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Wednesday, December 30, 2020

Vicky Welf Novel Mini Tease #1

*work in progress, subject to change, copyrighted by me Richard Raley, please don't copy and paste, etc*

“This is why I loathe bringing him up.” Brother ruefully shook his head. “He’s many things, but more than anything else King Henry Price is the mess that’s impossible to ignore, impervious to cleaning, and you will smell him until the end of your days…or until you incinerate those riding boots.”

Vicky snickered. “Quite the artful way to call someone a piece of shit.”

“Victoria!” Mother scolded.

“He did it!”

Monday, December 28, 2020

Not-So-Live Snarky Blog Reaction to Watching WW1984

 Spoilers Dipshits!

1.  Why am I doing this?  I think it's the only way I'm going to make it through the movie.  This really does show how much higher the bar is for a product when you haven't made the audience pay 60 something dollars for two tickets, a bucket of popcorn, two slurpees, and a commemorative Wonder Woman Covid Mask.

Like...two buttons on my remote and I'm switched over to Netflix or YouTube no problem.  Also in the middle of NI NO KUNI on my PS4 (which is a wonderful fairytale story btw), Reddit lurks, and my Kindle is sitting across the room on a bookshelf.  I think...or it's run away because I don't spend enough time with it any more...you only read one book a month!  And it's usually non-fiction!  And you edit on me, you know how that makes me feel?!?!

Let's not pretend it's not possible to reach that bar though, as my recent religious miracle experience on viewing the finale of Season 2 of the Mandalorian proves, grown man weeping tears of joy in a dark room all by his lonesome.

It's very possible!

2.   But not here!  I paused 27 minutes into the movie to start doing this, since...holy fuckballs what happened?

3.  The Mall scene is so bad I can't believe it wasn't that bad on purpose.  What zany antics!  Wowzers!  Even the old 60s Batman show would be embarrassed by that level of camp.  Commando-version Arnold thinks you've gone too far, okay?  SURF NINJAS was more realistic!  Kwan-stu, dudes!

4.  Do you see these pictures, asshole!?!?  Look at those pictures from the first movie!  You loved the first movie!  It might be relevant...linger...linger...slow pan...linger...

Real Talk:  This is 60 years later.  A healthy person would have moved on by now.  Also how fucking sad.  You're telling me she just stayed single and miserable for 60 years?

5.  Someone saw the GHOSTBUSTERS remake and said:  let's have Kristen Wiig do that again!  It worked so well the last time! 

6.  So we have two female characters in a scene written and directed by a woman and 99% of the conversation is about men and being in love.  Also, is it weird that I noticed how horrible Gal Gadot's makeup is in this scene?  Or maybe she just has really prominent dark spots under her eyes.  Or she's a drunk...  Imagine!  4K, the cruelest mistress!

7.  I'll just leave that overly aggressive cartoonish rapist on the floor, I'm sure he won't be a danger to anyone ever again!  I mean, he probably has brain damage from the way I punted him twenty feet so...ignore the blood leaking out of his ears!

8.  All you have to do to be sexy is wear leggings instead of skirts, got it!

9.  I can't tell if Lord's supposed to look like an 80s Trump or an older Steve Harrington from STRANGER THINGS...if he pulls out a spiked baseball bat it can only improve this movie, so more adult Steve!

10.  Okay, what are the giant plastic tubes about?

11.  Lord:  I'm giving you a bunch of money for science!  Wonder Woman:  Fuck you!

12.  IRS, the true villain!

13.  Golden crocodile head is cool, props people.  It's the best part of this overly long scene...

14.  Wiig:  Look at these sexy feet!  Gadot:  LEGS!  Wiig:  Oh fuck you!  Gadot:  Although I am 50/50 on whether my va-jay-jay was on the screen for a few frames there...

15.  The lengths he's going to to get this wishing rock is so over the top...just have him ask for it or swipe it!

16.  Hey, remember the first movie, you liked the first movie!  Here's lines from the first movie!  We're really sorry we killed this guy!

17.  LEGS!!!

18.  So we're getting that complicated just so Lord can get the rock, but why a dead man came back and is haunting some poor guy is just WHOOSH?  But we're also spending quite a lot of time explaining the dynamics of the situation?  I mean if you're going to just bring a character back to life like this then forget all the hoops and just do it...

