Handicapping the Thursday Night Football race

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Good news: We’re not getting an 18-game schedule!

If that’s the bad news for the NFL, here’s the good news: They’re going to take Thursday Night Football full-season!

Back in 2006, the NFL surprised many observers by putting a slate of late-season Thursday night games on its own NFL Network, rebuffing offers from other cable networks. Now reports are that the NFL will soon be awarding an early-season slate of Thursday-night games, giving those networks a second chance. And with the sports television wars heating up, the timing couldn’t be better, as the NFL – somewhat unexpectedly – plays host to the second major battle of the Wars with the Olympics in the rear view, one with no true incumbent.

Naturally, all the major cable players are involved, as well as one surprising dark horse; according to reports, Turner and Comcast are the front-runners. The NFL could even hand over control of the NFL Network to the winner. Before we continue, I should mention that I doubt the NFL will sign with any network for more than two years, when their other contracts expire. That means this contract will ultimately be a “trial balloon” of sorts. That said, here are the major players, what they have to gain, what they have going against them, and what their ultimate chances are:

Turner Sports

What they’re fighting for: Turner has the major advantage of not only having cable sports experience, but even being a pre-existing NFL rightsholder, holding half the then-Sunday night package until ESPN decided they wanted the whole thing. They’ve wanted to get back into the game ever since; apparently during the 2005 negotiations, Turner had actually hired some analysts for games before striking out on all the packages. Putting NFL games on TNT would not only give them a shot at redemption, it also would be the best fit from the perspective of the uninformed casual fan wondering why the Thursday night games move to the NFL Network midseason – the NFL would shuffle off TNT just in time for the NBA season to start. Turner also has experience running a league-owned network in NBA TV. Then there’s the prestige factor; Turner would join ESPN as the only entities to have all four of the modern major sports at the same time.

What they have going against them: Turner is already established in the game, which means they don’t have as much to gain as the next contenders…

NBC/Comcast

What they’re fighting for: Simply put, nothing less than firmly establishing their position as the competitor to ESPN they so dearly want to be. You know Comcast is looking longingly at the blueprint ESPN established for their success using NFL games. They’d love to relish the sweet irony of turning that blueprint against them, especially with the ability to tie it in to the NBC Sunday Night package (and make the season-opening game on NBC a natural extention of the Thursday package). In fact, in 2005 Comcast and Versus came closest of any other entity to getting the Thursday night package before the NFL took it to the NFL Network, setting up a lengthy carriage dispute between NFLN and the nation’s largest cable operator.

There’s a meme going around that Comcast tapped themselves out of cash on their Olympic bid, but that doesn’t make much sense to me. As I’ve said before, I don’t buy that two weeks every two years will grow the soon-to-be-NBC-Sports-Network, especially since audiences, even if they hate tape delays, have grown used to watching NBC’s primetime Olympic highlights packages. For Comcast to spend so much money on the Olympics that they’d doom any effort to get another high-profile package seems like a risky all-in bet to me for their ESPN-killer hopes. And they, too, have experience running a league-owned network, even if it’s just the mtn.; NFLN could also look to the Golf Channel to see what Comcast running the show might look like.

What they have going against them: I don’t think Comcast is hurting too much for money in the short term, the NFL’s relationship with Comcast has improved since the NFLN carriage dispute, and NBC Sports Network could probably handle showing games just fine, even if it shows UFL games right now. So what would a problem be? Well, Comcast may ultimately decide that, while the NFL would be nice, it has other options to grow the NBC Sports Network… like Major League Baseball in a year or two. For reasons I’ll get to when we get closer to those negotiations, if Comcast doesn’t win this fight I would consider them the favorites to snag some MLB games, and if Comcast decides they have a better chance of beating Turner or ESPN for MLB rights than beating a crowded field for eight NFL games, they might decide to underbid now.

Fox

What they’re fighting for: Fox has made no secret of their ambitions to return big-time sports to FX. The NFL would not only fit the bill nicely, but would also tie in nicely to Fox’s existing NFL package, and NFLN would be just one more sport-specific network to join the likes of Speed, Fox Soccer Channel, BTN, and Fuel TV.

