Are Democrats too fat for jeans?

'Isn’t about politics — it’s about reality'

'Trump thinks outside the Washington, D.C. box'

The soldiers are currently being treated

'she stated that it was so stinky in her house'

The boys are so back...

'Smugglers do not care'

News Fallout Fallout Season 2 Will Feature New Vegas‘ Most Controversial Faction The introduction of Caesar’s Legion in Fallout Season 2 brings one of gaming’s strangest debates to a new audience. By Matthew Byrd | Published on August 20, 2025 Screenshot: Amazon MGM Studios Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: Amazon MGM Studios While the first trailer for Fallout Season 2 understandably left people talking about Mr. House, those striking scenes of Walton Goggins in old New Vegas, and the possibility of a Macaulay Culkin sighting, eagle-eyed Fallout fans are fixated on the brief scene pictured above that confirms the return of the series’ most controversial faction: Caesar’s Legion.  Introduced in Fallout: New Vegas, Caesar’s Legion is a Mojave Wasteland faction that is quite obviously modeled after the Roman Empire. They wear tunics, they (generally) shun modern technology, and they follow a leader named Caesar who seeks to topple the New California Republic through totalitarian rule and barbaric methods that include slavery, cultural homogenization, rampant sexism, and total warfare. Though the Legion has been surprisingly successful in their conquests, they are often portrayed as an obviously villainous faction.  In fact, some Fallout fans find them to be almost comically villainous and underwritten compared to New Vegas’ other, more morally ambitious groups and characters. However, as New Vegas designer Josh Sawyer explained, the Legion wasn’t meant to be thought of as morally “grey.” They are meant to represent the “nature of humans who rise to power in such circumstances” and how such humans and circumstances tie into the Fallout series motto: War Never Changes.  However, not all Fallout fans see the Legion that way. The Legion has long attracted a vocal group of seemingly unlikely supporters who are perhaps constantly thinking of the Roman Empire for all the wrong reasons. Some fans support the Legion because they like their looks, because they want to role-play as bad guys, or because they generally enjoy annoying others with their decision to side with said bad guys. That last group sometimes blends into another group that genuinely argues for the Legion’s methods, their results, and the general idea of power through brutish strength and oppression. If this coalition of meme enthusiasts, trolls, diehard philosophical loyalists, evil aesthetic admirers, and “at least the trains run on time” defenders sounds frighteningly familiar, it’s because Fallout’s writers have long been excellent students of history.  There are also some questions about how the Legion fits into the show’s timeline. Fallout Season 2 takes place roughly 15 years after the end of Fallout: New Vegas, and New Vegas can end in one of many ways depending on the player’s choices. It seems unlikely that the show will feature one of the endings that suggest the Legion conquered New Vegas, so the series may instead focus on remnants of the faction long removed from their glory days. The scope of that faction and the identity of their leader (this is actually another Culkin candidate role) are mysteries for another day.  Regardless of those specifics, it’s the reaction to this faction that will be most interesting to monitor. Given the themes of Fallout’s first season, there is little doubt that the show will portray them largely as the totalitarian troops cosplaying as conquerors in a world looking for leaders who can grow something from the ashes, which is largely how they were originally intended to be presented. Historically, though, it is very much worth noting that such depictions of this group have not deterred endorsements. [end-mark] The post <i>Fallout</i> Season 2 Will Feature <i>New Vegas</i>‘ Most Controversial Faction appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV Alien: Earth Alien: Earth Mops Up the Acid Blood and the Emotional Wreckage in “Metamorphosis” Cleaning up after the Weyland-Yutani crash is easy compared to processing all these feelings… By Leah Schnelbach | Published on August 20, 2025 Credit: FX Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: FX Welcome back to Alien: Earth, already in progress! This week’s episode, “Metamorphosis”, was directed by Dana Gonzales and written by Noah Hawley and Bob DeLaurentis. It was a bit slower and more exposition-heavy than last week’s two episode-premiere, but there’s still a lot to unpack. Let’s Dissect a Still-Quivering Facehugger I didn’t know they’d literally dissect a facehugger??? Maybe manifesting does work. This episode highlights the fact that, new synthetic bodies aside, the Lost Boys are children. They think like children, they act like children, and Boy Kavalier should not have sent them on this mission. If only any of his staff could stand up to him or stop him from doing whatever pops into his head in the moment. Last week Nibs was the most tentative of the Lost Boys, and this week we see why. Of all of them, she seems to be the one who misses her old life the most. She questions why they’re “Lost Boys” when half of them are girls, why they have to riff on Peter Pan at all, and why they don’t get to choose their own names. After all, Wendy chose her name. Later Nibs remembers herself as a child, before her Transference. She asked when she’d get to go home. Meanwhile, Wendy finds Joe inside a shipping container. You think that would be good, but Joe’s been stuck to a wall with some sort of greenish sticky substance. The Alien set a trap for Wendy, and Joe’s the bait. This is extremely interesting to