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moonphase_feed) wrote2025-07-22 04:00 pm
moonphase_feed) wrote2025-07-22 04:00 pm
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mrissa) wrote2025-07-21 04:10 pm
mrissa) wrote2025-07-21 04:10 pmEntry tags:
The Lighthouse at the End of the World, by JR Dawson
Review copy provided by the author, who is a personal friend.
Nera has been helping her father at the titular Station her whole life. Or...her whole life-ish thing. Because Nera has only ever been in the Station, so she only interacts with her father, the dead, and the dogs who guide the dead on their way through the Veil and keep them safe. (The dogs. OMG the dogs. So many good doggos in this book.) Charlie has just lost her sister, who is also her best friend, and her family is falling apart. On top of it all, she's been seeing ghosts--but never the one she most wants to see.
But when Charlie finds the Station, she hopes for a chance to reverse what was lost. Nera is astonished--delighted--to meet another living person who can share at least some of her ghost experiences. But all is not well with the Station itself--dark forces threaten its peaceful work of helping spirits leave this world for what comes after. They want to shatter and rend. And the dark forces know all of Nera and Charlie's most vulnerable points.
Like life, this book is so full of both grief and joy. Both are extremely well-drawn and intense--I started reading this book on an airplane and stopped almost immediately, because I could see that there would be moments of stronger emotion than I wanted to invite by myself in seat 16B. If you've suffered loss recently, time your reading of this book carefully, but I think it can be very healing. I think this is one of those rare books that can be enjoyed by many but will be desperately needed by some. There's so much heart here, for other people and of course dogs, but also for places. Highly recommended.
Reactor (tordotcom_feed) wrote2025-07-21 07:25 pm
tordotcom_feed) wrote2025-07-21 07:25 pmThe Most Exciting SDCC 2025 Panels To Watch For
The Most Exciting SDCC 2025 Panels To Watch For
Here’s when you can catch SDCC 2025’s most exciting panels and presentations.
Published on July 21, 2025
Photo: FX Productions
Photo: FX Productions
San Diego Comic-Con 2025’s full schedule includes hundreds of events and dozens of panels that will run from July 24-27 at the San Diego Convention Center. And while there is still no way to watch those panels live unless you are fortunate enough to snag a ticket to the show, we will be bringing you coverage of all of the convention’s biggest presentations, announcements, and surprises.
Though this year’s SDCC lacks a massive Marvel Studios presentation (Marvel is busy finishing up Avengers: Doomsday and plans to return to SDCC in 2026), that just means that SDCC 2025 will instead be highlighted by a wider variety of updates about some of the other biggest names in movies, TV, and comics. It’s best to keep at least a loose eye on all of the proceedings to make sure you don’t miss a thing, but here’s a rundown of when you can catch the SDCC 2025 panels we are most excited about.
Alien: Earth – July 25, 1:25 PM PT
Those attending SDCC 2025 will get to enter “The Wreckage,” an Alien-themed interactive experience filled with lore, activities, and even custom beverages inspired by the famous sci-fi franchise. Those of us at home will have to settle for reactions to the world premiere of Noah Hawley’s upcoming FX series.
Set two years before the events of 1979’s Alien, Alien: Earth follows an eclectic group of Earthlings who must navigate the horrifying aftermath of a mysterious space vessel crash. Hawley has been keeping the most interesting details about the prequel series close to his chest (burster), but we’re curious to see how he will fulfill his ambitious mission to honor the legacy of the Alien films while laying the groundwork for what he hopes will be a multi-season production.
Predator: Badlands – July 25, 4:15 PM PT
With 2022’s Prey, Dan Trachtenberg not only revived the Predator franchise but opened the door to a universe of Predator-based adventures set on different worlds and in different eras. While the animated series Predator: Killer of Killers offered a taste of just how fun that concept can be, it’s Trachtenberg’s follow-up film, Predator: Badlands, that will likely set the tone for all future Predator adventures.
And as the recently released Predator: Badlands trailer shows, said adventures will seemingly include some less-than-subtle references to the Alien franchise. Trachtenberg has expressed interest in making an Alien vs. Predator movie, but could Badlands be a stealthy take on that very concept? This panel will hopefully reveal all.
Star Trek Universe – July 26, 12:30 PM PT
This 90-minute panel hosted by Star Trek: Voyager’s Bob Picardo will thankfully offer more information about the future of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. That information will likely focus on the remainder of the series’ recently released third season, though there is some hope that the showrunners will shed a little light on their plans for the final two seasons of Strange New Worlds.
But the biggest draw here is the proper reveal of the next Star Trek series, Starfleet Academy. Beyond the cast (which includes Holly Hunter, Bella Shepard, Tig Notaro, and Robert Picardo) and the setting (the 32nd century), we know very little about this show that will follow a new group of Academy cadets. Set your expectations to “debut trailer.”
Peacemaker: Season 2 – July 26, 3:30 PM PT
Whether you are a fan of the John Cena-led HBO series or not, this Peacemaker panel has to be considered one of SDCC 2025’s biggest presentations. Why? Well, it has something to do with the fact James Gunn recently revealed that Peacemaker‘s second season will be closely related to the events of the Superman movie.
We know that Peacemaker’s second season will revolve around the concept of the pocket universes we saw in the recent Superman film (and the show’s first season), but that only scratches the surface of what makes this panel so intriguing. Given that the DC movies have no other official presence at SDCC 2025, this Peacemaker presentation could end up being our best look at what James Gunn has in store for that rapidly expanding film universe.
Anne Rice’s Immortal Universe – July 26, 4:30 PM PT
Interview With the Vampire remains one of the most frustratingly overlooked and underappreciated shows on television. Thankfully, AMC has already greenlit the series’ third season, which will reportedly focus on Lestat as he goes on tour with his rock band. If you know, you know. If you don’t know, then we’ll hopefully all be treated to a glimpse at that majestic concept during this preview.
The panel will also include a look at the upcoming AMC series, The Talamasca: The Secret Order. Based on the paranormal investigation secret society from the Anne Rice novels, the show will follow members of the Talamasca as they research and track all manner of supernatural creatures. We know very little about the show beyond a few production photos and press releases, though this panel will likely include a debut trailer.
Sneak Peek of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art – July 27, 11:00 AM PT
George Lucas officially heads to San Diego Comic-Con for the first time ever as part of this highly anticipated preview of his upcoming museum, which will be moderated by Queen Latifah (bet you didn’t see that coming) and co-presented by director Guillermo del Toro.
And while it’s highly doubtful that either of those guests will throw any hardball questions Lucas’ way, this is still a rare opportunity to hear Lucas speak at length about his works in this kind of environment. Come for the stories of a remarkable career, and stay to see if the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art gift shop will include commemorative bottles of coarse, rough sand. [end-mark]
The post The Most Exciting SDCC 2025 Panels To Watch For appeared first on Reactor.
Reactor (tordotcom_feed) wrote2025-07-21 07:00 pm
tordotcom_feed) wrote2025-07-21 07:00 pmSlay, Diva: The I Know What You Did Last Summer Reboot Will Hook You
Slay, Diva: The I Know What You Did Last Summer Reboot Will Hook You
Jennifer Kaytin Robinson’s slasher reboot crowns a new Fisherman.
Published on July 21, 2025
Credit: Sony Pictures
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<p class="syndicationauthor">Posted by Emmet Asher-Perrin</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/movie-review-i-know-what-you-did-last-summer-reboot-will-hook-you/">https://reactormag.com/movie-review-i-know-what-you-did-last-summer-reboot-will-hook-you/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=818663">https://reactormag.com/?p=818663</a></p><post-hero class="wp-block-post-hero js-post-hero post-hero post-hero-horizontal">
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<h2 class="post-hero-title text-h1">Slay, Diva: The <i>I Know What You Did Last Summer</i> Reboot Will Hook You</h2>
<div class="prose post-hero-description prose--post-hero">Jennifer Kaytin Robinson’s slasher reboot crowns a new Fisherman.</div>
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Published on July 21, 2025
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<div class="post-hero-caption post-hero-caption-vertical [&_a]:link"><p>Credit: Sony Pictures</p>
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<p>Like its 1990s horror-sibling <em>Scream</em> (both from the meta mind of Kevin Williamson), <em>I Know What You Did Last Summer</em> has a simple but recognizable brand: The increasingly campy accusatory notes, scrawled on paper or spelled out in steam. A Fisherman killer ensemble that includes a slicker, boots, and a wicked hook. Jennifer Love Hewitt screaming “What are you waiting for?!” into the void. But it’s not a formula that can be recreated entirely from scratch, as several foundered sequels and reboots have demonstrated; this is a story that needs to feed off its own lore. In the spirit of 2018’s <em>Halloween</em>, Jennifer Kaytin Robinson imbues her <em>I Know What You Did Last Summer</em> with Gen-Z slang and self-examination into complex PTSD (specifically, <em>hurt people hurt people</em>) while also still poking fun at said hyper-self-awareness. It’s not perfect, but it crams in a lot of laughs and, best of all, shows how a franchise can grow and mature.</p>
<p>The original <em>I Know What You Did Last Summer</em> is shockingly bleak, even for the genre: In sleepy fishing village Southport, four teenagers celebrate their first Independence Day since graduating high school, only to not-so-accidentally kill a stranger and—most damningly—cover up the evidence before going on to the rest of their lives. But the next summer, an anonymous note drags them all back home to face the delayed ramifications of their actions. Except that the guilt has already ruined their lives: pageant queen Helen Shivers (Sarah Michelle Gellar) tried the modelling-in-New-York-City thing and returned home with her tail between her legs, aspiring quarterback Barry Cox (Ryan Philiippe) got benched, humble Ray Bronson (Freddie Prinze, Jr.) never escaped Southport to go write in Manhattan coffee shops, and Julie James (Jennifer Love Hewitt) is flunking out of freshman year. By the time the Fisherman starts in with his hook, they’re all already half-dead.</p>
<p>As co-writer and director, Robinson brings her bonafides from the rape vigilante cult TV series <em>Sweet/Vicious</em> and the <em>Heathers</em>-meets-Highsmith thriller <em>Do Revenge</em> to bear on this legacy sequel. Rather than skirt or erase the original’s failings (including an alarming amount of violence on women not even inflicted by the Fisherman), she doubles down on how toxic attitudes morph over generations, so that by the time the new crop of potential Final Girls are begging the older generation for help, they’re being written off as hysterical women.</p>
<p>One smart move is aging up the characters, finding a new vulnerable inflection point at which they make this awful decision. Instead of Gen X (or maybe elder Millennial) high school seniors, they’re Zoomers having a quarterlife crisis, as it’s the first wedding in the friend group dragging everyone back to their hometown. This generation’s Julie James is Ava Brucks (the excellent Chase Sui Wonders from <em>The Studio</em>), just neurotic enough to be relatable but still possessing enough spine to stand up to her vapid bestie Danica Richards (Madelyn Cline) and fiancé Teddy Spencer (Tyriq Withers). Ava is the moral center of the group, but that means her empathy for how the car accident could ruin their lives still compels her to keep her mouth shut.</p>
<p>The new foursome is actually a fivesome, with the addition of social outcast Stevie Ward (Sarah Pidgeon). In that way, the new installment splits Ray’s character into two personas: Milo Griffin (Jonah Hauer-King), Ava’s aspiring-politician ex-high school sweetheart, and working-class Stevie, the only one of the group who couldn’t pay her way out of a hit-and-run, which compels her to go along with the guilty cover-up. (If you read between the lines, bisexual Ava might have history with both of them, which shores up the Ray comparison.) Teddy and Danica are very much reincarnations of Barry and Helen, down to his pretty-boy aesthetic and her being Southport’s Croaker Queen of 2017 (or thereabouts). They’re all solidly into their adult lives and believe in their own immortality and happily ever afters, but being linked by the accident makes them all regress back into their toxic adolescent dynamics.</p>
<p>Yet the biggest glow-up belongs to Southport itself, which has transformed from sleepy fishing village to the Hamptons of North Carolina. In contrast to how Haddonfield grows around the scar tissue of Michael Myers’ Halloween massacre, Southport distances itself from its grisly past, the town working with developer (and Teddy’s father) Grant Spencer (Billy Campbell) to forcibly rewrite the town’s history by way of luxury vacation condos with marina access. This doesn’t sit well with longtime residents like Ray (Prinze, Jr. solidly in his silver fox era), still a fisherman but now running Ray’s Bar, a beloved spot for locals and tourists alike.</p>
<p>True crime podcaster Tyler Trevino (Gabriette Bechtel) is lumped into everything that’s wrong with this shiny new Southport, rather than offering an opportunity for an actually interesting commentary on the parasitic and parasocial nature of true crime. Instead of how the <em>Halloween</em> legacy sequel had its podcasters be the ones to let Michael loose on Haddonfield once more, Tyler is exposition and a punchline, though admittedly the name of her podcast is great: Love Laugh Slaughter. At most, her presence reminds audiences that Southport already has plenty of its own lore, from the unbroken line of Croaker Queens to its own take on “The Hook” urban legend that may well have inspired Ben Willis in his original killing spree. (And let’s not get started on the next generation of self-aware boat names, with Ray’s <em>Billy Blue</em> retired to a wall of his restaurant, but another boat named for Themis, the goddess of justice but also prophecy.)</p>
<p>Hewitt, our scream queen currently starring on <em><s>Wee-Woo</s></em> <em>9-1-1</em>, returns to her horror roots with the same grimly game self-effacement she brought to her guest spot on <em>Boy Meets World</em>’s 1998 <em>Scream</em> sendup. Julie James lets out one shrill scream, but she controls where and when; otherwise, she is cool and collected in the face of her worst nightmare coming back, because she has done the work in therapy. But don’t think that doesn’t mean you won’t get a note-perfect rendition of her character’s catchphrase at a crucial moment. And without saying too much, there is justice for Helen Shivers.</p>
<p>With so many new characters, the film skips a bit too quickly over the intervening decades for Julie and Ray, who underwent a bitter enough divorce at some point, likely the top of her list of reasons for never returning to Southport. Presumably it has something to do with a disagreement over trauma therapy, with each clearly falling on one side of the argument. What is puzzling (and perhaps just wound up on the cutting-room floor) is the complete lack of explanation for the ending of <em>I Still Know What You Did Last Summer</em>, in which Julie and Ray are married, when Ben Willis drags Julie under the bed. It could have been explained away as one of her nightmares (like the scenario that ends the first film), but the lack of explanation feels like an odd oversight. That said, each representing opposing ways to handle their shared trauma creates a strong framework for how Ava and her friends will have any hope of staying alive.</p>
<p>This overcrowded plot does manifest in murders that are a bit more bam-bam-bam, as if the Fisherman has been making up for the lost decades. The movie suffers without any epic chase scenes to emulate <em>I Still Know What You Did Last Summer</em>; all it would have taken was trimming the fat off other confrontations, including a near-perfect cameo that went on a tad too long and did not need CGI.</p>
<p>The reboot puts more effort into the whodunnit part of the slasher mystery than its forebear did, which mostly works. The original was pretty straightforward in establishing Ben Willis as the killer, leaning less on the mystery and more on the stunning lengths that a grieving parent would go to—especially apt as Julie was missing her own father. Absent parents leave their mark on plenty of the new cast, from Ava’s dead mom rendered in wistful photograph to Stevie’s white-collar criminal dad blowing up their family, but that motivation doesn’t quite translate in the same way to the identity of this generation’s Fisherman.</p>
<p>If anything, the killer reveal is most reminiscent of <em>Scream 4</em>, examining how different people internalize a tragic narrative and how that feeds into main character syndrome—whether as the Final Girl or the one with the hook. This acknowledgment of intergenerational trauma is basically a prerequisite for any of the classic franchises rebooting themselves in this century, but <em>I Know What You Did Last Summer</em> takes a big narrative swing that adds fascinating depth to the lore, even if the explanation itself is a tad too rushed. Setting up for hopefully at least one more campy installment, this legacy sequel definitely gives the franchise its flowers.[end-mark]</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://reactormag.com/movie-review-i-know-what-you-did-last-summer-reboot-will-hook-you/">Slay, Diva: The <I>I Know What You Did Last Summer</i> Reboot Will Hook You</a> appeared first on <a href="https://reactormag.com">Reactor</a>.</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/movie-review-i-know-what-you-did-last-summer-reboot-will-hook-you/">https://reactormag.com/movie-review-i-know-what-you-did-last-summer-reboot-will-hook-you/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=818663">https://reactormag.com/?p=818663</a></p>
Reactor (tordotcom_feed) wrote2025-07-21 06:00 pm
tordotcom_feed) wrote2025-07-21 06:00 pmBuilding a Better World in Ten Incarnations of Rebellion by Vaishnavi Patel
Building a Better World in Ten Incarnations of Rebellion by Vaishnavi Patel
A young woman struggles to change the tides of history in an alternate version of 1960s India that was never liberated from the British.
