Michael Offutt's Blog, page 22

I was surprised at how good the HALO series was on Paramount +.

I never played the HALO games that Microsoft put out, but I had plenty of friends who did. When the HALO show premiered on Paramount + earlier this year, despite my lack of familiarity with controlling Master Chief, I was excited to watch the show. I finally got around to finishing it this last weekend, and it didn't disappoint.

In reflecting on these nine episodes, I think I can say that HALO was a surprising show in that it had a lot of roles with diversity and handled them really well. This wasn't a clumsy or ham-fisted adaptation with little disregard done to racial casting. Every role seemed to have as much weight as the Master Chief himself. And each was given enough dialogue and enough screen time to warrant the investment of talented actors who seemed to take their roles seriously enough that I was immersed almost constantly while watching. In particular, I really enjoyed actress Yerin Ha's role in Kwan Ha, the only survivor of a Covenant-led attack that murdered her clan on the planet of Madrigal. Her story arc was really interesting, and shone just as brightly as the one led by the Master Chief.

I think that I'm glad I never played the video game, and thus was unfamiliar with the story going into this show. On the surface, it's a diamond in the rough, offering a lot of promise in many of its scenes (the one showing a ring-world of some kind in dreamscape-like sequences hint at some pretty high science fiction that may be coming down the pipe). I'm now on board with these characters, and I'm invested in whatever goes down with them. I actually cared that a Spartan was in danger. One thing that gave me a chuckle was watching John's bored face while watching for Kai to show up after the spaceship crash. That said to me that John knows an exploding starship is like a mosquito bite for a Spartan. In the end, I think the only thing that scares them are "feelings."

I was also impressed with the villainy of Dr. Halsey. In this show, the crime that she commits is one of the most horrific I've ever heard of in a story. Here's what it is in a nutshell: to create the Spartan program, she selected kids that were about six years old and targeted them for kidnappings. Then she cloned those kids (once they were kidnapped) and returned the clones to the parents. These "fake" kids would then (within days) hemorrhage blood and go into unexplained seizures and die, leaving the parents to mourn for their children while she kept the real ones for training to be Spartans. I was like...oh my god...that's so evil! I mean...it's like next level evil. Like Dr. Mengele evil (real-life former Nazi doctor). I wonder how she's going to outdo herself in season 2. Maybe she will just kill millions of people or something like that, and justify it to herself as "saving billions." What a monster.

Additionally, I learned just yesterday that it has been renewed for season 2. I can't wait.

Did anyone else watch HALO, or are you in the process of watching it? If so, what did you think?

Lower Decks is back with season 3 and Bradford Boimler is my favorite character.

With the launch of season 3 of Lower Decks on Paramount +, I think my favorite character is Bradford Boimler. Voiced by Jack Quaid who plays Hughie Campbell in Amazon's The Boys, the character of Boimler takes himself very seriously while everyone else does not. That's kind of his running gag, and it does seem to work. He also has a lot of the "Sheldon Cooper" obliviousness which maybe is an homage to Big Bang Theory which in its long run had many of its own homages to Star Trek. It may just be that geek culture in general is one big bathtub and everything just sloshes around in it constantly. So, if you are a geek, then you see all parts of the tub equally, and they all affect what you like equally.

Thus far in season 3 we learn a little more of Boimler than we did in previous seasons. The first thing that surprised me was the sight gag of "Picard at the Vineyard" before the Boimler reveal (meaning it was Boimler at his own vineyard and not Jean-Luc). I had no idea that Boimler had that kind of money in his family. But it could be that it was just meant to be another gag. And then, it was funny to see Boimler being ogled as a sex object by all the people at the vineyard (mostly women) who were literally throwing themselves at him. But in Sheldon Cooper style, he had no idea what was going on and gave them instructions quite literally whenever they would complain about "getting stains on their shirt," etc. I don't know why that kind of humor lands with me, but it does. So yeah, I laughed out loud multiple times.

