As far as modern occupations go, there are few more insidious and controversial than child actor. Former child star Leelee Kimmel (neé Sobieski) once said she didn’t know “why it’s legal for a child to act,” and called Hollywood a “gross industry” that capitalizes on children’s appearances. A new story from Bella Thorne seems to exemplify her question.
Speaking to Emily Ratajkowski for a new episode of her High Low podcast, the Shake It Up star recalls a specifically memorable audition from her early career as a child actor. According to Thorne, an unnamed male director once reached out to a casting director (who in turn contacted Thorne’s mother) to accuse Thorne of flirting with him and making him “uncomfortable” during a casting session. Thorne was 10 years old at the time.
Needless to say, facing accusations of inappropriate flirting when she was still pre-pubescent left Thorne in disbelief. “’What the fuck are you talking about man?’” she recalls thinking. “I don’t give a fuck what the fuck I said. I don’t care if I said ‘eat my pussy right now.’ She is 10 years old! Why ever would you think that? Why? Why?”
Thorne continues: “You’re in a director session—you can’t really say or do much. You do the scene, you say hello, you walk out. There’s no time to like ‘let me go sit on your lap’ or like make you feel uncomfortable. What the fuck are you talking about?”
Ratajkowski, who has faced her own struggles with Hollywood’s leering and entitled eye, noted both the absurdity of the director’s accusation and the way it exemplifies some of the controversies about child stardom today.
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“Just putting that on a 10-year-old child and making it like they made an adult man uncomfortable is insane… and then that was relayed to a casting director who was happy to relay that to your mom,” Ratajkowski sums up the vomit-inducing tale. “If you need a more fucked up story about Hollywood and, like, pedophilia and the sexualization of children, I don’t know if there is one.”
The 2022 Game Awards ended with a random kid sneaking up on stage and muttering nonsense about “reformed Rabbi Bill Clinton.” The 2022 Game Awards is now, understandably, trying to pretend that never happened, blurring the kid out of a picture celebrating Elden Ring developer FromSoftware’s second Game of the Year win.
“FromSoftware is the first studio to win 2 Game of the Year awards at The Game Awards,” the event’s social media account tweeted on Wednesday. The studio won in 2019 for Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, and again earlier this month for Elden Ring. “Congratulations FromSoftware,” it concludes. Attached was a picture of director and studio president, Hidetaka Miyazaki, holding the award alongside a member of the team who was translating his acceptance speech that night.
But it didn’t take an eagle-eyed observer to notice that the Bill Clinton prankster from that night, who had been standing behind both men, was sloppily Photoshopped out of the image. “LOSING MY MIND THAT THEY BLURRED THE KID LMFAOO,” quote-tweeted Twitch streamer GamesCage. “Hahaha you gotta use ‘content aware fill’ tool in photoshop to remove background assets next time,” added FromSoftware dataminer, Lance McDonald.
The kid who crashed the Game Awards that night was later revealed to be Matan Even, a high schooler with a penchant for clout-chasing IRL stunts, who later gained notoriety on the internet. He previously trolled an NBA fan cam with a freedom for Hong Kong t-shirt, and interrupted a BlizzCon panel with a similar message. He’s appeared twice on InfoWars to discuss Chinese censorship, but his social media presence shows no allegiance to one particular political ideology, and he has since distanced himself from InfoWars host Owen Shroyer, whom he had previously called his “favorite person” on the right-wing conspiracy network.
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Even’s stunt at The Game Awards was seemingly devoid of any larger substance or meaning, but it did momentarily steal the spotlight away from the rest of the ceremony. Host Geoff Keighley laughed it off as security escorted the minor off stage, and though he later tweeted that Even had been arrested, LAPD claim he was only escorted to a local police station before being released without any charges.
The blurred tweet would seem to indicate that Keighley’s Game Awards still feels besmirched on some level by the interloper that night. Apparently not besmirched enough to get someone with more Photoshop experience to fix the image, however. It took Kotaku’s own Zack Zwiezen less than fifteen minutes to properly edit the kid out of the image. Or as one person pointed out, The Game Awards could have simply used one of the many other stills in which the kid is out of view.
