Michael Offutt's Blog, page 51

Star Trek Picard is walking the disappointing road that the Star Wars sequels followed by killing the happy ending.

I'm a few episodes into Picard, the CBS All Access examination of what occurred after Picard's illustrious Starfleet career is over, and I'm beginning to think that what we have going on here is the same thing that seems to have happened with the continuation of the Star Wars movies. In other words, the happy ending didn't last and what was once good enough to be left alone has now been mined for visceral and emotional reaction to justify nasty changes in these beloved characters.

Spoiler Alert: I'm going to discuss "Stardust City Rag," which aired last week.

Case in point, the brutal killing of Icheb, who was a character I really liked in Star Trek: Voyager for about two seasons, was awful as soon as I realized who it was that was screaming while he was getting chopped up. I didn't need to see this, and I'm pretty angry with Star Trek not because of the gory death per se, but because it was Icheb. I liked Icheb a lot, and I know (because I'm a thinking adult who knows how stories work) that the director of this episode (it's Jonathan Frakes a.k.a. William Riker of Next Generation) called "Stardust City Rag" mined old content looking for ways to connect these present events to the past, stumbled upon Icheb, and was like, "I'm gonna kill off this character to motivate Seven of Nine."

It makes me shake my head in disgust.

Picard isn't Game of Thrones unless I missed a memo somewhere. Beloved characters do not need to be put on the chopping block in order to create visceral emotions for new stories. I honestly think that this is the laziest of storytelling...going for a character death in order to spur a major character onto a path that you want them to walk. There are a myriad of other ways that this could have been accomplished, maybe by devoting one episode (or several episodes) to a backstory following Seven of Nine's awareness of how the Federation has changed following the destruction of Mars, or following her own investigation into what exactly the Romulans are doing with that Borg cube.

It could be any number of things. My first guess as to what's going on with the Borg cube is that it's the one that was destroying Romulan colonies on the very edge of the Neutral Zone in the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. They never followed up on that, but it definitely had a "Borg foreshadowing feel" to it, as entire colonies had been scooped up and were missing. Maybe the Borg had a problem assimilating all of the Romulans...like there was something toxic or poisonous about Romulan genetics similar to what happened when the Borg attempted to assimilate Species 8472. All of the Romulans that are removed from the Borg ship (is the word "recovered" appropriate here?) seem to be crazy/insane...so there's obviously something medical (that's unexplained) going on here.

I think that the Borg decided to cut loose that ship and return to Borg space until Season 2 and the episode "Q Who," which introduced humans (and the Federation) to the Borg, which then was followed up in the season finale of Season Three "The Best of Both Worlds." And that's where that Borg ship that the Romulans are studying came from.

Anyway, I haven't been able to connect many of the dots in Picard, but killing Icheb seems cruel and unnecessary. There are plenty of things going on that are interesting enough to have brought in former beloved characters from Voyager, Next Generation, and even DS9 (if that happens at some point) without having to axe characters to give these people a reason to interact with the story. It seems gratuitous, and I don't like it.

At least Discovery is knocking it out of the ball park (in my opinion), by breaking new ground in tremendous thought-provoking ways.

The cover for Empire of Grass is absolutely breathtaking.

I know that it's common wisdom to say, "Never judge a book by its cover," but I think that old saying fails when it comes to Michael Whelan. That being said, I love Tad Williams, and I'm looking forward to reading this...the 2nd book in a new trilogy by Tad Williams set in the world of Osten Ard. This cover manages to look serene, peaceful, and yet epic all at the same time.

Deepfake technology and some of its future amoral users will probably end up starting a war.

Following the very unsettling online release of a clip from Back to the Future that casts Tom Holland in the role of Marty McFly and Robert Downey Junior as Doc Brown via computer manipulation, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this kind of technology is going to bring about the end of the world for human beings in one way or another. "It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye," is an old saying. I feel like its appropriate here, with the "eye" being a metaphor for "our civilization."

The lubricant of civilization...the thing that makes all of the wheels work together...is trust. It's a simple thing, really. Trust is what gives value to our money (the trust that America will continue to pay its bills), and it's trust that we extend to our community members that allows us to learn things and educate ourselves on what is right and what is wrong. It's trust that allows democracy to work. And folks...all of that is eroding in the post-truth era.

