A YouTuber named Reckless Ben says he has uncovered what he describes as a sprawling web of corporate theft, police indifference, and legal intimidation — all centered on Legos.

The story, which has since gone viral, involves a man whose father spent years building what Reckless Ben claims is the world’s largest Lego Star Wars collection, estimated at around $200,000 in value. According to the video, the collection was stolen, and the collector doesn’t even know it happened. His son Brian reached out to Reckless Ben because, as the YouTuber covering the story puts it, “he has no clue how to break this news to his dad.”

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The company at the center of it all is Bricks and Minifigs, a franchise chain widely regarded within the Lego community as the gold standard for selling collections. “Even me, a drooling crow-magnon man who is not deep into the Lego community, I’ve heard of Bricks and Minifigs,” the YouTuber said.

According to Reckless Ben’s account as described in the video, Brian approached a Bricks and Minifigs franchise to sell his father’s collection on consignment. The scale was staggering. “This was a store’s worth of inventory,” Brian says in the footage. “That store that day was nothing but my dad’s collection — all the shelves filled. They had to bring in extra shelves and filled the whole party room with shelves.”

A contract was drawn up stipulating the Legos remained the family’s property, with the store taking a percentage of each sale. The franchise owner, a woman identified as Crystal, confirmed her husband had to leave the country for work-related reasons. Shortly after, according to the video, corporate informed her they were terminating her franchise agreement and moving to install a new owner, and they wanted her out immediately.

Crystal, the YouTuber says, saved all the security camera footage from that night. On that footage, according to the account, corporate can be seen telling her they are taking over the business — and critically, confirming they are also taking on the consignments, including Brian’s collection. “That means that they are legally taking on the responsibility of Brian’s Legos,” the YouTuber said. “At least as I understand it, that’s how it seems to be. I mean, how do you possibly wiggle your way out of that one? That’s pretty indefensible. It’s right there on camera.”

With Crystal gone and corporate in control, Brian reached out to inquire about his collection and the money owed. Things soured quickly. According to the YouTuber’s account of Brian’s description, the new store owner crossed his arms and delivered what amounts to a legal threat: that any lawsuit would be dragged out until it cost Brian more than the collection was worth. “He let the mask slip,” the YouTuber said. “He let the evil out.”

Brian’s father had health problems. An expensive, multi-year legal battle was not an option. Meanwhile, the store’s social media began filling up with posts about the vintage Star Wars Lego sets — the ones Brian says they still haven’t been paid for. “It feels like they are just gloating,” the YouTuber said. “Just openly mocking Brian and his father’s collection.”

Word spread. A group of YouTubers picked up the case and began working to help Brian recover his collection or his money. Then, according to the video, Bricks and Minifigs threatened legal action against them. They stopped. “Bricks and Minifigs knows that they can just bully anyone that tries to expose them with frivolous lawsuits,” Reckless Ben says in his video.

Ben drove 16 hours to the store with his crew, wearing glasses equipped with a recording device. He asked about Brian’s collection. The employee, according to the YouTuber’s account, immediately told him to leave, then called police claiming harassment, after what Ben describes as a two-sentence exchange. “He’s just mentioned Brian’s Legos and asked what’s the deal with all of that, and she instantly starts playing this card,” the YouTuber said.

The store directed Ben to corporate. Corporate directed him back to the store. Nobody would take responsibility.

Eventually Ben reached the store owner by phone, presented the contract, and was told: “Are you stupid? Are you an idiot?” Police arrived. The officer trespassed Ben from the location for life. “The police officer literally didn’t care at all that the store just stole $200,000 worth of Legos,” Ben says in the footage. “For some reason, he made it seem like I was the bad guy.”

The YouTuber, a self-described connoisseur of police body cam footage, found the officer’s behavior unusual. “In instances of someone being trespassed, I’ve usually seen a conversation about what was your purpose here. He’s trying to explain they took this from my friend. And instead of answering that question, he’s just like, ‘Nope, you’ve just got to leave.’”

Ben then went directly to Bricks and Minifigs CEO Ammon McNeff. According to the video, McNeff denied knowing who Brian was. Ben pulled up the store’s own social media — posts showcasing Brian’s vintage Star Wars collection, describing its value, and essentially advertising it. McNeff, according to the account, dismissed it and had Ben removed. “Get the hell out of here,” Ben says he was told. “Don’t know what you’re talking about. If you come back, you’ll be arrested.”

Through an employee contact, Ben eventually reached store owner Josh by phone. Josh said he would return the Legos on one condition: a written apology from Brian, removal of all negative posts, and only positive reviews going forward.

Brian refused. “I walked in there with the best of intentions,” Brian says in the footage. “I want it back. And they’ve done nothing but lie and make my life a living hell over this. I’ve gone through nine months of anxiety, stress, hospital, medication-taking types of burden. I am not apologizing to this person.”

The YouTuber sided with Brian. “To be the insufferable person who is knowingly engaging in this shadiness — I’ll call it shadiness, but I think it’s far harsher than that — and then demanding that the guy representing his father, who is medication-ridden, who is not in the best of health, and only wanted to sell the collection to help with their living situation, is actually the bad guy here — is just completely crazy.”

Ben tested whether the apology demand was genuine by creating a deepfake video of Brian apologizing, using a friend’s voice synced to Brian’s image. Josh, according to the account, accepted it warmly. Then stalled for weeks. Then claimed the Legos were simply gone. “These are just actual degenerate scammers, allegedly,” the YouTuber said.

With a full lawsuit financially out of reach, attorneys quoted Brian $60,000 to $70,000 just for an injunction, given the previous owner had relocated internationally, Ben landed on small claims court. Low cost. Fast judgment. No corporate legal army required.

Bricks and Minifigs didn’t respond. Ben won by default judgment. One day later, according to the video, the store permanently closed.

“At first it did feel kind of cool that our plan worked so well it completely shut them down,” Ben says. “But pretty quickly it sunk in that we are not the winners here. The only winners today is Bricks and Minifigs. Now there’s absolutely no way to hold this store liable for what they did.”

The store closed so fast it didn’t update its Google listing. Customers arrived expecting an open shop and left negative reviews about the locked doors — unaware of the months of events behind them.

Ben put a sign outside.

It went viral.

Brian and his father have not been paid. The collection is unaccounted for. The franchise location is closed but Bricks and Minifigs as a corporation continues operating. According to the YouTuber, Ben’s investigation continues — a second part exists behind a Patreon paywall, and a teaser suggests Ben and his crew end up in handcuffs at some point.

None of the claims in this article have been independently verified. They derive from Reckless Ben’s YouTube investigation and the commentary YouTuber covering it. Bricks and Minifigs has not publicly responded to the allegations as described in the video.

What do you think about this situation?

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The second book of The Secret Scrolls of Naruto shifts the action from the open roads and waterways of the Kamigata to the warren of Tokugawa-era Tokyo, where the conspiracy runs deeper, the villains are closer, and nobody can be trusted. Two killers strike a deal over saké: one will murder the swordsman-monk Gennojō, the other will claim the woman he has been hunting since Osaka. Underground chambers, a great urban fire, a swordfight in total darkness on a plum-scented path, a deathbed confession that transforms a pickpocket, and a midnight ambush at Sensō-ji temple — this is the book where Yoshikawa Eiji earns his reputation as the Alexandre Dumas of Japan.

NEXT: Review: The Mandalorian and Grogu Plays Like a Repurposed Season Four

The City of Milwaukee has agreed to pay $575,000 to settle a federal civil rights lawsuit filed by former science fiction author Patrick S. Tomlinson and his wife Niki Robinson. The case, Robinson v. City of Milwaukee, 2:24-cv-00264, documented 45 police responses to the couple’s home over two years driven by false emergency calls, none of which were real.

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The facts of the swatting campaign are not in dispute. Milwaukee Police Department officers knew the address was a deliberate target. Court documents show one officer said he “thought the call might be fake,” another testified he “knew there wasn’t an emergency,” and a third said “We know. We know,” when told the address should be flagged. One officer sent a memo asking dispatch to mark the home as a “Swatter House.” A supervisor declined. The swatting worsened after a CBS58 news report on the situation. During at least one response, officers held Tomlinson at gunpoint and handcuffed him.

That institutional failure is real and the settlement reflects it. A police department that had documented knowledge its calls were fabricated and refused to flag the address, resulting in repeated armed responses to an innocent household, created genuine civil liability. Individual officers were granted qualified immunity. The city was not.

