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http://www.thenerdelement.com/2020/08/09/shark-week-is-here-and-i-couldnt-be-happier/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=shark-week-is-here-and-i-couldnt-be-happier

By Désirée Guzzetta

“It’s the most wonderful time of the year!”

As soon as my friends see me post this on social media, they know what I’m talking about, and it’s not Christmas.

It’s Shark Week!

I’ve been an avid fan of Discovery’s Shark Week offerings as long as I can remember. I can’t wait to snuggle into the couch with a snack and a glint in my eye and start watching. It’s the next best thing to SDCC for me.

Social media has enabled me to share my love of sharks with my friends and followers by posting RSFs, or Random Shark Facts, that I glean from each of the specials that airs. I pick whatever fact is most interesting to me in the moment and post it. It’s random because it happens when it happens during the show; I don’t wait until the episode is over to pick one favorite fact.

I wasn’t always a shark lover; having been traumatized by Steven Spielberg’s Jaws when I was a child, I set about learning everything I could about sharks in order to allay my fears. I still have a bit of fear whenever I swim in the ocean, but it’s more of a healthy respect now that I’ve seen so many specials and learned so much about shark behavior.

Join me this week as I live Tweet RSFs during each special I’m able to watch when it first airs (Pacific Time), and then again at the end of it all for a recap/review of the specials. It’ll be fun and informative!

Did you know when a shark launches itself vertically underneath its prey, it’s called a Polaris attack? Do you want to know more? Follow me at @dezbot on Twitter and let’s get randomly sharky!

You can find the full schedule with descriptions HERE

The post Shark Week Is Here and I Couldn’t Be Happier appeared first on The Nerd Element.

https://nerdist.com/article/owl-house-bisexual-character-disney/

Change is coming to the world of animation, and it’s a good change: the Disney Channel cartoon The Owl House now officially features an out LGBTQ+ character. As io9 reports, it’s not only a first for the popular children’s show. It also marks the first time Disney has fronted a queer leading character in any of their stories.

Over the course of the series, there have been subtle hints that the show’s main character, Luz, might be queer. A recent storyline showed her becoming particularly close to her former rival, Amity, which culminated in the latest episode. Viewers learned that Amity was planning on asking Luz to go to the prom with her… and not just as a friend. Owl House‘s creator, Dana Terrace, confirmed Amity’s bisexuality on Twitter adding “Representation matters! Always fight to make what YOU want to see!”

This marks a big step for Disney, who despite being one of the biggest and most influential corporations, has offered its audience very little in the way of queer representation. Earlier this year, Pixar released an LGBT short on Disney+ and its recent film Onward included a brief cameo from a queer character voiced by Lena Waithe. On the superhero side, Marvel will finally get canonically queer superheroes in Phase 4 with Thor: Love and Thunder and The Eternals—but only after 22 films and a decade of characters.

Disney

In her tweet, Terrace noted that she always intended to put queer kids in the main cast of her show, but “when we were greenlit I was told by certain Disney leadership that I could NOT represent any form of bi or gay relationship on the Channel.” Alex Hirsch, creator of Gravity Falls, weighed in with his happiness and confirmed that when he was working on his show back in 2012, “Disney FORBADE me from any explicit LGBTQ+ rep.”

It seems that Disney is finally taking the steps to bring more queer characters into the spotlight—and more importantly, into the world of animation. 2020 may be a tough year, but there have been a handful of positives. And representation in animation is definitely one of them.

Featured Image: Disney

The post OWL HOUSE Creator Confirms Bisexual Character appeared first on Nerdist.

https://www.essence.com/lifestyle/travel/weekend-escapes-nyc/

New York may be the city that never sleeps — but sometimes, that’s exactly what you need to do for a little R&R. 

With New York City (almost) back up and running following the global coronavirus pandemic, recharging in a remote locale is the self-care you may not know you need. Thankfully, there are plenty of options, all within driving distance of the Big Apple, and they’re all short on time, but big on fun, excitement and adventure.

So if you’re looking to escape sometime in the near future, here are a few options that are within 6 hours or less, making for the perfect road trip for family, friends or even lovers.