The Back to the Future clip I'm talking about is weird. It's not right, but it looks so good that if I hadn't seen the movie, I might be convinced that this is what the actors looked like way back then (You can find it online if you'd like to see it as I'm not linking it here). After having watched it, I'm convinced that these deepfakes are going to be so good very soon that people will begin to rewrite history. We are heading toward a time in which nobody will be able to discern what is real and what isn't, and that includes scholars. And there will be no point in trying to convince people that a video "isn't real" as too many people will be fooled into believing that what they see is the only truth.

Think about it for just a moment. Events could be deepfaked to the point that the truth of what happened in the event will forever be doubted by one or more people, where facts are no longer a part of the human experience. It will be nothing but the experience of perception, and this scares the hell out of me.

Users of deepfake technology can make Bernie say anything that they want. They could make Trump say that he loves abortion. They could make Hilary say that she's a cannibal and relishes the taste of children. This deepfake technology is quicksand for all of us, and it worries me deeply.

Thoughts? 

The Academy Awards are still entertaining but they've lost a bit of their mystery and luster because the modern world has no room for outdated privileges anymore.

I (like many others in this country) watched the Academy Awards this past Sunday (for films released during the 2019 calendar year). I've heard that viewership was at a historic low, and it definitely "feels" like the Academy Awards have lost a bit of their mystery and luster...that things aren't as "reverential" as I used to see them. How does it feel exactly? It's difficult to put into words. Maybe just a little more like Dancing With the Stars than the high-brow Academy Awards of yesteryear.

In 2020 the crowd at the Oscars just seems like a bunch of people who have interesting jobs and get paid a lot as opposed to possessing some kind of "other" quality in which I used to view actors and actresses. People like Jeff Bezos are in the audience. Sure, he's the richest man in the world and owns Amazon, but I had a knee-jerk reaction (at first) that he seemed out of place. And Jeff Bezos (in my opinion) looks like a schlub (like me)...just a balding guy in a suit that started a business out of his garage in Seattle and ended up at the Oscars. That was a wake-up call. I realized how much times have changed.

There aren't any "hosts" anymore for the Oscars. People setting up businesses to deliver packages now have more money than anyone. Jane Fonda has gray hair and basically says, "F*ck it," and she gets arrested a lot. Scarlett Johannson is just the SNL Weekend Update's guy's significant other (I love her many appearances on SNL by the way). Sharon Stone is on Bumble looking for a date because she's lonely and why not? Renee Zelweger is married to an average looking guy and no one cares. Natalie Portman, Chris Evans, Regina King, and Johnny Depp are now just people who do commercials on broadcast t.v., probably to make an extra buck just like Tina Fey for that mayhem commercial. Eminem looked like he walked in from the street and doesn't even know why he's there to sing, but they welcomed him anyway and had a good time because some of his music is fun to listen to. I think this Academy Awards had to set some kind of record for the amount of "F-bombs" that got dropped and censored, because no one cares. I loved Janelle Monae celebrating her queerness. I felt represented...but yeah...things have changed. I love that people in drag now give interviews. Why not? Life is life, and Hollywood stars have knocked pedestals over and are in the mud with the rest of us. No one is above anyone else. Some of these people probably ate at McDonalds before arriving at the Red Carpet.

Then there's the rise of things like Instagram and Facebook where these celebrities post videos of themselves on vacation (or in their yoga pants) has made me see them more as the flawed human beings that we all are. I follow Chris Pratt and he's always posting rambling dialogues on his Instagram without makeup, sweaty from working out, and he just looks like a dude you could run into at the 7-Eleven that would have b.o. Timothee Chalamet posts pictures all the time from his messy bedroom or just hanging out, and he looks like any young person biking to work in the morning. I've seen Ethan Hawke in person at Sundance...honestly he kind of looked homeless as he's very weathered. Tom Holland takes pics of walking his dog Tessa all the time, complains about his workouts, and frequently looks "very real" in his videos when he isn't deliberately trying to be a "thirst trap." It's strange to see these people (who are very famous) just being people. It's strange to see so many fat people in the audience. I feel like I don't even know what fame is anymore, other than some people have it and others don't. I couldn't tell you why.