Tomlinson is a former Tor Books author whose publishing career ended after In the Black in 2020, his last book with the publisher before the relationship concluded. He has since functioned primarily as a left-wing political activist and Twitter agitator, spending years in sustained online combat with critics who were offended about his awful take stating he never found Norm Macdonald to be funny while threatening legal action against people who mocked him.

The escalation in online fighting led to the swatting originated in 2018 when Tomlinson posted that he did not find comedian Norm Macdonald funny. Rather than ignore the resulting mockery, Tomlinson engaged repeatedly with every antagonist, threatening critics with jail time and filing legal actions that consistently failed.

Tomlinson filed a defamation suit against 60 anonymous members of an online message board. The case was dismissed as frivolous. A San Francisco judge ordered Tomlinson to pay $34,762.25 in opposing attorneys fees. Tomlinson publicly refused to pay the judgment, which resulted in contempt proceedings. By the time the matter was fully resolved he had paid $83,736.99, more than double the original court order, to the forum owner known as Quasi.

It has been widely reported and alleged that the Science Fiction and Writers of America (SFWA) provided approximately $100,000 toward Tomlinson's legal costs for the OnA Forums lawsuit. SFWA did not respond to requests for comment on the matter. The funds came from a professional organization representing working science fiction writers, used to pursue a lawsuit a judge subsequently dismissed as frivolous against an anonymous online message board.

Tomlinson also attempted to obtain a restraining order against an individual online. A judge found the claim ludicrous and denied it.

The $575,000 settlement sounds substantial. After federal civil rights attorney fees, which in cases of this complexity and duration typically run between 35% and 45% of the settlement, the net recovery to Tomlinson and his wife is unlikely to exceed $315,000 to $375,000. The city will fund the payment through a budget amendment expected to take approximately 90 days, meaning the money arrives in mid-August at the earliest.

Some online have speculated that Tomlinson called in the swatting calls himself or hired an agency to do so on his behalf, though none of this has bee nconfirmed to date.

None of that changes who Tomlinson is or what his track record outside the swatting case looks like. A man with a history of using the legal system as a weapon against online critics, who burned through over $100,000 in SFWA funds pursuing a lawsuit a judge called frivolous, who was dropped by his publisher, and who has spent years threatening people on social media with jail time, now collects a settlement from a city whose police department genuinely failed him.

What do you make of the Milwaukee settlement? Let us know in the comments.

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If the golden age of Trek and Babylon 5 left a hole in your sci-fi diet, The Stars Entwined fills it — interstellar espionage between two civilizations on the brink of war. Read The Stars Entwined on Amazon!

NEXT: What Is a First Edition? The Muddied Waters of McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern

Jack Posobiec has had enough of Star Wars. And right now, a lot of people are agreeing with him.

The conservative commentator and host of Human Events went viral Wednesday with a thread calling on his followers to walk away from the Star Wars franchise entirely, posting under the hashtag #DumpStarWars. The immediate trigger was Mark Hamill’s Bluesky post depicting President Trump lying dead in a grave with an “If Only” caption but Posobiec made clear the Hamill post was the last straw in a pattern, not the sole cause.

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His posts came rapid-fire. “Conservatives have slave mentality for movie franchises like Star Wars,” Posobiec wrote. “Mark Hamill can do videos with Obama, say he wants Trump dead, the series goes completely woke, and they still won’t stop throwing money at Star Wars merch, Disney trips, and Disney+. Weak.” He followed it with a direct call to action: “#DumpStarWars. You have to fight back FOR YOUR FAMILY.” Then: “#DumpStarWars. You have to fight back ECONOMICALLY.” Then, in response to someone pointing out Hamill’s post had gone too far: “Imagine raising your kids on Star Wars where Luke Skywalker calls for conservatives to die. Couldn’t be me.” His mother posted: “Sounds good to me. Mark Hamill has gone way too far.”

Posobiec also linked back to a prior post from the late Charlie Kirk, who had written before his death: “I don’t watch Star Wars, but apparently the latest Disney show, The Acolyte, is the ‘gayest ever’ according to its own creators, and has lesbian witches spawning children using the Force. Don’t think I’m missing anything!” Posobiec’s comment: “Charlie was also not a Star Wars fan.”

The White House’s Rapid Response account responded to the Hamill post directly, calling him a “sick individual” and stating: “These Radical Left lunatics just can’t help themselves. This kind of rhetoric is exactly what has inspired three assassination attempts in two years against our President.”

Hamill posted the dead Trump image days after Cole Allen was federally charged for the shooting outside the White House Correspondents’ Dinner where Trump was the alleged target. Days after Dean DelleChiaie, an FAA employee, was charged with researching how to smuggle a firearm into a federal facility to kill the President. Trump has survived three assassination attempts since 2024. The “If Only” post went up in that environment.

Hamill’s post was not a sudden departure from his public behavior. Fandom Pulse has covered his political trajectory in detail. During the 2024 election, he functioned as a surrogate for the Biden and then Harris campaigns, making the now-infamous “Joe B-Wan Kenobi” trip to the White House. He made posts about Trump’s anatomy during the campaign. He announced he was quitting X for Bluesky to protest Trump’s election and then came back online within hours. He announced a social media fast to protest the inauguration and ended it eight hours in. When he finally did stay off X, he migrated to Bluesky where he has continued the same behavior with fewer eyeballs — until this week.

On May 4, three days before the dead Trump post, Hamill appeared in a promotional video alongside Barack Obama for the Obama Presidential Center. Obama made Star Wars dad jokes. Hamill laughed. Then Hamill came home and posted a dead president image with “If Only.”

Fandom Pulse commented on this matter on May 4th when Obama posed with Hamill directly: “The franchise that once united everyone now functions as a cultural dividing line. Obama gets the Star Wars dad joke promo. Trump gets the Mandalorian image. Hamill laughs and calls it perfect. Posobiec calls the whole property fake and gay.”

That piece dropped before Wednesday’s thread. Posobiec’s thread is the response to the accumulated weight of years, not just one post.

The #DumpStarWars hashtag is now trending. Posobiec’s posts collectively cleared 15,000 impressions on the slave mentality post alone. The backlash to his call is arriving from fans who argue, as one commenter put it: “I’m sick and tired of people telling me what I can and can’t buy. If we stopped watching and buying anything and everything involved with woke idiots we’d all be f---ing Amish. Fuck Mark Hamill, but also, f--- anyone shitting on Star Wars fans just because of him.” Posobiec responded by posting the comment under the header: “Here is the slave mentality in action.”

The John Birch Society weighed in alongside him: “Americans should stop wasting their time with entertainment that rots their minds and pushes subversive ideologies.”

This conversation is happening two weeks before The Mandalorian & Grogu opens in theaters on May 22, the franchise’s first theatrical film in seven years, which is tracking at potentially the lowest Disney-era Star Wars opening ever. It is happening while Hamill, who last appeared on screen as Luke Skywalker in The Book of Boba Fett, continues to serve as the franchise’s most recognizable living face in the culture war.

There is a version of this story where Hamill’s politics are separable from the franchise he represents. Posobiec is arguing that version has expired. The audience that made Star Wars what it was grew up with Luke Skywalker as a symbol of hope against a faceless empire. That same actor spent the last four years functioning as a campaign surrogate, then posted a dead president image while men with guns are being federally charged for planning to kill that president.

Is it possible to separate Mark Hamill from Star Wars at this point, or has he made that impossible?

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Space marines on a holy crusade across the galaxy. If that sentence got your attention, Justified: Saga of the Nano Templar is your next read. Three books of relentless action Read Justified: Saga of the Nano Templar on Amazon!

NEXT: Gina Carano On Kathleen Kennedy: “I Wish Her the Best.”

The Mimi Yanagi story has a new layer, and it changes the entire picture the anime community was sold.

Jordan Williams, the UK VTuber who posted under the name Mimi Yanagi and was arrested April 20 for possessing prohibited images of children, has been exposed as a trans-identified male. Reduxx published the full investigation on May 4, drawing on research from KiwiFarms users who traced Williams’ online history across multiple accounts and handles.

Fandom Pulse covered the original arrest last week. At that point, Williams had been widely defended across anime and VTuber communities as a female artist persecuted by the UK government for drawing her own characters. That framing is now collapsed.

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Barack Obama and Mark Hamill stood in front of the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago on May the 4th and filmed a 68-second promotional video for the facility’s June 19 opening. The Obama Foundation posted it to X. The full transcript is worth reading in sequence.

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Obama opens: “Happy Star Wars Day from the Obama Presidential Center. I have a very good feeling about this.”

