Author: admin

Geekly Speaking About… Peter Capaldi as the next Doctor Who

© BBC One
© BBC One

Ever since it was announced that Peter Capaldi would be playing the newest incarnation of the lead character in the long-running British series Doctor Who, I’ve been excited to see exactly what direction the show would be going. After all, like many folks, I was first introduced to Capaldi as an actor through his work as the impressive and imposing Malcolm Tucker from “The Thick of It.”

All jokes about a “foul-mouthed Scottish Doctor” aside, I thought it would be best to turn to the (Re)Generation Who Community Manager (and former Geeking Out About contributor) Kara Dennison to speak about what may be in store for us during Series 8 from Capaldi based on his other acting work:

  • Apologies for the echoing, but that’s Skype for you. Also, there are a few swear words here and there in the podcast; I blame Malcolm Tucker. And finally, I’m sorry this isn’t fancy like the other podcasts, but my other jobs left me with little time to prep this one.
  • It’s worth noting that (Re)Generation Who is really reaching high for its inaugural convention as their guests include Colin Baker (Sixth Doctor), Sylvester McCoy (Seventh Doctor), Nicola Bryant (Peri), and a Skype Q & A with Tom Baker (Fourth Doctor). Check out their Guests page to see the entire list.
  • Here’s that article from The Mary Sue that I referenced.
  • Here’s my article on “The Time of the Doctor.”

If you don’t want to be spoiled for the events of the next Doctor Who series airing at 7:50 pm in the U.K. on BBC One and here in the U.S. on BBC America at 8:15 pm Eastern/7 pm Central, I don’t recommend following our Twitter stream, @geekingoutabout starting around 1 pm Central. But do check back later on in the day for our impressions of “Deep Breath.”

The Heartbleed Bug and how to talk about it with your non-geeky friends

One thing that my husband has been up late working on is patches and fixes due to the Heartbleed bug, information about which was publicly disclosed at the beginning of this week. What is it, and how does it affect you?

Basically, an error in the coding of a system called Open SSL meant that a person could send a query to a server and receive in return a random chunk of the server’s memory. With enough querying over time, this same person could eventually gain enough clues to compile information about the users whose information is stored on the server.

A more compact explanation can be seen in visual form, here:

 

Click to go to the website. © Randall Munroe

 

See that last panel? If you read the small print of the server’s text balloon, you’ll see that it states: “User Karen wants to change account password to…” It’s that kind of information that gets stored on a server, and that kind of information that can now be acquired due to this bug.

So, which sites and which services are affected by this bug? Mashable has a great list of popular sites and services here: The Heartbleed Hit List: The Passwords You Need to Change Right Now.

This is by no means a complete list, so here’s what you should do immediately to protect yourself and your private information:

  1. Change the passwords that you use on the sites mentioned on the Mashable list, immediately.
  2. If you used those passwords on other sites (because it was easier in your mind), change all of those passwords, too. Do not use the same password for different sites going forward.
  3. If a site or service which uses a secure certificate (you see https:// in your address bar at the top of your browser window when you browse to it rather than just http://) is not on the Mashable list, go to that site’s homepage to see if they have a comment on their News section about whether or not they use(d) Open SSL and/or if they’ve patched the problem. If they have, change your password. If they have not, inquire and keep hounding them until you get an answer.

In closing, please make sure you’re always using best and safe practices when using the Internet. Like going to the dentist, changing all your passwords is a tedious and unpleasant chore, but it must be done at least twice a year.

Your teeth—and your information security—will thank you for it.

Around the Water Cooler: Doctor Who – “The Time of the Doctor” (spoilers!)

Because who wouldn't want a naked Doctor for Christmas? © BBC
Because who wouldn’t want a naked Doctor for Christmas? © BBC

With Boxing Day having come to a close, it’s time to sit down and have a spoiler-filled discussion about the Christmas special episode of “Doctor Who”, now available to purchase on iTunes.

