Blogs and Ends: the Follow-up Edition

This post is mostly some follow-ups to posts that I recently made but didn’t rate a second full length post.

FIRST

Batwoman.

Well, it looks like there is a new lesbian in town boys. 

The producers aren’t just recasting Ruby Rose they are replacing the Kate Kane character with an entirely new Batwoman.

If you have been laughing at the incompetent antics of Kate Kane like I have, then you know that this decision constitutes a soft reboot of the entire series. Since the entire show was about Kate’s relationships with her supervillain sister, her father, and her former/soon-to-be-not-former lover, getting rid of Kate bulldozes all of that away. The show would be starting fresh.

The new lesbian, and yes she’s going to be a lesbian (and yes, only lesbians need apply for the job) will be named Ryan Wilder and she is, “…the complete opposite of Kate Kane. “She’s likable, messy, a little goofy, and untamed,” reads the document. “With no one in her life to keep her on track, Ryan spent years as a drug-runner, dodging the GCPD and masking her pain with bad habits. Today, reformed and sober, Ryan lives in (a) van with her plant. A girl who would steal milk from an alley cat and could also kill you with her bare hands, Ryan is the most dangerous type of fighter: highly skilled and wildly disciplined. An out lesbian. Athletic. Raw. Passionate. Fallible. And very much not your stereotypical All-American hero.”

My reaction was, “Christ, this is going to be funnier than the last one.”

NEXT

The Future of the Dresdenverse.

Jim Butcher originally envisioned a twenty book story arc for Harry Dresden and this year he will (finally) be publishing books sixteen and seventeen.  Which leaves him the problem of what will he do with this world after Harry’s story is told? It has to be a worrying question for the man because Dresden’s audience didn’t follow Butcher to his new Crystal Spires universe.  I’m afraid Butcher made an understandable but BIG mistake.  

Because I self-publish, I’ve had to learn the crucial importance of genre focus.  Butcher probably thought that since Dresden is Dark Fantasy, Dresden’s fans would follow him to a Steam Punk setting because there is a lot of fan cross over between Dark Fantasy and Steam Punk.  

While this is true, the problem is that the Dresden Files were ultimately Raymond Chandler mysteries.  That is what is at the core of those books.  The supernatural stuff is background material.

I think he’s figured that out because for the last few years he’s been giving side characters tryouts in their own short stories.  I think his publisher is pushing him in this direction too because, in the audio version of the shorts collection Brief Cases, there are three different readers instead of just James Marsters. And those readers were for two POV characters that weren’t Dresden.  That is kind of unusual, it felt like the readers were getting auditions. Sure, you can argue that Molly Carpenter should have been read by a woman but Marsters does a perfectly good Waldo Butters. Why bring in a third reader?

None the less, it does point to an interesting future for the Dresdenverse with these side characters as leads in their own rights. The three that I think are most likely are Molly Carpenter, the new Winter Lady, Waldo Butters, the newest Knight of the Cross (who apparently rates his own t-shirt now). Finally and possibly most interestingly of all, the adventures of young Maggie Dresden and her dog Mouse. Possibly Butcher is thinking of getting into the YA market, Maggie and Mouse wouldn’t be a bad way to do it.  Their story was called Zoo Day and Cataline Recommends with Enthusiasm.

NEXT  

The Snyder Cut.

While I was right about why the Snyder Cut was causing such a furor among the access media, there was more to the story than I knew at the time.

It’s hardly a secret that Warner Brothers has bumble-fucked the entire DC franchise all to hell.  But the reasons why are kind of nebulous. The simplest explanation is that Marvel had a team in place with a long term vision for the project, while DC did not.  

This explanation is a lie. Ironman was a bigger than expected hit and ended with a teaser regarding Nick Fury.  There was no mention of the Infinity Stones. Captain America first introduced one of them but it was never explicitly stated what they were. Feige was only potentially laying the groundwork for something bigger even though nobody at the time had any major details.  It was only with Thor that they began to plan a big team-up.

