Some Potpourri Before Leap Day

 A couple of little tidbits to cram into one entry:

You probably haven't noticed yet but on the list of links below the header is a new section for Virtual Voice Audiobooks.  Since Amazon doesn't make a convenient link to share, I decided to make my own.  

First I did the Eric Filler ones on that blog.  I brought up my Eric Filler author page and sorted by "audiobooks" and then I put the titles and links onto a list.  And since it just brought them up pretty randomly I sorted out the series--as many as I had.

Then I realized that Amazon's stupid buggy software hadn't just brought up audiobooks; some of the links were Kinde books!  Which would be fine if all the Kindles had audiobooks, but they don't so some of them were linking to books that didn't even have an audiobook!

So because Amazon's dumb software can't handle a simple filter job that some giant mainframe using punch cards in the 1960s probably could have handled, I had to go through and audit the list and make a bunch of changes.  Then go through it again and catch a couple more.  Hopefully now it's finally right.

It was easier to do with the PT Dilloway ones because there weren't nearly as many.  I threw the Patrick Dilloway books on that list too.  All of the books are $3.99 or $1.99 if you have the eBook already.

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I've talked a couple of times about the Movie House app.  It was an app on my Roku where if you watch their crappy movies and TV shows you get credit towards a $5 gift card to Amazon or Vudu.  Then they added a daily spin where you got extra points.  At first after 5 spins you got a free gift card.  Then later they downgraded that to 50% towards a gift card.  Then 40%.

It was pretty awesome for a while as I got hundreds of dollars in gift cards for doing relatively little.  I mean, I hardly ever watched the actual content and I set an alarm on my phone to do the spin once a day.  I think it was a good deal and y'all slept on it.  Sucks for you.

But now it's over.  First without saying anything they downgraded the wheel again so instead of getting 40% you get...another spin.  And of course that extra spin is rigged so you'll usually get 5%.  So basically it's going from 40% to 5%.  The only good thing is the bonus would kick in after 4 days instead of 5 but still not an improvement.

When I finally did get 100%, which took almost twice as long as it used to, there were only Vudu gift cards.  I mean sure I could use that to rent some movie, though most of the newer ones are $6 or more so I'd still have to spend money.  But really, I don't care about Vudu.  I can't buy stuff I need with that.  So fuck it.  I'm done.

(And Vudu gift cards suck.  The one I got for $5 I saw Across the Spider-Verse on sale to buy for $5 so I'll just use it on that, right?  Nope, it's only for rentals.  OK, so it's $2.99 to rent and I haven't seen it yet, so fine I'll just do that.  I should have $2 left, right?  I mean that's how every other gift card works.  Nope, the rest of the amount just vaporized.  So, yeah, fuck Vudu.)

Like I've said before, the failure of this should go into a business textbook for college students.  There were so many things they did that were just dumb and so many things mishandled that I'm shocked it took this long for them to implode.

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Last December my Amazon Vine account was terminated.  Not just that but they terminated my "community" account so all of my reviews (non-Vine and Vine) for over 20 years was deleted just like that.  When I emailed them I got a really lame explanation that then basically just said, "WE HAVE SPOKEN!!!" and then they just ignored any other emails.

A problem I found out a few days later when I looked in my Spam folder is the night that they suspended my account there were like 37 emails saying I had reported a review as fake.  The thing is, all of these emails were made when I was asleep, so how could I have done that?  Unfortunately the emails don't say what reviews were reported as fake, though I suspect they were my own reviews, because why else would my account be suspended?  But of course no one wonders why I would be reporting on myself.  Nope, just destroy my account.  Then refuse to answer any questions.

When I email their "community help" I just got ignored.  I went online to talk to drones and was told all they can do is email the "community help team."  So, what, this "community team" is some autonomous entity that doesn't answer to anyone?  It really doesn't make sense.  It's especially annoying because this was a lot of suspicious activity on my account.  It would be really nice if they took that seriously.  At one point since I'd tried emailing them a few times with the whole list, I sent each one separately.  They of course ignored all 37 emails.  It's utterly ridiculous.