What they have going against them: Fox’s existing NFL package is all the NFC games the primetime packages don’t snag, while FX would show games from both CBS and Fox, which would be awkward. But a far bigger issue is that, according to reports, cable operators have a clause that protects them from any rate hikes for FX. That means nothing Fox adds to FX’s lineup can increase their revenue from subscriber fees, effectively reducing FX to the level of a broadcast network and preventing them from effectively competing with networks that can hike their fees to cable operators. I would expect Fox to try to change this at the soonest opportunity – whether or not they can is another matter – but until they do any serious effort to turn FX into a sports power is likely to be a nonstarter, including netting them a slate of NFL games. FX will likely have to settle for its new UFC programming to grow their sports brand, along with select college football games.

ESPN

What they’re fighting for: An existing slate of NFL games that would tie in neatly, as well as the most powerful brand in sports. Also, ESPN once floated the idea of increasing NFLN’s distribution by merging it with ESPN Classic, so they’ve flirted with taking over the network before. For the most part, though, ESPN is mostly fighting to keep this slate away from (or make it cost-prohibitive for) their competitors, especially Comcast.

What they have going against them: Besides their utter lack of motivation, ESPN has already committed to college football on Thursdays; their fall slate is already pretty crowded, though ESPN could bump college football to the Deuce. Also, while ESPN may have flirted with NFL Network before, they have never run a network owned by another entity – Longhorn Network, which is less than a week old, is wholly owned by ESPN – and neither ESPNU nor LHN quite prepares them for the challenges they’d face running the NFL Network, owned by them or not.

Spike TV

What they’re fighting for: The big five contenders in the sports TV wars represent only five of the top six biggest media conglomerates in the country. You have to imagine that Viacom – the other half of the split that produced the CBS Corporation – wants to take their own place in the wars. Since the then-National Network picked up WWE programming in 2000, the network now known as Spike TV has used first WWE and later UFC programming to goose its fortunes. Now the UFC has bailed for Fox, and Spike may feel it needs another draw. The NFL would seem to fit the bill nicely.

What they have going against them: I’ll believe that Viacom is serious about competing in the war when I see it. For now, I’ll simply point out that like Turner, Viacom doesn’t have a broadcast TV outlet (not even a potential one like the CW). Like Turner, Viacom could shack up with its former corporate sibling CBS for anything that would seem to need a broadcast outlet. Unlike Turner, Viacom has zero experience broadcasting sports – even their WWE and UFC programming has been produced by those entities themselves – other than TNN’s time showcasing the short-lived XFL, and even less experience running a league-owned network. It’s going to take a lot of doing to convince any league to shack up with someone as unproven as Spike. Comcast managed to convince the NHL to shack up with a little outfit called the Outdoor Life Network; can Spike convince a prominent league to do the same? In any case, Spike isn’t mentioned in the SportsBusiness Daily’s latest reporting on the subject, so they’re probably out of the running by now, if they ever were.

Who will ultimately come out on top? Past history backs up the notion that Comcast and Turner are the favorites, as does motivation. Both factors also suggest Comcast will come out ahead. By all accounts, Versus would have nabbed the Thursday Night Football rights in 2006 if the NFL hadn’t given them to the NFL Network, and Comcast has far more motivation as well, with nothing less than the cornerstone of a new sports empire at stake. If the soon-to-be NBC Sports Network wins this package, it will go down as a turning point in the history of sports television in America, the point that gave birth to an entity with enough firepower to challenge ESPN’s stranglehold over the sports landscape.

Back in July, Ken Fang of the Fang’s Bites blog tabbed Fox as the third favorite over ESPN, citing Fox’s motivation and ESPN’s crowded schedule. I think he underestimates the impact of FX’s inability to raise subscriber rates, as well as ESPN’s desperate desire for Comcast not to get the rights. The last thing ESPN wants is for Comcast to gain a foothold that would allow them to become a true competitor to ESPN. Unless Turner proves virtually untouchable, I would expect ESPN to stay in the race right to the end, at least trying to influence the outcome.

