Talk of a World War Z sequel has been lurching around Hollywood nearly since the hit zombie film’s 2013 release. But after new scriptwriter Dennis Kelly was brought in to work with director J.A. Bayona, the latter signed to direct Jurassic World 2. Now producer-star Brad Pitt has a reunion he’s hoping to make happen.
That would be with David Fincher, who has directed Pitt in three features to date, two of which were really great (guess which): Se7en, Fight Club, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
Unnamed sources told Variety that Fincher and Pitt have recently met to discuss the project, and that “the talks were initially lukewarm but now negotiations are much further down the road.” Which is nearly as vague as this bit of non-information: “Plot details are unknown for the sequel, other than it still being set during a zombie apocalypse.”
Well, World War Z didn’t really take much from the Max Brooks source book (a shame, since it’s excellent) so that’s one direction it could go. But the prospect of getting Fincher behind the camera for any movie is always an intriguing one. And given his dexterity with terror and suspense, a David Fincher zombie movie is absolutely something we’d like to see.
Piltdown Man cranium and mandible as reconstructed by Dr Arthur Smith Woodward (L) and Professor Arthur Keith (R). (Image: Natural History Museum, London)
Piltdown Man is one of the most famous scientific hoaxes in history. A new paper in Royal Society Open Science provides compelling evidence that there was just one forger, rather than many. Also, the bones used to create the fakes came from a single orang-utan specimen and at least two human skulls.
“The people at the Natural History Museum [in London] have never stopped looking at Piltdown Man,” lead author Isabel de Groote, a paleoanthropologist at Liverpool John Moores University in the U.S., told Gizmodo. As new technologies become available, the specimens are re-examined, in hopes of shedding light on the remaining mysteries. This time around, the analyses included CT scanning, ancient DNA analysis, spectroscopy, and radiocarbon dating.
When paleontologist Arthur Smith Woodward and lawyer and amateur antiquarian Charles Dawson announced their discovery of unusual fossils in a gravel pit near the town of Piltdown in December 1912, it caused an immediate sensation. The two men claimed to have excavated human skull fragments and a distinctly ape-like jawbone with two worn molar teeth, along with some stone tools and the fossilized remains of animals.
Since the bones were found next to each other in the pit, surely, the men argued, they all came from a single creature—technically called Eoanthopus dawsoni, but soon nicknamed Piltdown Man. Many hailed the find as the long-sought missing link proving that man and apes were evolutionarily linked.
Woodward and Dawson presented a reconstruction of what such a skull might have looked like to the Geological Society of London that same month, speculating that the individual to whom it belonged must have lived 500,000 ago. More such fossils were excavated at the original Piltdown site over the next few years, including a canine tooth and an oddly curved slab of bone resembling a cricket bat.
Dawson died in 1916, but the year before, he wrote to Woodward claiming he had found three more fossil fragments (including a molar) from another skull at a second site just a couple of miles from the first one. The Piltdown 2 site was never found, and Woodward didn’t present the new fragments to the society until several months after Dawson’s death.
There were certainly skeptics within the scientific community when the discovery was announced, but eventually Piltdown Man was accepted as the real deal. It took 40 years before a team of researchers at the British Museum uncovered the fakes in 1953, using the then-new technique of fluorine dating. They found that the bones were not all the same age. The upper skull was 50,000 years old, and the ape-like jawbone just a few decades old, most likely taken from a modern orang-utan. There was also evidence that the jawbone had been stained with potassium dichromate to give it an older, reddish-brown appearance.
So it was clearly a hoax. But was Dawson the sole perpetrator, or did he have help from a fellow forger? Or was it someone else entirely? Woodward, at least, seems to have a been a true believer, continuing the search for more such fossils until his death in the 1940s.
Image: De Groote et al./RSOS
One suspect was Martin Hinton, a British Museum staffer who didn’t like Dawson and may have nursed a grudge. Some surmised he may have planted additional fossils after the first “discovery,” as a way to discredit his adversary—or at least let Dawson know he was onto him. Still others have argued that a young French priest named Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who was present when the canine tooth was found, may have planted that particular artifact. Even Sherlock Holmes creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle made the list of suspects, since he lived near Piltdown, was a paleontology buff, and was rather hostile to the theory of evolution.
This latest analysis exonerates the usual suspects and pins the blame on Dawson alone, since the forger’s modus operandi was so consistent among all the fakes, and a limited number of specimens were used to create all the fake fossils. He brought the first fossils to Woodward, and nobody ever uncovered a new specimen when he wasn’t present at the site. No more Piltdown fossils were found after Dawson’s death in 1916. He had the necessary access and connections, and he knew that the British scientists would expect to see “a large brain, ape-like face and jaws, and heavily fossilized materials that indicated great antiquity” in any missing link, the authors write.
And Dawson turned out to be a prolific forger—at least 38 fake finds, according to de Groote, including a stone axe, a fraudulent flint mine at the Lavant Caves, and what he claimed was one of the first bronze statuettes linked to Roman times. “He clearly had been doing this for a very long time,” she said.
Not coincidentally, the paper’s been published on the 100th anniversary of Dawson’s death (August 10, 1916).
CT scans showing the presence of a dental putty used to piece together the fake specimen. (Image: De Groote et al/RSOS)
The CT scans and DNA sequencing analysis show quite clearly that the teeth and jawbone came from a single orang-utan, most likely a relative of the apes found in Borneo. Two or three human skulls were also used in the forgery, likely dating to the medieval period.
There was gravel from Piltown in the bones and teeth, and also a kind of putty—what a dentist would have used at the time to make a white filling. The putty had been used to fill holes and repair broken bones, and there was evidence that the molars had been removed and then re-set in the jaw. This clearly links the fossils found at the Piltdown 1 and Piltdown 2 sites.
So is the case now closed? Not quite. At least one paleoanthropologist isn’t ready to exclude the possibility that Dawson had an accomplice—namely, the French priest, Teilhard de Chardin, who had a reputation as being a prankster, according to Francis Thackery to the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa. “My view is that Teilhard was an advisor to Dawson and that the motive behind the forgery was that it was initially a joke against [Smith] Woodward,” he told Science magazine.
CT scans showed the presence of Piltdown gravel in all the specimens. (Image: De Groote et al./RSOS
There is also still the question of why the canine is a darker reddish-brown than the other bones. And where did Dawson get his putty? Plus, the ancient DNA analysis of the human bones came up empty, as did the radiocarbon dating, although they may be as much as 1000 years old. De Groote said they opted not to go deeper into the bone to remove more sample material for a re-test. “We decided, let’s leave them and maybe several years from now, other new technologies will come around,” she said. “Although fake, the fossils do have cultural value. They’re almost antiques and we don’t want to destroy them.”