Overall, I think this is a good thing for everyone, because there are opportunities in the business for tons of people. Now, more than ever, I feel like any successful person can come from anyplace, and a lot of "success" just depends on a person being lucky while also having a solid work ethic. I also don't know if I could point out the qualities that make a star anymore. It used to be physical beauty and the ability to memorize lines. Now I think that there's demands for everything. Have you got big muscles? You can be a star. Are you funny? You can be a star. Are you brown, black, white, yellow? You can be a star. Are you mentally ill (here's looking at you Joaquin Phoenix--and yes, I do think he's mentally ill)? Then yes...you too can be a star. It feels very much like barriers that kept a certain "look" or "style" in the movies have very much crumbled, especially with the Best Picture win of Parasite.

I also didn't expect Parasite to win until it won Best Director. When it captured that, I pronounced to my Oscar party that it just won Best Picture. My heart was with 1917, but I knew that film had lost. "How do you know?" They asked. I responded, "It's simple math really. 1917 hasn't won any of the big awards, and this movie has. Parasite has to be Best Picture. Also, Best Director is very central to a film. It's a rare thing that a movie doesn't get Best Director and goes on to get Best Picture."

Parasite deserved its win. I watched it two hours before the Academy Awards. It's a dark and depressing movie that sits with you after you've watched it. This is a tone that many Asian movies tend to take. Income inequality is awful, people. The lives portrayed in Parasite are horrifying, and I'm glad I don't have a life that's like that.

I watch the Academy Awards every year, but its definitely evolving, and it's becoming more inclusive. I think barriers are coming down everywhere, especially with the rise of social media and the rise of independent streaming studios like Amazon and Netflix. Television is becoming more relevant, and movie theaters less so. I wonder if we'll ever see a YouTube influencer like PewDiePie on the stage in a tracksuit giving out an Academy Award to someone. Oh how times have changed.

Assorted Musings:

1) I wish I'd seen Dwayne Johnson. Was he even there? He's like the biggest star in the world. He's probably too busy marketing Termana Tequila, which is his vehicle to becoming a billionaire. George Clooney stumbled into this thing too, which is probably Dwayne Johnson's inspiration for an intentional business choice to use his star power to sell high quality tequila for a price everyone can afford.

2) I miss the Oscars having a host. Now we get ramblings like the one Maya Rudolph and Kristin Wiig delivered. Those were painful to watch and decidedly not funny.

3) I disagree with Martin Scorsese who said publicly that Marvel movies are not real movies. He's a dinosaur marching off to his tar pit, and it really shows in that The Irishman won nothing of its ten nominations.

4) Luke Perry and Sid Haig (House of 1000 Corpses) should have been in the Memoriam tribute.

5) Best Animated Feature Film was kind of a joke this year. I thought all the nominees paled in comparison to the ones from previous years. You know it's a "blah" year when the fourth entry in a franchise is the freshest thing you can find to win this category.

6) Laura Dern winning an Academy Award for a Netflix show is a testament to the rising power of streaming services and the growing marginalization of movie theaters.

7) Anything political the stars have to say feels even more tone deaf and out of touch than it ever has before in the past. The world is on fire. Everyone knows it, and every opinion about it is in a bubble now (viewed only by people who already know and support all the things being said). Being lectured to about going vegan from a man that can afford chefs to prepare and cook meals for him feels very odd. All other topics felt very much like an Echo chamber? No one that is conservative watches these award shows. Only liberals do. In many ways, it's just like Facebook in that anyone that was liberal and had conservative people following them got blocked a long time ago. Audiences are completely bifurcated. I've a friend like that who is oblivious to the fact that he's in an Echo chamber, posting anti-Trump stuff. He probably has twenty people (all liberal) who actually see those posts anymore. He doesn't realize that Facebook allows you to unfollow (but remain friends) with people.

8) I'm happy that Asians are winning things now. It's about damned time.

Behold the actual size of a Woolly Mammoth.

