Precious and Fragile Things

For those that don't know, you can watch the first two episodes of Legend of Korra today at Korra Nation for free, and unlike previous leaks and the files that were being downloaded a few days ago, this is completely legal and authorized by Nickelodeon. No danger of getting in trouble, and it's almost guaranteed to stay up!

I've watched it and, oh man, this series already has such a promising start. Also, right out the gate Brian and Mike are trolling the fans regarding the fate of Zuko's mother (if you watch, you'll see the moment I talk about early in episode one).

So, go watch because April 14 is too long to wait!

(Note: I'm only being half-serious with the subject line.)

George Lucas Says Han Never Shot First, You Were Just Confused

As it turns out, those who saw that controversial edit as a fundamental betrayal of the character—changing Han Solo from a shrewd, streetwise bad-ass to a guy who got really lucky that Greedo is such a lousy shot; rendering his evolution from amoral antihero to full-blown hero less meaningful, etc. —well, they were just confused all along, because Lucas now says Han never shot first:

The controversy over who shot first, Greedo or Han Solo, in Episode IV, what I did was try to clean up the confusion, but obviously it upset people because they wanted Solo to be a cold-blooded killer, but he actually isn’t. It had been done in all close-ups and it was confusing about who did what to whom. I put a little wider shot in there that made it clear that Greedo is the one who shot first, but everyone wanted to think that Han shot first, because they wanted to think that he actually just gunned him down.

I'm not going to live in a world where Han didn't shoot first, and you can't make me. LALALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU, GEORGE

Captain America: "Big man in a suit of armor. Take that away and what are you?"
Tony Stark: "Uh, genius billionaire playboy philanthropist."

Oh, Tony, never ever change. Ever. <3

I don't care, this movie looks like it'll be fantastic. Thor wasn't what I was expecting, but it was still enjoyable, and hey, any movie where I can drool over RDJ, Chris Helmsworth, Tom Hiddleston, and Chris Evans for extended period of time counts as a win in my book.

From white_lotus:

OMG YOU GUYS. Gene Luen Yang, author of American Born Chinese & whose short story was included in Secret Identities: the Asian American Superhero Anthology, is writing the new A:TLA comics!!! As mentioned at Dark Horse, this is meant to be the sequel to the animated series & the link to Korra.

I repeat: EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!

[23:55] <@JadeNSC> http://www.toplessrobot.com/2011/07/avatar_the_legend_of_the_biggest_damn_dog_and_to_a.php The sound you just heard was a fangirlish squee.
[23:57] <N_X[Semi-AFK]> Yeah, sorry about that. I couldn't resist squeeing there. I'll try to hold it in next time.
[23:57] <@JadeNSC> lol

Hat-tip to nagaina for the link.

Around 11:15 PM last night, a huge gust of wind came rolling down the ridge behind my house. Less than a minute later my power and cable went out and the wind got so loud that I thought a tornado was surely bearing down on us. Well, it wasn't a tornado, just a hellacious thunderstorm that raged for about an hour before fading away into stillness. The power stayed out until about 3:30 AM, which means I am plumb wore out today, to borrow a Southern-ism. (I didn't stay up waiting for it to come back; I just woke up when the power came back on and I had to get up to reset my alarm clock and turn off lights and the TV.)

More rain is expected throughout today and the rest of this week with chances for more thunderstorms, but I think really bad weather is over for now. What startled me was that we had absolutely no warning whatsoever. All was quiet and then BAM! Usually there's a rumble of thunder, some lightning, or at least a drop or two of rain. Even so, we managed to come out of it unscathed. Other counties were reporting wind damage and fallen trees. In Rutherford county, North Carolina, about sixty miles from here, two eighteen year-old girls are dead after a large tree fell over on their house. My thoughts go out to their family.

I occasionally complain about the lack of shade in my yard, but after last night I'm kind of glad there's not any trees near my house and that I've got a large open pasture behind me. About the worst that might happen is a cow or a goat gets flung against my house, which would take stronger winds than what we had last night. It would also mean they were too dumb to take shelter.

I was on WoW in the middle of our role-play night (which was winding down at that point at least) when it happened. I had no opportunity to warn that I might disappear or even mention the possibility of a storm. At least it waited until after all the plot information was discussed and between two of us, there should be a complete log available for guild records.

Ugh, I am so glad Wednesdays are "no homework" days for the kiddo. I seriously am too brain dead to help him do something as simple as two plus two.

Edit: Any NCIS fans here? Did you see last night's episode? Oh my god! Franks! P2P killer! Crying Ziva! New agent Barret being an idiot! And next week is the season finale! (I have to admit the opening two minutes when they showed Palmer first had me freaking out that something happened to Ducky.)

More bad reviews for M. Night Shyamalan's The Last Airbender. When Roger Ebert gives your movie half of a star while giving Twilight: Eclipse two stars, you know it's going to be ugly.

Pretty much the consensus is that Mr. Shyamalan is a legend only in his own mind. He was practically handed a complete story on a silver platter and still managed to turn it into complete and utter crap. Whatever happened to the man who directed The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable? Personally I wondered what the hell Nickelodeon was thinking when it allowed Shyamalan to wirte the screenplay and direct it. Please don't tell me the contracts were signed after The Happening, I don't think my heart could take it.

Moving away from The Last Failbender, I found two very interesting links today while sifting through comments on the reviews.

First up is an exciting Twitter post:

AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER coming back as new TV series on Nickelodeon? 4 days ago Viacom filed papers to trademark AVATAR: LEGEND OF KORRA

My heart, I must admit, gave an excited flutter. And I tried to ignore this until I found out about a job posting for a storyboard revisionist to work on an "Untitled Avatar project" for Nickelodeon.

I had heard rumors that the original creators Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante were looking to do a fourth season of ATLA, and it looks like those rumors might indeed be true. Perhaps they're flipping the metaphorical bird at M. Night Shyamalan, or maybe they just realized they had another story to tell. Let's hope they keep up their excellent work and are able to distance themselves far, far away from The Last Failbender.

It's as if a million weaboos cried out at once on the Internet and a famous rock star's son was suddenly beset by cries of plagiarism.

Tl;dr summary: Nick Simmons, son of KISS frontman Gene Simmons, writes/draws a comic book. Fans of the anime/manga Bleach notice some very, very strong similarities between the characters, and in one case it appears that he outright traced Kenpachi. Outraged, the fans post the information for the publishing companies of all the parties involved and amazingly they get a response.

Other possible sources for his blatant stealing include Full Metal Alchemist, Hellsing, and Naruto. For more WTF-ness, he may have even lifted a character from Neil Gaiman's Sandman.

sf_drama has more.

Radical Publishing has responded and they are halting production of Simmons's comic. Also, Kubo Tite and his publishers (author of Bleach) are aware thanks to the thousands of fans alerting them via the Internet.

The lesson here? Do not fuck with fans in the age of the Internet, for they will mess your shit up. And plagiarism is bad, mmmkay?

Of interest to a few people who read my journal, scans_daily is no more. Click to find out why.

From reading the comments, it looks rather silly.