The paper is surprisingly readable, due in large part to de Groote’s desire to “write the story rather than a [typical] science paper,” thereby providing a unifying framework for the different analyses. Because let’s face it: it’s one hell of a story. And in this case, that story enhances, rather than detracts from, the scientific content.
There’s even a section speculating about Dawson’s possible motivations, based on historians’ analysis of the many letters and papers Dawson left behind. “That’s the hardest thing for me as a scientist, to do,” de Groote admitted. “I look at numbers and images, I say this is right or wrong.” The question of why is much more difficult to answer, but Dawson certainly had high ambitions for his scientific career, complaining in a 1909 letter that he was still waiting for that one “big ‘find’” that would cement his reputation and earn him a fellowship with the Royal Society.
Dawson died before any such election could take place, but he fooled a great many smart people for several decades. The authors write that this should serve as a warning to not let our preconceived notions cloud our view of the evidence. “It was a lesson we had to learn the hard way,” said de Groote. “I just hope it doesn’t happen again.”
This is a surprise to absolutely no one who has followed Bryan Fuller’s comments about Star Trek in the past, but a ton of outlets are now confirming that the new show will have a female lead.
Both TV Line and Variety have sources saying that CBS is still in the process of casting the role for Star Trek: Discovery, which is set to debut on CBS All Access early next year. Deadline goes a bit further, saying that the character will “likely” be nonwhite.
All of this is in keeping with everything showrunner Bryan Fuller has said in the past. At one point, before he was in charge, he said he wanted to cast Angela Bassett as a Starfleet captain. And Rosario Dawson as the first officer. He’s also promised, repeatedly, to keep the progressive history of the show alive.
This is everything we could want from Bryan Fuller’s Star Trek and we hope for even more information in the coming months.
Update 8:30: At the TCA panel for the show, as reported by TV Line, Fuller confirmed more details about the new show. For one, there will be “few more aliens than you normally” have in Star Trek. For another, he confirmed the speculation that the show would take place before The Original Series but after Enterprise. Fuller added that there would “absolutely” be a gay character and more sex than seen on one of these shows. He also strongly hinted that Amanda Grayson, Spock’s human mother, would show up.
IGN clarifies the timeline somewhat, saying that Discovery would be set about ten years before Kirk and co.’s five year mission. Also, the new main character is female, but isn’t a captain. So could be getting the “lower decks” show—i.e. one about Starfleet officers that aren’t the bridge crew—that’s been rumored? Seems to be the case.
When we first heard—thanks to the 2014 Sony hack—that a crossover between the Men in Black and 21 Jump Street movie universes was in the works, we laughed. Hard. But then, when the studio moved forward with it, we really started to like the idea. A lot. How can they take it away from us now?
They can, because that’s show biz. The movie—which had a title (MIB 23) and a prospective director (The Muppets’ James Bobin), not to mention a literal galaxy of plot possibilities—may never happen, according to Jump Street star Jonah Hill, the guy who came up with the insane crossover idea in the first place.
Feast thine eyes and weep at what he told the Toronto Sun:
“It’s too complicated,” Hill concedes. “They’re trying to make all the deals, but it’s kind of impossible with all the Men in Black stuff. The Jump Street films were so fun to make and the whole joke of them was they were making fun of remakes and sequels and reboots and then now it’s become a giant sequel, reboot. It’s almost become what we were making fun of and it’s hard to maintain that joke when it’s so high stakes.”
Still, Hill, who co-wrote both Jump Street films and had the idea for this week’s Sausage Party, hopes Jenko and Schmidt return for a third installment.
“I love Channing and I love (directors) Phil Lord and Chris Miller and I love making those movies — they’re a lot of fun. So I hope it works out.”
3D illustration of gut bacteria. (Image: Anatomy Insider/Shutterstock)
Writer Ed Yong has been chronicling the science of microbial life for years at such outlets as The New York Times, the Atlantic (where he is now a staff writer), and his blog, Not Exactly Rocket Science (currently hosted by National Geographic). Now he has published his first book, I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life, in which he explains how bacteria can tune our immune system, change our response to cancer-fighting drugs, and modify our genetic makeup. Gizmodo caught up with Yong to find out more.
Gizmodo: You’ve written about the human micro biome for several years. At what point did you realize this could be a book?
Ed Yong: It always struck me as an area of science that was still in its infancy, and I didn’t want to write a book where I was overselling a science that was still rapidly developing. But then I realized that the human micro biome was just a very small part of a much bigger picture. Bacteria influence the evolution of animals, like the health of corals, or the ability of beetles to bring down forests, or the capacity for insects to feed off plants. That’s when the idea for the book really came into focus. It would be a natural history book, like the David Attenborough documentaries that I so loved when I was growing up, but shot through a very powerful microscope.
You visited quite a few science labs while researching the book.
Yong: I visited something like six different labs in five days, and a smattering of others, too. By its nature, this topic doesn’t lend itself to firsthand visual reporting, because a lot of the things I’m writing about are invisible to the naked eye, and a lot of the work involves sequencing genes and a lot of computational wizardry. So I wanted to see some squid with my own eyes. [I visited] the San Diego Zoo with Rob Knight, a leader in the micro biome field, and watched as he made his rounds around the zoo, collecting swabs from penguins and armadillos.
And I held a germ-free mouse at Jeff Gordon’s lab at Washington University in St. Louis. They live in these sterile bubbles, with black gloves that protrude into [the habitat]. You stick your hands in the gloves to pick the mice up. It makes you realize just how weird they are. They are like empty silhouettes. They have never seen a bacterium before, they have nothing growing inside them. They’re basically sterile. They look normal, but their immune systems are all messed up. There are all sorts of aspects of their development that don’t tick along in the usual way because they don’t have the right microbes inside them.
I think that’s the essence of the book. It’s about seeing this world that we are very familiar with—animals and zoos—in a different light. This is a book about the hidden aspects to the biology people think they know. But someone who deeply understands the micro biome, they see animal biology very differently.
There are a lot of misconceptions about the micro biome in the general public sphere. What’s your pet peeve?
Yong: There is this assumption that any change to the micro biome is necessarily bad. If you compare the micro biomes of people with inflammatory bowel disease, diabetes, or stroke against those of healthy people, you will almost certainly find changes. Likewise when you look at other things that might affect the micro biome like antibiotics or changes in diet.
Those are largely correlations. The majority of studies can’t tell us whether the changes in the micro biome are actually causing poor health, or are simply a consequence of them. There is evidence of a causal role for some conditions, but it is still not clear whether the micro biome is initiating the problems or simply perpetuating them.