He then delivers the pitch: “Mark, I am glad you are here. I want to tell you about someone. A young person born into ordinary circumstances, but restless, unsatisfied. A kid with big dreams. A bit of a rebel.”

Hamill responds: “I like where this is going.”

Obama continues: “They join a scrappy group of underdogs and set out to change things.”

Hamill asks: “By blowing up a giant space laser?”

Obama delivers the turn: “Mark, this is not about you. As wonderful as you are, this isn’t the monument to my legacy. It is a gateway to yours. The Obama Presidential Center is much more than a museum. It is an entire campus built to empower you. A place to come together, get inspired, and become, for change.”

He then adds: “That’s what I did there. Strong the dad jokes are.”

Hamill laughs and says: “That is perfect!”

Both laugh as the clip ends.

The Obama Foundation captioned the post: “May the Fourth be with YOU, from the Obama Presidential Center. Opening June 19.”

To be clear about what just happened: a former president used one of the most beloved sci-fi franchises in history as a vehicle to market his personal legacy center, compared himself to Luke Skywalker, and had the franchise’s most recognizable living face laugh approvingly at the end. The text overlay on the video reads “HOPE A NEW HOME HAS,” rendered in Star Wars font. The word hope. Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign word. In Star Wars font. At his presidential center.

The political alignment between Lucasfilm and the Obama orbit has never been subtle. Kathleen Kennedy, who ran Star Wars for a decade before stepping down in January 2026, moved in the same Democratic donor circles for years. The franchise’s progressive cultural turn under her tenure was well documented, and the fan backlash was proportional. The Last Jedi killed Han Solo and sidelined Luke Skywalker. Solo lost money. The Rise of Skywalker earned roughly half of The Force Awakens’ domestic gross. The Acolyte got cancelled after one season. Kennedy stepped down in January 2026 after years of declining returns.

The Obama Foundation video is the logical endpoint of that era’s relationship with the IP.

Meanwhile, the White House took a different approach to May the 4th. The official White House X account posted an AI-generated image of President Trump as the Mandalorian, helmet on, holding Grogu.

Conservative commentator Jack Posobiec responded to the Obama-Hamill video by calling Star Wars “fake and gay” multiple times on X and urging followers to stop engaging with the Disney property entirely. His posts drew traction from fans who have spent years watching the franchise used as a cultural messaging vehicle.

The Mandalorian film opens June 22. It is currently tracking at $65 million domestic according to World of Reel, which would be the lowest Disney-era Star Wars opening ever. Solo opened at $84.4 million and was considered a commercial disaster. Jon Favreau scrapped an entire planned season of Mandalorian television to make a standalone film accessible to audiences who had never seen the show, telling reporters he “had to start from scratch.”

The franchise that once united everyone now functions as a cultural dividing line. Obama gets the Star Wars dad joke promo. Trump gets the Mandalorian image. Hamill laughs and calls it perfect. Posobiec calls the whole property fake and gay. The Mandalorian film opens in seven weeks to whatever audience is left.

What do you think of Obama and Hamill’s May the 4th promo? Let us know in the comments.

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Space marines on a holy crusade across the galaxy. If that sentence got your attention, Justified: Saga of the Nano Templar is your next read. Three books of relentless action Read Justified: Saga of the Nano Templar on Amazon!

NEXT: Worldcon 2026 Has 101 “Inclusivity” Panels and Zero Christian Ones

Worldcon 2026 tagged 101 panels under “Inclusivity.” Search the full program schedule for the tag “Christian.” Zero results.

That single comparison tells you everything about what the World Science Fiction Convention has become. The organization that administers the Hugo Awards, positions itself as the home of science fiction fandom, and describes its convention as a celebration of imagination has found room for 101 panels on progressive identity politics. It found room for zero panels on Christianity, despite the fact that the tradition it claims to celebrate was built largely by Christian authors.

The scale of the ideological programming at LAcon V only becomes clear when you start reading the descriptions. These are real panels at a real science fiction convention.

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A pattern is emerging across independent creator communities this week that YouTube has not acknowledged and shows no signs of addressing. Small and mid-sized channels are losing their YouTube Partner Program status in bulk, hit with citations for “inauthentic and mass-produced content” — a classification YouTube updated in July 2025 to target AI-generated spam — that is being applied by automated systems to channels that have no AI content whatsoever.

Three cases landed publicly this week, each documented with screenshots.

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David Read has spent nearly six years building Dial the Gate into the definitive fan resource for the Stargate community — nearly 400 episodes of interviews, retrospectives, and deep dives with the cast and crew of one of science fiction television’s most beloved franchises. He’s done it for free. He’s done it out of love. And now, just as Amazon MGM Studios has announced a brand new Stargate series for Prime Video with original writers Martin Gero and Brad Wright back in the fold, Read has been forced to post a video telling his audience he can’t keep going without help.

“This was not an easy video for me to make,” he said. “I can’t even believe that I’m doing it.”

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What Dial the Gate Is

Before the struggle makes sense, the show deserves its proper introduction.

Dial the Gate launched in October 2020 as a long-form interview series presented by GateWorld. The long-running Stargate fan site that has been the internet home of the franchise’s community for over two decades. Read, who has deep roots in that community going back to the early GateWorld days, the Official Stargate Magazine, the canceled Stargate Worlds MMO, and Propworx’s prop auctions from the series, built Dial the Gate into something rare: a fan production that the talent actually takes seriously.

The guest list over nearly six seasons reflects that. Cast and crew from SG-1, Atlantis, and Universe have sat down with Read for conversations that go well beyond convention panel fare. These are long, substantive interviews — the kind that actually document what it was like to make these shows, episode by episode, season by season. For a franchise that ended its television run in 2011 without a proper conclusion, and whose fanbase has been waiting ever since, Dial the Gate has served as both archive and lifeline.

Nearly 400 episodes in roughly five and a half years is a production output that most professional operations would struggle to match.

The Reality Behind the Camera

What Read revealed in his video is the economics that have been running underneath all of it.

“This past five seasons, I have poured well over ten grand into this project,” he said. The majority of that, he explained, isn’t equipment. It’s guest fees. “The higher-profile ones — they will not do the show without being paid. And I will never ask anyone for a dime to help pay for an individual to come on, because that is my cross to bear. That is my choice to bring them on.”

Read has operated on a strict internal code: he brings on who he wants to bring on, he pays what he needs to pay, and he doesn’t pass that cost to the audience. “Up until now, it’s been very much my policy that I will not take from the pocket of a fellow Stargate fan. There’s no difference between us. None whatsoever.”

That policy has now collided with reality. Read went back to school for roughly 18 months, was made promises about work that didn’t materialize, and finds himself in a financial position he hasn’t been in since the 2008 recession, when he was out of work for two years. He’s been driving for Uber since before COVID to supplement his income. “You can’t increase costs 33% on average and reduce everyone’s payouts by about the same amount without there being major load-bearing problems,” he said.

Google ad revenue from the YouTube channel, once enough to keep things moving, no longer comes close. “I thought that’s all it would take, but that’s just not the case anymore.”

The result: Read can no longer produce Dial the Gate at its current volume without the show “doing serious structural damage to the load-bearing parts of my life that really need to hold up everything else.”

What He’s Asking For

Read has set up a Patreon at patreon.com/dialthegate with three tiers. He was characteristically direct about what it is and what it isn’t.

Every piece of content will remain free. Day one. Available to everyone. “It’s designed for you, my fellow Stargate fan. That’s just what it’s for.” There are no exclusives behind the paywall. Patreon members get credit recognition in the show and the option to remain anonymous if they prefer.

He’s also offering his services as an audio and video editor. “I’m not that great with a camera, but I am an editor.” Anyone interested in a consultation can reach him at dialthegate@gmail.com.

The ask is narrow and specific: help him keep up with the volume of coverage the franchise deserves, cover the talent fees for guests who require payment, and fund travel so he can cover the new show in person. “In order to keep the show up at the volume that I want to create it — and that Stargate deserves at this stage, with it coming back — I need a little bit of financial support.”

The Worst Possible Timing, and the Best

Amazon MGM announced the new Stargate series in November 2025. Writers’ room is active. Production is expected to begin in fall 2026 in London. Martin Gero is writing and executive producing. Brad Wright is involved. This is not a reboot — it’s a continuation from people who know exactly what the franchise is.

For the Stargate community, it’s the moment they’ve been waiting fifteen years for. For Dial the Gate, it should be the beginning of the channel’s most important chapter the moment when a show built to document and celebrate the franchise gets to cover its actual return.

Instead, Read is driving for Uber and asking whether he can keep the lights on.