  • Are those Peter Capaldi’s eyes in one of the background images that flash during the opening sequence? Or am I just too eager to see him?
  • What kind of church is the Doctor going to in that it doesn’t require clothes?
  • “You can’t keep using the TARDIS like this. Missed birthdays, restaurant bookings and please, just learn how to use iPlayer…” Heh, I see what they did there.
  • That’s Gallifrey? Well, that was awfully quick.
  • Oh, I get it now. If you’re naked, you can barely conceal any weaponry; thus, you’re putting your trust into the Church’s hands whenever you come aboard the ship. Very clever.
  • The Silence and the Weeping Angels are back? How interesting.
  • Another of the more interesting things we’ve just learned: the TARDIS has a silent mode.
  • “I’m an English teacher from earth and I’ve run off with a man from space because I really fancy—” Oh, LORD! Can we please have another “associate” who doesn’t fancy the Doctor? Donna Noble, I miss you so much.
  • “If I give my name, they’ll know they’ve found the right place and that it’s safe to come through.” That’s pretty clever plotting, to create the idea of a Truth Filter to force the Doctor to answer the question truthfully. Here’s a world-building question: Why would a colony want to have a Truth Filter in the first place? What secrets did the people who originally founded this settlement no longer wish to hide?
  • The decision that the Doctor faces now is just as fraught as the decision the War Doctor faced not too long ago: Do I save my people or do I doom the rest of the galaxy to an endless war? We know what the Doctor—all of the Doctors, really—answered last time; why would someone expect the answer to change now?
  • “Silence will fall.” About time this phrase got some more traction. Makes sense, too.
  • I am starting to understand more and more what the Eleventh’s plan is, perhaps. He aims to outlast all of his enemies. But just as each successive invader is getting more cunning and agile in getting around him, they are also breeding new generations of fighters ready to do battle with him. And he is only just one man, in a town full of people who don’t want to enhance their technology. I’m starting to think that he is doomed, the matter of the regeneration we know about and the fact that the planet’s named “Trenzalore” non-withstanding.
  • Another thing about showing the Eleventh as a much older man is that they’re finally tapping into the “Matt Smith has an old soul” idea that’s been floating around about him ever since his first episode aired. Unpopular Opinion Time: I’ve never really seen it or agreed with it.
  • “Comfort is irrelevant.” “Is that better?” “Affirmative.” Oh, this exchange was so cute, and ultimately so sad.
  • Here’s a flaw in the Doctor’s plan as I understand it: Once he dies, what happens to the Time Lords and the inhabitants of Christmas then? This is the action of a delaying coward who is hoping that someone who is not him will come and make the right decision.
  • Number Ten once regenerated and kept the same face. I had vanity issues at the time.” OUCH.
  • Originally, I misunderstood how they scripted this section and I never understood that the Eleventh was saying that he was really the last Doctor. It made me really angry about this plan of his, because I thought that he was leaving this entire mess to be sorted out by his next regeneration. Now that I understand what he’s saying, I still think it’s a stupid plan.
  • Tasha is pretty freaking amazing. Although I wish that she’d have punched him after the kiss rather than that rather weak slap. I also wish that they’d brought her onto the series sooner.
  • This scene with the Oswald family… can we also please have an associate whose has a family member who isn’t rubbish? Okay, okay, it then begs the question of what the motivation is for people wanting to leave their ordinary lives to go traveling with the Doctor if not for a terrible family life, but still…!
  • Just had a funny thought: What if the when the Thirteenth comes along, he immediately shouts his name so that the Time Lords can come through?
  • Clara’s hand on the Eleventh’s, supporting him in pulling the cracker apart? Brilliant.
  • When the crack closed, I’ll admit that I jumped thanks to the sound effect. And then I remembered: Doesn’t anyone who comes near one of the cracks in the universe get sucked up into it? If not so, how did Rory get erased from the timestream in “Cold Blood”? (Or does that only happen when people die near the crack?) And it never occurred to him to tell the Time Lords what was going on or to ask them to help, not once in the many centuries?
  • It’s a little amazing how much he resembles William Hartnell’s Doctor in this makeup. I wonder if they did that on purpose.
  • As much as it makes sense that he regained a bit of his youthful voice during this last bit, it looks odd to hearing the younger Eleventh Doctor’s voice coming out of this older one. I think they should have kept the old man voice. It would have been a more powerful moment.
  • “I will always remember when the Doctor was me.” An interesting line considering that he was the Doctor Who Forgot in “The Day of the Doctor.”
  • Once again, Wikipedia came to the rescue and clarified that by giving him some of their regeneration energy, the Doctor can live on for twelve more lifetimes. Clever way to keep the series going. But I think that perhaps it might have been braver for them to perhaps have a different Gallifreyan become inspired by the Doctor’s adventures and mission and take on adventuring in his name, sort of like the Dread Pirate Roberts. Then, maybe, there could be a female Doctor or a Doctor of Color in our lifetime.
  • Also, do we still call him the Twelfth? Or is he the Second First now?

As an ending for Matt Smith’s Doctor, it was a very riveting and heart-rending finale piece. I am still so very eager to watch Peter Capaldi in action, though. Late fall can’t come fast enough. Your thoughts?

Pop-Culture Catch-Up: Doctor Who — “The Day of the Doctor” (spoilers!)

Want to get excited about a new thing, but aren’t completely up to date on the fandom and don’t mind spoilers? We here at Geeking Out About are happy to help provide you with everything you need in order to stay current with your geeky passions in our new column, “Pop Culture Catch-Up.”

“The Day of the Doctor”
Directed by Nick Hurran
Written by Steven Moffat
Starring Matt Smith, Jenna Coleman
Guest Stars: David Tennant, John Hurt, Billie Piper, Jemma Redgrave, Joanna Page, Colin Baker, and more
Rating: TV-PG

Three Doctors, all alike in dignity. © BBC
Three Doctors, all alike in dignity. © BBC

Like many people, my first Doctor was Christopher Eccleston, aka the Ninth Doctor. His single season in 2005 as the eponymous character of the long-running BBC series Doctor Who introduced me to everything Whovian and I came to have a layperson’s understanding of the show and how it worked. I watched some episodes featuring Tenth Doctor David Tennant, including the special movies, and part of the first season with Eleventh Doctor Matt Smith; however, once I fell behind I lost interest.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the first episode’s airing and Doctor Who fans both old and new were a-buzz when news came forward that there would be a special episode celebrating this anniversary. Rumors and speculation flew around the world. Would it reunite several of the previous actors who have played the Doctor in a large over-arching plot as the 20th anniversary special “The Five Doctors” did? How much interaction would the upcoming Twelfth Doctor Peter Capaldi have in this special? Or would the inclusion of any former Doctors be more poignant and heartfelt as was the meeting between the Tenth Doctor and the Sixth Doctor (Peter Davison) in the Children in Need short “Time Crash”?

Simulcast around the world on November 12, 2013, “The Day of the Doctor” proved to include all of these things—and none of them at the same time.

The Five-Sentence Synopsis

During the height of the war between the Time Lords of Gallifrey and the Dalek race, the Doctor has been forced to make a terrible decision that will destroy the armies of both participants and eradicate the people on the entire planet of Gallifrey from the timestream. However, the sentient weapon known as The Moment refuses to benignly comply and brings him forward in time to meet two of the Doctors he would become as a result of his decision. With his Tenth and Eleventh incarnations, together all three Doctors puzzle out the meaning of their meeting and conclude that while the total destruction of the Daleks was the right decision, the complete annihilation of Gallifrey was not. However, only the Eleventh Doctor will remember this new version of events going forward.

Is that Really My Doctor?

When the first “nuWho” stories were aired, there were some noticeable changes. The Ninth Doctor was described and depicted as “angry,” “edgy,” “stripped down,” and full of “survivor’s guilt” over his participation in ending the off-screen Time War. With very few details forthcoming, fans were wild with speculation about what he did to make him feel so much guilt and anger. When it was revealed that he killed everyone on Gallifrey and all of the Daleks, it was a shock to fans who had grown up with the Doctor. How could someone who had made it a point to save not just humanity but aliens of all races and solar systems time and time again make a decision to kill everyone—even if it was for a greater good?

With this special, writer and executive producer Steven Moffat attempted to answer this question by first re-visiting the Eighth Doctor (Paul McGann) in the prequel short “The Night of the Doctor” and showcasing his decision to voluntarily die and be reborn as a warrior. (It also officially welcomed the Eighth Doctor’s companions from the Big Finish audio adventures into official canon, pleasing many Whovians.) Introduced as the War Doctor and played brilliantly by John Hurt (Alien, The Elephant Man), between the prequel and “The Day of the Doctor,” this “new” Doctor is a man who watched himself first try everything he could to save people from the war’s effects and then do everything he could to end it—all to no avail. By the time of his opening scenes of “Day” against the backdrop of a war-torn and besieged Gallifrey, this Doctor had seen and done so much that he believed that there were no other options but to end the War by killing everyone.

