Amongst all the toys revealed on Force Friday back in September were some of the first flying Star Wars drones easy enough for kids to pilot. The same can’t be said about this impressive 15-foot long Star Destroyer, though. Even its creators had a hard time keeping it airborne.

Made mostly of insulating foam panels held together with Gorilla Glue and copious amounts of packing tape, the 15-foot long Star Destroyer was powered by three motor-driven propellors while a pair of servos adjusting flaps on the ship’s trailing edge. The giant RC craft was also quickly detailed with a can of Rustoleum spray paint giving it that recognizable grey Star Destroyer finish.

Amazingly the giant replica actually flew for a short while after being launched from the back of a flatbed truck—just not well. It stayed aloft for quite some time before rolling over in mid-air and eventually returning to earth with a less-than-graceful landing. What’s important, though, is that humanity is officially one tiny step closer to building a real Star Destroyer and eventually oppressing the galaxy we call home. [YouTube via Make]

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The Expanse is pulling off something amazing. It’s showing a solar-system-wide conflict through the experiences of just the characters we’re following. It’s a really tough rope to walk, and they’re doing it wonderfully.

Spoilers for “Remember the Cant” follow.

In the book, I was most interested in what was happening with survivors of the Cant. The Expanse has made that story less interesting to me than Ceres or Earth, possibly because they’re adding a lot more there that’s new, possibly because Thomas Jane and Shohreh Aghdashloo are giving their roles a lot of dimensions that aren’t quite as obvious with the Cant crew.

“Remember the Cant” picks off where the episode two ended, and there’s no question that Holden’s message made it out. His accusation of Mars destroying the Cant is being played everywhere, all the time. On Ceres, that means that the station (which is run by Earthers and has some Earther inhabitants) is boiling over with resentment from the Belters and their sympathies to the radical OPA, which means that we get to watch Thomas Jane as Detective Miller play off of Jared Harris as the local OPA leader, Anderson Dawes. It’s scenes like this which make watching The Expanse a great experience.

I’m also going to call out the way the show used Miller’s partner, the Earther Havelock. In the books, he’s basically a nonentity who leaves the station when things get tough. While the way the show focuses on him this episode—showing him going to a prostitute to learn the Belter language, playing a joke on the captain—was a fairly obvious build-up to his death at Belter hands, it still worked. Just saying things are bad doesn’t really work unless we actually see characters we know affected.

On Earth, Avasarala is also investigating what happened to the Cant. It would be so easy to turn this character into just a government face that gives the audience piles of exposition. In this case, that Mars took inventory of all their weapons and technology hubs to make sure nothing went missing. Which means they didn’t give it to the Belters and they’re not working together.

In the hands of The Expanse, her discovery and reveal of that information does avert a war. But it also comes at the price of destroying her long-term friendship with the Martian ambassador. Their final talk is heartbreaking.

And on the Donnager, the ship’s crew is doing a decent job of turning the Cant survivors against each other. Alex gets his old Martian Navy uniform back. They tell everyone Naomi is OPA. Holden was kicked out of the navy. Shed faked his medical credentials to escape a drug dealer who wanted to kill him. And... no one knows anything about Amos, other than he’s loyal to Naomi. They’re all at each other’s throats in no time, just so the Donnager captain can tell Holden to take back his message and say that OPA agent Naomi destroyed the Cant. Which she didn’t.

As always, the way The Expanse mixes action—the riot on Ceres, for example—with the slow burn reveals-—Avasarala’s manipulations on Earth—makes for engaging watching. So does the balanced way everyone’s approached. Mars may not have destroyed the Cant, but they are ruthless in how they treat the five survivors. Havelock’s death, simply because he was an Earther, is horrible. But it’s also clear the Belters have been badly treated for a very long time. Plus, there’s a mystery ship on the Donnager’s tail. And book readers know what that means.

Top image via Syfy.

Contact the author at katharine@io9.com.

If games are a truly interactive medium, then it stands to reason that the people who play them have an unusual amount of influence on this creative form; more than they do on others. With that, we present, for the fourth year running, Kotaku’s Gamers of The Year.

ZeRo, The Smash Bros. Champ

There were plenty of great gamers in the world of eSports this past year, including the dominant League of Legends team SKT, who rolled through November’s world championships. There were the members of Evil Geniuses, who topped the 2015 earnings list thanks to a clutch play that helped them with the $6 million Dota 2 International. We also have a soft spot for Street Fighter pro Infiltration, who didn’t win it all at Evo but still dazzled the crowd with his unusual character picks. But above all the others we had to go with Smash Bros. competitor Gonzalo “ZeRo” Barrios, who took a 53-tournament Super Smash Bros. Wii U win streak deep into the year before losing to rival Nairo. And then he kicked off another streak, which has lasted six tournaments and counting. No wonder someone put a bounty on his head. He’s really good!

Nikki, The Data-Miner

Gamers have been mining secrets from buried game files for some time, even occasionally finding a half-made sex mini-game that changes the course of the industry and of gaming culture. This is the year, though, that data-mining became so widespread that it’s now a surprise when players don’t discover some gem hiding in the code of a new PC release or console patch. The poster child for video game data-mining in 2015 was the gamer known on Twitter as NWPlayer123. In the Splatoon community, she is known as the person who spilled most of the game’s secrets in a massive dump of data-mined information in June. Nintendo had put a lot of its Splatoon DLC on the game disc and was planning to reveal it slowly over time. Can’t do that in 2015! Funny thing is, none of this hurt the excellent game’s appeal. NWPlayer123 kept at it all year, repeatedly scooping Nintendo on its own game and sharing some findings from Smash Bros. DLC for good measure. A day before Nintendo released Final Fantasy VII hero Cloud Strife in Super Smash Bros., she’d pulled his victory animation from the game’s most recent patch and Tweeted it:

Data-miners, modders and hackers got so skilled this year that they were using data for a new Smash Bros. stage to recreate a playable version in an older Smash game before it was even playable for the new one. Wild. And this, basically, is the new normal. Sure, Rockstar Games might have planned a Grand Theft Auto Online Halloween “surprise”, but data-mining gamers will tell the world about it a couple of weeks early. Studios can try to confound the miners, of course. It’s all part of the game.

Jon “Many A True Nerd”, A Very Daring Gamer

Clearing Fallout 3’s hard mode on a single “true” health bar. Doing the same in Fallout New Vegas. Doing it through New Vegas and its DLC. The gaming exploits of YouTuber Many A True Nerd wowed us all year long. That isn’t to say we weren’t impressed by other adventurous gamers: We chronicled a few of them in our Compete series. And we marveled at the ingenious ways gamer Scott Buchanan exploits glitches to clear Super Mario 64 levels in ways humans shouldn’t be able to.

We appreciated the loophole gamers on Twitch used to collectively beat Dark Souls in 43 days. We watched speedrun records fall. We loved it all and highlighted as much of it as we could. But time and again, MATN attempted the impossible—and time and again, he achieved it. We’re looking forward to seeing what he pulls off in Fallout 4 and beyond.

