Chapter By Chapter features me reading one chapter of the selected book at the time and reviewing it as if I were reviewing an episode of a TV show or an issue of a comic. There will be spoilers if you haven’t read to the point I have, and if you’ve read further I ask that you don’t spoil anything further into the book. Think of it as read-along book club.
PART TWO: The Last Mission chapter 7
Here we are at the halfway point of this book, and nearing the end of the flashback portion. Chapter 10 is very short so I may lump that in with chapter 9, meaning we have essentially three more entries (including this one) to find out what happened to Talin IV. So we’ve already seen the one thing they didn’t plan for actually happen. How this leads to the end of the world we’re about to find out. And since I have nothing else to say to fill this section out, let’s just get to it already.
Speaking as a casual gamer myself, who only has so much time to game and is not exactly an expert at it, I have to agree. I want to enjoy the game too and I shouldn’t be the next Ninja or Markiplier to do so.
So it turns out I needed a bit more time to pull myself together than I anticipated. So I just gave the whole week a pass. Tomorrow BW Media Spotlight returns, though still not at full capacity since I’m still not cleared to go through heavy longboxes. I’m planning to call my doctor this week to get a proper check-up. Once I’m cleared I can see about also resuming The Clutter Reports but I do plan on getting something up next week just to let them know I’m still alive.
I’m also planning to see the theatrical anniversary re-release of The Transformers: The Movie on Tuesday because it was the best time for two out of three of us. I’m trying to reach the third member of our group so hopefully he sees this and gets in touch.
That means that Monday we’ll do the next Chapter By Chapter review installment for Star Trek: Prime Directive. Meanwhile, unless something comes up I really feel the need to talk about I’m going to do another Finally Watched week in order to clear some DVR space. This will include both of the last two Avengers movies, and hopefully Godzilla Vs Kong thanks to an HBO/Cinemax preview weekend on my cable system. This sentence originally declared that I was going to do one more but hadn’t chosen it yet, but some time after writing this in advance the news came down that the new showrunner for Doctor Who will be it’s old showrunner, Russel T. Davies, so guess what’s coming Tuesday, followed by hopefully all three Finally Watched choices I just mentioned. Have a good week, everyone!
2021 continues to do me damage. Friday I went in to get the kidney stone out so that’s dealt with. Tomorrow I’ll be getting the stint out and the healing can resume. It seems all I’ve done this year is heal or be sick and require healing. This week’s Jake & Leon could have done on time (maybe) if I didn’t have some tech issues but considering the state I was in yesterday it probably still wouldn’t have been posted. I expect I’ll still be tired for the next few days and that will limit how well I can work on the site. So more days off in a year where I’ve been forced to take too many days off. When I said I wanted to up my vacation time to keep from burning out THIS WASN’T WHAT I MEANT!
With luck I’ll still get the next Chapter By Chapter installment of Star Trek: Prime Directive but I may not be back until next Monday. I’m partly asleep right now so we’ll see how I feel before Friday. I’m hoping this will be a short hiatus either way. Have a good week plus however long it takes for me to work on stuff again. Sorry for all this but I haven’t had much of a choice this year.
Let’s do something a little different tonight. Lately my Saturday Night Showcase entries have been regular TV shows making an appearance on official YouTube channels owned by the rights holder or licensed by legal parties. I’m happy do so as it allows me to tap into nostalgia and point out these official hosts on YouTube, even if the shows are available on other streaming site or sometimes to promote those sites. However, this series is also about promoting independent work and it’s about time I threw one of those in here. So let’s talk about PopCross Studios.
Self-proclaimed as the “home of the nerdiest art videos on YouTube” (I’m paraphrasing), PopCross Studios is also the home of Chris Pearson, a cartoonist and storyteller from Canada who also wrote a series of novels called Multiverse Tales. His channel is about speed draws and discussion of character designs. He’s drawn classic heroes in unique situations, what happened if other universes like the My Hero Academia school were attacked by a Venom symbiote, what if they were dragons or Transformers, sci-fi characters in fantasy worlds (although I once asked him about doing it the other way around sadly I haven’t seen fantasy characters redesigned for a sci-fi universe…get on that, Chris!), fictional characters as the basis for an armored battlesuit design, and so on. He also does a monthly challenge to draw creations by his viewers into the expanded multiverse.