At this point I'm less concerned about getting my account back than figuring out what the hell happened to it.  It seems really shady.

And it got even shadier when I read a review on Goodreads where my longtime Amazon friend Ethan Cooper said he had the same thing happen to him.  Amazon deleted all but one of his reviews--including those on my books--because of "fake reviews."  Which is utter bullshit.  Maybe Coop was a little easy on my books for instance and maybe I was a little easy on his, but it wasn't fake.  What's wrong with some authors knowing each other and reviewing each other's books?  I'm sure Stephen King never reviews any books for authors he knows, right?  Yeah, I'm sure.

Now I'm wondering who else they went after in their latest purge.  They have overcompensated before to combat "fake" reviews with their Gestapo tactics.  It's still pretty ridiculous that they don't have any kind of due process for this to prevent people from losing their accounts for no real reason.  Meanwhile I'm sure there are plenty of actual fake reviews they haven't done anything about.

Why is Every Streaming Service Doing the Same Wrong Thing?

 For years, companies have often been pretty secretive with streaming data.  Companies like Netflix and Disney haven't been extremely forthcoming in saying what people are actually watching.  It was a little enlightening then when Nielsen (you know, the ones behind TV ratings since ever) listed the ten most-streamed shows of 2023.

As you can see there are 2 kids shows (Bluey & Cocomelon) and the rest are all shows that originally aired on network TV.  Not a single "original" streamer show like The Mandalorian, Power of the Rings, Stranger Things, or whatever.  Most of the shows are dramas or maybe dramedies (Friends is the only one of these shows I ever watched any of and that was only like 3 seasons) that aired on traditional networks from the 90s-2010s.  The top "original" series was Apple's Ted Lasso with 16+ billion minutes watched, which would probably be something like 12th-15th place on that list. 

I don't really know how accurate this is.  I mean I don't know if this counts everyone--like me for instance--or only a sample size.  Still, this should probably be a wake-up call for these streaming services throwing millions of dollars at "original" IPs.  

The thing is, almost every streaming service--even some of the lesser ones like Crackle or Tubi--has employed the same strategy.  They have some old stuff but they try to create "original" shows to gain attention and get people to sign up.  Disney has leaned on a lot of Marvel and Star Wars shows since the pandemic while Amazon invested big in Lord of the Rings and comic books like The Boys and Invincible.  Paramount+ made a big investment in Star Trek and Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan.  Netflix probably has the most "original" content in a variety of genres.

But now what we see is this strategy doesn't really work because people aren't watching this expensive "original" content as much as shows that in the case of Friends has been off the air for 20 years.  Really I think a lot of this is Americans are a pretty provincial people.  If you label something "Original" that's saying it's "New" and new is scary.  New is unexpected.  It's better to watch something you've seen before so you aren't surprised.  That's safe.

When it comes to entertainment, Americans have a pretty bland taste too.  And you can see most of the shows on that list are pretty bland.  Nothing that would probably be more than PG-13 rated at most.

The list of movies is almost entirely kids movies, most of them from Disney.  Almost all of them were released in theaters first, not streaming originals.  And as I just said all PG-13 and under, most being PG or less since they're for kids.  

I suppose it makes sense that if you and the kids (or just the kids) are home streaming they'll put on a movie for kids, right?  Maybe a surprise that Moana, which is from like 2016, is at the top of the list.

Something I was thinking is most of the shows and movies on these lists were put on regular TV or movie theaters before streaming.  Maybe provincial Americans need that seal of quality to try it.  Sort of like how a lot of people wouldn't read a self-published book because they think it won't have the same quality.  Streaming isn't self-publishing, but maybe there's the thought that it's not as good as something that's on regular TV or in a movie theater.

Anyway, you have to wonder now if streamers will prioritize older content over "original."  Not only is it cheaper and easier, it seems to be more popular.  The obvious problem though is there's only so much of that stuff people want to watch.  I mean when MAX locks up Friends that takes it off the board for the others so no one else can have it.  The same for the others.  You can't really make more of the stuff.