Satoru Iwata, President of Nintendo

Satoru Iwata was the cheerful face of the world’s most beloved video game company, the architect of Nintendo’s massive DS and Wii successes and the creator of games for HAL Laboratory. That’s a brilliant resume, but not one that’d get anyone on this particular list. And yet there was something about the late Iwata, who passed away in July.

He was more than just a brilliant innovator, a smart businessman, or a sharp game creator. He played this stuff, and he delighted in it. In his knowing smile on each Nintendo Direct, and in his jovial Q&As in each new “Iwata Asks,” you could just tell: He was a gamer to the end and his passing touched seemingly everyone in the gaming community. RIP.

Got your own picks for the Gamers of the Year? For the players who helped shape how we play, talk or think about games? Chime in below.

To contact the author of this post, write to stephentotilo@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @stephentotilo.

We recently got a new trailer for the upcoming Fox show Lucifer; not to be outdone, A&E would like to remind you of its own entry into the “2016: The Year of Our Dark Lord” television sweepstakes, busting out a teaser for Damien, which builds off the story of classic 1976 horror film The Omen.

As we learned at San Diego Comic Con earlier this year, Damien is set 25 years after The Omen and stars Bradley James (Merlin) as the grown-up son of Satan who doesn’t remember anything about his past. Helping jog this unaware Antichrist’s memories are characters played by Barbara Hershey (as a mysterious protector figure), Deadwood’s Robin Weigart (as a Vatican investigator), and The Walking Dead’s Scott Wilson (as a “power broker” of some kind).

In the below teaser, we see a sleek and contemporary update of one of the most haunting scenes from the original Omen; as is befitting the character’s adult age, he’s no longer willing nannies to fling themselves out of windows. That 666 birthmark still apparently has the same dangerous powers, though.

[Via Deadline]

It’s been one hell of a year for DC Comics. Sure, they didn’t explode their comic book universe, but the heroes and villains of DC have gone through some big changes. Last week, we caught you up with what’s going on in Marvel’s “All-New” universe, and now, it’s time to catch you up on Superman and pals.

http://io9.gizmodo.com/where-marvels-...

The Multiverse Is Back

When DC relaunched their comic line in 2011 with the highly controversial “New 52”, the doors to DC’s comic book multiverse—the interconnected miasma of alternate earths home to many DC characters—were seemingly closed for good.

You should know by now though, that nothing is permanent in comics. So yeah, the Multiverse is back! Following the events of Convergence, DC’s summer comic event which brought back amalgams of past versions of DC’s heroes and some of those alternate worlds, the series climaxed with the multiverse intact and open again—and now DC operates on a sort of “concentric circle” approach to canon, where it’s free to tell more stories from the different worlds of the Multiverse, a more diverse range of stories, rather than trying to strictly categorize every comic it puts out.

Shortly after Convergence, DC used the opportunity to give a firm shake to the status quo of its line-up. Not only was there a much more diverse line of comics—more female-led series like Black Canary, or Batgirl, new non-white characters like Dr. Fate and the new host of Doomsday in Doomed, and revivals of obscure, older series like The Omega Men or Prez—but some big changes in store for its biggest stalwarts.

Superman Is Less Super

Superman has arguably had the roughest go when it comes to these changes. Earlier this year he got a tasty new superpower called a “Super Flare,” a huge blast wave that expelled all the solar energy in his body. It had a cost, though; for a few days after using the attack, Clark had no powers, and was essentially human for a while.

But then his powers started getting weird. He lost the ability to fly—it reverted back to the super-jump the character was created with—while some abilities altogether were much less useful than they were before. Although he still had super strength, it wasn’t quite up to the ridiculous power level it had been in the past.

That isn’t Clark’s only problem. He’s been put through a hell of a time too, thanks to Lois Lane exposing his identity as Superman (he even had to adopt a new identity to hang low), him having to abandon his job at the Planet and leave Metropolis, and even witness the seeming death of his best friend. Poor Supes.

Bruce Wayne Isn’t Batman

Because Bruce Wayne died! Oh wait, he didn’t, but more on that in a second. But yes, Batman had his own problems in Gotham with the release of a Joker virus that turned innocent people into mindless killers—and to stop it, Bruce ultimately sacrificed himself to kill the Joker, saving the city in the process.

In the wake of Batman’s death, the GCPD turned to Jim Gordon to take on the mantle: he shaved his mustache (easily the most tragic casualty here), donned a pretty decent Bat-stealth suit, and then got into a ridiculously over-the-top Bat-Mecha to fight crime as the new Dark Knight.

But then Bruce Wayne got better! And can’t remember being Batman! So now while Jim does battle with a mysterious foe called Bloom as the mechanized crusader—even joining the Justice League—Bruce is currently running a children’s center on the outskirts of Gotham. Recently though, things started getting a bit less different: Jim lost his Bat-robot in a fight with Bloom, Bruce started to remember his past... and it turns out the Joker got better too. Dun dun dunnnnn!

Wonder Woman’s a God

Compared to the other two-thirds of the DC trinity, Wonder Woman got off lightly. She just replaced Ares as the God of War and her mother as the Queen of the Amazons, as you do.

While Batman and Superman’s ongoing sagas have all been about these big sweeping changes, Diana’s story has been far more personal. This is still a world where Wonder Woman only came onto the scene as a hero a few years ago, so she’s struggling to cope with these newfound responsibilities as well as her commitment as a member of the Justice League. Her biggest change? A new costume with some hilariously oversized wristblades attached.

It’s unfortunate that her status quo change isn’t quite as interesting (or as well-handled) as her friends. Diana deserves better.

... And Everyone Else Is Fine, Thanks For Asking

But aside from that, everything else is pretty much chugging along for the rest of the main DC heroes. Let’s all just try and be surprised for a minute that it’s Batman and Superman who got the biggest focus!

Green Lantern Hal Jordan is wandering the space-cosmos in the wake of some pretty bad things happening to the Green Lantern corps. Barry Allen is running around facing the threat of a new team of Rogues and the return of Professor Zoom. Oliver Queen has returned to Seattle, looking to protect the city from shadowy threats. Cyborg... got a painful-looking new body upgrade.

Actually, that’s probably the best indicator of just how minor some of the big changes in the “DC You” initiative have been for characters not named Superman or Batman: They got new outfits. That is the most notable thing that happened to them.

http://io9.gizmodo.com/which-dc-comic...

There’s Two Supermen Now

Yes, you read that right—there’s currently two different Supermen running around the mainline DC universe: The Superman of the New 52, which is the Superman we’ve been talking about here, and the Superman of DC’s former universe—the post-Crisis on Infinite Earths, pre-Flashpoint Superman that most people are familiar with as the iconic hero.

The character made a return for Convergence with a miniseries called Superman: Lois and Clark, but the popularity of the return prompted DC to give the character his own ongoing series again. Having somehow survived the destruction of his own Earth and finding himself on the Earth of the New 52, this Superman witnessed his alternate starting out his heroic journey and decided to keep hidden, working in the shadows to try and find a way of avoiding some of his biggest enemies from heading down a villainous path.

