Casting Codename UnSub

So, I've done multiple posts on how I would cast my novel, A Pius Man: A Holy Thriller if it were made into a film. If you want to take a look, there's a 2011, 2012 and 2013 edition.

While I think about it, please remember

However, there's been an oversight, and I have never looked at casting the novel Codename: Winterborn, or Codename: UnSub which I co-wrote with Allan Yoskowitz.

Remember this one?

From a casting perspective, this is easy: fewer characters, for one.

What would the casting look like for Codename: UnSub?

Kevin Anderson.

If you don't know the story (and seriously, you really should read it), Kevin is the spy that has a little problem .... namely, his entire team has been wiped out, his wife has been murdered, and politicians in his own government would like to see him deader than Jacob Marley on ice.

After his initial run in with the Islamic Republic of France (long, long story), Kevin is ... a little broken.  How broken is he? Let's say that he came close to mass murder in this book.  Think I'm exaggerating? Is ten million people enough "mass" in "mass murder"?

You also need someone who is considered "handsome"-ish, and can do a lot of hand-to-hand combat, has a dry, offbeat sense of humor, and can occasionally look at his own insane moments, and acknowledge that, yes, he really has lost his marbles, along with his friends, his family and almost anyone he ever knew.

Which leads to the flavor of the month ... no, I don't mean Benedict Cumberbach, though he does seem to be everywhere.  Cumberbach is a great actor, don't get me wrong, and he is able to kick ass and take names, but he's actually getting a little up there. He's already forty, and I'm shooting for at least a little younger.

I actually mean Stephen Amell, the star of Arrow. From seasons 1-5, he's going through a range of disturbed and insane, Look at the first episode of Arrow once more, he can do PTSD variant, and we want some of that. By season 5, we get witty banter, comedy, and he's actually acting like a human being.

As for the hand-to-hand combat ... his exercise routines were half the commercials for the show.

Oh, and Kevin also has a entire thing with bows and arrows.  Yes, it's "a thing."  It's a very long story.

Yes, there are a lots of long stories involved in this novel.  Please, read the novel, so I can stop saying "it's a long story." :)

There are, of course, other options.

The first one is Stephen Amell...

Yes, another Amell.

There was a time when the Amell cousins were going to take over CW.

Sadly, I have to tell you, I don't know how well he can act. I've seen him on The Flash, mostly, and he wasn't allowed that much in the way of an acting range. I'm told he's had a few other CW shows (two, at least, I think) but I haven't seen either, and I really don't have much interest in them. So this might be a bit of a nonstarter.

But then again, think about it: bad ass ... a little broken... does this sound familiar?

How about: Winter is coming.

And by that, I mean Sebastian Stan, the Winter Soldier.

What, did you think I would suggest anything by George RR Martin?

Frankly, I'll take Stan.

Speaking of cold...

Kyle Elsen

Kyle is an assassin, a nerd who kills people.  You know, the sort of flake who can get lost in his own head while thinking about some new methodology to apply to his job ... only it involves murder?

Kyle's primary characteristic is that he's, well, a little cool. In Codename: Winterborn, he doesn't have too much of a personality, but he makes up for that in UnSub. We get hints to his back story here. As a character, Kyle doesn't have issues so much as he has the leather bound collected volumes. There's a character arc that plays out, and gives Kyle depth beyond knowing a hundred ways to kill someone with a spoon.

But at the end of the day, his outward appearance is he's very, very ....cold.

Enter Wentworth Miller

Come on, even his photograph looks snarky. Does he even need to say anything?

And, let's take a look at that face for a moment. Don't tell me he doesn't look like a serial killer in the making.

My friend Carleigh
The model for Mandy in the
Antagonize me "interview."

Mandy.

Okay, Mandy is my favorite character, she really is. She is cute, kinda sexy, she enjoys her job, and, damn it, she's just fun to write. She's a mercenary, and her job in this novel is to hunt down and kill everyone's favorite nutbar, Kevin Anderson. She's morally ambiguous, with a sense of morality that crops up at some strange times. Well, strange for her.

Mandy doesn't need a lot of choreography, since most of her fights are gun battles, but we at least need someone who's lithe, athletic, something like that.

Also, a slightly more important part of her character involved her size, she's not particularly tall: 5'6" would be good. She's a blue-eyed brunette who's half smart-ass, half kick-ass, and really would like to be amoral when she grows up. She puts her best effort into it, honest.

Originally, when I designed Mandy, I loosely based her off of a 24 villain of the same name, played by Mia Kirshner. However, Kirshner is getting a little old for this sort of thing -- Mandy is in her 20s, and, well, I don't actually like Kirshner (in every one of her interviews she comes off as ignorant, but very, very certain of everything. And stiff. And shallow, and .... gah). Most importantly, I don't think she's capable of acting her way out of a paper bag.  Seriously, in 24, she doesn't exactly have much of a sense of humor or emotional range.

Why would I base a character off of someone like that? I wanted an unrelenting, unrepentant antagonist who would stop at almost nothing to hunt Kevin Anderson down like a dog, including gunning him down in a playground filled with children...

Obviously, when I started writing Mandy in the novel, she turned into something else on me.  So, who would we be getting?

We need to have someone who can deliver a line like this, from UnSub,

Bad guy: “What do you want?”“I'd say world peace, but that would be a lie. I'd be out of a job otherwise.” She gave him a little smile that creeped him out a bit. “How about the names of everyone you work with, now and forever? How about everyone up and down the supply chain? And a pony?”

Also, we need someone who can either hold a gun or fight, and act.

I think I know someone like that.

Getting warmer? Summer is coming.

Summer Glau.

She's got the general coloring down, and she's the right build. We know she can fight her little heart out, and she still looks like a kid. And she's a much better actress than anyone's really let her be. She's got my vote.

There's also Beth Riesgraf.

Yes, that's her as a brunette. On the one hand, she's too tall, on the other hand .... go watch Leverage. She can act, dang it.


Major Antonio Rohaz

This is Mandy's boss, the CEO of the Mercenary's Guild. He's described as having a dancer's posture, stiff and militaristic, with a sharp nose, and green eyes.  No, he doesn't look specifically Hispanic, but I grew up with a friend named Martinez (which she pronounced Martin-ez, not Mar-teen-ez) and who is whiter than I am, with green eyes, and light brown hair.