Comcast is the most likely to pick up eight Thursday night NFL games unless Turner and ESPN can hold them off. I don’t know if ESPN can tip the scales from Comcast to Turner, but they can certainly bite the bullet and crowd their Thursday night schedule in the early season if they value not having a lot more to worry about from Comcast for many, many years to come. Many sports fans have been hoping for some sort of real competition to ESPN. Within a month, they may have their answer.

How weird is IWC? I saw this coming by the second panel.

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(From Irregular Webcomic: Steve and Terry. Click for full-sized talentlessness.)

So earlier this week I tweeted how weird it was that Steve was about to become Hitler.

As it turns out, I wouldn’t know weird if it held me down and beat me up for my lunch money.

Here’s the funny thing: It wouldn’t be surprising if the “Me” character, as the creator of Irregular Webcomic!, was more important to history than anyone else in the room knows. Yoinking him out of history could conceivably cause the very reality they inhabit to collapse from the lack of his presence, maybe even cause the timeline distortion they’re having to deal with in the first place. Of course, Me has already been killed off once, but in this comic, that’s relatively minor.

Beyond that? I quite literally have no words to describe this. Whatever David Morgan-Mar is on, I want some of it. (Of course, that depends on which Morgan-Mar we’re talking about…)

The PGA TOUR re-ups with CBS and NBC

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I almost feel like this was a formality, as it only brings the broadcast rights to expire at the same time as the existing Golf Channel deal. ESPN’s alleged quest to kill sports on ABC probably took that network out of the running, and golf will never, ever be on Fox. But it does take place after the NBC/Comcast merger went through, keeps golf off ABC for the rest of the decade, and apparently broadens the Golf Channel’s role, so however technically, it counts as a win for NBC and CBS.

What’s far more notable is Versus’s new evening programming, which turns out not to be the SportsCenter-killer I was hoping it’d be, but still, baby steps.

2.5 3.5 2.5 .5 0

You know, I wouldn’t count out his chances of succeeding, at least in the short term. Maybe even as far as becoming a Planet of the Apes parody.

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(From Ctrl+Alt+Del. Click for full-sized revenge.)

So Ted’s plot isn’t world domination. Instead, he remains what he was from the start: a version of the Linux penguin.

This story arc continues to be reminiscent of the early days of Ctrl+Alt+Del, right down to looking to involve versions of real-life high-profile figures being invaded by the CAD cast. Most people have probably forgotten or are only dimly aware of CAD‘s pro-Microsoft stance, with the main relic of it being Zeke’s being made out of an X-Box.

There’s a part of me that wants to wonder how far back Tim had this story line planned out, probably before the evolution of the comic… except that Tim hinted around the time of the miscarriage that that story arc had, itself, been planned out fairly early in the comic’s history, perhaps as far back as Lilah’s introduction, which was probably less than halfway through the first year. This storyline, then, may be continuing the trend, previously noted, of Buckley trying to get away from the grimdarkness of the immediate post-miscarriage era and back to a more fun-loving time in CAD‘s history, with Ethan getting involved in wacky, out-there plots.

Given where the comic has gone since those early days, I still can’t help but shake the feeling that this plotline will leave long-lasting impacts on the cast. However, at this point I’d be far from surprised if it doesn’t.

It’s like a big ball of timey… wimey… stuff.

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(From Irregular Webcomic: Shakespeare. Click for full-sized command of the English language.)

Okay, I am officially lost as to how these time shenanigans work.

The only way I can make sense of Shakespeare’s nervousness in the third panel, and make the punchline not a complete non-sequitur, is to come to the conclusion that once the timeline is fixed, Shakespeare will “return” to the 16th and 17th centuries.

The conceit of the Shakespeare theme has always been “if Shakespeare had been born 400 years later“. While it has obviously never precisely adhered to “real” history, aside from the impact Shakespeare had on the English language apparently being applied anyway, neither has it ever hinted that that “real” history ever existed, if that makes sense. Shakespeare was in the 20th and 21st centuries before the Irregular Crisis, and we’ve established that the Nazis lost in their timeline.