I knew Woolly Mammoths were prehistoric creatures and that they were big. I know elephants are big, because I saw them in the now extinct Ringling Brother's Circus before it was not okay to have elephants in circuses anymore. And, yes, I've seen them in a zoo too. But the circus elephants left more of an impression on me because people were always crawling all over them and doing things.

So the above picture is a photo of "life-sized" sculptures of mammoths located in the Siberian town of Khanty-Mansiisk. I found it while reading scientific opinions written by mostly scientists on the ethical implications of bringing back Woolly Mammoths from extinction via cloning. Folks, that person posing with the trunk looks tiny in comparison. There's no mention of how tiny that person is, but I'm guessing maybe 5-foot six-inches or thereabout. Anyway...I'm a little in awe of how big these creatures actually were. I can't imagine how much a thing like that needed to eat, but I'm sure it was a lot. Honestly, it's kind of amazing how big some creatures get on our planet.

On a side note, did you watch the Oscars last night? I'll be blogging about the Academy Awards on Wednesday.

Today I learned that J.K. Rowling and Richard K. Morgan are TERF's. Neat.

"TERF" is an acronym for transgender exclusionary radical feminist. These are people who believe that sex is binary and assigned at birth and that surgeries and/or inner identity have nothing to do with any of that. Here's the tweet that earned her this interesting acronym (which I had to look up by the way):

The "Maya" in the tweet refers to Maya Forstater, who tweeted such things as "men cannot change into women," and "it's unfair and unsafe for trans women to compete in women's sports."

Richard K. Morgan, the author of Netflix's Altered Carbon series had similar things to say, when he wrote the following:

“I also hold these truths to be self-evident – facts are stubborn things; human sex is binary, you are either born a man or a woman, and neither sex can change into the other. The much vaunted phrase “Trans women are women” or “trans men are men” is a semantic nonsense; it is quite simply objectively untrue.”

I am a little disappointed, but I've come to expect it from the modern era where we know a lot about the people whom we look up to. I enjoy reading Richard K. Morgan quite a bit, and I don't see myself not liking his writing because of his somewhat "tone deaf" response to transgenderism. I guess I am a little shocked because his stories lend themselves so well to transgender identity. The whole conceit of Altered Carbon is that a physical body is just a sleeve and consciousness can be downloaded into any sleeve effectively making a person immortal.

I guess the only thing I really can say to this is, "Neat." The word says nothing, only maybe it's a little better than a sigh in that it's an acknowledgement that I didn't ignore what was said. I guess I support a person's ability to express what they believe? I dunno. It's weird. We live in an age where strong opinions can just be shouted out into the online world, and I wonder if people who hold these strong opinions even realize that some of these things are hurtful to others who are really struggling. I guess the outrage machine burns on and on, and at the end of the day, the world is exactly how George R.R. Martin saw it in Game of Thrones. We all know nothing, just like Jon Snow, and there is no such thing as good or evil. Only shades of gray, entirely dependent on what you believe and what you fight for.

In this month's Insecure Writer's Support Group post I say that art is a great starting place for a story.

Are you participating in the Insecure Writer's Support Group? If the answer is "No," then I think you should go HERE and sign up. Each month, the Insecure Writer's Support Group gives a bunch of people who sign-up, a platform to talk about writing or writing-related topics. You can choose to do a writing-related blog entry, or you can answer the "Question of the Month." This is what I usually do, and the February "question of the month" is quite interesting.

February 5 question: Has a single photo or work of art ever inspired a story? What was it and did you finish it?

When I was still in high school, I saw the below picture in a book. The artist was Michael Whelan, and I stared at the scene for a while, conjuring up stories of a world where a city fell from the sky. You never see one like this in fiction, you know? The cities are always flying...never one in ruins and lying upon the earth.
I never finished the story, because it was mostly just uncollected thoughts jotted down in a notebook about a post-apocalyptic world of fantasy, where the survivors could see evidence of a bygone age all around them, in ruins (like this fallen sky city). Knowing what I know now of genres, I'd probably make it a steampunk story were I to revisit this thing.
I think art is a great place to inspire an author to write. We are such visual creatures, aren't we? Thanks for stopping by.