These are the questions that I think get swept under the rug, and they are critically important when we think about trying to manipulate the micro biome in order to improve our health. For example, the idea that people from rural or hunter-gatherer populations have more diverse micro biomes than people in the West. There is a natural assumption that we have caused problems in our micro biome through the trappings of our 21st century lives: drugs, antibiotics, bad food, hand sanitizers, or what have you. It’s an intriguing idea, but to date, it’s still not clear whether loss of diversity is a bad thing, or to what extent it accounts for ailments of modern life, like allergies or autoimmune diseases.
So you’re saying it’s a bit premature for us all to be lining up for fecal transplants.
Yong: It depends. Fecal transplants are the best option for treating infections of Clostridium difficile—this very hardy bacteria that causes recurrent bouts of diarrhea. They have been tested in randomized control trials and they have proven to be much, much better than standard antibiotics. What is much less clear is whether they also work for other conditions. Studies that have looked at fecal transplants for inflammatory bowel disease or metabolic disorders have had less dramatic results. It’s reasonable to think that C. difficile is a special case.
I guess the problem with fecal transplants is that lack of evidence doesn’t stop people from trying them because they are very easy to do. You can do them at home, and there are loads of stories of people who have done so. But there are also stories of parents trying fecal transplants on autistic children. That strikes me as a really bad idea. I understand the strong emotions that fuel choices like that, but these procedures are not without risk.
Ed Yong bonds with a giant tardigrade. (Image: Ed Yong)
Did you get your own micro biome tested?
Yong: I did not, actually. I honestly don’t think those tests can tell me anything of use at the moment. A lot of the methodologies are still being worked out. We know that the micro biome varies a lot over the course of a day, depending on what you eat, where you’ve been, what infections you’ve had, or what drugs you’ve taken. It’s this very dynamic entity.
This field is still in its infancy and that means if you looked at someone’s micro biome, even if you had a perfectly accurate readout, so what? I dispute the idea that you could look at that readout, as the evidence currently stands, and tell me I am at risk of disease X, or whether I need to be doing something differently with my diet. The reason to take part in studies like American Gut is to contribute to science. You greatly add to the number of research subjects that will be represented in future studies.
One of the most fascinating aspects of microbial life is how they use something called horizontal gene transfer to pass genes back and forth.
Yong: This is one of my favorite aspects of biology, because it is so bizarre and counterintuitive. We are used to the idea of parents passing genes onto their kids, but in the world of bacteria and other microbes, genes are just commodities that can be traded from one individual to another. When those microbes form partnerships with animals [including humans], they can shunt those genes over to us. In doing so, they can sometimes transfer incredible abilities, like the ability to make antibodies, or break into plants and cause agricultural disease.
And possibly become a Spiderman?
Yong: Right, one recent version of Spiderman’s origins is horizontal gene transfer. A little bit of spider DNA fuses with his own genome and then, BOOM—he is crawling up walls and shooting webbing from his wrists. It’s kind of the natural version of genetic modification, a very controversial topic. But here it is happening across the tree of life all the time. It’s yet another way in which microbes can influence our lives.
So is our knowledge of the micro biome rewriting the principles of evolution in any way?
Yong: It’s always fashionable for journalists and some scientists to claim that this upends everything Darwin said and revolutionizes our understanding of evolution. But fundamentally this is still Darwinian evolution at its core. It might be faster, and it works in a quantitatively different way, but qualitatively, it’s still the same. What microbes do is allow animals to make use of adaptations that already evolved in bacteria. We either pick up those genes, or we pick up the microbes and form partnerships with those that have abilities that are useful to us. From our point view, that evolution takes place very suddenly, but that’s because a lot of the gradual slow work has already been done by the microbes. It’s still Darwinian evolution at its core, it’s just kind of turbocharged from our perspective.
Mikhail Rakhmatullin and Nuttavut Baiphowongse are two of the artists who worked on Netflix’s Stranger Things. Specifically, on the show’s signature villain.
To see the images in their native resolution, click on the “expand” button in the top-left corner.
Fine Art is a celebration of the work of video game artists, showcasing the best of both their professional and personal portfolios. If you’re in the business and have some concept, environment, promotional or character art you’d like to share, drop us a line!
People have been working to deal with their Stranger Things music urges while waiting for the official soundtrack. A few weeks ago, it was confirmed that it was in the works, but now Pitchforkis reporting dates for the release, and it’s happening soon.
According to a press release, the soundtrack will be split into two volumes. The first is out digitally this Friday, with a CD release on September 16. The second volume will be out a week later on August 19, with a corresponding CD release on September 23 (we know most won’t be bothering with the CD release, but it helps to be thorough).
The score for the Netflix show was created by Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein, of the Austin band S U R V I V E. The Duffer Brothers, the main brains behind the show, were fans of the band’s music and had brought them on for some official work. Dixon stated in a release:
“We discussed having a classic tone and feel to the music for the show but being reserved enough that it wasn’t ’80s cheese, while offering a refreshing quality so that felt modern. This was one of the qualities that drew them to our music in the first place. Having a familiarity with classic synths worked, but with an overall forward thinking approach.”
The synth score has been one of the standouts of the series, which featured a number of standout pieces, including amazing child actors and all that whacky nostalgia. But the music wasn’t just there for reference purposes. It holds its own with low, heart-thumping beats. Listen for yourself.
I cannot bear the secret any longer. Guys, you were right. You who complained that the media was somehow prejudiced against DC movies were right. You who thought that Marvel/Disney was paying off critics to praise their movies while slamming DC’s were right. You were always right. And now I must confess: there is a secret conspiracy to destroy DC’s live-action movies, and I have been a part of it.
I know, it’s horrible. Sickening. Truly, I can barely look at myself in the mirror since I allowed io9 to publish such drivel as Germain Lussier’s Suicide Squad review, which states “basic” “flaws” about the movie that are “in line” with “pretty much every other reviewer on the planet.” They’re all in on it, guys. Let’s face it: Suicide Squad was great. It was flawless. Only a conspiracy unlike the the world had ever seen could possibly create such a cruel, pernicious, sustained, and remarkably consistent false narrative about the film having “tonal” “problems.” What does that even mean, anyway? I don’t know. We made it up.
As so many of you have suspected, we are indeed funded by Marvel/Disney. They spare no expense purchasing our opinions, and we spew hate on DC/WB movies as they hand us our checks. How else do you think that the staff of io9 own Lamborghinis? It’s not like Gawker has a lot of money at the moment! (In all honestly, the fact that all of ours cars’ license plates read “I H8 DC” really should have been a clearly tip-off, guys.)