If I’m right about where Morgan-Mar is going with this, it raises far too many questions: How did Shakespeare get time-displaced from the 16th and 17th centuries? Why didn’t the Irregular Crisis return him there, and why would fixing World War II do so if the Crisis didn’t? How does he know he was displaced 400 years? If he retains his memory of his time in modern times (which would make Shakespeare’s characters of Ophelia and Mercutio named after their IWC counterparts instead of the other way around), which seems to be the most consistent way of doing things, wouldn’t that cause as much upheaval of the timeline as anything else, and potentially more than just keeping him in modern times?

On the other hand, perhaps we now have a glimpse of where Morgan-Mar was headed with Shakespeare and Ophelia’s relationship upgrade…

How to really revitalize the DC Universe

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You know what the saddest part of DC’s “New 52” “soft reboot” (apparently they’re calling it that now, apparently out of a realization of just how reboot-like it is) is? A hard reboot isn’t really that bad an idea.

I can understand why they don’t want to do it. Aside from alienating existing fans, they have some critically-acclaimed storylines going in their Batman and Green Lantern books, and they’d rather not kill that golden goose. It’s really the same sort of thing that screwed up Crisis on Infinite Earths, when they didn’t want to screw up well-praised runs on books like New Teen Titans and Legion of Super-Heroes. That, coupled with poor editorial control, resulted in continuity being more of a mishmash than it had any right to be, and screwed up some properties to a state of confusion beyond repair. (Ironically, Legion wound up more rebooted than the rest of the DCU as a result of CoIE.) The solution is to announce the reboot well in advance, allowing all storylines to be wrapped up (if the old continuity is abandoned entirely) and preventing anyone from starting new critically-acclaimed storylines you’ll want to keep until after the reboot, much as Eric Burns(-White) suggested a while back.

But Crisis on Infinite Earths was also an opportunity, an opportunity to shake up DC’s stable of superheroes and tell their stories afresh, stories not possible in the mature universe CoIE replaced, stories about superheroes in the early days of their careers and going through the associated trials and tribulations. The only other time in DC’s history that has produced this sort of opportunity until now was at the very start of the Silver Age, but DC was more interested in telling their “iconic” style of superhero story, so while they refreshed many old concepts, they didn’t spend much time going into the story potential of their just starting out. Marvel did, however, and when CoIE came around, DC made up for lost time. Most of the core concepts of their heroes remained the same (most of the changes coming to villains and minor heroes), but despite CoIE depositing readers in an established universe not that different from the one left behind, DC took advantage of the opportunity to retell the early days of their classic heroes in books like The Man of Steel, Batman: Year One, and George Perez’s run on Wonder Woman (who was retconned to not have existed before CoIE).

With this reboot, DC has/had another opportunity to start afresh, shake up its core concepts, and tell new stories about superheroes just establishing their careers. DC seems to be taking the Silver Age approach: many if not most of their heroes are being shaken up, but aside from Superman and the Justice League, no stories set in the unique, ever-changing, uncertain period early in the age of superheroes, and precious few origin retellings, with everyone being thrown into the five-years-on continuity minefield I’ve talked about, and complained about, before.

While I’d prefer that DC go whole-hog with their reboot and start at the beginning, that’s not to say I disdain the importance of shaking up their old concepts. The whole reason DC is going through with this reboot is to make itself more relevant to today’s audience, especially outside established superhero comic fandom. From virtually the instant Marvel declared independence from the restrictions of a DC-controlled distribution system, and for virtually the entire time since (the major interruption coming at the turn of the millennium when Marvel declared bankruptcy), especially following the rise of the direct market, DC has placed a distant second to Marvel in the comic book sales charts. They just haven’t captured the zeitgeist as well as Marvel for the better part of 40 years.

This might be explained by Marvel’s product being better suited for the existing hardcore comic book fanbase, but Marvel’s movies have done ghostbusters at the box office while DC’s have had mixed success at best, and Marvel first struck a chord with audiences when comic books were a lot more popular among the general public. Marvel revolutionized the superhero in the 60s, presenting heroes that seemed more human and relatable and touching on important themes, and since then DC has had to fight the perception that their stories and heroes are still stuck in the 40s and 50s, that they’re too committed to an unrealistic Platonic ideal of the superhero, that their stories and heroes are too idealistic, too abstract, not human enough.