The Outsider is so intense that I can only watch half of an episode before I have to switch to something else for a while.

I started watching The Outsider on HBO. I've purposely not researched it on the internet, because the first episode was so gripping that I had to stop it about halfway through and watch something else. Call me a wuss when it comes to scary stuff, but this kind of story occupies my thoughts long after I stop watching it. So when it gets to intense, I press pause, then exit, and watch something else to kind of decompress. Then after a while...I go back to it.

The show accomplishes this by masterfully building up the tension, hitting all of those "there is something very strange going on here" buttons that kind of skillfully gaslights the audience into believing that one reality is the obvious reality...but then the show provides you just enough details for you to notice the cracks in that reality. After a while you start doubting yourself as things don't make sense and the likely explanation seems impossible. The Outsider takes itself seriously with every event unfolding and firmly planted in a modern America reality of 2019. The plot thus far is pretty simple. There is an eleven-year-old boy who was brutally murdered (this is about the only time there is real gore). As a side note, it does make me wonder why Stephen King likes to murder little boys. After all, It Part One has lots of boys getting murdered, and so does Doctor Sleep. I've noticed the trend in "King" books. If the character is an underaged boy, then it's the same as wearing a "red shirt" in 60's Star Trek. But the author has a lot of practice killing and brutalizing this kind of character. So it's always done masterfully and really exploits my "horror" reflex well.

I want to continue watching The Outsider, but I find myself kind of being anxious to start the next episode because it so fully pulls me into the story. I suppose that this is the kind of thing that the creators of the show wanted to do.

Is anyone else watching The Outsider? If so, what do you think of it?

You'll navigate life much better if you understand that expecting businesses to respect you is the same as putting lipstick on a pig.

You may have heard of the book, American Dirt, recently in the news. Oprah is catching heat for it for recommending it as a "must read." Latinx writers and readers are upset because they feel that the author, Cummins (who identifies as white and Latina) is getting a payday for writing a story built upon harmful stereotypes about migrants from Mexico and Central America. You may have heard that the marketing campaign for the book is tone-deaf. I (personally) have never read the book, but in any sense of the word, I am here to argue that the marketing for it is doing exactly what it was supposed to do: sell books. It's a blockbuster as far as these things go, and harmful stereotypes don't matter (yet) in the world of big business.

This weekend, many people are going to watch the Superbowl. It too features harmful stereotypes. One of the teams in particular is a shining example of cultural appropriation. If you watch the game, you will see on the television people parading in red-face...showing their pride for their team... the "Kansas City Chiefs" and doing the "tomahawk chop." The Chiefs and any other team in the N.F.L. is just a business. They are there to make money. That's what capitalism is all about, and the N.F.L. knows how to make money. Businesses in the capitalism dystopia of the United States of America do not face (yet) any monetary consequences for making choices that harm minority groups.

I don't know how to properly feel about the "outrage machine" that is constantly burning and churning in the United States. People seem to think that businesses are supposed to be respectful. I'm here to tell you that they aren't and never have been. Could they be? Yes. But I'm pessimistic that this could ever happen. I go one step further by being "accepting" of the status quo. The fight to change all of that takes more than I have to give, and I suspect that a lot of people are in the same boat as me.

As a citizen of this country who experiences all kinds of trauma every day from capitalism, I too want to live in a world where the trauma creators are held accountable and punished. I would love to live in the world conjured up by Elizabeth Warren. However, even if she's elected president (which I see as a long shot), I'm pessimistic that real change could possibly happen without fire and blood. Her vision of America isn't the world we live in. Trauma creators and abusers are given full license to continue to traumatize, and they make a ton of money doing so, and that's just the way it is. I as a singular person don't see how any of this can change, and I'm left dumbfounded that new people, fresh people, everyday discover this truth and are shocked by it. My only explanation for this is, "you must have been raised with idealistic and loving parents, because they hid from you the entire truth of this world." A few years from now every one of these "newly minted" adults will be suffering from anxiety and depression. You can't go from a childhood of love to an adulthood of abuse and not get these two personality disorders.

