Fun Fact of The Day: This dolphin here is actually using the puffer fish as a drug to induce a trance-like state. The skin of the puffer fish, in small amounts, is known to produce a narcotic effect. The behavior was captured by an award winning wildlife documentary producer, John Downer, and a zoologist, Rob Pilley, who states “Young dolphins are purposely experimenting with something we know to be intoxicating. After chewing it gently and passing it around, they began acting most peculiarly, hanging around with their noses at the surface as if fascinated by their own reflection.”
The head writer and a director of Avatar: The Last Airbender are making a new Netflix Original animated series
Aaron Ehasz, the head writer of ATLA, has started a new production company called Wonderstorm that is producing a new, original animated series for Netflix in conjunction with a AAA video game in the same universe, unrelated to the Avatar universe.
He is being joined by Giancarlo Volpe (Twitter, Tumblr), one of ATLA’s main directors who has also worked on Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Green Lantern: The Animated Series, and Star vs. the Forces of Evil.
At the moment, Wonderstorm looks like a team of ten, among them: it was co-founded with Justin Richmond (an Uncharted director) and Justin Santistevan from Riot Games, where Ehasz worked from 2012-2015 as a creative director for League of Legends (and Volpe worked as a director for animated content). Aaron Ehasz has also been a writer on Futurama.
This résumé of worldbuilding-heavy TV series and video games looks like it’s the crux of what Wonderstorm’s goals are all about: creating a new fictional world (or worlds?) with deep and broad lore and building a franchise from that across different forms of media, integrated with one another more than you might typically see. Currently it sounds like they’re working on one main original scifi or fantasy universe, with a video game and Netflix Original animated series on the way, and it sounds like from the ground-up they’re focusing on having the show and game coexist meaningfully. Pretty cool!
You’re in charge of assigning every child on Earth the monster under their bed. One child in particular has caused every monster assigned to him/her to quit. You decide to assign yourself.
Case: #273402 Status: Disastrous.
I stare at the file and realize I have no options, over the last 2 years every monster assigned to Charlotte Dower has quit, every last one. Her first monster; a giant goldfish-faced humanoid named Bubba, had been with her for four years, and then she wasn’t scared of him anymore. After that it was a string of different common, uncommon, and rare monsters… I even assigned a sentient sock monster to her. He came back crying! I look on my tablet, only one assignable monster left; myself. Field work has never been my cup of tea, but desperate times call for desperate measures. So at 8:03 pm, after Mrs. Gideon tucks in Charlotte and her little brother Daniel; I slither into the space beneath Charlotte’s bed. Across the room underneath Daniel’s crib is a rookie, Chico, a standard Creep kind of monster. I turn my attention to the bed above me, Charlotte is still awake but barely, I reach up over the bed and run an ice cold finger over her cheek, silence, so I do it again. “I’m not afraid of you monster!” She whispers, but her voice is shaking. I can see a small clock on the wall 8:14, a door somewhere in the house slams and there is an audible hitch of breath from above me. A few minutes go by I can hear Francis Gideon yelling at his wife. There are heavy footsteps on the stairs, and loud panting breaths, Charlotte scrambles off the bed and… She. CRAWLS. Under. The. Bed. With. Me. “Move. Over!” Charlotte hisses at me. I do. The door to the bedroom slams open and I smell the stench of human intoxicants before the man even steps inside. I know why Charlotte isn’t afraid of any of my monsters; she’s afraid of her own. Francis reaches a hand under the bed and I thrust my wrist into it, he starts to pull, I slither out. “What the…” I cut Francis’s next words off by unfolding to my full 12 foot height. Looming over the drunken man I caress my cold fingers down his face. “If you ever touch, scare, or harm my child again, I will find you, and I will do the same to you, for all eternity.” I promise to him. As Francis runs from the room he soils himself. I pull Charlotte from under the bed, tuck her back under her covers and kiss her forehead goodnight. “I’ll be back tomorrow night, sleep well darling.” Charlotte Dower is my child, I am the monster under her bed.
WELL GODAMN, WE HAVE OURSELVES A WINNER
Holy shit I’m gonna cry that’s beautiful.
Every single cursed moment of my tumblr existence has led me here. I am whole. I am complete.