Q is Chekhov’s Gunman

I’ve currently only seen three James Bond films in their entirety, the first two Daniel Craig movies and most recently earlier this year The Man With The Golden Gun.  But I’ve seen clips of other movies before and I watched a bunch of Bond relevant Video Essays on YouTube this year because they simply were what was trending a few times.

Bond has been a very influential franchise,  so I can see Bond’s fingerprints on plenty of other media I’ve consumed.  Lupin III has been called the James Bond of Japan, a few of the 60s and 70s Godzilla films are referred to as being James Bond influenced.  There are direct James Bond references in the Anime Moriarty The Patriot. 

What’s interesting though is how one of the key signs that something is really leaning into the Bond influence structurally is if there is a Q analogue. When Batman Begins was being hyped up Nolan was very open about the James Bond influence, and a key factor always pointed out was Lucius Fox as played by Morgan Freeman being Bruce’s Q.  Nolan's love of drawing on Bond continued with Inception and Tenet which also both have their Q analogues. 

And a thing I’m sure I’m not the first to notice about Q is how his role is essentially to provide Chekhov’s Guns.  Professor Agasa has been referred to as Detective Conan’s Q, and it's in several of the movies that it's really on the nose, just like Q he introduces some new invention early on which then plays a key role in the climax. 

The wording of Chekhov’s Gun is that because something is seen early on it should be used.  But no sane person is really going around criticizing every time some innocuous detail from act one doesn’t come up later. No it’s considered good writing advice for the opposite angle, anything that plays an important role in the resolution should be set up earlier, that’s how you avoid a Deus Ex Machina accusation. 

So Bond style movies without a designated Q character still have a scene or two that like Q serve the purpose of introducing something in the protagonist's arsenal that will be important later. Maybe the protagonist themselves invented whatever gadgets they’re going to use, like many non Nolan versions of Batman. 

And this is why I struggle at being an actually interesting blogger. I make lots of observations like this I want to share, but they don’t always lead me to any profound revelation or theory.  Rather than continuing this Chekhov’s Gun train of thought I kind of want to share other random Bond related thoughts I’ve had this year. 

Ya know the Obi-Wan Kenobi parts of Attack of The Clones could be compared to a Bond movie just as much as they can to Film Noir Detective films. Ewen McGregor has a similarly dry sense of humor to Roger Moore and Christopher Lee is the villain.

I watched a Book YouTube video that separated all the Bond Novels both by which they felt were the good ones and which ones’ namesake films are a reasonably faithful adaptation of at least the same basic sequence of events. And the only novel that was both good and doesn’t have a close enough adaptation is Moonraker, which is interesting for in the Book having a villain who is a surviving Nazi War Criminal, not the most original idea for a Pulp Villain but they annoyingly keep staying relevant. 

When it comes to the various pitches Bond fans keep saying they want for the next movie, I kind of hope the Period Piece idea is the one Amazon doesn’t do.  Because when the Bond Novels (except maybe Thunderball) enter the Public Domain pretty much everywhere but the United States in a decade, period piece films that directly adapt those novels distinctly unlike how the Movies have typically been are exactly what people independent of Amazon will most easily be able to make without Amazon shutting it down.  

So I say an old fashioned Black and White mid 50s set Moonraker adaptation is exactly what some independent filmmakers should right now begin preparing to make. In fact you can already do it in Canada. Maybe give it a different name since Pop Culture now associates that name with something distinctly NOT in the book. 

My other advice for people planning to make their own PD James Bond projects in a decade is if you want to avoid Spectre because of the question mark that might still hang over Thunderball, just use Paul Feval’s Les Habits Noirs translated The Blackcoats as your international criminal secret society. Their English branch is sometimes called The Gentleman of The Night and it's leader The Lord of The Night is sometimes plotting to liberate Ireland from British rule which I mention because another Bond video I saw talked about the lack of Ireland in the Bond movies.

In some small ways certain writers have always gotten away with treating Bond like he’s quasi PD.  Like incorporating the Mycroft Holmes was the original M fan theory.  Is there any fictional character from the same era whose name happens to begin with the letter Q who was also a scientist/inventor?

I've been thinking about my French Pulp Fiction interests again.

I did a post recently on how Anime still isn't Mainstream, but the thing is Anime isn't even the most Niche thing I'm into.  Anime at least has enough of an active online fandom presence that I can Tweet about it and find lots of interesting YouTube videos and Tumblr posts and Fan Fiction.

What I'm talking about in this post I'm not even sure what to call it, it's way more specific then what most people who'd call themselves a Francophile mean.  I often use Shadowmen as a short hand after the anthology series Tales of The Shadowmen or the nonfiction book Shadowmen: Heroes and Villains of French Pulp Fiction.  