However, the main premise of “Day” seems to be that even if you are at the end of your rope, there might be a new piece of rope that you can tie to your end. With this new extension, you can move forward into the future. “You would have hope,” the Eleventh Doctor says, pointing straight at the Gallifreyan high command and by extension, the viewers. It hearkens back to even though how the Ninth Doctor had witnessed the death of all of his people, he still cared enough about the world to help it continue running smoothly.

That, if anything, is the true gift that the Eleventh Doctor’s retrospective insight into his actions over 400 years granted to the War Doctor: guidance. By having the Eleventh Doctor first return with the War Doctor to his defining Moment (oh, I see what they did there now) to aid him and then later help persuade his former self that there was still yet another option, Moffat impresses upon his audience the importance of reaching out to others—for they may have a solution to your problem that you never considered.

Around the Water Cooler: Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. – “The Bridge” (spoilers!)

"Riding along in my automobile / My agent beside me at the wheel." © ABC/Marvel Studios
“Riding along in my automobile / My agent beside me at the wheel.” © ABC/Marvel Studios

It’s been a crazy week, but now I can get back to talking about the latest episode of “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”, now available to watch on the official website.

  • I believe this is the first episode to include a “Previously on…” which means it’s mid-season plot building time! I’m looking forward to seeing the mysterious woman in the flower dress again, mostly so I can figure out exactly what her role in the Centipede project and/or organization is. She’s definitely not the head honcho, but she seems to have more savvy than a regular minion or hench. Perhaps she’s like Mirage from The Incredibles: non-powered, but extremely vital? Hopefully I’ll get to find out more about her soon—including her name.
  • I already don’t like Jailbreak because of how snotty he was to the people rescuing him. Consider how easy it could have been for the squad to say, “Oh, whoops… that dude you wanted us to break out of federal prison? We experienced some turbulance and he accidentally fell out of the helicopter while it was a mile up. Sorry. Sir.
  • God, the more I see May with Ward, the more I like it. I know that’s breaking the heart of at least one of my friends who’d prefer to see Ward with Fitz, but I really think that May is good for him.
  • “Did I beat Captain America’s time?” “Not even close.” Oh, lookit how adorable you are, Mike Peterson.
  • So recently, Geena Davis published a guest post with The Hollywood Reporter about how one way to make media less sexist and more inclusive is by writing into scripts that at least half of the extras in a scene should be female. I’d like to note that perhaps the casting directors of “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” are keeping this in mind with respect to non-whites as well with the inclusion of the Asian field agent who was talking to Mike Peterson.
  • Aw, Simmons! And now you have to go around being adorable. Which begs the question: Does she get this flustered around Ward, whom we already know looks good shirtless? Or is she more intrigued by Peterson on a scientific level as well?
  • Is that a genuine example of a scene between two men where they’re talking about women and their relationships with them and it moves the plot forward as well as establishing character? Stop the presses!
  • “The Avengers thought I was dead, so I had to keep that up.” Does that mean that at this point in time, they know he’s alive now?
  • From this first scene between Poe and Raina, I got the sense that that while he is working with her, he is not working for the Centipede organization. Hmm, so he’s not one of our Big Bads, and that makes an amount of sense.
  • May turning on Skye like that makes me sad, but it also makes sense because she’d just been rattled by Ward and didn’t get back to her center fast enough. Proves that she’s human. Good for her!
  • Of course, I am now fearing the scene where Skye runs to Papa Coulson, whining about how May is being a big ol’ meanie. I do hope they manage to pull something great out of that or subvert my expectations completely.
  • The more I look at the “bedrooms” on the Bus, the more I realize how important it must be to carve out any kind of personal space and private time while inside it. At least Coulson has an office and May has her cockpit. Fitz and Simmons have the lab, but sharing that could be a bit of a pain. Where does Ward go?
  • “The staying away, not being there? I’ve seen first-hand the kind of damage that can do.” Is Coulson referring to Tony Stark?
  • J. August Richards’ face after speaking to Raina? Awesome.
  • Yeah… nice mid-series plot-twist.

Thoughts?

Trisha’s Link of the Day: “Zufruh” by Ryan Sohmer and Anna-Marie Jung

Sometimes a great idea doesn't make for a great webcomic. © Ryan Sohmer and Anna-Maria Jung
Sometimes a great idea doesn’t make for a great webcomic. © Ryan Sohmer and Anna-Maria Jung/Blind Ferret Entertainment

I don’t know how many people here read Ryan Sohmer’s edgy/adult-ish webcomic “Least I Could Do,” but it’s been one of my daily reads since I was introduced to it by my friend Harris O’Malley (aka Dr. Nerdlove). Also, after discovering the Vlogbrothers and posting about their very first webseries “Brotherhood 2.0,” I became a huge fan of theirs as well.

Back in 2007, the Vlogbrothers and their audience came up with the concept of the “evil baby orphanage,” which was their solution to the “If you could go back in time to kill Hitler as a baby, would you do it?” question. They thought that the more ideal situation would be to time-travel to when the most evil humans in history were children, take them away from the circumstances in which they became evil, and raise them in an orphanage to be good and responsible citizens. This idea caught on so well with the Nerdfighter community that with the Vlogbrothers’ blessing, an indie game company called Wyrd Miniatures was able to successfully Kick and start a card game.

In a weird synergistic sort of way, Sohmer also had an idea regarding evil babies and decided to create a webcomic and raise funds for it using the extremely new Patreon platform:

“Zufruh” answers the question: What happens when you take the most evil men and women in history and place them in a daycare as toddlers?

It’s a strip I’m doing with Anna-Maria Jung, and I decided to do something a little fun with it, and put it up on Patreon. For those of you unfamiliar with it, Patreon is a subscription based system that lets you pay as little as a buck a month, giving you access to the comics as we produce them.

How much we update, if we create this at all, is up to you. If not, it goes back into the vault.

