Skinwalker

Not to be confused with the movie Skinwalkers. That was a fairly shitty movie about werewolf like vampires or something like that. But, like I implied, that’s totally not the point of this post.

A skinwalker in Native American folklore (this is me speaking without referring to Google, so I could be wrong) is a sort of shaman or holy man that has the ability, through a ritual, to assume the shape of a wild animal and move about as that animal. I’m not sure on any of the particulars. I don’t know if it’s a metaphorical transformation that takes place during a spirit quest with lots of peyote dumped on the fire. I don’t know if it talks about a literal transformation, as it would be in the case of werewolves. I don’t know if it’s a spiritual transformation where the skinwalkers spirit takes the form of an animal and walks across the astral plane for one reason or another.

I don’t know.

I could Google it, but I’m almost positive I’d find evidence relating to all three of the examples, and each one would be as valid as the last. (Depending on the sources of course.)

So, I’m going to take a step away from the folklore and look at something I do know a pretty good deal about; Dungeons and Dragons.

Skinwalkers bring to mind two core classes that relate directly to the skinwalkers ability to shape shift. First is the druid, which as far as I know is the official “skinwalker” class. Why? The druid has the ability to take on what’s called a wild shape, meaning it can transform into an animal of its choosing and use that animal’s body however it sees fit.

The other class that comes to mind is the shaman. Like the druid the shaman is able to assume the form of its guiding spirit, which is generally an animal but not always.

I personally feel that the shaman is the more likely of the two classes to become a skinwalker.

And, I totally lost where I was going with this post as it was supposed to have been written three or four days ago. I don’t know. So, I suppose what I’m going to do now is move on to the end of the post.

Guess what happens there.

Ryan

4-3-14—4-6-14

Mutants

So, I’ve been on the naughty list for the last couple of days. Yes, I’ve been writing and posting my blog posts, but I haven’t been doing it the way I should be. Take today’s post for example. Cupcake gave me the topic, mutants, yesterday after I posted my discussion on April Fool’s Day. But, I’m just now (at 8:13 pm) sitting down to write today’s post. This means I’m going to be behind on getting my stats posted and that will mean a wide number of other things which I really don’t want to talk about here. It’s all just prattle.

Anyway, the topic is mutants, and I suppose I should be able to come up with a fairly decent post about mutants, mainly because I feel like one half of the time. Lol.

Cupcake was watching an episode of Face Off (SyFy reality tv show about practical effects make up and design) and the topic of the contest for that episode was mutants. Each of the contestants designed their own mutants and so on and so forth, the rest doesn’t matter so far as I’m concerned. What does is the concept, the question the challenge raises: What is a mutant and what does that mean to you?

It’s kind of a double question, but a good one none the less.

There are a couple of things that come to mind when I hear the word mutant. Most of those are pop culture references, and I think maybe one of them comes from scientific fact. That’s the one I want to talk about first.

As far as I can tell (and this is without me checking Google) a mutation is often an irregularity or abnormality n the genetic sequence. This irregularity often causes problems with the individual born with that mutation. An example of this could be a deer born with five legs, or it may have three eyes. And, there are other more common mutations. People are born blind, or they’re born with Down syndrome or something similar. This is and isn’t a mutation, it’s more like a birth defect caused by an irregularity in the genetic sequence… which is exactly what I just said to define a mutation…

Herm.

Mutations are also highly useful when it comes to evolution. First, there were a lot of brown bears, because there were a lot of temperate forests between ice ages. But, when the world got cold again, the ice caps spread and a lot more of the earth became white. Brown bears had trouble with getting food because their prey could see them miles away and get the hell out. Then there was a mutation. A bear was born with white fur (technically a polar bear’s fur is clear because it lacks any sort of pigment) and was better suited to sneaking up on its prey. This made the bears with white fur continue to survive and breed and be born, and the brown bears in the polar area slowly died out. (And, yes, I totally just stole that example from Cosmos.)

Now, the other references I can think of are right up Face Off’s alley. It’s the X-men from Marvel Comics. And, the mutant bug movies of the 1950’s. And, I’ll leave you with what I think is the most famous pop culture mutant of all time:

Ryan

4-2-14

Steel

I’ve had a real strange desire today, ever since I got finished with The Goal That Shall Not Be Named. I’ve wanted to watch the movie Steel, and I can’t figure out why. It’s a terrible movie, an absolutely terrible movie that should have never left the first draft of the screenplay, but it did, and I’m now completely allowed to make fun of it.

Steel is a superhero move (the worst one in my opinion, though Spider-Man 3 comes pretty close) based on the character John Henry Irons from the DC comics of the same name, well, I think the comic was called Man of Steel, I don’t know. Irons became a hero in much the same way Tony Stark did. His technology was turned around and used against him, and continently enough this is right around the time Superman was killed by the monster Doomsday. Irons felt it was his responsibility as a genius inventor to step in and take Supes place. He made himself a suit of armor (similar to Iron Man’s) put Superman’s S-shield on it, grabbed a cape and went skyward with his mission.

I became a fan of John Henry Irons, not after watching Steel in the late nineties, but while I was in high school and when I first encountered the novelized form of The Death of Superman, the book’s title, if anybody’s curious, is The Death and Life of Superman (look it up, it’s a good read), and in the latter half of that book (during the Reign of the Supermen arc) is where I was exposed to Irons.

And, that’s where my brain stopped. I was trying to think about the good qualities of John Henry Irons, the qualities that make him a relatable character, but then I get stuck on Shaq who played Irons like he was a teddy bear and all around boy scout. You know, a character that would be very similar to Clark/Superman and yeah, that works for Supes, that’s his character and it always has been (if you ignore Man of Steel, and I try too). But, that doesn’t mean it works for every superhero. I mean look at Spiderman, his life is shit 99% of the time and that makes him a relatable character. Bruce Wayne is relatable, not because we’re all billionaires who run around at night in tight black spandex, but because he’s a tragic figure. His parents were murdered in front of him when he was a child, and we can relate to that because it makes us ask the question what would happen if my parents died; what would I do. And, if you answer is to dress up in black spandex and run around at night then you probably need to see a therapist.

But, there’s nothing to relate to John Henry Irons, no so far as I can remember. He’s a boy scout who sees somebody using his mistake and immediately jumps to the I need to be a superhero thing to stop this. There doesn’t seem to be any catalyst to it. Nothing to give him that tragic relatable edge. I dunno.

I do think they should make another Steel movie, with today’s CGI it would be epic, and if they got the right writer (kind of pointing at myself here) then the movie would be just as successful as its Marvel counterpart, Iron Man. Of course… there might also be some legal trouble there. Not sure.

Anywho, I’m off into the wild blue yonder.

Ryan