The main fan-site is CoolFrenchComics.com and the main modern publisher of relevant content is Black Coat Press.  They publish lots of English Translations of 19th and early 20th Century Pulp Fiction, but also some books that contain new stories using these characters or related themes.  The Editors who run BCP are Jean-Marc & Randy Loffcier and some of the books they Translate themselves.  However a lot of their flagship books are translated by Brian Stableford.  A number of them, including some that may benefit from a Female perspective were translated by Nina Cooper.  It seems everything that's a Stage Play rather then Prose is translated by Frank Morlock.  Another notable contributor is Rick Lai who I'll talk more about later.

BlackCoatPress has made some marketing decisions I consider unfortunate.  Starting with their decision to say "Adapted by" rather then "Translated by" on the covers of all their translations. Now they have an explanation for this on their website on a page called Adapted vs Translated, where it's basically because they're trying to distinguish themselves from old Public Domain translations that are little better then what we in the Anime Community would call Machine Generated Translations, they want to give their translators credit for the skill they provide in making their translations actually pleasing to read, it's not because they are actually changing or rewriting anything.

The problem is that explanation isn't on the back of the every book.  And so for example when I'm trying to convince fellow Anime fans to try one of them out, a Translation openly branding itself as an "Adaptation" is going to make them think of 90s Hack Dubs where the names are all Americanized, and Croissants are called Jelly Donuts, and Death is euphemized as "leaving this world", and Eugenie Danglars & Louis d'Armilly are referred to as "cousins".

Rest assured BCP's Translations are the opposite of that, preserving the French cultural characteristics in ways modern Anime Dubs and even Subs still struggle with, like keeping rather then translating French nicknames and Honorifics.  I watched a YouTube video once where someone talking more about Manga translations actually said that Honorifics should be translated or dropped entirely, that they simply don't work in English and only pretentious Weaboos want to keep them.  And I've come to realize that's just plain Racist, only when talking about East Asian media is it at all controversial to preserve their Honorifics, no modern respectable translation of Les Misérables for example would dare change Monsieur to Mister or Mademoiselle to Miss, some of those old PD translation that BCP wants to distinguish themselves from so badly did, but everyone today agrees that's stupid.  No one considers it jarring in the Musical when these French honorifics are spoken by the Cockney accented Thenardiers, it actually works just fine.  Japanese honorifics are way more different from English honorifics then French ones are, what they communicate about the culture is even more important to preserve and any attempted 1 to 1 equivocation of them to English words will be way less accurate in their connotations.

Another marketing mistake is that a few books will on their back cover blurbs describe aspects of what happens in ways that might feel a bit like a bait and switch once you've read them.  So for example don't read The Wandering Jew's Daughter expecting The Wandering Jew to be Superman.  The Wandering Jew's Daughter is itself not one of the best of Paul Feval's novels, but the BCP translation is worth buying just for the information Stableford provides in the Introduction for cultural context, so much history of how the Wandering Jew legend was used in French literature and melodrama that you won't find on Wikipedia.

Stableford's translations always have very in-depth educational Introductions, extensive Footnotes, and more often then not an insightful Afterward as well.  With both John Devil and The Vampire and The Devil's Son I definitely agree with Stableford's Afterward provided interpretations of what actually happened in the story. Companions of The Treasure is another one where Stbaleford's interpretation is basically Canon to me.

The Phantom of The Opera is such a classic of literature and pop culture in general not just in France that you would probably think surely a good faithful and complete English Translation existed before Jean-Marc & Randy Lofficier published theirs in the 2000s, but you'd be wrong.  Multiple reviews of their translation affirm that no one before even kept the basic format of how the story is told.  But because theirs came so late and most people assume that "certainly a Penguin Classics edition can be trusted" their English version remains rarely read even by younger readers.  Half the Phantom of The Opera content on YouTube is from Lindsay Elis, and one thing you learn in those is how pervasive is the opinion that Andrew Lyod Webber's musical is better then the original novel, and I can't help but blame the fact that most of these Musical Theater Kids have never read the real novel.

Speaking of Lindsay Ellis she did a video on The Persian, lamenting the constant either White Washing or Demonizing of that character.  So it's a shame she never read Rick Lai's Shadows of The Opera, in that series The Persian is not exactly a main character but they are from what I recall faithfully preserved as both a Persian and a good person.

Speaking of which, now is a good time to mention that there is some relevant material published by other publishers.  A number of Frank Molock's stage play translations were published by Borgo Press, and the first volume of Rick Lai's Shadows of The Opera was from Wild Cat Books, but BlackCoatPress took over for the follow ups.  BCP hasn't published any Rocmabole stuff besides two Stage Plays in one volume, Basil Balian has made a very abridged translation of the entire Rocambole saga, and Jean De Ponson du Terrail has made complete translations of the first two volumes.