The Game Awards did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Photo: Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images (Getty Images)
Hit me (with a series of strange shower videos) baby, (at least) one more time! Because Britney Spears appears to be alive, says TMZ, and back to filming half-nude erotica for the public again. All is right in the world.
Britney Spears’ fans—the ones who, like, #Freed Britney, but also the ones who were somehow surprised about the continued erratic nature of her videos post-conservatorship—have switched up their signature chant to #WhereIsBritney. Convinced that she might never have returned from her honeymoon and that husband Sam Asghari might be running her Instagram account, they became even more spooked when Spears posted a video on a private jet last week claiming to head to New York City. If she was really there, they claimed, paparazzi would’ve captured a shot of her, but alas, no Brit in NYC.
Loathed celeb gossipmonger Perez Hilton added fuel to the fire of speculation by claiming he has some inside info on Britney, and something very bad is going on. “Concern is warranted,” he warned.
Have no fear, Britney stans, TMZ—most trusted authority on all life or death matters—is here! The outlet learned Tuesday night that “Britney Spears isn’t missing, in trouble or dead as growing fan theories might suggest — in fact, it’s quite the opposite.”
Sources apparently close to the singer told TMZ Spears said she was going to NYC to “throw people off” and that she and Asghari were actually headed to a vacation in Mexico where they had hoped to enjoy some peace and quiet. The sources also claim the shower footage she posted was indeed shot in Mexico and is new content. Spears wouldn’t dare deny the age-old influencer proverb: Always Be Posting. In one post, Brit said she “changed my name to Brooklyn,” while in another she appeared to broker a peace treaty with her mom, Lynne Spears, after telling her to “burn in hell” in October.
“Instagram doesn’t like posts of people revealing their bodies anymore so here’s a selfie of me in Mexico 🇲🇽 !!! Mom and Dad … I crossed the border and I made it !!! After no coffee for 15 years ☕️ … Mom we can go have coffee together now !!! I’m treated as an equal … let’s have coffee and talk about it !!!”
Fans had also been spooked by the eerily timed travels of Spears’ parents who both touched down in Los Angeles last week, prompting concerns over whether something ominous had happened to Britney. But TMZ say Lynne and Jamie Spears—you know, the one who kept his daughter in a conservatorship for 13 years against her will—were in town to see Britney’s niece, the daughter of Brit’s brother Bryan, perform in The Nutcracker. As for Brit’s fans, the intention is always good, but the conspiracy theories, at least this time, are best kept to the annals of TikTok.
At least for now, rest somewhat assured that Sam isn’t on vacation with a body double (how boring!), and long live Britney.
Here’s John Mayer saying nonsensical things about dating: “Dating is no longer a codified activity for me, it doesn’t exist in a kind of…it’s not patterned anymore.” [Call Her Daddy]
Add this one to things I’d be happy to never read again: Jenna Bush Hager’s daughter says her mom “never wears underwear.” [Page Six]
Are Meghann Fahy and Leo Woodall, two White Lotus guests, in love? All signs point to probably definitely maybe. [Vanity Fair]
Former Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Brandi Glanville called Coyote Ugly’s Piper Perabo a “horrible cunt” for allegedly having an affair with Glanville’s ex, Eddie Cibrian, who says none of this is true. The mess! [Page Six]
I’m working on a memoir. It’s called Every Time I Read a Headline Saying Pete Davidson Was Spotted with Another Famous Woman, I Die 1,000 Small Deaths. This time, it’s his co-star Chase Sui Wonders. [Page Six]
I like annoying-sounding things, like feedback loops on Discord calls, un-WD-40’d door hinges, and small dogs who are losing their shit over the existence of reality. But not everyone likes to be annoyed while playing video games, and that’s why the developers for recently-released first-person-shooter High on Life just issued a patch to deal with one of its more divisive elements: talking guns that just won’t quit it.