Believe it or not, I based the character design, very loosely, on Basil Rathbone in the original The Mark of Zorro. This included the clipped delivery of the words, the baring, and everything short of him actually pulling out a sword in the middle of the book.  His importance grows throughout the series, You could say that he's a minor character, but he's going to make an appearance throughout the series, and leave major impacts along the way ... some of them in people's heads, but that's neither here nor there.

Yes, I know. After that sort of buildup, who could you possibly get who could top this.  It's Basil Rathbone. He's Sherlock Holmes. He's an Olympic-level fencing master.  He was the archetypal villain in anything involving a sword for nearly forty years of Hollywood history.  How do you top that?

You get a god.

Yes, I went there.

Look at the original character description, and tell me it doesn't sound familiar: pale skin, green eyes, sharp nose, black hair.  You know this person, don't you?

Yup, it's Tom "Loki" Hiddleston, one of the other flavors of the week for the past few years.  Seriously, if we modify that photo (taken at ComicCon, San Diego,) and make it a military uniform, he's got the look. Also, Hiddleston is a Shakespearean actor who wore his Loki costume, in public, and kept a straight face. He can do whatever he likes.

Allan and his wife have floated one or two other names, like David Zayas (the Generalissimo in The Expendables). or Carlos Bernard, of 24.

However, there is another person that I want to keep in mind.

Giancarlo Esposito

I know what you're thinking. He's too dark for the person I've described. However, he can pull off the mustache, his features are close enough to what I'm thinking of ... obviously, we need to work on the hair, I'm not sure the haircut in that photo is not military regulation.

Also, I remember that Esposito has done a few jobs in military uniform. I just can't seem to find it right now. Yeah, sorry.

Moving right along...

The next four characters are sort of interlinked.  They're all in the town of San Francisco, they're all computer nerds, though all very different people.  We've got the shy, the sarcastic, the joker, and the damn near sociopathic.

Lotus

This is an Allan character design.  Lotus is one of a set of hacker Triplets.  For Lotus, he wanted someone short, blonde, and utterly, breathtakingly beautiful as a computer genius, probably the best computer hacker and programmer in the entire city, and maybe the planet Earth.

Believe it or not, I go someone already picked out. It was easy.

Look to the left. This is Emily Bett Rickards. She's not bad looking, huh?

But, nah, she can't do computer jargon, right?  It's Hollywierd, the hot babes can't possibly also do smart at the same time. Maybe some ass-kicking, but brains? Don't kid me.

Oh, wait.

That's right, Madam Rickards is the brains behind the operation of Arrow, playing a computer programmer.

Funny enough, when I suggested Rickards to Allan, before I wrote this blog, I did start with the first photo, and I had an interesting reaction.  Said reaction being "Oh my God!"

And that was before I suggested Loki as Rohaz.

The name Bonnie Wright has also been floated. She's Ginny Weasley at the Harry Potter Franchise.


Mickie.

Mickie, Lotus' sister, could technically be played also by Emily Rickards or Bonnie Wright, they are triplets after all. Yes, there is a fraternal twin involved here, but having identical twins and a fraternal are not impossible.

For the record, Mickie is sociable, sarcastic, and has no problem constantly smacking her brother (to be discussed below), who really deserves it (no, seriously, he deserves it). Her special features include drugging people for information, dealing with unruly costumers in their bar, and has utterly insane hair -- usually bright red hair.  She's also a computer hacker, though not as much of a genius as Lotus.

So, smart, probably good looking (to be related to Lotus, you'd sort of expect her to be), sarcastic, and looks good with red hair.

I guess we can have Rickards play both parts. Lord knows she does sarcastic well enough on Arrow, but if we want someone different, I'm seeing Emma Stone.  Yes, Emma Stone. Let's face it, she already is a redhead, she can handle smart in both Amazing Spider-Man and Easy A (didn't like the film, but liked her), and with facial expressions like that (look right) she can pull this off without a problem.

Mac

Yes, you might have caught a theme in these triplets, we have three hackers running a bar, a mixologist named Mickie, a hacker named Lotus and a primary bartender named Mac... Okay, there are some moments of this particular world that are about as subtle as a heart attack.

Then again, we're still more subtle than every other dystopia written for the last ten --  twenty -- thirty...

Okay, I can't really think of a dystopia that's subtle, but I'm sure one will come to me five minutes after I've posted this article.


Anyway, Mac, the last of our information brokers, who is average, blonde, and kind of annoying. "Oh, look at how many bad puns I can tell and pretend they're funny."  I may have been writing this blog post for too long already, but God, this character can get annoying. I'm glad he's not on screen that often.  I think I'm going to invest some character development for him in the next book. Either that, or invest some bullets into blowing his brains out. Either way, I'm good.

While he's not a blond, it's been suggested that I try ... Rupert Grint.

If you don't know the name Grint, or anyone named Rupert ... seriously, who names their kid Rupert? .... he's Ron Weasley of the Harry Potter franchise.

I'm not sure how well he works. He might also be too tall for the role. Then again, everyone I can think of, I dislike.

Then again, for UnSub, I don't think he's that important.

Kaye Wellering

Kaye is an interesting character, mostly because of the things the reader doesn't know about her.  She heads the "Hacker's Union," which is based on Alcatraz, with a forward office in Chinatown. The Hackers run all the major utilities in the city, and can turn them on or off at will. Kaye herself even states that, even though the Hackers are centuries ahead of even the "real world," she still has ultimate power in the city that time forgot, and has no problem playing with the lives of day-to-day people as though everyone in the city were her own personal toys.  There's a reason that Kevin refers to her as the bitch-queen of San Francisco.

She also looks young. That's not because I'm on some sort of CW kick, where everyone has to be young and pretty, but because there's a backstory. Notice, I didn't say she is young, just looks it. It's an important part of who she is.  So, we need someone who at least appears younger than she is (say, early 20s) and play older. If she were male, I would say "Get David Tennant, since he can do 900 year old time lord," but we'll have to settle for someone else. And, while Sarah Michelle Gellar is looking pretty darn good a decade after Buffy went off the air, that may not hold up.

Another detail makes me think of an actress, actually. Kaye is a 5'2" redhead. While the height is incidental (Kaye has been described as wearing 4" heels), and redheads come in a bottle, about about Molly C. Quinn?  She's been playing 14 going on 400 on Castle since the show began..  There's no reason not to think that she can't do something similar in a Codename: Winterborn film.