Now, there is certainly a place for idealism, and it’s certainly possible that DC’s commitment to those ideals has been overstated. I think there is still room for DC’s heroes and the ideals they embody, but I think their presentation needs to be modernized, made more relevant to today’s audiences, to make the message of those ideals all the stronger. Here, then, is my proposal to, for lack of a better word, “Marvel-ize” DC’s properties. I’ll skip Batman, the most Marvel-esque of DC’s properties, and perhaps not coincidentially the most successful and popular, both in comic books and the box office; he doesn’t need any major updates. But I will take a look at DC’s other major properties to find out how to improve their appeal to modern audiences while preserving and strengthening the core of their character, and to what extent DC is achieving these things with the present reboot, starting after the jump (because this will be a long post).

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As for why I didn’t post this on Wednesday? Distractions. I’d really rather not talk about it. Suffice to say, Homestuck is sucking me in even when it’s on hiatus.

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(From Ctrl+Alt+Del. Click for full-sized conveniences.)

Oh, I’ve been really remiss in not talking about the current storyline in Ctrl+Alt+Del.

After wrapping up the surprisingly fast and ultimately fruitless KOTOR storyline, Tim Buckley rather abruptly shifted gears to Ethan’s attempt to figure out just what Scott was working on in that locked room. Until the cliffhanger two weeks ago, I wasn’t entirely convinced that his attempt would be successful; after all, it had been a lingering mystery for some time, we got gobsmacked with this story arc out of nowhere, and until fairly recently Scott looked like one of a number of concepts that had been forgotten without explanation.

But no, now was the time for Buckley to finally give us the answer we’d all been waiting for… abso-freaking-lutely nothing out of the ordinary. I was all set to write a post that Monday even in this likely scenario, but delayed it to Wednesday when Scott, also predictably, caught Ethan in the act, to see if he would give some sort of explanation. None was forthcoming, especially once Buckley dropped another Friday cliffhanger: Scott was up to something nefarious after all.

But that also-semi-predictable revelation paled in comparison to what Buckley dropped on us Wednesday, which I doubt anyone saw coming: the penguin was behind it all along!

Okay, when I put it that way, it admittedly sounds kind of silly, and Buckley may be flirting with PVP/Goats Syndrome here. (A webcomic with Cerebus Syndrome that’s flirted with both First and Ten and PVP/Goats Syndromes? It’s the Webcomic Syndrome Triple Crown!) As gripping as this storyline is for someone who’s been following CAD for long enough to remember when Scott retreated into the back room, I can see it being just as annoying for one of the strip’s haters. In fact, this plotline is actually reminiscent of some of the worst plots of the pre-miscarriage era, when Ethan was founding religions and being the Savior of All Gaming. Ethan has once again been put in a position way above where he should be, and the only direction “Scott’s” plot can go is even sillier. What’s the plan, cause a new Ice Age so that telepathic penguins can take over the world?

This storyline may have me back engrossed in Ctrl+Alt+Del for the time being, and it’s even reminding me why I got interested in it to begin with. But it may also be a threshold test to see if I remain engrossed in CAD. If all those years of mystery were to set up one silly storyline – if there are no long-term ramifications to this whatsoever – or if “Scott’s” plan ends up being too silly, or Ethan’s role in stopping it too unlikely, to take seriously, it may ultimately be the storyline that finally drives me away from CAD, unless I decide to take it as a simple thrice-weekly silly diversion. I doubt I’ll make a final decision on the latter until I’ve gotten caught up on Darths and Droids, or the subject of my next webcomic review.

Yes, I know I’m using “nonplussed” wrong, and I don’t care.

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(From Irregular Webcomic! Click for full-sized timeline refugees.)

What I find exceedingly interesting about this comic, and what makes it the biggest development in the Irregular Crisis in months, is the first panel.