I also hadn't realized that Boimler's hair was actually purple. I guess in the animation, I assumed it was kind of a blue black thing. I've seen people use black and then blue to explain highlights in it. But I hadn't given it much thought. And then Boimler said he dyes his hair purple. So, that explains it. But now I'm wondering why he dyes his hair purple.

The season three opener also had the lower decks crew playing a kind of Star Trek version of Dungeons & Dragons. So of course I liked that. The "DM" in this case (who is the one that runs the game) was the Klingon Martok from Deep Space Nine days. He said a line that reminded me of my friend Joseph, who runs some ridiculous games where he has encounters that just end badly for players and that don't make a lot of sense rules-wise. This is actually common in the D&D community, because a lot of people who run games don't really know how to run them. It can be hard to get a mastery of encounters, and much of the time, DM's just want to kill player characters probably because they've convinced themselves that by doing so, people will take them seriously. It's kind of how George R.R. Martin has an oversized influence on fiction by being one of the first authors to really "kill his darlings." A lot of people just don't like to do that, so you end up having these laughable critiques like, "Galadriel has plot armor. Nothing can happen to her even though they are trying to make this seem dangerous."

Anyway, so the line that Martok says in season 3, episode 1 of Lower Decks happens when Brad Boimler declares that his character is going to do a thing, and then he rolls a twenty-sided dice. It comes up a "1" which is a critical failure in just about every scenario. The Martok character laughs and says loudly, "The Klingon warrior rips your arm off and beats you to death with it. It is a death WITHOUT honor, because technically you died by your own hand." It's a quote that stuck in my brain, and by which I've teased my friend Joseph with several times now. When I did it the first time, it was at his game that he runs at the local game shop, and his players all agreed, "Yeah, that's Joseph."

The season opener also had a holographic James Cromwell making his inaugural warp flight from Bozeman, Montana in it. This was featured in the movie First Contact, which came out sooo long ago. Man, does time fly. Anyway, in the Star Trek universe, civilian space flights actually take off from a theme park in Bozeman, Montana. I couldn't help but think that someday this is probably going to happen somewhere on the planet. Only it won't be a holo James Cromwell doing the piloting. It will be a holo Elon Musk. And this sadly means that I'm living in the screwed over Mirror Universe, as if that wasn't apparent already.

Stable Diffusion is here to give you art on demand and to make artists obsolete.

For the past week or so, I've been playing around with Stable Diffusion. If you want to play around with it, you can go HERE to check it out. When you click on that link, it will take you to a link where you can enter a string of text and then hit a button and wait for a robot (an artificial intelligence) to generate an image based on those words. I did one last week where I wrote, "Timothee Chalamet as Legolas," and it generates some really uncanny valley images. It's kind of addicting to come up with a sentence and then wait for the A.I. to interpret your words and generate a bespoke image just for you.

Here are some images that were generated by other people who have been playing around with the software. 

It's definitely got some uncanny valley to it. Another thing it can do is generate images from other images. This second set of pics came from Reddit user argaman123. They created this image: and then they added the following prompt:

A distant futuristic city full of tall buildings inside a huge transparent glass dome, In the middle of a barren desert full of large dunes, Sun rays, Artstation, Dark sky full of stars with a shiny sun, Massive scale, Fog, Highly detailed, Cinematic, Colorful

And then Stable Diffusion produced the following two images:

I haven't gotten anything close to results like this, but I'm still learning how the software works. It's also improving all of the time. I think it's only a month old at this point. However, anyone that does art for a living should be scared. Stable Diffusion literally makes images in less than five minutes. And as the software gets better, artists are probably going to become obsolete if this is the kind of quality we can expect from artificial intelligence.

The robots are coming for us all.

Three episodes into the Rings of Power I have a few observations that could be construed as nitpicks.