High on Life, a Metroidvania first-person shooter that was described in our review as “this fucking talking gun game,” released yesterday on PC and Xbox. Generally it seems to be a fun game to play, but not one to listen to. The game comes from the mind of Justin Roiland, co-creator of Rick and Morty. Perhaps that’s all you need to know. But if not, know that High on Life is a very vibrant, cartoonishly silly first-person shooter where your gun, who has a mouth and eyes that face you during gameplay, will say things like “welcome to fucking space!”
It’s on brand for this kind of Adult Swim-style humor. But when it arrives in a video game form, where you’ll spend multiple hours at a time playing as opposed to a 30-minute silly cartoon, the constant chatter is sure to get annoying. It seems that the developer, Squanch Games, is aware of that and has thus issued an update to give players more control over how frequent the guns talk.
As you can see, these patch notes look very much like what you’d expect from a game these days: A chunk of digital nips and tucks to address outstanding bugs, improve quality of life features, and tune up certain gameplay mechanics. That includes, in this case, the 11th item (as if it were buried to say, “yeah, we know it’s annoying”) under the Content Updates section that reads out “improved player control over gun and enemy combat chatter within the settings menu.”
As observed by GamesRadar, High on Life isn’t the only game to get a feature like this. Forspoken, which is playable as a demo on the PlayStation 5, also has a talking inanimate object: a seemingly sentient bracelet. Like High on Life’s guns, it too has gotten under enough nerves to earn an option to adjust how frequently the thing spouts random dialogue at you.
Chatter and annoying voices can sour an otherwise pleasant game, though often this kind of thing won’t be pervasive throughout a game. The ability to adjust such features is certainly appreciated and allows more room for experimental, quirky choices like talking guns or bracelets; I’m all for giving people the choice of how they want to tailor, or hear a game. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go play some Gex.
Left: Jimmy Fallon ( Photo: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue) Right: Art at Long Island’s Bored & Hungry restaurant, which uses NFT art in its branding (Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images)
Jimmy Fallon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Justin Bieber, Madonna, and other celebrities who spent a fairly embarrassing chunk of the last few years trying to convince fans that ugly pictures of monkeys were both a) cool and b) a lucrative investment opportunity, are now getting hit with a lawsuit. Specifically—and per THR—a number of famouses have found themselves defendants in a new suit this week that accuses at least some of them of, among other things, failing to disclose a financial stake in a company that facilitates purchases of Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs, even as they were publicly promoting the brand.
Said suit is being put forward by Adonis Real and Adam Titcher, two Ape buyers who lost money on their purchases, and who are hoping to develop a class-action suit against all involved. Their targets include BAYC parent company Yuga Labs, a number of celebrity promoters who endorsed the brand (Paris Hilton, Diplo, Post Malone, Snoop Dogg, Stephen Curry, Kevin Hart, DJ Khaled, and more are also named as “Promoter Defendants”), and well known music industry manager Guy Oseary, who’s being accused of setting up low-key payments through a company called Moonpay (which many of the named celebs are purportedly investors in) to pay them for their endorsements.
Much of the lawsuit’s focus rests on Oseary, the long-time manager for Madonna (as well as U2, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and more), who’s referred to in the legal docs as “the Fifth Ape.” (Alongside the four founders of Yuga Labs, all also defendants.) Oseary is accused of leveraging his considerable network of contacts—the lawsuit specifically calls out his help in Fallon booking U2 in the first days of the host’s tenure on The Tonight Show—to rope in celebrity investors and promoters to build up the Bored Ape brand.
Jimmy Fallon buys his first NFT with MoonPay
Highlighting a November 2021 Tonight Show interview with web artist Matt “Beeple” Winkelmann (who’s allegedly in business with Oseary, and also a named defendant in the suit), the lawsuit accuses Fallon of being paid to promote the brand when he talked about getting his own ugly monkey picture through Moonpay, writing that, “Fallon did not disclose that he had a financial interest in MoonPay or that he was likewise financially interested, directly or indirectly, in the increased saleand popularity of Yuga securities.” The lawsuit goes on to allegedly detail a number of other transactions in which celebrities appear to have been paid, either in cryptocurrency or NFTs, in exchange for their endorsements.