I did mention above my desire to sell this stuff specifically to fellow Anime fans.  Rick Lai's Shadows of The Opera and Sisters of The Shadows series is a good place to start.  It began with Rick Lai making a female version of The Shadow, and then things get increasingly implausible with how nearly all the major players in this epic saga are female.  It's a series waiting to be made into an Anime. 

But as interesting as I find Rick Lai's work, some of the characters he uses I really don't want his takes on to be people's introductions to them.  Chiefly Paul Feval's The Blackcoats saga and Maurice Leblanc's The Countess Cagliostro, both have been translated by BlackCoatPress.

The Countess Cagliostro is however the Prequel of the Arsene Lupin saga, and not the only book of that saga to take place before some books already published when it was written.  So is the Lupin Saga one where it's appropriate to read in Chronological rather then Publication order?  Well I still haven't read all of them, but for the essentials of what I have I'd say go ahead.  Basically the essential Arsene Lupin works are the ones translated by Jean-Marc & Randy Lofficier and the original short stories included in Arsene Lupin: Gentleman Burglar which basically all take place between Countess Cagliostro and The Blond Lady aka The Blond Phantom.

Paul Feval's works are the most interesting to me.  My introduction to him began as part of my prior Vampire phase, it was The Vampire Countess and Vampire City which caught my attention first and which I read in that order.  Both are great and so are Knightshade and Revanants.  Countess and Revanants are from an earlier phase of Feval's career when he hadn't gotten as ultra Meta yet.  

There is something said in a few reviews of Vampire City I consider misguided, and that's making it sound like Polly Bird is in any way Trans representation, she was simply the subject of supernatural gender bending and it isn't even emphasized all that much, and in the end it would certainly be problematic to read her as Trans representation.

John Devil is the best of Feval's novels, but also the longest at least of what BCP has translated.  I think the best entry point to The Blackcoats saga would be either Salem Street or The Invisible Weapon, but 6 out of 7 of them are worth reading and fairly capable of standing on their own, The Cadet Gang is the one that he clearly was forcing himself to write after losing all passion for the topic so I'd say don't bother with it.  

Thing is while a good deal of the Prose content relevant to this interest is available in English now (there are some still untranslated I want to see get translated), most of the French Movies and TV shows about these characters have no English Subtitled release I can watch.  It's in this area where fans of Japanese entertainment media are lucky, even the most obscure stuff can usually be found Subbed in some capacity.  But for French stuff I wanna watch, the 60s Fantomas trilogy, the 63 Judex, the 96/97 film version of Paul Feval's Le Bossu titled on Amazon as On Gaurd, and the 2004 Arsene Lupin have Subs I can watch, but that's it.  However I also wanna see some of the films based on Eugene Sue's The Mysteries of Paris, or Rocambole, or all of the other Le Bossu adaptations (it seems one gets made about once a decade), or the TV adaptations of Les Habits Noirs and Le Loup Blanc.

Update: I forgot to talk about something important.

If I have piqued anyone's interest in buying stuff from BlackCoarPress, I know from talking with them that buying the book using their website directly gives a larger percentage of what you spend to the Author or Translator then they would get when using a site like Amazon as the middle man.  However that also costs the consumer more on shipping and handling.  And more often then not I get the book faster when I use Amazon, but that's because of the same circumstances that force their delivery drivers to piss in bottles.

It's another unfortunate symptom of Capitalism that what's more affordable for the consumer results in less of the money spent going to who actually deserves that money.  I am in a financially difficult situation right now.  But anyone who is in a fairly comfortable situation financially I would ask to be willing to spend the extra money necessary to support BlackCoatPress directly.

Death Note and Social Commentary

What bugs me about the utter failure of the Netflix Death Note movie is that it's gonna be seen as a vindication of those who felt it was wrong to make an American set adaptation in the first place.  I stand by my conviction that a Western re-imagining of Death Note is necessary, as well as that in a Western setting Light should be White because being privileged is vital to his character.  What the Netflix movie screwed up is that it ignored his privilege.

You see, I'm gonna suggest something really controversial. I think the greatest logical weakness of the original story of Death Note is that it's set in Japan.  Japan's crime rate is actually way to low to make sense as a place for Light's particular frustrations to fester.

I know that is potentially a very offensive thing for a Western Anime fan who's never been to Japan and can't speak Japanese to say.  But maybe we should view it as problematic how often Western Anime critics want to view every single detail of every Anime in the context of what's inherently Japanese about it, when really I'm pretty sure every country has lots of writers who would like for their writing to resonate universally and transcend their native cultural context. 