I'm three episodes into Amazon's Rings of Power. I am stunned by this beautiful and contemporary take on Tolkien's works. I also couldn't quite suss out a plot by the end of episode 2. However, episode 3 seems to have done a decent job in drawing it all together for me. My friend who watches it with me reminded me that a lot of Tolkien stuff takes a while to get going, so this should follow that same formula.

So what should I say about Rings of Power? Well, it's mostly observations. So, if you think my observations might be spoilers, then you should probably avoid them. However, if you too are watching the show, it might be useful to know if you noticed the same things that I did. So here are my first observations based off the beginning episodes.

The first is that the guy they've hired to play Elrond has the biggest chin I've ever seen on someone. In some shots, it honestly makes his entire face look like a crescent moon. I've joked with my watching partner that "Elrond must receive broadcasts from the future because of his chin." So that's been fun. It's also mean of me to body shame, but I can't help it in this case.

My second observation is that its weird that Galadriel jumped off the boat near the shores of Valinor and just...I dunno...decided to swim back to Middle Earth. This seemed so unbelievable to me that I commented to my friend, "This would be like diving off a boat in the middle of the Pacific and swimming back to San Francisco. It was utterly ridiculous. My friend reminded me that elves are badass. So, I shrugged and said, "Okay...I guess I can let this go. But it does bother me."

My third observation is that I think Halbrand who plays a man from the south (notorious followers of Sauron and Morgoth) is Sauron just kinda hanging out and being all hot and stuff. It's really weird. But he killed the people without a second thought at sea, and I think he saved Galadriel so that she would introduce him to the elves and so that he could help out with the rings of power (which they are about to get around to forging). It makes sense, because Galadriel kinda likes him and in the books and in the movies she clearly doesn't and calls him "the deceiver." So...I think he "deceives" Galadriel starting with this shipwreck and subsequent trip to Numenor, etc. And most of us who have read The Lord of the Rings books know that Sauron was a great smith, so him trying to help out in the smithy seems within character. If I'm right, it's just weird seeing Sauron eating dinner and hanging out. He kinda has a look with all that spikey armor that I'm not used to thinking of him like this. But I suppose he could look like whatever he wants to look like to accomplish his goals for his master.

My fourth observation about the show is that the Harfoots, who appear to be ancestors of the Hobbits, are incredibly cruel. They just abandon anyone that falls behind when they decide to move from one location to another. They actually have a word for it: "de-caravaned." And among some of the worst punishments are being at the back of the caravan, because it is more likely to lose the back than it is to lose the front. In practice, it looks like you can expect no help from anyone else in the caravan. You either follow under your own power and strength, or you just fall behind and die, and then they read your name out in a book once a year. It was honestly kind of grotesque, but whatever.

I suppose these are just nitpicky things. I'm enjoying the show, and I know it is difficult to create a fantasy world. They are doing better than most, and this is to say that I don't think I could have come up with anything better using only footnotes and appendices. Is anyone else watching, The Rings of Power? If so, what are your observations?

Allowing work aversion disorder to set in is probably the most toxic thing you could do to yourself if you can't afford to not work.

I suppose this post was a combination of things I was thinking about. There was the death of Queen Elizabeth II yesterday, which got me thinking about people who don't really have to work because they live off other people in a life of extraordinary privilege and entitlement. There are also numerous people I know who have what is called "work aversion," and they are at various ages in life. And thinking about those two things in particular led me to write this peculiar essay of sorts for this blog, and how being work averse when you are not rich in a capitalist society is probably the most toxic thing you could do. It's actually just awful. But first, I think I need to define what Work Aversion Disorder is. And trust me...it's super common. I have only like 10 total friends and at least four of them that I know of suffer from this "disorder," which when you boil it down isn't really a diagnosable disorder. It's just a better term than extreme toxic laziness.

