely anything. Not even two complete sentences! So, yeah, it's pretty different. One does not really "replace" the other in the same sense.
Here's a truth bomb for you: Blogs are old tech. Blogs came about in the early 2000s (maybe the late 90s?) as simplified web pages. It was a way for Luddites (or just people who don't have a lot of time to learn coding) to have a web page without having to learn HTML, Java, and other programming languages or buy a fancy web page creation program. Plus you didn't have to worry about hosting and uploading by FTP and all that happy shit we did in the mid-to-late-90s.
Because they're old tech, blogs don't really work so well in the modern world. I mean, come on, try typing a blog entry on your phone. I dare you! Unless you have a specialized keyboard or something, it's a pain. I type all my blog entries on desktop computers or sometimes my Chromebook. Never on my phone. Whereas it's super-duper-easy to do a TikTok, Snapchat, or Instagram post on your phone. It's not too hard to do a Tweet or Facebook because there's a lot less typing. And no formatting or any of that shit. At most you can attach a photo or video, right?
I'm just saying, it's not an apples-to-apples thing here. It's like apples to whatever the prehistoric forerunner to apples was. Blogs don't have the ease and convenience of social apps in the age of "smart" phones.
When I commented on the article about how all I see is blogs dying, the author told me to "up my SEO game." Which is kind of a joke. Who finds blogs with search engines? I rarely ever do. How'd I even find that article? A "friend" posted it on Facebook.
Another truth bomb coming in hot: people like me are no one and our blogs are nothing. It doesn't matter what headlines I use or keywords or whatever. I'm nothing and so Google or Siri or Alexa or whatever isn't going to show me in the top of the results--probably not even the top 10,000--unless by some weird miracle someone is looking for something super-duper specific. The only reason I'd expect anyone to find me by a search engine is if I pissed someone off and they're looking to dox me. So maybe they put "PT Dilloway" in their search (or ask Siri or Alexa or whatever) and it brings this blog up. It'd be great if I had fans who were doing that, but come on, who are we kidding?
"Write great headlines" or "write about something current" or whatever sounds like great advice, but it ignores the basic fact that algorithms are designed not to show pissant little blogs like this at the top of the results. That is literally how Google algorithms were designed, to show more popular results first. I can write a review of Avatar 2, but Google isn't going to show that first no matter what headline I use. It'll show professional reviews for newspapers and sites like Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB first. Because those are more popular and well-known than this here blog.
The other part of this is that most people rarely ever go past the first page of search results. Probably less than 1/% go past 5 pages of results. So your pissant blog on page 900 of the results might as well be invisible.
Unless someone types in (or asks for) something really specific, you are not going to show up in the top of the search engines. EVER. Unless you have money like Elon Musk, you can't really advertise your blog in a way to get noticed. You have about as much chance of winning the lottery as you do of going "viral," especially with old tech like a blog.
The irony there is how can your blog go viral? Only through social media. So if you abandon social media for a blog, how are you going to tell people what's on your blog? Email? Snail mail? Cold call people at random? (Most of the numbers you'd get are probably Luddites who still have landlines so maybe they'd read a blog--if they have a computer.)
Riddle me this: How is a blog like social media? The actual way most of us get people to read is pretty much the same as Facebook and Twitter. We have our little circle of family, friends, and acquaintances and while maybe we hope to be as notable as Stephen King or Neil Gaiman, it's never gonna happen. All the people who comment on this blog are people whose blogs I comment on. In other words, they're in my circle.
So I wouldn't worry about headlines or "SEO" or advertising; I would worry about networking. Comment on other people's blogs and maybe they'll comment back. How to find other blogs? Look for people who comment on blogs you follow. Or if someone like Tony Laplume has some links on the side, go look up anything that sounds interesting and is fairly current. There's no point commenting on blog posts that are years old; chances are that author has already abandoned the blog and will not even notice. And of course if any of your social media "friends" post a link to a blog, go check it out.
And, yeah, that's slow and a lot of work and it won't get you nearly as many views and comments and such as going "viral," but it's really all you can do.
You might wonder, why even blog at all? Good question! I thought about quitting (again) this year. I even had a post written. Then I accidentally published it back in October and quickly deleted it. And then decided not to redo it.
For me there are a couple of advantages to a blog vs social media. One, obviously, that I can write longer posts. There's not the word count limit like Twitter or even Facebook. Two, I don't need to use video/pictures like TikTok, Instagram, or Snapchat. For someone who's gross looking and sounding, video and pictures are not gonna work. They'd repel people instead of attract them. Three, and maybe most important to me, is that blogs are more archivable. If I Tweet or Facebook something, it can be almost impossible to find it later. Let's say in a couple of years, I want to see if I watched some fairly obscure movie like Max Cloud, I can bring up the blog and type it in the search box and it should come up. But if I search something more generically-titled like The Selling it still might not come up or be buried behind a bunch of irrelevant entries. Still, it's better than social media. The blog I use for my journal is especially good for this as I can just go look up stuff by date if I wonder what I was doing, say, 4 years ago from today. Or even 18 years ago! (It goes back to about late 2004, so that's a long time.)