me because it means that the Xenomorph captured Joe, dragged him through the building, and then lashed him to the wall, which must have been super traumatic—but why is it so focused on Wendy? Joe tries to warn her, but naturally she ignores him and cuts him free, and then there’s the Xenomorph, and they’re cornered. Except. The Xenomorph leaves, jumps onto the roof of the shipping container, and freaks them out running around up there until Wendy stabs it with her sword. Which, excellent job Wendy getting a palpable hit, but they discover the whole “it has acid for blood” thing in a uniquely terrible way, as the blood eats the sword in her hand and starts dripping down on both of them. They get away, for a second, but it pursues Joe and crawls on top of him, extends it’s second mouth—and then Wendy uses a meat hook to skewer it through the jaw and drag it off of him. I’m not sure I’ve seen anyone wrangle an Alien before? Maybe that wacky trillionaire was right after all, and this traumatized-child-in-a-synthetic-body was the perfect person to send on this mission! She drags the Xenomorph to another shipping container, this one with an automated door, while Joe crawls to the door’s switch. They can trap it! Which is a solid plan until the Xenomorph pulls a Balrog and uses its tail to drag Wendy in with it. We hear them in there screaming as Joe hotwires the door panel to open it again, and—I’ll admit I was expecting this—there’s a decapitated Xeno-corpse sprawled on the floor next to its extremely removed head, green acid blood everywhere. Wendy’s shaking all over and leaking milky fluid. She collapses as Joe gets to her, and a few second later he joins her on the floor. These kids have had a terrible day. Let’s check in with Smee and Slightly, shall we? Credit: FX Once again these two are the closest to comic relief we get, as they gaze in grossed-out awe at the eggs, and Slightly laments missing out on all the strange creatures in the lab. But then Morrow shows up, and tries to interrogate them as they cross their arms and insist that their knowledge is classified. Once he realizes that they’re children (assuming that they’re regular synths, behaving as children) he holsters his gun; they protest that they’re not children, and accidentally let slip that they have parents, which catches Morrow by surprise. It would be very cute if I wasn’t terrified for them. Morrow connects to the ship’s computer and upload all of its files into his own brain, deletes the originals, and goes back to questioning Smee and Slightly until Kirsh glides up and informs him that the ship’s contents are a ball that went over a fence into the neighbor’s yard, and he’s the neighbor. Kirsh tries to be something of a heavy, refers to Morrow as needing friends, and Morrow snaps back that he doesn’t have any friends. So far, so vaguely threatening dialogue—but then Slightly insists “Everybody needs a friend!” because he’s a child and has no idea what’s going on. And again, this is hilarious in the moment, but I have a feeling the humor’s going to be drained dry by the time this show ends. Morrow jumps away into the bowels of the ship rather than allow Kirsh to capture him for Prodigy. Kirsh collects all the specimens, the eggs, the Xeno-corpse, and Wendy and Joe, who are just barely alive. Arthur and Dame Sylvia work on Wendy, almost mouth off at Boy Kavalier, and finally settle for politely throwing him out while they try to revive their girl. He wanders over to Kirsh, who’s also mad at him (I mean, as much as Kirsh can be mad) and we get my favorite scene in the episode as yet another idiot leans over an egg, almost all the way into facehugging range. Kirsh watches him do this with an incredulous look on his face before yanking him away and explaining what almost happened to him. Credit: FX (I’m not sure Kirsh made the right cost/benefit analysis here.) Boy Kavalier puts Kirsh in charge of the specimens. Meanwhile, Atom Eins has gone to the Lost Boys’ room. He questions Smee and Slightly about their encounter with Morrow. The boys learn that they have retinal cameras in their eyes—yet another thing they didn’t understand about their new lives. Earlier, Nibs talked about her unhappiness with Curly, but now we see that Curly has latched onto one specific detail: why did Wendy get to choose her own name? Why is Wendy the favorite? She takes the initiative to find Boy Kavalier—not with Kirsh, as Wendy did, but alone—to give a report on their mission. She tells Boy Kavalier that Wendy is only worried about “her stupid brother” and that she, Curly, is the best, and the one who has ideas about how to help the world. She should be the favorite. When Boy Kavalier asks about her ideas she won’t share them because “You’ll steal them”, and Boy, to his credit, replies “True.” He seems to admire this initiative, promises to send her books to read and films to watch, and that after she’s gone through them, “we’ll play”. I am now worried for Curly. Meanwhile Morrow calls Yutani… but doesn’t recognize her. Because now he’s speaking to “his” Yutani’s granddaughter, because he’s been out in deep space for two generations and most of the people he knew are dead and gone. When she reminds him that he should have read his contract he shakes it off. It’s not that, he knows that—it’s that these creatures have becomes his life’s work, and he’s going to get them back. Rather than coming in as she asks, he hangs up on her and continues his hunt.   