Work aversion is the state of avoiding or not wanting to work or be employed, or the extreme preference of leisure as opposed to work. It can set in because people observe privileged folk not working, and they think that if so-and-so can get away with it, I can too. It can also come from parents who coddle their children and believe that many kinds of work are beneath their children to do. It can set in from negative experiences. A lot of work is done alongside assholes who berate, pay you low wages, or who treat you as a subhuman. This is mostly because of an inconvenient truth in that a lot of people are actually terrible. Violent crime aside, the bullies and the casual law breakers and people who can't be bothered to respect others are everywhere. So work in itself (for many people) is trauma. You have to have a thick skin to work, to suffer performance appraisals, and to suffer the many indignities that are splashed on you because of work. So I get it. Work Aversion then is the ultimate boundary. It is saying, "I'm not going to play this game. It hurts me. I'm not doing it. Ever." And then what happens is that the burden of that person living gets passed to someone else. So the workload increases.

What I find fascinating is the insidious spiral of death this decision creates. In other words, these extremely concrete boundaries set by those who have "work aversion" will destroy you in a capitalist society. There are so many complications, but here's a short list of those that are possible (and that I've actually observed) that are visited upon the person with this disorder:

1) Loss of assets. Duh...if you can't afford anything because you don't work, then you end up poor. This (in the short term) leads to huge debt and credit problems that (because of our society) can quickly creep onto a partner or a loved one like a disease and ruin their finances.

2) This then leads to abandonment. Duh. Again, this is a no-brainer. Why would you let someone else drag you down? So strings get cut, the person is abandoned, and the people who were partners thank the gods that they were able to escape this "toxic" person. Friends scatter to the four winds too, because in a capitalist society (especially America today), everyone that isn't a Queen is maxed out on who and what they can care for.

3) Because of abandonment and because of being dirt ass poor, depression sets in. Now you've got a real diagnosable mental illness. Then self-neglect sets in. This includes malnourishment (if they even could afford food to begin with), and the neglect of one's personal appearance or hygiene. This in turn drives even more people away.

4) Strained relations with family and friends happen. No one wants to be around a needy, stinky, person who doesn't want to work and just wants you to support them. So yeah, the isolation grows if it wasn't already huge to begin with. Not to mention that the person is probably constantly talking about their mental illness and screaming for help and there is literally no one who can fill this bottomless well of need (because what they really need is millions of dollars to meet all of their financial burdens as a result of being work averse). 

5) This leads to reduced socialization, which causes even more mental illnesses, like anxiety, and terrible codependency issues.

So yeah...it's like dominoes. When you knock one down, it touches another, and so on and so forth. But I get it. Who wants to work, especially when we can see that there are folks who live wonderful vibrant lives who really don't have jobs that abuse them and treat them like garbage? But work aversion disorder is literally the worst thing if you are not one of the people who are lucky, and can afford "not to work." And it's amazing how it's a doorway to so many horrible things. In fact, I'd describe what happens to a person as a toxic death spiral. It's like you make a decision to circle the drain. But what's the alternative? For many people, it is embracing severe daily trauma for low wages that eventually break your body and your mind. That's fascinating, isn't it?

Anyway, that's what I wanted to share with you today: thoughts on being forced to work and having the privilege of not having to work. Those are some interesting things to contemplate in this all too human experience called life. Now if only I could answer (for myself) why we have things like Kings and Queens to begin with? Why do we celebrate these freeloaders? How did it even get started? Does it all go back to bullying and narcissism? Did the one with these toxic traits thousands of years ago just bully and stomp their way to the top and enslave everyone else? Maybe that's all it was. As I said earlier, people are terrible, and they just keep visiting terrible on other people forever.

The September IWSG wants to know what genre I'd have the most difficulty writing for and why.