“The question is how frequently, what volume of content — my feet have to touch the ground and I can’t live in the fantasy world anymore.”

That sentence lands hard for anyone who’s watched what he’s built. Dial the Gate exists because one person loved a television show enough to spend six years and more than ten thousand dollars of his own money making sure the people who created it got to tell their stories properly. The franchise is coming back. The audience is there. The host who built the infrastructure to cover it is asking for help.

If you’re a Stargate fan, this is the moment to show up. Head to patreon.com/dialthegate.

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If the golden age of Trek and Babylon 5 left a hole in your sci-fi diet, The Stars Entwined fills it — interstellar espionage between two civilizations on the brink of war. Read The Stars Entwined on Amazon!

NEXT: Project Hail Mary Is Chasing the All-Time Space Movie Record

Josh Daws spent 12.5 years at The Walt Disney Company. He worked on Disney blogs, ShopDisney, and most recently ESPN Fantasy Sports. On April 15, Disney’s new CEO Josh D’Amaro cut 1,000 employees company-wide, and Daws was among them. An hour later, he posted on X: “I was just laid off from The Walt Disney Company after 12.5 years with the company. Ask me anything.”

The thread went viral within hours.

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The questions poured in from every direction including fans, critics, journalists, and the terminally curious. What came back was not the scorched-earth takedown many anticipated. Daws answered carefully, honestly, and at times with a candor that landed harder than any polemic would have.

On DEI inside Disney: “Peaked in 2020 and has been in steady decline since then. It’s much better internally now. The vibe shift is real.”

He said the same thing again when pressed from a different angle: “Not a fan, but they’ve toned it down a ton since Trump was elected. The vibe shift is real.”

Daws, a Christian, was asked directly why Disney seemed to despise conservative Christians while pushing an LGBTQ agenda at every turn. His answer cut through years of culture war noise: “Very small and vocal minority of the company. Most folks just want to make cool stuff.”

Disney’s critics have spent years treating the company as a monolith of ideological malice. Daws, who was inside the building for twelve and a half years, says the people actually ruining things were never representative of the broader workforce. The 2022 leaked “not-at-all-secret gay agenda” all-hands meeting, which Daws confirmed attending, was the product of a small faction. The rank and file had other concerns.

He dismissed the theory that Disney employees were deliberately sabotaging Star Wars and other franchises. “Nah. No one wants to make crap.” Poor creative direction and ideological tunnel vision, not malice, drove the failures.

On AI’s role in his firing: “On the grand scale, probably to some degree. On the small scale it’s probably more to do with me being remote. Remote workers are easier to cut.” He also dropped a candid verdict on Disney’s new leadership: “I think the new CEO needs to make some big moves to instill confidence in the market.”

His overall outlook on the company’s future was measured. “Cautiously optimistic. I’m rooting for them. America needs a healthy Disney.”

Disney has not responded to press inquiries about Daws’ claims. D’Amaro, who officially became CEO on March 18, now owns the aftermath.

What Daws confirmed on the record lines up with what outside observers have been saying since 2024: the political monoculture inside Disney’s content divisions was never as absolute as the loudest voices made it sound, and it is contracting. That does not rehabilitate the years of franchise damage under Bob Iger’s second tenure or the ideological casting decisions across Star Wars and Marvel. But it complicates the simplest version of the story.

The question fans are left with is whether Disney’s “vibe shift” produces anything on screen, or whether the bureaucratic habits of six bad years outlast the people who built them.

What do you think?

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NEXT: Issa Rae: DEI Is “A Bad Word” in Hollywood and Execs of Color Won’t Co-Sign Anymore

Disney cut roughly 1,000 employees across the company today. Marvel took some of the deepest hits.

Both Marvel Entertainment in New York and Marvel Studios in Burbank lost staff, with layoffs confirmed across film and TV production, comics, franchise, finance, and legal. According to Deadline, approximately 8% of Marvel’s total workforce is gone.

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The visual development cuts tell the real story. Marvel Studios eliminated most of its in-house visual development team and will replace them with outside contractors hired project by project. That is not a restructuring. That is a studio that no longer trusts its own pipeline enough to staff it permanently.

Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro confirmed the cuts, framing them as part of a push toward a more streamlined marketing and brand organization. The Wrap reported the Marvel reductions follow directly from the studio’s artificially inflated production slate, which ballooned during the Disney+ era as the streamer demanded fresh content regardless of whether audiences showed up. They largely did not.

Marvel went through a smaller round of layoffs in 2024. That round was quiet, whereas this one is not. Eight percent across nearly every department signals that Disney has finally accepted what critics have been saying for three years: the machine was producing too much product of too little quality, and the bill has arrived.

This round included several individuals at Marvel Comics. Senior editors Lauren Bisom, Devin Lewis, and Darren Shan are among those let go this week. Timothy Cheng, Marvel’s Executive Director of Communications, is also leaving after years with Marvel.

The comics division being included is worth noting for the right reasons. Marvel’s print operation has run as a largely separate concern from the studio side, but the same ideological capture that damaged the films ran through the comics just as thoroughly, with legacy characters replaced, messaging prioritized over story, and the existing fanbase treated as an obstacle. Whether the layoffs reach the editorial decisions that drove that direction is a different question. Studios rarely cut from the top.

What is clear is that the version of Marvel that treated Disney+ as a content factory, that greenlit She-Hulk and Secret Invasion and Ms. Marvel and assumed the brand would carry them, is being dismantled today. The question now is whether the people making the cuts understand why those shows failed, or whether they believe the problem was volume rather than quality.

Independent publishers and creators have been building audiences while Marvel spent years alienating its core readers. The market was never gone. It went elsewhere.

Is Marvel cutting the right people, or will the same creative direction survive the layoffs intact?

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April Fools ' Day has become one of the most insufferable things on the internet. Going on social media and looking for any news for the day, and then the day after, is a complete trainwreck because there’s a full day of people posting complete lies, thinking they’re clever about it, and then not even mentioning it’s a parody post as if it’s supposed to be some kind of gotcha for the viewership.

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Back in 2021, DC Publisher and Chief Creative Officer Jim Lee articulated his enthusiasm for the portrayal of Superman’s son, Jon Kent, as homosexual within the pages of the comics.

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“We couldn’t be prouder to tell this important story from Tom Taylor and John Timms,” Lee declared to Rolling Stone. “We talk a lot about the power of the DC Multiverse in our storytelling, and this is another incredible example. We can have Jon Kent exploring his identity in the comics as well as Jon Kent learning the secrets of his family on TV on Superman & Lois. They coexist in their own worlds and times, and our fans get to enjoy both simultaneously.”

The remark is offered as a celebration of narrative freedom, yet it discloses a fundamental constriction that has only lead to the destruction of so many IPs and characters. So many modern writers elevate sexual orientation to the privileged site of “exploring identity” under the assumption that the most compelling drama one can depict is the discovery and affirmation of same-sex desire.

If this is done as often as it is, then how can it be innovation?

In truth, this is a ritual reenactment of a modern myth that reduces a human person to the autonomous expression of erotic preference. These so-called "creatives" are repeatedly marketing character reduction as depth.

To declare that a character is gay (or belongs to any other designated identity cohort) conveys precisely one piece of information: membership in an abstract collective. It says nothing about the concrete shape of that person’s life, the texture of his desires, the contours of his virtues or vices, or the particular way he moves through the world. Yet, contemporary storytellers treat this single datum as though it were a revelation heavy with narrative weight. The character is thereby rendered “interesting” by the mere fact of his placement within an identity group. While his individuality is not denied outright; it is quietly subordinated. The person becomes a representative specimen first, a flesh-and-blood agent second.

For the modern creative, the self is understood as a sovereign chooser who constructs meaning by affiliating with pre-packaged identities. In this scheme, the group is not a secondary reality that emerges from the interplay of particular persons. Instead, the group is the primary reality, and the person is interesting only insofar as he exemplifies it. And so, we encounter yet another homosexual character. Yet another figure whose only mark of distinction is the particular orifice in which he chooses to lodge his penis.

What is never explained is why a category itself warrants something dramatic or interesting. Why should the audience be expected to find fascination with yet another man who prefers men? The reason we are never told why is because the underlying metaphysics forbids the question. To ask why would be to suggest that an identity is received rather than chosen and that real drama, in any story, lies in the particular manner in which a person navigates the given order of things.