He’s not going to stay hidden for much longer, though—DC has already started teasing that he’ll be meeting the “current” Superman early next year.

The Justice League Comic Is Having a Crazy Time

Separate from all of that ,though, is the main Justice League comic, which is currently in a halfway house of continuity—Bruce Wayne is still Batman, Superman still has all his powers, and so on—while it goes through an event called Darkseid War, something DC have been teasing since the very beginning of the New 52 universe.

Long story short? Darkseid’s Daughter, Grail, teamed up with the Anti-Monitor to kill her father. They succeeded, and when Darkseid died, the whole pantheon of New Gods went ballistic... turning most of the Justice League into their replacements in a totally batshit god-a-palooza.

Batman is now the God of Knowledge (and immediately used his newfound power to discover the real identity of the Joker). Flash is the God of Death. Superman, the God of Strength. Shazam, the God of Gods. And bizarrely enough, Lex Luthor has taken Darkseid’s place as the God of Apokolips. There was also an incredible one-off comic about Hal Jordan becoming the God of Light, but he quickly cast aside the mantle, in a fantastic character piece that fans of Green Lantern (and Hal in particular) should definitely read.

It makes very little sense, especially in the grander scheme of DC’s current output, but it’s one of those sort of wild and grand event series you can’t help but appreciate for its constant big moments.

None of That Will Matter Soon Though

Sadly ,although DC’s current “DC You” initiative has lead to some interesting takes on its most popular and iconic characters, it looks like a lot of those changes are going away very soon.

The same recent solicitations that revealed that the two Supermen would team up next year also revealed that Superman was back in his traditional outfit and restored to his former, all-powerful glory. They also confirmed that Bruce Wayne would be retaking the mantle of Batman alongside Jim Gordon—meaning that two of the biggest defining arcs of this year’s DC comics out put are being wiped clean just 10 issues after they set out. After all, there is a certain movie coming out next year.

It’s a shame, considering that this has been a year where DC has consistently tried to shake things up with their comics and incorporate new takes, new heroes, and new directions. It’s not all been a success (arguably the real success has been in the establishment of a more diverse line-up, rather than any particular story arcs), but it’s a little sad to see that such a grand experiment is coming to an end so soon.

Traditionally, wildlife photographers try to capture the majesty of their feral subjects. But even the most dignified wild animals get caught doing something downright silly every now and again.

Tanzania-based wildlife photographer Paul Joynson-Hicks felt that the goofier moments in wildlife photography weren’t getting enough appreciation. So this year, he organized the first annual Comedy Wildlife Awards, a collaboration with Nomad Tanzania, Natural High Safaris, Nikon UK, Kenya Airways and One Vision Imaging. “I always loved my own funny wildlife images and other people did as well, so I thought, what a fun concept to get loads of them together,” he told Gizmodo.

The competition brief was simple: “Seeing the funny side of the majestic creatures we love to photograph and protect.” With 1,502 entries from 52 different countries, you could say it was a smashing success.

“It was a pleasure to judge the inaugural Comedy Wildlife awards,” said British comedian Hugh Dennis. “The finalists should be very proud of themselves, as should the animals they photographed, simply for looking so funny. Sadly there is no way of telling them.”

Without further ado, here are the winners of the 2015 Comedy Wildlife Awards.

“Rush Hour” (Winner)

Copyright: Julian Rad / Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards.

First prize went to Austrian photographer Julian Rad, for this absolutely heartbreaking shot of a chubby little hamster in a big hurry! In addition to his trophy, Rad has earned a one week trip to Tanzania. He and the first and second runners-up also received new Nikon cameras.

“You Haven’t Seen Me...” (Silver Runner Up)

Copyright: William Richardson / Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards.

William Richardson took second place for his photo of a very stealthy deer in London’s Richmond Park. If you squint really hard, you might see him.

“Nearly got it” (Bronze Runner Up)

Copyright: Oliver Dreike / Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards.

Third prize went to Oliver Dreike for capturing this very candid moment in the life of a mountain gorilla and proving that one bad habit, at least, is shared among primates.

Other highly commended photos below....

“Dancing Sifaka.” Copyright: Alison Buttigieg/Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards.

“Geronimo.” Copyright: Charlie Davidson/Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards.

Copyright: Graham McGeorge/Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards.

“It’s Not Funny! I’ve Got a Cramp in My Flipper!” Copyright: Julie Hunt/Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards.

“Help Mum!” Copyright: Marc Mol/Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards.

“Sorry, Am I in Your Way?!” Copyright: Megan Lorenz/Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards.

“The Last Tango.” Copyright: Tony Dilger/Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards.

“Did I Really Do That Last Night?” Copyright: Yuzuru Masuda/Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards.

Copyright: Julian Rad/Comedy Wildlife Photograhy Awards.

Copyright: Mohammed Alnaser/Comedy Wildlife Photograhy Awards.

Follow the author @themadstone

Darth Vader is many things—tragic villain, almighty horror, dab hand with a lightsaber—but he is not a dancer. Thanks the the Darth Vader Annual, we now know that this is what happens when you’re stupid enough to insist that the Dark Lord of the Sith take you for a twirl on the dance floor.

Minor spoilers ahead for Darth Vader Annual #1, by Kieron Gillen, Leinil Yu, Jerry Alanguilan, Joe Caramagna, and Jason Keith.

The first Darth Vader “annual” issue is a self-contained story, set in the continuity of, but unrelated to, his ongoing comic series or the Star Wars crossover event Vader Down—which is doing a fantastic job of showing us Darth Vader at his most fearsome.

http://io9.gizmodo.com/the-new-star-w...

The annual issue, which sees Vader sent to a planet called Shu-Torun to question its King as to why the planet isn’t filling its mining quotas to the Empire, is pretty much the same sort of thing. It’s filled with people underestimating Vader, only for him to readily hand their butts to them.

But it also features a snobby courtier demanding that Vader dance with his daughter. Shu-Torun is—according to Vader’s guide on the planet, Princess Trios—an intensely courtly culture, and to refuse the hand of a noblewoman at a dance is a hugely insulting thing to do. It’s also what you do when you’re Darth Vader, because yo, you’re Darth Vader. You don’t dance, you choke people!

Which, coincidentally, is what Vader does when the Duke really insists that Vader dances with his daughter.

Vader flings the Duke up into the air, for the rest of the dancing court to see, and then simply lets him plummet to the floor, giving the best comeback in return:

Moments later, Vader’s interrupted by people trying to kill him—what, you wanted to hear about that bit instead of dancing? Well, go read the comic!—but presumably, the answer to his question would’ve been a resounding no after that.

Christmas Twister, also known as F6: Twister, is a 2012 action thriller that’s awfully light on action and thrills, but positively dripping with terrible acting and even worse special effects. But it does have one huge thing going for it: the (unintentionally) funniest script about bad weather ever written.

http://www.amazon.com/F6-Twister-Cas...