Noir is my favorite Anime, and as such one I've often pointed to as one that could make a good Live Action adaptation (though I've also come to feel it might be pointless to adapt since there is nothing I'm willing to change).  But at least one time I expressed that, someone responded with "Noir could only be done in Live Action well if it's made in Japan".  This confused me since Noir ISN'T EVEN SET IN JAPAN.  It sets foot in Japan only in the very first episode.  If you want to express some frustration at Americans messing with Anime in the context of this show then say France should make it, because it's mostly set in France and is inspired by French films like La Femme Nikita and Leon.  And a French Dub already exists, so if it's as good as the English one then you already have the dialogue written for you.  Kirika is ethnically Japanese, but due to her amnesia plot point nothing about her ever reflects being a product of Japan.  But make no mistake I would never tolerate her being white washed in an adaptation, that's because it's precisely Asians living in the west who need more representation.

With Your Name (which J. J. Abrams expressed a desire to adapt) I understand the arguments for it being inherently Japanese when it comes to how it uses Shinto.  But I once read someone saying it's "about the cultural divide between Urban and Rural Japan", as if there is no way that could be recreated in an American version.  I shouldn't need to explain why that sentiment expresses an utter ignorance of America.

Back on topic.  The first thing Death Note's existence reflects about modern Japan is how influenced it's become by western media.  When you get right down to it, it's basically another literary descendant of Holmes vs Moriarty and Gregory Temple vs John Devil, but with a supernatural twist, and even that aspect is by no means a proper representation of the Shinto view of death and the afterlife, the word Shinigami may be Japanese but the concept is a foreign import.

Mother's Basement described Death Note as being about Japan's harsh stance on crime.  The thing is, that only works if Light is an allegory for Japan itself, and really he isn't written like an allegorical character at all.  Light makes most sense as a deconstruction of American characters like The Punisher and Charles Bronson in Death Wish, characters who appeal to an American attitude that we have so much crime because we're not being harsh enough on it.  An attitude that at first seems inherently Conservative, but it manifests on the Left in things like calls for Hate Crime legislation.

And of course these American characters tend to be White, because Americans who feel that way tend to be White.  Because when they get their way it's minority communities who suffer, they know full well the police are hardly playing with kid gloves.  And that is why Light as an ethnic Minority in America would never make sense to me.

Heck the show itself seems aware of how unlikely Japan is as a setting for all of this since everyone was shocked at the Law Enforcement gathering when L said he thinks Kira is in Japan.  You can argue that shock is mostly him narrowing it down to one country at all and not picking the most obvious one, America, but that still backs up my point.  (In an American's setting you can create that same shocking narrow down to knowing which State.)

I've seen people say you couldn't set the Near and Mello arc in America because then the CIA's involvement wouldn't be a political controversy.  Do these people not know that the CIA isn't supposed to operate domestically? 

Now lots of Anime feature literary archetypes and conventions that are western in origin in-spite of being set in Japan.  But few are as easy for me to imagine being moved to another country as Death Note.  So little time is actually spent at Light's school life that the particulars of why Japanese High School is different never show up.  Nothing annoys me more then when people act like Misa can only work in Japan, celebrity worship is absolutely a thing in America.

Frankly the only thing that would be difficult to keep word for word in an American setting is Chief Yagami refusing to carry a gun when he's no longer officially a Cop due to it being illegal.  But even then you could explain it by saying he's a Democrat.

Yes I said Word for Word, I genuinely feel that the English Dub Script of the Death Note anime shares Shakespeare's ability to work word for word in multiple settings.

Light never once even at an early transitional phase says he's interested in cleaning up Japan.  It was always The World.

John Devil Expanded Universe

I want to talk here a bit about my personal plans for expanding on the John Devil universe in future writings.  

Star Wars is about Fascism, but is it so in a way that is actually useful in opposing Fascism?

So my fellow SJWs at TheMarySue and LadyGeekGirl and on Tumblr have been going on and on about how Star Wars is obviously political.  What they mainly mean by that is it's obviously on their side, and want to use that George Lucas and the new directors are all mostly on the Left side of modern American politics as proof of that.  But the Author Is Dead and George Lucas especially was like Tolkien in that he wanted his stories to have a universal appeal beyond his own personal views or context.

But I'm not making this to talk about any intentional room for interpretation.  But rather a far deeper issue of how society responds to the fiction they watch.  And to start with you should watch this video from KyleKallgrenBHH on YouTube.

From Caligari to Hitler: Imagining the Tyrant - Between the Lines

This premise goes back decades. But this particular video on it was made in November of 2016, after the U.S. presidential Election of that month but before Rogue One came out.  I had watched it when it was still pretty new and bookmarked it on YouTube.

Rogue One is a movie I loved and enjoyed.  But as I looked at a certain segment of Star Wars fans not so impressed with it, expressing how bothered they were by people in their theater openly cheering on Darth Vader at the end.  I was reminded of the above video.