A Yuga Labs spokesperson responded to the suit this week, calling the claims “Opportunistic and parasitic. We strongly believe that they are without merit, and look forward to proving as much.” This isn’t the first celebrity-focused NFT/crypto lawsuit to crop up in recent months, as the entire market continues to rest comfortably in the toilet. (Trading of the Bored Ape NFTs has reportedly dropped by 93 percent since its launch.) A number of paid promoters (including Larry David) were recently named as defendants in a suit for promoting crypto exchange FTX.
You can read the full text of the Bored Ape suit over at THR.
Elden Ring got a free PvP expansion with update 1.08’s December 7 rollout, which opened up three colosseums in the Lands Between, all ready for your spilled blood. I returned to developer FromSoftware’s open world after a long vacation (I hadn’t touched it since the spring, I needed to experience other games with in-universe indoor plumbing) to test it out, and was surprised by how much fun I had, even as decidedly not a “PvP person.”
Each colosseum, all empty and fairly nondescript battlegrounds in Limgrave, Leyndell, and Caelid, houses a different type of conflict. Leyndell’s Royal Colosseum contains a 1v1 “Duel Mode” with no respawn, the Limgrave Colosseum offers “United Combat” 2v2 with respawn or “Combat Ordeal” free-for-all with respawn, and the Caelid Colosseum has the previously mentioned modes with the added ability to summon Spirit Ashes.
Read More: Elden Ring’s Colosseum Update Arrives With Three New PvP Modes
And along with colosseums, the update brought a few necessary balance changes (and five new-but-Eurocentric hairstyles), which I think help level the playing field, despite a few immediate deaths on my end. In any case, I’ll gather my scattered bones and talk you through what you need to know about Elden Ring’s PvP refresh.
How do I access Elden Ring’s PvP colosseums?
Tricky FromSoftware wasn’t going to let you have your Roman fun that easily—you have to break down the gristle before you eat. But unlocking all three colosseums isn’t difficult, as long as you know where to go.
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Limgrave Colosseum: from the Warmaster’s Shack site of grace, head north toward the circular building (aka the colosseum) by the shore. Open the main door and touch the stake of Marika inside to enter a match.
Leyndell Colosseum: start at the Leyndell, Capital of Ash site of grace, and head southwest until you’re behind the dead dragon. Jump onto the ruins, head up the ladder, continue straight, then west along the mountain path until you reach the large doors. Open them and touch Marika’s effigy.
Caelid Colosseum: You’ll need to start at the slightly arcane Deep Siofra Well site of grace. Ride your horse west around the mountain pass, past the big guys trying to kill you with giant arrows, and behind the large, disappointed-seeming jar. Open the door there, touch the effigy.
After you access all three colosseums for the first time, they’ll be available for fast travel. Go to the Roundtable Hold—a smaller Marika statue to the right of the fireplace in the main room will let you choose your combat mode and venue.
What balance changes should I expect?
FromSoftware altered some builds’ power, so players’ fixation on thrust weapons has definitely abated. According to update notes, these are the following colosseum balance changes:
Thrust weapons have reduced counterattack damage
Some weapon types elicit reduced guard efficiency for attacks performed with a raised shield
Straight Swords, Thrusting Swords, Heavy Thrusting Swords, Curved Swords, Axes, Spears, Twinblade Swords, Katanas all have reduced poise damage
Bestial Sling also has reduced poise damage (but people still love to spam it!)
Carian Slicer is less powerful
What’s the best PvP build right now?
There doesn’t seem to be one build above the rest at the moment. People are vibing, letting their Spirit Ashes take care of each other in “Pokémon” battles and one-shotting you with their black magic.