Published on July 21, 2025
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<p class="syndicationauthor">Posted by Christina Orlando</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/book-review-ten-incarnations-of-rebellion-by-vaishnavi-patel/">https://reactormag.com/book-review-ten-incarnations-of-rebellion-by-vaishnavi-patel/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=818336">https://reactormag.com/?p=818336</a></p><post-hero class="wp-block-post-hero js-post-hero post-hero post-hero-vertical">
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<h2 class="post-hero-title text-h1">Building a Better World in <i>Ten Incarnations of Rebellion</i> by Vaishnavi Patel</h2>
<div class="prose post-hero-description prose--post-hero">A young woman struggles to change the tides of history in an alternate version of 1960s India that was never liberated from the British.</div>
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<p class="post-hero-author text-xs font-aktiv uppercase font-medium [&_a]:link-hover">By <a href="https://reactormag.com/author/jenny-hamilton/" title="Posts by Jenny Hamilton" class="author url fn" rel="author">Jenny Hamilton</a></p>
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Published on July 21, 2025
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<p>Vaishnavi Patel’s third novel, <em>Ten Incarnations of Rebellion, </em>imagines an alternate version of India where young women must raise the banner of rebellion and secure the freedom of their homeland, once and for all. In this world, India never attained independence from England. The leaders of its independence movement—Nehru, Gandhi, Jinnah—died in the 1930s, and the British have since pursued a strategy of brutal oppression against the Indian nation, drafting most of its young men to serve in never-ending border wars. Bombay was destroyed, rebuilt, and renamed Kingston—and it’s Kingston where Kalki Divekar comes of age in the 1960s, grieving the rebel father who was forced to flee home when Kalki was just a child.</p>
<p>Before Kalki’s father left, he instilled in his daughter his passionate drive for freedom. <em>Ten Incarnations of Rebellion </em>follows Kalki on her journey from an ordinary schoolgirl to leader of the revived Indian Liberation Movement. Each chapter shows us one of the steps on that journey, and the stories Kalki learned as a child form a crucial backdrop for her growth as a leader. Patel cleverly aligns her novel’s structure with the ten incarnations of Vishnu, so we get to hear those stories as the characters share them with each other in moments of intimacy and moments of doubt. Each of Vishnu’s avatars has a lesson to teach Kalki and her friends, and Kalki draws strength from imaginatively rooting the movement’s struggles in the stories of the gods’ triumph, heartbreak, and endurance.</p>
<p><em>Ten Incarnations of Rebellion</em> contains no speculative elements apart from proposing an alternate history for India—which by itself represents a massive challenge to the author, who must reimagine a whole world history. Patel sensibly keeps her main story local, with brief mentions of what’s happening throughout the rest of India and the world. Kalki and her friends are never trying to liberate India all on their own, instead recognizing that they are one group among many fighting for the country’s freedom. Even within Kingston/Bombay/Mumbai, Kalki doesn’t know everything about the work of every cell within the liberation movement she’s started in the city, although she consults with other cell leaders on overall strategy. It’s a savvy choice by the author, allowing Kalki to blossom as a leader while emphasizing that liberation is always and inherently a group project.</p>
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<p>As is the case for any group project, the group members have to navigate competing visions for how best to achieve their goals. Kalki—who’s Hindu—begins her work with two close friends and allies, one Muslim and one Dalit. Her Dalit friend, Yashu, keeps pressing for guarantees that the new India of Kalki’s vision will abandon caste prejudices and enable low-caste Indians like Yashu to be full, welcomed members of society.</p>
<p>Though Yashu is the strongest influence pushing Kalki to think beyond herself, we see a range of other ideas and strategies over the course of the book. Should the rebellion remain nonviolent, or take actions that risk harm to noncombatants? Do they prioritize social support and network-building over acts of sabotage against British targets? Patel—who has obviously thought deeply about histories of rebellion against empire in India and elsewhere—doesn’t pretend that these questions have easy answers. Kalki is constantly talking through these issues with Fauzia and Yashu, and the answers they find are never absolutes. They are making the best decisions they can for their specific local context and the resources they can bring to bear on the fight. Other people, in other places, may choose differently; that doesn’t mean that they, or Kalki, chose wrong.</p>
<p>Even so, the fight for freedom takes its toll. When Kalki and her best friend Fauzia—another of the resistance leaders—confess their feelings for each other, they’re able to take joy in the relationship, but Kalki is never able to give herself over to it fully. She cares deeply for Fauzia, but she cares first and most for the movement. As is true for so many of the ethical conflicts that arise throughout the book, the author resists taking a side. Fauzia wants to build a life together. Kalki cannot promise that life until India is free. Both of them love each other, and both of them are committed to the work they’re doing. If the cost of liberation is a life without family, is that a price worth paying? Here again, different characters find a different balance for competing values, without the book feeling a need to stake a claim on who’s right.</p>
<p>In a striking scene late in the book, Kalki comes across a British man who has been beaten and left to die in an alley. She has good reason to hate him as a representative of the empire, and as a person who has does irreparable harm to her, personally. Standing above him, he begs for his life, and Kalki makes the choice to spare him “because that is not the India I want to live in.” It’s not a gesture of forgiveness—she says that she doesn’t forgive him—but this one man’s life or death is almost beside the point. Kalki is committing to keep making the moral choices to build the nation she wants and the person she wants to be. Her world has often been cruel, but she won’t let it make her cruel, too. </p>
<p><em>Ten Incarnations of Rebellion</em> feels particularly timely to our current geopolitical moment, as nationalist leaders sweep into power in countries across the world. But resistance to oppressive powers is always happening, everywhere. We won’t be perfect in the fight, but we can, like Kalki and her friends, seek to learn from each other, think deeply about our values, and build, brick by brick, the world we want to live in.[end-mark]</p>
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<p class="has-sm-font-size"><em><a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/762403/ten-incarnations-of-rebellion-by-vaishnavi-patel/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Ten Incarnations of Rebellion</a></em> is published by Ballantine Books.</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://reactormag.com/book-review-ten-incarnations-of-rebellion-by-vaishnavi-patel/">Building a Better World in <i>Ten Incarnations of Rebellion</i> by Vaishnavi Patel</a> appeared first on <a href="https://reactormag.com">Reactor</a>.</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/book-review-ten-incarnations-of-rebellion-by-vaishnavi-patel/">https://reactormag.com/book-review-ten-incarnations-of-rebellion-by-vaishnavi-patel/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=818336">https://reactormag.com/?p=818336</a></p>
oursin (oursin) wrote2025-07-21 06:12 pm
oursin) wrote2025-07-21 06:12 pmEntry tags:
But why do they want to?
Be respected literary novelists, that is?
Here be blokes going wah wah wah about the plight of the male novelist, lo, the voice of the Mybug B heard in the land, no?
Is this the death of the male novelist? The lonely life of a man writing fiction in 2025:
“Being a middle-aged white guy and working in this space today feels, to me, like what it must have felt to have been a poet at the end of the 20th century,” Niven tells me, laughing. “It’s a very niche, very recherché area, with a tiny audience. Men just don’t read fiction in anything like the same quantities they used to, and fewer of us, it seems, are writing it.”
You know, women are notably broader in their reading parameters? I'm not convinced by this argument:
He tells me a story about a friend – “with a big public profile” – who published his first novel a couple of years ago. “It was very good, but it was non-genre, and he’s a middle-aged white guy, so I did my best to manage his expectations.” The novel was turned down by every major publisher before eventually being picked up by a tiny independent. The book, once published, came and went, as so many do. “If it had been written by a woman, it would have sold six, seven times as many as it eventually did. But this is where we are today.”
Or maybe it just Wasn't All That?
And apparently at least one of the lairy 'scabrous, satirical, and vigorously male' novelists of the 90s who cannot catch a break these days:
["W]rites crime novels now. The last refuge of the scoundrel is the crime novel. And I get it! There’s a definable audience for crime fiction, but if you’re not writing genre fiction, then it’s difficult out there.”
Because the damselly laydeez never, ever dabble in the waters of crime or genre fiction....
Oh, wait.
I do wonder WHY they want to write SRS LTRY FIKSHUN??? is it all about the Kultural Kred? (Am currently reading Norma Clarke on Goldsmith and Grub Street, and how it was Not Gentlemanly to be a hack who wrote for filthy lucre, and the delicate balancing acts Georgian literary figures had to engage in.) And why are they all about being warty boys when they do so rather than being, oh, Henry James or Scott Fitzgerald or noted for their exquisite prose style? is it also about Macho Cred?
My own literary tastes among the Blokes of the Pen whose works you will tear from my cold dead hands have been discursed of here and they range widely. I can't help imagining several of them waxing satyrik about this lot.
Reactor (tordotcom_feed) wrote2025-07-21 05:00 pm
tordotcom_feed) wrote2025-07-21 05:00 pmNew Predator: Badlands Trailer Makes Its Alien Connection Extra Clear
New Predator: Badlands Trailer Makes Its Alien Connection Extra Clear
Those Weyland-Yutanis, always coming up with such cool new tech.