In terms of humanistic and idealistic goals, the human race as a whole is pretty much garbage. For example, we have garbage for a president. Honestly (and this may shock some of you), but Trump kind of represents what I've come to know of a lot of people in this country. He's a con-man, a liar, a grifter, an abuser, and the list goes on and on. Folks, that also describes some of my neighbors and people I hang out with on a Saturday night. I'm being perfectly serious. So unless you want to live the life of a hermit (which I don't) then you end up making friends and socializing with trauma creators and abusers. Very few people are all bad, but we are all better off knowing the truth about ourselves. As a side note, it's also why we should allow people in prison to vote. Many prisoners and criminals only differ from us in one aspect: they got caught. You'd be surprised at how much scum is out there that is actually voting. If we allow that kind of pond scum to cast a ballot, we should allow the rest of it too.

You may be reading these words and thinking, "Boy, Mike must keep some terrible company...he needs some new friends." My response to you is, "If you think that the people you keep company with are noble and virtuous human beings, you know nothing of the people you spend time with." Going back to the dumpster fire we have as a president...well, we have a representative democracy. From my point of view, the shoe fits, and we're wearing it. Trump has probably (forever) torn down and rubbed mud over the highest office in the land. I'm no fan of his, but maybe it was about time. We put the people that served in that office on these high pedestals and celebrated them as the best of what we had to offer. Why did we do this? I think it's because we wanted to think it represented who we were, which was never true with the exception of a tiny minority of people.

And just like us, our entertainments (the things that we find "fun") for the most part, are not worth celebrating. Can we all stop putting book readers on some kind of pedestal? The same goes for college professors, CEO's, actors, and people who play musical instruments. "Oh you read a book...you must be smart!" No, no, no. People who read books are no smarter than people who watch Jerry Springer. It's just another market for entertainment that isn't as cool as Tik Tok these days. And people who write books are not "geniuses" (an overused word). They're just introverts who may have personality disorders who decided that their narcissism might best be captured by telling some kind of story. My caveat to this is that some are better at coming up with ideas than others who have emptier heads. Combine that with discipline and bam, you've got a writer. That's it. That's all a book is. It seems weird to me that a book is just a celebration of discipline. Maybe actual "discipline" is so hard to find these days (which says more about our society than anything) that it's worth celebrating? I hope that this isn't true, but I fear that it is. Sigh.

Remember Ricky Gervais's speech at the Golden Globes? Here's a small part of what he said to the Hollywood elite with a "nod" to the fact that he knew this was his last time hosting (it's obvious he didn't care about any consequences):

"Seriously, most films are awful. Lazy. Remakes, sequels...the actors who just do Hollywood movies now do fantasy-adventure nonsense. They wear masks and capes and really tight costumes. Their job isn't acting anymore. It's going to the gym twice a day and taking steroids, really. Have we got an award for most ripped junky? No point, we'd know who'd win that.

"...Apple roared into the TV game with The Morning Show, a superb drama about the importance of dignity and doing the right thing, made by a company that runs sweatshops in China. Well, you say you're woke, but the companies you work for in China--unbelievable. Apple, Amazon, Disney. If ISIS started a streaming service you'd call your agent, wouldn't you?

"So if you do win an award tonight, don't use it as a platform to make a political speech. You're in no position to lecture the public about anything. You know nothing about the real world. Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg.

"So if you win, come up, accept your little award, thank your agent, and your God and fuck off, okay?"

Everything Ricky said is completely true, and I loved it. This. Everything. This is the world that we live in. We shouldn't put these people on any kind of pedestal. They are entertainers and our entertainment is garbage. I consume garbage, and so do you. So does everyone. It's okay to like garbage, but let's not call it something else. This isn't to say that we shouldn't appreciate the garbage that brings us joy. However, if our garbage is served up without the beautiful trimmings of cultural awareness and respect, I don't think we should act as if we are shocked that this is happening. Ever hear of the phrase, "Putting lipstick on a pig?" Entertainment is business, and business is "the pig."

The demands for a better world from business is trying to put lipstick on a pig. To change how business operates, there needs to be consequences. There needs to be laws. There needs to be fire and blood. So without any of this, how about we celebrate American Dirt for achieving remarkable sales, and then throw away the lipstick that we want to put onto it? Sales and money were always the bottom line of the content creator and the publisher. Writing is not art, it's a business.