I wouldn't be surprised then if there is more of a push from companies to lock up older series.  That of course makes it suck a little more for people who can't afford (or just don't want to have) a ton of streaming services.  In which case some of us might have to just go back to DVDs to watch our old favorites.

And if you want another depressing nugget, looking at that list of shows, you don't have a ton of diversity.  I mean some of those shows have people of color in them, but predominantly they're shows starring white people.  That's pretty unfortunate.  The movies are more diverse with Moana, Encanto, and Wakanda Forever on there.  I'm not sure what that says--people can tolerate diversity in small amounts?  Kids are less racist?

A Cheap, Fairly Generic Thriller Idea

 Who says you need "AI" to come up with ideas?  Here's an idea I thought of after reading that Codename: Chandler book referenced in the last entry.  I'm not going to say it's original, because I think this is kinda generic, but it'd be easy for someone to turn into a book or even a cheap movie.

Created by Wombo "AI"

The McGuffin of that Chandler book was a phone that was basically like the "nuclear football" the president is supposed to have nearby at all times.  Whoever had this phone and the code could launch a nuclear strike instantly.  Which I really hope is not a thing because that would just make it ridiculously easy to start WWIII.

Anyway, so let's say such a thing exists and some spy has it.  Bad guys find out and chase the spy.  To throw the bad guys off, the spy drops it in some random dude's pocket or random woman's purse.  Random person is going about his/her day later when bad guys attack!  And then the spy saves him/her but is badly wounded.  He explains that random person has to get it to someone for safe keeping.

Random person then is on the run from bad guys like Cary Grant in North by Northwest.  Mayhem ensues!  And maybe the person he/she is supposed to give it to turns out to be a bad guy and random person has to get the phone back.  And eventually random person gets the phone back and maybe the spy shows up again having survived the attack.  Or maybe the spy is a bad guy too.  Whatever.

Eventually random person saves the day and is invited to become a spy or something but turns it down to go back to the mundane life that seems a lot better now.  The end?

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And now here's an Eric Filler version!  Instead of a nuclear football phone, let's say that there's some kind of magical artifact that can grant someone a wish, sort of like Wonder Woman 1984.  The thief doesn't have time to make a wish after stealing it from a museum.  He drops it in some random guy's pocket/purse or whatever and random guy finds it and turns into a hot girl!

Bad guys get after the hot girl since she has the valuable stone.  She has to go on the run and try to get help.  In the end the bad guys are taken down and the girl decides she likes being a girl and starts a new life, probably with a love interest developed along the way.  The end?

So there you go.  Now to wait for someone to put that first idea on Hulu or Tubi or whatever in a movie starring Nicolas Cage, John Travolta, and Kevin Dillon.

Codename Chandler is More Austin Powers Than James Bond

Flee by J.A. Konrath
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This felt like the literary equivalent of cheap action movies I sometimes watch on streaming that want to be like the high-budget productions but don't have the money or talent to actually make it happen. Money is less of an issue here than talent. As in writing talent that could craft decent characters or a logical plot.

So "Chandler" is a government agent living at the moment in Chicago. Then suddenly she's set upon by assassins who all look like her. The reason for this is actually less plausible than clones, robots, or even multiverse versions of herself. I won't give it away, but it's pretty silly and implausible. About as silly and implausible as the McGuffin: a phone that can literally call in a nuclear strike anywhere in the world with just one code. As dumb as American government could be, I hope we're not stupid enough to make nuclear strikes so easy an almost-random person could it.

There are of course villains but they're as thin as the paper I didn't read this on--because I read it on Kindle. The POV is largely first-person from Chandler but when it switches to third-person with the villains it doesn't do them any favors. Instead of adding depth, it only makes them more one-note, mustache-twirling clichés.

Even the naming system of the agents doesn't make that much sense. Chandler and Hammett were contemporaries in the 30s, but then you have Fleming from the 50s-60s, Forsyth/Ludlum from the 70s-80s, Follett late 70s-present, and Clancy 80s-2013. There's no consistency in the time periods or really even the genres. If you were giving these names out all at once, why would you do it like this? Either pick authors from the same time period or the same genre or just make it more random.  I mean it's like if Splinter had named the Ninja Turtles da Vinci, van Gogh, Picasso, and Warhol, who were all in different times with different styles instead of using all Renaissance painters/sculptors. 

