- Dax Shepard Under Fire for Confronting Jonathan Van Ness on Trans Rights Yahoo Entertainment
- Dax Shepard And Jonathan Van Ness Had An Incredibly Heated Discussion About Trans Rights And Gender-Affirming Care, And It Left Jonathan In Tears BuzzFeed News
- Jonathan Van Ness Dressed Down Dax Shepard After He ‘Parroted’ Anti-Trans Propaganda on Podcast Jezebel
- Queer Eye’s Jonathan Van Ness breaks down in tears during trans rights debate Digital Spy
- Dax Shepard’s Trans Rights Debate With Jonathan Van Ness Pushes the ‘Queer Eye’ Host to Tears Yahoo Entertainment
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Tag Archives: Shepard
Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard Address Angry Comments Questioning if They Were Really ‘Stranded’ at Airport – Yahoo Entertainment
- Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard Address Angry Comments Questioning if They Were Really ‘Stranded’ at Airport Yahoo Entertainment
- Kristen Bell & Dax Shepard Shut Down Backlash Over Their Travel Nightmare Access Hollywood
- Kristen Bell Whines About Cancel Culture Without Saying the Words ‘Cancel Culture’ Pajiba Entertainment News
- Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard react to critics claiming they lied about being stranded at Boston airport NBC10 Boston
- Kristen Bell & Dax Shepard Address Rumor That They Host Orgies & That They Lied About That Airport Debacle Just Jared
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Kristen Bell, Dax Shepard ‘kicked out’ of Boston airport after trying to sleep at gate following 9-hour delay – New York Post
- Kristen Bell, Dax Shepard ‘kicked out’ of Boston airport after trying to sleep at gate following 9-hour delay New York Post
- Kristen Bell, Dax Shepard & Kids Get Stranded At Airport After 9-Hour Delay Access Hollywood
- Kristen Bell, Dax Shepard and Kids Stranded at Boston Airport PEOPLE
- Kristen Bell ‘stranded’ at airport following nine-hour delay, spent $600 on pillows and blankets Fox News
- Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard spent $600 on pillows and blankets so their family could sleep in the Boston airport after their flight was delayed. Then, they said they were kicked out of the airport. Yahoo Entertainment
- View Full Coverage on Google News
The Best Gaming Merch of 2022 You Can Actually Show Off
Video game merch is rarely cool. You’d be hard-pressed to find wearable merch worthy of any place other than the gym, or household items you could display in a mid-century modern living room. It’s also rarely inspired or unique—my cabinet is full of slightly chipped Call of Duty coffee mugs, my storage bin overflowing with cheap shirts, my couch beers are almost always swaddled in a branded koozie.
The swag gamers get is loudly garish, wildly patterned, or just plain ugly, with an apparent hatred for subtlety. Much like how top gaming execs have historically dressed at The Game Awards, gaming merch so often feels like a cheap cash-in—an image of Pikachu ironed on to a roughly spun T-shirt or a collage of Super Mario characters crowded together on a canvas pair of Vans. It’s giving Hot Topic.
But lately, as the game community expands and elevates more diverse voices (including those of us who like fashion), we’ve seen an uptick in some seriously cool gamer merch. There’s inspiration in these items, whether it’s a gorgeous vinyl, an actually nice pair of kicks, or a chic gamer chair. Here’s the coolest pieces of video game merch we’ve seen this year.
Jennifer Hale Addresses The Bayonetta 3 Casting Controversy
Renowned voice actor Jennifer Hale, known for her role as Commander Shepard in the Mass Effect series and the new voice of action character Bayonetta, released a statement in response to the discourse following Bayonetta’s former voice actress claiming she wasn’t offered a living wage by PlatinumGames to reprise her role as the Umbran witch.
Over the weekend, Hellena Taylor, the original voice actor for PlatinumGames stylish hack-and-slash series, Bayonetta, uploaded four videos to her official Twitter account claiming PlatinumGames offered her an “insulting” flat rate of $4,000 to reprise her role as Bayonetta. It should be noted that Bayonetta 3 also features an entire coven of Bayonettas from alternate timelines, for which Taylor would have also presumably been asked to record lines. In the videos, Taylor requested that fans boycott the game and instead donate their money to charity.