Because this thesis was not mainly about heroes of German cinema who could be viewed as unintentional proto-Nazis, though that was a small factor.  It mostly came down to the tendency of the masses to be fascinated by Villains.  Star Wars has always had that factor, it is the TVTropes Trope Namer for Rooting For The Empire.  And recently The Fanboy Perspective did an editorial about how annoyed he is by movies who's villains are not sufficiently charismatic and Bad@$$ enough to satisfy him.

Now don't get me wrong.  That Vader scene is one you are supposed to "enjoy".  You are supposed to "enjoy" it the same way you "enjoy" a Slasher film.  But of course the fandom of Slasher films has this same problem, I keep seeing people try to say the Final Girl archetype is Feminist, but they don't sell action figures of Laurie Strode, they sell action figures of Michael Myers.

Now I was planning on making this post and saying what I am about to say before Carrie Fisher was even hospitalized.  But naturally I now find it even more important to say that the character people should have been standing up and cheering at the end of Rogue One was Princess Leia.

And of course I can't help but notice the clear correlation between this kind of Star Wars fan, and the Prequel Haters.  People who resent the Prequels for emasculating Darth Vader, and are oh so thankful now to Rogue One for restoring his Manhood, quite literally symbolized by the extending of his Lightsaber.

And we see that in the new Trilogy's haters also to an extent, not liking how whiny and pathetic Kylo Ren seems, they wanted a new Vader, not a Vader wannabe.

Now before you go "great Job invoking Godwin's Law in your ongoing Crusade against Prequel Haters".  I want to say, don't oversimplify my premise.  I'm not saying you can identify Trump voters by tallying who cheered on Darth Vader, or who hated the Prequels.  On Tumblr I certainly know many Prequel haters who are Anti-Trump, and the most Conservative Star Wars fan I know is a relative who's pretty okay with the Prequels.  My point is that there is a basic cultural overlap between the mentality that leads to thinking the Villains are the best parts of Comic Book films, and finding Trump's style appealing.

And I know full well The Prequels also give us a Villain to be fascinated by, as they finally gave The Emperor an actual character.  Yet at the same time so much Prequel hate is tied to feeling Darth Maul and Count Dooku were under utilized.  And complaining about Anakin killing the Younglings.

Yes, that is an important comparison to the Rogue One scene.  Undeniably that should show the character's Evilness far more.  In Rogue One he's killing enemy combatants, not even a War Crime much less one against civilians, it's wrong only to the extent he is on the wrong side.  But it's not so easy to cheer on Vader massacring Younglings, which Lucas kept off-screen anyway.  More importantly then that though, is how it doesn't make him seem Bad@$$, it makes him seem Pathetic.  Sidious had basically just told him he needed to do some Evil for the Evuls to grow more powerful with The Dark Side, and so he did just that.  Reminds me of how Utena fans who hate the movie are so upset by Akio now being made to look pathetic, Ikuhara did that deliberately.

The massacre of the Seperatists leaders could have been far easier to cheer on.  But the way it's scored and shot, and how it's inter-cut with Palpatine's speech (Lucas cited this as his one Godfather Baptism moment) discourages the audience from doing so.  Topped off by seeing how even this killing of people who narratively had it coming had Anakin crying, showing he still has further to fall, and is certainly as Yoda predicted "Suffering".

I also noticed recently a problem in how all the universally praised Star Wars films, are ones where the "War" in question is unquestioningly a just one, for our Heroes side at least.  And in TFA and Rogue One even more so then the Original Trilogy, hesitancy to go all in on fighting it is presented as weakness.  While The Prequels which send the message that fighting an unjust war, one where our Heroes were the aggressors, is what created The Empire in the first place, get decried for not being simple enough.

2002 saw the release of both Attack of The Clones and The Two Towers.  That was also the year the Bush Administration was beating the War Drums on Iraq, so much so my mind still affiliates that War with 2002 more so then 2003.   Both films happen to have a theme of a War about to break out, which it does at the end.  Bizarre coincidence since it couldn't have been pre-planned.

The sad Irony is that Tolkien would certainly despise the Bush Doctrine as someone traumatized by WWI.  Yet the timing of when the Two Towers movie came out allowed many Bush voters in the theater to take Aragorn's "Open War is upon you, whether you would have it or not" as a take that to Anti-War liberals.  I know this because way back then I was one, a fact I'm deeply ashamed of.  Meanwhile AOTC clearly presents the decision to go to War as a mistake.  The Empire was truly Born in Episode II, and the score beautifully tells you that at the end.  It was just formalized in Episode III.  I wonder to what extent the Prequels are a factor in my ceasing to be Pro-War by 2006.

