batman

I want to use my local library, specifically, I want to walk to my local library, which is only about a ten-minute walk away, and write these on my laptop at the library. I had planned to work on it Monday through Friday, but one thing after another kept happening, so I ended up skipping a week. The theme of this one is in the title, as I’m rereading The Incandescent by Emily Tesh, released last April, I’m playing games that I played in the Xbox 360 era on my PC, and in AEW, a lot of the men’s feuds seem to be continuing to mixed results.

Books – The Incandescent Reread and Blood for the Unyding Throne Release

The urge to re-read The Incandescent by Emily Tesh from earlier this year took over me about a week ago, and I just finished it again. That may be my favorite book of the year, even more so than The Devils by Joe Abercrombie, who is one of my favorite authors. I don’t often describe a book as beautiful, but to me, that is a beautiful book. Particularly this time around I find Dr. Walden’s meeting with Nikki Conway just heartbreaking. A teenager, barely an adult, is thinking of turning down a great opportunity to be the support system to her friend, who, like her, has no support system in a world where money can determine everything you have in life. Through this conversation, Dr. Walden has to kind of reassess the privilege she has had, which the character of Laura Kenning pointed out before she lost her job. It’s honestly such a great take on the British magical boarding school; it’s going to end up being one of my favorite books ever.

The terminology of academia may seem like an obstructing wall of jargon—and sometimes, perhaps, it is—but far more often than that, it is a set of keys. You cannot understand the forces you are dealing with, still less wield them meaningfully yourself, unless you have the words to set around them. The language of power is the handle on the knife.
The Incandescent by Emily Tesh

The hardcover for Blood of the Undying Throne came out this Tuesday and I didn’t want to say anything about it when it was on my advance reader copy but the official copy has a quote from my podcast No Page Unturned on the GeeklyInc podcast network. If you don’t know, often praise for the previous book of a series will be quoted on the next one from various sources who talk about it. I didn’t know this was happening and was quite shocked in a good way to see this. It means a lot.

Games – Xbox 360 Games Come Back Around and God of War (2018)

It seems, without realizing it, I’ve wandered back to my Xbox 360 era with the games I’m playing recently. I already mentioned Mass Effect: Legendary Edition in the last volume. Still, I’ve been crafting a private list on my Backlogged of my personal best 100 games of all time, and I came about to a discussion with my friend Hiro about how Batman: Arkham Asylum is essentially a Metroidvania. So that discussion has me playing it, to see where in 2025 it falls on my list, and it holds up amazingly well, especially the combat system, considering how many games have taken it and evolved it since then. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work on my Steam Deck, but its sequel, Arkham City, does, so I’m also playing that on there bit by bit when I am lounging on the couch, taking a break from reading, or lying in bed in the morning. It’s also October, so I installed the Dead Space remake from last year onto my desktop. That’s another Xbox 360 era game I played a lot. Now that I think about it, weirdly, the last year has been filled with throwbacks to the 360 days.

Almost a year ago the first Red Dead Redemption came out on PC.
Sega put out that remake/remaster of Sonic Generations that added Shadow content.
Valve updated Half-Life 2 last November for the 20th Anniversary and put it out for free.
Dead Rising came out with that Deluxe Remaster last September.
Castle Crashers put out new DLC and updated all the art for that game.
Oblivion received a remaster earlier this year.
Gears of War Reloaded was released for the Playstation and PC.
A new version of Ninja Gaiden II was released called Ninja Gaiden II Black

All of this brings me to say, where the fuck is a new Peggle?! Also Capcom, make vanilla Street Fighter 4 on Steam playable again, thanks. Back to the subject of my 100 greatest games list, I don’t know where they fell on the list, but Batman: Arkham Asylum and God of War (2018) were, I believe, close together, so somehow playing Arkham Asylum led me to installing God of War and sinking my teeth into it once again, and deep.

Oh, wait, I remember now. I was listening to a gaming podcast where one cast membner said they haven’t replayed the new God of War games because they’re only fun when Kratos is fully kitted out, which I fundamentally disagree with. After playing twenty-two hours of the PC version, I vehemently disagree with this. It’s still amazing how good that axe feels in it, when you swing, when you throw, when you bring it back to your hand. The incredible feeling of it never goes away, even after seven years, three if you’re talking Ragnarok. When our family received money for our possessions in our house that were lost in the fire in 2017, I, on a whim, bought a PlayStation 4 Pro and God of War (2018). In a weird way, those two purchases for a time represented all the systems and games I lost in the fire, which was not a small amount, going back to my childhood.

Wrestling – AEW Forbidden Door to Full Gear.

AEW Wrestledream was great, but I think I missed my moment, personally, to write about it when I skipped writing about it last week. The only comment I will make is that I didn’t love the main event so much that Samoa Joe versus Hangman Page shouldn’t have been a main event, but I also am not Darby’s biggest fan. I’m sure what is coming out of it will be great, but I’m going to be perfectly honest, Samoa Joe v. Hangman and Darby Allin v. Jon Moxley really didn’t need to continue.