And the way he does this is by speaking directly to Slightly, courtesy of the invisible device he placed on Slightly’s neck back in the ship. Slightly repeatedly says that he doesn’t want to talk to him, but he can’t make it stop, and then Morrow reminds him of what he said earlier. Slightly was right—Morrow does need a friend. Will Slightly be that friend? Great. Now I’m worried about everyone. Meanwhile, Kirsh, Tootles, and Curly dissect one of the facehuggers. This excellently squicky scene is intercut with doctors removing one of Joe’s lungs, seemingly under the guise of operating on his Xenomorph-inflicted injuries. The scenes come together as Kirsh releases a tiny fetal Xenomorph into the tank with the removed lung, and we see it burrow inside. This would be intense enough, but since Wendy now has some sort of empathic connection to the Xenomorph, she wakes up just in time to collapse in excruciating pain again. In This Space, Everyone Can Hear My Opinions Last week’s double-episode premiere had to prove itself as a worthy addition to the Alien franchise, while giving enough exposition to ground people who were tuning in after maybe not seeing an Alien movie in years, while also raising enough of its own questions to justify its existence. And it did all of that! This week’s episode builds on that foundation, giving us alien-wrangling action that I think might be unique to the franchise (let me know if I’m wrong about that), and it also builds on the queasy intersection of man and machine. Morrow is, to be blunt, out of date. When he left on the mission for Yutani, he was the future, a melding of humanity and machine that could hold awesome amounts of data in his head, and unleash a hidden blade from his arm at the slightest threat. He’s come home to a world where a human consciousness can be uploaded into a fully synthetic, basically immortal body. Where someone (something?) that looks like a young woman can take out a whole-ass alien with only a small sword. Who is Morrow now, in this world? Who is Kirsh, so much smarter, in most ways, than his boss, yet still seen as passé in a world where the Lost Boys exist? Morrow is obviously setting Slightly up to be his mole inside Prodigy, which will spell the child’s doom. But he also, alone of the adults around the Lost Boys, seemed to try to push Smee and Slightly into asking themselves questions about what they’d be willing to do to the humans around them, and, essentially, which side they’d choose between man and synth. The moments that are sticking with me so far are Morrow saying his daughter hates raisins, and Kirsh turning away when Smee comforts Slightly. Like I know it’s a horror show, but can’t we stick to the fun horror of aliens shredding stupid hapless people, and not the emotional carnage that’s already ramping up here? UGH. And, of course, Wendy’s ability to take out a whole Xenomorph single-swordedly, and her connection to them. She seemed to be able to hear them last week, but now she feels the agony of being vivisected. What’s the meaning behind the connection? And why are they using Joe’s old lung as a Xenomorph terrarium? Was it just the convenience of having a severely injured human lying around? On Immort(AI)lity Credit: FX Morrow wishes he could be “all machine instead of the worst parts of a man”, and he also talks about his daughter, and about how he’s been gone so long all of his friends are dead. So things are not going well with the show’s cyborg. Smee and Slightly learn that they have retinal cameras in their eyes, and, later, Nibs presses her finger into her eye. It seems the Lost Boys are finally starting to reckon with their new reality. And Curly, who was not privy to Boy Kavalier’s conversation with Dame Sylvia last week, has essentially positioned herself as the person who might finally blow the boy trillionaire’s mind. But what happens if she falls short? Boredom’s Not a Burden Anyone Should Bear This week’s incongruous pop culture appeared to be a CGI Peter Pan adaptation that I did not recognize. Is it maybe The New Adventures of Peter Pan? End credits music came courtesy of Metallica and their 1992 hit “Wherever I May Roam” David 8 Was Right Credit: FX Seriously, watching Kirsh stare at Boy Kavalier as the dope leans into the Xenomorph egg, like so many dopes before him, filled me with inexpressible joy. A joy only topped when Kirsh grabbed Boy like he was scruffing a rescue kitten, and marched him out of the lab. Whatever Happened to “Save the Cat”? Maybe Joe is the cat in this episode? Did they… they did give him a new fake lung, right? They’re not just stripping him for parts? Scattered Transmission in the Void of Space! I really really really really love that when Joe crawls into the shipping container next to his sister and the Xeno-corpse, he casually turns his head and vomits before he collapses. He’s a regular human being who has been through an absolute nightmare, and I was really pleased a) that they show his body rejecting everything that’s happened to it and b) that he doesn’t even have the strength to at least crouch or fully roll away. The most he can do is turn his head. I also love that he exclusively calls Wendy “Marcy”. Smee seeing how upset and scared Slightly is, getting up, and gradually putting an arm around him juuuuust about destroyed me. What finished destroying me was seeing Kirsh watch them and then turn away when they hug. I think it’s safe to assume that these kids don’t have bright futures ahead of them, and that Kirsh understands that. Can we get an entire episode of Alien Autopsy? Quotes! Credit: FX Kirsh: Was it worth it? Boy Kavalier: What? Kirsh: Risking decades work on something new and shiny. Boy Kavalier: My, you’re all so feisty today. Morrow, to Slightly: When is a machine not a machine? Curly (in a delightfully unsubtle dig at Wendy): My dad always threw the first pancake in the trash. Boy Kavalier, on prodigies: What makes them geniuses is that they’re children, and children have access to a world of infinite imagination. [end-mark] The post <em>Alien: Earth</em> Mops Up the Acid Blood and the Emotional Wreckage in “Metamorphosis” appeared first on Reactor.