Then there are forced cameos by Konrath's other Chicago characters "Jack Daniels," a female police detective and some private eye guy whose name I can't remember and whose cameo contributed nothing and was far less subtle than Stan Lee's cameos in Marvel movies.  Unless you're a fan of Konrath (which I'm not since this was the first--and maybe last one--I read) these cameos are just intrusive and don't add much.

The only standout is "Fleming," who reminded me of Barbara Gordon, who was Batgirl until she was crippled by the Joker and then became a hacker named Oracle who aided the Bat-family and other heroes. That is basically what Fleming does.

This could have been a fun read if the characters had been interesting. Since much of it is Chandler's POV she needed to have a personality, but didn't. I would recommend "The Barista's Guide To Espionage" by Dave Sinclair that was similar but much more fun and with a better character.

That is all.

(Spoiler:  Since no one is likely to actually read this I'll just spoil it and say that "Chandler" and her doppelgangers are identical septuplets who inexplicably have the same fingerprints.  The likelihood of that is about the same as getting struck by lightning after being beamed up by a UFO on your way to redeem the winning lottery ticket you bought from Bigfoot.  And then someone in the government like instantly has the brilliant idea to take these seven girls and turn them into killing machines.  Sounds legit.  Not.)

Dialing Back the Dial of Destiny

 It's President's Day so there will probably be even less interest than usual in blogging.  So here's another of my stupid movie ideas.  At one point I actually looked around my blog and made a list of links and I think I had 33 of them.  (A lot of Star Wars prequel/sequel ideas.)  So this would be #34.

My biggest problem with the movie (besides that Harrison Ford is just too old to do much) is the last act where they actually go back in time and meet Archimedes and fight Romans.  Ugh.  How is that better than aliens?  I mean, that's Bill & Ted shit.  It was pretty weak.  Also, the fate of Indy/Marion's son Mutt.  I get that Shia LaBeouf basically got himself canceled but just saying that he went to Vietnam for...reasons and died was weak.  And while we still probably wouldn't want him in the movie, maybe we can at least make his death count for something.

You can still have the deepfake Indy in 1945 fighting Nazis for the dial if you want.  Skip forward 24-ish years to where Indy/Marion are at his retirement party for whatever college.  The party is interrupted when a messenger shows up to say that Mutt has died in Greece or Italy or some such place where he was studying something or other.  Indy and Marion are then distraught.

Days later there's the funeral though there's not really a body or anything.  At the funeral, "Wombat" shows up to express her condolences but also to say that she and Mutt were working together on finding the dial.  They were getting really close to finding the missing piece when he was killed by some bad guys.  And then bad guys show up!  Maybe then Marion is injured so we don't have to use her in the rest of the movie.

A lot then can go like it did as Indy and Wombat go to find the other piece of the dial.  The change I'd make at the end is instead of the dial only being able to take them back to whatever BCE could take them pretty much anywhere, anytime.  So the Nazi guy is going to back to 1939 like before but then Indy stops him and gets the dial.  He considers using it to go back to when his son was killed to save him.  But then Wombat convinces him that would create a paradox and really make him no better than the Nazi guy.  As someone who loves history, he should keep it unaltered, even if it means losing someone he cares about.  So he destroys the thing instead.  Like maybe he opens a gateway to the distant future and tosses it in, sort of like Discovery.

Then Indy goes home to see how Marion is doing and Wombat reveals that she's pregnant with Mutt's kid--Indy's grandkid.  Cue the theme song!

Not perfect, but I think it's better.  It still isn't exactly Indy going out in a blaze of glory, but at least some better character work.  Or not.  You decide!  Or not.

And even though they didn't use my better idea, here's how you could still do a revival movie:

In the 90s a guy who turns out to be Indy's illegitimate grandson (they killed "Mutt" offscreen but who's to say he didn't knock someone up?) is an archaeology professor.  When the Taliban takes over Afghanistan and start destroying historical artifacts, the guy goes there to save what he can.   In addition to saving artifacts, he saves some women who would be killed by the new regime as well.  It's gritty and real and topical! You could probably also use Iraq in either 1991 or the early 2000s.