Read More: Bayonetta’s Original Voice Actress: ‘I Urge People To Boycott This Game’ Over ‘Insulting’ Pay Offer
Prior to Taylor speaking out, PlatinumGames told Game Informer that the replacement of Taylor for Hale was due to “various overlapping circumstances” that made it “difficult” for Taylor to play Bayonetta once again. Taylor says that she wrote to Hideki Kamiya, executive director of the game, to plead her case, which is when PlatinumGames sent her the “immoral” offer to perform all her work on the game for only $4,000.
In her tweets, Taylor mentioned she was breaking her NDA agreement with PlatinumGames by speaking out. After the suicidal ideation, depression, and anxiety she experienced during a period with little work, Taylor said she has nothing left to lose.
“I am not afraid of the non-disclosure agreement. I can’t even afford to run a car. What are they going to do, take my clothes? Good luck to them,” Taylor said in a tweet.
Today, Hale addressed the Bayonetta controversy in a tweet.
“I am under NDA and am not at liberty to speak regarding this situation. My reputation speaks for itself,” Hale wrote. “I sincerely ask that everyone keep in mind that this game has been created by an entire team of hard-working, dedicated people and I hope everyone will keep an open mind about what they’ve created.”
As a longtime member of the voice acting community, Hale said she believes in “every actor’s right to be paid well” reaffirmed her “great respect” for her peers, and mentioned the years of advocacy she’s undertaken in the field.
“Finally, I hope that everyone involved may resolve their differences in an amicable and respectful way,” she said.
Kotaku’s reached out to Hale and Taylor for comment.
Prior to Hale’s post, fellow voice actor Yong Yea tweeted about the high likelihood that Hale had not been made privy to Taylor’s situation with Platinum before she took on the role of Bayonetta. Yea’s tweet includes screenshots of Hale liking tweets which suggested that NDAs prevented her from weighing in fully.
“Direct your frustrations at the companies and decision makers,” Yea wrote.
Read More: Bayonetta 3 Is Out In October, And It’s Got A Mode To Make The Game Less Sexy
While fans wrestled with whether or not they’d adhere to Taylor’s boycott wishes come Bayonetta 3’s release, PlatinumGames’ Kamiya had his Twitter account temporarily deleted and suspended after mass-blocking people asking him about Taylor’s allegation. He’s back now, but has locked his account so no one can reply to his tweets.
Bayonetta 3 is slated to release on October 28 on the Nintendo Switch.
Mass Effect 4 Merch Has Fans Talking About Shepard’s Return
If there’s one thing Mass Effect’s Commander Shepard has earned, it’s some goddamned rest.
Over the past 24 hours, flavor text for a promotional product, as spotted by a YouTuber, sent fans into a tizzy of speculation that the galactic hero would be returning in some sort of new adventure. But the fan-favorite role-playing series’ project director quickly put the rumors to rest, to which I can only say: Good. Bringing Shepard back is an abjectly terrible idea.
Though the main Mass Effect trilogy culminated in 2012—and its follow-up, Mass Effect: Andromeda, came out to middling reception five years later—BioWare’s seminal series of bang-an-extraterrestrial RPGs is in the midst of a resurgence. The developer teased the “next Mass Effect” at the 2020 Game Awards. Though details are slim, it purports to connect the threads between Andromeda and the core trilogy. That announcement was followed by last year’s Mass Effect Legendary Edition, a 4K-resprayed compilation of the original trilogy, plus like 99.99% of its DLC, which resurfaced its operatic narrative in cultural consciousness.
And if there’s one thing our collective replays drove home—Ah, sorry, one sec…
Spoilers follow for Mass Effect 3, 10 years old as of this year.
Ahem. As I was saying, if there’s one thing our collective replays drove home, it’s that Commander Shepard’s story comes to a definitive end. For many, that means Shepard meets perhaps the most definitive end: death.