Published on July 21, 2025
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<p class="syndicationauthor">Posted by Molly Templeton</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/predator-badlands-trailer-weyland-yutani/">https://reactormag.com/predator-badlands-trailer-weyland-yutani/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=818689">https://reactormag.com/?p=818689</a></p><post-hero class="wp-block-post-hero js-post-hero post-hero post-hero-horizontal">
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<h2 class="post-hero-title text-h1">New <i>Predator: Badlands</i> Trailer Makes Its <i>Alien</i> Connection Extra Clear</h2>
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<p class="post-hero-author text-xs font-aktiv uppercase font-medium [&_a]:link-hover">By <a href="https://reactormag.com/author/molly-templeton/" title="Posts by Molly Templeton" class="author url fn" rel="author">Molly Templeton</a></p>
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<p>In the <a href="https://reactormag.com/predator-badlands-teaser/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">first trailer for <em>Predator: Badlands</em></a>, eagle-eyed viewers noticed a Weyland-Yutani logo in the eyes of android Thia (Elle Fanning). In the new trailer, you don’t have to look hard at all: The trailer opens on a scene of Thia in some sort of repair tank, the text “field unit reboot” and “Weyland-Yutani bio-weapons division” overlaid on the top. It also reads “MU/TH/UR 062578.” MU/TH/UR 6000 was the artificial intelligence on the <em>Nostromo</em>; the much longer number after the letters here suggest both that we’re farther in the future, and that this bit of technology is considerably more advanced. </p>
<p><em>Badlands</em> is the second <em>Predator</em> film due out this year, after last month’s <em>Predator: Killer of Killers</em>. It stars Fanning in <a href="https://www.empireonline.com/movies/news/predator-badlands-alien-connection-weyland-yutani-dan-trachtenberg/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">two roles</a>, and Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi as Dek: a young, outcast Predator who decides to go on a hunt on what Thia describes as “the most dangerous planet in the universe.”</p>
<p>And he may not be the only one out there hunting. While director and co-writer Dan Trachtenberg <a href="https://www.empireonline.com/movies/news/predator-badlands-alien-connection-weyland-yutani-dan-trachtenberg/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">has said</a> he wanted “no humans in this movie,” there do seem to be some people about, likely getting in Dek’s way, definitely up to no good. And, yes, getting themselves dead. Thia seems to spend much of the film in a very C-3PO-in-Cloud City sort of state (which is to say, without the lower half of her body), but she also makes a dramatic kill of her own, taking out a sort of alien pterodactyl with enthusiasm and a knife.</p>
<p><em>Badlands</em> is probably not the end of Trachtenberg’s time with his Predator friends. He <a href="https://www.empireonline.com/movies/news/predator-badlands-dek-like-conan-mad-max-exclusive/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">told <em>Empire</em></a> he had three ideas after <em>Prey</em>, and this is the second. One certainly wonders about the wider, <em>Alien</em>-related world he might be setting up.</p>
<p><em>Predator: Badlands</em> is in theaters November 7th.[end-mark]</p>
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<p>The post <a href="https://reactormag.com/predator-badlands-trailer-weyland-yutani/">New <i>Predator: Badlands</i> Trailer Makes Its <i>Alien</i> Connection Extra Clear</a> appeared first on <a href="https://reactormag.com">Reactor</a>.</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/predator-badlands-trailer-weyland-yutani/">https://reactormag.com/predator-badlands-trailer-weyland-yutani/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=818689">https://reactormag.com/?p=818689</a></p>
Reactor (tordotcom_feed) wrote2025-07-21 05:00 pm
tordotcom_feed) wrote2025-07-21 05:00 pmBabylon 5 Rewatch: “Walkabout”
Babylon 5 Rewatch: “Walkabout”
Sheridan plans a new attack against the Shadows, and Dr. Franklin spends some time in Downbelow…
Published on July 21, 2025
Credit: Warner Bros. Television
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<p class="syndicationauthor">Posted by Sarah</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/babylon-5-rewatch-walkabout/">https://reactormag.com/babylon-5-rewatch-walkabout/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=818662">https://reactormag.com/?p=818662</a></p><post-hero class="wp-block-post-hero js-post-hero post-hero post-hero-horizontal">
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<h2 class="post-hero-title text-h1"><i>Babylon 5</i> Rewatch: “Walkabout”</h2>
<div class="prose post-hero-description prose--post-hero">Sheridan plans a new attack against the Shadows, and Dr. Franklin spends some time in Downbelow…</div>
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<p class="post-hero-author text-xs font-aktiv uppercase font-medium [&_a]:link-hover">By <a href="https://reactormag.com/author/keith-decandido/" title="Posts by Keith R.A. DeCandido" class="author url fn" rel="author">Keith R.A. DeCandido</a></p>
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Published on July 21, 2025
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<div class="post-hero-caption post-hero-caption-vertical [&_a]:link"><p>Credit: Warner Bros. Television</p>
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<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="740" height="493" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/babylon-5-walkabout-01-740x493.jpg" class="w-full object-cover" alt="Dr Franklin visits a club in Downbelow in Babylon 5 "Walkabout"" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/babylon-5-walkabout-01-740x493.jpg 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/babylon-5-walkabout-01-1100x733.jpg 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/babylon-5-walkabout-01-768x512.jpg 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/babylon-5-walkabout-01.jpg 1200w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 740px) 100vw, 740px" /> </figure>
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<p><strong>“Walkabout”</strong><br>Written by J. Michael Straczynski<br>Directed by Kevin G. Cremin<br>Season 3, Episode 18<br>Production episode 318<br>Original air date: September 30, 1996</p>
<p><strong>It was the dawn of the third age…</strong> Mollari is upset because one of the ships providing defense for B5 is a Narn heavy cruiser. By the terms of the treaty between the Centauri Republic and the Earth Alliance, any Narn vessel should be turned over to the Centauri. Garibaldi tartly points out that B5 is no longer part of the EA and he can go pound sand.</p>
<p>Alexander arrives on the station and goes to medlab, asking after Franklin, but getting Hobbs, who says that Franklin is on an extended leave of absence. Alexander asks if anyone was with Kosh when he died.</p>
<p>Ulkesh, the new Vorlon ambassador arrives, though he does not identify himself as such, insisting that he be called Kosh in order to maintain continuity and keep Kosh’s death on the down-low.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1100" height="825" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/babylon-5-walkabout-03-1100x825.jpg" alt="Sheridan greets Ulkesh, the new Vorlon ambassador, in Babylon 5 "Walkabout"" class="wp-image-818679" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/babylon-5-walkabout-03-1100x825.jpg 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/babylon-5-walkabout-03-740x555.jpg 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/babylon-5-walkabout-03-140x105.jpg 140w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/babylon-5-walkabout-03-768x576.jpg 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/babylon-5-walkabout-03.jpg 1200w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1100px) 100vw, 1100px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Credit: Warner Bros. Television</figcaption></figure>
<p>G’Kar hosts the captain of the Narn cruiser, Na’Kal, who tells him that they are slowly assembling the tattered remains of the Narn fleet. Na’Kal wants to know when they can strike back at the Centauri, but G’Kar says the time for that isn’t right, and at the moment, defending B5 is the priority.</p>
<p>Garibaldi tracks down Franklin, who hasn’t used his quarters in several days. The doctor explains that he’s on walkabout. The concept comes from Australian aborigines, and it’s when you just start walking until you meet yourself. Garibaldi thinks it’s silly, but respects his wishes.</p>
<p>Alexander meets with Ulkesh, wanting to know if Kosh left a piece of him with Alexander, but she wasn’t on the station at the time. Ulkesh says that means she failed. She doesn’t know if anyone else was with him or not, but promises to try to find out.</p>
<p>She then meets with Sheridan, discussing Kosh’s death. Alexander mentions that it’s been a very long time since a Vorlon died. She also starts to suspect that <s>Spock</s> Kosh may have left <s>his katra</s> a piece of himself in <s>McCoy</s> Sheridan. The captain also has a difficult favor he wants to ask her…</p>
<p>In the War Room, Sheridan explains the favor and his plan. With the revelation in the Book of G’Quan that the Shadows are vulnerable to telepaths, they need to test this notion in the field. Sheridan wants to take Alexander in the <em>White Star</em> and ambush a Shadow ship—but they’ll need support, as well as some backup telepaths. Delenn promises the latter with some Minbari telepaths to back Alexander up. As for the former, folks are a bit reluctant.</p>
<p>G’Kar asks Na’Kal to provide support for the <em>White Star</em> on this mission, but Na’Kal considers it to be a fool’s errand, and far too risky. They need to stay safe for the eventual retaking of the Narn homeworld from the Centauri.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1100" height="825" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/babylon-5-walkabout-04-1100x825.jpg" alt="Cailyn James (Erica Gimpel) sits with Dr Franklin in Babylon 5 "Walkabout"" class="wp-image-818680" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/babylon-5-walkabout-04-1100x825.jpg 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/babylon-5-walkabout-04-740x555.jpg 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/babylon-5-walkabout-04-140x105.jpg 140w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/babylon-5-walkabout-04-768x576.jpg 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/babylon-5-walkabout-04.jpg 1200w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1100px) 100vw, 1100px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Credit: Warner Bros. Television</figcaption></figure>
<p>In downbelow, Franklin goes into a bar and sees a woman named Cailyn James singing. He finds himself completely captivated by her, more so when she comes to join him for a drink after her set, having noticed how intently he was watching her performance. They eventually wind up back at her quarters for a night of passionate nookie-nookie. At one point, Franklin asks if there’s anything he can do for her, and she asks for metazine, as she’s running low. Franklin can’t bring himself to do that so soon after admitting to his stim addiction.</p>
<p>The <em>White Star</em> goes into hyperspace, with a Minbari support vessel accompanying them. As they wait for news of a Shadow attack, Sheridan and Alexander talk about Kosh, and the captain mentions the dream about his father that was a final message from Kosh.</p>
<p>Garibaldi storms into G’Kar’s quarters in the middle of the night, angrily returning the Book of G’Quan to him. He’s pissed that after everything Sheridan did for the Na’Kal and his crew when <a href="https://reactormag.com/babylon-5-rewatch-the-fall-of-night/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">they came to B5 for sanctuary</a>, that they’re sitting this out. Garibaldi reminds G’Kar that he can see the big picture where Na’Kal can’t. He then leaves in a huff.</p>
<p>Lennier picks up a distress call from ships being attacked by a Shadow vessel. The <em>White Star</em> leaves hyperspace, leaving the Minbari ship behind in reserve.</p>
<p>Alexander tries and fails to telepathically engage the Shadow vessel. Sheridan grabs her hand to try to get her to focus, and she sees into Sheridan’s mind—including how Kosh died. That pisses her off and she attacks again, this time succeeding in freezing the Shadow vessel, though the effort makes her eyes bleed. Unfortunately, the <em>White Star</em>’s weapons are only powerful enough to take out the Shadow when Lennier takes the jump engines offline to increase power to weapons.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1100" height="825" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/babylon-5-walkabout-02-1100x825.jpg" alt="Lyta Alexander prepares to use her telepathy against the Shadows in Babylon 5 "Walkabout"" class="wp-image-818678" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/babylon-5-walkabout-02-1100x825.jpg 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/babylon-5-walkabout-02-740x555.jpg 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/babylon-5-walkabout-02-140x105.jpg 140w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/babylon-5-walkabout-02-768x576.jpg 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/babylon-5-walkabout-02.jpg 1200w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1100px) 100vw, 1100px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Credit: Warner Bros. Television</figcaption></figure>
<p>While Franklin is sleeping, James steals his identicard in order to get her hands on some metazine.</p>
<p>Before the jump engines can recharge, four more Shadow vessels show up. The Minbari vessel joins the <em>White Star</em>, but they only have three telepaths on board, so only three of the Shadow vessels are frozen—Alexander is too wiped to handle the fourth.</p>
<p>Then a jump point opens, and the Narn cruiser comes through, its firepower combining with the <em>White Star</em> and the Minbari ship to take out the fourth Shadow vessel. Then G’Kar comes through leading a flotilla of League ships. The other three Shadows retreat.</p>
<p>Franklin wakes up to find James passed out on the deck. He takes her to medlab, assuming she overdosed on metazine and pissed that she used his identicard to feed her addiction. However, Hobbs explains that she’s suffering from terminal neuro-paralysis. She only has a limited time to survive, and the metazine helps manage the symptoms. After her diagnosis, she decided to live in downbelow and bring joy to the folks in that not-so-great part of the station with her singing. Franklin, abashed, sets up to get her as much metazine as she needs for as long as she lives.</p>
