the mellow tigger's musings

There's an interesting series from Mexico called Coyotl: Hero And Beast that's available for streaming online. It's sort of a werewolf story, but not really. The main character is more of a werecoyote, but not really. The first episode gives us all of the origin for this character, but not any of the legend behind it. I'm watching it on on Max (formerly HBO), but it's apparently also streaming on other networks like Hulu and AppleTv.

The setting for this story is northern Mexico, in a town devastated by wars between two drug cartels. The show is violent. Threatened violence, actual violence, just all-around violence. I'm not sure I'll continue watching for that reason. There are 2 gay gangsters, other gangsters call them fags, and the gay guys proceed to throw them around the room, beating the straight homophobes senseless. There's enough violence to go around, regardless of sexual orientation. I think it's the 3rd episode that opens with this disclaimer (in Spanish, I watch with English subtitles):

"The scenes of narco violence are inspired by reality. The monster hero, unfortunately, is just a legend."

Rather than being like a western werewolf, this character is based upon mesoamerican nagual. This is a person who can shapeshift into their animal nature, which in this case is a coyote. Like werewolf stories, however, this guy didn't know about such things and didn't plan on this transformation, but it was released in him by someone else, regardless. Now, he has to figure out the balance between his humanity and this superpower that allows him to take revenge on the people who killed so many others in town.

It's a decent story. The main character actor is... a lot to look at. (Are there muscles on those muscles? No, but almost.) I like how each episode begins with a preview scene from later in the episode, which reminds me of a fun old sci-fi series Space: 1999, which had a full episode montage at the beginning during the opening credits. I'm not sure yet if I can keep up through all of the violence of this show, though. Living in the warzone has dramatically lowered my tolerance for all of this testosterone-laden idiocy.

I even tried watching the first new episode of "Last Of Us", about 3 minutes after it premiered tonight. I turned it off at the beginning when one revenge-driven character says, "When we kill him, we kill him slowly." Yeah, I'm not up for that as entertainment any more. Is it any wonder that Minecraft is the big hit of the movie theaters right now? Are we all growing tired of this constant slide into the libertarian might-makes-right hellscape of real life these days?

I'll give Coyotl another go, but I might rely on others to tell me how it ends.

A narcissist will make everything about them. A fascist will make everything about their power over you. Don't concede your power by responding immediately to every insanity that you encounter. Remember Brandolini's law that states it takes longer to refute lies than it does to utter them, and also Do Not Obey In Advance (and a followup version, with things that you can do).

Remember that scene from Fifth Element, where the proverbial "bad guy" breaks something just to get the ego power boost of being responsible for what happens around him. That's where we're at now (again) in the USA.

I have a lot more to say. The recent kerfuffle with Colombia is the perfect example of what I want to describe more fully about the era in which we now live. Be aware of what information you are not hearing in any narrative. I need to do a lot more editing, though, to reduce it to a more concise form. Maybe next week.

For frith, who recently mentioned the story and movie, "The Last Unicorn". Nicely done artwork, by the way.

Apparently I never blogged it at the time, so I guess it was during the reign of Google+ where I mentioned a special event on social media. When Peter Beagle did his movie tour a decade ago, I caught the showing at a theater here in the Twin Cities. He had a book signing in the theater before or after the movie (I forget which), and he signed my very old copy of "The Fantasy Worlds of Peter Beagle", a hardback book from 1978 that's still on my shelf, after winnowing my small library over the decades. It remains.

Personally, I enjoyed the schmaltz of the movie music, but I agree that the moping in the castle continued a bit too long.