But we don’t just do it for money. We also do it because we loathe DC and its characters so much. Personally, I hate them because I grew up reading Marvel’s comics instead of DC’s and that was enough to make me want to embark on a secret crusade to ensure DC’s movies fail at the box office. Others have more personal reasons; I know that Geoff Johns cut off Katharine Trendacosta on a freeway once, and she’s been spuriously making up stories about the “insanity” on the Suicide Squad set ever since. One staffer, who shall remain unnamed, watched Dan DiDio gun down his parents in a darkened alley one night; he—or she—swore thereafter to devote his/her life to saying mean things about DC’s films in vengeance.
I am coming clean because I cannot in good conscience pretend that WB/DC’s movies are bad any longer. Suicide Squad isn’t just a good movie, it’s great. Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice made Captain America: Civil War look like a Mary-Kate and Ashley direct-to-VHS piece of crap. And Man of Steel… I loved Man of Steel,especially when Superman murdered that guy! That was my favorite part! And yet I allowed my thoughts to be perverted for large bags with money signs printed on them, with help from my own disgusting pro-Marvel prejudices.
We even stooped so low as to make up problems for DC’s movies to have—they were so flawless, inventing flaws became our main mode of criticizing them. For instance, I’m shocked anyone believed me when I said that Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice had its primary villain piss in a jar and then enact a remarkably complex plan to get it into the hands of a US senator seconds before she was about to be murdered anyway. Or when I said how Pa Kent told young Superman that he should have allowed dozens of children, trapped in a submerged school bus, to drown. What Superman movie would have a scene so preposterous? What movie would do such a thing? It seems impossible to believe, and yet so many people believed me and my fellow paid-off critics—too many people.
I know some of you are upset by this admission, and to you, I can only apologize. To those of you who are confused, because I, like many critics, have periodically raved about things like the most recent Wonder Woman trailer, that Justice League clip from Comic-Con, certain parts of BvS and Suicide Squad, a great deal of DC’s television series, most of their animated series, and so forth… it was all to just throw you off our trail. It was a long con, and I’m ashamed of my part of getting you to fall for it.
So from this point forward, I swear to you readers that I will only tell the truth about DC and Marvel’s assorted live-action film—the truth which we all know to be that DC’s films are perfect masterpieces of superhero cinema while Marvel’s are piles of poopy garbage.
And to that handful of brave, clever fans, who have had the courage and the foresight to call out the entire entertainment journalism industry for this obvious, horrid bias, I salute you. I beg of you, do not stop there—I know Rotten Tomatoes seems innocent, in that they literally only aggregate other people’s reviews and thus have no opinions themselves. But they are crooked as the rest of us! I just… I just don’t know how yet. Once I figure it out, though, I’ll confess that too. Meanwhile, keep signing that petition! We’ll get ’em eventually! Maybe!
I do not ask forgiveness for my sins, because I do not deserve them. I just need to let you all know that I can no longer take part in the greatest nerd conspiracy since the Illuminati managed to get Joel Schumacher hired to destroy the ‘90s Batman movie franchise from the inside. I will do my best to make up for what I have done, by making sure to never, ever, say anything bad about a DC movie ever again. Even if it’s true. Nay—especially if it’s true.
Every year, the Perseids are a spectacular show. But this year, they’re something even more special than usual, and you shouldn’t miss it. Here’s how, when, and where to watch the Perseid meteor shower—and what you should be looking for when you do.
The Perseids are an annual meteor shower that shows up right at the height of summer in August. Usually, the shower comes to an impressive peak of almost 100 meteors per hour. That number is already enough to tie it with the Geminids for the most prolific shower of the year, but this year we should see rates of almost double the normal amount, with 160-200 meteors each hour.
It’s called an outburst—and this is the first one we’ve seen in the Perseids since 2009. The already considerably thick blanket of meteors we see during the Perseids is due to the trail of dust and debris from Comet Swift-Tuttle. This year, however, the comet’s trail is pulled a little closer to us by Jupiter’s gravity—and that means that instead of skirting the trail’s edges, our planet passes straight through the thick of it, doubling the amount of debris we see burn up beautifully in our atmosphere as meteors.
2009 Perseids (Image: NASA/JPL)
But it’s not just the number of meteors to be on the look out for this year. There’s also something exceptional about those meteors themselves. Each year, the Perseids mix in a high number of fireballs into the shower, which burn brighter and bigger than any plain old meteoroids. Even on a regular year, it’s the best shower of the year for fireballs. But, like I said, this is no ordinary year.
“The last Perseid outburst, which happened in 2009, was pretty spectacular, with a fair number of fireballs mixed in with the regular meteors,” Bill Cooke of NASA’s Meteoroid Environments Office told Gizmodo. “I would think that this year’s display, on the night of the 11th/morning of the 12th, would be similar.”
With an average speed of 132,000 mph, the meteor trails that we’ll see were already going to be plenty bright and long. But fireball explosions mean not only extra bright meteors, it means that you could also see meteor smoke—not actually smoke, but trails of ionized light that linger and wave in the sky even after the meteor is gone.
How to Watch
The best viewing of the Perseids is going to be tonight, although tomorrow night and perhaps even through the weekend will also be excellent viewing. Although anytime after dark should net you plenty of meteors, the peak will be between midnight and dawn.
The greatest threat to seeing this year’s shower is every stargazer’s classic enemy: the moon. This year, we’ll have a half moon to contend with and that should wash out some of the meteors we see but, with so many, not even the moon can obscure the view too much. In fact, this year’s show is going to be so exceptionally strong and bright that, even in a city, you might still be able to spot some—although if you can’t, there’s a reliably good livestream over at Slooh.
Your very best bet, though, is to pack a bag and head out to the darkest place within driving distance. Make sure to pack a star map (or app), a blanket to lay out on, a flask, snacks, and mosquito repellent. Leave the telescopes and binoculars at home—they’ll only make it harder to scan the full sky.
A good place to start looking is the radiant, right above the constellation Perseus. But, if you want to see meteor trails (which, believe me, you do), you should lean back and take a look at the full sky’s view of this genuinely spectacular meteor shower.
The CW’s DC Universe is getting a little bigger—and a little more diverse. Straight from the channel’s panel at the Television Critics Association summer tour, a new animated series for CW Seed has been revealed: and it’ll star the little-known DC comics hero Ray Terrill, better known as The Ray.