Consider Blizzard’s Overwatch roster where each new character arrives trailing a cloud of cosmetic distinction: a skin tone, a pronoun set, a sexual orientation announced. Their costume changes, their accent shifts, but the inner logic of every single character remains identical. They are not formed by a history of moral struggle nor do they have a concrete vocation within a larger cosmos. Instead, we are told the characters are "exceptional" from outset precisely because they deviate from a preconceived norm. The deviation is treated as self-justifying and the player is invited to admire them not for any particular excellence but due their addition to the demographic completeness of the roster. None if this is organic. All this is idealized quota management.

Do any of these creatives stop and consider the obvious question: What would initially draw us to these characters if not the fact that they are super-human? Jon Kent bears the double inheritance of Kryptonian power and human limitation. Yet, his true exceptionalism is that he prefers to stick his penis in another dude? Really?!

In place of “exploring his identity” through erotic experimentation, a worthy narrative might depict Jon confronting the temptation of self-sufficiency that power inevitably offers. It might show him learning, through failure and repentance, that true heroism is not the assertion of autonomous desire but the offering of one’s self in service to a common good that exceeds the self.

This entire superhero genre is rooted in the exploration of tension between superhuman capacity and the moral formation required to wield it rightly. Power is gift that must be disciplined by virtue. In the case of Jon Kent, the story writes itself: a character could be formed in the image of his father’s commitment to truth and justice, not as abstract slogans but as habits of the body and the will. He might learn that strength without mercy distorts the imago Dei, that the protection of the vulnerable is not a political slogan but a participation in divine stewardship. The secrets of his family could become the occasion for a deeper reckoning with his origin, with the mystery of being both alien and native, both mighty and limited. Such a reckoning would echo the classical and Christian understanding of the person as relational and ordered toward ends that transcend the self. Jon’s hybridity would then function not as a metaphor for fluid identity but as a sign of the union of divine and human natures in Christ, where the difference is assumed and redeemed rather than dissolved into a choice.

Again, this stuff writes itself. The entire superhero genre works because it dramatizes the reception of a given power, a given name, given mission that arrives outside the self and demands a response. What’s funny is that the attribution of sexual identity functions in precisely the same way, but only insofar as modern creatives utilize identity politics as powers endowed by the modern State and its institutions. The individual is proclaimed sovereign, yet this sovereignty is strangely dependent: it requires the backing of bureaucratic, educational, and cultural apparatuses to confer meaning and prestige upon the chosen marker. Without that scaffolding, the declaration that a character is homosexual would register as mere biographical trivia, no more narratively potent than a preference for coffee over tea. With it, the datum is elevated to the status of moral and dramatic revelation.

The modern State and its allied institutions make this possible by transforming identity into a consumable product. What presents itself as radical individualism is, in reality, a carefully managed pluralism. The creative class does not invent new depths of character; it simply assigns the approved labels and waits for institutional applause. Group affiliation, especially along the axis of erotic preference, is treated as self-justifying because the surrounding culture has already decided that deviation from the presumed default constitutes intrinsic value. This is also why the multiverse exists. Every multiverse is a theological warrant wherein several contradictory Jon Kents can coexist. One honoring familial inheritance in an animated feature while another can be reinvented through sexual self-definition in the comics.

Consider the archetype: Superman does not invent the mantle of truth and justice; he receives it as the son of Jor-El and Lara, as the adopted son of Jonathan and Martha Kent, and ultimately as the heir of a moral order that transcends both Krypton and Smallville. His drama lies in learning to bear that inheritance without being corrupted by it. The power is a dangerous gift that must be schooled by virtues he did not create: restraint, mercy, courage ordered toward the common good. The same pattern recurs across the great characters of the genre’s Golden and Silver ages. Batman inherits the trauma of his parents’ murder and the wealth that allows him to wage his war; he accepts the burden of becoming the symbol Gotham needs rather than the vengeance he might prefer. Spider-Man receives both the radioactive bite and the dying words of Uncle Ben; his greatness emerges from the acceptance of responsibility that flows from that dual inheritance, not from any reinvention of his core self.

In each case, the hero is not primarily a consumer of possible identities within a multiverse of options. He is a son or daughter who must answer the question: What will I do with what has been given to me? The inheritance may be biological, adoptive, cultural, or vocational, but it is always prior to the self’s deliberation. It carries weight, limit, and direction. Acceptance of that weight forms the character. Rejection or endless renegotiation dissolves it. The story gains tension precisely because the inheritance is not infinitely malleable. There is a givenness to the power that resists complete reinvention.

The current regime of superhero storytelling has largely abandoned this logic. Today's mainstream writers insist that rendering anti-normal as the new normal somehow confers upon that figure an intrinsic interest, as if immutable traits carry within themselves a surplus of meaning never requiring further specification. The character becomes “interesting” precisely by deviating from what is taken as default, and the deviation itself is treated as self-explanatory. No thicker account of the good, the true, or the beautiful is required. The gesture suffices because the imagination that produces it has already accepted a prior metaphysical claim: that identity is a project of self-construction rather than a participation in given reality. Postmodernity here reveals its characteristic emptiness, promising what has never existed and then congratulating itself for the novelty. Yet nothing new appears, no matter how often this pattern is repeated. Only the same thin assertions dressed in the language of empowerment.

Where the Christian imagination has traditionally formed desire toward participation in the body of Christ and the common good, late-modern cultural production trains desire toward the self. The comic book, like the marketplace, offers an endless array of possible "selves" from which one may choose, each marked by the appropriate badges of race and sexuality. The multiverse becomes the theological warrant for this pluralism where contradictory portrayals of Jon Kent need not trouble one another because they inhabit separate worlds and times. In this economy, Jon Kent does not inherit the moral and metaphysical weight of his father’s legacy. He simply chooses a new marker of difference and is thereby rendered “relatable” to everyone and to noone at the same time.

I wrote this essay in response to John F. Trent asking the question as to whether Jim Lee should be removed from his position. Such a query, while understandable as a reaction to institutional failure, remains trapped within the logic of managerial correction. Even if Jim Lee were removed from his position tomorrow, that single act would not undo the long accumulation of postmodern habits that have already corrupted the hearts and minds of so many working creatives today.

The path forward, therefore, does not lie in futile attempts to reform institutions that have grown rotten at the root. The mainstream comic industry is thoroughly captive to an ideology that has seeped into the industry for decades now. As such, the industry deserves to die a slow death, starved of talent, audience, and cultural authority as its repetitions grow ever more tedious and its pretensions more hollow. In its place, Christian creatives must step forward and work outside its decaying bounds. They must build anew: independent publishers, creator-owned imprints, webcomics, prose novels, animated series, or any other medium that allows our cultural inheritance to be honored rather than renegotiated.

Christian storytellers are uniquely equipped for this recovery because they already possess the thicker vision of the person: not a blank canvas for identity construction, but a creature addressed by name, situated within family, tradition, and creation, and called to participate in a good that exceeds every autonomous choice. We can tell tales in which the hero becomes great not by deviating from our givenness but by accepting it and offering it back in love. Such stories would not need the approval of corporate boards or the applause of institutional critics.

The mainstream may linger for a time, propped up by institutional inertia and captive capital. But its imaginative poverty is already evident. As it slowly expires, a new generation of creators who refuse the tyranny of the reinvented self can plant seeds for something better: superhero tales that once again remind us that the most compelling drama is not the assertion of preference, but the faithful reception of what God has given to us. Our inheritance awaits. The question is whether enough hands remain willing to take it up outside the walls of a dying empire.

Fandom Pulse is reader-supported independent journalism. Paid subscribers get exclusive scoops and investigative reporting daily.

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In a gritty interstellar sanctuary teeming with 1,462 exiled governments, hard-nosed military policeman Chief Warrant Officer Graven Tower—a man who hates aliens—teams up with a beautiful xenocriminologist and his sharp-witted AI partner to solve the savage murder of an alien royal heir.

Packed with explosive military-SF action, noir intrigue, and politically incorrect edge, Quantum Mortis: A Man Disrupted delivers a fast-paced whodunit that will keep you turning pages until the final twist. If you crave old-school sci-fi thrillers with zero apologies, this is your next addiction.

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John Bradley, the founder, producer, and lead guitarist of Booster Patrol, passed away on March 20. He was 61.

Bradley was a music producer, guitarist, singer, lyricist, and artist who spent years building something real inside the independent creative community. He described himself as an “all-purpose gadabout” and ran the Postcards from the Age of Reason blog, where he had just begun documenting the full history of the Booster Patrol, Boomer Patrol, and Vaxx Trax musical projects which are some of the most hilarious and poignant works in modern times. That retrospective series, which launched in March, now stands as an unfinished record of a career that deserved a proper accounting.