Most of Mass Effect 3’s story focuses on Commander Shepard’s last-ditch effort to defeat the encroaching army of Reapers, a collective of sentient machines who roam the galaxy every 50,000 years and eliminate all traces of moderately intelligent life. At the end of Mass Effect 3, though there are various endings, you’re given a series of broad choices as to how you defeat the threat.
One choice allowed you to destroy all synthetic life in the galaxy, including the Reapers. Another allowed you to subsume them under your control. A third, available only if you did enough side-questing, gave you the option to fuse all synthetic and organic life. (Post-release DLC infamously added a fourth potential ending, which allowed you to simply blow up the Catalyst, condemning the galaxy to death.) All are available in Legendary Edition, and all show Commander Shepard making that ultimate sacrifice (y’know, death). But if you manage to get to a maximum “military readiness” score—meaning you basically did all of the side-questing, and the collect-a-thons—you’d see a cutscene of Shepard taking in a single breath.
Since-deleted text for an N7 Day poster sold on BioWare’s store suggested that the hard-to-achieve, 3.4-second long cinematic was canon. (N7 Day is BioWare’s annual fan celebration of the Mass Effect series.) As pointed out in a recent video by MrHulthen, a YouTuber who specializes in covering Mass Effect, the flavor text initially read: “While Shepard and the survivors are left to pick up the pieces, fans are left wondering what’s next.”
That text was revised—see if you can spot the difference—to “The threat of the Reapers might have been ended, but at great cost including Earth itself. While the survivors are left to pick up the pieces, fans are left wondering what’s next.” And currently, the poster’s product page doesn’t contain any reference to plot details regarding Mass Effect.
Representatives for EA, which publishes Mass Effect, did not respond to a request for comment. Mike Gamble, Mass Effect’s project director, said on Twitter that the original text mentioning Shepard’s survival was put out in error. But if it’s even the barest indication of what the next Mass Effect is about, the potential ramifications are flummoxing, to say the least.
I mean, if Commander Shepard truly makes a comeback, does that mean time travel is in play? After all, if this new game is meant to connect to Andromeda, which takes place six centuries after the events of the main trilogy, the narrative would need to do something to bridge the gap in time. Or, oh, maybe there’s a multiverse thing going on, though I certainly hope not; we’re already at peak cultural multiverse fatigue, and I can’t imagine such sentiment subsiding by the time the next Mass Effect comes out. (The next game does not have a name or a release date.)
Given that we know next to nothing about the plot of the next game at this point, I suppose it’s impossible to rule out the laziest of all worlds: that Shepard actually survived getting disintegrated in an incandescent flash of heavenly blue light, or disintegrated in an incandescent flash of heavenly red light, or disintegrated in an incandescent flash of heavenly green light, or, uh, trampled by an ageless species of intergalactic machines who are strong enough to level cities.
Read More: Everyone Makes The Same Choices In Mass Effect, Apparently
But all speculation is, ultimately, beside the point. The return of Commander Shepard would likely come as a disappointment to fans—it would essentially do away with the entire thrust of the original trilogy, whose appeal was predicated on making tough choices at key narrative moments, of living with the consequences, and seeing the ramifications all the way through to the finale. That finale was pretty damn definitive. Fans have had a decade to let it gestate. There’s no reason to rewrite that history.
Plus, c’mon, if there’s any supposedly dead character who should make a comeback, it’s not the good commander (who, again, has seriously earned some peace and quiet 10 times over). It’s Thane.
Chanel Iman Staying in Family Home During Divorce from NFL’s Sterling Shepard
Sterling Shepard is saying goodbye to his man cave … at least while his divorce from Victoria’s Secret model Chanel Iman is being hashed out in court … we’ve learned she’ll be staying put in the family home, and he’s moving his stuff out.
According to new legal docs obtained by TMZ … Chanel gets sole use of their pad in New Jersey as the divorce winds its way through the court, and he had to remove his personal items from the home, which will now occupy his bachelor pad.
Get a load of the items the New York Giants star had to pack up and ship out … in addition to his wardrobe and bling, the haul includes his gaming systems, ping pong table, sauna, red light therapy system, all framed and loose football jerseys, plus a projection TV and couch from the basement, a computer and his KAWS dolls.