19.  You're a genie, Maxwell!

20.  I'd judge her for taking so long to get to the stone, but we've already established that Dianna hasn't had sex in 60 years...so...priorities!

21.  Wiig:  Ha!  Even more legs and my va-jay-jay is 100% showing!

22.  Real Villain IRS strikes again!

23.  Nostalgia!  It's all we got, please help us!

24.  Okay, I gave sexy time a pass, but we're 20 minutes later and we're doing museum tours now...

25.  Weird Tubes!

26.  Oh fuck me, they depowered her.  I mean, I very much get that we're doing the whole wish must be countered with equal bad shit by this point, but you went with depowering?  Not the fact that she'd have to rape some poor random dude to have the sexy time?  That wasn't enough?  I'm guessing some producer was like:  Cheetah could never beat Wonder Woman in a fight, no one will buy that, so we better do something!

And what they came up with was depowering Wonder Woman.  Instead of, ya know...picking a cooler and tougher villain...instead of a CGI monstrosity that I'm sure will eventually show up on my screen one day....once we get through about 30 more minutes of 80s references and more legs.  And feet...

27.  This entire villain is built up like that Star Trek episode where Georgi--

28.  Sherburt's ability to appear out of nowhere totally soaked from head to toe is almost a superpower at this point...he has good purrs though, so we forgive him. 

29.  --asked the holodeck to make an enemy that could defeat Data .  I want to be as cool as Dianna!  Oh, you mean Wonder Woman!  And now you're a fucking cat, bitch!  Also, how hasn't she been:  hey, Dianna, I can like...lift cars now, is that weird?

30.  Never feed your cats Temptations, it's a massive mistake.

31.  Wait...they just have working and fueled jets sitting at a Smithsonian building?  And a fucking runway?!?!  With security all labeled up with Smithsonian sigils?  What is this fucking movie?

32.  Execs:  Hey, we need the invisible jet, people like the invisible jet!  People:  um...it's like...not really important.  Execs:  No, no, give them the invisible jet!

33.  Oh yeah, it's the Fourth of July btw.  Look at how pretty!  (it is pretty)

34.  Hey, drunk rapist guy is back!  He's getting his ass kicked again.  Fuck rapists!  Except Wonder Woman for what she did to the guy Steve is possessing...cuz she's pretty so it's okay, right?

35.  Lord:  Oh look, that archeology lady that was mean to me followed us all the way to Egypt...fucking kill her!  Also, why are we in Egypt?  We know Patty Jenkins is trying to do a Cleopatra remake and I feel like maybe she's got some Egyptian fetish...

36.  WW's acting like she's not bulletproof before she realized she wasn't bulletproof btw.  Also is this really only the second action scene and we're 80 minute in?  Remember in the first movie how we had a badass dog fight scene and the beach scene and the No Man's Land scene by now?  Wait...is Steve kicking a tank turret?  Useless love interests are just the worst...

37.  I don't know if the CGI or the kids playing soccer on a highway when they're in the middle of giant flat desert is worse...

38.  Save the bananas!

39.  Egypt to Washington by morning...I see they have Game of Thrones teleport powers...

40.  Ancient Mayan, no problem, let me read that!  Right next to Greece, no problem!

41.  Steve's gonna have to sacrifice himself again so that Dianna can get her powers back to full.  Execs:  they liked the first movie, let's repeat the first movie!

42.  Look a kid, he's not completely evil!  But he's letting his kid doom himself through wishing...so he is a dick...

43.  Steve:  OMG she never got over me in 60 years.  Crazy/Hotness scale tilting in the wrong direction!

44.  Random lasso exposition powers activate.

45.  Oh yeah, that silver dinner tray really did a good job blocking bullets, Steve.  And yeah, we really had to worry about Steve killing a bunch of secret service agents using guns with a fucking sword, Dianna.

46.  I knew you for 5 seconds, Barbara, and this isn't you!

47.  Two hours and there's still thirty minutes left...

48.  Artist-Formerly-Known-As-Steve:  What the fuck is going on?  And who's been using my dick?

49.  They keep doing that green screen close up of her using her powers and it looks horrible.  Not as horrible as this flying CGI...

50.  Cheetah already had a wish!  Listen movie, I was starting to think maybe I was being too mean, even if this is all in good fun, but you can't go on and on about your rules and then just say fuck 'em when you feel like it.