<p>Alexander reports to Ulkesh that she thinks Kosh may have left a piece of himself in someone on the station…</p>
<p><strong>Get the hell out of our galaxy!</strong> Apparently Kosh left a piece of himself in Sheridan’s mind when he sent the captain the dream of his father.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1100" height="825" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Babylon-5-Walkabout-10-1100x825.jpg" alt="Garibaldi returns the Book of G’Quan to G'Kar in Babylon 5 "Walkabout"" class="wp-image-818686" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Babylon-5-Walkabout-10-1100x825.jpg 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Babylon-5-Walkabout-10-740x555.jpg 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Babylon-5-Walkabout-10-140x105.jpg 140w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Babylon-5-Walkabout-10-768x576.jpg 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Babylon-5-Walkabout-10.jpg 1200w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1100px) 100vw, 1100px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Credit: Warner Bros. Television</figcaption></figure>
<p><strong>The household god of frustration.</strong> Garibaldi has a fun episode: he gets to snark off Mollari and bitch out G’Kar, and between those be a vehicle for exposition on what Franklin’s up to.</p>
<p><strong>If you value your lives, be somewhere else.</strong> This is the <a href="https://reactormag.com/babylon-5-rewatch-dust-to-dust/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">second time</a> that Delenn has pulled telepathic Minbari out of thin air when the plot has required it.</p>
<p><strong>In the glorious days of the Centauri Republic…</strong> Mollari is not pleased that there’s a Narn cruiser in orbit of B5. Sucks to be him.</p>
<p><strong>Though it take a thousand years, we will be free.</strong> Apparently, breen is a Narn delicacy that is <em>exactly</em> the same as Swedish meatballs. G’Kar says that every civilized culture has the equivalent of breen/Swedish meatballs, which calls into question just how civilized they are, but whatever. (No, your humble rewatcher isn’t a huge fan of Swedish meatballs and always found this particular gag more puzzling than funny.)</p>
<p><strong>The Corps is mother, the Corps is father.</strong> Alexander is only able to use her telepathy to hold a Shadow vessel in place when she’s <em>really really</em> pissed off…</p>
<p><strong>The Shadowy Vorlons.</strong> Ulkesh insists on being referred to as Kosh even in private amongst folks who know that Kosh is dead. When questioned on this by Sheridan and Ivanova, Ulkesh simply says, “We are all Kosh.” (It is possible that the name Ulkesh is derives from “all Kosh,” though that would be too cute for words.)</p>
<p><strong>Looking ahead.</strong> The likelihood that Sheridan has a bit of Kosh in his brain meats will pay off at season’s end in “Z’ha’dum.”</p>
<p><strong>No sex, please, we’re EarthForce.</strong> Franklin spends James’ entire set watching her with goofy eyes and an appreciative ear. She notices this, and the two hook up in rapid succession…</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1100" height="825" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/babylon-5-walkabout-08-1100x825.jpg" alt="Erica Gimpel as the singer Cailyn James in Babylon 5 "Walkabout"" class="wp-image-818684" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/babylon-5-walkabout-08-1100x825.jpg 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/babylon-5-walkabout-08-740x555.jpg 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/babylon-5-walkabout-08-140x105.jpg 140w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/babylon-5-walkabout-08-768x576.jpg 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/babylon-5-walkabout-08.jpg 1200w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1100px) 100vw, 1100px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Credit: Warner Bros. Television</figcaption></figure>
<p><strong>Welcome aboard.</strong> The big guest is Erica Gimpel of <em>Fame</em> fame (sorry) as James. We’ve also got four recurring regulars: Robin Sachs, making his second and final appearance as Na’Kal after “<a href="https://reactormag.com/babylon-5-rewatch-the-fall-of-night/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The Fall of Night</a>”; he’ll be back in “Movements of Fire and Shadow” as a different Narn and in <em>In the Beginning</em> in his Minbari Grey Council role. Ardwight Chamberlain as the voice of Ulkesh, back from “<a href="https://reactormag.com/babylon-5-rewatch-war-without-end-part-one/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">War Without End, Part 1</a>”; he’ll return in “Z’ha’dum.” Jennifer Balgobin returns from “<a href="https://reactormag.com/babylon-5-rewatch-interludes-and-examinations/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Interludes and Examinations</a>” as Hobbs; she’ll be back in “Objects at Rest.” And finally, Patricia Tallman returns from “<a href="https://reactormag.com/babylon-5-rewatch-passing-through-gethsemane/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Passing Through Gethsemane</a>” as Alexander, her last appearance as a guest star; she’ll return at the top of season four as an opening-credits regular.</p>
<p><strong>Trivial matters. </strong>Franklin went on walkabout and Kosh was killed in “<a href="https://reactormag.com/babylon-5-rewatch-interludes-and-examinations/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Interludes and Examinations</a>.” Na’Kal and his cruiser asked for sanctuary at B5 in “<a href="https://reactormag.com/babylon-5-rewatch-the-fall-of-night/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The Fall of Night</a>.”</p>
<p>J. Michael Straczynski wrote the lyrics to both songs sung by James in the episode, with the music provided by the show’s composer, Chris Franke.</p>
<p>Metazine is the same drug that was used to keep Sinclair unconscious in “<a href="https://reactormag.com/babylon-5-rewatch-and-the-sky-full-of-stars/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">And the Sky Full of Stars</a>.”</p>
<p>Meant to put this in the “<a href="https://reactormag.com/babylon-5-rewatch-war-without-end-part-one/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">War Without End, Part 1</a>” rewatch, but the name Ulkesh comes from the novel <a href="https://babylon5.fandom.com/wiki/To_Dream_in_the_City_of_Sorrows" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><em>To Dream in the City of Sorrows</em></a> by Kathryn M. Drennan.</p>
<p>This episode was written to come immediately after “Interludes and Examinations,” but with the airing schedule set to hold the final five episodes for the fall of 1996 to lead into season four, the production schedule was rearranged so that both parts of “War Without End” would air in May instead of making people wait four months for <a href="https://reactormag.com/babylon-5-rewatch-war-without-end-part-two/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Part 2</a>.</p>
<p><strong>The echoes of all of our conversations.</strong></p>
<p>“And what guarantee will you give me that the cruiser will not open fire on a Centauri vessel as it approached Babylon 5, hm?”</p>
<p>“The same guarantee I gave you when I said that none of the other Narns would break into your room in the middle of the night and slit your throat.”</p>
<p>“Mr. Garibaldi—you have never given me that promise.”</p>
<p>“You’re right. Sleep tight.”</p>
<p>—Mollari bitching about the Narn cruiser at the station and Garibaldi not giving a damn.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1100" height="825" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/babylon-5-walkabout-06-1100x825.jpg" alt="Sheridan speaks with Garibaldi, Ivanova, and Lennier in Babylon 5 "Walkabout"" class="wp-image-818682" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/babylon-5-walkabout-06-1100x825.jpg 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/babylon-5-walkabout-06-740x555.jpg 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/babylon-5-walkabout-06-140x105.jpg 140w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/babylon-5-walkabout-06-768x576.jpg 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/babylon-5-walkabout-06.jpg 1200w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1100px) 100vw, 1100px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Credit: Warner Bros. Television</figcaption></figure>
<p><strong>The name of the place is Babylon 5.</strong> “Burn, you bastard!” The least interesting part of this episode is the titular segment with Richard Biggs making goo-goo eyes at Erica Gimpel.</p>
<p>After watching the episode with my wife, I remarked to her that it’s amazing that, even when he’s not being a doctor, Franklin makes bad medical decisions. That’s not <em>entirely</em> fair—James’ behavior pretty much screams “addict looking for a fix,” so it’s not a huge leap for him to think that, even though it’s so totally wrong. I like James’ wanting to spend her remaining days bringing joy to people who don’t have much of that, and no one ever went wrong letting Gimpel just sing and be awesome, but Biggs’ limitations and Franklin’s general incompetence make it hard to get one’s arms around this particular plotline.</p>
<p>Luckily, we have the rest of it. This is the logical next step after Garibaldi found the passage in the Book of G’Quan about telepaths, and the scene where they fight them is genuinely suspenseful and exciting and full of shots of Patricia Tallman staring intently, something she does particularly well.</p>
<p>I also loved Garibaldi taking the piss out of both Mollari and G’Kar. It’s obvious from his telling off the former that whatever vestiges there were of their friendship are totally gone now. Then he does a lovely job of hoisting the latter on his petard, interrupting his sleep to give the Book of G’Quan the way that G’Kar interrupted his to give it to him in the first place.</p>
<p><strong>Next week:</strong> “Grey 17 is Missing.”[end-mark]</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://reactormag.com/babylon-5-rewatch-walkabout/"><i>Babylon 5</i> Rewatch: “Walkabout”</a> appeared first on <a href="https://reactormag.com">Reactor</a>.</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/babylon-5-rewatch-walkabout/">https://reactormag.com/babylon-5-rewatch-walkabout/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=818662">https://reactormag.com/?p=818662</a></p>
Reactor (tordotcom_feed) wrote2025-07-21 04:00 pm
tordotcom_feed) wrote2025-07-21 04:00 pmSuperman Embraces Silliness — That’s Why We Take It Seriously
Superman Embraces Silliness — That’s Why We Take It Seriously
Leaning into fantasy to outline a clear moral response to real-world issues.
Published on July 21, 2025
Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures
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<p class="syndicationauthor">Posted by Sarah</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/superman-embraces-silliness-thats-why-we-take-it-seriously/">https://reactormag.com/superman-embraces-silliness-thats-why-we-take-it-seriously/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=818479">https://reactormag.com/?p=818479</a></p><post-hero class="wp-block-post-hero js-post-hero post-hero post-hero-horizontal">
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<h2 class="post-hero-title text-h1"><i>Superman</i> Embraces Silliness — That’s Why We Take It Seriously</h2>
<div class="prose post-hero-description prose--post-hero">Leaning into fantasy to outline a clear moral response to real-world issues.</div>
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<p class="post-hero-author text-xs font-aktiv uppercase font-medium [&_a]:link-hover">By <a href="https://reactormag.com/author/joe-george/" title="Posts by Joe George" class="author url fn" rel="author">Joe George</a></p>
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Published on July 21, 2025
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<div class="post-hero-caption post-hero-caption-vertical [&_a]:link"><p>Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures</p>
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<p><em>Superman</em> is a very silly movie. Within its first five minutes, <em>Superman</em> tells viewers that metahumans have existed for three centuries and then introduces a quartet of robots and a super-dog with a little red cape.</p>
<p>For many fans, writer and director James Gunn’s embrace of the goofier parts of Silver Age comics is exactly what makes Superman so special. Not since the 1978 movie starring Christopher Reeves has a non-comic book Superman story so openly embraced the character’s pulpier sci-fi aspects.</p>
<p>In fact, it’s so silly that some might wonder why the movie has become such a political flashpoint over the past week. For as much as bad faith cable news channels and social media commenters are quick to read real-world politics into all aspects of pop culture, we have to acknowledge that this is a movie about a space alien in bright colors who spends a lot of time rescuing an adorable super-dog.</p>
<p>And yet, viewers aren’t wrong to find political relevance in Superman—relevance that becomes more clear precisely because of its silliness.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Arresting Imagination</strong><strong></strong></h3>
<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1100" height="688" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Superman-Nicholas-Hoult-1100x688.jpg" alt="Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) in Superman (2025)" class="wp-image-818496" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Superman-Nicholas-Hoult-1100x688.jpg 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Superman-Nicholas-Hoult-740x463.jpg 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Superman-Nicholas-Hoult-768x480.jpg 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Superman-Nicholas-Hoult.jpg 1280w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1100px) 100vw, 1100px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures</figcaption></figure>
<p>Midway through <em>Superman</em>, it appears that Lex Luthor has actually won. Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) takes Superman (David Corenswet) to a secret prison hidden between dimensions, pausing to reveal a team of super-smart chimps he created to wage an internet campaign against the Man of Steel. When they reach their destination, Luthor deposits Superman in a cell with Metamorpho the Element Man (Anthony Carrigan), who uses his powers to create kryptonite, rendering Superman powerless.</p>
<p>That plot sounds like it would be right at home in a <em>Superman</em> comic from the 1950s, where writers such as Otto Binder and Cary Bates crafted tales around wild, audacious ideas, with no regard for realism or even internal plot consistency.</p>