I liked the concept of the “Evil Baby Orphanage/Daycare” as a thought experiment from the Vlogbrothers, and I liked it enough as a card game to back the Kickstarter. However, judging from the sample comic above (which was the thumbnail image you get if you paste Sohmer’s Patreon link into Facebook), I’m not sure if I like it as a webcomic. (Or at least a webcomic written by Ryan Sohmer.) I’d have to see more before I decide if I’d add it into my blogroll, but I don’t think I’d become a Patreon of his in order to do so.

The video on his Patreon site—though slickly produced—has even less information:

Other questions I have are “Why is it called ‘Zuhfruh’?” and “Why did you decide to include the gay pride logo into yours if one of the main characters was known in his adult incarnation for sending thousands of gays and lesbians to concentration camps?”

Thoughts?

Trisha’s Take: How to properly issue and respond to a DMCA takedown notice (SFWA edition)

Click to enlarge © Geeking Out About
Click to enlarge © Geeking Out About

When I checked my email Monday morning, I was expecting to see the usual: job search referrals, ThinkGeek newsletters, Facebook notifications, maybe a notice from my local library telling me that my copy of Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance was ready for pick-up.

I did not expect to see a notice from Scribd.com claiming that I had violated a copyright.

What followed was a flurry of emails, some conversations with my webhost, another with my attorney, a lot of waiting—and finally, a sensible resolution.

But most importantly, I got to experience how a lot of “good intention” can almost be turned into a road leading into hell.

It all started back at the end of May when the Spring 2013 edition of the members-only publication of the SFWA Bulletin arrived in their mailboxes. Within its pages contained a long-running column written by authors Barry Malzberg and Mike Resnick called Dialogues.

The topic for this issue revolved around the flurry of criticism that both had received from both members and non-members regarding two of their columns not more than three issues previous about “lady editors” and “lady writers” and the cover on one of those same issues which featured a buxom redhead in a chain mail bikini.

Long-time readers of this blog are already rolling their eyes in exasperation, but Malzberg and Resnick didn’t agree with the critiques and set forth to reply to their “anonymous” detractors. A whirlwind of discussion arose, and I posted my thoughts on how the whole mess could have been avoided in the first place.

As part of my original article, I had included a link to a .PDF which I stitched together from images found elsewhere on the Internet and had uploaded to my account on Scribd.com. This document contained low-res scans of the entire Dialogues column called “Talk Radio Redux” so that readers could determine for themselves whether Malzberg and Resnick’s reply to their critics was reasonable or invalid.

Though I didn’t get my college degree in either journalism or communications, I do know the importance of a primary source. As someone who wrote many English papers, I know how important it is to cite your work when making a point and provide references that anyone can access.

Until Natalie Luhrs at Radish Reviews posted the scans, all of the previous commentary on the Bulletin‘s content was based on selective excerpting which had been re-typed by the critics; this made it all too easy to dismiss the critics’ concerns. One of Mike Resnick’s supporters even illustrated this train of thought in the comments to Luhrs’ post:

Would you care to show all the columns [from issues #199 to 201?] The one that started the flame war? The first response? When you censor things like you do in this article, you only reinforce the idea that Resnick and Malzberg are right.

Luhrs’ response was perhaps a bit too prescient:

I don’t have the rest of the articles. If someone wants to provide me with images, I will be MORE THAN HAPPY to post them. My not posting them is not censorship–you will note that this site is not run by a “them” but by ME. As a private individual and as someone with significantly less power in the speculative fiction community that Mike Resnick and Barry Malzberg, I have no power to censor them.

There’s also this comment from a writer named Rochelle on an article written by author Amy McLane and posted at The Parking Lot Confessional:

Amy, could you provide me a link to what leightonmeester is responding to? Because I was startled in a different way when I read that section and all I could think was, “Surely, that didn’t appear in a professional arena…?

A different author named Shannon Leight responded by linking to my Scribd content, and I’m assuming she did so because she wanted for Rochelle to be able to confirm for herself that Malzberg’s and Resnick’s comments regarding their detractors had indeed been printed in the Bulletin. Other writers and organizations which have linked to the content on Scribd as part of their commentary on the controversy include this article on AdWeek, this article at The Daily Dot, this more recent article at Lit Reactor, and the references section of this Wikipedia article on the SFWA.

When I posted the .PDF to Scribd.com, I had briefly weighed the importance of respecting the Bulletin‘s and the authors’ copyright on the material against the more compelling journalistic need to ensure that the entire story was being accurately told—but only briefly. I scanned Scribd’s Terms and Policies pages and came away with the feeling that my re-posting of the images of the publication as part of my critique of the article and the situation fell under the “fair use” doctrine. I uploaded the .PDF, finished writing my article, and moved on to other stories.

Until Tuesday, that is, when Scribd sent me a boilerplate message stating that a third-party claimed that I had interfered with their copyright, referencing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) (.PDF).

Around the Water Cooler: Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. – “Repairs” (spoilers!)

I would be smirking, too, if this were a part of my morning routine. © ABC/Marvel Studios
I would be smirking, too, if this were a part of my morning routine. © ABC/Marvel Studios

After a hell of a morning, I definitely needed to relax with this commentary on the latest episode of “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”, now available to watch on the official website.

  • This may be a bit rude of me, but I totally love how Ward’s complicated plan to hide his “no-strings attached” relationship with May is circumvented by her just leaving the hotel room—thus, subverting the regular gender norms regarding casual sex. I do have to wonder, however, why she didn’t wear a bra. Even smaller breasted women need support.
  • I love how this entire ensemble worked together in this episode. The way Ward almost instantly picked up on Fitz and Simmons’ prank on Skye regarding May’s reputation was perfect and did much to make him that much more likable.
  • Tangential to this, I think I wouldn’t mind if they did a small web series during the hiatus about Skye attending S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy training.
  • The Monster of the Week was a bit weak—more of a MacGuffin, really—for the great character moments between the core cast. I haven’t read other reviews or reactions yet, but I think I’m totally okay with this.
  • I’m also totally okay with the “explanation” of the “Cavalry” nickname, even if I’m not sure I understood its import and how the situation was more dramatic with her going in with no weapons and a facing a cult with hostages inside rather than the outlandish stories that Ward, Fitz, and Simmons spun.
  • Perhaps the weakest bits were when Skye and Hannah were talking about God. I cringe whenever mainstream shows touch upon religion when it’s not normally a part of its makeup; this was no exception.
  • Of course, I love the post-credits scene here. It’s a nice, natural progression and I can’t wait to see May open up a bit more.

What were your favorite bits?