The post Best Weekend Escapes Within Driving Distance of New York City appeared first on Essence.

https://blacknerdproblems.com/the-world-ends-with-you-final-remix-drops-the-beat/

Back in Fashion

In the eccentric library of the Nintendo DS, The World Ends With You was singularly unique. At the time, the 2008 handheld-only JRPG from Square-Enix shared more in common with the style of Atlus’ Persona games than SE’s own flagship Final Fantasy series. That style tied deeply into the game’s characters and setting, based in the fashion-forward Shibuya district of Tokyo, Japan. A sense of curiosity around the game’s signature design has earned it a small but devoted fan following. 

With the announcement of an anime adaptation coming in 2021, TWEWY gets an opportunity to draw even more interest to its 10th anniversary re-release on the Switch. It’s a second chance for the cult favorite one-off to make the jump to broader recognition. A second chance is all Neku Sakuraba wants. TWEWY begins with the teenaged protagonist awakening in the famous Shibuya Scramble crosswalk.

Run all you want, there’s no escaping your Kingdom Hearts crossover.

Invisible to nearly everyone around him, Neku must partner with Shiki, a young girl he’s never met. The streets of Shibuya have become a maze of death separated from everyday life, where both kids are harried by monsters called ‘Noise’ at every turn. Only by surviving these minions and their ‘Reaper’ masters can Neku and Shiki hope to return to the real world. Their struggle to escape the ‘UG’ (Underground) of alternate Shibuya will lay bare the secrets that brought them into these circumstances.

Off the Rack

The anime-ready tale unfolds in a visual novel format flavored by the unmistakable art of character designer Tetsuya Nomura. Running through the districts of ‘the UG,’ Shibuya’s alternate dimension, looks better than ever on a big screen. The result is what feels like a Jet Set Radio homage by way of Kingdom Hearts. Instead of skating around styling on public spaces and cops, though, the bulk of play is spent silencing the phantom Noise plaguing Shibuya. 

When the Switch is docked, player control shifts to the Joycon for use as a Wiimote. An option to reset the cursor when it goes off-target is readily available, but players are better off swiping and tapping enemies in handheld mode. Whatever the player’s preference, mastering TWEWY’s pin system is the key to combat. Individual spells that Neku can call upon in battle are reduced to collectible pins, associated with the different trending brands in Shibuya’s various regions. 

“To fight graffiti, we created graffiti of our own.” cue Pacific Rim theme

These can be won through combat or bought from brand-name stores, selling pins alongside the latest fashions (the RPG equivalent of equipment). Pins can level up and evolve but gain more effectiveness in areas where they are en vogue. Fighting enough battles in a given area will cause the brands the player uses to gain more popularity. It’s a clever way of keeping fashion in mind even during the heat of battle.

Wack Market 

In addition to the clever marriage of mechanics and themes throughout the game, TWEWY is made for portable, intermittent play. The difficulty can be adjusted between to reap increased rewards or lower the frustration in encounters. When logging back in after not actively playing the game, pins can be leveled with up to 7-days worth of experience from your absence. One can only wonder what modern RPGs would look like if they had been willing to take lessons from the systems here. 

So, for an RPG that respects one’s time as much as The World Ends With You, it’s a shame that the game seems incapable of respecting anything about Black culture despite how heavily it relies on it. Fashion as we know it is literally an industry built upon repurposing and reselling other cultures, but the Japanese street style on display here is glaringly devoid of any brown or Black faces beyond ‘ganguro girl’-style tans. From the ‘Bling’ onomatopoeia that comes up when collecting pins at the end of a battle to the design of the cast, it’s more of a wearying disappointment than a surprise. 

Beat’s character design is ‘a living forum post about how ‘Eminem is the G.O.A.T.’

Considering the teeth-grindingly annoying stereotype of characters like Beat (a character that’s best described as every teenage white boy that listens to rap shoved into a skull beanie), perhaps it’s best the story goes no further than referencing Shibuya’s alternate dimension as ‘the Underground.’ Choices like Neku and company only becoming visible to the ‘real world’ in places where they spend money seem like accidental commentary on the game itself: like Blackness, the player only shows up as a commodity. Stripped of the gameplay that makes this worth revisiting, The World Ends With You’s eventual anime will have little more to bring than dated-sounding noise.

7.75 Out Of 10 Collectible Pins

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The post ‘The World Ends With You: Final Remix’ Drops The Beat appeared first on Black Nerd Problems.