Although it's going to be creepy with a "sexy" Molly Quinn. I now understand friends of mine who are disturbed by a sexy Michelle Trachtenberg, having first seen her as Harriet the Spy.

What's Kaye's job in this? Oh... that's a really long story.

Andreas Foreman
Foreman is ... tall, dark, and deeply disturbed. He is a bright, energetic, charismatic, and manages to make the world revolve around him. He has a million followers, more or less, called the Forsaken, and they are all willing to kill for him. In fact, like the mafia, you can't become one of them unless you've killed, though Kevin Anderson suspects that it is just a gross over estimation. After all, how do you keep track of such things?

He is also tall, skinny, with dark, piercing eyes, and goes from being soft spoken, to over the top and energetic.

Tall, skinny, charismatic, deranged, over the top....

Sound like anyone we know?

Yes, David Tennant.

However, for UnSub, he's not as important as the man who works for him.

Harris Derringer.
He's short, dark, and vicious. In the case I'm thinking of, Derringer is former SAS, and while Foreman is nuts, Derringer is just plain evil. He's the puppet master, while Foreman is the one who keeps the masses in line.

Short, dark, British and evil.

We can stereotype that one.

Sadly, Mark Sheppard will need a stunt double to pull off the capoeira moves I have him do in UnSub.

His part is simple: he's a suspect.

Anyway, I think that's more than enough for right now. there are one or two more characters I'd want to focus on after that, but right now, I'm cross-eyed, lucky if I can spell my own name, and I'm hoping I didn't write this blog in a language more closely resembling Norwegian than English.

You might want to try Codename: UnSub.

Daredevil Season 2 Review

So, at long last, we have Daredevil, season 2, reviewed on the blog. That only took ... five months.

This was a strange season, overall, and not because of the content so much as how it was handled. While season 1 had a great, brilliant buildup of the antagonist and the protagonist, ramping up to an inevitable collision of two men who really were mirror images of each other, season 2 was a little all over the place.

Hi, my name is Frank.
I'll be the sniper for this evening.

To start with, we have the introduction of Frank Castle, the Punisher. He's running around Hell's Kitchen, massacring the three gangs involved in a massive shootout that butchered his wife, his daughter, and his son, and left him for dead in a hospital. Daredevil, on the other hand, believes in law, order, and the possibility for redemption, and generally objects to this approach. In fact, you could say that the primary motivation for Daredevil going after the Punisher is purely philosophical, because it's bad enough that the NON-lethal vigilante is running around, doing the cop's job for them, but having a professional killer wiping them out en mass starts to sound like a recipe for mob rule, complete with torches and pitchforks. When the Punisher is caught, Frank Castle is represented by .... Murdock and Nelson.

On the other hand, there's the plotline with Elektra -- Matt Murdock's crazy ex-girlfriend, who's first going up against a corrupt corporation and ... spoilers ... sort of ... is going up against The Hand, magical Yakuza ninjas. (Yes, comic books, where "Magical Yakuza Ninjas" are a thing).

And by "crazy ex girlfriend," at the time, I even thought the line: "Oh Matt, don't stick it in the Crazy ... oh no. Too late." Yes, she's hot, but there are moments that she is crazier than a bag of cats. She doesn't mind killing, and dang, does she seem to enjoy her job.

This three-way plot sort of devolves after a while. The Elektra thread seems to have little to no connection to the Punisher thread, only insofar as the two plots interfere with each other and cause problems for our hero, pulling him in two different directions at once. Dealing with the Hand and Elektra drags Murdock away from the Punisher case, and dealing with the personal and professional fallout of defending the Punisher puts stress on Daredevil as he fights the hand. By the end of the season, the finale feels a little rushed. In fact, it's starting to feel like they knew they were going to have to have multiple stories spin out from this season.  But I'm rushing ahead.

Subtle

First of all, let me address some of the acting. Elodie Yung is marvelous as Elektra. She's insane, she's enjoying every minute of it, and I think her performance works, overall.

Scott Glenn returns as Stick, Murdock's schmuck of a mentor, who actually does care, he just has really lousy ways of expressing it, and his duties are such that he looks schizophrenic ... until he explains himself, and all of the secrets he's keeping. Seriously, Stick, if you actually explained yourself earlier, there might be fewer problems.

Foggy Nelson, this year, is a much firmer character. He has more confidence, he knows what he's doing, and in some cases, he mans up because he has no other choice. Hell, he manages to use his superpower to get out of some nasty situations. He avoids being killed by bikers, he defuses a gang war in an ER, he stands up to a vicious District Attorney who is more of an antagonist  than some of mad dog killers. He really stood out this season, and the actor gets some serious props from me for pulling it off.

Karen Page surprised me at how much she was a driving force this season. After Frank Castle is arrested, and we go into "The Punisher Case," Page comes to the fore of this story. Having had to shoot someone herself, she clearly sees parallels between her and Castle. And she dives into this case headlong, and she barely stops long enough to be shot at. Fatigue and exhaustion are her primary adversaries, and she doesn't seem to be really shaken too much by bullets anymore. She does most of the legwork and investigation this season. Ben Urich has rubbed off on her. This is what I call character growth.

Hell, half of Daredevil this season seems to be more like The Punisher season 1, costarring Karen Page as a sort-of sidekick. In fact, after the initial arrest, Daredevil and Punisher come face to mask only once, and Castle and Murdock come face to face perhaps twice.

And then, of course, there's Jon Bernthal, playing Frank Castle, the Punisher. I gotta tell you, I don't think the Punisher was ever handled this well. Ever. In fact, I would say that Frank Castle is more sympathetic here than in the comics. They finally got him -- he's a man whose family was butchered right in front of him, he was left for dead, and the only thing he has left is revenge, and killing people who have it coming. He's a killing machine, that's all that he is ... and he's not terribly happy about it. But he has to do it. He must. And I don't think I've ever seen a trigger pull break your heart quite like this before ... One Batch, Two batch.....

Not to mention that Castle has some of the better moments in this season. There is a particularly heartrending moment in a diner, sitting across from Karen Page, as she complains about how Murdock is driving her insane, and hurting her every time he does something else stupid.

Castle's response is perfect.