Trisha’s Quote for the Day: How Penny Arcade’s Robert Khoo is more evil than mastermind

[You] know what’s … rare? A guy who can write excellent code in several disparate languages, manage multiple different server installs, administrate databases, and configure office firewalls. All while being motivated to do “tedious” work and manage his own projects while not caring about his work/life balance and being solely focused on the job.

That’s not a unicorn, it’s something more like a deity, and it doesn’t actually exist. There is no one out there who can realistically meet that job description. What they will get instead is a jack of all trades who has mastered very few or none of them, and who will have to scramble like crazy just to meet the base requirements of the job, let alone excel at them. You know why? Because as they readily admit, it’s a job that should require four people. You get what you pay for, guys.

and

You don’t want that job. There is no upside to taking it. You’ll be worked like a dog and paid like shit while you’re doing it, while Khoo, Krahulik, and Holkins continue cashing their trade show checks.

Robert Khoo is a brilliant businessman, and such businessmen excel by finding the sucker and exploiting him or her.

Don’t be that sucker.

—Web designer and writer Christopher Buecheler lays it out to the potential applicants for a job working at Penny Arcade.

When my husband first expressed his outrage over the job posting, I didn’t think too much of it; however, reading this, I understand his anger a little better. At the same time, however, I doubt that any of the people who currently have full-time jobs (like their first employee Mike Fehlauer or most recent new hire Jamie Dillon) there are being terribly exploited.

So, my advice to any and all of the applicants out there when if they’re called in to a final interview where they start talking salary is to ask what the top person is taking home, and then maybe increase that by 50% or so. Because for a web-based company, if your electronic infrastructure breaks down, you definitely don’t want to be underpaying the guy or gal you’ve hired to maintain it.

As a side note, wouldn’t it be ironic if stories from their current web and Internet infrastructure team started appearing in The Trenches?

Pop Culture Catch-Up: X-Men: First Class (spoilers)

Want to get excited about a new thing, but aren’t completely up to date on the fandom and don’t mind spoilers? We here at Geeking Out About are happy to help provide you with everything you need in order to stay current with your geeky passions in our new column, “Pop Culture Catch-Up.”

X-Men: First Class
Directed by Matthew Vaughn
Starring James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Kevin Bacon, Jennifer Lawrence, and more
Rating: PG-13 for intense sequences of action and violence, some sexual content including brief partial nudity and language

Two men fight for truth, justice, and genetic equality in X-Men: First Class. © 20th Century Fox/Marvel Studios
Two men fight for truth, justice, and genetic equality in X-Men: First Class. © 20th Century Fox/Marvel Studios

When I first saw the X-Men: Days of Future Past trailer, I expressed a ton of confusion about it, and was told that I needed to see X-Men: First Class to really understand what’s going on. I was a little reluctant at first, but upon remembering that my local library has DVDs you can rent, I immediately requested it.

See, while I saw and loved X-Men when it came out in 2000, the two subsequent sequels left me with a bitter taste in my mouth. However, with the help of some friends who were kind enough to let me know that First Class was a much better movie than X-Men: The Last Stand I dove into this viewing of the DVD with much pleasure.

The Five-Sentence Synopsis

Traumatized by the horrors of the Holocaust, Erik Lensherr vows to enact revenge upon the man who wanted to turn his mutant gift into a terrible weapon. At the same time, doctoral candidate Charles Xavier wishes to help troubled mutants like Erik discover the full extent of their abilities to usher society into a new age of evolution. When the engineer of Lensherr’s despair schemes to throw the whole of humanity into the chaos of a nuclear war during the turmoil of the Cuban Missile Crisis, it’s up to Charles and Erik to guide a team of unproven students to defend the world. Ultimately, however, the two men are too different to be able to work together as the battle lines between them and the world around them are drawn.

‘Ships to Enjoy

As mentioned in the DVD extras, core of this movie is the relationship and friendship between Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and Erik Lensherr (Michael Fassbender): how it began and how it ended. You can’t imagine a more imperfect pair than these two, especially the way they’re portrayed here. This Charles Xavier is a bit of a flirt, one of the idle (but brilliantly intelligent) rich like Bertie Wooster for whom everything seems to have fallen into place. At the beginning of the movie, he’s rakishly charming and has his own pet/virtual companion in Raven, an orphan who has grown up doting on him. The only dark blot in his past is the fact that his mother has never seen him grow up in his ancestral home; this is something that young Charles Xavier doesn’t dwell upon at all.

In contrast, you have the emotionally and psychologically tortured Erik Lensherr whose entire world was ripped from him when his mother was killed before his eyes. Exactly what Klaus Schmidt/Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon) did after Erik’s full mutant potential was unleashed is never really specified, Judging from the fact that over a decade later, Erik is still out for vengeance, it must have been pretty horrific.

Where the two shine together is when they start working with the students in response to Sebastian Shaw’s gambits. You start to see Charles really settle down into becoming not just an academic professor but a real teacher, working within each person’s personal limits to make them feel more at ease. You also see Erik push them beyond their limits as he was once pushed. In the little family they built upon the Xavier estate grounds, then, Charles takes on a more nurturing parental role and Erik is the stern taskmaster whom everyone wants to please. The two men balance each other, like a ying and yang symbol and when their ideas become conflicted, to watch the balance and accord break is heart-rending.

‘Ships to Avoid

What I appreciate the most about First Class is that unlike the first X-Men movie and comics, there is no overwrought love triangle to complicate the more serious “racial prejudice” themes that have been at the core of the X-Men since they were first created by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee in 1963. Raven (Jennifer Lawrence) shares an almost-kiss with Hank McCoy (Nicholas Hoult) and a kiss with Erik, but a budding romance are not the point of those scenes. In the former, the scene introduces the concept of negative body image and the latter is the climax to that entire sub-plot. The scene after between Charles and Raven also serves to reveal to the audience that his approach to Raven’s upbringing was an utter mistake and ultimately, it was Charles’ youthful arrogance that made joining up with Erik the better option for her.