DC, on the other hand, had a different problem.  The Nolan Batman movies were a huge success but by their nature, they preclude the possibility of a superhero team-up because there were clearly and obviously, no super-powered people in that universe.  Consequently, you couldn’t build a team until Nolan finished his trilogy, and then you’d have start from square one by rebooting Batman.

This cost DC a ton of momentum. 

Ironman (2008), Ironman II (2010), Captain America (2011), and Thor (2011) between them put Marvel in the enviable position of having an audience clambering and beating the gongs for an Avengers movie which they delivered in 2012. The same year as the LAST of the Nolan Batman movies.

Now DC could start…after the race was over.

Everyone knew that there were billions on the line.  Everyone likes the idea of making billions but nobody cared about the characters in the least.  Grim-Dark had worked for DC with Batman so they decided they wanted And here I’m quoting Midnight’s Edge, “a flying Batman, an underwater Batman, a woman Batman, a robot Batman, a fast Batman… Oh and Batman.” Everyone was supposed to be stern and brooding so Warner Brothers went to Captain Dark and Stormy night himself Zack Snyder and said do what you want.  

And then they couldn’t keep their hands off what he was doing because making four different movies to introduce and make the audience care about four different characters was going to give Marvel too much time to eat DC’s lunch.

Maybe Snyder’s vision was never going to be that good.  I am not moving off my position that he never understood Superman at all. But that said, it didn’t have to be as bad as it was either.

When Whedon’s Justice League failed a lot of people at the top of Warner got fired and then the newest class of Peter-Principle executives started frantically throwing some DC at the wall to see what sticks. Aquaman and Wonder Woman succeeded. Suicide Squad and Harley Quinn failed. Joker has all the hallmarks of a movie that crushed it because the executives were too busy screwing around with Birds of Prey to pay attention to a low budget movie. Consequently, they were free to make something great. 

The new class of executives had finally agreed among themselves to a plan of action even if it wasn’t a good plan.  Cavil is out as Superman. Affleck is out as Batman. They would hire pretty-boy actors for both of these roles. 

And then disaster struck. AT&T which had recently purchased Warner Brothers looked over the situation and decided to start implementing its own plans for the DC Universe. Cavill’s very successful turn as the Witcher got him his old job back.  And for that matter, there are some very thick smoke signals going up that Ben Affleck might get another shot at Batman because Ma Bell is not at all impressed with Sparkly Batman.  Or to be exact the pretty-boy actor who has had so much of his life handed to him on a silver platter that he thinks exercising is icky because it makes him sweat.

Warner Brothers is pissed about the boss stepping in and doing their jobs for them. And worse still ignoring executives half-assed plans and just giving the fans whatever they want.

I find this all so funny I may have to triumph over myself and love the Snyder Cut.

LAST

I know things are rough right now.  And the outside world feels kind of crushing but keep a few things in mind.  First, the WuFlu has been a wet firecracker of a plague.  Millions were supposed to have died and didn’t.  Which means no one is going to remember this in twenty years.

These riots are bad but honestly were expected.  Riots happen when you have a lot of mass psychological strain. Usually, a prolonged heatwave will do it but being poor and locked up with your screaming family for months will do the job. 

This will burn out shortly, leaving the far Left lolling bed with a post climactic glow… And leaving the Right-wing with a literal “broken glass” advantage.  The side that wins is usually the side that’s the most pissed. The side that will crawl over a mile of broken glass to pull the lever at the polls. That is definitely Trump’s side at this point.  His reelection has gone from likely to probable. 

None of this is going to be remembered as being important in twenty years and most of it will be all but forgotten except by historians.

So what will be remembered as the most important even of this year?

Likely, this:

This is the beginning of something or perhaps I should say, possibly the beginning of something that will change everything.

Okay, I’m done.