The Ray has been around since 1940, but the Ray Terrill version of the character, the second incarnation, first appeared in 1992. However, the CW Seed series won’t be taking inspiration from that 1992 comic, but Grant Morrison’s Multiversity, which took Ray’s superhero team—the Freedom Fighters—and updated them to better reflect the modern America they fought for, which included making Terrill an openly gay man.
Ray will bring his light-based superpowers to Freedom Fighters: The Ray next year from Greg Berlanti’s production house Berlanti Productions and Blue Ribbon, the team behind the Vixen animated series.
Presumably, just like Vixen before it, Ray Terrill’s animated adventures could eventually lead to him and his fellow Freedom Fighters into the CW’s live-action DC shows—joining the likes of Curtis Holt on Arrow or Sara Lance on Legends of Tomorrow as an important piece of LGBT representation in the CW’s superheroic output.
The popular Japanese anime TV series turned film franchise Tiger and Bunny is coming to America. Ron Howard’s Imagine Entertainment and others have hired screenwriter Ellen Shanman to adapt the work into live-action form.
Created by Masakazu Katsura in 2011, Tiger and Bunny is kind of like a Lethal Weapon with superheroes, set in a world where superheroes protect citizens and a hot shot new hero, Bunny, gets paired up with a crusty veteran, Tiger.
“As we move forward in developing the wonderful ‘Tiger & Bunny’ film, we are delighted to add a true rising star in Ellen Shanman to bring the story and characters to life,” Ron Howard said in a press release. “Ellen’s strong, visionary, creative voice is a perfect match to adapt this wildly popular story for new audiences.”
Imagine is teaming with All Nippon Entertainment Works (ANEW), and Bandai Namco Pictures on the film, which they first announced at New York Comic-Con 2015. Hiring Shanman is the first major step since then.
We all know that Bruce Wayne spent years traveling the world, mastering all manner of esoteric mental and physical disciplines to become the Dark Knight. But there’s no way he can do all that and be a bomb-ass cocksman, too. There is no doubt in my mind that Batman is very bad at The Sex.
He’s the World’s Greatest Detective and one of the most formidable multi-style combatants to ever walk the earth. But the very fact that he’s human means that Batman has to be bad at something. Traditionally, his weakness has been interpersonal relationships. History has shown that team-ups are always rocky with the Caped Crusader. If he’s right about something, he’s a smug ass. If Superman or the partner in question trumps him, he sulks like a little punk. He’s not been a great surrogate son or father either, what with all the gruff, aloof singlemindedness he foists on his crime-fighting. And if you can’t relate to people, then you can’t relate to your lovers. Bruce Wayne has probably never gotten anybody off in his entire adult life.
Here’s how Batman’s initial sexual encounters probably go: Somewhere, deep under the ever-looping sequence of his parents’ deaths, Bruce’s libido explodes from being suppressed so long. He undoes the biometric locking mechanism on the utility belt, silently promising himself it’s going to be different this time. Catwoman or whomever peels off that body armor, revealing the chiseled physique beneath. (The weight of Batman’s publishing history suggests that he’s heterosexual, so let’s just roll with that. It probably wouldn’t be any different if he wasn’t.) “Look at those obliques,” thinks Selina to herself. “All those scars. This is gonna be hot as hell.” Five minutes in, it’s “what the fuck is he doing with his pinky?! Is… is that a lock-picking technique? Jesus Christ, he has no idea what he’s doing, does he?”
Bruce doesn’t call the morning after. He’ll blame everything on his mommy issues, if he ever admits anything went awry in the sack. He probably can’t achieve climax unless his partner whispers Martha into the cowl’s pointy ears. (Yeah, of course the mask and cowl stay on the whole time. “It… it’s my true self.”)
But wait, you say! The Dark Knight has come back from gruesome injuries and fought through the Scarecrow’s fear gas with nothing more than his incredible will. Batman’s got near-total control of his mind and body! The key word there is “near.” Picture 20-something Bruce learning tantric meditation from some ancient yogi with a long, grey beard. He’s already mastered the techniques to get his body to heal itself and make it so that thought and action are one. You think he’s sticking around so that he can learn to delay his own orgasm and have sex for six hours straight? Nah, son; he’s got a plane to catch. If you’re looking to become the black-cloaked embodiment of vengeance itself, sex-having isn’t exactly a vital tool for winning the war on crime.
You know how Bruce is always pushing romantic interests away from him? “My mission doesn’t allow room for attachments,” he grunts. “The safety of Gotham City comes before anything,” he’ll growl. All of that is code for “Sorry I finished before you did.” He gives Talia, Catwoman, and those other unlucky women the stiff arm because he doesn’t want further confirmation that he’s a five-pump chump.
Ultimately, Batman’s a self-centered dude who couldn’t let go of his trauma. He’s saved Gotham and the world many times over, but pleasure is basically a foreign concept to him. If you want to nail a Bat-dude, get some of that trapeze action from Nightwing. He’s actually experienced joy in his life and has a legendary ass to boot.
Well, this is certainly going to be a ton of work. Syfy’s announced that Bryan Taylor (Crank) and Grant Morrison (of being Grant Morrison) are adapting Aldous Huxley’s classic Brave New World for Syfy.
We heard that Syfy and Amblin were working on this last year, but now we know who’s going to be writing and executive producing the show. And Morrison and Taylor are certainly people with vision. Syfy doesn’t say whether this is going to be a ongoing series or a miniseries, but, even with these two on board, this is going to be an uphill go of it.
Brave New World is a near-perfect example of the “false utopia” trope that science fiction has been in love with for decades. It also takes place in 2540, which is far enough in the future that Syfy is going to have to work hard to make it look “futuristic,” while also updating the things in Huxley’s novel that were scary future-tech when he wrote it but aren’t as far off (or as scary) now. Best of luck, Syfy. We’re so glad to see the channel be ambitious like this. Put this next to The Expanse and it’ll be a great night of television.
Syfy also announced it was making Happy!, based on the graphic novel by Morrison and artist Darick Robertson. Morrison and Taylor are also going to executive produce this, with the two writing the pilot and Taylor directing it.
You know, just your usual show about a grim hit man who ends up with a chipper imaginary blue winged horse. Syfy is really swinging for the fences.
Years later, No Man’s Sky has populated its procedurally generated planets with all sorts of strange and disturbing creatures, but there’s still the question of whether or not the snake has appeared for anybody in-game yet.
Over on forums like neoGAF, users are debating whether or not the giant snake is actually in the game, because nobody seems to have proof of its existence yet. For some, the potential lack of giant creatures like the sand snake is a deal breaker. Others realize it’s only been day two of release, and with 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 planets to explore, there’s a very real chance that we just haven’t stumbled on the worm yet:
For our part, no one at Kotaku has encountered a giant snake in the dozens of hours we’ve played (which makes sense, for a game of this scale). I can’t find anything on the giant snake online, either. We asked our 1.13 million followers on Twitter if they’ve encountered the snake, and so far, nobody has been able to procure definite visual proof. That said, people have found other curious creatures that come close...