Going back to Lucas intent, yes he wanted to cosmetically reference the Nazis like everyone was doing at that time.  But in the Audio Commentaries the real meat when he's talking about Historical influences lie in his talking about Ancient Rome and of all people Napoleon III.  Julius and Augustus Caesar, and both Napoleons presented themselves as the Left Wing of the politics of their times, however odd that may seem to us looking at it now.  Lucas message in the prequels was about how Democracy can be subverted, regardless of the ideology of the one subverting it.

That he cited Napoleon III is interesting to me.  Years after I'd first enjoyed those Audio Commentaries, I started developing an interest in 19th Century French Popular fiction, the genesis of which was discovering Paul Feval and BlackCoatPress.  Brain Stableford talks much about the historical contexts of all these novels in his Introductions, Afterwards and Footnotes of his Translations, (interestingly in The Invisible Weapon he theorized Feval become personally disturbed by his own ability to write such compelling villains, that he became like Mliton, unknowingly of The Devil's Party).  And there too Napoleon III is unavoidable.  He may be a nearly forgotten figure today, but to his contemporaries he was very important.

And of course the shadow of Napoleon Classic Version is vital to that.  Especially since censorship meant any negative commentary on him had to veiled.  And he had critics from both progressives and old fashioned conservatives.  Seemingly any novel mentioning the original Napoleon in the 1850s, 60s or even to an extent 70s had Napoleon III in mind.  But not using OG Napoleon himself as the allegory, no they didn't want to grant him that.

The thing about the real Napoleon was that he managed to earn the respect even of those who most harshly opposed him Politically, from both the Royalists and Republicans, from Alexandre Dumas to Paul Feval.  Napoleon III couldn't do that.  And thus the contemporary fictional allegories for him lie in the Napoleon wannabes.  Like Henri Belcamp of Paul Feval's John Devil, or The Blackcoats: Companions of The Treasure, where Julian Bozzo-Corona disguised himself as his far more iconic Corsican Grandfather, Colonel Bozzo-Corona.

Of course it is this failed wannabe nature of how Napoleon III was fictionalized by his contemporaries that makes someone in the know like me a little disappointed in Palapatine as a character partly inspired by him.  And this informs what I in-spite of my issues with TFA love about Kylo Ren.  It is Kylo Ren's failure to be Darth Vader that reminds me of Napleon III's failure to be Napoleon.  And I now kinda hope Snoke is equally a wannabe Sidious, overcompensating in his hologram so no one questions the size of his.... hands.

I realize I kinda left the original topic a bit there.  But I wanted to show I'm not just being a hater who's now completely cynical to seeing useful Politics in Star Wars.  Because Donald Trump also wants to be something he is not.  The Alt-Right sees this as a second American Revolution, but Trump is no George Washington.

Some people might find it offensive to see any French Figure as a proto-Fascist when France was a nation victimized by 1940s Fascists.  But in their current Political Climate they should know they're no more immune to it then America is.

June 20th 2017 Update: Triumph of The Will

I just watched a YouTube video by Folding Ideas about Triumph of The Will. It didn't exist yet when I first made this post.

It was informative on a few levels, the key thing is the closing, that this film that defines how we think of the Nazis, is how the Nazis wanted people to think of them.  It really makes you rethink things.

Because the imagery of that infamous Propaganda film is also core to how fictional evil Empires and Tyrants are compared to the Nazis to demonize them.  Including in Star Wars.  And yet paradoxically I've also seen it observed that it influenced the Rebellion's award ceremony at the end of ANH.  You know, the one where the Blond White Male heroes get Medals but the hairy alien who can't talk properly doesn't.

"Show don't Tell" isn't a universal rule

There are times when many people seem to think it is, or at least in a visual medium like film and animation it is.  I see it in Fanboy-Perspective's defense of Batman V Superman and Clark's lack of dialogue in it.

But there are times when I do feel telling is better then showing. Especially if you're someone who wants less Origin Stories in Superhero movies, what you basically want is to be told not shown.  Likewise if you don't like overuse of Flashbacks, you want to be told not shown.  I'm annoyed how many fans feel that dead Robin easter egg means some DCEU film HAS to flashback to when that happened, how about we just leave that to the imagination for a change?

If you are the opposite of me on the issue of if movies should be longer or shorter, or if you feel the same.  Sometimes telling is shorter and sometimes showing is shorter, it depends on what you're trying to communicate.

And this also ties into how I'm a big supporter of, especially for horror, the idea that what you don't see is more disturbing then what you do.

But the thing about any medium that has acting as one of it's story telling tools.  Is what you can do by showing how a character tells something, and how others react while listening.  When trying to understand Shakespeare, it's import to know that Elizabethian audiences would have cared more about what they heard then what they saw.

In the 70s TV Miniseries Jesus of Nazareth, there are many things I don't like about it (mainly the White Washing) but also things I think it did well.  One of it's highlights was showing Jesus tell the parable of the Prodigal Son to a room full of people, it was a far better choice then cutting to a dramatization of it.