So there are some good things about blogging, but I don't think Gen Z and younger kids really give a shit about that. Or a lot of other people who are barely literate and thus something like TikTok, Instagram, or Snapchat works better for them because it's mostly visual and auditory.
The big issue with blogging is discoverability. That's also the big issue for selling books in general. I've said before the thing I remember most from my college marketing class wasn't even something from the overpriced textbook. It was something my professor said: people can't buy something if they don't know it exists. For most of us on Amazon, that's the biggest mountain to climb. There are probably a billion (or more) books on Amazon. You can have good keywords, a nice cover, and so on, but that still doesn't people are going to find you.
Like with blogs, a critical problem is that quite simply no one is looking for your book. Or very few people probably are. Most people read a few well-known authors or in one genre. I doubt there are a lot of people typing (or asking Alexa for) certain types of books. And, again, unless you're Elon Musk, you probably don't have the money to do advertising that would actually work.
The best ways you can get people to buy books:
Make one free! People probably aren't searching a lot for keywords but I imagine there are a lot of cheap assholes looking for free shit. How do I know? Every time I make a book free, a bunch of copies get downloaded! Even books that almost no one has ever purchased for money. So obviously there are a lot of bargain hunters out there. That also can work for charging 99 cents. When I make a book 99 cents because it's shorter or it's the first of a series or something, it usually sells more than if I charge $2.99 or more. Because, again, people are hunting for deals more than keywords.
The other thing you can do is more about luck, but it's sort of what I was talking about earlier with "circles." If your book gets into the "Also Viewed" or "More to Explore" or whatever sections on the Amazon page of another book, it can help to drive sales because it's basically making your book more visible. How can you do this then? You really can't do it consciously. I mean you can try to use the same sort of plot, cover, title, etc as a high-rated book in your subgenre, but even then it might not matter. It is mostly whether the Amazon algorithms bless you.
Anyway, overall I'd say don't expect a lot of blogging or bookselling. Now let's see if I get more than 2 comments on this post--that aren't by me.
I mentioned in a prior entry that some other authors told me that as far as transgender fiction goes, gender swaps are not as popular as plain old cross-dressing, aka "feminization." And obviously a lot of people think it's "weird" or "creepy" even though a lot of mainstream properties like Star Trek, Quantum Leap, various comic books, and so on have done it.
Anyway, I got thinking of how I could redo some of my stories without the gender swap and maybe they'd be better. Or worse. Here are some ideas:
Gender Swap Warriors: This would be one of the easiest because the gender swap aspect is what actually made it hard to do anything in the first place. Take that out and it's about four college students who find an alien ship and get the memories of the alien crew implanted. Then they take up the struggle against the evil space empire with four ships that merge into a giant robot with a cool sword and stuff.
If I don't have the college students turn into girls the story works as just a Voltron/Power Rangers/Star Wars-type mishmash. I'd probably want to have one or two of the students be women just so it'd be easier to have some romantic elements. It would be easier then to do sequels to "continue the story" than it was trying to incorporate a gender swap, though the idea of a double agent trying to infiltrate a second team still seems pretty cool. The third one about a girl with magic who came before the original team would be less important.
The 12 Swaps of Christmas: This is the one that really got me thinking about this. I really liked the concept of this story but I didn't have the time to maybe make it as good as it could have been. The basic premise is sort of The Time Traveler's Wife with a murder mystery. A guy has a crush on a woman named Clare who lives across the hall from him, but she won't give him the time of day. Then on XMas Eve she seemingly kills herself and the guy finds an ornament in the mail that when he puts it on the tree takes him back in time to when Clare was a teenager. Each day a new ornament takes him to another time in her life and he starts to unravel the secrets of her life while in the present he falls in love with another girl who also turns out to have a connection to Clare.
The good thing about the gender swap in this story was it explored issues about Clare's sexuality that became important to the story. If the guy stays a guy we'd kind of lose some of that. Or instead of Clare making love to him, the guy would just have to see her fucking some other girl, making it more passive. It might be better to just make the guy a girl from the start. She would not have a real crush on Clare at first but as she learns about Clare exploring her sexuality, she ends up exploring her sexuality as well. So it would be like a lesbian or even maybe a bisexual romance thing.
At the same time there'd still be the mystery aspect of learning why Clare killed herself--or if she even did. If I set it during the holidays I could still use the "12 Days of Christmas" theme of each ornament representing a different verse of the song. Or maybe I could find something else to use to set it at a different time of the year.