This is what it looks like when all your illusions about yourself are stripped away. © 20th Century Fox/Marvel Studios
This is what it looks like when all your illusions about yourself are stripped away. © 20th Century Fox/Marvel Studios

Best. Scene. Ever.
For me, it has to be the scene between Hank and Raven when he comes to tell her that he has perfected the serum that will remove their appearance of their physical mutations. Already, the movie had established that Raven feels a strong emotional and possibly sexual connection with the men who have been able to see her in her “true” form and not been judgmental about it first in the scenes where Raven is talking to Charles about how he picks up English co-eds and later in the scene where Hank comes to her with the idea of the serum in the first place. Now, we see her realize that her self-image issues are a form of self-hatred, something that Hank just isn’t able to understand because he’s filled with so much of it. Hank’s intellectual brilliance is masking a deep, deep self-loathing and just as he tells her that she is hiding her true self away from even the people who have been able to accept her, I think she also realizes that poor Hank has way more emotional issues about his mutation than she does.

Final Thoughts

X-Men: First Class was the right movie, with the right actors and the right crew, at the right time. Director Matthew Vaughn was wise to hold off on making an X-Men film until this project came along; at the same time, I wonder if there’s a way he could have avoided all of the problems of The Last Stand. Perhaps he did need a bit more seasoning before he was ready for the franchise. Alas, with Bryan Singer at the helm of Days of Future Past, we will never know.

Trisha’s Quote of the Day: Letting artists be artists

In the olden days, producers knew what visual effects were. Now they’ve gotten into this methodology where they’ll hire a middleman – a visual effects supervisor, and this person works for the producing studio. They’re middle managers. And when you go into a review with one of them, there’s this weird sort of competition that happens. It’s a game called ‘Find What’s Wrong With This Shot’. And there’s always going to be something wrong, because everything’s subjective. And you can micromanage it down to a pixel, and that happens all the time. We’re doing it digitally, so there’s no pressure to save on film costs or whatever, so it’s not unusual to go through 500 revisions of the same shot, moving pixels around and scrutinizing this or that. That’s not how you manage artists. You encourage artists, and then you’ll get – you know – art. If your idea of managing artists is just pointing out what’s wrong and making them fix it over and over again, you end up with artists who just stand around asking “OK lady, where do you want this sofa? You want it over there? No? Fine. You want it over there? I don’t give a fuck. I’ll put it wherever you want it.” It’s creative mismanagement, it’s part of the whole corporate modality. The fish stinks from the head on down. Back on Star Wars, Robocop, we never thought about what was wrong with a shot. We just thought about how to make it better.

—Legendary visual effects artist Phil Tippett wants many visual effects supervisors to get out of his office and go back where they came from.

Be sure to check out the rest of his AMA (Ask Me Anything) on Reddit right now!

You Had to Be There: “An Evening with Patrick Rothfuss and Paul & Storm” in St. Paul, Minneapolis

Rothfuss-PaulandStorm

An Evening with Patrick Rothfuss and Paul & Storm

November 14, 2013
Amsterdam Bar and Hall
Saint Paul, MN
Performed by Patrick Rothfuss, Paul and Storm

When we moved to Minnesota this year, my husband and I made a deal with each other: If there was a live event that sounded interesting and the ticket price was reasonable, we’d try to go. After all, what better way is there to learn how to navigate your new metro area than attending great shows in great venues?

Both individually and together, we’ve seen musical comedy duo Paul and Storm perform many times, and they always put on a good show. Money’s been a little problematic for us recently, though, so I made a decree that if we were going to see them perform again, there would have to be a real good and compelling reason. So when we learned that the next leg of their shows would not only swing through the Midwest but also bring fantasy author Patrick Rothfuss along for the ride, we snapped up the tickets quicker than you could say, “When’s Book Three coming out?”

This is not because we’re particularly strong Rothfuss fans. In fact, until that night, we’d never bought any of his books before. However, judging from the set that he did at w00tstock 5.0 this year, I knew that I’d love to hear what Rothfuss could do with a smaller audience and whether or not he’d be reading snippets from the new book. (A person can always dream!)

Suffice to say, neither my husband nor I were disappointed.

The show was at the Amsterdam Bar and Hall in St. Paul and if you’re driving, I have to strongly urge you to take the B stairs or elevator down from the ramp to street level. When you exit the elevator vestibule, the “red doors” of the Bar and Hall will be directly in front of you and you can go right inside. Getting our Will Call tickets at the box office was painless, and once we had our wristbands showing that we were old enough to drink, we sauntered inside.

For this show, seating was ample and came in two varieties: many rows of chairs for those who had already eaten and wanted to sit closer to the stage, tables and chairs for those people who hadn’t and were okay sitting further back. Because we liked the look of the bar menu, we chose to sit near the back and eat before the show started at 7:00 pm. The food was Dutch-themed “pub grub” and went down easily with our drinks, all of which were reasonably priced. In fact, my husband liked the look of the cocktail menu so much that he had a second drink after his first stout, something he normally doesn’t do. The service was quick, our waitress was friendly, and the food was pretty delicious. We were able to finish everything, including dessert, before the show started.

Paul and Storm performed first, starting with “Opening Band,” a song which they will probably be performing first at every show they do for the rest of their lives. The rest of the set list consisted of a mix of old songs and new songs, the latter of which will be appearing on their next album Ball Pit, for which their Kickstarter campaign was recently approved and already funded more than twice over after only about a week. Of these, I believe I liked and laughed at “Right Here With You” the most due to the chorus. Between songs, they did a quick poll of the audience to see who among them had seen their act before, and very many people in the audience had not. This meant that their older songs got a lot of wonderful and healthy reactions; this further intensified my enjoyment of hearing them played live again because I could enjoy hearing other people react to things I’ve already heard several times before. And since Paul and Storm had already identified that the crowd was mostly here to see Rothfuss and were more book nerds than musical comedy nerds, “Write Like the Wind” (link is to the official music video) was a great big hit and was perhaps funnier than the last time I’d heard it live.

Since another show was going to be taking place right after theirs and the concert staff needed to re-purpose the space, there was no intermission between Paul and Storm’s set and Patrick Rothfuss’; the performers acknowledged it by stating that if anyone needed to get up to use the bathroom, they wouldn’t point and laugh. I chose to make my break during “Nun Fight,” and I’m totally okay with my choice because Paul and Storm’s introduction to the song wasn’t as luxurious as it has been in other shows I’ve seen of theirs. This was probably the biggest drawback to the show, but probably something they couldn’t have avoided unless they could have started the show earlier. The closing number was “Irish Drinking Song,” not to be confused with “Another Irish Drinking Song,” the Da Vinci’s Notebook track which was featured on in the movie Despicable Me 2. With this number, I suspect that they may be trying to create another “Captain’s Wife’s Lament”-style experience with which they can end their shows. Where I was sitting in the audience, I couldn’t tell if many people were singing along with the chorus; perhaps this song would have played better with a different crowd or maybe I was just sitting too far back.