I enjoyed Suicide Squad, but yes it is a flawed movie.  One of it's highlights is El Diablo telling his backstory in the bar scene.  I feel that could have maybe been improved by not having any flashbacks, but just having him tell the story.

If a movie is ever made of Paul Feval's John Devil.  I do not want any "Flashbacks" or whatever you might call a Dramatization of the stories Henri Belcamp tells about his adventures in Australia and on St Helena.  One reason is because none of those stories are entirely true, and the audience of a movie tends to assume anything we see play out must have happened.

But also because I want to see Henri Belcamp be an Orator.  I want to show how he plays his audience and how they are suckered in by it.  Same thing if a movie was made out of The Vampire Countess, another Paul Feval novel translated into English by Brian Stableford.

So no, what I'm saying is we don't need to see everything, it sometimes works to just tell us.

I shall share some thoughts on Twilight Hatedom and an Anime called School Days

 [Update February 2019: I'm not too fond of this post anymore, I kind of stand by the the basic points I was arguing but say some things in ways I wouldn't any longer.  So don't read this one, Lindsay Ellis has now said better what I wanted to say about Twilight, and School Days was never something I actually cared about.]

I have seen all 9 episodes of Sherlock

I enjoyed it, my favorite episode was probably a Scandal in Belgravia.  All the actors do a very good job.

I really like Molly, who I don't think is based on anyone from the original books.

It's interesting how Artistic inspiration goes in circles, House M.D. was clearly based on Holmes a great deal, and it's also clearly influenced the Holmes Adaptations that have been made since.

On the question of how Sherlock survived the fall.  We're kind of supposed to see the third answer shown at the real one, but it's still a little ambiguous.  I found the the 3rd scene shown the most absurd frankly, there is no way that couldn't have had witnesses who weren't in on it.

All 3 theories start with the same wrong assumption I think, that Sherlock surviving means he didn't hit the pavement.  It could be a simply matter of him doing something when he landed to minimize the damage.

Now the big mystery is If and and if so How did Moriarty survived.  Which I find interesting because he killed himself the same way Henri Belcamp did in John Devil.  And while Feval never made a sequel to that I think he was going to if the novel had been more successful at the time.

People accidentally survive shooting themselves through the Mouth like that quite often.  Anything you can do by accident someone as smart as Moriarty could probably do on purpose.

I found the show's take on Charles Augustus Miverlton (Magnussen) interesting.  He's a total control freak and literally marks his territory.

The reveal of how his "Files" actually work reminded my of The Colonel's Treasure a little bit.  It's Psychological rather then Supernatural, but the premise is the same, it kind of doesn't actually exist.  He is the Treasure.

Rocambole in London

For now I decided to skip Volume 2 of Basil Balian's abridged Rocambole translations and go right to volume 3 with his London adventures.

The first story in the Volume was really the epilogue to Rocambole's India adventure.  It was amusing.

The summery of the Rocambole saga on CoolFrenchComics is sometimes misleading. Part of it may be how abridged this Translation is.  But I take notice that Jeon-Marc seems to want to encourage people to compare these characters to Iconic Modern characters, in ways that may or may not be accurate.  In the case of this first story, they describe The Beautiful Gardiner (Romia) in a way makes her sound kind of like Poison Ivy.

I did my post that talked about the Strong Female characters of Ponson and Feval.  Now that I've read this there are more I could add.  Vanda, Romia, but most of all Ellen Palmure.  At least in the first book of the London trilogy she is a really intriguing character.  The way her character completely changes at the end is kind of hard to swallow.  A problem that faces many female villains when they make a Heel-Face turn.

One of the main things I was looking forward to reading about was Reverend Peters Town.  Who's called Bishop Towne in this translation.  He's been called a sort of Protestant counterpart to Eugene Sue's Father Rodin.  Thing is, he's not actually clever enough to fit that analogy I feel.  It's always a different Villain who actually seems to be a match for Rocambole's ingenuity.  Towne is maybe more comparable to Father D'Aigrigny, Rodin's superior.

Rocambole was a character who started out a villain.  What's interesting here is that while operating as part of this Irish Resistance in London he kind of seems effectively like he's a Supervillain again in terms of his tactics.  Comparable to Anime characters like Lelouch Vi Britannia.

Feval and Ponson both wanted to play on French reader's tendency to sympathize with the Irish under British occupation, but Ponson was willing to go much further.  Because Feval still had Fergus O'Breanne and Henri Belcamp as villains rather then heroes.

There are flaws, but overall I recommend it.