We can forgive its low-rent CG, because everything about this made-for-TV Twister suggests a tightly controlled budget. The biggest name in its cast is Casper Van Dien, looking a bit more weathered than in his Starship Troopers heyday, but still square-jawed and believably heroic. (Look closely and you’ll also spot Steven Williams, forever 21 Jump Street’s Captain Fuller, but also so great on the last season of The Leftovers.) Second-billed is Richard Burgi, whose current gig is General Hospital, but in 2012 was double-hitting on Desperate Housewives and One Tree Hill.

Anyway, the cast is mostly “That Guy from that One Thing” plus people you won’t recognize doing really crappy Southern accents. Van Dien plays Ethan, a serious/academic/scientific meteorologist who works at a college in small-town Texas. Burgi plays Logan, a Ken doll of a TV weatherman who’s planning on ditching Texas for a new job in New York City—and he’d sure like anchorwoman Addison (Victoria Pratt) to go with him. But she’s Ethan’s wife, so that’s awkward.

Into this love triangle of sorts plunges the most powerful tornado ever recorded: a mighty F6, which manifests inconveniently right before Christmas. (Oh! It’s also Ethan and Addison’s anniversary. What are the chances?) Christmas Twister is the kind of disaster movie that prioritizes the personal problems of its characters WAY above the actual disaster—which is why most of the movie is Ethan driving around Texas rounding up his family, while getting CB radio updates from the students he’s left in charge of his weather-prediction equipment back in the lab. That the entire film was apparently filmed on a clear summer day in Los Angeles—with angry clouds and the occasional wan-looking funnel cloud painted into the frame—doesn’t exactly add to the suspense.

The screenplay (clearly written by someone who definitely watched Twister several times for research) is full of laughable moments, suitable for treasuring as part of your holiday festivities, preferably with several gallons of strong drink within arm’s reach. There are multiple moments that unfurl without any set-up to justify the heightened emotions they demand, as when the boy that Ethan’s teenage daughter has a crush on is sucked up into a funnel. Noooooooo, character who had zero lines and was mentioned for the first time just two minutes prior! We’ll miss you forever ... though we have way more feels for the fluffy dog—pictured at the top of this post—that’s left to stoically wander the carefully set-dressed ruins for most of the film.

Interestingly, though, amid its many clunkers, the Christmas Twister script does try to explain its monster storm as best it can, using totally accurate climate science. When Ethan’s student wonders how it’s possible for a tornado outbreak to happen in December, he blames climate change. “Thanks to years of abuse, the environment has finally reached a breaking point,” he says.

(And there is truth to this. See below.)

http://gizmodo.com/9-maps-that-sh...

But murky mentions are made of a blunder Ethan made in the family’s previous home of Chicago—inaccurate forecasting that apparently led to Addison misinforming her viewing public, and an entire town being evacuated, with no storm to back it up. “He’s a crusader, Addie,” Logan says dismissively when Addison wonders if it’s better to follow Ethan’s advice to warn people—and be safe, rather than sorry. “These temperature rises are nothing to be alarmed about. They’re all part of the natural cycle! In fact, some of the hottest days every recorded were in the earliest part of the 20th century.”

Fortunately, that fiendish climate-change denier—his other vile quality is that he keeps a framed photograph of himself on his desk—makes his own forecasting blunder, deciding to report live from the local power plant and being all, “Whut? Why?” when everyone at the station is like, “Get out of there, man!”

That’s basically the face I made the entire time while watching Christmas Twister, which ends with the climactic rescue of Addison and her heavily pregnant co-worker—and a final-scene suggestion that absolutely nothing saves a troubled marriage from crumbling apart better than a big-ass tornado. Happy holidays, y’all!

I was blown away by “Telling the Bees” by T. Kingfisher, newly published in Strange Horizons. To the point where I was kind of amazed that I’d never heard of the author before, until I realized it was a pseudonym for Ursula Vernon.

We already praised Vernon’s “Jackalope Wives,” and her comics work is also phenomenal. But “Telling the Bees”—which is a very short piece, and a pretty quick read—is something else entirely. Here’s how it begins:

There was a girl who died every morning, and it would not have been a problem except that she kept bees.

When her heart had shuddered back to life and she had clawed her way back from the lands beneath, she sat up and drew a long sucking breath into the silent caverns of her lungs. Her first breath was always very loud in the little cottage, but there was no one there to hear it.

She wrapped her robe around her. It was a dressing gown in the morning and winding sheet at night. Then she swung her feet over onto the floor and the cold tiles were no colder than the palms of the newly dead.

Go read the rest over at Strange Horizons. It’s worth it!

Top image: dasWebweib/Flickr.

Charlie Jane Anders is the author of All The Birds in the Sky, coming in January from Tor Books. Follow her on Twitter, and email her.

Even if you don’t end up putting grandma on a hoverboard, this Christmas Eve is set to be the weirdest in recent memory. No jacket required for much of the normally frigid East Coast, while the West Coast freezes its usually balmy buns off? Here’s a look at the meteorological surreality of the December 24 forecast.

First, let’s recap. June was the hottest June on record. July was the hottest July on record. August was the hottest August on record. September was the hottest September on record. October was the hottest October on record. November was the hottest November on record. The month’s not over yet, but in all likelihood, December will be the hottest December on record. And even if it’s not (which it will be), this week in particular is one for the record books, delivering the warmest Christmas Eve ever for much of the country.

A jet stream shoved way north due to warm ocean temps—yes, El Niño-related, but not technically El Niño, yet—has created this weather pattern, nicknamed the Blowtorch. (They could have come up with a much more Christmasy name than that. Chestnut Roaster?) This means the US is essentially split into two very different weather stories. The West Coast is cold (although not record-breakingly cold), while the Eastern half of the country is getting blasted with record-breaking heat.

How hot are we talking? “At least 90 of the 236 weather-observing sites in the Lower 48 states will be within three degrees of a daily record high for December 24,” according to Weather.com. That’s 25 states that will likely see their warmest Christmases ever. Here’s what that looks like.

Most cities on the East Coast will break their high temperature records tomorrow

Boston, New York City, Buffalo, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Atlanta, Raleigh, Tampa, Cleveland, Houston, Orlando... the list goes on and on and on.

All of these cities are forecasted to report record-high temperatures. In some cases, the temperature will be up to 30 degrees higher than average. Which leads to my next map...

Many of those cities will break those records at 12:00 a.m.

This is the craziest part. Not only are all those cities breaking their temperature records, they’re shattering them: Some of the low temperatures will be higher than the record high.

That means most of these places will break the record the minute the clock strikes midnight. And it will only get warmer from there. For example, in Boston, it only needs to hit 61 to break the record. The high is forecasted to be 67.

New York City’s Christmas Eve will be warmer than LA’s Christmas

Just to show you one of the most dramatic East Coast-West Coast comparisons, let’s look at NYC vs. LA. New York City is already seeing one of the largest temperature anomalies on the East Coast: The forecasted low of 59 is higher than the record high of 56 set on Christmas Eve of 1988.