51.  Wiig:  Wait until you see my CGI monstrosity legs and va-jay-jay!

52.  7 billion people on the planet, no one wished for Lord to shut up or drop dead.

53.  Execs:  have her ride lightning, that would be cool!

54.  Execs:  make sure she uses the armor, we made toys with that armor!  I mean, she has her powers back so there's no reason for the armor and unlike Cheetah, she's been trained in combat since she was old enough to walk, maybe even some jiujitsu before that...but we have to have the armor!

55.  My CGI and beat your CGI.

56.  Don't worry, instead of you having to actually do anything, we'll just film a close up on your face over and over as you get hit by something we can't see.

57.  Human tetherball fight or a Pink music video?

58.  Limp rope...happens to all of us.

59.  Ah, this all happened because white people made fun of his tamale, of course!

60.  Lord:  Fuck off helicopter guy!  Pilot:  But I brought you right to your son...somehow.  Lord: I don't need you!  I was actually in GAME OF THRONES so my teleport powers are even stronger than anyone else!

61.  Exec #1:  This movie needs more kid!  Exec #2:  Jeremy...you've had too much cocaine.

62.  Exec:  We're releasing the movie in Christmas now, so of course we need a Christmas scene reshoot!  Don't worry, only two or three of the crew will die from COVID.

63.  Hey, it's the guy I raped!  FYI...  Also, nice clothes.

--FIN--

Thursday, December 24, 2020

Dinner Party From Hell Conquered

Chapter List for Vicky Book

One Does Not Just Drive to Welf Manor <---finished

A Boy is In My Room, Squee!!!  <----finished

Constructs:  The Next Generation <---finished

Hands Up!  Fashion Police! <---finished

Consanguinity, What's the Worst that Could Happen? <---finished

Winter Lovin' <---we are here

The Battle for Tyson Bonnie

A New Challenger Appears!

Maximus Wrangling

Eureka, By Victoria Von Welf


Over the hump?  Feels like it.  Pretty happy with how it all turned out as well.  Mama Welf has a great monologue in addition to a bunch of other little moments.  Vicky has her own major epiphany, Tyson holds his own in political warfare, and one of the new characters introduced is pretty much Emily from THE BETROTHAL but with superpowers...so...that's terrifying.

I am considering moving some of the exposition back to an early chapter and turning it into a conversation since there's like a three thousand word info dump and that's after I cut some of it and rearranged it so it wasn't all smushed together.  I favor a TELL AND SHOW approach with King Henry because he's so off the wall, but other characters don't get to break the rules of writing like he does.  Or like...every rule that's ever ruled...

Side note:  Smushed is a word, Google, get your shit together!

The chapter I'm working on now is mostly just a reset chapter before we go into the big event that is the main reason I decided to write this Vicky novel.  I'm not sure how many pages that main event is, but I'm pretty sure it's going to be at least 50% of the whole novel, if not more.  There's a TON of characters and happenings and...oh, good stuff, good stuff!

I am taking off the rest of the year for the holidays, but this is progress.  Still can be better, but I'm feeling like my old self and health wise I don't think I've felt this well in at least a decade.

Mom really needs the support and happy thoughts right now with everything that happened, especially since my aunts are stranded on the other side of the country cuz the Rona.

And is happening...we got kind of smacked in the face again a couple days ago.  My father went in for his yearly check up and apparently his heart is in AFib.  He's got really bad lungs already from working in a cold box warehouse his whole life, so we just figured his latest bout of fatigue and windedness was the usual winter mix, but...nope.

Obviously a very NOT GOOD situation.  For one, it increases his risk of stroke and heart failure massively just on its own.  They already stuffed him full of blood thinners and got him into a specialist the very next day...such rapidity itself being alarming.  And after years of hauling my grandfather to and from appointments and surgeries, my poor mother has to take my father in next week for an echocardiogram and a cardioversion to try to reset his heartrate.

It's not even the "he could die" part that's troubling me, it's just the idea of more doctors after everything we've already gone through...I've only had two months of normal, if you can have anything normal in 2020.  Fuck me, again?!?!

So I'm taking a week off.  Watching some movies, watching some sports, playing some football manager.

I'll dive into the Welf Winter Gala in 2021.  And *fingers crossed* get back to King Henry terrorizing Singles this year too!

Love to all of you, stay safe, and have a happy new year!