Narcissism Is Nothing New

 I always find it a little amusing when someone like Michael Offutt will rant about how people have "become" so narcissistic, as if a lot of people weren't already narcissists.  People do this kind of thing a lot, ranting about how things are so terrible now, meaning they weren't that way before.  I always wonder when was the Golden Age when people were kind, empathic, giving, and well-read.  Um, yeah, probably never.

Darker Than Amber by John D. MacDonald
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

So it's funny when I read a book like this that according to Goodreads was first published on New Year's Day 1966.  The book is mostly about a prostitute Travis McGee rescues from sleeping with the fishes only for her to be murdered (again) a short time later while trying to get her stash of money.  Trav then takes down the prostitute's pimps in pretty easy fashion.

At one point Trav's friend Meyer talks about a book.  According to the author, a lot of people see themselves as real but view just about everyone else as an object.  In other words, most of the people were narcissists who only thought of themselves.  Everyone else was just there to serve them or for their entertainment.  They lack the empathy to understand that other people are as real as they are.

A modern way to think of it is that these people think of life like a video game where they're the main character and everyone else is an NPC.  So it doesn't matter how crappy you treat them, because they're not real.  That certainly explains all the terrible drivers out there, doesn't it?  I run you off the road or destroy your car, so what?  You'll just regenerate, right?  It explains mass shootings too.  These aren't "real" people they're shooting, just characters who are easily replaced.  (I'm not saying that video games cause this behavior, just that this is how some people seem to view things.)

The point being, if you think narcissism is something new, it isn't.  I mean a book written in 1965 was already saying this.  These old books also rant sometimes about increasing population and urbanization leading to a lack of morals or things like that. It's a good reason to read classic books or watch classic movies.  It helps you realize that everything old is new again.

I copied this off Kindle on my computer so it's not great-looking, but if you want proof, here it is:

Ironically though we're so narcissistic that we think we're the first ones to be huge narcissists.  lol

Happy Valentine's Day: The Most Loved Post

Pretty self-explanatory.  For Valentine's Day I pulled up the most-viewed post.  It's still this one from an A to Z Challenge by a landslide.  I mean by about 2000 views.  The bots really love bimbos.

In the Transformed series are not one but two books focusing on bimbos.  For my purposes a bimbo is a woman who looks really hot but isn't all that bright.

The first Transformed Into a Bimbo borrows heavily from my prior novel Chance of a Lifetime.  In the first story, a scientist is working on an anti-aging drug called FY-1978, which is the drug that turns Detective Steve Fischer into Stacey Chance in the novel.  Anyway, some animal rights protestors raid the lab to free the test animals and in the process the scientist gets dosed with the FY-1978.  He finds himself turning into a girl who gets increasing hot--and increasingly dumb.

The second story is basically a miniature version of Chance of a Lifetime.  A detective tries to foil a robbery at a pharmaceutical company and is shot with the drug, now going by the name Yunagin--Young Again, get it?  He turns into a young woman who then gets revenge on the criminals.

There are a couple of key differences.  First, Steve/Stacey is named Jake/Jackie Madigan; Jake is Steve's old partner in the Chances Are books.  Then of course Stacey looks like this:

You know, pretty much like a normal young woman.  Whereas Jackie looks like this:

Yowza!

Then there's how Jackie takes revenge.  Where Stacey pretty much fought them with guns and such, Jackie uses her body.  One guy is into S&M stuff so she uses that to her advantage and gets kind of creative.  You know, because this is supposed to be erotica.

Someone whined about the first book that the character should get into the sex more quickly, so I decided to give that a try with the sequel.  The first story is really short.  It's one of those classic Twilight Zone stories where a rich guy thinks he's going to cheat death by transferring his brain into his bimbo trophy wife, but gets more than he bargains for when he really starts turning into her.  If you read carefully you can see where Michael Offutt makes a cameo.