The first Wednesday of every month is Insecure Writer's Support Group day. If you've been following my blog, you know I like to participate in this thing. This is the first time I can remember in a long while when the IWSG happened so late in a given month. I guess it was a perfect storm with the 31st of August landing in the middle of last week so that the 1st was actually a Thursday. If this is your first time stumbling across this blogfest, know that it's been going for years now (maybe even a decade). Alex Cavanaugh, writer of best selling science fiction, started it all. Here are a few other details taken from the sign-up page, which you can find HERE.

What is the purpose of the IWSG?: Well, it is to share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!

When do y'all post?: As I said above, it is the first Wednesday of every month. This is the official Insecure Writer’s Support Group posting day. You are to post your thoughts on your own blog, talk about your doubts and the fears you have conquered, discuss your struggles and triumphs, and offer a word of encouragement for others who are struggling. Or, you can just answer the monthly question, which is what I do every month unless I'm feeling particularly ambitious.
Visit others in the group and connect with your fellow writer - aim for a dozen new people each time - and return comments. This group is all about connecting! Be sure to link to this page and display the badge in your post. And please be sure your avatar links back to your blog! Otherwise, when you leave a comment, people can't find you to comment back.

The IWSG is on Twitter! The handle they use is @TheIWSG and hashtag is #IWSG.

The awesome co-hosts for the September 7 posting of the IWSG are Kim Lajevardi, Cathrina Constantine, Natalie Aguirre, Olga Godim, Michelle Wallace, and Louise - Fundy Blue!

Every month, the IWSG announces a question that members can answer in their IWSG post. These questions may prompt you to share advice, insight, a personal experience or story. Include your answer to the question in your IWSG post or let it inspire your post if you are struggling with something to say.

Remember, the question is optional!

September 7 question - What genre would be the worst one for you to tackle and why?
I'm going to answer this as anything that people who are strongly conservative in their politics would enjoy. I know that sounds like a weird way to answer this question, but people who are conservative and people who are liberal like different things. They just do, and it's a fact and not an opinion. It's why Yellowstone is such a huge hit with conservatives and very few liberals actually watch it. I know what conservatives like, and I just can't write any of that. It's not for me. I don't understand it. I don't like it. And I'm glad that it isn't my job to write stuff for their minds. So yeah...that's the genre that would be the worst thing for me to tackle.
I hope that answer satisfies you. Now for those of you who have visited my blog, here's a not-so-fun fact about the State of Utah where I live: temperature records going back to the 1800's show that Utah (on average) has eight 100 degree days during the summer. Here on September 7th (Wednesday) of 2022, we have now had 35. It will be 105 degrees today. I'm not sure what is happening, but I hate it. I never signed up to live in Phoenix, Arizona. Our future is so screwed.

Why was there so much red matter in a containment field in the 2009 Star Trek movie?

So I came across Star Trek on cable one night this week (I think it was on AMC), and it was the J.J. Abrams reboot that happened in 2009. I hadn't seen it in a few years, and I only watched some of it, because I was headed to bed. The part I did watch was the "red matter" scene, where the Romulans inject a drop of red matter into their drill that is going to attack Vulcan in order to make a hole deep enough for them to fire a torpedo into Vulcan and cause its collapse into a black hole. This is where (for the first time) I kind of blinked and asked the question, "What is red matter anyway?" I figured that the internet would have stuff written on it. And it didn't disappoint. So today's entire post is an essay of sorts on exactly what "red matter" is, because I figured you guys would all want to know. It's like that itch that you didn't even know you needed to scratch from the pseudo-science from a movie that is already thirteen years old and where one of the main crew members has already passed away. How time flies. So ready? Here goes.

Red Matter in J.J. Abrams's reboot is a substance capable of forming a black hole when ignited. One drop was sufficient to collapse a star or consume an entire planet. From what I can gather, it was originally created by Spock, and his idea was to use it to reinvigorate a dying Romulan sun, but it didn't work, and the result was the complete and utter destruction of Romulus. So...my brain was like...okay, then why was there this much in the movie (picture below):

Remember when staring at the huge red ball that they only needed one drop.