Because of prevailing one-shots, I would recommend you opt for sweeping, ultra powerful attacks that can hold their own like Dragonfire, Collapsing Stars, and Giantsflame Take Thee, or weapons like Twinblades or a Curved Sword.
And if I really had to choose the best build… not pure strength, I’ll tell you that much. My Great Hammer-wielding, level 134 character died instantly trying to get close to some spellcasters, and I’ve noticed that fast, blood-letting, and dexterity-scaling weapons are most popular. Sluggish strength weapons struggle against them, though I was able to eliminate opponents in three hits when they finally let me land some.
But, I don’t know, I still had fun while losing. It’s certainly amusing to try shit out, especially in password-protected combat rooms where you can coordinate with your friends. I made my friend engage in torch-only warfare, for example, and learned that the Torchpole is much more punishing than the Torch. I also found that the rot-inducing Scorpion’s Stinger is a funny thing to whip out when you’ve agreed to a bare knuckle fistfight. Now you learned it, too.
I wouldn’t worry about what attacks should be considered “toxic,” or OP, or recommended builds, or whatever—this is a really relaxed update, and more than anything else, I think you should just try to enjoy yourself.
2,500 years ago, one of space’s most beautiful features was born: the Southern Ring Nebula. The nebula was vividly imaged by the Webb Space Telescope earlier this year, and astronomers now think they know exactly how a star’s violent outburst occurred, leaving the elegant nebula in its wake.
The star that bore the nebula was about three times the size of the Sun and 500 million years old. That’s quite young, in stellar terms; our Sun is about 4.6 billion years old and should live for another 5 billion.
Around 2,500 years ago, Confucius and the Buddha were still alive. The Peloponnesian Wars were about to kick off. And somewhere in those intervening years, a star 2,000 light-years away expired, blasting gas outward from a newly formed white dwarf.
The Southern Ring Nebula’s star is not dead—not yet—but its expulsion of gas is a major turning point in the star’s lifespan. White dwarfs are the stellar endgame; they form when stars have exhausted their nuclear energy and begin their slow cooldown.
Thanks to images from the Webb Space Telescope and clever calculations and mathematical modeling by the research team, the moments preceding the Southern Ring Nebula’s stellar light show can now be examined in detail.
Different Webb filters highlight various aspects of a light source, which is why some parts of the nebula may look pearlescent or a translucent red while others look blue or orange, depending on the image. The Webb image processors choose to highlight different aspects of objects in order to showcase various elements—hot gas, for example, or star factories within larger systems.
A team of 70 astronomers worked together to determine that as many as five stars (only two of which are now visible) may have been involved in the stellar demise. Their investigation of the star’s death is published today in Nature Astronomy.
“We were surprised to find evidence of two or three companion stars that probably hastened its death as well as one more ‘innocent bystander’ star that got caught up in the interaction,” said Orsola De Marco, an astronomer at Macquarie University and the study’s lead author, in a university release.
The team’s play-by-play of the nebula’s origins was possible thanks to very precise measurements of the most brilliant star (the star among stars, if you will) in the Webb image. Webb data enabled the researchers to precisely measure its mass and how far along in its own life it is, which in turn allowed them to derive the mass of the central faint star before it shed its material and created the colorful nebula.
Webb imaged the Southern Ring with two instruments, NIRcam and MIRI. The Webb images were supplemented by data from the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope, the San Pedro de Mártir Telescope, and NASA’s Gaia and Hubble space telescopes.
Only two of the stars thought to be involved in this cosmic rager are visible in Webb’s representative color snapshot of the nebula, taken with NIRcam. The bright star in the nebula’s center is partnered to the one that ejected so much material that it became a white dwarf. That wizened (and exhausted) star sits faintly along the 8 o’clock diffraction spike of the bright central star in the image above.
The astronomers believe that at least one star interacted with the fainter star (star 1 in the illustrated timeline below) as the latter swelled up, preparing to expel its gas and become a white dwarf.