People that can hurt you, the ones that can really hurt you, are the ones that are close enough to do it. People that get inside you and tear you apart, and make you feel like you're never gonna recover. Shit. I'd chop my arm off right here, in this restaurant, just to feel that one more time for my wife. My old lady, she didn't just break my heart. She'd rip it out, she'd tear it apart, she'd step on that shit, feed it to a dog. She was ruthless. She brought the pain. But she'll never hurt me again. You see, I'll never feel that. You sit here and you're all confused about this thing, but you have it. You have everything. So hold on to it. Use two hands and never let go. You got it? 

Which, of course, leads to something else. This season, they decide to follow up on Karen Page and Matt Murdock being an item, as they were in the comics. Which is BS. I'm sorry, but please go back through season 1, and watch Karen and Foggy as they're bar hopping in season 1. They had all sorts of strange chemistry, but dang it, it WORKED. This? Eh. Not so much.

And now, looking at Matt Murdock himself. Charlie Cox, is, as always, perfect for the role. Though the problem of these season is actually the problem with the character--and Daredevil has always had personal problems. In this case, Murdock is trying way, way too hard to be Superman.

Yes, Daredevil has always had the reputation of being one of the most stubborn men in the Marvel universe, but season 2 is where he really starts pushing his own limit. And the bigger problem also feeds into it. He doesn't talk to people, and he tries doing everything, failing spectacularly. Remember the priest that Matt spent every other episode with in season 1? He makes one appearance in the entire season. And while Matt spends his entire time talking to Elektra or Stick (or early on, with Castle), you watch him fall apart. Let's face it, these are not the people you want to spend all of your time with if you're going to stay sane ... or sane-ish.

This is particularly highlighted by an episode where Matt has to bring in multiple wounded victims to a hospital, at the same time Foggy is also wounded in a shooting. This leads to bringing back Claire Temple, the Night Nurse, played by Rosario Dawson, who insists on smacking Matt upside the head with common sense, while he's busy trying to play martyr ... which is a common comic book trope. If you don't believe me, just look at the history of Spider Man. It's part of the character's problem, and it really should boil down to "Dude, take a break for five minutes. Try getting Tony Stark on speed dial."  Murdock is in a mindset where he's thinking "I'm going to be Daredevil from now on!" Yeah, I know. But Tony Stark also had ideas like this at one time. Stark was drunk out of his mind at the time, but Murdock has never been the most stable Marvel hero.

And of course, in the latter third of the series, everything picks up again. Not because of the hand, but because of the one man that everyone has been waiting for the entire series.

Yup, the return of Wilson Fisk, played by the always entertaining Vincent D'Onofrio. He's back, and he's here to interfere with the plot. And, seriously, this man has more impact on the series just by showing up than almost anyone else who ran around, dumping exposition.

What's Fisk doing here? In part, he's here to show us exactly what he's been up to since he went to jail. What is he actually doing in the plot?

Well, let's just say that he ends up meeting Frank Castle. The result is that Castle ends up looking like this.

And when Murdock finally -- and I mean finally -- does some work in the Frank Castle plot, and puts together that Fisk has been up to shenanigans.

This of course, leads to an interesting confrontation that we never really got in season 1.

You can imagine how well this goes, especially since season 1 gave the credit for bringing down Fisk to the Murdock and Nelson law firm. So Fisk knows that the guy across from him has put him in there. And Fisk, as usual, has anger control issues.

Then Murdock threatens Fisk.

Hilarity ensues.

One highlight that I have to point out is episode 3.  Like in season 1 and their episode 2 ("Cut Man") in season 2, episode 3, "New York's Finest," they felt the need to have Daredevil talking throughout most of this, ending with an awesome fight sequence. you might remember "Cut Scene" ending with a simple tracking shot of a fight going back and forth down the hallway. In this case, they did the same thing with Daredevil walking down a flight of stairs.

In terms of pointing out individual episodes, by the time we get to the finale, it's getting a little strange. How strange? Well, there's Elektra and Daredevil versus what looks like a hundred ninjas. When our "heroes" come up to face the ninjas ... there are maybe only two or three dozen. Yes, that's still a lot, but where did the rest of them go?

If you're wondering, "Shouldn't the Punisher be in this, somewhere?" You'd be right. I was expecting more of a Castle ex machina, but perhaps he was busy slaughtering the other five dozen ninjas somewhere offscreen.

Honestly? I think they should have had another episode, or add at least ten minutes to this one.

At the end of the season, there was an interesting monologue by Karen Page about heroes

"What is it, to be a hero? Look in the mirror and you'll know. Look into your own eyes and tell me you are not heroic, that you have not endured, or suffered... or lost the things you care about most. And yet, here you are... a survivor of Hell's Kitchen... the hottest place anyone's ever known. A place where cowards don't last long. So... you must be a hero. We all are. Some more than others, but none of us alone. Some bloody their fists trying to keep the Kitchen safe. Others bloody the streets in the hope they can stop the tide, the crime, the cruelty... the disregard for human life all around them. But this is Hell's Kitchen. Angel or devil, rich or poor, young or old, you live here. You didn't choose this town. It chose you. Because a hero isn't someone who lives above us, keeping us safe. A hero is not a god or an idea. A hero lives here... on the street, among us, with us. Always here but rarely recognized. Look in the mirror and see yourself for what you truly are. You're a New Yorker. You're a hero. This is your Hell's Kitchen. Welcome home."

All I can think is "Tell me that wasn't written by a New Yorker who lived through 9-11."

At the end of the day, this is a 4-star season, perhaps a 5-star season. Heck, I'd actually say the Hand plot was 4-star, and the Punisher was 5-star.  Hell, I think I would have liked a shorter season just to focus mostly on Punisher. Daredevil season two is a lot more of a mystery than season one. Imagine Steve Martini meets Larry Correia. You watch as they put together the mystery of who Castle is, then who slaughtered his family, and what's the big deal around this one man.

And then there's the hand. And yes, the Hand plot is needed to set them up as the Big Bad for The Defenders series, and Daredevil was a good place to do it. I just wish that it didn't make the season feel slightly disjointed.

By the end yes, I liked it.

As for what all this means for The Defenders?  Well, by the end of this season, Foggy might well end up at the law firm where Jessica Jones hangs out, so imagine the fun bits of that happening. And now that Punisher is getting a series, I expect him to be in Defenders.