But here’s the crazy part. Los Angeles is only supposed to see a bone-chilling high of 57 on Friday. On Christmas Eve, New York will be warmer than LA will ever get on Christmas. [Update: New York City shattered this record with a warmer low than forecasted, 61 at midnight.]

New York City’s Christmas Eve may be warmer than its 4th of July

Here’s the biggest head scratcher. For at least a few cities, December 24 might bring temperatures higher than the ones recorded on July 4. What!

This one is a might: On July 4, 2015, New York City recorded a high of 75 degrees. The forecasted high for Christmas Eve is 72 or 73... it’s a bit of a stretch, but not completely unlikely. It’s like Christmas in July, but July in Christmas.

There is a very good chance the Midwest will have tornadoes

This is the not-so-fun part. With warm unstable weather comes the chance for severe storms. This week, the Midwest and parts of the Southeast are seeing a higher than normal chance of tornadoes. You know, the kinds of things you usually see in summer.

The risk for tornadoes is relatively high but this part of the forecast came true a day early: A tornado watch was issued for several states on December 23, and a series of large tornadoes have been spotted in Tennessee and Mississippi.

Merry Christmas!

Follow the author at @awalkerinLA

Top image WSI via @MJVentrice

Alcohol clocks never caught on with consumers, so they were only marketed for a short time in 1945. Have a look at one in action, and see if you can figure out how it turns.

You might be able to find an old alcohol clock in a museum, or in the home of a very serious clock and watch collector. Some look nicer than others. Some are just turning pinwheels, while others sit beneath elaborate clocks in fancy glass cases. Regardless of ornamentation, they all use the same mechanism to work. Take a look at one in action and take a guess.

Soothing, isn’t it? This isn’t an example of a classic alcohol clock. Instead of the coil, the first clocks had light bulbs. The bulbs served the same function as the coil, though, in that they heated up the glass vial closest to them. As they heated the vial, the air in it would expand, forcing the alcohol up, through the central tube, and into the top vial. When the vial on top got sufficiently heavy, and the one below sufficiently light, gravity would cause the vial to turn and the clock hands to move forward.

This made for an impractical clock. A lot of things had to keep in a stead state for it to work. The temperature of the light bulb couldn’t change and the vials had to remain air-tight. It didn’t catch on, but it’s a very neat mechanism.

Top Image: Benjamin Hauber

America’s favorite hipster chocolate brand was thrust into an uncomfortable spotlight last week, when several detailed investigations cast doubt on pretty much every aspect of the Mast Brothers’ Brooklyn-flavored, ingenuity-fueled origin story. But for chocolate lovers, the allegation that matters most is this one: the Mast Brothers sold $10 craft chocolate bars under the pretense that they were “single origin,” when, in fact, some of that chocolate was re-melted factory stock.

Quartz has a great run-down on the details of the scandal, which surfaced last week after a Dallas food blog ran a four-part series titled “Mast Brothers: What Lies Beneath the Beards.” I’d recommend checking out both of those stories for all the deets on how we’ve apparently been had by the lumberjack-styled makers of a dubiously artisanal candy bar.

But if you’re not a chocolate aficionado, one question might linger in your mind even after digesting all of this: what the heck is “single origin” chocolate—and why should I care?

The Good and the Bad

As a concept, single origin is simple enough: chocolate is made from cacao harvested in one particular region. Just as grapes grown in different climates and soils produce wines with distinct flavors, cacao tastes different depending on where it’s grown. Sourcing from a single origin allows a craft maker to have much more control over the taste and quality of his or her final product, and to build a catalog of flavors that are truly one-of-a-kind.

Single origin also helps ensure integrity in the supply chain. Since the early 20th-century, chocolate from the world’s largest companies, including Nestle, Hershey, and Mars, has been tainted by the specter of child and slave labor. It’s a problem that refuses to go away. The large cacao operations in West Africa and South America also take an environmental toll, as farmers will clear-cut rainforest to plant vast monocultures of the prized tree. If you’re a chocolate-maker, the best way to ensure that both humans and the environment are being treated with respect is to know exactly where your cacao comes from. That’s an idea many craft chocolatiers now embrace, and it’s one that the Mast Brothers have definitely helped broadcast to the public.

A worker holds a handful of dry cacao beans at the Agropampatar chocolate farm Co-op in El Clavo, Venezuela. Image Credit: Fernando Llano/AP

Of course, from a business perspective there are downsides to being socially responsible. Not surprisingly, it’s a lot more expensive to purchase cacao from trusted growers versus a shadowy supply chain whose sole aim is to maximize profits. But for fledgling chocolate makers, there’s an even bigger problem: it’s very difficult to make a single-origin bar in a small, craft operation, that stacks up to what large companies can mass-produce in factories—in terms of flavor, texture and consistency. Sure, Cadbury may not be known for the individuality of its chocolate bars, but if there’s one thing the company does offer, it’s a flawless texture and utterly dependable, enjoyable flavor.

That’s why, when craft chocolatiers are first getting started, they’ll sometimes beef up their product with mass-produced filler.

Single Origin, Really?

Which brings us to the Mast Brothers kerfluffle. In the early days of their operation, evidence suggests that Rick and Michael Mast cut their home-brewed, bean-to-bar chocolate with factory stock bought from the French manufacturer Valrhona. It’s even possible that some of their early bars were 100% Valrhona. More problematically, it seems that the pair attempted to obscure this fact, always claiming that they made their chocolate from scratch. (To be fair, the Mast Brothers recently admitted that they did experiment with melting industrial chocolate in the beginning. This point is now elaborated in a post on their website.)

But for years, the chocolatiers did not make this clear, and according to some accounts, they went as far as to mis-label bars single origin. As Quartz explains, it was the high quality of the Mast Brothers’ early chocolate bars that caused other chocolate makers to raise eyebrows:

In the chocolate community, the suspicions of remelting began early. The Mast Brothers’ original bars had a taste and texture that was too much like the palate-friendly kind available at the drug store to be truly “bean to bar,” Scott explains in his first post. Bean-to-bar chocolate has a distinctive taste that, like wine, ties it to its origin, and craft chocolate makers use minimal processing to retain that taste.

“I was confident that they did not make the chocolate at that time,” Aubrey Lindley, co-owner of craft chocolate shop Cacao in Portland, Oregon told Scott and confirmed to Quartz. “It had an overly refined, smooth texture that is a trademark of industrial chocolate. No small equipment was achieving a texture like that. It also tasted like industrial chocolate: balanced, flavorless, dark roast, and vanilla.”

According to Scott, the first-name-only blogger who broke the story earlier this month, when the Mast Brothers transitioned away from mass-produced chocolate, the quality of their product took a nose-dive. Earlier this year, Slate published an article detailing the gripes of the chocolate-making community with Mast, which basically boil down to a simple conclusion: the Mast Brothers’ chocolate is not all that great. It’s chalky and off-balance—at times, insultingly bitter.

The Mast Brothers are by no means the only company that’s struggled to perfect both flavor and texture as a bean-to bar chocolate maker. In fact, the more details about the company’s origins unfold, the more their story seems illustrative of the challenge facing all single origin, craft chocolate companies.