According to the team, that mystery star (star 3) spewed out jets of material as it interacted with the dying star and cloaked the faint star in dust before merging with the dwarf. Star 2 in the illustration is the bright spot at the center of the nebula now—a comparatively stalwart character, given its lack of explosive activity or gassy releases.
Another star (or ‘partygoer’, in the Space Telescope Science Institute’s analogy of an astrophysical fête gone wrong) kicked up the gas and dust let loose by its predecessor, causing wavy ripples in the material. Then, another star (star 5 in the panels above) circled the light show and produced the ring system encircling the nebula.
By the researchers’ reckoning, you can consider the white dwarf near the nebula’s core to be the party host that raged way too hard and passed out well before the party’s end. But the star showed everyone a great time while it was up for it, and it’s thanks to it that the party lived on.
“We think all that gas and dust we see thrown all over the place must have come from that one star, but it was tossed in very specific directions by the companion stars,” said Joel Kastner, an astrophysicist at the Rochester Institute of Technology, in an StScI release.
The researchers believe the same methods that uncovered specifics of the Southern Ring Nebula’s birth could help unpack the births of other nebulae, as well as the astrophysical forces at work in the interactions of stars.
The imagery that unveiled this interstellar scene was published in June; only now have researchers had the time to sift through the data and present their interpretation of it.
So, consider the images you’veseenfromWebbthusfar—they all have their own stories, which will (hopefully) soon be told in detail.
More: Are the Colors in Webb Telescope Images ‘Fake’?
Anyone who lives with allergies knows how deeply unpleasant they can be, knocking you out with a range of symptoms affecting you from head-to-toe. Dogs feel our pain, too, and can be allergic to a number of the same things we are.
But if humans can be allergic to dogs (or, more accurately, their dander), can they be allergic to us? Here’s what to know.
Can dogs be allergic to people?
Like humans, dogs can be allergic to certain foods, skin irritants, and medications, as well as environmental allergens, like pollen, dust miles, mold, and animal dander, according to the American Kennel Club (AKC). And yes, this includes human dander.
Is this new?
Even if you’ve had dogs your entire life, this may be the first you’re hearing about the possibility that they can be allergic to people. And Dr. Valerie Fadok, an AKC veterinarian specializing in dermatology, says there are good reasons for that.
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First, she says, testing dogs for human dander allergies has only recently become a routine part of the test in vets’ offices. The second reason has to do with fleas. Sort of.
Prior to the early 1990s, when effective, modern, preventative flea control treatments became widely available, it was far less common for dogs to sleep in bed with their humans, Fadok explains.
Now that excellent flea protection exists, dogs are spending longer periods of time snuggled up next to their people (especially in bed) and being exposed to their dander—which, in turn, makes their human dander allergies noticeable in a way that they weren’t before, Fadok notes.
The signs a dog is allergic to people
Dogs’ environmental allergy symptoms are largely the same for any allergens, so if yours experiences any of the ones below, you’ll need to take them to the vet for a test to identify the cause.
According to the AKC, the signs that your dog may be allergic to human dander (or any other environmental allergens) include:
Scratching and licking themselves, especially around their groin, anus, eyes, muzzle ears, paws, and underarms
Moist, crusted-over, or bare patches of skin
Runny nose and/or sneezing
Watery eyes
Hives
Diarrhea
What to do if your dog is allergic to people
If your vet has determined that your dog is, in fact, allergic to human dander, they will also talk to you about the best ways to treat their allergies. Depending on the type and severity of you dog’s allergic reaction, the vet make recommend longer-term solutions, like allergy shots, or short-term treatments, like an antihistamine, or cortisone cream to soothe their skin.
There are also things you can do at home to help reduce your dog’s exposure to your dander (and other allergens), including:
Vacuuming your home as much as possible
Switching to washable rugs, and washing them regularly
Using an air purifier with a HEPA filter in your bedroom
If your dog sleeping in your bed is nonnegotiable, changing and washing your bedding often
Report back to your vet after a few weeks with an update on your dog’s symptoms. If they’ve stayed the same or gotten worse, your vet will help you determine the next steps.