Like...that is a ridiculous amount of red matter. I don't know how dangerous all of that stuff is, but one drop can cause an entire planet to disappear into a black hole. So this led me to question, "Why would Spock make the above when all he needed was a single drop?"

Here's what I found out. Getting this out of the way, I'm not the first person to ask this question. And there is no answer other than maybe he thought it would be nice to have extra for other applications. Who knows? However, the Vulcans were not overly keen to have a potentially world-ending substance sitting around in their science facility. In the comic book (I shouldn't have been surprised that there was a comic book) Geordi LaForge and Spock indicate that red matter is very unstable. They had to build a special container on Spock's ship (named the Jellyfish), and that ultimately became the safest place to store it. That's why there's such a huge amount of it on Spock's ship and nowhere else. They also seemed to think that it would be okay to jettison whatever was left into the singularity that formed and it would just disappear into the black hole like everything else. That seems weird to me, but I don't understand black holes anyway. So I suppose that sounds like a good idea. Like...where else would you store it safely?

And finally, I guess that all of J.J. Abrams's movies and productions have a red ball placed somewhere in them. I've never noticed this. But it is an Easter Egg for his movies. There is one in the Alias pilot, and people who work with J.J. wonder where the red ball is going to show up. So the red ball in Star Trek was impossible to miss, which may be an indication of how excited J.J. was to direct the movie, even if its disruption to canon has riled many Star Trek fans.
So, now you know as much about "Red Matter" as I do. It's one huge macguffin, and an inside joke. Are you satisfied? Did it scratch an itch you never knew you needed to scratch? Have a great Labor Day weekend. I will be back on Wednesday with an Insecure Writer's Support Group post.

The House of the Dragon spinoff feels less interesting than the original Game of Thrones even if it is a gorgeous production.

I've watched two episodes of House of the Dragon now, and I wanted to weigh-in on the Game of Thrones spinoff. However, it will be impossible to do so without spoilers. So, here is your spoiler warning.

House of the Dragon doesn't feel like Game of Thrones as much as it feels like Game of Thrones fanfiction, but maybe through the eyes of someone with less talent. The original story featured a huge cast of characters (many of them horrible), with each one starring in its own chapter or point-of-view. This technique allowed George R.R. Martin and by extension, the HBO team, to cliffhang each story and then go on to the next scene. With House of the Dragon the scene transitions are more like a regular tv series. They are just different points of view within the same large family. And the dynastic succession seems like a story that we've seen before. In some ways, having watched Game of Thrones, I wonder why any of these people don't see that the struggle for this uncomfortable chair that the king sits in is even worth it. Or maybe the ultimate lesson is that it is bad to be the King of Westeros.

That chair too has been changed a bit to make it more imposing. The steps leading up to it appear broader than they were in the original series. They are also covered in the littered remains of melted longswords and daggers no doubt taken from enemies and forged in a way to make the Iron Throne a bit of a contemporary art piece. The fact that the king regularly cuts himself on it and gets grotesque skin infections from the wounds seems lost to the common sense of those who should know better within the context of this fictional world.

The dragons as well seem a lot different. The ones that Daenerys rode were what I might consider to be a more traditional take on the mythological monster. Matt Smith from Doctor Who plays Daemon Targaryen, and his dragon appears to look more red and serpentine. Smith's character is utterly without charisma of any kind. This in contrast to Joffrey in the original who had charisma even if he was a psychopath. It almost feels like Matt Smith overacts in his Targaryen role so as to appear intentionally crazy, as opposed to the slow boil of crazy that we saw in other characters in the original series.

Where House of the Dragon does seem to land well is in the violence and gore that were hallmarks of the previous series. However, the original show covered quite a bit of territory. Seeking to maybe break new ground, the Westeros of centuries past shows itself in a tournament of bored knights eager to maim one another, and in a horrific birth scene that seems conjured to remind us all that many women prior to modern medicine did not survive a baby. And of course, there is plenty of social commentary on the state of the patriarchy in this medieval horror show, with baby boys clearly being more important than mothers and with a Targaryen in Harrenhal choosing a male heir over a female one.