Which brings us back to the original question: is single-origin chocolate better? That depends on your tastes—do you like bold, individual flavors, or dependable, comfort desserts? It also depends on your budget and your values.

What is clear is that it’s probably not a great idea to obfuscate the truth about where your product comes from—especially when your brand is staked on authenticity.

[Quartz | Dallasfood.org | New York Times]

Follow the author @themadstone

Top image: Cacao from the Bolivar, Los Ríos and Guayas provinces of Ecuador, via Ministerio de Turismo Ecuador / Flickr

Raymond McCarthy Bergeron’s candy-colored short film re÷belief has won a huge array of festival awards, and it’s not hard to see why—it’s inventive and pulses with an unusual rhythm. This is due to the process he used to make it: 3D printed zoetropes.

Here’s how the filmmaker, who created the film for his graduate thesis at Rochester Institute of Technology’s School of Film and Animation, explains the meaning behind his method (and check out behind-the-scenes production stills on his blog):

Much of this film is a personal story that recalls nine very specific instances of my life. These are memories that have repeatedly haunted me throughout my youth and adulthood. The memories regularly reflected times of bliss mixed with sullen, miserable moments.

Ultimately, the story thread focuses on cycles, and choosing 3D printed zoetropes as the metaphor and medium within a short film seemed perfect to share a story about childhood, religion and relationships. After all, ‘Zoe’ translates as ‘life’ and ‘trope’ is a reoccurring motif. 3D Printing, handcrafting and manufacturing these zoetropes are physical representations that impart a physicality within this film.

It is hoped that while watching this experimental, filmed animation, the viewer would allow their own life experiences, moments and feelings to emerge and discover the resonances of the film’s themes within their own memories or consciousness.

It feels like it took forever for the LEGO Ideas Doctor Who set to arrive in stores, but—in this case especially—time is relative. It’s here now at least, and it’s fantastic.

Thanks goodness for senior video game artist Andrew Clark, who combined his love for both LEGO bricks and Time Lords into one wonderful pitch to LEGO Ideas, the site where fan creations have a very slim chance at becoming official play sets. Clark submitted his work in February of 2014. It gained the 10,000 votes needed to be considered by the LEGO Ideas board, and one year later it was approved.

The set was released earlier this month, and last night I finally got a chance to put all of the pieces together.

It was a relatively easy build, as many LEGO Ideas sets are. Knowing popular entertainment properties will likely draw in those outside of traditional LEGO fandom, the instruction manual gives short, concise steps to putting together the TARDIS control room and the iconic blue box itself. The only trouble I ran into was with dark blue Police Box bits blending together in the booklet—that’s probably an issue with my eyes than anything else.

The set comes with four minifigures and two Daleks, which are essentially mini-kit builds.

We’ve got the 12th and current Doctor, Peter Capaldi, whose LEGO hair does not do him justice. The 11th Doctor, Matt Smith, is looking dapper in tiny form. Their mutual companion Clara is present—sadly the set does not come with a crow made of smoke to remedy that.

And of course it wouldn’t be Doctor Who without two of the series’ most frightening enemies.

Well, relatively frightening. The Daleks have seen better days.

But the Weeping Angel, the horrific statues introduced in the new series that can only move when you’re not looking at them...

...they’re nothing to worry about, as long as you don’t turn your back on them.

The shows’ most enduring star fared quite well in the transition from real thing to brick creation.

More than just a big blue box, the Doctor’s time and space machine is the centerpiece of the set. It can open up, revealing a hidden passenger:

Or it can connect to the interior playset:

Like man fans I would have preferred the TARDIS interior be contained inside the TARDIS where it belongs, but this is the next best thing. (And this is the very best thing.)

The time rotor is impressively blue and glowy.

The console itself was the most intricate part of the build, but the results are fantastic.

They even managed to work in the door opening mechanism, which is good, because otherwise they’d all be trapped.

There are even consoles along the railings, so Matt Smith has something to do while everyone else is off saving the universe.

There’s only one real problem with the LEGO Ideas Doctor Who set—there’s only one of them. Sure, they packed two of the 13 Doctors in it, but if two were enough the show wouldn’t have made it our of the 70s. LEGO has all of the designs—just check out the LEGO Dimensions Doctor Who set. Perhaps if this $60 box of parts sells well enough we’ll see more.

To contact the author of this post write to fahey@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter@bunnyspatial.

Watching this video might make you want to go back to Jack Black’s school of rock. Here’s Black, and Tenacious D bandmate Kyle Gass, performing one of the greatest movie themes of all time: Queen’s “Flash Gordon.” Aaaaaaaa!

[Thanks, Tim!]

Contact the author at charliejane@io9.com and follow her on Twitter @CharlieJane

Lawrence Kasdan talks about how the Han Solo spinoff movie will approach the character. Peter Capaldi ponders his future on Doctor Who. Stefan Kapicic talks playing Colossus in Deadpool. Mark Ruffalo teases a new characterization for the Hulk. Plus, what’s to come on Galavant and iZombie. Spoilers!

Han Solo Anthology

Lawrence Kasdan says the spinoff film will delve into who Han is as a person, rather than his specific history:

I think it won’t be the thing you’re worried about. It will not be like, ‘Here is where he was born and this is how he was raised.’ I think what it will be is, ‘What was he like ten years earlier?’ Ya know, maybe a little earlier, you’ll get a glimpse but… what formed the person we meet in the cantina? It is not so much about his specific history. It is about what makes a person like that? He’s not fully formed in the cantina! Kurosawa once said ‘the heroes are the ones that are still changing and the villains are locked and petrified into what they are’ and Harrison embodies in Force Awakens someone that’s still not settled on who he is.

[Empire Film Podcast via MakingStarWars and Slashfilm]

Star Wars Episode VIII

Greg Grunberg, longtime collaborator with JJ Abrams (and the actor behind X-Wing recon pilot Snap Wexley in The Force Awakens) says that the director now regrets his decision not to stay on and direct the next mainline movie:

He read [the script] and said something he never, ever says. He said: ‘It’s so good, I wish I were making it.’ He may have said something one time on Lost, with Damon [Lindelof, the co-creator], but I never hear him express regret like that.

[The Washington Post via Vulture]

Thor: Ragnarok

Mark Ruffalo discusses the evolution and merging of the Hulk and Bruce Banner’s personalities, and where that may go in his next appearance:

It’s very subtle, but the Banner/Hulk consciousness is beginning to meld a little bit. Who decided to leave [in ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’]? Was it Banner or Hulk? It’s not really in the mythology of Hulk up until that moment to be that conscious and pro-active. It’s interesting, right?

I think it’s really exciting where we could go with it. Now I feel like we’re kind of in No Man’s Land. I mean, the comic books have kind of broached the subject, but we’re moving away from the traditional Hulk/Banner relationship. We’re starting to mess with it a little bit.