Mystery Flesh Pit National Park is a fictional project by Trevor Roberts, who having started on Reddit has for the past few years has been posting stories and artwork to his website, fleshing (sorry) out the tale of a huge creature that is discovered underground in Texas and…turned into a tourist attraction.
It’s a very cool pitch, like some kind of Lovecraftian Jurassic Park, full of absurdity but also abject horror, and it has slowly been picking up enough fans that it has been covered on sites like USA Today. Given the success of the project, and the fact that Roberts has built more of a detailed diorama of a world than a linear story, a video game adaptation must have seemed to a lot of people like a really good idea.
So last week Roberts announced that, courtesy of Village Fox Media, a Mystery Flesh Pit video game would be going into development, and would be seeking its funding on Kickstarter. Billed as a “survival horror video game for PC”, it would centre around the efforts of a crew tasked with helping the Park recover from a disaster—remember, it’s inside a giant beast—that kills 750 people.
A week later the Kickstarter—which was very light on demonstrations or detailed information on development—has been binned, with Roberts saying the decision was made after a combination of “fan feedback, a fumbled marketing push, internal disputes, and some deep introspection”. Specifically, it seems the process of handing off work on the game to other people…did not go well, with Roberts since writing (emphasis mine):
To those who were looking forward to a videogame, I apologize. Most people do not fully appreciate what a substantial undertaking it is to produce even a modest videogame. I have personally and carefully created each and every piece of the Mystery Flesh Pit project, but something as large as a videogame is wholly beyond my scope as an individual artist. When I am not the one directly responsible for overseeing its creation, I cannot ensure its quality. After this experience I can firmly state that there will be no endorsed videogame adaptions of the Mystery Flesh Pit as long as I am alive.
I sincerely hope that by cancelling this overly-ambitious Kickstarter campaign I have avoided what could have been a rushed and inferior gaming experience at best, and an unmitigated disaster at worst. It is also my hope that my decision to endorse this particular Kickstarter does not harm or hinder the superior work of other credible, talented creators that are and have been working hard behind-the-scenes to bring you a Mystery Flesh Pit Tabletop Gaming Experience late in 2023.
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“I have no hard feelings towards the developers”, Roberts tells me. “It was a mutual decision in the end to cancel it. I think they were a little bit too ambitious, and I had a moment of clarity where I saw the disaster this was going to become for all involved. I think I did the right thing. And, for the record, I have always been and continue to be wholly supportive of fan games. My statement about there not being a Mystery Flesh Pit videogame ever was, admittedly, a little overzealous. Fan games are awesome. I just think there are already too many games/movies/series that are poorly planned cash grabs by burnt-out creators, and I’m not about that.”
It’s refreshing to see Roberts see the writing on the wall and pull the plug like this now, and not months/years down the line—having already taken the money—like so many other doomed campaigns have done on the platform.
The tabletop adaptation, which as Roberts says is still coming, should be out early next year.
Power Rangers fans across the world are still in shock from the sudden passing of Mighty Morphin’ star Jason David Frank this past weekend at the age of 49, with tributes rolling in from across the worlds of Power Rangers and Super Sentai to honor the actor—including a touching new video from Hasbro.
Hasbro shared the tribute this evening, after releasing a brief statement over the weekend in light of Frank’s death. “All of Ranger Nation is deeply saddened by the loss of Jason David Frank,” the statement read in part. “JDF brought countless smiles to fans over the years and will be greatly missed.”
Although Frank will be best-known for Tommy’s debut in Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers as first the Green, and then White, Power Rangers, his legacy as the character continued across the franchise, continuing on to lead the Rangers as Zeo and Turbo’s Red Ranger, and then Dino Thunder’s Black Ranger—all of which and more feature in the tribute, including his recent appearances in anniversary episodes of the franchise. It’s a reminder of just how many generations of Power Rangers fans are touched by his loss, and a fitting farewell to a man who helped shoot the series into the stratosphere in the ‘90s with Tommy’s arrival.
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water.