“Oh man, I hate questions like this, because like wouldn’t you just rather discover for yourself?,” Murray wrote. “Huge creatures are out there, and I haven’t seen them on streams yet. They are rare.”
The wildest thing about all of this is that the giant snake may not even be the most out-there monster hiding within the game. In a 2014 interview with Game Informer, Sean Murray said that Hello Games was refraining from showing the public creatures that were particularly alien. He also noted that creatures would change depending on your in-game location:
Game Informer: So they’re going to be freakier and more abstract in the final game?
Sean Murray: Yeah, that’s possible, and that will happen actually more and more towards the center of the galaxy.
I don’t know about you, but knowing that things get weirder toward the center of the galaxy actually motivates me to keep exploring within the game, especially if it means I might encounter cool giant animals.
Eventually, someone may or may not find the giant snake from the trailers. For now, though, the discussion and speculation around the giant worm is one of the best things about No Man’s Sky, because it means that aspects of the game are taking on a myth-like status. I’ve seen people online who think images of the giant snake aren’t real, but rather just Photoshops. I’ve seen people show off discovered planets with giant corridors, which may or may not have been dug by the native wildlife. I’ve heard mysterious moans and cries on certain planets that I can’t for the life of me figure out where they’re coming from. Is it just ambient noise? Is there something enormous out there, beyond the horizon?
The news came from the CW’s TCA presentation, where executive producer Greg Berlanti announced a two-part musical coming late in the season. And that’s not all the excitement in store of DC’s CW-verse next year.
“Yes, there will be a musical crossover,”said Berlanti, via TV Line.“There’s going to be a musical pair of episodes in the back half of the year between Supergirl and The Flash.” He added that they’ll mostly be singing existing songs, but the writers have been kicking around trying to write “at least” one original tune for each episode.
You may also note that this announcement comes exactly one day after our own Alex Cranz demanded a musical number, documenting the high number of singers in the DC/CW shows’ casts. And lest you think that she is not psychic, because she wanted all the shows and not just two, Berlanti also said he wanted to bring in characters from Arrow and Legends of Tomorrow into the show. A comment he capped with this:
The panel also revealed that the Chris Wood’s pod-person, from the Supergirl cliffhanger, is Mon-El—who isn’t actually a Kryptonian in the comics. Also on deck? Sharon Leal as Miss Martian. Honestly, despite the decreased Cat Grant screen time, the CW is pulling out all the stops to prove it’s the right home for Supergirl.
The Greenland shark has just been named the longest-lived vertebrate, with a lifespan of up to 400 years. Image: Julius Nielsen
If you’re counting on technology to radically extend your lifespan, you’ll want to pay close attention to what’s happening with the Greenland shark. According to a new scientific paper, this mysterious deep-sea dweller can live up to 400 years, making it the longest-lived vertebrate on Earth.
Let that number sink in for a minute. Four hundred years ago, a ship called the Mayflower was about to set sail for the New World. The oldest Greenland sharks alive today might have been babies when the first Pilgrims crossed the Atlantic. Or, they could have been young adults. A dating analysis of 28 female Greenland sharks, published today in Science, determined that the oldest individual lived to be somewhere between 272 and 512 years of age. Most likely, she was a ripe 390 when a research vessel accidentally hauled her up.
Even on the lower end of that scale, the Greenland shark’s impressive lifespan still blows any vertebrate contenders out of the water. The next longest-lived vertebrate, the bowhead whale, has barely crossed the two century mark.
Greenland sharks are among the most poorly studied sharks on the Earth. Found in cold, deep waters throughout the North Atlantic, these slow-growing scavenger/predators have been hauled up as bycatch for centuries and were briefly harvested for their liver oil in the early 1900s. But despite our longstanding relationship with Greenland sharks, humans know next to nothing about their population size, distribution, and ecology. Norway’s conservation Red List describes the species with two simple words: “Data Deficient.”
“I think in general, people have overlooked the Greenland shark as this deep sea animal of no ecological or economic importance,” lead study author Julius Nielsen told Gizmodo. “There’s never been a scientific interest.”
A PhD student at the University of Copenhagen, Nielsen became fascinated with Greenland sharks about five years back, when one was accidentally hauled on board the scientific research vessel he was working on. “It was an amazing experience, seeing such a big animal,” he said. “I started investigating what was known about the shark, and was really surprised by how little information there was.”
To Nielsen, one of the most intriguing aspects of Greenland shark biology was the animal’s incredibly slow growth rate—less than a centimeter per year on average. While that’s a strong indicator of longevity, Greenland sharks are impossible to age by traditional methods, because they lack hard, calcified tissues that deposit in growth layers.
It was Nielsen’s advisor who devised a clever workaround: radiocarbon dating the shark’s eyelid. This unusual structure is composed of transparent cells filled with inert, crystallized proteins. “It’s basically a dead tissue,” Neilsen said, describing how layers of glassy cells accumulate on the lid throughout the shark’s life.
Armed with a method, Nielsen and his collaborators acquired tissue samples from 28 individual sharks caught as bycatch during the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources’ annual fish surveys between 2010 and 2013. Peeling back layers of cells to access the oldest tissue, the researchers measured the abundance of carbon-14 isotopes to determine the animals’ ages.
A Greenland shark in the icy waters of Disko Bay, western Greenland. Image: Julius Nielsen
Right away, they noticed something unusual: most of the eyelid tissue samples lacked the telltale carbon-14 signature of nuclear weapons testing in the 1960s, indicating that the sharks were born more than fifty years ago. “We could see right from the beginning that we were dealing with something extreme,” Nielsen said.
Only the three smallest animals appeared to be born during or after the so-called “bomb spike.” Further analysis revealed that most of the sharks grew up in the 19th or early 20th century. And while it was difficult to get a precise age for the largest two individuals, suffice to say they are old as dirt: 335 ± 75 years, and 392 ± 120 years .
“The main point is that the Greenland shark is at least 272 years old, and therefore the oldest vertebrate in the world,” Neilsen said. “I think this must be the first time in human history that a person has done an age determination, ended up with a range of 240 years, and still called it a success.”
“This is one of the most innovative methods of assessing age I’ve ever seen,” said Jay Olshansky, an expert on longevity and aging at the University of Chicago who was not involved with the study. “The story told to us by the Greenland shark adds another notch in the longevity scale, and while we’re still missing some of the details for this species, it’s not too difficult to fill in the blank spaces.”