Why anyone even continues to use Harrenhal as a dwelling is a question I never got answered either from the original series or the books. If you don't recall this specific castle in Westeros, it's a ruin of melted stone with many collapsed hallways and uninhabitable spaces due to dragon fire being used on its inhabitants. It would be little more than living out of a cave. There is always some noble squabbling over Harrenhal, yet no one ever gets around to renovating the place and fixing it up. I guess part of its ongoing appeal is its ruined appearance so that people can gape in awe and say, "This is what happened when Balerion the Dread melted the place." Balerion is the "big" dead dragon skull at King's Landing. I'm pretty sure Drogon ended up being that big at the close of Daenerys's storyline. 

The new cast of House of the Dragon may settle into their roles yet. But it is difficult to see how it will maintain the epic feel of Game of Thrones without a spooky bad guy (the White Walkers). In fact, it may end up being more of a medieval Dynasty (this was a popular prime-time soap opera in the 1980's that featured various squabbling modern-day nobles backstabbing one another while living off their oil money). Dallas is another one of these dynasty-esque shows. So, House of the Dragon then is just a gussied up Dynasty featuring dragons instead of cars and with white wigs on everyone. Watching this show makes me think of the phrase "lightning in a bottle." It's obvious that there is more hunger for Game of Thrones. But there may not be more Game of Thrones to be had. 

Sometimes, a good story is just that. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Stretching it out to give more to the people has always been a problem. Look at Jaws and Jurassic Park. Both of these are examples where the brilliance of the original made people go looking to recapture that "lightning in a bottle." And it never worked, even if those attempts produced money. Being profitable is not the same as being good, and I think we are in that territory when it comes to House of the Dragon. The thing has millions of viewers, and it probably always will dominate the ratings. But the magic of what made the original unique is simply not there, at least in these first two episodes. It would help things a lot if they actually had a supernatural villain to worry about (like the Night King) as opposed to watching a family destroy its enemies, many of whom reside within the same walls. Ah well...if any family was interesting enough to warrant a series, it was the Targaryens and their dragon lords. 

She-Hulk on Disney Plus didn't waste any time drawing bigger connections to the MCU.

In today's post, I want to discuss the first two episodes of the new She-Hulk series. So this is your spoiler warning.

She-Hulk on Disney Plus didn't waste any time drawing bigger connections to the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe). Most of these Marvel series are not shy on this aspect. But right from the get-go we had a Sakaaran spaceship that resulted in Banner's niece getting infected with his gamma irradiated blood. And then from there, she's off to represent Emil Blonsky, whom we briefly saw in Shang-Chi and who had a larger part in an Edward Norton led Incredible Hulk movie that I believe I've only watched once, and it was well over ten years ago. That show was the one that had the Abomination in it. Honestly, I thought it would be a better movie. But it wasn't bad. I just remember that my interest waned in it once Edward Norton jumped ship for whatever ship he's sailing on these days. I used to like Edward Norton a lot (his performance in American History X is incredible). But I've come to understand that he may be a bit difficult to work with. I've worked with "difficult" folks, so I get it. My sympathies go to anyone that is forced to work with difficult, snobby, demanding people.

I am wondering who Blonsky's "seven penpals" are at this point. He mentioned it more than once when meeting with his lawyer (She-Hulk), and I'm thinking that the line felt "bludgeoning" enough for me to think that they are laying the ground for something. But my knowledge of Marvel is not good enough for me to predict what this "something" is going to be. I also wonder if Matt Murdock will make an appearance at some point seeing as he's a lawyer too. That would be an interesting turn of events and draw a nice connection to the Daredevil series, since we know that She-Hulk is now going to take the place of Mark Ruffalo in the Avengers movies.