Paul and Storm then introduced Patrick Rothfuss, who kicked off his set by explaining first the story behind a very non-children’s book-style book he wrote called “The Adventures of the Princess and Mr. Whiffle: The Thing Beneath the Bed” and then reading it aloud while the illustrations were projected onto a screen. Since I’d seen him perform this during his w00tstock 5.0 set, I relished in the fact that I knew what was coming and my husband and some of the audience members didn’t; this made the progress through all three endings and the coda all that much more delicious. Rothfuss followed this reading by reading out loud some old advice columns he had written for his college paper, both of which went over well and had me doubled over in laughter.

He also took some questions from the audience towards the end of his set. It was perhaps this last bit that went over the least successfully with the crowd as the questions from the audience couldn’t be heard by anyone in the back and Rothfuss didn’t repeat the question for the rest of the audience before answering it. This could have been avoided by having a volunteer merch minion take one of the stage microphones and stand in the audience near the front of the stage so that people could line up and ask questions convention-panel time; then again perhaps there weren’t enough monitors on the stage available for Rothfuss to be able to hear questions being asked through a microphone.

Perhaps the most personal Rothfuss became during the Q & A was also my favorite moment. An audience member asked a question, to which his answer was something like, “Yes, thank you, my therapy sessions are going very well.” Rothfuss went on to explain that after achieving success with his first novel The Name of the Wind, the amount of stress and pressure in his life to continue to succeed and support the charity he founded and the people who work for him almost ruined his relationship with his long-time partner and other friends. He explained that being a Midwesterner, the idea of even going to therapy was antithetical to him as he came from generations of farmers who are used to fixing all of their own problems by themselves; the idea of getting professional help for your feelings was something he resisted for a very long time. However, once he understood the need for it, Rothfuss was able to see why learning about how his brain processed his feelings was important and that the year or so he’s had of therapy has really helped him. This was something I could relate to a lot, having gone through several years of therapy myself; I hope more people (ahem, Mike Krahulik) can take his words to heart.

Listening to Rothfus speak, I could tell that he was a great storyteller, but he’s got a long way and many more public appearances to go before his “patter” becomes as polished as someone like John Scalzi’s or John Green’s. There were times where he meandered and dithered while deciding which of the old advice columns he was going to read or how he was going to transition from one section of his set to the other. At the same time, his introduction of the Princess story was flawless and he answered all of the audience questions with ease and humor. The more public appearances like this he does, the more comfortable he’ll become with being a performer as well as an author and thus will be able to win over audiences members like me who may have heard of him but have not yet read his work.

Finally at 9:00 pm, it was time for the show closer, “The Captain’s Wife’s Lament,” which Paul and Storm have elevated from being just a simple innuendo-filled sea shanty to being the kind of long-form improv bit that Frank Sinatra only wishes he’d been able to command during the “Rat Pack in Las Vegas” days. Earlier in the show, Rothfuss joked about how proud he was to have been able to play the “X is my Y cover band” game twice during his own set; during “Lament” and with the aid of a beer he drank rapidly, Rothfuss was able to hold his own against Paul and Storm’s constant barrage of puns and jokes. Again, due to the time limit on the set, the short song only lasted 15 minutes, after which there was a healthy bit of applause and everyone ran to the merch booth to buy stuff.

After taking the last bit of cash out of the ATM—thus depriving other show attendees from being able to purchase any of Rothfuss’ merchandise, the proceeds of which were going to Heifer International via his charity Worldbuilders—my husband and I lined up with our two Princess books to be signed. The line formed very quickly and was very orderly, and judging from how long it took each item to be signed, Rothfuss took his time with each fan and even took a picture or two with some fans. As we waited in line, I noticed Paul and Storm at a nearby table chatting with each other or looking around the room or on their phones with no fans around; that’s when it really hit home how much of a Patrick Rothfuss show this was rather than a Paul and Storm show.

After talking to Rothfuss and asking my question, my husband and I went over to talk to Storm to thank him for coming to Minnesota at this cold time of year and to gush about JoCo Cruise Crazy 4, which will be our honeymoon trip next year. Storm’s face lit up when he learned this and we had a great little conversation about what goes into planning a cruise, how they decide what the entertainment will be this year compared to the previous years, how understanding the cruise line has been about the group’s request for a ball pit. This is probably what I like the most about going to see a geek-adjacent live performance: the performers are generally never standoffish and almost always remember that they used to be “regular” geeks as well and treat their fans accordingly.

According to a recent interview, they stated that their next scheduled appearance will at JCCC4 in 2014; the rest of their energies will be put towards finishing up Ball Pit, managing the Kickstarter rewards and JCCC4, and gearing up to tour the nation and promote the album with an ice cream and guacamole food truck in accordance with their biggest stretch goal. I don’t know with whom they’ll be performing or when they’ll be coming back to Minnesota, but you can betcha that I’ll be there.

With or without chips for the guacamole.

Around the Water Cooler: Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. – “The Well” (spoilers!)

And the awesome guest star streak continues with Peter MacNicol. © ABC/Marvel Studios
And the awesome guest star streak continues with Peter MacNicol. © ABC/Marvel Studios

Beware of the spoilers in this commentary on the latest episode of “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”, now available to watch on the official website.