There is plenty wonky about the alternate 1940 that most of the IWC cast has been sucked into, but Mercutio mentions none of it in the first panel. Everything Mercutio mentions is business as usual for the Cliffhangers theme, especially Hitler being a brain in a jar, which in the first place, implies that prior to the Irregular Crisis, Cliffhangers and Shakespeare were not in continuity with each other, and that history for the Shakespeare theme was the same as in our reality.

In the second place, it implies that the time flux the rest of the cast is trying to untie may be as simple as the history of the Cliffhangers theme overwriting everything else. This isn’t the first time this has been suggested – Hitler being a brain in a jar came as a complete shock to the Steve and Terry crew – but I had always written that off as a secret, heretofore undiscovered application of Nazi science – the yeti was completely nonplussed to discover Nazi teleportation technology the other Steve and Terry members were taken aback by. It has never been made as explicit as Mercutio makes it here. What’s more, it suggests that all the activity that has centered around 1933 and the Reichstag Fire is ultimately irrelevant, and may be making things worse. While Nazi victory is the most obvious consequence of a timeline divergence, addressing (or causing) the proximate cause of that may ignore a more far-reaching problem, yet one potentially simpler to fix, at least for the Paradox Department.

I have complained about the pace of the Irregular Crisis in the past, but David Morgan-Mar may finally be laying the groundwork for its resolution… even it it takes a rather circuitous, and yet far more fascinating, route to get there.

The most recent flash took a disturbingly long time to load the first time. How long will EOA take?

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(From MS Paint Adventures: Homestuck. Click for full-sized scrapbook.)

I’m surrendering. I’m still not as heavily invested in Homestuck as I am in The Order of the Stick and I still have numerous issues with it, but I’ve become just as anal about it (partly because, while OOTS is updating now, it’s still very slow), and I’m stuck (no pun intended) with it for at least the rest of the act. I’ve been remiss in not talking about numerous recent developments: Scratch’s tale of the troll ancestors and today’s update, also known as “Better Living Through Moirallegiance”.

First things first. Scratch dropped two bombshells on consecutive days: first, that the troll ancestors were, once upon a time, the actual players of the game, on a world a lot more peaceful and a lot less cutthroat than the Alternia we’re familiar with, but weren’t made of hardy enough stuff to complete the game and agreed to scratch it, creating a hardier, stronger race that could complete the game – a race shaped by Scratch every step of the way, with the former players moved into the role of ancestors to the new players, but with no memory of their former lives.

I could say a lot about this, but it should suffice to say this bit of human-nature mythologizing: It is implied that the history of the troll people would have played out exactly the same way as it did before without Scratch’s interference. Moreover, it appears that Scratch’s interference was limited to historical figures, not the course of evolution. In other words, Scratch created a culture that was hard, grueling, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short, but the underlying nature of the people may have been the same peace-loving people that failed to make it in the game the first time around. Given that multiple trolls have given signs of being worn down by having to play the roles society has given them, to the point that Feferi, the heir apparent to the throne of Alternia, had fantasized about overturning the race’s caste system, this appears to be quite interesting.

(Yes, Order of the Stick isn’t the only webcomic that can have deep, literary themes. I’m warming to it here, people. I’m going to be wearing oversized bull-horns and a Hero of Breath God-Tier hoodie to cons before you know it.)

Despite the former players’ amnesia, Karkat’s ancestor, the Signless, saw glimpses of his former life, which leads to the second bombshell: he proceeded to preach a message of peace and harmony that led to him being hanged by the authorities, with his memory to live on underground as the Sufferer. In other words, Karkat’s ancestor was essentially troll Jesus (with Kanaya’s taking the role of the Virgin Mary), which I guess makes Karkat the second coming of Jesus. And he does sort of bring on the end of the world, and in an odd way, the birth of a new Eden…

(As an aside, Homestuck is positively riddled with symbolism of all kinds from all sources, to the extent I started having a problem with it when I reviewed it, but I have to tip my cap to Hussie’s ability to re-appropriate existing imagery for his own purposes. Take Karkat’s symbol, taken from the symbol for the constellation Cancer. Hussie derives it from the irons the Sufferer was hung in, which then takes the same importance among the Sufferer’s followers the cross has for Christians, who ensure it’s applied to Karkat as his symbol. Hussie managed to take a pre-existing symbol and derive it from an element in his own story almost seamlessly. As Eric Burns(-White) might say, Hussie gets a tasty, tasty biscuit.)