Another of the things I find interesting about the character of Blonsky is that we learn (by the end of the second episode) that his participation in the underground fighting ring that was featured in the movie, Shang Chi was in fact an illegal appearance. Honestly, this is a no-brainer. So, I should have realized this. But I didn't. There were too many things I was trying to process plot-wise that this appearance by the Abomination seemed like just another interesting and humorous cameo. However, now that I've had time to process what we saw in She-Hulk I think there are more realistic real world implications.

For one, She-Hulk herself admits out loud that people need to earn a living. Money doesn't just drop from the sky, and she wonders if being an Avenger even comes with a paycheck. When I turned this tidbit over in my mind, I realized that even though Wong is now the Sorcerer Supreme, he might also need a paycheck. So I assumed that Wong is the one that is selling his magical talents to break random super people out of their prisons so that he can earn money in the fighting ring. Afterall, being the Sorcerer Supreme probably doesn't pay a living wage, and those tuna melts from the corner deli don't come cheap.

We don't need this explanation for Stephen Strange. He obviously has a good windfall fund somewhere since he was a rich doctor once, and the Sanctum Sanctorum has to be paid off in full (minus yearly property taxes). The idea that the Sorcerer Supreme has all these regulations and rules about using magical powers and artifacts and whatnot for fear of being magically corrupted, but these same rules do not include using your powers to make money for personal gain (in illegal fight clubs) makes me laugh.

And finally, these two episodes of She-Hulk make me wonder what the plans are for Banner. It seems obvious that they are removing him from The Avengers. But he is seen leaving Earth in a Sakaaran spaceship. So, I wonder if we are going to get a World War Hulk thing in the future? I'm thinking that the Sakaarians are taking Hulk back to the planet to meet his son and baby mama. Some band from Earth attacks (maybe the Illuminati) and Hulk's son and baby mama get killed. That makes Banner lose his shit, and then he comes back to Earth as an unstoppable angry man. Anyway, it's just thoughts at this point. But a lot of it was kicked off with these first two episodes of She-Hulk. They were pretty good. Anyone else wondering where they are going with this thing? Anyone else enjoy what they saw?

Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is a $400 million dollar story made from footnotes and appendices.

Today I learned that The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power does not have the rights to The Silmarillion. I was like...what in the hell? I guess the rights to Tolkien's properties are complicated. What they do have are the rights to the Lord of the Rings trilogy, all of its appendices that go with it, as well as The Hobbit. So, the appendices cover a good amount of the Second Age. Additionally, I guess the showrunners were allowed to ask to use certain elements from the other books (or to get permission) if even one name was (for example) mentioned in the appendices. In other words, if a person, a place, or an event is referenced in the Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit in any way that they were allowed to use all of the connecting details that appear in The Silmarillion. However, they couldn't use anything that appears solely in The Silmarillion.

This is a really weird way to spend $400 million dollars (the cost of the first season). I'm a little in awe that someone would greenlight a show adaptation from what are essentially scraps and footnotes, when there are entire novels out there written by other fantasy authors that are relatively cheap (in comparison) to get. I understand that The Lord of the Rings has name recognition. However, there are a lot of fantasy stories out there that are just as good if not better in their overall story.

All that being said, there are additional considerations that I would have had if it was my $400 million being invested in this thing. For example, I've noticed online that this series (it isn't even out yet) has become something of a lightning rod for folks who are mad because there are strong women and non-white people being represented. This means that the series will start with a lot of bad will (assume that half of the United States is basically racist). Even if the series is good, it runs the risk that this "bad will" could spread online and infect even non-racists and non-sexists. To simplify, if the series ends up not being all that great of a story because it is drawn from appendices and footnotes, there will be huge arguments that state (wrongly I might add) that the show exists to showcase diversity and that therefore the problem is diversity.

We live in interesting times, folks. I am looking forward to The Rings of Power. It's going to be here soon.