Recently he designed to give these mash-ups stories, leading to original characters based on his Multiverse Tales novels and building on what he didn’t get to show when the series had a premature ending. Even the mash-ups (except for the PopCross Transformers and Venomized universes currently) have been drawn in, like meeting the chronicler of the dragon world with unique dragons and ones based on superheroes like Captain America, or ones based on the open source SCP Foundation fan project.
This combination of speeddrawing and storytelling in the PopCross Multiverse began with tonight’s adventure. “BioMech Kayla” is about a girl trying to rescue her friend from a forbidden zone in her universe and meets Charlie, a liquid metal “bio-mech”. Can they save her friend? Did someone mix coffee into Charlie’s systems? And how does this start Kayla and Charlie on a trek through the multiverse? Enjoy!
Can you take a classic show and give it a good remake? Increasingly Hollywood seems to be telling us no, or at least they don’t care to. They like the name, they sort of like the concept, but between the everything for meeeeeeeee crowd, surface viewers looking to push an idea using nostalgia as a cheap marketing ploy while lying to the audience, and studios who don’t care either way so long as they have your money what you see is a poor imitation if not outright mocking of the very property they’re going after only because its famous.
Belgium cartoonist Peyo created the Smurfs as a one-time character in a story for the Johan And Peewit comic but he did such a good job creating them that they became popular enough to get their own comics. Later, American animation studio Hanna-Barbera thought they would be perfect for their Saturday morning offerings and NBC agreed. The show lasted quite a few seasons and still maintained a spot in people’s memories thanks to syndicated reruns and Cartoon Network/Boomerang. Sadly this led to a duo of movies where the Smurf journey to New York, forcing people to ask “why are the Smurfs in New York?” or “why is Hefty suddenly a terrible and insulting Scottish stereotype when the woods they live in are based on forests in Belgium and classic European fantasy stories”?, or my personal favorite “why is this live-action?” and we can’t forget “why the @#$%#$ did they make a sequel?” I have not seen these movies nor do I plan to. Ever.
A recent all CG movie introduced more female Smurfs because understanding how Smurf lore works is too much like work when there are feminists to placate, and yet all the Smurf girls moving to a different tribe (I haven’t seen The Lost Village and that one is on the “finally watch” list) actually makes a sort of sense so I’m of two minds on that one. In the actual fiction all you have are Smurfette (an artificial Smurf created by Gargamel, whose comic story is a bit more misogynistic than the HB version), Sassette the little girl Smurf, and Nanny Smurf. I’m not against more since they’ve been established without Gargamel’s magic but I’m not sure the addition is for the right reasons. Basically I don’t trust the entertainment industry to do something because the story demands it rather than the usual suspects who aren’t going to watch, play, or read it anyway. A topic for the future when I’ve seen the movie?
This leads to the new Smurf cartoon, which in the US is airing on Nickelodeon. Two stories (though not from the same episode) are currently available on the Nickelodeon Cartoon Universe channel (which at least appears to be legit) so consider this a sort of Friday Night Showcase with review as I give my thoughts on “Smurf-Fu” and “Clumsy Not Clumsy”.
It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who cares that a story Gwen Stacy having a one night stand with Norman Osborn and giving birth to twin sons didn’t sit well with her fans, basically having her cheat on Peter during their time apart with his arch enemy. So here’s an example of the retcon bomb being dropped on something that deserved it as Nick Spencer has just changed the story.
The writer is hoping that One More Day can be retcon bombed next but as I’ve written I just don’t see it happening, especially with Joe Quesada still Marvel’s chief creative officer, and this was all his doing to not “age the character”, plus that just means ticking off fans of the new continuity. Fans of the Spider-Marriage (or just those who don’t like Peter making a deal with the figurative devil shut up yes he is) have gotten their hopes up in the past but I’ll be surprised if that ever happens even if Quesada leaves.
BW’s Daily Video: Adam Sessler Versus “Git Gud”
Catch more of The Sess on the G4 reboot YouTube channel.
Speaking as a casual gamer myself, who only has so much time to game and is not exactly an expert at it, I have to agree. I want to enjoy the game too and I shouldn’t be the next Ninja or Markiplier to do so.
Tell others about the Spotlight:
Posted by ShadowWing Tronix on September 27, 2021 in Video Game Spotlight and tagged Adam Sessler, commentary, G4TV, video games.
Leave a comment