I think Dracula has an overlooked relationship to the Yellow Peril trope

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_peril
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/YellowPeril

Dracula is not usually mentioned when discussing the Yellow Peril fear in fiction.  But I shall explain why I think maybe he should be.  (Note, The above linked Wiki sites could add Dracula in the future, but as of my writing this Post they don't mention Dracula).

Fu Manchu was not the very first such characters in fiction.  What he's usually considered to be is the first who's a really good Charismatic Super-Villain, but even that's disputed.

Fu Manchu himself was originally a much more sympathetic character then he's given credit for.  He has a Code of Honor, and was originally an extreme Revolutionary fighting to liberate the East from the British Empire.  Which makes me inclined to view him as being a lot like an oriental version of Paul Feval's Henri Belcamp or Fergus O'Breane., or Jules Verne's Captain Nemo.  And there was a genuine mutual respect between him and the British detective opposing his schemes.

The Yellow Peril Trope also has a strong connection to Gothic Horror.  H.P Lovecraft and some of his known influences like Robert W. Chambers. 

Above is a Police Sketch style drawing of how Dracula is actually described in Bram Stoker's Novel.  You may notice he looks kind of Asiatic.  The kinds of actors that pop into my head as someone who could look close to that are the ones that used to float around for The Mandarin before Iron Man 3 was cast.

In the Novel he is described as a Sezkely, and takes great pride in his believed descent from Attila The Hun.  Attila like Ghengis Kahn is among the historical figures that Yellow Peril style Super-Villains tend to look up to or identify with. The way western Super-Villains often tend to admire Napoleon Bonaparte or Alexander The Great.

The Novel also has a West vs East theme to it.  About an Ancient Evil from the old uncivilized Eastern Europe coming to infect Modern London.

And the Book does predate all or most major fictional works with a Yellow Peril theme.  And is only two years after the term is believed to have been coined in Germany.

It is no secret that Dracula is a very well known, popular and influential novel.  So why would it's connection to the Yellow Peril trope be overlooked?

To being with, Stage and Film productions have always cast White Actors to play him (with no offensive make up job like they get when they play Fu Manchu or a Fu Manchu knock off).  Bela Lugosi actually was more ethnic then most, but still did not have the features seen in the sketch.  And Dracula's appearances in Comics and Animation have followed suit.  So most people think of someone like Christopher Lee when they visualize Count Dracula.

Another reason is the overemphasis on his thin connection to Vlad Tepes, which was originally only a small thing Stoker threw in and by no means central to how he viewed the character.  None the less it has taken over how people choose to expand on his history.  Here is a good discussion of that issue.

Vlad Tepes himself had some Asiatic ancestry too probably.  So why would that contribute to Dracula originally being a Yellow villain being obscured?

First off would be more of the above reason, Cinematic depictions of Vlad always use white actors.  Hollywood typically just sees Europe and thinks white (especially when pre-1500), being uninformed that Eastern Europe was and is more ethnically complicated.

Another reason however is characterization.

While the Dracula of Stoker's Novel chooses the Asiatic aspect of his Ancestry to take Pride in, (Attila as discussed already).  Vlad Dracula was the opposite, he hated the Asiatic Turks, and thus hated the thought of sharing any kinship with them.

So, that's my rambling for today.  I hope I've given fellow Nerds something to think about.

Paul Feval, a very over looked but historically important author

I want to increase familiarity with him, here are some links about his works, including ones selling modern English Translations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Feval
http://www.blackcoatpress.com/feval.htm
http://www.blackcoatpress.com/johndevil.htm
http://www.blackcoatpress.com/invisibleweapon.htm
http://www.coolfrenchcomics.com/habitsnoirs.htm
http://www.coolfrenchcomics.com/habitsnoirstimeline.htm
http://www.reviewingtheevidence.com/review.html?id=6883
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheBlackCoats
http://www.blackgate.com/2011/05/06/john-devil-and-the-world-of-paul-f eval/
http://www.blackgate.com/2011/07/15/the-black-coats-an-introduction/
http://taliesinttlg.blogspot.com/2010/05/classic-literature-vampire-countess.html
http://taliesinttlg.blogspot.com/2010/06/classic-literature-knightshade.html
http://taliesinttlg.blogspot.com/2010/04/classic-literature-vampire-city.html
http://www.reviewingtheevidence.com/review.html?id=6803
http://www.reviewingtheevidence.com/review.html?id=6803
http://www.lsu.edu/necrofile/knightshade.htm
http://www.thedraculasociety.org.uk/ds_reviews-bst.html
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2010/02/vampire-city-by-paul-feval
http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/feval_paul

John Devil is arguably the first Supervillian, as a Detective author he is important in bridging the gap from Poe to Sherlock Holmes, and his Vampire stories are very interesting considering they predate Dracula and even Carmilla.

The Black Coats saga was his most seminal work, the in fact the first fictional depiction of The Mafia.