The Boomer Patrol project started in June 2021 when Bradley took a set of parody lyrics and returned a completed recording within two days, impressing his collaborator enough to launch what became a catalog of over 100 songs. That was John Bradley in a sentence: fast, capable, and committed. He did not wait to be asked twice.

Vox Day, his collaborator and friend, honored him with an original song written in the style Bradley had mastered, describing him as both a bandmate and a friend.

Beyond the music, Bradley was a consistent and generous presence in the independent space in our community. He promoted books, encouraged writers, and showed up with optimism when the work was hard and the audience was still being built. That kind of community member is rare. He believed in what independent creators were doing before it was easy to believe in it, and he put real effort behind that belief.

The Booster Patrol catalog remains on YouTube and SoundCloud. Go listen to it. It is the best tribute available.

John Bradley was 61 years old. He will be missed.

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In fandom culture, there’s been an increasing push to have BIPOC or LGBTQ-only spaces that are simply meant to exclude straight, white males from gathering more than anything else. They do so in the name of “inclusivity” and “diversity,” but the result is anything but. Now, the mainstream media is celebrating a new convention in Washington, D.C. that’s eye-opening.

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Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks ran straight into the arms of progressive activists this week, declaring “we support diversity” after facing backlash over the company’s new Harry Potter toy licensing deal with Warner Bros. Discovery. The statement reveals a company that hasn’t learned anything from years of alienating its core customer base through relentless identity politics across its entire gaming portfolio.

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The controversy erupted when Hasbro announced a multi-year partnership to produce Harry Potter toys, games, and collectibles tied to HBO’s upcoming series reboot. Podcast host Nilay Patel confronted Cocks on the “Decoder” podcast, claiming J.K. Rowling’s “transphobia is turning off lots of young consumers” and asking how Hasbro justifies the deal.

Cocks folded immediately: “For me, it’s separating the art from the artist and going to what the core fans want. I’m not going to get into the politics around it, other than to say we very strongly support diversity and inclusion inside of Hasbro. We are proud of it and proud of the diversity of viewpoints and backgrounds we have in our employee base. Harry Potter is a wonderful franchise. It’s done a great job of bringing joy to the world.”

The statement is remarkable for its cowardice. Rather than defending Rowling’s right to hold biological reality-based views or pointing out that Harry Potter fans overwhelmingly support the franchise regardless of activist pressure, Cocks immediately distanced himself from the author while pledging allegiance to diversity and inclusion.

This is the same company that has spent years systematically dismantling two of its most beloved gaming properties through relentless progressive messaging - and the Harry Potter deal suggests they have no intention of stopping.

Magic: The Gathering tells the story of Hasbro’s ideological capture in painful detail. It started in 2020 with what media outlets celebrated as removing “racist cards” from the game - pulling titles including “Invoke Prejudice,” “Cleanse,” “Stone-Throwing Devils,” “Pradesh Gypsies,” “Jihad,” “Imprison,” and “Crusade.” That initial purge opened the floodgates.

Wizards of the Coast, Hasbro’s gaming subsidiary, then introduced what they called “trans and non-binary representation” to the card game. Alesha, Who Smiles At Death became a marquee transgender character inserted into a game about intense combat and destroying opposing summoners. The company even published story fiction on their website reiterating the character is “her” - with italics - to ensure players understood the virtue signaling.

They doubled down with planeswalker Niko Aris, described as non-binary, whose card art depicts what critics called the look of a “mentally ill leftist.” The progressive messaging accelerated from there.

Magic’s biggest controversy arrived when Wizards obtained the Lord of the Rings license and promptly decided Tolkien’s beloved characters needed updating. The company made deliberate changes to character designs and representations that Tolkien never intended, treating a beloved literary estate as raw material for contemporary social messaging.

Hasbro applied the same formula to Dungeons & Dragons. The Monster’s Manual removed orcs as monsters entirely, while introducing male hags, male dryads, and transforming the incubus and succubus into what fans described as a transgender allegory. The official D&D art revealed what fans called “Mexican Orcs” - an attempt to address perceptions that orcs represented Black people by replacing that imagery with Mexican cultural elements instead.

The company then marketed a “glam bard” supplement explicitly designed to attract Taylor Swift fans to D&D - people who, by definition, don’t play the game. The strategy of abandoning core audiences in pursuit of demographics that have no interest in the product has become Hasbro’s defining business approach.

The D&D account posted art on X loaded with homosexual couples captioned “In this realm, your story is yours to tell” - a direct signal about the direction of the franchise. Meanwhile, Hasbro used Magic: The Gathering to promote a Trans Lifeline charity through a livestream that was, according to fan response, universally savaged.

The very next week after that Magic controversy, Hasbro pushed Dungeons & Dragons further into the same territory. The pattern reveals a company that registers fan backlash and responds by accelerating the behavior that caused it.

Now Cocks wants credit for “separating the art from the artist” while simultaneously declaring his company’s commitment to diversity and inclusion. The positioning is cynical. Hasbro isn’t separating art from artist - they’re using every property they touch as a vehicle for the same progressive messaging that has driven away Magic players, D&D enthusiasts, and now potentially Harry Potter fans.

The Harry Potter deal itself carries irony so thick you could cut it with a sword. Hasbro is partnering with a franchise whose creator holds views their CEO just distanced himself from, while simultaneously running a company that has spent years inserting the exact ideology Rowling opposes into every product they make.

Tim Kilpin, President of Toys, Games, Licensing and Entertainment at Hasbro, offered the standard corporate enthusiasm: “The world of Harry Potter and its unforgettable characters align perfectly with our mission to deliver a lifetime of play to generations of fans.”

What Kilpin didn’t mention is that Hasbro’s “mission” apparently also includes transforming beloved gaming properties into progressive messaging vehicles, alienating core fanbases, and then declaring diversity commitments when activists come calling.

HBO’s Harry Potter series debuts in 2027, with Hasbro products revealed later this year. Given the company’s track record with Magic and D&D, fans of the wizarding world would be wise to watch carefully how Hasbro handles the franchise - and whether their diversity commitments show up in the product line alongside the toys and collectibles.

What do you think about Hasbro’s pattern of inserting progressive messaging into beloved gaming franchises?

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Six books. One unforgettable world. The Adventures of Baron Von Monocle is steampunk adventure with the kind of worldbuilding and heart that made you fall in love with fantasy in the first place. Start the series on Amazon.

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The Pokémon Company issued a response to the White House using the company’s latest game Pokémon Pokopia as a meme to promote making America great again.

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On March 5th, The White House shared a Pokémon Pokopia meme that saw the phrase “make america great again” emblazoned over the upcoming game.

It was captioned, “MAGA” with American flag and lightning bolt emojis.

In response to this meme, The Pokémon Company spokeswoman Sravanthi Dev told Time Magazine, “We are aware of recent social content that includes imagery associated with our brand. We were not involved in its creation or distribution, and no permission was granted for the use of our intellectual property.”

She added, “Our mission is to bring the world together, and that mission is not affiliated with any political viewpoint or agenda.”

Except the company has affiliated itself with political viewpoints and agendas. Back in 2020, the company made it abundantly clear it supported the divisive Black Lives Matter movement. It posted on social media, “#BlackLivesMatter.”

It added in an attached image, “Here at The Pokémon Company International, we believe in friendship, inclusivity, and equity. These are values that anchor the Pokémon brand. There is no place for oppression within our community.”

“We stand in solidarity with our Black employees, fans, and families who continue to be impacted by systemic racism and senseless violence,” the company stated. “We will be making a $100,000 donation to the NAACP and a $100,000 donation to Black Lives Matter. Our commitment to you is ongoing, and our support will be as well. We believe that Black Lives Matter.”

Additionally, on the company’s corporate website it pledges itself to the woke ideology of diversity and inclusion.

It states, “TPCi is committed to upholding its culture dedicated to inclusivity, which constantly celebrates diverse perspectives—where voices are heard, and every employee can be their authentic self. We maintain a safe environment grounded in respect and civility for all.”

To that point it has various Employee Resource Groups based on race, sexuality, and sex. The company’s LGBTQ+ resource group is described as working “with leaders and departments to promote inclusion at all levels, including initiatives related to engagement, talent acquisition, professional development, and community-building.”

In 2023, the company announced it was funding pride parades in Seattle and London. It posted on LinkedIn, “Pride is about celebration, love, and community. We are proud to collaborate with The Rainbow Gym, an Employee Resource Group (ERG) at The Pokémon Company International supporting our LGBTQIA+ colleagues, to be an official sponsor of Seattle Pride and Pride in London this year. Bringing people together is at the core of our company mission and we look forward to walking together in Pride in the cities our offices and many employees call home.”