News Katabasis R.F. Kuang’s Katabasis Already Getting a Prime Video TV Series Adaptation We can all read the book when it comes out on August 26, 2025. By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on August 20, 2025 R.F. Kuang photo by Julian Baumann Comment 0 Share New Share R.F. Kuang photo by Julian Baumann Babel and The Poppy War author R.F. Kuang’s latest novel, Katabasis, isn’t even out yet, but that hasn’t stopped an adaptation of the work from moving forward. According to Variety, Amazon MGM Studios is already developing it into a television series to stream on Prime Video. The project even has a showrunner attached: The Walking Dead alum, Angela Kang. Both Kang and Kuang will executive produce, along with Mandy Safavi, Ben Smith, Jeffrey Weiner, and Adam Docksey. Amazon describes the show as “a dark academia fantasy in which two graduate students in Magick must put aside their rivalry and journey through Hell to save their professor’s soul—perhaps at the cost of their own.” Katabasis takes place in an alternate history where “magick” is real and something one can get a Ph.D in from places like Oxford and Cambridge (a recurring premise in Kuang’s work). It revolves around Magick Ph.D. candidate Alice Law, who heads to Hell to retrieve the soul of her abusive advisor at Cambridge, Professor Grimes. Fellow Grimes advisee Peter Murdoch joins her in that journey. Danger and personal introspection ensue as they trek across the realm’s different levels. This isn’t the first work of Kuang’s picked up for adaptation. Back in 2020, we heard that The Poppy War was in development for TV, though that appears to have stalled. Babel is also reportedly in development for adaptation, but we haven’t heard news of that since early 2024. The Katabasis project is still in its early days—it’s not clear if any scripts have been written, much less if there’s been any action on the casting front. In the meantime, we can look forward to reading the novel when it comes out on August 26, 2025. [end-mark] The post R.F. Kuang’s <i>Katabasis</i> Already Getting a Prime Video TV Series Adaptation appeared first on Reactor.