If this is an upsetting truth, then congratulations...you've just experienced abuse. Welcome to capitalism. It's trauma-tastic. However, I think you'll navigate life much better if you understand that expecting businesses to respect you is the same as putting lipstick on a pig.

The Witcher is an enjoyable mess of a show but it doesn't reinvent anything.

The Witcher is an enjoyable mess of a show. I finished watching the Netflix fantasy series in December, and even having read the books, I got a bit lost with all of the time jumps. It was nice to see real life versions of Yennefer and Dandelion (you may know him as Jaskier), Marigold, Ciri, and Geralt. However, there were times when the computer generated graphics did remind me of Xena (the gold dragons were one of these sections, although I may have been comparing them to how good the Game of Thrones dragons looked, which is clearly a mistake on my part).

And regarding the books, there are a lot of reviews out there that say that the author, Andrzej Sapkowski, reinvented the genre for many readers. To be honest, I don't really see this when I read the books. Surprisingly, the majority of the narrative seems to be taking place either through Ciri's eyes or through events that have to do with Ciri, and maybe this is what they mean. Here we are finally presented with a story that is "epic fantasy" in flavor wherein the main character is a woman? Possibly, but I'm not sure. It could also be that the reviewers who are saying this aren't actually as well-read in the genre as they claim to be.

But what about "the Witcher?" What about "Geralt?" Geralt is there, yes, but he's less than 40% of the story...maybe he's even down to 30% in parts. It's weird that there's so much emphasis in the title of these stories (and the cover art) to really pin the story to Geralt (a specific Witcher), when his only real purpose is to serve as a vehicle for a story, kind of like Indiana Jones in Raider's of the Lost Ark.

The translation from Polish also presents its difficulties. I didn't realize until I watched the show that the bard's name was Jaskier as "Jaskier" literally means "Dandelion." So the translation refers to the character as Dandelion in all the dialogue. I was confused and at one point I was like, "This character has to be Dandelion, but I don't know why they aren't calling him that." There are also descriptive sentences that don't quite make sense, because I wouldn't have expressed myself in that same manner. Translating a thing from Polish to English has got to be challenging, so I don't fault the translator. At the end of the day, I still understood what was going on, but on occasion, it felt weird.

As far as reinventions go, however, I don't see that the Witcher is blazing any real new ground. There are monsters being killed by a person with fantastical strengths, there's an overarching story of a school of magic-users manipulating governments, and there are multiple worlds from which all of these monsters originate. In the books I read, I saw no incredible insights into the psychology of humans. An example of what I'm talking about is the phrase, "History is written by the victors." This was a profoundly deep observation that George R.R. Martin made regarding the human psyche that I've seen reproduced nowhere else. As you no doubt know, this one thing resulted in the greatest mystery of modern fantasy fiction: Who is Jon Snow? When I sit back and think about this singular aspect to Martin's fantasy epic, I'm kind of left in awe that he pulled it off so well. So yeah...there's none of that in Sapkowski's work.

But what the hell does reinventing something even mean these days? It seems like a buzzword to try and market something, and I'm not even sure that it's necessary or means that something is better. Reinventing the wheel is more than likely just trying to push you into using something that is less efficient than the wheel. In capitalism, they call this kind of thinking "disruption," and there are lots of things that "disrupt" the way services are provided, but I don't necessarily believe it leaves any of us in a better place. Yes, we now have Uber and Lyft, but we always had taxi's. How is it any different other than taxi drivers don't make any money these days, and now...they can't support a family?

The closest thing to a reinvention that I've read (recently) is with Michael J. Sullivan's Legends of the First Empire books. The reason these fantasy epics seem like a reinvention to me is because they take place during the Stone Age of a civilization instead of the Medieval European Age of civilization. So you have magicians and fighters inventing things like the wheel, the bow and arrow, and pockets. I've been finding the reading of these things to be very interesting and refreshing in a way that I didn't (at first) expect. Oh and the main characters are pretty much all female...so there's that too. It seems odd to say that the Stone Age is breaking new ground, but it is. I think there's an irony in there somewhere.