<p>Yet, if framed in slightly different terms, that plot sounds like something from a gritty realist film, if not from the pages of the daily newspaper. It involves a millionaire who secures a government contract for his off-site private prison, where political prisoners are secreted away and where a lack of oversight allows for all manner of torture and human rights violations.</p>
<p>The absurd elements highlighted in the first description are not diminished by the abuses highlighted in the second description. In fact, they’re clarified, brought into focus. No, we don’t currently have super-smart chimps or inter-dimensional travel. But bots do sway public opinion on the internet and nations, including the United States, do regularly violate the most basic human rights in private prisons. Connecting these cold, hard facts to outrageous sci-fi concepts can certainly provide an out for people who don’t want to acknowledge the horrors of our world. But it can also underscore the absurdity and inhumanity of our current reality, pointing out that there are people in places of power who think like supervillains. </p>
<p>That’s especially true when storytellers like Gunn are able to tap into real human emotions that go beyond the outrageous situations. One of the most potent examples occurs right before Superman is taken to Lex’s prison, when he surrenders himself to Rick Flag (Frank Grillo) and the U.S. military. In spite of the fact that Superman is turning himself over to the authorities, Ultraman violently detains Superman, slamming his head into the ground, leaving cracks and craters in the pavement. Adding to the complexity is Ultraman’s true identity, the face he hides behind his ICE-like black suit and mask. The more we learn about Ultraman’s origins, the more we see how easily a victim of violence can become the oppressor.</p>
<p>Again, we have an outrageous situation, with one super-being pushing around another. But the wince that Corenswet pulls when Superman’s face hits the ground, and his annoyed response (“Is that necessary?”) brings the viewer back to reality. In that moment, we viewers cannot help but think about countless instances of U.S. police and other agents of law enforcement using excessive force against the people they arrest, even when the detainee does not resist.</p>
<p>That connection between superhero action and real-world injustice highlights something else a movie like <em>Superman</em> can do: It can provide moral clarity, precisely because of the way it taps into our imagination.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>A Powerful Fantasy</strong><strong></strong></h3>
<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1100" height="688" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Superman-David-Corenswet-4-1100x688.jpg" alt="Superman (David Corenswet) pulls on his boots while a streak of purple energy appears in the background over the city" class="wp-image-818499" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Superman-David-Corenswet-4-1100x688.jpg 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Superman-David-Corenswet-4-740x463.jpg 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Superman-David-Corenswet-4-768x480.jpg 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Superman-David-Corenswet-4.jpg 1280w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1100px) 100vw, 1100px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures</figcaption></figure>
<p>While <em>Superman</em> offers depictions of brutal law enforcers and international conflict, it is in no way a dark movie. Throughout the film, we’re treated to inspiring, reassuring images of Superman saving the day. He shields a little girl from harm with his own body, he pulls a squirrel from the fray, and he repeatedly checks in on the civilians around him. Even when faced with a giant, fire-breathing kaiju, Superman considers ways that he can humanely subdue the beast and preserve its life.</p>
<p>Each of these moments show off Superman’s amazing abilities, his super-strength, invulnerability, and x-ray vision. Superman may take a beating throughout the course of the film, but he never looks weak, not even when wracked with Kryptonite poisoning.</p>
<p>That’s because Superman is a power fantasy, as are all superhero stories. Whatever else they might do, fundamentally, superhero stories depict people with fantastic abilities who are set apart, and usually above, regular society. Superman and the other costumed crusaders he inspires in the film are exceptional, not subject to the same rules as regular people.</p>
<p>That exceptionalism has led many to see a fascist bent in superhero stories. Even before <em>Invincible</em> and <em>The Boys</em> gave us Omni-Man and Homelander, DC Comics put images of Superman sitting on a throne and lording over regular humans on the covers of <em>Action Comics</em> and <em>Superman</em>. If superheroes can do anything, then what’s to prevent them from acting as oppressors rather than saviors, and where are the checks on their power?</p>
<p>While those kinds of questions should always be posed to those who hold power in the real world, in the world of superhero stories, it can be easy to ignore the <em>fantasy</em> aspect of power fantasies—but the fantasy at the core of Superman’s character is crucial. Writer Grant Morrison, whose <em>All-Star Superman</em> influenced Gunn’s movie, put it simply in an interview with <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2025/07/09/dc/superman-history-dc-reboot-james-gunn-snyderverse-smallville" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><em>The Ringer</em></a>, pointing out that while Superman’s morality is a major part of character’s appeal, it’s not simply that he’s a good person. “There are people like that, but they’re not like that all the time,” Morrison observes. “But in fiction, we invented someone better than us.”</p>
<p>That last point puts all the silliness of Superman into perspective. Superman is inherently unrealistic, Superman is a fantasy. And as a fantasy, he gives us a way to imagine a better version of reality, to see what the world could look like if we could do better, care more about each other, help those in need—and he gives us an ideal to strive for, when it comes to combating real-world evils.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Imagining a Better Tomorrow</strong><strong></strong></h3>
<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1100" height="688" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Superman-Flag-Raise-1100x688.jpg" alt="A child raises a flag with the Superman logo in Superman (2025)" class="wp-image-818495" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Superman-Flag-Raise-1100x688.jpg 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Superman-Flag-Raise-740x463.jpg 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Superman-Flag-Raise-768x480.jpg 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Superman-Flag-Raise.jpg 1280w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1100px) 100vw, 1100px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures</figcaption></figure>
<p>Towards the climax of <em>Superman</em>, a young child in the impoverished fictional nation of Jarhanpur looks at the might of invading forces of Boravia and prays for help. Holding a tattered flag emblazoned with the hero’s emblem, the boy whispers the name “Superman” again and again, until the people around him, emboldened, take up the cry and begin shouting the name themselves. That transition from desperate prayer to defiant chant captures the power of the Superman story—not because Superman himself arrives to save the day, but because when help does arrive, it’s in the form of the Justice Gang, a trio of self-absorbed corporate heroes who have been inspired by Superman to finally intercede and help when it matters most.</p>
<p>What follows is an incredible scene of resistance: Both the Justice Gang and the regular people of Jarhanpur stand up to the Boravian invaders. To be sure, there’s plenty of fantasy elements involved, from Green Lantern (Nathan Fillion) using his power ring to knock over the tanks to Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced) swooping in to drop the Boravian leader (Zlatko Burić) to his death. But the pleasure of the fantasy isn’t just the action and spectacle that <em>Superman</em> delivers. It’s the belief that ordinary and imperfect people, sufficiently inspired, can come together and fight back against a seemingly unstoppable evil. It’s the hope that justice exists.</p>
<p>We could easily dismiss Superman’s resolution to international conflict as too simplistic and too silly, just like we could sneer at the earnest speech that Superman delivers at the end of the movie, in which he holds out the possibility that Lex Luthor may choose to use his talents for good. And it <em>is</em> silly. </p>
<p>But in that silliness, we can see through the complexities and absurdities of global geopolitics and systems that allow petty, insecure men to inflict pain and horror onto others. And once we’re reminded, in no uncertain terms, that our fellow human beings shouldn’t be allowed to die in such conflicts, that no one should be dragged away and hidden in off-site prisons, that internet disinformation hurts people, that’s the first step in figuring out what to do about it. That’s how we start making the silly fantasy into hopeful reality.[end-mark]</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://reactormag.com/superman-embraces-silliness-thats-why-we-take-it-seriously/"><i>Superman</i> Embraces Silliness — That’s Why We Take It Seriously</a> appeared first on <a href="https://reactormag.com">Reactor</a>.</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/superman-embraces-silliness-thats-why-we-take-it-seriously/">https://reactormag.com/superman-embraces-silliness-thats-why-we-take-it-seriously/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=818479">https://reactormag.com/?p=818479</a></p>
Reactor (tordotcom_feed) wrote2025-07-21 03:35 pm
tordotcom_feed) wrote2025-07-21 03:35 pmKevin Feige Teases Resets and Recasting in the Future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe
Kevin Feige Teases Resets and Recasting in the Future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe
A rare interview with Kevin Feige offered a glimpse into the future of the MCU (kind of).
Published on July 21, 2025
Screenshot: Marvel Studios
Screenshot: Marvel Studios
Marvel won’t be doing a big Hall H spectacular at San Diego Comic-Con this year, but Kevin Feige has still gotten his say. The Marvel Studios chief held a group interview last Friday to talk about Marvel’s past and future—and, presumably, to inject more Marvel into a cultural conversation that’s presently very excited about the success of its rival, DC Studios, and James Gunn’s new Superman.
But when you dig into what Feige told his group of assembled writers, what’s most notable might be how little he actually said. He repeated the Disney company line about how they’d been making “too much” content, using this to explain everything from why Blade keeps getting delayed to why Wonder Man (due out later this year) and Ironheart (out last month) weren’t released for so long after each series was completed. “I don’t like when things sit on shelves,” said the man who is in charge of Marvel Studios.
Blade, he said, is still happening; the current version is set in the present day. The movie doesn’t currently have a director.
The sheer amount of stuff still on the Marvel docket is apparently when you start trying to whittle down the many reports on the Feige interview (Variety, for example, ran at least three different pieces using bits of the conversation). He confirmed that, after 2027’s Avengers: Secret Wars, the X-Men will be recast for an X-Men film directed by Thunderbolts’ Jake Schreier.
Secret Wars, overall, “sets us up for the future,” Feige said, going on to suggest that no role is safe from potential recasting. Not even Steve Rogers and Tony Stark. He compared the possible recasting of those roles to the James Bond franchise and to Superman, which is interesting given that the Bond films don’t hew tightly to any sort of continuity, and every new Superman is a reset.
“Reset” is exactly the word Feige used about Secret Wars, saying it will be a “reset” for the MCU. He also used the phrase “singular timeline,” saying they are “thinking along those lines,” which should be a relief for anyone tired of too many timelines and universes in which anything can happen and, thus, very little of what happens has much emotional weight.
Speaking of lack of emotional resonance, Feige also said that the events at the end of Thunderbolts, which affected the entire borough of Manhattan, will not affect the upcoming season of Daredevil: Born Again, which also takes place in New York. Which, for me, raises some questions about exactly when each of these stories takes place in the Marvel timeline. Questions I am not going to even try to answer at this time.
There are a few disappointing bits in Feige’s statements. For one, despite all the setup, Feige said only that “potentially” there might be a Young Avengers project at some point. Also, Miles Morales will not show up in the MCU until the Sony trilogy finishes with Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse: “We’ve been told to stay away,” Feige said.
Feige addressed the situation with Kang actor Jonathan Majors, with whom the studio “parted ways” after Majors was convicted on two misdemeanor charges (assault in the third degree and harassment in the second degree, as NPR detailed). According to Feige, Marvel had already turned against Kang prior to 2023: “We had started to realize that Kang wasn’t big enough, wasn’t Thanos, and that there was only one character that could be that because he was that in the comics for decades and decades.” He said he spoke to Robert Downey Jr. about what he calls the “audacious” idea to cast the actor as Doom “even before Ant-Man 3 came out.”
Interestingly, right before Ant-Man 3 came out, Feige told Entertainment Weekly, “For years, we’ve always had the inkling that Kang would be an amazing follow-up to Thanos. He’s got that equal stature in the comics, but he’s a completely different villain. Mainly, that’s because he’s multiple villains. He’s so unique from Thanos, which we really liked.”
Feige teased one more thing about the future of Marvel, beyond recasting potentially everyone and resetting countless timelines into one singular story: “We were talking about a structure of an upcoming post-Secret Wars movie that I won’t name,” Variety quotes him as saying. “But I will say, like Shang-Chi, [it’s] getting back to what genre haven’t we done and want to do and how could this movie be that genre? [We would] focus on a singular storyline by embracing a certain genre we haven’t seen in a while.” Are you waiting with bated breath yet?[end-mark]
The post Kevin Feige Teases Resets and Recasting in the Future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe appeared first on Reactor.