[CBR]

Deadpool

Entertainment Weekly has an new interview with Stefan Kapicic, who plays Colossus in the film, plus a new picture of the Mutant:

Tim Miller’s idea of Colossus was to be bigger and stronger than everyone else, so for the motion capture they needed an extremely tall man (I’m 6’4”, but he wanted Colossus to be over 7’, so they used a stunt-double to recreate his height, and he did very good job there). Tim also wanted Colossus to sound as close as possible to the comic book character’s background, so he had me to come in, since my voice was what he envisioned for Colossus who has an authentic Russian accent. My character’s voice gives him the past history as Piotr Nikolayevich Rasputin once you hear him speak. This made him the most authentic to the original idea of the comic book character.

The Flash

Matt Letscher has been confirmed to reprise his role as the non-Harrison Wells form of Eobard Thawne, AKA The Reverse Flash. Letscher will return in the second season’s eleventh episode, the aptly titled “The Reverse Flash Returns”—implying that this is indeed (somehow) the character who was erased from the timeline at the end of the first season, rather than a Thawne from an alternate Earth. [CBR]

The X-Files

David Duchovny discusses his favorite episode from the new series:

For me in terms of being an actor, Darin [Morgan]’s scripts — which were funny and whimsical yet very smart and rigorous — were always challenging and fun. And it’s the same this time with [the Morgan written/directed “Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster,” airing Feb. 1]. Chris [Carter] really took care of the scope and the action, [but] action’s less interesting for me to play as an actor. You’ve got to be there at night, basically. And you’ve got to run to something or from something. [Laughs] That’s not a knock on Chris’ writing. But Darin’s episodes were always very verbally, often comically driven and thematically twisted. And it’s the same this time.

[TV Line]

Supergirl

Here’s a brief new press release for “Childish Things”, highlighting the debut of the comics villain Toyman:

“Childish Things” – Kara does her best to support Winn when his father, the supervillain Toyman, breaks out of prison and seeks out his son for unknown reasons. Also, Cat offers Lucy a job at CatCo and Alex asks Hank to use his powers to help uncover Maxwell Lord’s plans, on SUPERGIRL.

[Spoiler TV]

Shadowhunters

Actor Katherine McNamara briefly discusses the setup for her character, Clary:

We spend the majority of the season on the quest to find Jocelyn and to try to get her back, and to save her from whence she has been kidnapped.

[Ksite TV]

Doctor Who

Peter Capaldi hints that he’s nearer the end of his time on the show than the beginning:

This could be my final year – it’s terrifying. I love Doctor Who but it can be quite an insular world and I do want to do other things. There will come a time when this is over. But I knew that when I started. I was thinking about my regeneration scene from the outset. That’s my terrible melancholic nature. When you accept the job you know there’ll come a day, inevitably, when you’ll be saying goodbye.

[The Telegraph]

Nardole meets a rather grumpy Doctor in a new clip from tomorrow’s special, “The Husbands of River Song”.

iZombie

Here’s a gallery of new pictures from the tenth episode of season two, “Method Head”—more at the link. [Spoiler TV]

Galavant

And finally, here’s a few pictures from “Aw, Hell, The King”—you can find more at the link. [Spoiler TV]

Additional reporting by Gordon Jackson and Charlie Jane Anders. Image: The Flash.

If a UK intelligence agency’s holiday puzzle wasn’t enough to keep you entertained, how about something a little more difficult? This crossword puzzle is based on the computer science language of regular expressions, and it should keep you busy for... some time.

Regular expressions are a sequence of characters that define a search pattern. They’re what are normally used to define processes like “search and replace” that most of us take for granted. But if you’re nerdy enough you can actually write them from scratch. Or, uh, use them to solve this crossword puzzle.

You can fill in an interactive version of the puzzle, that was put together by Greg Grothaus, here. Good luck!

[Gregable]

Whether intentional, by coincidence, or because the plot points are obvious continuations of the established characters, there are a number of things in The Force Awakens that tread over ground the old Expanded Universe also walked. Major spoilers ahead.

The New Republic and the Remainder of the Empire

As in the original-now-Legends Expanded Universe, the Rebel Alliance of the original trilogy becomes the New Republic. Which makes sense, since it turns them from a group of freedom fighters into a “government.” In both cases, the change follows Battle of Endor (i.e. Return of the Jedi) and Mon Mothma becomes the political leader.

Both the Imperial Remnant and the First Order are the results of the Empire losing to the New Republic and being forced to the fringes of the galaxy. In The Force Awakens, the First Order is the militant splinter faction of the Empire, with the original Empire relegated to a “rump state.” In the Expanded Universe, the Imperial Remnant is what remains of the Empire decades into the conflict with the Rebels/New Republic. Like the Empire in The Force Awakens, it has peace treaties with the New Republic and has a faction of hardliners still prevalent.

And, semi-hilariously, semi-horrifically, both iterations of the New Republic don’t even make it one generation before crumbling into dust. At least The Force Awakens lost to a superweapon wielded by the Imperials and not an invading hoard of fanatically religious bug people.

Starkiller Base

Speaking of the superweapon, Starkiller Base has more than a passing resemblance to another EU nightmare: the Sun Crusher. First, there’s the weird compulsion the Empire seems to have towards planet-killers. Second, both of them destroy suns to do their jobs. In both cases, the result is a whole system being killed in one fell swoop, rather than a single planet.

Weirdly, as much as the Sun Crusher is a ridiculous ship, it has less in common with the Death Star than Starkiller Base does. Starkiller is much bigger than the Death Star, but it’s still got the one soft spot which can be targeted. The Sun Crusher isn’t a base, it’s a fighter. And it’s made out of an indestructible material. The Sun Crusher, and its related books, isn’t good. In this case, hewing closer to the formula actually worked in The Force Awakens’ favor. Where trying to fix all the problems with the Death Star ruined all the fun.

A Son of Han and Leia Turns to the Dark Side

Kylo Ren manages to combine a bunch of elements from the Expanded Universe. His original name, Ben, was given to Luke’s kid in the books. (Which, honestly, makes more sense.) In the books, Han and Leia also send their kids away “for their own good.” In The Force Awakens it’s for training. In the books, it’s to protect them from kidnapping attempts.

In the books, Jacen Solo turned into a Sith under the influence of Lumiya, who trained under both Darth Vader and the Emperor. Jacen Solo was told he had to sacrifice his parents in order to become a true Sith Master. He wasn’t entirely sure he loved his parents anymore, and ended up seeing the death of his aunt—Mara Jade Skywalker—as his sacrifice.

Kylo Ren’s got a lot of that same plot in him. He’s the Solo son who goes dark. Like Jacen, he started out training under Luke Skywalker. Like Jacen, Ren’s lured to the dark side and is under the sway of another. And like Jacen, Ren ends up cementing his turn by murdering a family member. Jacen chose the name Darth Caedus, while Ben Solo chose Kylo Ren.

There’s a lot of speculation over Rey’s family—whether she’s a Solo, a Skywalker, or just specially Force-powerful. For those familiar with the EU, it’s really hard to not assume some kind of familiar relationship between Ren and Rey. When Rey fought him and won in The Force Awakens, that was reminiscent of Jaina and Jacen Solo’s last fight in the books. Jaina is Jacen’s twin.