The docs say Sterling also moved out a bunch of weightlifting and other exercise equipment, but it sounds like Chanel will still be able to keep her model figure … the Peloton treadmill and bike are staying put.
As we reported … Sterling filed for divorce back in June after more than 3 years of marriage and 2 kids.
The docs say Sterling and Chanel want joint legal custody of their kids during the divorce proceedings … and when Sterling plays football on the road on Sundays and can’t get back to the family home by 8 PM that night, he’ll pick up the kids the next morning.
While Sterling’s not living at the North Caldwell marital home during the split, the docs say he will continue footing the bill for her monthly living expenses.
And, the docs say Sterling and Chanel agreed to not have any romantic third parties spend the night when they’re parenting.
The final division of assets and parenting issues will be decided down the road at the end of the divorce … but this is how they’re operating in the meantime.
Michael Strahan’s Blue Origin Launch on New Shepard: Live updates
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Crew begins New Shepard spacecraft ingress
The six-member NS-19 crew is beginning ingress of the New Shepard spacecraft.
Crew begins walk up launch tower
The six-member NS-19 Blue Origin crew is beginning to ascend the launch tower to the New Shepard spacecraft.
NS-19 crew arrives at the launch pad
The NS-19 crew is now at Blue Origin’s Launch Pad One in Van Horn, Texas, getting ready to board the New Shepard spacecraft for launch.
Crew driving to launch pad
The six members of the NS-19 crew, including “Good Morning America” host Michael Strahan, is now driving to the launch pad. Also in one of the vehicles is Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos, who flew to space July 20 as part of the debut crew launch, called NS-16.
Crew emerges from training center
The NS-19 crew just emerged from the training center to get into their vehicle that will transport them to the launch pad.
New Shepard system on the pad ahead of NS-19 launch
The Blue Origin broadcast showed an early-morning view of the New Shepard system sitting ready on the pad, ahead of the planned liftoff of the NS-19 mission later this morning.
Commemorative coin
Here’s an image of the commemorative mission coin that the NS-19 crew will take into space. It includes images of the Blue Origin symbol (a feather) and the New Shepard rocket.
Key moments to watch for before launch
Key moments in today’s countdown to launch:
- T-54 mins, ceremony during which crew receives commemorative coins
- T-45 mins, crew departs the Astronaut Training Center and moves to the launch tower.
- T-33 mins, astronauts will load into the crew capsule.
- T-24 mins, capsule hatch close.
- T-10 mins, Terminal Count Ready Report from Mission Control.
Robert Pearlman of collectSPACE on site
Robert Pearlman of collectSPACE, who is a long-time Space.com contributor, is reporting live from Van Horn.
Here’s his first report on Twitter from the launch site: “Good morning from ‘s Launch Site One, where there is a #NewShepard rocket on the pad and a chill in the air! Launch preparations are underway for an 8:45 a.m. CST liftoff with the #NS19 crew. @BlueOrigin”
Tribute for Glen de Vries
Blue Origin ran a short tribute video (available below) for Glen de Vries, a participant in the company’s NS-18 spaceflight with “Star Trek” star William Shatner. De Vries died in a plane crash in November.
Weather is good for launch
Blue Origin’s webcast just said that weather is looking good for launch.
Blue Origin’s webcast is live
Blue Origin’s live launch webcast for today’s NS-19 New Shepard mission has begun. You can watch it in the window at the top of this page.
Meet Blue Origin’s NS-19 crew
Blue Origin has released a new video showcasing New Shepard’s NS-19 crew and you can watch it here.
The NS-19 mission will launch Good Morning America host and former NFL star Michael Strahan on a suborbital trip with five crewmates, including Laura Shepard Churchley, the eldest daughter of the late Alan Shepard, one of NASA’s Mercury 7 astronauts who was the first American to fly in space and later walked on the moon.
“I kind of feel like a little bit like I’m following in my father’s footsteps,” Churchley says in the video.
“The moment that I decided I would be willing to go was here,” Strahan says, referring to when he covered Blue Origin’s first crewed launch with Jeff Bezos aboard for Good Morning America earlier this year. “Watching Jeff and Mark Bezos completely changed my mind. It was amazing.”