Reactor (tordotcom_feed) wrote2025-07-21 03:00 pm
tordotcom_feed) wrote2025-07-21 03:00 pmLiving With Dolphins: Audrey Schulman’s The Dolphin House
Living With Dolphins: Audrey Schulman’s The Dolphin House
A fictionalized account of a wild 1960s experiment…
Published on July 21, 2025
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<p class="syndicationauthor">Posted by Sarah</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/living-with-dolphins-audrey-schulmans-the-dolphin-house/">https://reactormag.com/living-with-dolphins-audrey-schulmans-the-dolphin-house/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=818653">https://reactormag.com/?p=818653</a></p><post-hero class="wp-block-post-hero js-post-hero post-hero post-hero-vertical">
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<h2 class="post-hero-title text-h1">Living With Dolphins: Audrey Schulman’s <i>The Dolphin House</i></h2>
<div class="prose post-hero-description prose--post-hero">A fictionalized account of a wild 1960s experiment…</div>
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<p>Audrey Schulman’s novel <em><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59147214-the-dolphin-house" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The Dolphin House</a></em> is a pretty much straight retelling of an experiment performed on St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands in 1965. The serial numbers have been lightly filed off, the names changed and the situations played up for maximum drama, but the actual history is if anything wilder than the fictionalized version.</p>
<p>In our timeline, a young woman named Margaret Howe followed a rumor to a house by the sea, where <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jun/08/the-dolphin-who-loved-me" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">a small company of scientists were studying dolphins</a>. Neuroscientist John Lilly had conceived the project, to explore the then-radical new concept of animal cognition. Lilly was not just trying to understand how dolphins think. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o23O7_0QChY" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">He wanted to teach them English</a>.</p>
<p>The director of the lab was Gregory Bateson, Important Thinker and Great Intellectual. When Howe showed up, he invited her to observe the three captive dolphins in the lagoon and record what she saw. It turned out that she was good at it.</p>
<p>Howe was not an academic scientist. She had dropped out of college after a year and had been working in a hotel on the island. But she was sharp and observant and she had an intuitive understanding of the animals.</p>
<p>She ended up turning part of the house into an aquatic apartment and living there with the youngest dolphin, an adolescent male named Peter. She lived, ate, slept in and just above the water, with a ten-foot, sharp-toothed, sonar-using roommate who learned, over a period of six months, to mimic human sounds using the flap of his blowhole.</p>
<p>NASA funded the experiment, seeing it as a possible insight into communication with alien species. The male scientists observed and took notes, but was Howe who did the teaching and training and who learned a great deal about how dolphins live, think, and communicate.</p>
<p>It was a most unusual experiment. And that was before it got really weird.</p>
<p>Schulman follows the outline and the timeline of the historical experiment, but fictionalizes the characters. Her version of Lilly is named Blum, and his second in command is Tibbet. There’s a third, whose name we never quite get; the protagonist hears it as Eh.</p>
<p>The protagonist’s name is Cora. She’s a high-school graduate, a cocktail waitress, and she has a Magical Disability.</p>
<p>Cora is hard of hearing. This makes her more observant and more focused on subtle signals, though it causes confusion, as with Eh’s name. It also isolates her from her fellow humans, and allows her to be a kind of bridge between the human and the nonhuman.</p>
<p>Because she’s Magic, she can hear much better in water than in air, which means she hears dolphin sounds clearly as long as she’s underwater. On land she wears a set of <a href="https://hearingaidmuseum.com/gallery/General_Info/GenInfoTransEar/info/generalinfo-eyeglass.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">glasses that have hearing aids built into the arms</a>.</p>
<p>This ingenious device helps her to hear fairly clearly, but the delicate circuitry is not waterproof. Good thing the magic kicks in when she takes the glasses off and dives in. Kind of like a Clark Kent effect, with water. And dolphins.</p>
<p>Disclosure here: I am hard of hearing. I’m quite a bit younger than Margaret Howe, but I remember hearing devices in the mid-Sixties, in between the clunky cigarette-carton-sized thing you wore on a harness on your chest and the tiny, all but invisible digital machines of the new millennium. I had <a href="https://i.pinimg.com/736x/f1/03/58/f10358d654d38b901160b91e222cc79b.jpg" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">a barrette that attached to a plastic tube and an earpiece</a>, and clipped onto my hair. I could wear in the open or I could comb my hair over it. It was the latest technology, and it was a miracle for its time.</p>
<p>Schulman writes well and vividly, and she’s done her homework. She does a good job of describing what it’s like to live with a hearing disability; how lipreading works, how a person learns to pick up visual cues and read body language, and how the human world can seem remote or disconnected. She also understands how exhausting it can be to try to meet the hearing world on its own terms, since it’s generally unlikely to go the other way.</p>
<p>Cora is as alien to the scientists as the dolphins are. She’s female, disabled, not an academic, and for further Other Points, she’s part Seminole. Blum at one point pontificates about how her “Indian” heritage makes her more in tune with nature and more able to commune with animals. Cora keeps her mouth shut, but reflects that her ethnicity has nothing to do with it. She’s a woman, and women spend their lives studying and accommodating men. It’s a short leap to studying animals.</p>
<p>Cora’s character is fictionalized, and the male scientists are written to be less than likeable. Blum’s experiments on the dolphins range from abusive to downright horrific. He and his colleagues are arrogant, oblivious, and often patronizing to the little girl without the college degree. But she’s the key to their experiment. It can’t work without her.</p>
<p>It all starts to fall apart when Blum gets into LSD (and wants to try it on the dolphins, to Cora’s horror). What finishes it off however is something intrinsic to dolphin behavior.</p>
<p>When Cora sets up her live-with-the-dolphin experiment, she chooses the young male, Junior, for her companion. The younger of the two females, Kat, is a more focused and willing learner, but Cora calculates that the scientists will pay more attention if the subject is male.</p>
<p>Junior is not an easy pupil. For a while it seems he’s not going to cooperate at all. The breakthrough comes in a way that will cause major trouble, but at the time, it seems logical and sensible. Which, in dolphin terms, it is.</p>
<p>Dolphins are tremendously social and very tactile. They’re in constant physical contact. They have sex early and often.</p>
<p>It starts fairly innocently. At night when Cora sleeps in her floating bed, Junior takes her foot gently in his mouth and holds it while he sleeps along with her. It’s the same thing a young dolphin does with its mother, holding her fin for support and security.</p>
<p>Junior is fascinated by human anatomy. The back of Cora’s knee particularly intrigues him, and the touch of her fingers sends him into a state of bliss. Separate, articulated fingers, separate toes, are completely alien to a dolphin with its smooth, curved body and its solid flippers and tail.</p>
<p>The longer he and Cora live together, each apart from their own species, the more Junior pushes the boundaries of physical contact. It comes to a head when he charges her and knocks her unconscious. She comes to with him holding her above the surface as he would an injured dolphin, carrying her to the edge of the pool and keeping her head above water.</p>
<p>Cora realizes that Junior needs a release. That release is physical and sexual. When she offers it, for the first time he actually does what she’s been trying to teach him to do for days and weeks. He speaks an approximation of human sounds, in the order in which she’s been trying for days and weeks to teach him.</p>
<p>Stimulus-reward. It’s solid practice, but the manner of it is controversial to say the least. Cora knows that. She also knows that it’s getting results.</p>
<p>It’s Blum who blows it wide open. Cora tries to conceal what she’s doing, but between professional jealousy and plain malice, Blum extracts the truth. He spreads it to the other two men, and from there it gets to the media.</p>
<p>Never mind the rest of the experiment, the demonstration of a dolphin’s ability to mimic human sounds (and quite possibly understand what they mean), the tantalizing vision of communication between human and animal. Human-on-dolphin sex is a massive scandal. It culminates in the cover of a men’s magazine, depicting a woman having passionate sex with a dolphin.</p>
<p>The whole thing collapses under the weight of the scandal. Cora tells herself it’s her fault—though it’s really Blum’s, and Tibbet’s and Eh’s. The funding evaporates. The media, apart from the porn industry, cancels its interviews. The project shuts down.</p>
<p>For Cora, life goes on. For the dolphins, not so much. Blum has an awakening of sorts, becoming an advocate for freeing captive dolphins and studying wild dolphins in their native habitat. But he’s come to this through tragedy.</p>
<p>That’s part of dolphin behavior and anatomy, too. Dolphins’ breathing is always voluntary. It is not autonomous. Every breath has to be made with intention. A dolphin can decide not to breathe. It’s a choice he makes.</p>
<p>Most of this really happened. In a concise but comprehensive author’s note, Schulman lists the things that are real, and the things that are enhanced for dramatic effect. Very little of it is truly imaginary.</p>
<p>It’s so very Sixties. The far-out science. The drugs. The sex, the sexism. The grand optimism of it all, and the human-centrism, the idea that an animal should learn to speak our language. It took another several decades for the focus to shift and for Dr. Denise Hertzing to try to <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/06/26/883301238/denise-herzing-do-dolphins-have-a-language" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">discover if dolphins have a language of their own</a>. It seems <a href="https://focusingonwildlife.com/news/first-evidence-of-potential-language-like-communication-in-dolphins-study/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">they might</a>.[end-mark]</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://reactormag.com/living-with-dolphins-audrey-schulmans-the-dolphin-house/">Living With Dolphins: Audrey Schulman’s <i>The Dolphin House</i></a> appeared first on <a href="https://reactormag.com">Reactor</a>.</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/living-with-dolphins-audrey-schulmans-the-dolphin-house/">https://reactormag.com/living-with-dolphins-audrey-schulmans-the-dolphin-house/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=818653">https://reactormag.com/?p=818653</a></p>
Reactor (tordotcom_feed) wrote2025-07-21 02:00 pm
tordotcom_feed) wrote2025-07-21 02:00 pmWind and Truth Reread: Chapters 81-83
Wind and Truth Reread: Chapters 81-83
Moash, thunderclasts, death rattles… Things are getting a bit dire.
Published on July 21, 2025
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<p class="syndicationauthor">Posted by Drew McCaffrey</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/wind-and-truth-reread-chapters-81-83/">https://reactormag.com/wind-and-truth-reread-chapters-81-83/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=818311">https://reactormag.com/?p=818311</a></p><post-hero class="wp-block-post-hero js-post-hero post-hero post-hero-vertical">
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<h2 class="post-hero-title text-h1"><i>Wind and Truth</i> Reread: Chapters 81-83</h2>
<div class="prose post-hero-description prose--post-hero">Moash, thunderclasts, death rattles… Things are getting a bit dire.</div>
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<p class="post-hero-author text-xs font-aktiv uppercase font-medium [&_a]:link-hover">By <a href="https://reactormag.com/author/paige-vest/" title="Posts by Paige Vest" class="author url fn" rel="author">Paige Vest</a>, <a href="https://reactormag.com/author/lyndsey-luther/" title="Posts by Lyndsey Luther" class="author url fn" rel="author">Lyndsey Luther</a>, <a href="https://reactormag.com/author/drew-mccaffrey/" title="Posts by Drew McCaffrey" class="author url fn" rel="author">Drew McCaffrey</a></p>
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Published on July 21, 2025
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<p>This week’s installment of the <em>Wind and Truth</em> reread isn’t for the faint of heart, Cosmere Chickens. Things are looking Very, Very Bad for our heroes on several fronts, and losses and deaths abound. Moash viciously brings down another founding member of Bridge Four, a Shardbearer falls, and the Azimir dome crumbles. We’ll discuss all this and more as we dive into chapters 81, 82, and 83. Get your beverage of choice ready for some heartfelt salutes to the fallen, and let’s begin…</p>
<p>The book has been out long enough that most of you will hopefully have finished, and as such, this series shall now function as a re-read rather than a read-along. That means there <em>will</em> be spoilers for the end of the book (as well as <strong>full Cosmere spoilers</strong>, so beware if you aren’t caught up on all Cosmere content).</p>
<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Paige’s Commentary: Plot Arcs<strong></strong></h3>
<p>Day 7 continues with chapter 81, “The Scholar With a Spear.” Our Radiants and soldiers are still doggedly defending Narak Prime. The plan is to trick the enemy forces into focusing on Narack Three rather than Narak Prime. They’ve set up a decoy: a Lightweaving of a store of infused gemstones that they only wished they had. Things are getting hairy, and then, amazingly, the singers and Fused head to Narak Three.</p>
<p>Then Sigzil gets a message from Leyten that they’ve found him. They’ve found Moash.</p>
<p>POV switch!</p>
<p>Adolin reveals a massive aluminum chain that he plans to use to trip the approaching thunderclast. He has the wagon on which the chain sits hooked up to Gallant, who is none too happy about it. They head toward the thunderclast, hoping to head it off. Neziham, the Azish Shardbearer who isn’t long for this world, is with Adolin, sent by Kushkam. They hear horns indicating a massive attack inside the dome but Adolin convinces him to stay to fight the thunderclast, telling Neziham where to aim his Blade to incapacitate the beast if they’re able to bring it down. </p>
<p>At one point, Adolin conveys to Maya that he might need her. She pleads with him to let her finish her mission, saying she’s almost there. </p>
<p>POV switch!</p>
<p>We get a short POV from Commandant Kushkam, leading the charge against the Deepest Ones who have literally begun rising up from the stones of the plaza in front of the dome.</p>
<p>POV switch!</p>
<p>When Sigzil arrives where Leyten has indicated that Moash would be, Leyten and his squires are fighting with no Stormlight and no Surges. Moash has a fabrial that cuts them off and they’re fighting him in the conventional way. Only Moash has access to Surges, and he has an Honorblade. Sig calls for the retreat, telling the others to get out—but he realizes that Moash is using Lashings to keep Leyten and the others from leaving. Then Leyten signals for his two remaining squires—Moash already got one of them—to flee to the sides, and he moves in to distract Moash.</p>
<p>Leyten grapples with Moash and a moment later, Sigzil is there and rams his special knife into Moash’s back. Moash turns to look at him and then Sigzil sees his eyes: diamond glowing with Voidlight. *shudder* Sig tries to engage and get Moash talking, telling him that he doesn’t have to do this. Moash claims he’s been betrayed in favor of the lighteyes, and suddenly Vienta realizes that Moash can <em>see</em> her, though she’s hidden. Sig tells her to go but then Moash lashes himself upward and slashes with a knife that bends the light. </p>