The second story was a lot longer.  It's one of those that sort of spun out of control a little.  Basically a janitor at a lab triggers a weird holodeck sort of thing and finds himself inside the holographic world as a character called "Naughty Nancy."  A scientist gets pulled in with him and together they jump through a few different scenarios as they struggle to escape.

The scenarios I based on some of my previous books, so they end up as schoolgirls, little girls, Goth girls, whores, fat girls, and geek girls.  That's part of why it ended up longer than I intended.  Fans of "Archer" will get the Dr. Krieger reference in the story.

And of course you can buy both on Amazon for the low low price of $2.99 each!

Would You Pay To Read This Blog?

 I mentioned in a couple of blog entries that former Forbes movie critic Scott Mendelson started a Substack and I subscribed to it.  Like a drug dealer he gave you the first few articles for free...then the paywall went up.  To which I shrugged and said, "Yeah, I'm not paying to read your blog entries."

This is one of those new problems to consider.  Besides dozens (hundreds?) of streaming channels now, you also have Patreons, Substacks, Youtube channels, Instagrams, TikToks, and whatever other stuff.  Some of it like Patreon and Substack are already monetized and others might be as well; I just don't use them enough to know.  Musk is already experimenting with charging for Twitter X.  As I'm sure more and more of these get monetized, I wonder how people will decide what content they want to pay for and what content they don't want to pay for.

A lot of it will probably come down to WHO is offering the content.  Celebrities obviously have fame on their side, so the gossip hungry might pay to see more of their lives.  "Influencers" also have fame, albeit perhaps less so.  Someone like Mendelson at least has perceived expertise versus someone like me.  But what about the rest of us?  

I read some other blogs--when the authors actually bother to blog something.  And most of them I find enjoyable.  But if they put up a paywall and asked for $5/month, I'd scoff and say, "Yeah, right.  I'm not paying to read your blog entries."

A lot of it is that I'm poor but also from an older generation where web pages and then blogs and then social media were free.  Now you're coming along and asking me to pay for what I was getting free before?  Check your roll, dude.

I can't imagine anyone paying to read a blog like this.  I mean, people barely read it when it's free, why would they pay for it?  I think eventually a lot of people will try the paywall route only to find it's a figurative brick wall and they'll go SPLAT like Wil E Coyote.  But those who are famous or who are perceived to be experts at something will probably survive.  Unfortunately that means less content for those of us who can't/won't pay for it.

The problem with newspaper paywalls is it makes it even easier for people to turn to fake news that's largely free.  In a similar fashion, when all the reputable experts hide behind paywalls, it leaves people to go down skeevy blind alleys of fake news and conspiracy theories.  And that's unfortunate--sometimes even dangerous.  If the only news and content people have access to is from whackos, what do you think is going to happen to the people viewing it?

So it would be good if not all real content hid behind paywalls to make it only for the rich to access.  If you remember, the Internet was literally created for the free exchange of information between universities and such.  Since the early 90s people have had to pay to access the Internet as a whole, but now we're seeing more and more sites/apps charging for access to their content on top of paying for an Internet connection.  Like with streaming there will probably be a saturation point where consumers just have enough of this nickel-and-diming.

At the same time, if I thought someone would pay to read this, would I start charging?  In a heartbeat!  It's all about the Benjamins, baby!

Can You Own a Word?

 On Facebook the official DC account posted this:

And I laughed and said, "Really?  Avenge?"  I mean, come on.

And of course other people are like, "What?  Marvel doesn't own that word."

Well, no, they don't OWN it in the legal sense, but they own it in the court of public opinion.  I mean it's the base word of one of the most successful franchises in movie history.  There's an obvious connotation between that word and Marvel.  So unless they're hoping to trick people into thinking it's a Marvel movie, it's kind of a stupid thing to do.

There have been cases where people try to trademark some pretty common word.  There was a romance author who tried to copyright some pretty ordinary word and it was just completely ridiculous and I think it eventually got thrown out of court.  Marvel really can't say DC can't use the word "Avenge" in ads or even titles, but it's just kind of a common sense thing.

