Candescence

So, right now Australia is probably the most exciting political arena at the moment, because, well... The leadership fighting is on. Again. Quick recap: The right-wingers in the Coalition have been agitating over the National Energy Guarantee (unfortunately acronym-ed as NEG) policy, because, well, coal fetishists. Despite initially getting the policy through the party room, threats by up to 10 ministers to cross the floor to oppose it has caused PM Malcom Turnbull to modify the policy, first changing the emissions reduction target to a regulation-based method and then dumping it entirely to focus completely on price reduction, the latter of which would never have the approval of the states. Regardless, there had been significant rumblings of a challenge from Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton. Dutton, for the record is a former Queensland cop who is a hardcore authoritarian. He's also at severe risk of losing his own seat at the next election and possibly the least popular pick in terms of potential leader of the Liberal Party. Earlier today, in an attempt to head the internal opponents off at the pass, Turnbull called a leadership spill. He won, but by 48-35. Dutton was barely 8 votes off from a proper majority. Historically, this is bad news for Turnbull, because we've seen this shit happen before in Australian politics on both sides of the aisle, and it never ends well for the incumbent. Dutton has resigned from the cabinet, but about six other ministers are resigning as well at the time of this writing. Everyone basically expects Dutton to continue canvasing for votes and come back for a more successful round 2. A lot of these votes are from Queensland, where 20 or so Liberal MPs are looking at electoral annihilation and are desperate to find any means of saving their skin, believing a hardline Queenslander will do the job. It doesn't help that a recent IPOS poll suddenly swung 4 points, 45-55 towards Labor, and a recent bunch of by-elections was a disaster for the Coalition, who failed to pick up any seats and even went backwards in terms of primary vote.

Oh boy. Michael Cohen apparently is claiming that Trump knew about the Trump Tower meeting with the Russians in advance and signed off on it. Which, if true, proves that collusion did happen. Excuse me while I get some popcorn.

It's remarkable reading about how much the guy really went off his rocker as time went on. He basically tried to retcon the ghosts in the last season of Danny Phantom into being aliens (what?!) because he considered their original concept to be blasphemous. I don't really care if someone makes a Christian streaming service, but to basically scam your backers by hiding your intentions to try and convert kids is just despicable, and certainly not Christ-like. Also, his attitude towards LGBTQ people and his "joke" to Tara Strong is just terrible.

"But why" is pretty much going to define this show. There is simply no compelling reason for this show to exist as it is, nor any reason why it isn't an adaptation of Ian Flynn's material. In other words, it's basically DMC: Devil May Cry all over again, except without a narrative that's downright offensive, at least, which is... Not a high bar, frankly.

I'm not sure whether to laugh at just how stupid and uninspired that particular plot detail is or scream into a pillow right now. It's not even a pun, it's just a BACKWARDS NAME. Bloody hell, if they wanted an evil twin character who isn't Blues, there's Copy Megaman from MM1/Powered Up or fucking Quint. Either of them would've worked fine. But nope. This is pretty much the obvious sign of a studio that clearly doesn't give a shit about the source material.

So... Incredibly average and uninspired kids show. In other words, still way below the standard set by other kids shows in recent years (and carrying on from the likes of the DCAU) which are capable of entertaining people of all ages, not just kids. I wouldn't care nearly as much if I wasn't still so sore over the cancellation of the Mega Man comic, which was one of the best comic books in recent years, which was a perfect example of how to adapt Mega Man right while keeping it kid-friendly. They could've used that as the basis for a cartoon, but NOPE. That's pretty much the reason I will never give this thing a chance when it could've been so much better.

Honestly, I'm inclined to argue that 'centrism' is a goddamn myth, and this instance, and outright dangerous, as being a centrist would essentially require capitulating to some of the terrible shit the right wing want, especially when the right have no interest in bipartisanship anymore. And even then, with the increasing polarisation of US politics, the only way to allow more 'centrist' voices is to retool the entire electoral system so more than two parties are actually viable. First past the post simply does not work if you want a healthy multi-party system (granted, the founding fathers didn't want political parties at all, and guess how that worked out), you need, at least, preferential voting, which would significantly open up opportunities for third parties, as there is literally no such thing as "throwing your vote away" in a preferential voting system. Also, mandatory voting. if you don't want to vote, just throw in a donkey vote, but it should be the duty of every person eligible to vote to actually register and vote.