Perhaps it’s no coincidence that, after Hussie’s self-insert forcibly wrenches control of the story away from Scratch (with a result that many are interpreting to be Scratch’s death) we get what amounts to a flashback to the gathering of trolls in the immediate aftermath of Vriska’s death… and Karkat, who has spent several real-time months hiding for dear life from Gamzee’s rampage, and now with three other trolls by his side, proceeds to subdue him as only the second coming of troll Jesus can: parenting and friending him all the way, by himself.

Now, I may jest about this, but Karkat is hardly a Mary Sue. Although he is the leader of the trolls, and arguably keeps them together far longer than they might have otherwise, his character has been primarily defined by his perpetual bad mood and self-loathing. (I swear he isn’t a Mary Sue, honest.) Karkat finagled his way to the leadership role of the trolls the same way the trolls do everything else, through back-biting and treachery, and his impulsiveness is arguably the reason for everything bad that has happened, is happening, or will happen to the trolls. And while he himself is arguably more human-like than any other troll, as hinted earlier, he’s not the only one who’s worn out by the trollish way of life. Karkat may seem more like a Sue from a troll perspective than a human one, but even there more of a deconstruction of the type.

Finally, at the end of Scratch’s tale, we discover who “Aradia”, Scratch’s captive, is: Aradia’s ancestor, Lord English’s Handmaid, and the other influence in Alternia’s evolution. Her last act is to recruit the last ruler of Alternia (who ultimately kills her) to serve as another of English’s servants, “carrying out his work in the places he cannot reach.” There’s a frighteningly plausible theory that this means she becomes Betty Crocker, namesake of the food empire, surrogate mother of John’s Nanna and Jade’s Grandpa, and scourge of John’s life.

Despite the promises of both Scratch and Hussie, we still have some time to go until the end of the act; I wonder if Hussie was legitimately tired of how the Scratch interlude was proceeding and decided to abort it early. But that doesn’t mean Hussie was entirely averse to giving us some bang for our buck for the end of the interlude, and now the remainder of the act can proceed in a more natural fashion, until the end-of-act flash is ready. I may have a longer experience with Homestuck fandom than I thought.

Cleanup on aisle UFC

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Because I don’t want to roll this up into a much longer NFL post…

I posed the question as to who would control the UFC’s broadcasts on Fox as “Gus Johnson or Mike Goldberg?” The answer might be both: because of the sheer volume of UFC programming on Fox and FX, the UFC is thinking about bringing in more commentators to take some of the load off of Goldberg and Joe Rogan, which Johnson’s existing relationships with Strikeforce and Fox would make him a natural fit for. Similarly, while UFC will still be controlling the presentation, they will work closely with Fox to make it as good as it can be.

As for the quality of fights to expect on free TV, the UFC’s rights fee is substantially smaller than that of other sports, so pay-per-view will remain the backbone of the business, implying you won’t see Brock Lesnar v. Fedor Emelianenko on Fox anytime soon. That article makes it feel more like a stepping-stone, putting the product on broadcast TV to increase exposure and respect to the point where the company can afford a real TV deal. However, the UFC will be cutting back on PPVs slightly, all parties made clear that this deal is “just the beginning” and a foundation for future growth, and Dana White told Entertainment Weekly‘s TV blog that “the broadcast fights will be significant matchups, rather than saving all the important bouts for Pay Per View. ‘We want to pull ratings, we want to pull the big numbers,’ White said.” So the Fox fights will be PPV caliber, but will they be top-notch caliber? Rumors that featherweights will be among those featured on the first one-hour Fox show in November have me doubtful about that, at least for the short term, and I don’t know how top-notch the UFC will be able to go in the next seven years on Fox given the rights fee probably isn’t changing.

Still, one thing was already clear: UFC just changed the game in MMA, and may have made themselves completely invulnerable, to the extent they weren’t already, to any attempt to challenge their supremacy.