Though, honestly, I'm trying to see any of the Defenders working with Jessica Jones. At all. eriously, imagine locking her and Punisher in the same room. Or with Matt Murdock. Hell, imagine her in the same room with Karen Page. I think I'd rather see her interact with Jones' friend the radio show host (Hellcat). Who am I kidding, I want a Hellcat series, not Jessica Jones season 2 -- one of them has charisma, and she's not the brunette.

As for season three, I suspect there will be at least one or two people figuring out who Daredevil is, so that'll go well.

Anyway, at the end of the day, I enjoyed season two. Have fun.

Speaking of fun ... insert a shameless plug for Honor at Stake. :D

Season in Review: the DOA -- Castle, Agent Carter, and Supergirl

There have been so many shows this season, I van't even keep track, really.

So let's start with the dead, or the dying.

To start with, Yes, Castle has finally bit the bullet. But let's face it, we knew that it was dead the moment that Stana Katic wasn't going to come back. It has been eight seasons of utter insanity, and I enjoyed every minute of it. You could say that it taught me how to do romance ... though not quite as drawn out. Hell, you could even say that this was the tv show that taught network television that, yes, you CAN have a man and a woman get married and grow together as a couple, and not kill the show.

But, alas, it couldn't go on forever. You knew it was on its last legs when Season 7 ended neatly. I knew it was on it's last season with the incredibly shaky opening this season.

Oh well. All in all, it was a fun ride. And it will be missed.

Agent Carter, on the other hand, won't be. While I like the character of Peggy Carter, the show ... oh my God, the show. It had two modes: fun or brain dead. While the second season cut back on the out and out man-hating from season 1, there was a lot of talking and not a lot of actually doing anything. Seriously, people, the secret to a tv show is that STUFF ACTUALLY HAPPENS. As strange as that might be. In Europe, it is "the cinema" so we could see all the things on screen. In America, they're movies, because THEY MOVE. Remember that.

Of course, the past of Peggy Carter was completely irrelevant to the story. While it was amusing to see them at least acknowledge that Carter was a Bletchley girl, I didn't need to know that she was going to be a normal woman at one point. Who cared? Get on with the story. And then, in one of the last episodes, we had a 10-15 minute musical number while she was knocked out.

I will not miss this show. Good night, Miss Carter. You missed every opportunity to surpass Agents of SHIELD, and I look forward to when I can write the obituary on that show, too.

On the other hand, then there's Supergirl -- a preachy, whiny, wussy little show that somehow manages to spend over $3 million an episode. How does it do that? They don't really have an awful lot of stunts. Not even a ton of special effects. The sets might cost that much, but I'm a little curious where all that money went, because it wasn't on the screen.

Season 1 was a massive disappointment to me, and it can be summed up in the last two episodes. Yes, the last two episodes boiled down to "STOP TALKING AND DEBATING AND JUST DO SOMETHING. ANYTHING."  I didn't quite throw things at the tv, but it was close.

Also, there is something truly wrong with the show when it has a crossover with The Flash, and wastes it. I'm reasonably certain that they made Barry Allen dumber for his appearance on ths show -- it's the only reason I can imagine they had him throw lightning at someone made from pure electricity. And similarly stupid things. The only reason to watch that episode boiled down to watching the dynamic of Flash and Supergirl interacting.

The sad thing is that the entire point of the last two episodes, "Hope conquers all," is being covered to better effect on Arrow at the same time.

It's especially disappointing when the final fight scene for Supergirl was Kara and her uncle Non blasting at each other with eye beams. The result was for Non's eyes to explode, and him apparently dying. Please consider that the actor for that was Chris Vance, the same man who did some great Jason Statham fight scenes on a weekly basis in a Transporter TV show. And no one figured out that maybe having an epic knock-down drag-out for a season finale might, just might, have been a good thing.

Can you tell I'm annoyed?

While this show is not dead, it is moving to The CW, which is a good thing. I suspect that 90% of the problems with the show come from direct studio interference. They had one demographic, and guided the show for that demographic and that alone, completely ignoring every other type of possible viewer. Maybe whoever was jerking it around at CBS will be hands off when it comes to CW, and maybe the 8 million viewers will follow along with it.

And, with that show, Greg Berlanti will own Monday-Thursday at 8 pm on the CW, with Friday as a day off. Just imagine that crossover between Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, and Legends of Tomorrow. You'd think that crossover might be a bit of a mess.

You might even call it .... a Crisis.

BWAHAHAAHAHAA

Midseason TV review: Blindspot, Castle, Blacklist

Yes, this seems like an odd collection of shows to group together, but two are against each other on Monday night, and two are both on NBC.

Starting with Blindspot, they had a good, strong run of episodes to open this season ... until they hit a solid wall.  In an attempt to make each episode about government corruption, they stretched themselves beyond the breaking point with one episode that was so badly executed, even the actors seem to have a hard time getting through the episode, and the director must have filmed everything in one take in a rush to get the crap over and done with.

Am I exaggerating?  Well, how about this: the main plot of the episode is around evil corrupt cops, using body cameras for blackmail. Their first blackmail victim was blackmailed because he was a gay sports star ... yes, because that apparently still matters, because evil football, or something.  And of course, evil corrupt cops, because Ferguson, or something.

Meanwhile, in the same episode, you had the FBI division commander involved in going over the NSA data that was scooped up in PRISM, in cahoots with the CIA director and the FBI agent's girlfriend. Yes, that's right, girlfriend.  Let's jam as much gay / bi /whatever into the episode in one big round of Lefty-storylines and vomit it out in one go. We have once more returned to the grand old days of the CIA is evil -- and not in a-Libertarian sort of "all government is evil" kind of way, more like a 90's cartoonishly-evil way.

Since then, Blindspot hasn't quite recovered. The villains since then have been deranged, perverted Bond-villains.  It's jarring, given what happened at the start of the season.

The mid-season reveal is ... casually blowing away the CIA Director, and showing that our girl of the million tattoos had her own memory wiped.  Yes, really.

Blindspot is on a razor's edge here, and may not make it to the end of the season.

Castle, on the other end, is still as fun and as odd as ever.  Despite having an opening gambit that made me certain would spell the series' doom, the show has managed to continue to be as charming and as creative, and as deranged as the ones before.