Dylan Taylor, one of the four paying passengers, says going to space has been a lifelong dream, while another passenger, Evan Dick, says he’d hoped to work in aerospace when he was younger and is catching up for lost time with this flight.
Father-child duo of Lane and Cameron Bess — also paying passengers — round out the crew.
“When it became real, I went up to the family and said ‘Who wants to go?’ and the only person who raised their hand was Cameron,” Lane says. “We weren’t thinking about it being first father and child so much as it being an opportunity to experience it together.”
“It’s certainly an honor to be one of the first LGTBQ+ people in space,” Cameron, who is pansexual, says in the video. “You know I’m now hero. I didn’t really work to go space, but I do think that the visibility that I’m providing for that community is valuable.”
It’s Launch Day for Blue Origin’s NS-19
It’s launch day for Blue Origin’s NS-19 mission aboard New Shepard, which will liftoff off at 9:45 a.m. EST (1445 GMT) to carry Good Morning America host and former NFL player Michael Strahan and five others on a suborbital trip to space.
The six New Shepard crewmembers are at Blue Origin’s Launch Site One near Van Horn, Texas for today’s launch. They’re staying at Blue Origin’s Astronaut Village, where they’re flight has been delayed since Dec. 9 due to high winds and weather.
Blue Origin’s webcast begn at 8:15 a.m. EST (1315 GMT) and you can watch it in the feed above.
Flying aboard the New Shepard vehicle with Strahan will be:
- Laura Shepard Churchley, 74, the eldest daughter of NASA astronaut Alan Shepard. Shepard was the first NASA astronaut to fly in space, and the New Shepard spacecraft is named after him.
- Dylan Taylor, 51, chairman and CEO of the space exploration firm Voyager Space, founder of the nonprofit Space for Humanity, and co-founding patron of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation.
- Evan Dick, age not disclosed, an engineer and investor who is a volunteer pilot for Starfighters Aerospace.
- Lane Bess, age not disclosed, principal and founder of a technology-focused venture fund called Bess Ventures and Advisory.
- Cameron Bess, age not disclosed, who is a child of Lane. They stream variety content on Twitch under the alias MeepsKitten.
We’ll have live coverage of the countdown and launch here.
Amazon’s Mass Effect TV Show Shouldn’t Star Commander Shepard
After years of wondering when, not if, Mass Effect would ever make the leap from video games to film or TV, it would seem we’re at last on that precipice: Amazon has eyes on bringing BioWare’s sci-fi shooter/Garrus Vakarian dating simulator to streaming. But the question should be less if the Mass Effect series should come to TV, but how—and the answer is without its “main” character.
Commander Shepard is the star of the first three video games in the Mass Effect saga—in the fourth game, Andromeda, it’s Ryder, a character similarly largely defined by the player. Shepard is beloved, although not perhaps necessarily because they are a great character. Shepard is, in some ways, hard to define as having a personality when you scrape away the thing that makes Mass Effect still so loved, and the thing that makes an attempt to adapt Commander Shepard’s story to another medium such a dangerous prospect: so much of what we see in Shepard as players is what we ourselves put into them. Mass Effect is a game franchise defined by its incorporation of player choice, no matter how clear sometimes the limitations that influence can be made within its systems. Even if, on a macro scale across the games, players’ choices are relatively binary, or more about filling in the little flourishes here and there rather than the broadest strokes of its overarching tale, Commander Shepard remains a deeply personal character to people who play the Mass Effect games. We do more than just control Shepard from one plot point to the next, we guide what they say and what they believe in, we forge their friendships and their loves, we craft them as a person. Are they man or woman, paragon or renegade, are they queer, are they war survivors or orphaned soldiers, tech experts or psychic space-wizards? All the little choices people pour into that character make Shepard less of their own person, for better or worse, and instead our window into their place in Mass Effect’s universe.