<p>It’s not Vienta that he kills, but Leyten’s spren. Then he attacks Leyten himself, stabbing him in the chest with the anti-Stormlight knife. Moash—being the coward that he is—then flees as more soldiers approach. Sig cradles Leyten, who gives a death rattle as he dies; Drew talks about it below. Leyten speaks as Sigzil and says that he’s the Scholar with a Spear and that he dies by the hands of a friend. It’s really quite bone-chilling. Though, of course, we know that Moash doesn’t kill Sigzil in <em>this</em> book.</p>
<p>Chapter 82, “The Primary Purpose of Science,” opens with Navani, still appearing as Melishi in the vision when the Windrunner stood against the Skybreakers. She’s able to converse with the Sibling in real time, as they share a small Connection with Navani “close” to the tower. The Sibling says that they cannot bring Navani, Dalinar, and Gavinor back to the Physical Realm. They suggest that perhaps one of their siblings might know how, but Navani tells them that the Stormfather refuses to help. </p>
<p>They lose their connection. Navani and Dalinar talk about Connection and, in short, determine that they need to Connect to the future vision of the Recreance. Dalinar says that they can’t trust what the Stormfather has told them. Navani says that the Sibling told her to follow the Windrunner, Garith.</p>
<p>In the midst of this, little Gav, who had fallen asleep in Dalinar’s lap, wakes to say he heard his father again. Of course, we know it’s not his father, and I begin to feel so much anger at what Odium is doing to him.</p>
<p>Navani creates a Connection to the near future of the vision and they appear in another vision, with the Windrunner they’ve been seeking, looking about a decade older—the same age he did when Dalinar first saw him in a vision of the Recreance, which began at Feverstone Keep.</p>
<p>POV shift!</p>
<p>Adolin does his best to wrap that chain around the thunderclast’s feet, but he’s not going to be nearly as successful as Luke was against that AT-AT. (For anyone too young to know what I’m taling about, see Tom Holland’s Spider-Man toppling Ant-Man in <em>Captain America: Civil War</em>, where he references my Star Wars reference.)</p>
<p>POV shift!</p>
<p>Kushkam is still outside the dome, dazed after being near the impact of a boulder that had been dropped by a Heavenly One. He suddenly feels a shock of coldness and his mind clears. The young Edgedancer has given him Healing and he orders someone to get her a helmet and to keep her alive before he grabs a pike and heads back into the fighting. Then a group of enormous Fused burst from the dome. Kushkam sends orders to drop the firebombs.</p>
<p>POV shift!</p>
<p>Adolin runs for the loose end of the chain, planning to hook it around the thunderclast’s other foot. To no avail. The thunderclast kicks and throws Adolin down the street, leaving Adolin lying on the ground, every piece of plate cracked and leaking Stormlight. Then, tragically, the thunderclast literally smashes Neziham to a bloody pulp, breaks the aluminum chain, and continues on its trek toward the dome.</p>
<p>Chapter 83, a Szeth flashback chapter titled “Hired Blade,” takes place nine and a half years before present day. Szeth has dealt the killing blow to the Windrunner Honorbearer, Tuko-son-Tuko, who has some interesting things to say before he dies—and I’m not just talking about the death rattle. He says that he knew Szeth would come for him the moment they sent him to train. He calls Szeth one of Pozen’s “glassy-eyed sheep” and predicts that Szeth will be thrown away, too. He urges Szeth to walk away, insisting “[y]ou don’t have to follow him.” And then the death rattle. (Again, see Drew’s section for more on the death rattles.)</p>
<p>So Szeth has won and is the Windrunner Honorbearer. He’s annoyed at the other Honorbearers as they seem more intent on congratulating themselves than congratulating him. Then he’s left with Sivi and tells her that they used him to kill Tuko. Sivi says he was sent by the spren; he counters by saying that he was sent by all of them. Sivi admits that Tuko was talking of rebellion, of civil war. Then Szeth says he wants to meet the Voice. She hedges, but then the Voice speaks to them both: </p>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p><em>You have all done well. Let him fly to me, </em>then<em> go on his second pilgrimage. </em><br><br><em>Szeth, come to me at Ayabiza and seek the holy grotto beyond it. There, you will know the full extent of Truth—and you will have your answers.</em></p></blockquote></figure>
<p>Dun-dun-<em>dunnn…</em></p>
<p>Of course, this is what causes Szeth himself to rebel and then be cast out… but we’re not quite there yet!</p>
<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Lyndsey’s Commentary: Character Arcs and Maps<strong></strong></h3>
<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1500" height="820" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Wind-and-Truth-Chapter-Arch-Chapter-81-.png" alt="Wind and Truth Chapter Arch - Chapter 81" class="wp-image-818324" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Wind-and-Truth-Chapter-Arch-Chapter-81-.png 1500w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Wind-and-Truth-Chapter-Arch-Chapter-81--740x405.png 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Wind-and-Truth-Chapter-Arch-Chapter-81--1100x601.png 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Wind-and-Truth-Chapter-Arch-Chapter-81--768x420.png 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1500px) 100vw, 1500px" /></figure>
<p>Chapter 81’s arch Heralds are Nale x2 and Vedel x2. Double the hooded Herald, double the… fun? Nah. There’s nothing fun about this chapter. I’d assume that we’re seeing Nale since Sigzil is fighting the Skybreakers over on Narak Prime, and Vedel is standing in for Adolin, as she usually does. </p>
<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1500" height="822" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Wind-and-Truth-Chapter-Arch-Chapter-82.png" alt="Wind and Truth Chapter Arch - Chapter 82" class="wp-image-818325" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Wind-and-Truth-Chapter-Arch-Chapter-82.png 1500w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Wind-and-Truth-Chapter-Arch-Chapter-82-740x406.png 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Wind-and-Truth-Chapter-Arch-Chapter-82-1100x603.png 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Wind-and-Truth-Chapter-Arch-Chapter-82-768x421.png 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1500px) 100vw, 1500px" /></figure>
<p>What a strange assortment of Heralds we have on chapter 82. Ishar at least makes sense, as we do see quite a lot of our resident Bondsmiths Navani and Dalinar, not to mention Melishi. Battah (Herald of the Elsecallers, attributes of Wise/Careful and role of Counselor) seems out of left field, though… as does the Wild Card, whom we usually see in connection to Hoid. He’s nowhere to be seen in this chapter, or anything connected to him… and while I suppose several of the characters could be seen as exemplifying the attributes of Careful/Wise, it seems like a bit of a reach.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1500" height="840" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Wind-and-Truth-Chapter-Arch-Chapter-83.png" alt="Wind and Truth Chapter Arch - Chapter 83" class="wp-image-818326" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Wind-and-Truth-Chapter-Arch-Chapter-83.png 1500w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Wind-and-Truth-Chapter-Arch-Chapter-83-740x414.png 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Wind-and-Truth-Chapter-Arch-Chapter-83-1100x616.png 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Wind-and-Truth-Chapter-Arch-Chapter-83-768x430.png 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1500px) 100vw, 1500px" /></figure>
<p>Chapter 83 is a Szeth flashback chapter, so it tracks that Ishar shows up twice in the decaying arch. Jezrien’s presence can be explained by the fact that Szeth wins his Honorblade here, defeating the Windrunner in battle. And Battah of the Elsecallers, our final arch Herald…? Well, she’s not here for Sivi (Willshaper) or Moss (Lightweaver). Pozen, however, who is the guiding force behind a lot of this, does hold the Elsecaller Honorblade.</p>
<h4 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Sigzil</strong><strong></strong></h4>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>He hadn’t fit in with the scholars at home because he didn’t like sitting in musty rooms reading. He’d wanted to be out doing field research, learning and experiencing. That was why Master Hoid had chosen him as an apprentice. And it was why he was an effective Windrunner. <br><br>And now, why he could lead.</p></blockquote></figure>
<p>As I’ve stated before, we’re being given some very heavy-handed signals here (if you know what to look for) that Sigzil’s new-found confidence is about to be destroyed. While this chapter isn’t the death blow, it’s certainly a fatal wound, symbolically <em>and</em> literally.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p><em>Found him. North side.</em><br><br>Sigzil felt a sudden chill. Him. <br><br>Moash.</p></blockquote></figure>
<p>This standoff has been a long time coming. The rest of Bridge Four has just as much of a bone to pick with Moash as Kaladin does, now that he’s killed Teft in cold blood.</p>
<h4 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Adolin</strong><strong></strong></h4>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>He was a common man in a world of giants. Against these things, even Shardweapons were of middling effectiveness.</p></blockquote></figure>
<p>Adolin underestimating himself once again. He’s anything but a “common man,” but of course we’ll see this revelation come full circle by the end of the book with the Unoathed.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>Was the Plate… worried? <br><br>“Not your fault,” Adolin mumbled, getting his bearings.</p></blockquote></figure>
<p>Dear sweet Adolin, not even questioning his connection to his “inanimate” Plate, just as he never did to his Blade. He just accepts it, much like how people will bond with pretty much anything if you put googly eyes on it. </p>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>A colossal stone fist smashed down on Neziham, crushing him against the ground. Plate exploded and popped in a sequence of spraying molten bits, and the thunderclast’s knuckles slammed into the street. Neziham’s Shardblade clanged free, rolling across the street, and didn’t vanish.</p></blockquote></figure>
<p>And so we lose another Shardbearer, and Adolin loses another battle (or so he thinks in this moment) against a Thunderclast.</p>
<h4 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Leyten</strong><strong></strong></h4>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>His squires ran in opposite directions. Leyten stood his ground to distract Moash.</p></blockquote></figure>
<p>Leyten proving to be a hero to the very last. He stands his ground in order to allow his squires to reach safety…</p>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>Moash lightly floated away from Sigzil, easily staying out of his reach, and landed near Leyten. There, he plunged the anti-Stormlight knife straight into Leyten’s chest.</p></blockquote></figure>
<p>…at the expense of his own life. And so another original member of Bridge Four falls. <em>::pours one out for Leyten and raises a middle finger in Moash’s direction::</em></p>
<h4 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Moash </strong><strong></strong></h4>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>“We were brothers, Sig,” Moash said. “But then you chose the Alethi lighteyes over me—you went to them, after they murdered us, degraded us. After all that, you became hounds in the laps of the Kholins.”</p></blockquote></figure>
<p>I’m going to take a step back from my own personal hatred of the character to attempt to provide a more unbiased view of this statement in particular. In a way, Moash is the dark version of Kaladin; a Kaladin who didn’t come to a grudging acceptance of the ruling elite—who turned instead to violent revolution.</p>
<p>I can understand his motivation a bit more than I did… oh, let’s say about six months ago, and leave it at that.</p>
<p>Moash suffered a great deal under the yoke of the lighteyes, and his actions reflect those experiences. He didn’t befriend them like Kaladin did, he never saw the other side, the <em>humanity</em> of the ruling class. He didn’t <em>want</em> to see. Will his “eyes” ever be opened to this? Will he find redemption?</p>
<p>Time will tell.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>“I used to avoid emotion. Reject it. I welcome it now.</p></blockquote></figure>
<p>An interesting turn for his character. It’s just a shame that the emotions he’s welcoming are all negative ones.</p>
<h4 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Navani</strong><strong></strong></h4>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>She was quite aware of the injustices done to women by their society. That did not discount the different but still debilitating ones done to men.</p></blockquote></figure>
<p>I’m often struck by how mature Navani is, and how deep of a thinker she is. She takes nothing for granted, examining everything from every angle. A true scientist, through and through.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>“Dalinar,” she said, “could you please <em>ask</em> before you do something unexpected with your powers?</p></blockquote></figure>
<p>And not only does she take the time to examine everything, she <em>communicates</em> her issues calmly and clearly! If every character involved in a love affair in a book would do this, we’d have a lot less novels!</p>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>“She has two children, a boy and a girl,” Navani said. “Like me. She is roughly my age. And judging by her bearing, she is proud, although she walks alone with no husband. As I did for years after Gavilar’s death.”</p></blockquote></figure>
<p>Her ability to empathize and form connections is another facet of her thoughtfulness.</p>
<h4 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Dalinar </strong><strong></strong></h4>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>“The man you were can’t fix this, Dalinar. He never could have.”</p></blockquote></figure>
<p>Dalinar truly has come a long way from the man he was before. His brute-force approach never would have been able to account for the intricacies of world politics on this scale.</p>
<h4 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Szeth</strong><strong></strong></h4>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>“Honor-nimi,” Szeth said, “you fought well.” <br><br>Tuko spat bloody spittle into Szeth’s face. <br><br>A fair reaction.</p></blockquote></figure>
<p>This made me chuckle. Only Szeth would react to someone spitting blood in his face with a “fair, I deserved that.”</p>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>“Or perhaps someone will kill me in delayed retribution for what I’ve done.” That felt good. Knowing that all of these acolytes who glared at him with such vitriol might someday have their own chance to kill him.</p></blockquote></figure>
<p>What a twisted life this poor boy had led, that he welcomes the chance for bloody retribution to be doled out to him.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>Over five years since he’d last seen his sister. And at least a few months since that had finally stopped hurting.</p></blockquote></figure>
<p>Ouch. I don’t know what hurts more; the fact that it’s been so long since he’s seen his sister, or that the pain from that has <em>finally</em> abated.</p>
<h4 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Strategy</strong><strong></strong></h4>
<p>On the Narak front, we’re seeing the Skybreakers along with the Fused forces attacking Narak Prime. However, they turn mid-chapter to the fake gem archive on Narak Three, just as Sigzil had hoped they would.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1100" height="723" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Wind-and-Truth-map-detail-notes-1100x723.jpg" alt="Map detail from Wind and Truth. Text: "In general, I've left off the new structures on this repurposed map. the coalition added their own buildings and stored supplies mostly on Narak Three and Four, even though there's more space on Narak Prime, leaving it as a monument to the ancient humans who once lived there. Some plateaus been decimated or have sustained significant damage due to the Everstorm. "" class="wp-image-818390" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Wind-and-Truth-map-detail-notes-1100x723.jpg 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Wind-and-Truth-map-detail-notes-740x487.jpg 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Wind-and-Truth-map-detail-notes-768x505.jpg 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Wind-and-Truth-map-detail-notes-1536x1010.jpg 1536w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Wind-and-Truth-map-detail-notes.jpg 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1100px) 100vw, 1100px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption"><a href="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Wind-and-Truth-map-detail-notes.jpg" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><strong>Click to enlarge.</strong></a> Credit: Dragonsteel.</figcaption></figure>