Swapping Mall 3: This is largely the same as The 12 Swaps of Christmas in that it was a time travel mystery thing. Only in this a thief is sent back in time in this old mall as different people and discovers the connections between them--including his parents. It's less important I think whether he's a guy or a girl and there aren't the ornaments relating to the song, just stores in a mall, so it'd probably be easier to redo this one.
The Comeback, aka The Last Encore: This is a story I really hate that Amazon banned for no reason except they declared war against age regression stories written by me--and pretty much ONLY by me. It's a story I really like, to the point that I edited and re-released it under my PT Dilloway name. It'd be pretty easy to take the gender swap out. Instead of becoming a girl, the washed-up guy could be a dude. Or it could just be a washed-up woman who becomes a girl. Amazon might still get pissy about the age regression thing, though I like to point out they literally have a TV show in Invincible that pretty much does worse with age regression than I ever did. I could make the guy/girl become 18, though I think that waters down the premise a little in that he/she is supposed to go from a hard rocker to a teen idol. If he/she is still an adult it kind of dilutes that premise and I hate diluting my premise just because of some irrational "rule" that even the company making it doesn't follow.
Only Human: This Transformers-themed story would be super easy to redo. Basically just have the robots become males instead of females. Bingo, bango, problem solved. Or of course the robots could be female to start with. Not that it really matters.
I've Become My Asian Girl Fantasy Too: This was sort of a high concept thing: a writer becomes the character he's trying to write and experiences her final adventure first-hand. A male author wrote a series of books about a teenage girl who at night became a succubus who killed evil doers by having sex with them and sucking out their life force. After 24 books, the series is being cancelled and the author stuck on the last book when he's hit on the head during a robbery and wakes up as the girl. In her final adventure, Satan himself shows up with a legion of demons to take over the world and somehow the rogue succubus has to stop him.
So either the author could be female or the character could be male and not a succubus. Some other kind of paranormal thing could easily work and then it could be less R-rated with sex stuff too. Or just get rid of the high concept part with the author and just do a regular story about a girl who makes a deal with the devil to save her father and becomes a succubus at night.
Gender Swap Detective: This was a noir-ish detective series, or at least it was supposed to be and the swap angle actually messed that up a little. The idea was a detective is following a case and gets blown up but comes back to life as a beautiful woman. It'd be easy to redo this as a paranormal story. The detective could become a vampire or zombie or werewolf or angel or whatever and then go on solving mysteries. And it'd be easier to just focus on mysteries instead of worrying about throwing in a gender swap.
Swapoween: I really liked my pastiche of John Carpenter's Halloween. Instead of Michael just escaping from a mental hospital, he was supposed to be put to death, only he was given an experimental drug that caused him to turn into a young woman who then meets a teenage girl named Lori. The twist was they fall in love, but the Michael character doesn't really understand actual love and winds up stabbing Lori and then murdering her best friend and some guy she was crushing on. The Michael character figured that way he could have Lori to himself.
It could probably work if the serum they give him just gives him healing powers like Wolverine or something. He escapes, goes back home, falls for Lori, and then kills a bunch of people when she rejects him or whatever.
Hitchswapper: The premise of this was a guy is traveling Route 66 after retiring. In Oklahoma he picks up a hot woman who turns out to be a witch. She turns him into a woman to blackmail him into taking her to Los Angeles. But of course we could do this without turning him into a woman. She could just use her witch power in some other way. And like before, as he comes to understand her and what she's doing, they fall in love and he helps her to complete her mission to save a young girl with budding magic powers.
Rich Man, Poor Girl: This was kind of a Trading Places-type thing where a rich guy agrees to a bet with some other rich guys to become a poor girl for a day. So obviously he could just become a poor guy instead of a girl and most of the rest falls into place.
Gender Swap Resort: It'd be pretty easy to take out the gender swap part and make those three stories more of a Fantasy Island thing or something. In the first one it could just be a girl breaks down at work and goes to the island and finds love. The next one a girl enters a poker tournament and is blackmailed into cheating until she finds a way to get out of it. And the last one, a former Olympic skier goes to teach at the resort and has to win a race and finds love. Easy peasy.
I'm sure there are a lot more I could do if I put my mind to it. But some I think just work too well as gender swap stories to do them another way. I mean, what would be the point of redoing Swapnado, which in itself was a pastiche of Sharknado?
Swap, Swap, & Away was a fun superhero story where I basically had Superman and Lois Lane swap bodies. What I would change is so I could have some sex scenes, the imp that swaps their bodies then turns Superman-as-Lois into a slutty bimbo. To make it more mainstream I'd take that out and just let him be the normal Lois and try to live her life as she tries to live his.
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