Blogs and Ends: The Non-Romantic Valentine’s Edition

There wasn’t a lot on the popculture front this week.  But here is a quick review of it.

FIRST

WandaVision 

The news from this week’s WandaVision, was the return of Quicksilver.  I had wondered if something like this was going to happen when he got mentioned in episode three.  

When Pietro was spoken of, I remembered the Solomon like, cutting the baby in half deal that had to be struck between Fox and Disney a few years back.  Disney had clear rights to the Avengers and Fox had the rights (or at least an ironclad license) to the X-Men.  The problem was that the Twins were both Avengers and X-Men.  Consequently, each studio got to have one.  Disney got to borrow Quicksilver long enough to kill him off.  And X-Men didn’t have any real need for the Scarlett Witch at all.

When Disney bought Fox, the deal was null and void but that left the problem of a dead Quicksilver who no longer needed to be dead.  

But none the less was.

Feige has been pretty good about one thing and that has been leaving death as a permanent thing.    There is a clear work around for Vision given that he is an android and so was never technically alive in the first place.  Pietro is a different kettle of fish.  

None the less at the end of newest episode, Quicksilver shows up at Wanda’s front door.  And it’s the one the from the X-Men. 

Well, we knew they were going to start showing up in the MCU, I suppose Quicksilver makes for a decent bridge.

NEXT

Flailing and failing DC Comics has, for inexplicable reasons, decided to rename Black Adam, Shazadam.  

I suspect that the SJWs that infest DC comics couldn’t deal with a character that has Black in his name when he obviously isn’t.  I think they are so far gone at this point that even race bending the character would only make the Black Adam problem worse for them.  

So, despite the fact that DC has nowhere near the marketing budget needed to do a major branding change on prominent character. They are going ahead and doing it anyway because they are somewhat uncomfortable with the name he’s had since the original Fawcett run of Captain Marvel in the 1940s.

AT&T doesn’t care what they do since they going to shutter DC Comics anyway.

NEXT

This week George RR Martin stated that he is very proud of the fact that due to the lock down he was able to get “hundreds of pages” written for The Winds of Winter.  

Sadly, he continued, he has hundreds more pages to go before it’s perfect.  So, not only has he failed on his promise to deliver the final book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series last summer, but he has now kicked the publication date down the road to 2022.

His fans complained, naturally.

And just as naturally the revolting little goblin in author form called his fans assholes for wanting to read his book.

I still don’t get the attraction myself.  

“The major points of the ending will be things I told [Benioff and Weiss] five or six years ago. But there may also be changes, and there’ll be a lot added.”  

Martin has basically said it won’t be at significant variance from the TV show and everybody knows how that ended. His fans are awaiting lots and lots of filler material.  

NEXT

Dragon Lance books update.

I recently found out that Hickman and Wiess have dropped their lawsuit against Wizards of Coast.  Apparently, whatever problems they had with the current owner of D&D have been resolved.

The reason I found out, was that Hickman was getting dragged for having posted this meme on twitter.

In case you don’t know, and I don’t blame you if you don’t, the figures on the top are from a YouTube show called Critical Role. The bottom ones are Hickman and Wiess’ characters from Dragon Lance.

Critical Role is a collection of voice actors who play D&D on YouTube according to the current rules set.  The rules that say it’s racist if Orcs are evil.  I shit you not. That is a thing.

Comicbook.com took some time to moan about it; “However, one of the major shifts to occur in the game between the debut of Dragonlance and today is the embrace of non-traditional character races. That’s reflected in the cast of Critical Role, whose characters include a tiefling, a half-orc, an aasimar, a halfling who until recently was a goblin, and a firbolg. All of those races have roots in older versions of the game, but have become increasingly more common and popular for players to use in recent years. While humans are still a popular Dungeons & Dragons choice, you’ll see just as many bullywugs, tortle, and tabaxi when sitting down at a D&D table.”

Anyone who started playing D&D in the Eighties has the not unreasonable question: what the fuck are these things? Apparently, these are just a few of the many, many races you can play in the modern, Portland friendly, multicultural D&D of the 21st century.

Let’s face it, past a certain point you have stopped playing Dungeons and Dragons and are reenacting RainFurrest. 

LAST

Eighties music from 2012.

Honestly guys, if you think modern music is bad, then you aren’t trying to find the good stuff.  

Okay, I’m done here.

See you Monday.