  • I sure hope I’m not the only one who’s getting tired of these unimaginative episode titles.
  • Watching this opening sequence, this is the first time that I’m now starting to feel like I’m being pressured to keep up with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I was totally going to see Thor: The Dark World, but life got in the way a little. At least my copy of X-Men: First Class arrived from the hold I’d placed on it at the library and I can watch that today before seeing X-Men: Days of Future Past. Also, at least the only things that are being spoiled so far are the fact that more Asgardians came to Earth, they brought a spaceship this time, and it destroyed buildings in London.
  • What was up with Ward’s sudden prissiness regarding the clean-up? Is it that he didn’t want another incident happening like the one where Simmons almost died? If so, he could have alluded to it better.
  • I call total and utter “bullshit” on the Norwegian dude’s tree-felling technique. There is no way he could begin at about waist or torso height with a vertical cut and then end up with the tree being felled with a horizontal cut near the bottom. This is sloppy, sloppy work on someone’s part and I have no idea who to blame.
  • And now he’s being Mister Nice Guy? Ward, why does it seem like you’re a completely different person now? Also, I’m somewhat glad that Simmons didn’t bust out a Dune/“Fear is the mind killer” speech because a) they probably would have had to pay for that reference and b) it establishes that Simmons is not your average Whedonesque snarky geeky scientist. I totally love her more now.
  • In the scene where Coulson is being debriefed by the witness, I couldn’t tell him apart visually from the male antagonist. I honestly thought they were the same person at first. Does that make me racist against Norwegians?
  • Peter MacNicol! One of the best guest stars they’ve had so far, not including the cameo by Samuel L. Jackson in the second episode. Of the few episodes of “Numb3rs” I saw, I loved his appearances as Dr. Larry Fleinhardt, Charlie Epps’ academic associate.
  • Here’s what I don’t get about myth and epic tales. The Berserker Warrior doesn’t want his staff to fall into the wrong hands, yet verses survive telling about where he hid the pieces. These verses were specific enough for the antagonists to be able to hike into the forest and find a specific tree, which was “marked” by a ring of stones around it. These stones are protecting something that’s not supposed to be found, yet they’re very conspicuous in this forest. None of this makes any sense whatsoever.
  • Despite the excellent character moments between Skye and Ward just now where she called him by his first name and he flashed back to a near-drowning incident, I am starting to hate this episode due to the sheer stupidity in it. Clearly, an important plot point was that Ward needs to get his bare hand on the staff, so I understand why it wasn’t completely in Randolph’s bag when they’re underground in the catacombs under the cathedral. But he’s now on the run after the encounter and the staff is still sticking out of his bag? And a short and squat duffel bag at that? Why not a poster tube? It would have had the same visual impact of knowing that Randolph still had the staff without having it just sticking out of the bag.
  • Perhaps the only thing that makes sense is that a university professor would have a car that doesn’t have power locks.
  • Interesting statement about hyperaggressiveness as it relates to being hateful and petty just now. I think I rather like it. I also love how professional the rest of the team is about his little display.
  • OMG. Whatever doubt I had just now regarding the part about this epic myth has now just gone away with the reveal that Randolph is the Asgardian Warrior. My point about the staff in the bag still stands, however.
  • It’s so interesting seeing Skye’s civilian reaction to Ward’s new-found inner dick as compared to May and Coulson’s. It makes sense, too, because she is only learning how to act as a part of a team and when to trust certain people.
  • And…. I am so freaking happy that this episode ended with Ward and May rather than Ward and Skye. The “Terror in Tahiti” scene is pretty awesome, too.

And, just because I can, here’s the picture I’d originally wanted to use to head up this blog post but didn’t due to spoilers above the cut:

MAOS_Ep8_MayStaff_sm

Damn, I could look at Agent Melinda May forever.

Trisha’s Take: Four ways I would fix the second season of “Heroes of Cosplay”

Anime/Star Wars mash-up cosplay before it was cool © Geeking Out About
Anime/Star Wars mash-up cosplay before it was cool © Geeking Out About

See that picture up there? The girl in the purple cheongsam wielding the double-bladed lightsaber? That’s me as Darth Shampoo—an irreverent take on a character from the Ranma 1/2 franchise—the first cosplay costume I would ever do. That picture was taken during the second Anime Expo I ever attended back in 2000; since then, while I’ve worn outlandish outfits to conventions, I’ve only cosplayed one other time at an anime or other genre convention.

However, I’ve always appreciated the art and artistry of people who do choose to go to conventions and dress up as their favorite characters for an entire weekend. In the several years since I started going to genre conventions, I’ve watched the fandom cosplay community grow and change in part due to the Internet and rise of dedicated forums and social media as well as the change in conventions themselves.

Nowadays, instead of waking up and hoping to see your picture in the galleries of the now defunct A Fan’s View website run by Kevin Lillard, a cosplayer attending a convention can hope that their picture made it into cosplay galleries of national media outlets like Business Insider, websites for internationally funded cable channels like BBC America, or even your local Fox affiliate station such as this one in Salt Lake City, Utah.

And then, of course, there’s the reality TV series called “Heroes of Cosplay.”

Announced this year in April as “Cosworld” and purporting to be a documentary about cosplayers and the costuming world, what premiered instead on August 27 on the SyFy network was instead something more similar to the TLC show “Toddlers and Tiaras” than SyFy’s own competition reality series “Face Off.” Eight women (Holly Conrad, Chloe Dykstra, Yaya Han, Riki LeCotey, Monika Lee, Jessica Merizan, Victoria Schmidt, Becky Young) and one man (Jesse Lagers) were cast to appear in the show. The format of each episode followed this rough formula:

  • Cosplayer decides to attend a convention and plans a costume.
  • Cosplayer goes shopping for materials for the costume and plans its design.
  • Cosplayer has various difficulties with making the costume (with or without help from friends and/or significant others).
  • Cosplayer goes to convention with or without a finished costume along with a voiceover “announcing” their arrival; attendees gush over the costume and take many pictures.
  • If costume isn’t finished, cosplayer attempts to finish costume: Will they succeed?
  • Cosplayer enters masquerade contest.
  • Masquerade contest is over: Who will win the cash prize?

Interspersed with taped interview segments and tons of B-roll from Anime Expo 2013—seriously, anyone who’s been to the Los Angeles Convention Center knows what it looks like!—viewers could watch all the drama that comes with the cosplaying world take place at five genre conventions across the U.S. ranging from Wizard World Portland in Oregon on the West Coast all the way to MegaCon in Orlando, Florida in the East.

When episodes started to air, there was a great uproar from the cosplay community and other geek-adjacent media venues. Amid the outcry that the show wasn’t really representative of the experiences of the majority of the people who cosplay and parts of it were staged and/or manipulated by the producers, there was also the charge that the show just wasn’t that good.

I am not responsible for any liver-related trauma suffered by anyone reading this blog.
And it even inspired a drinking game. (If you’re the person who created this, please contact me so I can credit you properly!) © The RPF Forum

 

Which made me wonder: If I had the crew, the budget, and the opportunity, what would I do to make the upcoming second series of “Heroes of Cosplay” better?