That being said, Nathan Fillion has made mutterings about leaving, and last year, the show didn't even know if i would be renewed.  So, I'll lay money that this is the last season, no matter what the storyline says.

As for The Blacklist ... I like half of this show a lot.  Half of this show is dealing with the supervillain du jour while being hunted by the FBI, and the other half is about soap opera stuff that makes me crazy.

Basically, this is a vehicle for James Spader to ride roughshod over everybody. And it's always a joy to watch him play. Frankly, they should just show him onstage all the time.

Strangely enough, for the most part, yes, I like all of these shows. And I especially want Blindspot to get back to the quality of the early days of the season. Seriously, how can you screw up Lady Sif as Jason Bourne? Get your acts together, people.

Making Vampires For the Real World (Honor at Stake)

I've always had a problem with vampire fiction in which the vampires were so secret, nobody knew they existed.  Nobody.  At all.

Seriously, when you're around for hundreds of years, eventually somebody is going to start talking.

Which is why when I started writing Marco and Amanda, their first step was to go to the local Catholic church and start asking questions -- if only so their inquiry can be kicked up the chain of command.  The next step would have been to go to the nearest synagogue. Why? Because where else are you going to go aside from the organizations that have been around for a few thousand years?

And from the church, we will get one very simple concept: Vatican ninjas,

Yes, it feels as though I've promised Vatican ninjas for a while now.  Well, you're gonna get them.

After a while, I started working out the people who should have, reasonably, come across vampires for the last hundred years or so -- and survived the encounter. Soldiers were at the top of that list. Since there are a lot of soldiers who went from the military into the police department, there would be cops all over the country who would at least be concerned about the monsters under the bed.

Yes, I know, if I'm not careful, I'm going to end up recreating the world of Monster Hunter International.

Now, is every  last vampire going to be the loaner sulking out in the middle of nowhere?  Well, that would be hard, considering that Honor At Stake is in New York City. For the record, no, "the city" is not Manhattan.  I live in Queens, so I'm one of those people who remember that New York City has five boroughs.  Yes, I know that New Yorkers refer to Manhattan as "the city," but if a large quantity of vampires lived in Manhattan, it would be way too easy for the neighbors to realize that the creepy guy next store is not right.

.... Okay, for the most part, there are a lot of neighborhoods where you can get away with that because every other person on the block is some variety of "not right," because, well, welcome to New York.  The major philosophy of the city is "cerchez le buck" and "leave me alone, and I won't push you in front of a train, thanks." But you can't stuff all the vampires into one neighborhood.**

That's why there will be a vampire who claims to be a Roman Centurion from the Empire and he owns Little Italy! At which point, someone will smack him down and tell him that, 1) being a Sergeant in Mussolini's army doesn't count, and 2) if he doesn't sit down and shut up, he'll be driven out of "Little Italy" (which, right now, is about one square block in lower Manhattan) and sentenced to his great grandson's home in Howard Beach, enjoy it when it floods.

Yes, welcome to New York.

I created a NYC-VA President Jennifer Bosley off of
Billie Piper from Doctor Who.

And yes, there will be a governing body of vampires. The New York City Vampire Association will have monthly meetings in the far east corner of Queens, in the local VFW hall. But that's for book two.  It's also for vampires of status -- you know, the vampires that invested in the ground floor of Ma Bell (AT&T), IBM and Apple.

There will be vampire bars. There will be a nice little underground network that will guarantee fresh blood, caught that evening. There will be plenty of them that want to be 9-5 vampires (AM, of course), go home, crawl into a room with blackout curtains, and not want to get up until the next morning.

There will also be a history of vampires going back to the 18th century.  Why only that far back? Because I haven't needed a reason to go back farther yet. There will be vampires on both sides of World War II -- because Gulags and Concentration camps are natural places to make certain that the victims of vampires don't end up coming back for any reason (Let's just say that there was one concentration camp where it was replaced with a row of trees. No one really knows what happened to it. I have a nicel little supposition on that one.)

Now, why would vampires be a secret?  Well, that part is simple, and I'll give you an example. I live in New York. Announce that vampires exist. Prove it to one and all.  Watch every goth become a target of people with recently purchased bow and arrow sets, or Molotov cocktails, or try to utilize weaponry they've seen in any random vampire film.

That's why even the most demonic vampire is going to keep a low profile. Because even vampires understand that, if Satan appears in a puff of smoke in front of a live studio audience, people suddenly become very, very religious.  And you'd have every single civilian on the planet carrying enough crosses and rosaries to equip everyone in the Vatican, and still have enough left over to hand out to the tourists.

Short version: mass panic is good for no one.

BUY HONOR AT STAKE HERE

** Yes, I just said that New Yorkers are comprised mostly of capitalist libertarians, but it's true. Trust me, if the totalitarian schmucks who get 90% of the national air time were representative of the city, the city would look much more like Detroit, or Baltimore.

Writing a Romance Novel (Honor At Stake)

I've obviously done romance before, but mostly as a subplot in the books I've written.

With Codename: Winterborn, for example, there were two love plots going on.  One was between Kevin Anderson and his wife.  The other was with hunter and prey, and even then, it was a little odd. It was very, very ... Laura, really.**  Though the main plot is heavy on the action.

[**Laura, a murder mystery in which a detective falls in love with the victim through her portrait. In the case of Codename: Winterborn, it was via files and seeing him in action]

With Codename: Winterborn, however, this took months, the average romance novel takes, what, days? A week or two? Then jumping into bed like sex-starved hyenas during mating season?  I think the longest was a Kenyon novel called Fantasy Lover where holding off on sex was a massive plot point.

The closest to falling in love in a matter of days was Scott Murphy and Manana Shushurin in A Pius Man, and the rest of the Pius Trilogy (books two and three take place over the course of a week or so).

But now, Honor At Stake ...

I want a damn love story. Something that looks real.  Something that feels real.  Something that takes time to develop.

Reason #3 why Honor At Stake takes place over the course of 9 months.

How do I do that?

The casual visitor to this blog says: "Well, Declan, you've been in love before, right? Use your real love life."

I say: "Have you read my blogs about my love life? It looks like a train wreck."

Yeah.  Fun fact, any relationship of mine that survived in real life for any length of time was unreal in so many ways, I can't even describe it without people calling me a liar.  Hell, I don't even believe my own love life.

