Schlock Mercenary

The Schlock Mercenary mega-arc will draw to a close this year. The arc began when Schlock enlisted with Tagon’s Toughs in the strip dated June 12, 2000. That means it’s basically everything that has appeared on this site so far. It will end with closure, resolution, satisfaction, and a big, all-caps “THE END.” I’ve been saying this for a while now, and every time I say it somebody pops up and says “wait, what?” So I’m saying it again, but this time around there’s an air of urgency. You probably have questions. I shall attempt to FAQ you some answers. Q: When will it end exactly?

I don’t think Frozen II is going to get sing-along screenings, but I’m okay with that. To my mind, if there’s a weakness¹ with Frozen, it’s that one of the songs was so iconic, so memorable, and so infectious it unfairly raised the bar on the rest of the franchise. Reset that bar, and Frozen II stands up just fine. The music perfectly suits the story, and the story is complex enough to give people (including parents and their children) interesting and important things to talk about after the show is over. Oh, and Olaf’s recap of the first film calls to mind Michael Peña’s recaps in Ant Man, demonstrating that there’s more than one way to entertainingly and unreliably re-narrate. Taken together, I think the Frozen films suffer from a worldbuilding problem: specifically, the first film was written without the sequel in mind, and the worldbuilding that made the second film so very interesting raises the “wouldn’t someone have mentioned that?” question with regard to the first film. Put another way, they created a fascinating setting, and it’s so immersive I want it to hold up like a proper epic fantasy rather than than a couple of animated musicals. Worldbuilding notwithstanding, Frozen II clears my Threshold of Awesome. I’m “I remember every Peter Cetera² music video” years old, and Kristoff’s musical number alone was enough to lift the film over the bar for me. ¹ There’s more than one weakness, but this review isn’t about the first film.

NOTE: This review is as spoiler-free as I can make it. I’ve included no plot points beyond the most basic ones, like “this is a Star War” and “it has a third act.” I saw Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker in IMAX 3D. The show ended less than an hour ago, and I’m currently nursing¹ a headache while revisiting the logic behind my decision. Mostly it was about timing. The 3:20pm show was the most convenient for me. But let’s face it… this film promised me lots of big landscapes, and starscapes, and sith-capes, so I figured that a screen which played those to their fullest effect would ensure that even if I didn’t like the story I’d be able to enjoy the visuals. I enjoyed them both! But to my surprise, my biggest complaint, the one thing keeping this final Skywalker-infused installment of the Star Wars saga from clearing my Threshold of Awesome, was the editing. Well… not the technical bits of the editing so much as the way the editing was used to influence the pacing. The first half (at least) of the film raced from scene to scene, switching from thread to thread, without giving me time to process. Lots of scenes, not enough sequels. TERMINOLOGY BREAK: “Scene/Sequel” format was described sixty years ago by Dwight Swain². In his terminology, “scene” is a unit of conflict, and “sequel” is linking material in which the reader (or viewer) has time to process the previous scene, and is made ready for the next one. “Scene” might be a car chase. “Sequel” would be sitting on the back bumper of the ambulance talking about what happened, perhaps while watching one of the cars burn in the background. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker kept changing scenes on me before I was done thinking about them. We’d jump from location to location so quickly I began to wonder if some poor editor wasn’t told to shave 20 minutes off the film by chopping 20 seconds from the end of sixty consecutive scenes. It was exhausting. Fortunately, the final act of the film seemed to be paced in a more viewer-friendly way. It completely changed the flavor of the film for me. At the halfway point I was worried that I was going to exit the theater asking myself “what even WAS that?”, but by the third act I was no longer worried. It was a Star War, and it was turning out to be a pretty good one³. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker does not clear my Threshold of Awesome, but I enjoyed it quite a bit. I look forward to seeing it again at home, where I can pause the show for twenty seconds about sixty times. ¹ 500mg acetaminophen, 120mg caffeine

I’m late to the party on this one, I know. Here’s a short summary: Knives Out is the most fun I’ve had at a murder mystery in recent memory, and I spent several minutes combing my memory for contenders. Sandra and I saw it together, and were both quite pleased at our selection of date-night films. Knives Out clears my Threshold of Awesome, and I think it may end up as one of those “comfort food” films I must own on Blu-Ray for watching again and again and again.

During last night’s episode of Typecast RPG¹ I asked our DM, Dan Wells, to clarify the “snake people with snakes for butts” thing from last week. His use of the word “calipigia” improved the imagery quite a bit. ABOVE: The audience helped us name her “Asspen Calipigia” You can watch the whole episode on Twitch (including the after-show) via this link until December 24th. It’ll have a permanent home on the Typecast RPG YouTube channel, but without the after-show. ¹ Twitch only archives our content for two weeks. The Twitch links in this post will go stale, and I’ll probably forget to clean them up, so here’s a footnote in advance to say oops.

Tonight at 9pm Eastern I’ll be playing D&D over at twitch.tv/typecastrpg¹, and we’ve got the art-cam working beautifully. You can watch me create masterpieces² like “snake-men with snakes for butts” in real-time! (No, that’s not an actual creature from the game. That’s what the lying, trap-setting NPC who wanted us to get eaten by ophidians said the ophidians looked like.) Tonight the party is deep in the icy cave-city of the ophidians, and our goal (at least as I understand it from last week) is to steal the airship macguffin³ before the necromancer and his army of undead can steal it. None of us want to be trapped in this snowy wasteland. We’ve got a world to save⁴. ¹ Typecast RPG is Charlie Holmberg, Brian McClellan, Mari Murdock, Ethan Sproat, Howard Tayler, and Dungeon Master Dan Wells.

Head over to shop.schlockmercenary.com and use the discount code 2019HOLIDAY between now and December 5th for 10% off anything in our store. Additionally, we have a bunch of things already on sale, and yes, the coupon bonus will stack, increasing your savings. If you need your packages to arrive by Christmas, international orders must to be placed by December 4, and US orders must to be placed by December 18. If you’re ordering t-shirts, please be aware that those have a separate shipping chart. They’re produced on demand, and fulfilled by the printer, and it’s probably already too late for internationally-shipped shirts to arrive by Christmas (the deadline was Nov 25). If you’re shipping shirts to the US you have until December 10th to place orders for by-Christmas delivery.

This is our 19th Thanksgiving since creating Schlock Mercenary, and our 15th since it was our primary source of income. This is a great time of year to sit back and contemplate ways in which to counter that old saw about familiarity breeding contempt. Just because it’s gotten difficult to remember NOT being supported by the kindness of friends, fans, and strangers on the internet doesn’t mean it’s any less magical. Thank you! If you’re reading this, you’re one of the reasons this exists. Maybe you’ve shopped with us. Perhaps an advertiser has sent us some money in exchange for the opportunity to pester you. It’s possible you’ve contributed to our Patreon, signal-boosted a Kickstarter, or simply PayPal’d us some change. For any of that, we’re grateful. But our gratitude needn’t be for transactional stuff. The fact that you read this is itself a reward. Telling stories for other people is incredibly fulfilling, and we’re super-fulfilled for having been able to do this for nigh on two decades. Thank you!