Shepard’s nature as that kind of powerful cipher makes the possibility of a Mass Effect show simply trying to adapt them and the events of the original trilogy of games something of a nightmare. It’s not that it can’t be done—the games have long prided themselves on their cinematic framing and values, making it about as easy an adaptation as it could possibly be if literally translated. But bringing in a Shepard, whoever plays them, and trying to set a defined frame around the nebulous idea of who Commander Shepard is, feels like asking for trouble: and asking for it from a fanbase that has, to put it diplomatically, very much proven how vocal they can be about things they don’t like about the ways the series handled their choices. Even what might seem like the simple choice of whether or not adapting Shepard as John or Jane would be a decision that upends Mass Effect’s fanbase, and that’s before you even get to the granularity of weaving about their personality, their romances, or the way they conduct themselves across their story. So much of ourselves is wrapped up in our interpretation of Commander Shepard as Mass Effect players that the thought of seeing some version that is not just our own would be jarring.
So why even do it? It’s not just that adapting Shepard is a guaranteed way to disappoint the Mass Effect fan base in one way or another. Mass Effect’s world is home to more than just one story, and Shepard’s story has already been told. It’s a setting ripe for exploration beyond the conflict between the Commander and the Reapers. A Mass Effect show could follow in and around the shadow of Shepard—following characters we know before or after they crossed paths with Shepard, familiar favorites like Kaidan, Liara, Garrus, Thane, or Tali (or perhaps an anthology that could encapsulate the lives of its beloved expanded cast). It could show us the events that brought us to Mass Effect’s start point, like the Rachni War and the Krogan rebellions that came after, the Quarian’s creation of the Geth, or even the First Contact War between the Turians and Humanity. There are tales in between the games, especially the period of time in Mass Effect 2‘s opening where Shepard is, well, quite dead (they get better). With the addition of Andromeda to the canon, Mass Effect’s universe and potentiality exploded onto the scope of whole galaxies—and a show could explore what Andromeda set up, seemingly left behind after that game’s lukewarm reception, while we wait for whatever comes next in the franchise.
We know what Shepard’s story is already, and most importantly to Mass Effect players, we know what that story is to our own experience of the shape of it. If we’re going to take the next Mass Relay to TV stardom, Mass Effect should stand ready to do so beyond the shadow of its first hero—and get ready to lay the groundwork and introduce us to new ones beyond the Commander’s reach.
Wondering where our RSS feed went? You can pick the new up one here.
Dax Shepard Says Extracting Wife Kristen Bell’s Clogged Breast Was ‘Not Easy and Not Rewarding’
Dax Shepard is getting real about the time he came to his wife Kristen Bell’s aid during an uncomfortable breastfeeding experience.
In a clip from Wednesday’s episode of The Drew Barrymore Show, the talk show host asks the couple about when Shepard had to nurse out a breastfeeding clog that Bell encountered when she had mastitis. Bell first discussed the experience with Katie Lowes on her Daytime Emmy–nominated series Momsplaining with Kristen Bell back in 2018.
“Let’s just say that I extracted mastitis and we’ll leave everyone’s imagination to wander,” Shepard told Barrymore. “Let me also add that it is not easy and not rewarding.”
“I mean it is to know that you helped your partner but other than that it’s where the rubber meets the road. It’s down in the trenches you know?” the father of two added.
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RELATED: Kristen Bell and Katie Lowes Bond Over Husbands Being Willing to ‘Nurse Out’ a Breastfeeding Clog
Despite the unconventional experience, Bell told Barrymore that it made her “realize the level of commitment that this man had to me.”
When the Frozen actress — who shares daughters Lincoln, 8, and Delta, 6½, with her husband — initially discussed Shepard’s help in 2018, she recounted, “I said to my husband, ‘I really need you to suck this out. We could talk about it, we could be weird about it, or you could just go ahead and nurse.’ He pulled it out. He had a cup next to him. He was pulling out and spitting into this cup, and I’ve never been more in love in my life.”
Last month on an episode of Momsplaining, she chatted with Lowes for a second time about the experience and reiterated that the method is useful.
“It works!” said Bell, as Lowes said, “I know. I’ve asked my husband and to be honest with you guys, Adam has never had to nurse out a clog but he has said numerous times, ‘I would do it.’ “
“Because that’s my boy right there!” Bell responded while the Scandal alum clapped.