The Seattle Pride event is infamous for people exposing themselves publicly and violating various indecency laws. In fact, during the 2023 event numerous men on bicycles exposed themselves to people in the crowd.

The Pokémon Company has a history of affiliating itself with political viewpoints and agendas that work to tear people apart.

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Discover the timeless thrill of true heroism in Heroes of Chivalry (Junior Classics), a captivating collection of legendary tales featuring King Arthur and his noble Knights of the Round Table, the valiant Roland under Charlemagne, the epic deeds of El Cid, and more.

These stirring stories of courage, honor, quests, and moral virtue have been carefully selected and adapted for young readers to bring the golden age of knighthood to life, inspiring bravery and integrity in a new generation. Perfect for families seeking wholesome, adventure-filled classics that teach enduring lessons of chivalry!

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EXO-6 founder Nanjin Tam revealed he’s only interested in making one Starfleet Academy character.

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In a post to Facebook, Tam revealed that a new contract his company signed with Paramount includes Starfleet Academy, but he’s only interested in making one character from the show. That character is Captain Ake.

He wrote, “I also just noticed that our new contract includes Star Trek: Starfleet Academy. As of now, the only character I’m personally interested in making is Captain Ake… (excluding her feet).”

For those unfamiliar with Captain Ake, the character was designed to walk around barefoot despite Starfleet protocols.

Actress Holly Hunter, who plays the character, explained why her character walks around barefoot in an interview with Reactor Magazine, “It had to do with her being [part-Lanthanite], and it also had to do with my name, which is ‘water in the desert.’”

Hunter also insinuated that this is the reason why her character is always in weird positions, “Wherever I am, whatever environment that I’m in, I’m going to explore it with my body. It gave every scene, many scenes, a whole different vibe, a different texture, and it put me in a different place.”

Additionally, she informed People, “That's fun, because it's the antithesis of what you should do – people are wearing protective footwear – boots, maybe with steel toes. And there I am completely unprotected and trotting around, loping around, lazing around. Yeah, I like the opposition of it.”

“Because I’m the Starfleet chancellor as well as the captain, I wanted to avoid rigidity. I wanted to avoid formality and kind of a more militaristic posture,” she elaborated. “I wanted to be adaptable and leaning into them and curious and playful. And I wanted to be approachable. I wanted to lead with some humor.”

Fandom Pulse is reader-supported independent journalism. Paid subscribers get exclusive scoops and investigative reporting daily.

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Read The Stars Entwined, a gripping military space opera where Lieutenant Sean Barrows infiltrates the telepathic Aryshan Empire through radical genetic modification and neural reprogramming, only to fall in love with Commander Tamar amid a brewing interstellar war. Blending high-stakes espionage, intense space battles, and a heartfelt forbidden romance, this fast-paced debut delivers authentic sci-fi thrills.

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There is a major problem among nominally right wing pop culture commentary in that it normalizes left wing degeneracy. It does this by only opposing the so-called current extremes of left wing rhetoric while letting what was once considered extreme get a free pass. In fact, many shows will be praised because they just avoided pushing the Overton Window.

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As an example, Bleeding Fool recently published an article by Jamison Ashley discussing Tony Gilroy’s Andor series.

The article posits that the series maintained a Star Wars identity rather than becoming an overt Hollywood attack on ICE and President Donald Trump. Jamison writes, “They kept this Star Wars show from turning into another Hollywood attack on ICE and President Trump.” In fact, Jamison even claims that this is praiseworthy, “Why praise their restraint now? Because it protected a $650 million investment from activist overreach.”

What’s his evidence for this? It’s a quote from the show’s creator Tony Gilroy admitting that he deceived audiences with a marketing tactic so he could push a radical anti-Trump political agenda.

Gilroy explained to The Hollywood Reporter the marketing tactic that he and Lucasfilm came up with to do with this, “The actors have a broad spectrum of political ideas, and we didn’t want anybody to perjure themselves or violate their conscience. So we came up with a legit historical model, and it’s a version of what I’m telling you now. ‘We studied history to make the show, and we based it on historical models. We don’t have a crystal ball. There’s comps for everything that we did all through history.’”

“So that was a very, very safe and legitimate place for us to sell the show without ever having to say what I’m free to say now,” he added.

And what is he saying now? In the same interview he’s describing President Trump and his administration’s immigration enforcement as fascist and he says that is literally the message he put in Andor.

He was asked, “Well, when you finally put it in your rear-view mirror and started making a movie called Behemoth!, real life, as it’s done before, eerily mimics numerous story points in Andor. Can you take me through your thought process as you’ve watched the reporting out of the Twin Cities?”

Gilroy answered, “Well, on a human citizen level, it’s just an absolute gothic nightmare. The simplest answer to the strange synchronicity of all of this is really on them, the outside forces. We were pretty much doing a story about authoritarianism and fascism, and the Empire is very clearly a great example of that. It’s a great place to deal with those issues, and as we’ve discussed many times before, we had this wide open canvas to deal with it.”

And this isn’t the first time Gilroy has talked about it. In fact, he bemoaned the fact that his show had so many “synchronicities” with the Trump administration because it made it harder to sell the lie. He admitted to Reason that people would easily recognize the parallels to current events in the show, “Oh, we saw that. We did the first season and that was just sort of done in a vacuum. That was done as per just trying to live and get through the show and make it happen. By the time we were in the second season and developing it—and, you know, the Trump resurgence was coming back—as we were finishing the show, it takes two and a half years to do the show. As we're finishing and watching the election coming up, we're going, ‘Wow, are we heading for a highway collision here or not?’”

He then bemoaned, “I would have been well pleased to not have the level of synchronicity that we had. As it started to happen—what can you do? It presented complexities for Diego and myself and some of the actors who were out selling the show, because we had to sell the show pretty hard for about six months. It made some of these early conversations very difficult, because we really didn’t wanna get… Disney has a lot of money invested in the show, and the Star Wars audience is rather large and complicated and probably includes all kinds of different people. We didn’t want to have anybody to tune out. We didn’t want to have anybody turn off.”

How does Jamison describe this deception? “Smart move. Disney sold a hit without letting politics tank the ratings.”

He did not stop there. He continued to glaze this deception as “smart business.” He wrote, “The series worked because it focused on drama, not cheap shots at ICE raids or Trump. Gilroy’s gag order proved effective. It maximized audiences and shielded the franchise. Isn’t that what smart business looks like? In a culture drowning in activist noise, Disney’s caution on Andor stands out. They protected their golden goose. Trump’s America rewards that kind of common sense.”

But here’s the real kicker, he positions this as part of a broader Disney marketing strategy where they cut transgender propaganda from animated children shows, “Look at Disney’s bigger picture. Trump wins his second term. The company shelves transgender episodes from Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur and Pixar’s Win or Lose. Those cuts dodged real heat from an administration that demands accountability. … Disney learned the hard way. Restraint on Andor spared them another flop.”

Win or Lose still promoted disordered homosexuality in the episodes it did release. Andor still pushes pro-immigration rhetoric and attempts to paint those enforcing immigration law (ICE) as depraved criminals. There’s an entire episode around an Imperial officer trying to sexually assault an immigrant. Ironically, one report indicates that up to 60% of woman and girls migrating from Latin America to the United States are sexually assaulted, and it’s not done by U.S. immigration officials.

And that brings us to the real point. Sure, the marketing was intentionally crafted to deceive people. This is not unexpected. Numerous people have been warning and predicting this would be the case. Gilroy is just admitting that it is something they did. However, the show itself still is propaganda. It still is attacking President Trump and ICE. Gilroy admits to that as well. It’s just not going to the extremes with gender ideology.

In the end, the real danger lies not in the overt extremes that draw fire from nominally right-wing commentators, but in their willingness to grant a free pass to what was once considered radical simply because it now wears the mask of restraint.

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Experience Jon Del Arroz’s The Saga of the Nano Templar series, where elite warrior Templar Drin, wielding lethal nanotech, turns his back on the galactic empire’s endless holy wars after grappling with the true price of “justice”—only to crash-land on a harsh desert planet dominated by tyrannical aliens who enslave its inhabitants.

This gripping military sci-fi saga delivers relentless battles, themes of redemption, and unflinching faith amid overwhelming evil, offering the explosive action and moral weight that fans of Star Wars and Warhammer 40K will love.