Besides, I suspect that a love story that is a blow by blow of a real relationship would probably bore the crap out of most people.

However, I am a follower of one of the better romances on television: Castle.

Yes, Castle.  It has character development, a relationship that grows out from mutual attraction, to partnership, to friendship, and then to love. Heck, I've got one review that noted that's how it should work, but let's face it, when else do you see that in the romance genre?   The phrase "Let's just be friends" is pretty much the end of any romantic relationship -- in romance, and in my own experience.

And, along the way, basically everyone else sees this relationship except these two.

In Honor At Stake, with Marco Catalano and Amanda Colt, oy, these two have got relationships baggage that look like Samsonite, or maybe a Haliburton.  Emotional issues? Well, one's a vampire, the other is a killer, what do you think?

There is also, of course, the belief that some people have that they are unloveable -- "Seriously, what creature could possibly love a creature like me? Only some broken psycho would express any interest -- only the psychos have expressed an interest. And why would any "normal" person give me the time of day?"  You know, like they kinda do on Arrow.

Not that I know anything about that, of course.

So you have two creatures of the night -- would would rather be feared rather than loved, and one who eats people.

Now, I'm not going to say that this is the most unlikely duo I've ever created.  Manana and Scott were pretty much the most opposite I could get while making them still human.  As for the vampire ... well, their personalities are compatible on multiple levels.

I like little things. Little details.  Little innocent things that can be taken the right way if you look at them really hard, but don't because neither one thinks the other wants to go there. Little looks and touches, and smells and "if she hugs me any closer she's going to realize I'm having a not-so-innocent reaction," and "stay calm, or the increased heartbeat will give the game away."

You know, things like that.  I'm told I do that well.

And there are ninjas, but they'll be tomorrow.

Right now, pre-order the book.

Cast this -- Codename: Winterborn

So, I've done multiple posts on how I would cast my novel, A Pius Man: A Holy Thriller if it were made into a film. If you want to take a look, there's a 2011, 2012 and 2013 edition.

However, there's been an oversight, and I have never looked at casting the novel Codename: Winterborn, which I co-wrote with Allan Yoskowitz.

Remember this one?

Yes, I know I don't talk about this one much, but, blast it, I've been busy.

From a casting perspective, this is actually going to be easier than the Pius universe. Why? Because I've got about nine major characters in the entire story -- both heroes and villains -- that would make it to the big screen and a few minor ones: let's face it, if you've read the book, you can see how some Hollywood people would cut out the first few chapters, so we'd lose .... some of the more colorful characters in the opening.

What would the casting look like? Well, let's look at it below the break.

Yet ANOTHER interview, and the FAQ: On Hollywood.

Codename: Winterborn seems to be taking off.  A lot, really.  Okay, we've sold 12 Kindle books, which isn't bad for something I've barely pushed at all. 

Now, you can find yet another interview on Winterborn over at CatholicMom.com.

Also, I've been getting some kick ass reviews. Sweet, huh?

Anyway, I had made a yearly event out of playing a game.  The game around my house is "Cast this book / old movie / tv show with modern actors."

I've done this in years past, as you can see in 2010 and 2011.  2012 was an odd year for me.

Contestants in this game include Adam Baldwin, Alan Tudyk, Sean Maher, Robin Tunney, Stana Katic, Seamus Deaver, and more.

Now, if only I could fit Nathan Fillion in there somehow, I think the whole cast list would be complete.

Come, listen, and see if you have any suggestions.  If you prefer reading the list, the bulk of it is in the previous posts.

Enjoy.

DragonCon Report #6: an hour with Peter David

Just when you thought that this thing would never get posted (and, at several points, I didn't think it would be), it goes up.

Peter David is at the end of every Star Trek track at the end of every year.  He's the last hour on the last day of the convention. The way he told the story one year, someone in charge of scheduling said "Peter David? He's the last person I'd want to see," and random minion wrote down "Peter ... David ... last .... person."

And so a tradition was born.

Anyway this is an hour video.  He starts by killing time with some DragonCon memories, discusses projects he has with Will Smith (a movie called After Earth), his problems with the publishing industry (which suddenly doesn't make me feel so bad), and more.

DragonCon report #2: Babylon 5 and Firefly

Wonder Woman at DragonCon

[No, I will not be doing a 9-11 article this year. Everything I could say in the matter was covered last year.]

Believe it or not, I didn't get into a lot of panels at DragonCon because they were standing room only, and not even that. The Lord of the Rings panel was crowded out, Torchwood panels were crowded out, even guests Adam West and Burt Ward (Batman and Robin from the 60s) had so many fans that the place was crowded out.

However, as John Ringo has said, what happens at DragonCon, stays on YouTube.

So, who needs to go when stuff is being filmed?

Answer: Me. Much of what I did go into didn't even get put online.

So, one panel, which I didn't get into, is a Firefly panel.  For those of you who don't know Firefly, it is a sci-fi western of Joss Whedon's from about ten years or so ago.  This panel had Sean Maher, Jewel Staite, and an appearance from Adam Baldwin -- his first appearance in years, since he was busy working on a show called Chuck.





Below the break, Babylon 5 stars Mira Furlan and Bruce Boxleitner (aka: Tron), discuss their work on the show.

Purple Only Works On A Ninja Turtle.

I'm a Born Contrarian.

People tell me that we need to be tolerant to all religions, I'm the first one to ask, “Does that include being able to blow yourself up in public?”


I'm told about Nike paying pocket change for someone to make their shoes overseas, and I ask “Is that comparable to local wages?”

Someone tells me that, “I'm going to burn this book!” All I can think is, “The bookstores are going to love you when you buy out their inventory.”


I like bumper stickers that say “Nuke the whales.” I've hated every Presidential candidate for the last twenty years. Green advertizements make me want to litter. Negative ads make me want to vote for the target. Vegans make me want to eat a porterhouse. Atheists who hate me for believing in God make me want to go to church daily. I believe in women's lib, and chivalry, and that Gloria Steinem is an idiot. If you gloat about the Yankees, I will become a Mets fan, even though I hate baseball.


In short, if you give me two sides of any issue, I will find a third alternative that will, somehow, be the same as telling both sides to go perform an impossible anatomical act on themselves.


