I finally get to put this out!  I’ve been biting my tongue on this one since December!  And I’m so excited I can finally post this!  First I want to point out that back then I mentioned how excited I was for this movie and that it was going to trigger the ‘neeeeEEeEEeErrRrrRrRRRrds’ and sure enough.  As of writing this, five days before release, those whiny-ass, know-nothing, bitch cunts have been whining and bitching about Milly Alcock.  All the blather, based entirely on a handful of trailers, is focused on jackass bullshit like “she’s bullet proof, how’d her ears get pierced?” and “she doesn’t sexually stimulate me enough to be a Supergirl!”  And I should point out that I scaled up the language.  Mostly because it physically pains me to write such ignorant and low thoughts.  Now then, for the real conversation because I don’t want to give anymore energy to those sister-kissing, brain dead incel twats.

     In short, I FUCKING love this movie!  I know many people believe that a fictional character HAS to have the skin color and genitals for anyone to relate to them.  Yes, myself and the people likely to read this are smarter than that.  Watching Kara go through her experience in this film was profoundly powerful.  They did a fantastic job of portraying among other things that there isn’t a clock one can punch in and out of grieving.  And that there’s no good time just get it done and out of the way.  This in particular is something I’ve been dealing with for at least three decades.  Even now, in my forties, I hear shit from assholes whining that “you’re not an abused child now, get over it!” and then I have to explain to them how stand-up works.  Point is, the greater theme of this film is grief and working through it.  And yes, there’s some super hero fighting and action and Momoa as Lobo but the big part is the grief thing.  Alcock did a phenomenal job portraying a fairly specific vulnerability in this film.  Watching someone spiral can be hard, being someone spiraling is painful too but fortunately the numbing helps with that a little.  Of course it doesn’t last as long as we’d like.  I know, numbing isn’t great in my personal experience it’s just part of the process and the trick is to not stop on that step.  All in all, this is a fairly accurate portrayal of the grieving process and that in and of itself is important to portray with ‘super’ people.  Even if you can fly or run at supersonic speed, you can’t outrun yourself.

     Beyond that, it’s a fun super hero movie!  What I saw was a rough cut so, I didn’t get to see all the final SFX and such but everything is done superbly well.  The performances, sets, costumes, everything is phenomenal!  And Milly Alcock does a fantastic job portraying a young woman coping with the loss of a world, who would’ve been ‘just friends’ with me in high school.  I just hope they kept Cheek to Cheek in that one scene, I can’t imagine a better use of that song.  This probably isn’t one you should take younger kids but it’s definitely worthwhile for teenagers and up.  I’m hoping to go watch it again soon now that it’s out but I need to figure out some things first.

     That said, GO WATCH IT!  WATCH IT NOW!

Coming soon.  I can finally post my Supergirl review in a couple days.  I’m going to start podcasting again.  I really miss doing all that and I need to get going with it.  I recently started testing some of the Stargate material I’ve been working out for the Marvel Multiverse RPG.  When we get the podcast back into full swing, that’s the game we’ll playing for a bit.  I’ve got one player on board so far.  When I get at least two more players we’ll just need to deal with a few technical issues like video and streaming things, and my cleaning up my hovel.  So far so good.  The little bit we played the other day went well.  I ran the game with three players, two of them are not familiar with Stargate and none of them played D616 before.  Character creation always takes longer than one anticipates but we still got going pretty quick.  I don’t know when we’ll play next but after we played I finally sat down and finished some prep for it.  I’m looking forward to the next game.  Maybe after we get a few episodes out I can use them to demonstrate how Stargate should be handled.  I guess we’ll see.

     Anyway, I’m super excited for Supergirl to come out this week.  I got to go to preview screening back in December and watched a rough cut.  I’ve always loved watching the behind the scenes features on everything so, I really enjoy watching movies when they aren’t a hundred percent finished.  I’ve lucked out and scored passes to six or seven movies over the last year and a half and they’ve all been great!  A few like Supergirl are bigger franchise movies that I most definitely would’ve watched in any circumstance but it’s of course super fun to see them so early and not-so-much polished yet.  I don’t think I can say specifically which ones but they’re going to be fun!  Most of the movies I’ve caught doing this have been some original and pseudo-indie flicks.  I’m pretty sure I still can’t say names but there have been some uniquely interesting stories and fantastic execution.  I can’t wait until I can post those reviews.

