Sadly, it’s a deeply flawed movie, despite the performances and actors. It feels like a movie that was written by a committee, who then shot half of it, and then the committee ran off with the script, so a second committee met in the room where the first committee met, and wrote a new script based on the notes they…

I think that the idea that there’s an audience for these shows that isn’t versed in Trek history is well-taken, but I also think that the shows can’t have it both ways.

Almost all of these are traditionally published— it’s atypical for an actual indy/self-pubbed book to make these lists. THAT SAID, “traditionally published” is far from an even playing field. Some get the full marketing push, for others, making a long list like this and a release day tweet is about all they get.

Banner month of some ones I’ve been excited for. So for my own personal curation of this list:

See, I hated Bandersnatch because everything in its narrative steered in the direction of Mental Unhealth=Great Art and why? For real, if you make the healthy choice of working in the office with a team and support the game gets done and... it’s terrible, 0 out of 5. If you work alone in your dank bedroom and go down…

Re: #3, I imagine but Cobie Smulders and Ben Mendelsohn have Better Things To Do and were probably happy to fulfill their outstanding Marvel contracts.

For me, it was the (early 90s, I think?) habit of having all the Annuals be One Big Crossover.  So to remotely understand the story in the Annual of the comics you were following, you had to get EVERY ANNUAL.

All the director said was “after Civil War”, but “after Endgame” fits with that as well, and makes sense.  Given that, the immediate aftermath Gravik was still working with Fury (and thus collecting The Harvest), it makes sense he wasn’t explicitly replacing people until after that.

From what I understand, the argument for Ant-Man to be a Phase 2 is less about Ant-Man being the appropriate coda to that, and more about Civil War being the appropriate start to Phase 3.

What I love about that book is how the culture on the planet realized “Starfleet and the Klingons are both going to try to control this planet, which we don’t want.  We have no way to actually fight them off, so... I guess we need to just confuse the fuck out of them.”

What I find funny about that scene is how they clearly wanted a scene where BECAUSE URGENCY she had to get out of uniform and into a space suit or something, so she just RAN to the shuttlecraft and tore off her clothes... BUT YET she makes a point to maintain SOME propriety so she tells him to turn around...
EXCEPT…

Certainly, part of the plan always involves fluidity, and Marvel is very good at responsive fluidity. Like, clearly there was, at one point, an idea for Eternals 2, but since the first didn’t seem to connect with audiences, they aren’t pushing the idea of making it happen any time soon. But when Ant-Man did connect,…

Secret Invasion definitely feels like it was originally a Captain Marvel movie that got hastily rejiggered into a Nick Fury TV show.

I think it’s more a thing of people saying, “I, personally, am tired” and acting like that represents a nationwide and worldwide trend.  It’d be as if I say, “I, personally, can’t stand shrimp, and therefore there is a great ‘shrimp fatigue’ amongst all food eaters, no matter what Red Lobster sales are telling you.”

Requirements for Best Series are at least three entries, totally 240K words, so a series doesn’t have to be “done” when it’s nominated, and it can’t be re-nominated until there’s at least another two entries AND another 240K words*. So Locked Tomb getting nominated now is going to be... interesting, because it likely…

Kuang won the Astounding, and was nominated for Best Series, so the body of Average Hugo Voters definitely knows her.  I would presume that either she declined (and I have now heard some definitive Some Folks Declined In Protest whispers) or she’s at the top of the longlist.  

I’ve Heard Good Things but haven’t checked it out.

I will be intrigued to see the nomination data when it comes out, because the lack of Babel on this list is surprising. It is certainly possible it was nominated and Kuang declined? (I don’t know well enough to know if she might decline out of principle because the awards are in Chengdu— I heard some whispers of folks…

Few things make me cross than the fact that most of the coverage for an award that is largely literary goes to the categories that aren’t literary at all.  When there was the “Best Game” special category a couple years ago, most of the coverage went to the winner of that, rather than, you know, all the rest.

The Nebulas are more the SAG, while the Hugos:Oscars comparison is apt?  In that the “WorldCon Membership” is a nebulous group mostly of long-time insiders?