<p>Meanwhile, over in Azimir, the thunderclast and the Fused have arrived. The thunderclast begins moving towards the dome (shaded in blue below), and Deepest Ones arise from the plaza surrounding the dome to begin their own assault (represented by red Xs on the map). Things aren’t looking good for Adolin and company… especially when the Thunderclast kills the other Shardbearer, and the Fused crack open the dome like an overcooked egg.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>Heavenly Ones were buzzing high above the city, dropping boulders—artillery that, after millennia of practice, they knew how to make as dangerous as any siege weapon.</p></blockquote></figure>
<p>Bad news for Azimir all around.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="435" height="648" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Wind-and-Truth-map-detail-1.jpg" alt="Wind and Truth - map detail" class="wp-image-818333" /></figure>
<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Drew’s Commentary: Invested Arts & Theories<strong></strong></h3>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>“The Scholar with a Spear! I die by the hands of a friend! My spren screams in death, and I know that I have failed to lead! I am no captain! I am nothing! Vyre strikes me, and my eyes burn!”</p></blockquote></figure>
<p>Moelach’s presence on the Shattered Plains means we still get some new death rattles, and this one of course stands out. On a first read, this appears to be prophecy of Sigzil’s death later in the book… but on reread we know that he avoids it by breaking his bond with Vienta.</p>
<p>Now, this would hardly be the first time that future sight is shown to be mutable in The Stormlight Archive. Renarin is probably the most obvious example, when Jasnah elects not to kill him in <em>Oathbringer</em>, but we have other instances as well. This seems to be the latest.</p>
<p>But there’s still an awful lot of runway for Moash, clearly. Who knows what lies in store for him in the back five (and maybe after)? Sigzil is obviously still alive in the future of the Cosmere, as we know thanks to <em>The Sunlit Man</em>, but he <em>does</em> have at least one new spren bond in his future. </p>
<p>And then again, there’s the name used: Vyre. “Vyre” is a title, and while Moash currently holds that title, who’s to say that we won’t see some narrative echoes in another friend assuming that title much later?</p>
<p>I think this death rattle still has a strong chance of being true prophecy.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>Got stopped on my way out of the city. Evidently I hadn’t filled out the proper forms for stealing a map. After four hours of mind-numbing paperwork—and an exorbitant fee—they let me go, map in hand. No wonder there’s so little crime here.</p></blockquote></figure>
<p>I always get a nice spike of joy whenever I see Nazh’s handwriting on one of these in-world maps or sketches. </p>
<p>For those who don’t know or don’t remember, Nazh has been hanging around for a while now. He works with Khriss (the author of the Ars Arcanum at the end of every book), he’s from Threnody originally, and he’s a sort of Cosmere James Bond. He gets into and out of tight places. Frequently.</p>
<p>The idea that Nazh got caught stealing this map and just had to spend four hours filling out forms, rather than being thrown into prison or caught fighting for his life, gives me a good chuckle. There’s a lot more to come with Nazh in the future of the Cosmere—including in the brand-new <em>Isles of the Emberdark</em>, which was just published on July 10. He’s a fascinating character.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>“Perception,” she said, remembering the research into spren. “Perception changes Investiture, Dalinar. Wit talked about this place, and how it is a shifting web of Connections.”</p></blockquote></figure>
<p>Such a small, throwaway line. But such an important one nonetheless.</p>
<p>There are a lot of capital letters in the Cosmere, especially when it comes to the Invested Arts. Thanks to the metals charts in <em>Mistborn</em>, we know of the Spiritual attributes: Identity, Fortune, Connection, and of course Investiture itself. But undergirding all of them is a unifying operative.</p>
<p>Intent.</p>
<p>The Shards have Intents, the Dawnshards have Intents (Commands), and the utilization of Investiture itself requires Intent. And as Navani so rightly points out, <em>perception affects intent.</em></p>
<p>Someone like Hoid, or Khriss, or Vasher, someone who has dedicated long spans of time to investigating the nature of Invested Arts, is much more capable with those powers than even someone naturally powerful, like Vin or Elend. They <em>know</em> and <em>understand</em> the limitations of different Invested Arts, and have spent a long time figuring out how to exploit them.</p>
<p>That’s how you have Hoid storing memories in Breaths, preventing himself from being overwhelmed by the weight of all the years he’s lived, or Vasher fueling his Divine Breath and continued existence with Stormlight rather than with a Breath per week.</p>
<p>I strongly suspect that the coming conflicts in the Cosmere will be driven by the pursuit of deeper knowledge just as much as they will by access to natural resources like metals or raw Investiture.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>“I climb!” Tuko shouted, ragged. “I climb the wall of grief toward the light, locked away above! I climb, the weight of my darkened twin on my back, and seek the captive! The light I love! I… Storms… the light I <em>love</em>!”</p></blockquote></figure>
<p>This is a particularly dense death rattle, without an immediately intuitive meaning. That said, the fact that it’s happening at all is just as interesting to me. This means that there <em>was</em> an Unmade active in Shinovar a decade previously—perhaps just before Moelach was lured to Kharbranth for Taraganvian’s hospital experiments.</p>
<p>It goes to show how corrupted Ishar truly was, that he was so ingrained in Shinovar but didn’t take action against one of his enemy’s greatest lieutenants.</p>
<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-dots" />
<p>We’ll be keeping an eye on the comment sections of posts about this article on various social media platforms and may include some of your comments/speculation (with attribution) on future weeks’ articles! Keep the conversation going, and PLEASE remember to spoiler-tag your comments on social media to help preserve the surprise for those who haven’t read the book yet. </p>
<p>See you next Monday with our discussion of chapters 84 and 85![end-mark]</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://reactormag.com/wind-and-truth-reread-chapters-81-83/"><i>Wind and Truth</i> Reread: Chapters 81-83</a> appeared first on <a href="https://reactormag.com">Reactor</a>.</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/wind-and-truth-reread-chapters-81-83/">https://reactormag.com/wind-and-truth-reread-chapters-81-83/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=818311">https://reactormag.com/?p=818311</a></p>
Schneier on Security (bruce_schneier_feed) wrote2025-07-21 11:04 am
bruce_schneier_feed) wrote2025-07-21 11:04 amAnother Supply Chain Vulnerability
ProPublica is reporting:
Microsoft is using engineers in China to help maintain the Defense Department’s computer systems—with minimal supervision by U.S. personnel—leaving some of the nation’s most sensitive data vulnerable to hacking from its leading cyber adversary, a ProPublica investigation has found.
The arrangement, which was critical to Microsoft winning the federal government’s cloud computing business a decade ago, relies on U.S. citizens with security clearances to oversee the work and serve as a barrier against espionage and sabotage.
But these workers, known as “digital escorts,” often lack the technical expertise to police foreign engineers with far more advanced skills, ProPublica found. Some are former military personnel with little coding experience who are paid barely more than minimum wage for the work.
This sounds bad, but it’s the way the digital world works. Everything we do is international, deeply international. Making anything US-only is hard, and often infeasible.
EDITED TO ADD: Microsoft has stopped the practice.
oursin (oursin) wrote2025-07-20 07:44 pm
oursin) wrote2025-07-20 07:44 pmCulinary
This weeks bread: a loaf of Dove's Farm Organic Heritage Seeded Bread Flour, v nice.
Friday night supper: penne with bottled sliced artichoke hearts.
Saturday breakfast rolls: eclectic vanilla, strong white flour - perhaps just a little stodgy.
Today's lunch: kedgeree with smoked basa fillets - forgot the egg due to distractions and basa cooking rather more slowly than I had anticipated, still quite good - served with baked San Marzano tomatoes (we entirely repudiate the heretical inclusion of tomatoes in kedgeree but they are perfectly acceptable on the side), and a salad of little gem lettuces quartered and dressed with salt, ground black pepper, lime juice and avocado oil.
ranunculus (ranunculus) wrote2025-07-19 02:31 pm
ranunculus) wrote2025-07-19 02:31 pmBad Cows
Yesterday evening I got a call from Marika and Rosemary. "Do the neighbors have cows?" No, they don't. Once again most of the herd was out. They had forced their way though the very same hole as they had before, breaking all the wire we installed. I called Kerri, Cody's wife then jumped in the Gator and zipped down to the fence. I got around a big bunch of cows that were still right near the boundary and pushed them out the gate and back onto our place.
In the Gator I had a partial roll of barbed wire. While Kerri was coming up the steep driveway to Rudy's, I began rolling out barbed wire. Three new strands of it across the broken area. Once that was in place, and the rest of the cows were in, we began weaving more strands of barbed wire vertically. They won't break that stuff! We worked long after full dark to reinforce the fence with all the cows right there watching us. As I left Kerri suggested I move the herd up the hill away from that particular spot. It was hard getting them going but eventually the whole bunch started up the hill. Chena helped by barking enthusiastically. She clearly was watching me carefully, and after a few minutes she voluntarily trotted back around a slow group and got them moving. I called her off as soon as they moved and told her what a good girl she was. After a few forays to move various cows, I felt confident enough to send her out to bark, and then call her back to the Gator. She was SO proud of herself! I'm delighted to have a dog who has figured out that her job is to help move cows, but ONLY when asked. There were a couple of times this summer when she tried to move the cows away from the house and got yelled at. It was clear last night that she absolutely understood the difference between working for me, and not chasing stock when she wasn't "working". I don't think she will ever be more than mildly helpful, but as is often the case I'm awed by what instinct combined with intelligence produces.
Today I went back down to the fence and continued fixing it up. After a while Kerri showed up and together we got Rudy's whole line fixed up. We added another strand of barbed wire all the way to the south corner, plus a lot of vertical stays. The fence needs some more t-posts but it should do for now.
In the Gator I had a partial roll of barbed wire. While Kerri was coming up the steep driveway to Rudy's, I began rolling out barbed wire. Three new strands of it across the broken area. Once that was in place, and the rest of the cows were in, we began weaving more strands of barbed wire vertically. They won't break that stuff! We worked long after full dark to reinforce the fence with all the cows right there watching us. As I left Kerri suggested I move the herd up the hill away from that particular spot. It was hard getting them going but eventually the whole bunch started up the hill. Chena helped by barking enthusiastically. She clearly was watching me carefully, and after a few minutes she voluntarily trotted back around a slow group and got them moving. I called her off as soon as they moved and told her what a good girl she was. After a few forays to move various cows, I felt confident enough to send her out to bark, and then call her back to the Gator. She was SO proud of herself! I'm delighted to have a dog who has figured out that her job is to help move cows, but ONLY when asked. There were a couple of times this summer when she tried to move the cows away from the house and got yelled at. It was clear last night that she absolutely understood the difference between working for me, and not chasing stock when she wasn't "working". I don't think she will ever be more than mildly helpful, but as is often the case I'm awed by what instinct combined with intelligence produces.
Today I went back down to the fence and continued fixing it up. After a while Kerri showed up and together we got Rudy's whole line fixed up. We added another strand of barbed wire all the way to the south corner, plus a lot of vertical stays. The fence needs some more t-posts but it should do for now.
oursin (oursin) wrote2025-07-19 03:47 pm
oursin) wrote2025-07-19 03:47 pmSome v misc things
The Case of the Missing Romani American History:
The history of Romani Americans is missing. Although the experiences of other marginalized and immigrant American groups are now well-represented in mainstream historical scholarship, Romani Americans remain absent from American history. This absence has detrimental effects to Romani Americans who are placed outside historical time. It also harms scholars whose work could benefit from the placement of Romani people in the histories they tell.
***
A ‘new Canterbury Tale’: George Smythe, Frederick Romilly and England’s ‘last political duel’:
In the early hours of 20 May 1852, six weeks before polling in that summer’s general election, two MPs travelled from London to woodland outside Weybridge in a bid to settle a quarrel provoked by the unravelling of electioneering arrangements in the double-member constituency of Canterbury. Frederick Romilly, the borough’s sitting Liberal MP, had issued a challenge to his Canterbury colleague George Smythe, whose political allegiances fluctuated and who had notoriously been embroiled in four previous prospective duels. The pair, accompanied by their seconds, who were also politicians, exchanged shots before departing unscathed. None of the participants faced prosecution but neither Smythe nor Romilly was re-elected.
A challenge to a duel was in fact by this time a common-law misdemeanour, and killing one's opponent counted as murder, though apparently there were few prosecutions in either case. It is perhaps disillusioning to the readers of romantic fiction to discover that politics seems to have figured so heavily as the casus belli.
***
Do not foxes have the right to enjoy the facilities of the public library system? London library forced to briefly close after fox 'made itself comfortable' inside - this was a London library, rather than the London Library.
***
Two entries in the People B Weird category:
Sylvanian Families' legal battle over TikTok drama:
Sylvanian Families has become embroiled in a legal battle with a TikTok creator who makes comedic videos of the children's toys in dark and debauched storylines. The fluffy creatures, launched in 1985, have become a childhood classic. But the Sylvanian Drama TikTok account sees them acting out adult sketches involving drink, drugs, cheating, violence and even murder.
(What next, Wombles porn?)
And
I'm 16 and live entirely like it's the 1940s (I bet he's not eating as though rationing is still in force, what?):
"I liked the clothing, how they dressed, and the style," Lincoln explained. "Just the elegance of how everyone was and acted... with the time of the war, everyone had to come together, everyone had to fight, and everyone had to survive together.
"Most people back then said it was scary, but it was quite fun to live then, and they could go out, help each other and apparently there's not that much stuff today that is similar to what that wartime experience was."
Lincoln said he loved the music of the time, including Henry Hall, Jack Payne and Ambrose & His Orchestra.
The teenager's wardrobe was also entirely made up of clothes from the era, which he said he preferred to modern-day clothes.
He even cycles on a 1939 bike when out and about researching and finding items for his collection.
We wish to know whether he gets woken up by a siren in the middle of the night to go and huddle in the nearest air-raid shelter. Singing 'Roll out the Barrel'.