Those “blank spaces” include age to puberty, reproductive window length, and the survival rate of offspring. Since these life history attributes tend to scale predictably with lifespan, Olshansky suspects the Greenland shark has a very wide reproductive window and encounters little predation. Nielsen’s analysis, which determined that the animals do not reach sexual maturity until they’re about 150, seems to support that hypothesis.
All of this has major implications for Greenland shark conservation. As you might imagine, a species that doesn’t reproduce until it’s midway through its second century of life could be hard-hit by commercial fishing. “I don’t consider them threatened, but I do consider them vulnerable,” Neilsen said. “This definitely advocates for a precautionary approach in terms of exploitation, and for minimizing by catch.”
Sonja Fordham, president of Shark Advocates International, agrees. “While scientists may continue to debate absolute longevity, it is clear that the Greenland shark is exceptionally slow growing, late to mature, and long-lived, even by shark standards,” she told Gizmodo. “As is the case for most sharks, these life history characteristics make Greenland sharks particularly susceptible to overexploitation and slow to recover once depleted.”
No doubt, these incredible animals deserve our protection in their own right. But there’s also a selfish reason for ensuring the survival of Greenland sharks: unlocking the secrets of extreme longevity.
“This article highlights just how little science still knows about the life histories of these and other magnificent creatures,” said Kevin Perrott, a scientist at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging and co-founder of SENS Research Foundation. “It also underlines how easy it would be to remain forever ignorant and lose this resource because of climate change and environmental damage.”
By carelessly wiping out biodiversity, Perrott added, “we run the risk of forever losing the opportunity to study organisms with insight into humanity’s most pressing medical challenge, the aging process.”
Olshansky agrees. “Having another vertebrate living so long tells us that natural selection has successfully produced a species capable of avoiding or delaying diseases such as cancer or neurological disorders, for far longer time periods than humans are now capable of living.”
Gerontologist and anti-aging expert Aubrey de Gray cautioned that factors contributing to the Greenland shark’s longevity may not easily translate to humans owing to the different environmental pressures the sharks have evolved under.
“We must remember that cold-blooded species, especially when living in very cold environments, have less of a problem with oxidative stress than mammals do, because the main source of free radicals in our bodies is the oxygen metabolism that we need to perform in order to keep warm,” he told Gizmodo. “Therefore, these sharks may not have any new tricks applicable to us, even though they outlive us by such a wide margin.”
“But, they may!” he added. “So we should definitely study them more.”
Stand down, Rob Zombie—your reign of terror over all horror movies set within deranged carnival environments is getting some competition. Jennifer Chambers Lynch, whose genre chops include episodes of The Walking Dead and Teen Wolf, has been tapped to helm a Halloween-themed thriller called Hellfest.
Chambers Lynch, who happens to be the daughter of David Lynch, is teaming with The Walking Dead producer Gale Anne Hurd for the film, which Deadline describes as follows:
Hellfest involves a Halloween night of fun turns deadly at a horror theme park when a costumed killer begins slaying unsuspecting patrons who believe that it’s all part of the show. Production will begin this winter at an undisclosed theme park.
All Rob Zombie joking aside (though the guy sure does love his clowns), amusement parks—be they abandoned, haunted, zombie-plagued, overrun with evil robots, or filled with ill-maintained rollercoasters—have long been a horror-movie staple. Hellfest looks like it will continue this tradition, taking inspiration from both the costumed killers of classic slashers, and the current craze for Halloween-themed experiences like Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights. As long as it’s not a found-footage joint—and with a talent like Chambers Lynch behind the camera, hopefully that’s not a factor—there’s some major spooky potential here.
We’re finally on the cusp of Star Trek’s grand return to TV with the impending arrival of Star Trek: Discovery, but there have been many attempts over the year to get Trek on TV that weren’t nearly as successful. Here are four times the franchise tried to launch a new show, but failed to make it off the ground.
Weirdly enough, the first ever proposed Star Trek spinoff basically had as little to do with Star Trek as it possibly could. Fans of the original series can cast their minds back to the original series’ season two finale “Assignment: Earth,” which saw the Enterprise bring itself back in time to study 20th century Earth, only to be embroiled in the adventures of Gary Seven, a human tasked with protecting the Earth with the help of mysterious alien benefactors.
The 1968 episode is a lot more about Gary, his transforming cat/assistant Isis, and their human friend Roberta than it is about Kirk and his crew—the opening titles even end with Gary Seven’s actor Robert Lansing’s credit, the only time a guest star would be credited outside of the end credits on the show. That was for good reason: with Star Trek on the brink of cancellation, Gene Roddenberry was looking to create a new show to air as part of NBC’s fall schedule, and staged “Assignment: Earth” as essentially a pilot he could pitch to executives for a cheaper sci-fi/mystery show to replace Star Trek.
Roddenberry wrote a 47-page pitch script for Assignment: Earth that would’ve continued Gary’s mission to protect the present and avoid his own disastrous future, but it made no mention of his origins in Star Trek or the crew of the Enterprise. When Star Trek was renewed for a third and final season, however, plans were quickly shelved.
2) Star Trek: Phase II
The Enterprise’s new design. Concept painting by Mike Minor, via Memory Alpha.
Not to be confused with the movie plans also known as Phase II, this direct follow-up to the original Star Trek series was being developed in the mid-’70s when Paramount were looking to launch a new TV network. With a resurgence in popularity for Trek after the show entered syndication after its cancellation, Paramount decided to scrap plans for a proposed movie spin-off, Planet of the Titans, and produce a new TV show instead.
Featuring a refitted Enterprise, a new five-year mission, and the introduction of new characters to the crew—like Vulcan science officer Xon, who would’ve replaced Leonard Nimoy’s Spock, and First Officer Will Decker (who eventually appeared in Star Trek: The Motion Picture)—Phase II entered production with plans for a two-hour pilot and a 13 episode series to air in 1978.
However, behind-the-scenes changes, including the fact that the deal of Paramount’s new network fell through, saw the Phase II production downsized—first to a feature-length TV movie, and then in the wake of Star Wars’ surprise success, into a theatrical feature that would eventually become Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979. Ideas and concepts from Phase II would live on in early scripts for The Next Generation, but eventually a book containing scripts for the pilot and one of the proposed episodes, as well as a history of the project, was released in 1997 as Star Trek Phase II: The Lost Series.
It wouldn’t be until after the end of Enterprise that we’d see another proposed Trek show—but this one would’ve been unlike anything the franchise had done for years: for the first time since Star Trek: The Animated Series, there were plans in 2005-6 to make a full-fledged cartoon set in the Trek universe.