I said the other day I kind of miss when AEW only had four pay-per-views, and that’s not completely true. The truth is, the spacing for Forbidden Door to All Out (or vice versa with All In mixed in) to WrestleDream to Full Gear to World’s End is kind of a mess as there are so few weeks in between those to build feuds. It doesn’t help that sometimes a Dynamite after a PPV can be the real end of the feud, with Dynamite acting as a sort of fallout for the final match of the feud on PPV. Neither do the specials like Blood & Guts, Ring of Honor PPVs, Grand Slam, Anniversary episodes thrown in the bunch there. It’s all kinda messy. I say this, when in fact I’m not unhappy, really, with AEW at all right now, but it does feel like the late summer to fall to winter lineup needs some sprucing up especially when you compare it to Revolution to All In.

Personally, I think World’s End is a cursed pay-per-view. The first one was not only boring but represented a lot of what was wrong with MJF’s first title reign and his vision for AEW. The second one, even with the Continental Classic finals, was tarnished by Jon Moxley’s terrible idea for a four-way with AEW top guys at the time, where the Death Riders just made them look like idiots, and then Adam Copeland returned to make them look even more like idiots. Throw it in the bin, put WrestleDream in that spot on the calendar, have the C2 finals there, and move Full Gear up by maybe a week or two to give space between it and WrestleDream. You can have whatever special TV episodes you want, like Blood & Guts, Grand Slam in NY, etc, between All Out and Full Gear when WrestleDream would originally take place. Forbidden Door would maybe benefit and be seen as more special if it were biennial. That’s one solution to the too-tight schedule that is AEW’s late August to December, but I’m sure Tony could come up with a different or better plan if he tried, perhaps.

It’s been happening for years ever since Christopher Nolan began working on Batman Begins, but Warner Bros. thinks its audience are not nuanced enough to get multiple iterations of their characters.

It started with the Bat-Embargo that was placed on the cartoon Justice League Unlimted. The creators of that show were no longer allowed to use any ancillary characters from Batman including Renee Montoya and Harley Quinn, two characters that were created in their animated universe. Their reasoning was that children would become confused by too many different versions of Batman characters in Justice League Unlimited, Batman Begins, and their developing cartoon The Batman.

First of all, this is highly underestimating the intelligence of children. Speaking from my own experience, I had no problem differentiating Mark Hamill’s Joker with Jack Nicholson’s Joker. It was very clear there was a difference between the animated Batman that appeared on Fox and the version that appeared on the WB network. Let’s take it outside of superheroes. It was clear there was something different about Dan Castellaneta’s Genie in Aladdin: The Series and Robin William’s version in Aladdin: The Movie. This was at an age where there was no internet and I only learned why the Genie’s voice was different by reading the back of Return of Jafar’s case. Kids now have information at their fingers. There would be no confusion.

Oh no, my head. There are way too many Batman’s!

Warner Bros. still doesn’t see it that way and now they’ve spread this idea to not only children but adults as well. Deadshot, a character slated to appear in the Suicide Squad film and played by Will Smith has already appeared in on Arrow as a member of their version of Suicide Squad. Once the movie was firmly into production suddenly the character had to be removed so there was no “brand confusion.” In other words, sorry audience but you’re too dumb to tell the difference between these:

Clearly they are the same, therefore I am confused on how to take in the media. Sorry Warner Bros.

This spreads out to other obvious characters such as Batman, Superman, and Wonder down to characters like Harley Quinn. It even goes as far as to spread to characters that haven’t even be slated for a film yet. In season three of Arrow, we are introduced to Ray Palmer a.k.a. The Atom. This was originally intended to be Ted Kord a.k.a Blue Beetle but because Warner Bros. might have plans to use him in a film he was not permitted to appear on the show.

Now, with the premiere of Supergirl, Warner Bros. is sticking to their plan of avoiding all “brand confusion” by only mentioning Kara Zor-El’s cousin and vaguely showing Superman blocked by sunlight. Obviously, whoever plays Superman on the new CBS show would be confusing to those watching Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. The audience might say “Hey, wait this guy look different from this other guy,” because no one else has played Superman before. Oh wait:

I’m so confused.

The worst part is that they’re not even consistent. Blue Beetle and Booster Gold both appeared in Smallville with the latter also having a prominent role on Justice League Unlimited. Development for a Suicide Squad film began as far back as 2009 yet they allowed Deadshot not only to appear in Arrow, which wouldn’t premiere for three more years after, but also in Batman: Assault on Arkham along with Harley. Harley appears in all three of Arkham games developed by Rocksteady along with the Joker. The first game in that series came out the year after Heath Ledger appeared as the Joker in The Dark Knight. No brand confusion there.

The most prominent example of this is CW’s The Flash premiering while they’re simultaneously announcing Ezra Miller being cast as The Flash for the movies. How is this not an example of “brand confusion?” Warner Bros. makes the announcement just as their Flash TV series is beginning. You might be asking, “what if this is DC learning their lesson?” but you have to remember that this announcement was made before Arrow was forced to kill off their version of Deadshot because of the Suicide Squad film.

Marvel, on the other hand, has no problem having multiple version of their characters in film and television. They seem to be doing just fine. For writers of fiction, one of the basic rules of storytelling that is taught is never to treat your audience like their idiots. Warner Bros. needs to learn this lesson before their audience gets tired of being talked down to.