This includes fads. Mentioning breast cancer month will earn a glare from me, and the fact that more women die from lung cancer than breast cancer.


Recently, there's been a few suicides of younger people, some who were gay, at least one who was questioning (I say this because I can't imagine that any fourteen year old knows what the hell they are).


My normal reaction to suicide is that “you get no sympathy from me.” (Keep reading, go with it.)


Not for any religious reasons. There is a strain of thought in the Catholic church that suicides are a coin toss: how mentally disturbed were they? Were there factors that someone missed in terms of mental health? What was the thought process going on in their brains? Were they trying a stunt they saw on “Jackass”?


Suicides rarely get sympathy from me because I was the nerdy fat kid. From Kintergarden to The start of college, I was that person with no friends. Over the years, I have been accused of being a future terrorist, a current terrorist, a soon-to-be mass murderer, or a future serial killer. I was a target of bullying for more than half my life. I have never given serious thought to suicide, or mass murder. However, I did come up with various and sundry ways to assassinate individuals who had earned my ire.


Only two types of people come up with creative ways to kill large amounts of people: terrorists and thriller writers. I hope to be the kind that pays better.


So, my first thought about teenagers and college students committing suicide is usually: I lived, what the Hell was your problem?



But, as a friend of mine educated me on details that the newspapers don't mention too loudly, I noticed some things. A lot of people have focused on the gay issue (“LGBTQ”). I believe I've mentioned before, I don't care who you sleep with, as long as you're not giving me the details.  You straight people, I'm talking to you, too.


[For the record, I'm using the word gay in substitute for LGBTQ … mainly because if we keep adding to the acronym to encompass everybody, we're going to run out of letters. And because not even Wikipedia is 100% certain what the Q is for.]



And as I look at the suicides of late, I'm more interested in the bullying aspect. While I went through it for over a decade, it was never organized. No one put so much energy into it that they formed moderate to large sized gangs of thugs to launch a campaign of harassment that drove someone to death.



I've come to a few conclusions.



1)  It's probably not because of who they're sleeping with / thinking of sleeping with / are suspected of wanting to sleep with.
I like to refer to it as the Freakish Individual Syndrome (FIS). If you look like you're out of place, if you're a brunette in California, the nerdy fat kid, the gay one, or even possess the random genetic quirk, you are a target.  The people in question were easy targets for the pack of jackals to gang up on.  I am told that sexuality is an easy subject to lock onto at any age from 13-22, mainly because development in that area is still ongoing.  If someone did an indepth report, I would lay money, right now, that the bullies in question had tried previous targets, and failed miserably.

Also, FIS will probably also mean that you'll be called some variation of gay as an insult—I went to an all male high school, and I heard the variations on a theme tossed around so often, I wasn't sure if it was a running gag, the insult of the day, or if half of my student body was thinking of making time with the other half. It's just one of a hundred random insults of teenager-dom; extend this into college for any large clique, because their IQ drops significantly in large groups.

The point: if you suffer, even slightly, from FIS, you have a bullseye on you. Because there are people looking for a target.

Why are these twits looking for a target? See #2.


2)Someone has too much time on their hands:
Hey, you. Not you, the one next to you. The one with the stupid brand name clothing. The one organizing the bully mob. You're a moron. You can't think of anything else to do? Nothing good on television? Really? Teasing people is part of growing up, so is being teased, and occasionally being made fun of. But organizing groups? Seriously, that's your idea of a pastime? You have no life. You're downright pathological...

And you're not even paying attention, are you? That's your problem. Your mother and I have been worried about you for a long time. And when you get into barfights because you think you're impervious to the consequences of the checks your mouth is writing, and someone sticks a shattered beer bottle in your guts, don't say I didn't warn you. Now be a good little moron and go torture some animals, and change your sheets, you wet the bed again.

3) Advice from a madman (me):
If being gay (you know what I mean) is the excuse someone is using to target you, you might want to take a page from my book. You might not, but it worked for me … no, I don't mean fantasize about mass murder, or shoving your adversary down a well, or introducing them to the finer points of piano wire, you don't want to become THAT much like me. However, you might want to become blatant. At least for their benefit.

For example: In college, I kept dressing in suits and ties … green jackets, yellow shirts, and green and gold ties. I had purple shirts for the season of lent, black and orange ties for October, shamrock ties for Halloween; if I was going to stand out by dressing professional, I was going to be as brightly colored as possible. I covered my mild FIS of being the nerdy fat guy by becoming the UBER-nerdy, overdressed guy.  It wasn'y a costume, or put on, I just exaggerated my natural tendencies, going from "overdressed" to OBVIOUSLY overdressed.  Also, it was the only time in my life I was color-coordinated.

Now, while I don't suggest dressing in lavender (it only works during Lent, Easter, or on a Ninja Turtle), the next time you hear “gay,” “queer,” “fag,” pick another insult word here, just smile at the men and tell them “I know our breakup was unpleasant, but I am not into S&M, see you at the bathhouse” or laugh at the women and say, “Don't worry darling, I wouldn't steal anyone you would date, honest.” Watch the tormentors change color.

I also suggest that this works for anyone who has insults on sexuality thrown at them, and the insult doesn't even come close to the mark.

Sharpen your tongue, and any campaign of harassment and bullying turns into a battle of wits, and they're the ones who have brought the knives to an artillery duel. They come to bully you, you use it as an opportunity to laugh at them.

4) If you're a target:
I have to tell you, you will live. Honest. I have learned to enjoy my freakishness. I may have far too much fun with it too. Then again, I had freakish qualities like being a gentleman, believing in chivalry, wanting to avoid sex until I got married, that sort of thing. You'd be surprised how badly such things go over around “normal” people. Normal people are a little weird.



Now, I don't know how much anyone should take my advice. I'm geared with a mindset that conjures up images of garotting my victims, feeling the life leak out of them as they struggle against the wire cutting off their air …

I'm also the person who thinks that a terrorist should be sent back to their homeland alive and relatively healthy … except they have their hands, feet and genitals cut off with a blow torch.

At the end of the day, targets of bullying certainly don't want to turn into me. While, despite my thought processes, I have yet to inflict malevolent harm upon a single mammal on God's Earth (killing insects does not count), I have come to enjoy and make use of my mindset, they may not.

So, as one of my ties says: non illegitimi carborundum.

Don't let the bastards grind you down.