Word association is a psychological test they can give people.  If I say, "Avenge" what do you think people would associate with it:  Marvel or Black Manta?  Duh.  And acting like it's just some random word they used is pretty ridiculous; Avengers movies have made like $10 Billion!  Or probably more than the entirety of the DC movie universe.

Even if your property existed first there can still be that problem.  Like the TV show Avatar: The Last Airbender came out years before James Cameron's "masterpiece" Avatar.  But since the live action movie of the former came out second, they mostly called it The Last Airbender so people wouldn't associate it with the billion-dollar movie.

That's something to keep in mind when you're looking for a title for a story.  I mean, I can call my book Gone With the Wind or Slaughterhouse-Five or Twilight or something like that, but people are still going to think of the other one.  While legally you might be able to do it, it's probably not sensible from a practical point of view.  Unless you're hoping people will be looking for that book and yours will pop up, which is unlikely.

In that vein, I might have mentioned once before how I looked up Carl Hiaasen's author page and there's clearly a book that's not his but it has pretty much the same name as his--Skintight vs Skin Tight--so Amazon just stupidly lumped them together and despite that I've flagged it a few times they still don't change it.  Or how Amazon stupidly put reviews for a different book called Naughty or Nice on my book called Naughty or Nice.  Don't expect Amazon to be smart enough to know which one is yours and which is someone else's.

Anyway, by now the Aquaman movie is on pace to make about half the first one.  So it's flopped less than The Marvels but still didn't do great.  Guess this poster didn't really help much.

Why Do Shows/Movies Have to Make Needless Changes to Characters?

A while back I watched the first two episodes of The Winter King on Amazon Prime.  The rest of it I had to sign up for MGM+ on Black Friday to watch.  I wrote an entry about the first two episodes and how diversity casting can be annoying when you're really a fan of the source material.  But reluctantly I did have to admit that maybe Merlin could be black in 5th Century Britain.  It's not likely but it's plausible since Rome had a lot of contact with Northern Africa, especially in its wars with Carthage.

A few episodes went by on MGM+ and it was OK, setting things up nicely.  Then finally it gets to the kingdom of Powys and we meet the princess Ceinwyn and her handmaiden Guinevere--as in that Guinevere.  And the casting just sucked for both of them.  Not that either actress is a bad actress, but they both totally looked wrong for the part.  I hate to be shallow like that, but again, when you're a fan of the book, you want things to look like the book.  And especially in this case it seemed easy to do.

In the books, Ceinwyn is the "Star of Powys" because she has really pale blonde hair, like platinum blonde so it's like starlight.  Get it?  And I think she was kinda pale and delicate and so it's a little "opposites attract" when she ends up with Derfel, who's this big strapping warrior.  Basically she's supposed to look kind of like Danerys in Game of Thrones, though the books for this came out long before that show--I'm not sure about the book.  Anyway, seems like it should be really easy to find a pale blonde or just someone pale and use dye or a wig to take care of the blonde part.

But no, they cast some average-looking brunette instead.  (Sorry, Emily John.)  Why?  Well the other half of this is in the books I'm pretty sure Guinevere is a redhead.  Again it seems like that ought to be pretty easy to find.  But no, let's cast a black woman.  A black woman with blonde hair.  WTF?!

I have nothing against black women with blonde hair in modern times, but this is the 5th fucking Century.  And this ain't fantasy like Game of Thrones or Rings of Power.  This is historical fiction.  Why the fuck would there be black women with blonde hair?  Is it a wig?  Doesn't seem like it considering she apparently sleeps with it on when she's with Arthur on their honeymoon.  Is she dyeing it?  

I had to go Google whether they had dye in the 5th Century.  It turns out the Romans did have dyes and even made prostitutes dye their hair blonde--though most wore wigs.  So I guess theoretically it's possible though at this time in Britain the Romans have been gone for a while and most of their technology has been lost or abandoned.  It's possible there could still be a recipe for blonde dye around Britain then, though I doubt it would look that good.