Being produced by Zero Room Productions, Final Frontier almost began as a series set in the same time period as the original show, but after CBS expressed an interest in the animated series—initially conceived as a five-part webseries for StarTrek.com, with the potential to evolve into a full series—it was retooled to take place 150 years after the events of The Next Generation.
Final Frontier would’ve been set in a period where an explosion of Omega Particles—volatile molecules that could effectively destroy the ability to travel through space at warp, first introduced in Voyager’s fourth season—caused by an unknown force had rendered warp speed travel impossible throughout Federation space, leading to a costly war between the Romulans and a beleaguered, isolationist Federation. In an attempt to go back to Starfleet’s exploratory roots, Alexander Chase, the captain of the Enterprise, would’ve begun a new mission after the war to rediscover the galaxy, hoping to change the Federation’s isolationist regime.
Sadly, by 2007, CBS Interactive reshuffled the StarTrek.com staff, firing many and canceling any projects in the works. Final Frontier was left in limbo, but the team behind the initial production kept the memory of the series alive by opening the show’s official website, a repository of concept art and information for what might have been.
4) Star Trek: Federation
Planned Star Trek Federation logo, by Michael Okuda, via TrekMovie.
At around the same time Enterprise ended in 2005, there were also burgeoning plans for another live-action Star Trek show—one that, like Deep Space Nine before it, would’ve examined the darker sides of a future United Federation of Planets.
An idea developed by Bryan Singer, Chris McQuarrie, and Robert Meyer Burnett, Federation would’ve been set even further into Star Trek’s future than Final Frontier: specifically, in the year 3000. The Federation would’ve been on a sharp decline, fractured as world after world left in disgust at its human-centric outlook and vast corruption, and with Starfleet stretched thin and poorly equipped. A sudden attack on Federation colonies by an entity known as the Scourge, leaving only Alexander Kirk as the soul survivor, and denial of the attack by the Federation would’ve seen Bajor, Betazed, and even Vulcan leave the alliance.
In a galaxy where the Ferengi were a major power, and the Klingon Empire was slowly expanding, the dire state of Starfleet would’ve seen a new Enterprise comissioned, the first flagship in centuries, to promote Starfleet’s ideals of exploration and scientific legacy, while also tracking down the scourge, with Kirk at the helm.
The series bible was developed over a year by Geoffrey Thorne, before a proposal was sent to Bryan Singer for polish. But Singer’s final pitch never made to Paramount—while polishing it after he’d finished work on Superman Returns, Paramount announced that J.J. Abrams would be rebooting the movie series, and the Federation pitch was never handed over to the studio. However, details about the series eventually made their way out thanks to a report from TrekMovie.com in 2011.
After announcing that Suicide Squad stars Harley Quinn and Killer Croc would be making their way to Gotham’s third season, executive producer Ken Woodruff says Quinn might turn out to be someone who has already been on the show. Hmm. It’s going to take the brilliant analytical mind of the Riddler to figure this mystery out.
You may have already seen Harley as a person that you thought you had met and known for a long time. So we always reserve the right to sort of do that as well.
Call me crazy, but I wonder if it might just be the blonde female character that is 1) crazy, 2) already hung around with Gotham’s proto-Joker Jerome, and 3) has no narrative purpose on the show other than wandering around and being emblematic of the show’s utter unwillingness to give the tiniest shit to setting up an even barely recognizable Batman universe.
I’m not complaining. The idea of having a Harley Quinn character in a city where the Joker doesn’t even really exist yet is such a gloriously goofy, insane, Gotham-y thing to do. Although I had sort of wanted for Gotham to go ahead and make Barbara the Joker herself—just go for the gusto. I mean, this is a show where Alfred punched a 12-year-old girl in the face and that’s just about to take another 12-year-old girl, the young Poison Ivy, and have her meet a monster that’s basically going to send her into puberty overdrive. This is not a show that plays by the rules of... well, anything, but least of all established Bat-canon.
Hufflepuff had a great reason to exist in the beginning. J.K. Rowling had divided people up based on their defining characteristics of bravery, ambition, or intelligence. And yet some people aren’t defined by that. Some people are defined by their really soft hair, or their ability to sound just like Shakira when warbling in the shower. So Rowling invented a fourth house—a “fuck it bucket” where all the leftovers got tossed. That was Hufflepuff.
And look. They seemed to be some just fine people, okay? In the books they are very innocuous, although they had a bit of a tendency to die. Cedric Diggory was very polite and dreamy cannon fodder, and who doesn’t love Tonks, who died off-screen after spending three books using her incredible shapeshifting abilities to do nothing more than look like a Hot Topic reject. And Professor Sprout? That bitch harvests deadly roots on the regular. That’s pretty cool.
But because humanity likes to be filed and sorted as much as 10-year-old witches and wizards, people of the real world began to identify with the house. The internet is rife with people claiming to be Gryffindors or Slytherins or Ravenclaws. In the early ‘00s, there were even a few people brave enough to wear the badge of mediocrity that Hufflepuff’s badger entails.
But then came Pottermore, which further commoditized a product Rowling was, in the ‘90s, reluctant to commoditize. Besides telling people what the fucking virtual wand they’d use if transported to a fantastic world that collapses under the weight of its own world building, Pottermore also sorted people into houses.
If you were lucky you were a Slytherin. If you were unlucky, tired, and had to make a new account because you forgot your login for the email for your old account, you were a Ravenclaw. If you were blustery you were a Gryffindor.
And if you were 95 percent of Tumblr you were the forsaken: A Hufflepuff.
The collective internet has not dealt well with their sudden sorting into the leftover house. Rather than accept their fate as fridged best friends and background Susan Bones they have risen up and deigned to say “NO. Hufflepuffs are COOL.”
They aren’t.
And you real-world Hufflepuffs can’t change that by sorting Korra or Supergirl or Rey or Harley Quinn into your dumb house. They would not be in your dumb house. Your house is where everyone blows on their tea and leads very content and very quiet lives. Your house does not hold fictional characters beyond, like, Dale from The Walking Dead, and all those extras in any movie where people are staring at the interesting people doing interesting things.
So stop trying to make Hufflepuff happen. Don’t hop into every post about the glory of better houses and pipe up with stupid shit like, “Hufflepuffs would sit you down with hot cocoa and hug you” or “Hufflepuffs would beat the villain because you never mess with a Hufflepuff’s friend” or “Neville is basically a Hufflepuff.” He isn’t. He’s a Gryffindor. So please stop co-opting better characters for your shitty house and go drink a warm mug of something.
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