     Well, I need to get going with some things.  Among others I’m still looking for more substantial work.  I’m thinking I’m going to record something today.  I’m not sure yet what but something.  I’ve noticed that I have considerably less to bitch about now that I’m not having to deal with utah drivers anymore.  Maybe I’ll record a one-sided conversation about one of my first bits I wrote, about traffic in utah versus traffic in LA.  It’s one of my favorite bits in no small part because of how close to my heart it is.

I’m starting my first shift at the new job tonight.  I’m planning to swing by the open mic at small pub nearby on my way into work.  I love walking around the valley at night.  So much of my youth was spent walking up and down Van Nuys Blvd. most nights, going to In-N-Out to feed myself because Artie refused to.  Enjoying the cool air in contrast to the stagnate, hot, wafting steam during the day.  God damn it, I could use a Double-Double right now.  If anyone wants to buy me some cheeseburgers, there are now mortal words to portray just how swelled my soul to accept them.  Seriously, though, that’d be a huge help!  Honestly, if I could be legitimately just paid in cheeseburgers for doing these fun, creative things I want to start doing regularly again, I’d love that!  I would make an account for this, my fans send me whatever money they want, and I would only use that money for cheeseburgers.  I’d figure out how to pay for everything with day jobs and the money that comes in here would be entirely and solely for cheeseburgers.  Snacks for our games on podcast days, cheeseburgers!  Also, fries and shakes.  essentially, the card for that account would only be used for In-N-Out, Jack in the Box, Carl’s Jr., and a few smaller hole-in-the-wall type places.  That sounds reasonable to me.  Honestly, my garbage diet subsists principally of cheeseburgers anyhow.  And just having my food perpetually taken care of would be a huge help with shit going on right now.

     Speaking of podcasts, I’m putting together a game modeled on the Stargate franchise and using the D616 system.  I’ve been making assets and crafting characters while tweaking the system accordingly so, once I clean up my shit hole apartment, and straighten out some tech issues, I can get some people coming over to play games.  I have one player for sure.  Another tabletop player I met through friends playing tabletop games, and he happens to an almost equally huge Stargate nerd.  Then when I’m closer to relaunching I have a couple conversations pending.  When I have two more solid confirmations on players and ideally someone in the Producer’s chair, we can get this thing going again.  I can’t wait to start up again.  I miss doing all the behind the scenes stuff like editing and working with the video and audio, setting up the studio, especially when it all comes together and works exactly how it’s supposed to.  It’s a beautiful thing pulling off a live performance of anything, but tabletop role playing games like this with the video resources we’ve got here, the tabletop apps I use for these games, and then having fun people around to play, it’s going to be great!  I can’t wait.

     Yeah, I’m still not feeling great about the Stargate news but I’m thinking that the new podcast game we’re about to start playing, I’ll use to write and play out at least some of the things I’ve been thinking about while trying out writing my first screenplay.  I guess we’ll have to wait and see…

I know, it’s been a couple weeks.  I had a few job interviews last week.  I got a couple offers.  I started one job Monday.  I’m planning to pickup another but then I applied for passes to a convention in a few weeks so, I need to figure out how to start multiple jobs and then finagle the access if my passes get approved.  And then I’ll need to figure out pretty much the same things for conventions in October and/or September.  Some of my is coming together but of course, not quickly nor effectively enough.  I was thinking about this earlier, I find myself in a damn near identical circumstance as twenty-two years ago.  Unemployed, out of money, and starting a job for the same company.  In regard to the symmetry of life, fuck that!  Anyway, Plan B isn’t on the immediate itinerary.  But I have something more pressing to talk about right now.

     News broke yesterday about the new Stargate series and I was waiting to write something until I looked more into it.  I saw a post somewhere and was calming going to look into it and then moments later, I saw a post from David Blue saying the same thing so I decided to put a little more urgency into my homework.  It seems that Amazon wasn’t pleased with the current progress.  Turns out that Martin Gero, with all his experience and time working on Stargate properties, that his work on this Stargate property was turning out to be too much Stargate.  They fired from the project Martin Gero citing that his proposed direction was more for existing fans and less with the intent of appealing to a “wider audience”.  Here’s what I think of that.  If your intent is to reboot this franchise with a new series, then your intent, in so many words, is to disregard the existing fan base.  You are ostensibly starting over to build a new fan base with a new property while calling it something old.  That’s not a recipe for success.  I was talking to a fellow nerd about this and paraphrased Ben Browder as Cam Mitchell when the character entered the series and to quote: “…I chose SG-1.  That meant Colonel Carter, Teal’c, and yourself, not two letters a dash and a number.”  My point here is that many fans, myself for one, wont necessarily follow a new anything just because of it’s named after something I love.  Judging by fan bases of other properties like Star Wars, Star Trek, Thundercats, Knight Rider, Charmed, The Powerpuff Girls, and numerous others, it’s statistically unlikely for such a reboot of the Stargate franchise(keep in mind that this would be rebooting the entire franchise, 315 episodes across three series, two subsequent films, or three if you count the webseries Origins: Catherine cut together as a film.) and not just a single beloved series.  Following this course of action, in a couple years when the reboot fails to perform there’ll be a room of executives saying to each other “How did it not work?  We took the thing they loved and changed everything about it.”