My thinking is that since they made Guinevere blonde for...reasons they then decided they should make Ceinwyn brunette so they wouldn't look alike.  Because why not ruin both characters while we're at it, right?  For no goddamned reason that I can tell.

Does it really matter?  It matters a little bit.  Ceinwyn is kind of a Helen of Troy in that she's the beautiful woman that inadvertently causes a war over her.  In this case it's because Arthur dumps her to marry Guinevere.  Her beauty is another part of her "star of Powys" nickname.  When you make her look ordinary and just shrug off her nickname as "it's just what my mom called me" it really waters down the character.  A character who is supposed to be somewhat important to the overall story for all 3 books.

The Guinevere thing then annoys me because then I feel like a racist even though it's not really about race.  It just doesn't make sense that anyone would look like that in that place and time.  And again it's historical fiction, not fantasy.  It felt like a little bit of a betrayal too because I went along with Merlin being black, suspending my disbelief, and then you do this.  I'm supposed to suspend that much more disbelief?!  Gah!  I can't get behind that!

If you want to think of it another way, imagine if I were going to do a drama set in Central Africa in the 5th Century focusing on the various tribes or nations or empires or whatever was there at the time.  And then I decide to cast a white woman for the princess of one tribe that is otherwise all black.  And I decide this white woman should have pink hair.  Besides being racist, it would be completely implausible from a historical standpoint for a person like that to exist in that place and time.  That's pretty much what they did with this show.

And really it seems like a needless, silly thing to do.  I don't know what their excuse would be.  "We couldn't find anyone else for these parts."  Yeah, right.  That's as lame as when studios whitewash parts and claim they couldn't find a black/Asian/Middle Eastern/Indian/etc person for it.  Yeah, right.

There have been a couple other times in the last few years where something like this happened.  In two different GI Joe movies there's been a "Baroness" character and both times they have her just talk in an American voice instead of an Eastern European accent like she's supposed to have because she's from somewhere in Eastern Europe where they have, you know, baronesses.  After watching that Origins Snake Eyes movie I screamed, "Why is it so hard to get someone who talks with the right accent?!  Is that tiny amount of fan service too much to ask for?!"  I mean, really, how fucking hard is it to get that one little thing right?

Another time was in The Martian they cast Mackenzie Davis as "Mindy Park" who's supposed to be Asian in the book.  It's one of those needless whitewashing things.  I mean, they couldn't find an Asian woman for a pretty minor part in the movie?  Really, Ridley Scott?  REALLY?!?  And I liked Mackenzie Davis in an episode of Black Mirror but, come on, she's not a household name where it's like, "OMG we need to find a role for her in this movie so we can put her name on the poster and stuff!"  

The latter is also true for The Winter King.  Like I said, the actresses they cast are fine but neither is a household name.  Jordan Alexandra's biggest part according to IMDB was playing "Office Worker" in Dr. Strange 2.  So obviously this wasn't about casting star power.

Anyway, this kind of stuff just annoys me because in all of the cases mentioned it was needless.  It really shouldn't have been hard to find someone to actually fit the part the way it was supposed to be.  When you don't do that, your "poetic license" or whatever really starts to become a distraction.  It's definitely not a distraction I needed when I really want to like a show because I love the books it's based on.  Maybe as a fan of the books you could just throw me a bone and not make stupid, needless changes to the characters?  Maybe?  

And like with the Baroness thing, when you don't get simple things right it tells me as a fan that you really don't know and/or care about the source material.  As a fan then that annoys me because it makes it seem like you're not taking this seriously, not as seriously as I take this.  It's more important to you to put your artistic stamp or whatever on it.  Or you're just lazy and don't care who you cast or what they sound like or any damned thing.  Just put whoever in there and shoot this thing so we can go home.  Like with the GI Joe movies, Transformers movies, Star Wars movies, etc. I really just want someone who's going to care about the source material as much as I do.  Needless changes like the Baroness's accent, or the race of particular characters, or hair color of particular characters, or whether the particular character even has hair (ie, Lex Luthor) make me question that commitment.

I did still like the show, but I'd have liked it more if they'd done those two characters right instead of making stupid casting choices for no real reason.