NEXT: Joshua Charles And Eternal Christendom Dedicate Its Weekly Great Rosary Campaign To The Conversion Of ‘Star Trek’ Actor Marina Sirtis

Bounding Into Comics is shutting down operations, according to internal sources and a cryptic message from current Editor-in-Chief Spencer Baculi.

The collapse of what was once pop culture journalism’s most important conservative voice represents a stark lesson: compromise your principles for corporate advertisers, and you lose everything that made you valuable in the first place.

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John F. Trent founded Bounding Into Comics over a decade ago to provide a Christian and conservative alternative to the corporate shills at CBR, Screen Rant, Kotaku, and IGN. While those outlets pushed DEI initiatives and woke activism disguised as journalism, Trent built something different with truthful, hard-hitting coverage that actually held the entertainment industry accountable.

The site exploded in popularity, reaching three to five million views in peak months. Trent became the most important investigative journalist in pop culture, uncovering activist statements and industry malfeasance that everyone else either ignored or actively covered up. Geeks and Gamers, Friday Night Tights, Yellow Flash, and The Quartering built entire YouTube channels reading Trent’s research aloud. His work formed the backbone of alternative pop culture commentary.

Then the company was sold. In 2023, The Publisher Desk acquired Bounding Into Comics and immediately began gutting what made the site successful. The new owners demanded Trent tone down rhetoric against LGBTQ activism, stop criticizing the replacement of white characters in films and comics, and eliminate negative commentary about Disney to appease advertisers.

The Publisher Desk wanted to transform Bounding Into Comics into another corporate mouthpiece indistinguishable from the sites it was created to oppose. They told Trent to remove his Christian viewpoint from articles and eliminate his anti-LGBTQ stances. The message was clear: conform or leave.

Trent chose his principles and left a month later.

I was writing for Bounding Into Comics at the time. I wanted to publish pieces critical of DC and Marvel’s leftist behavior and the mainstream comic industry’s corruption. The site declined to run my work, censoring content that challenged Disney and Warner Bros. I left as well.

Trent landed at That Park Place while I founded Fandom Pulse. We continued our work in tandem until That Park Place repeated the exact same betrayal. The site would go on to partner with The Publisher Desk.

Trent left again and joined Fandom Pulse, where we’ve maintained the uncompromising journalism these other outlets abandoned. We’ve held the line on truth in gaming, television, books, comics, and tabletop games while former competitors collapsed into irrelevance.

The results speak for themselves. Both Bounding Into Comics and That Park Place now receive fewer monthly views than Fandom Pulse. Readers recognize authentic journalism versus corporate-approved content regurgitation. When you compromise your principles for advertiser money, you lose the audience that made you successful in the first place.

A few months ago, we learned That Park Place was struggling so badly they partnered with Geeks and Gamers to help fund their operations, moving some content to that platform. They’re running the same failed playbook in watering down content to appease corporate interests while wondering why their audience disappears.

Bounding Into Comics, meanwhile, has been hemorrhaging traffic for months. The site that once dominated conservative pop culture coverage now can’t afford to pay anyone. They’ve gutted all interesting content, leaving nothing but generic news regurgitation identical to every other corporate shill outlet.

Today we learned they’re shutting down entirely. Their Editor in Chief Spencer Baculi posted to X about the news:

This represents the most important lesson in modern media: tell the truth, remain unabashed about your principles, stand for Christ, and you win. Compromise those things for corporate money, and you lose everything.

Christ promised us victory when we stand for what’s right. The path may be difficult. Behind the scenes, people at Bounding Into Comics and That Park Place have worked to undercut Fandom Pulse with influencers who used to rely on our journalism. But we’re the only ones still doing the investigative work these sites refuse to touch, which is why we’re growing while they collapse.

Publishers Desk thought they could buy Bounding Into Comics, strip away everything that made it valuable, and maintain its audience through brand recognition alone. They were catastrophically wrong. Audiences aren’t stupid—they recognize when content shifts from principled journalism to corporate propaganda.

The same pattern destroyed That Park Place. Both sites believed they could have it both ways: maintain conservative audiences while appeasing progressive advertisers. That’s impossible. You either tell the truth about Disney’s agenda, Marvel’s woke comics, and Hollywood’s anti-white racism, or you become another IGN clone. There’s no middle ground.

John F. Trent understood this, which is why he walked away twice rather than compromise. His investigative work at Fandom Pulse continues exposing industry corruption without corporate censorship. We don’t answer to Publishers Desk or any advertising network demanding we soften criticism of LGBTQ activism or DEI initiatives.

This independence comes at a cost. We don’t have corporate advertising revenue. We rely on readers who value uncompromising journalism enough to support it directly. That’s why Fandom Pulse subscriptions and contributions matter. They’re what allow us to tell the truth without corporate gatekeepers demanding we water down content.

Bounding Into Comics’ shutdown proves the “get woke, go broke” principle applies even to conservative outlets. The moment you compromise your principles for corporate money, you begin dying. Publishers Desk killed Bounding Into Comics by demanding it become everything it was created to oppose.

The entertainment industry desperately wants to eliminate outlets that expose their agenda. They can’t shut us down through direct censorship, so they use financial pressure to buy conservative sites, demand editorial changes to appease advertisers, then watch the audience evaporate when content becomes indistinguishable from mainstream outlets.

This strategy works only if we let it. Fandom Pulse exists because readers recognize the value of journalism that doesn’t compromise. We’ve grown while former competitors collapsed because we refused to play the corporate game. When Publishers Desk came calling with advertising money contingent on editorial control, we said no.

Support outlets that refuse to compromise. Subscribe to Fandom Pulse. Help us continue the investigative journalism that holds the entertainment industry accountable without corporate censorship dictating what we can say.

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NEXT: Sony Pictures Boss Explains Why Marvel Films Are In Decline

Eternal Christendom and its host and founder Joshua Charles announced that this week’s Great Rosary Campaign is for the conversion of Star Trek: The Next Generation actor Marina Sirtis, who played Counselor Deanna Troi.

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In a post to X, Charles shared that the reason he chose Sirtis is because “I love Star Trek [and] have a great deal of love and affection for the cast that played the various characters of the different ships, different space stations, whatever it may be. And it had big role in my life since I was a little kid.”

“Star Trek is not a particularly Catholic show, but it’s got many elements of it that are very constant with the Catholic faith, great respect for life, very pro-life, very big on human dignity,” he added. “And so I am just very, very thankful for all the cast members for the wonderful characters that they brought into my life. And how those characters helped me think, think about controversial topics, shoot higher in my own life, shoot for greater degrees of excellence, and just provide some good old fashioned fun.”

“The famous saying in Star Trek from the Vulcans is ‘Live long and prosper.’ Well, the ultimate living long and prospering is to spend eternal life with God in heaven. And that’s why I’m going to ask all of you to join me in praying the Rosary for the conversion of the cast that played the different Star Trek characters.”

On top of praying the Rosary this week for Marina Sirtis, Charles also recommends people to offer a penance with a Holy Hour in front of the Blessed Sacrament before the Holy Eucharist of our lord.

Eternal Christendom’s The Great Rosary Campaign is based on several Biblical themes and principles:

1. Pray for our brethren: “Pray for one another…” (James 5:16) and “So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all men, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.” (Gal: 6:10)

2. Pray for our enemies: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 5:43-44)

3. Pray for all men, particularly leads and those in authority: “First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all men, or kings and all who are in high positions… (1 Timothy 2:1-2)

4. Go into battle with the Ark “When the troops retired to the camp, the elders of Israel said, ‘Why has the LORD permitted us to be defeated today by the Philistines? Let us fetch the ark of the LORD from Shiloh that it may go into battle among us and save us from the grasp of our enemies.’ So the people sent to Shiloh and brought from there the ark of the LORD of hosts, who is enthroned upon the cherubim. The two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, accompanied the ark of God. When the ark of the LORD arrived in the camp, all Israel shouted so loudly that the earth shook. (1 Samuel 4:3-5)

5. Evangelism and Apologetics equates to love plus arguments plus prayer and penance

6. Returning good for evil: “Do not return evil for evil, or reviling for reviling; but on the contrary bless, for to this you have been called, that you may obtain a blessing.” (1 Peter 3:9)

Charles and Eternal Christendom have previously conducted the Great Rosary Campaign for Gates McFadden, Levar Burton, Megyn Kelly, Sean Hannity, Mark Calaway (The Undertaker), John Hudson Dilgen, Scott Adams, Sundar Pichai, Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk among others.

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NEXT: Passage Press Publisher Lomez Claims Lena Dunham's 'Girls' Show Is "Successful Right Wing Art"