     I’ve been saying this in regard to reboots since this fad of rebooting started so many years ago.  Why reboot something instead of doing something new?  It’s been demonstrated repeatedly that people respond more positively to new things as opposed to redoing old things in worse ways.  Even when you sequels.  Historically sequels underperform compared to primary installments.  The point here is that there’s little functional reason in buying a popular, established property to use it to make money, and then try to change it.  They started this bringing on board Martin Gero, among the most notable names of the previous series with the intent of tying back to the established franchise.  And then they got rid of him for tying back to the established franchise.  I’ve worked in retail for pretty much the entire adult life and this ‘executive’ mindset is not exclusive to entertainment.  Someone walks into a thing where they have no experience or substantive contribution, their reaction to the situation is to change everything about it, fail having undone the established progress and momentum of efficiency, and then ultimately have to go back to how things were done in the first place because their “new” concepts not only failed on their own merits but also undid previous success.  Like I’ve said before and demonstrated in numerous posts on here, the established universe has literally infinite storytelling potential and instead these executives are going to try and make something new with an old name thinking that just calling it Stargate would be enough to sway nerds.

     Once again, kids, THIS is why we learn history.

A quick update, I’ve had a few more job interviews this last week.  I haven’t heard anything from any of them yet.  I have another interview scheduled and I’m still sending out resumes and applying everywhere I can.  So, we’ll see what happens.

     I got my phone service back for a bit so, I’ve been watching Stargate again while I have access to PlutoTV.  I was reminded recently of another fun loose end that could be visited in a new upcoming Stargate series.  There is an episode where O’Neill is cloned by a rogue asgard.  The clone doesn’t shake out right and results as being a clone of O’Neill at age fifteen.  With the clone’s impending death close at hand, the team works out a way to save his life.  And the young clone is set up with a normal civilian life, going back to high school and living his life without the Air Force or specifically the stargate but of course with O’Neill’s experience and memory.  This got me thinking about some things.

     It’s been around fifteen years since then.  That puts the clone’s age into his thirties.  So, I’m thinking that a Jack O’Neill who doesn’t get to be a pilot, a Special Forces Operator, not traveling through the gate, would ultimately get a little restless.  Maybe he sticks it out in high school, experiences a little bit of the childhood he didn’t get the first time around.  And then decides to go to college in lieu of joking the Air Force.  Studies engineering thinking he likes well enough boating, why not learn how to build and maintain boats.  He spends a few years as mechanic and hobbyist shipwright.  Building his own boat while repairing and modifying others’ boats.  I’m thinking it isn’t very long before he winds up getting in touch with some less-than-noble elements.  

     While trying to get certain law enforcement agencies to deal with these elements and being disregarded at every turn, not being able to exercise his lost clout and all, he takes matters into his own hands.  Between his vigilantism and Robin Hood style smuggling Johnny O’Neill starts dealing in alleged alien technology.  Eventually, I see Johnny getting his hands enough equipment to essentially build a custom goa’uld scout ship.

     I’ve only thought about for this for a few minutes at this point so I haven’t thought through much more than this.  I’m working to figure out how best to tie into upcoming series.  Maybe he gets recruited into some sort of NID outfit.  Maybe the NID knows who he is or at the very least what this O’Neill has been doing in recent years.  Who knows?  Maybe the Stargate program recruits him as a civilian contractor and puts him on a newer SG team.

     And now we’re to that point in the post where I ask anyone to put this in front of Martin Gero.  As the Showrunner for the upcoming Stargate series I’m pretty sure he’s the person I need to be begging for a job writing on Stargate.  Soooo, if anyone reading this just happens to know Martin Gero, please show him my posts so I can work to talk him into giving me a job.  I need to finish the screenplay I started but I’m a whole third of the way through.

     I’ll make a deal with you.  Someone helps me get in touch with Martin Gero and I won’t blow the opportunity.  And then I’ll buy you a cheeseburger…or cookies…whatever.  I get a job writing for Stargate and I’ll be able to afford a few different kinds of snacks.