Timeline-wise, Rey can’t be Ren’s twin. She’s nineteen and Ren is around 30. And Han and Leia don’t react to her strong enough for her to be their daughter. But something about that theory feels right, if only because of the baggage left behind by the EU.

Luke’s Jedi Classes End In Tragedy

It’s nothing new for Luke to lose a trainee to the Dark Side. It happens a lot in the books, since it’s always a fun dramatic device. Which is likely why we got it again in The Force Awakens. And Luke does spend a significant period of time searching for information about the Jedi, since most of it was lost in the Emperor’s purge.

In the EU, Luke lost around half of his first Jedi class to the Dark Side. They were attacked by the most powerful turned one. Over the years, it happened fairly frequently that Jedi wandered to the Dark Side and back. It’s in-keeping with the EU characterization of Luke’s Jedi training that he lost his nephew to the Dark Side. And so is his search for information on the history of the Jedi.

Lightsabers

Anakin Skywalker’s lightsaber, lost by Luke in the battle with Darth Vader on Cloud City, reappears in The Force Awakens. How it ended up in the hands of Maz Kanata is still a mystery. In the books, its reappearance is well-explained. The Emperor recovered it (and Luke’s hand) and stored them in his secret treasure trove. Luke gave it to Mara Jade.

We also see that the lightsaber that Kylo Ren has made for himself has a weak blade, which is much softer looking around the edges. We know that’s because he made it without complete knowledge. That’s also something we’ve seen in the EU, with the most memorable example being the lightsaber of Tenel Ka. She didn’t construct hers with care, and the blade failed during a training exercise, costing Tenel Ka her arm. The way Ren’s lightsaber looks, I half expected a similar thing to happen to him.

Contact the author at katharine@io9.com.

While it might be Christmas Eve, for Deadpool, today is Trailer Eve—and ahead of the full event, Fox have released a suitably festive teaser to celebrate. Seems like Santa’s got some new competition in the “Jolly guy in a red suit” department.

While the festive trappings—the music, the rhyming narration, and the snow-strewn title cards—are nice and all, there’s actually some intriguing little snippets of new footage, giving us a hint at the film’s story (and some unfortunate times for Morena Baccarin’s character, Vanessa) and a wonderful moment with Colossus that serves as the teaser’s sting.

But yeah, you’re mainly here for some festive Deadpool weirdness. Oh, and the way it was revealed, which was by Hugh Jackman tweeting out this:

Oh my. Let’s start the “OMG WOLVERINE CAMEO” rumors right now! Oh wait, they’ve been happening for ages already? Of course they have.

The full second trailer for Deadpool will be available online tomorrow, the bloodiest Christmas gift of all.

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For a limited time, Amazon is taking 75% off any digital movie rental with promo code MOVIE75OFF. The promotion is limited to U.S. accounts, and you can only use the code once, but otherwise, it seems to be clear of any major restrictions. Let us know in the comments what you rented! [75% off Any Movie Rental with Code MOVIE75OFF]

Note: This deal is really confusing and poorly managed, but it does work! To use the code, click the “More Purchase Options” link on the movie page, and enter the code prior to renting. The price on the Amazon page won’t change, and Amazon’s order history page actually told me it charged me full price when I tested it. However, my credit card statement showed the 75% discount, and Amazon support will always be able to help you out if you’re having trouble.

If you still have people on your Christmas shopping list, you could either go to a store today and fight the Christmas Eve crowds, or you could get them a discounted magazine subscription from Amazon, starting at just $5. [Magazine Subscriptions Gold Box]

It turns out that Home Alone did terrible things to young Kevin McCallister’s mind, but don’t let that ruin the movie for you. [Home Alone: 25th Anniversary Ultimate Collector’s Edition, $27]

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Amazon has kicked off their annual holiday ebook sale, with over $1,000 titles discounted by up to 85%. This sale usually goes live on Christmas day, so check back tomorrow for the possibility of even more deals. [Kindle Holiday Sale]

It’s not as fast or as powerful as an iPad, and its 1280x800 screen is far from spectacular. But if you just want to binge on Jessica Jones while you cook dinner, it’s tough to beat an internet-connected 10” screen for this price. [Samsung - Galaxy Tab E - 9.6” - 16GB, $150]

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For a limited time, RadioShack (that’s not a typo) is selling a new Apple TV for $120, or $30 off its MSRP. They’ll also toss an HDMI cable in for good measure. Be sure to check out Gizmodo’s review if you’re on the fence. [Apple TV Next Generation - 32GB and HDMI Cable Bundle, $120]

Amazon just kicked off their end-of-year digital game sale, with big discounts on downloadable PC, PS4, and Xbox One titles. Highlights include Cities: Skylines for $12, Bioshock Triple Pack for $14, and Civilization V Complete for $13, but be sure to head over to Amazon to see all of the available discounts. [Amazon]

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• Sony DSCHX90V/B Digital Camera with 3-Inch LCD (Black) with $50 Giftcard ($398) | Amazon
• Apple® iPad Mini 2 16GB ($194) | Target
• LG - 60” Class 4K Smart TV ($900) | Best Buy
• BL SP150 10” 150-Watt Powered Subwoofer ($80) | Newegg

Home

• Up to 50% off select outdoor gear, clothing, and accessories | Amazon | Today only
• Etekcity Lasergrip 774 Non-contact Digital Infrared Thermometer ($14) | Amazon
• KitchenAid - Tilt-Head Stand Mixer ($190) | Best Buy
• Panasonic KX-HN6099W 2 Camera Home Surveillance System ($100) | Woot
• Radiant 2-Person Hemlock Infrared Sauna ($1100) | Woot
• Refurb Cuisinart GR4N 5-in-1 Griddler ($50) | eBay
• Pioneer Pet SmartCat The Ultimate Scratching Post ($35) | Amazon
• Etekcity S9 130ft./40meter Distance Measurer Meter Kit ($37) | Amazon | Use code DISTAOF6
• Etekcity MSR-P600 Autoranging Digital Multimeter ($15) | Amazon | Use code 5MSRP600
• Multipurpose Herb Shears with 5 Stainless Steel Blades and Cover ($7) | amazon | Use code 8SX8SZ26
• Attmu Resistance Bands Tubes for Fitness Training, Includes 5 Best Quality ANTI-SNAP Bands ($16) | Amazon | Use code I3RQPBDY
• Husky 111 Piece Mechanics Tool Set ($50) | Home Depot

Gaming

• Star Wars Battlefront ($40) | Best Buy
• Guitar Hero Live ($70) | Best Buy
• Vertical Stand Cooling Fan with Dual Charger Station for PS4 DS4 Accessories ($20) | eBay
• Razor Black Label R-Tec Kick Scooter ($31) | Amazon

Media

• 20+ giftable magazine subscriptions starting at just $5 | Amazon | Today only
• Home Alone: 25th Anniversary Ultimate Collector’s Edition ($27) | Amazon | Today only

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