#and its a whole comedy of errors. miscommunication all the way around

[turtshell]

its almost embarrassing how much time i've dedicated to thinking about ftm 03 leo. i have so many thoughts about him

[goggles-mcgee]

Too Late: Luka & Kagami (commission for miner249er)

Chapter 6 of the commission for @miner249er 

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Summary:  Luka and Kagami just being there for one another and trying not to drown in their guilt and grief

It was mostly quiet between the two, Kagami had taken to channel surfing while Luka strummed his guitar aimlessly till he got sad and frustrated that he couldn’t find a melody. Then he would meditate before trying again. Mostly he was trying to get back into the music for his mom and Juleka’s piece of mind, he knew they were worried about him, he knew they noticed the lack of music in his life, but he also knew they knew why. Marinette. Even just thinking her name made his heartstrings tug painfully. How had everything gone so wrong? Him and Kagami had a plan, at the time it seemed like a good plan, but thinking back on it now he couldn’t help but see it for all it’s flaws, and there were...many. He felt like a fool, but he hadn’t brought up their failed plan because he knew Kagami could not handle hearing about their failure. He could hear it in her song, he could see it in her eyes, it was seeped into her very being, and all he could feel was pain and regret. That’s why there was no more music.

The “music” he would make would sound like his heart and his thoughts, and at the present they sounded like someone threw silverware in a blender and he felt like he was in that blender himself. Constantly hurting, constantly trying to get out and heal, but never being able to because he was too caught up in the motions. Once he had gotten the Snake Miraculous, he thought he understood the saying, “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” His power was all about learning from the “past” and that saying had always been something that had stuck with him. He thought him and Kagami were well prepared to handle anything with their plan, but the more he thought of it, the more he screamed at himself that they should have told Ladybug, they should have told Marinette, they should have said something, anything. 

Romeo & Juliet had always been his least favorite Shakespeare play, he hated miscommunication in tragedies. It worked well as a plot device in comedies, but in tragedies it was just frustrating. Luka always believed people could be better than the famous star-crossed characters and everyone else in the play, he truly believed he was above that level of miscommunication. Sure he had trouble explaining himself, more often than not he used his music as his voice, confident it would make sure his feelings were communicated clearly. Then Marinette came and he found himself wanting to talk without his instrument as the voice, each day built his confidence, he had never been that confident in his talking abilities, and then everything crashed and burned. Miscommunication was the fuel. 

He was sure if he hadn’t cried as much as he had already he would be in a fit of sobs at the moment, but as it was, Luka was all cried out. So was Kagami it would seem, whose mother uncharacteristically was actually giving her time to herself, time to grieve, and time with her “friends.” Luka knew the only friends Kagami had were him and Marinette, and there had been that air of almost more that hung above them all, but just thinking of that hurt him more than he could ever put into words or song. It was easier to deal with the heartbreak of the things that came to be and passed rather than the ones that hadn’t even had a chance to see the light, or even have the opportunity to be a proper thought that was discussed. No. No. He wouldn’t think about it. He couldn’t think about it. 

“Luka? You okay?” He heard Kagami’s soft voice ask. He looked to her immediately hoping he wasn’t showing the desperation he was feeling, but at the tight smile he got in return he knew he failed hiding it. “Thinking about her again?”

He made a noise somewhere between yes and no. It was harder to talk when she disappeared, but he didn’t want to leave Kagami to have to interpret all his sounds so he cleared his throat and pushed past the lump that seemed to be stuck there no matter what he did. “Shakespeare.” 

Kagami nodded and took a seat beside him on the couch and leaned her head on his shoulder. “Romeo and Juliet again?”

Luka sighed and nodded as he closed his eyes and leaned his head on top of Kagami’s softly. “I know it’s not technically history, but it’s a part of history and it made me think.” 

“I would say stop thinking since that’s all you’ve been doing today, but I know that is not easy and not actually achievable.” 

“If I could stop thinking that would be great. I just...she would still be here if I had-”

“If we.”

“If we had just communicated we wouldn’t have lost her...I...we…” Luka growled before sitting up and grabbing his guitar and playing an angry harsh cord. He held his guitar to his chest like a lifeline, his grip not loosening, the string biting into his skin and for a moment he wished it stung or imprinted but his callouses protected him. 

“I know. I know. She...Marinette was my first friend. The first friend I had ever made on my own. Not one my mother made me have because it would be good for the company or because it would make me or her business partners look good.” Kagami started to tell Luka, of course he paid attention, Kagami wasn’t really one to open up about how she felt. Even with all the time she had spent with him and Marinette and all the encouragement they both gave her to be more open with them. “I thought...I believed our plan was foolproof. For the first time in a long time, I didn’t stop to think of human error, and everything that could go wrong. Marinette...Marinette and you gave me optimism Luka. I had never looked at the world or any situation I had faced with optimism. It’s not how I was raised. Or any Tsuguri for that matter.” 

Luka didn’t know what to say so he held Kagami’s hand and gave it a squeeze for comfort and a way to say to continue if she felt comfortable. There of course was an anxious little voice inside his head that was screaming that, maybe, just maybe, if Kagami hadn’t spent so much time with them, everything could have been avoided but he quickly shot that thought down. He would never regret becoming friends with Kagami. Never. She was Marinette’s and his compass. She gave them control and direction when the two of them wandered too far. Luka was the calm, he was the ship’s wheel. He followed the compass and made sure to keep them all steady and comfortable, but he was always ready to change the course if they all needed the change of scenery.

 At first, Luka thought of Marinette as the sea. Beautiful, full of life and emotion, taking care of all the creatures and life in its waters, and filled with creativity. Then she changed in his mind to a lighthouse, something that would call him and Kagami home, a safe haven, something to strive for. Again the image in his mind changed to her as their anchor. She kept them both grounded, she made sure Luka didn’t get too lost in his thoughts and she made sure Kagami didn’t second guess herself. She kept them safe. Marinette was all those things and more. 

“But you guys,” Luka tuned back into Kagami and berated himself for getting lost in his thoughts, “you guys gave me optimism. I was no longer just thinking about the bad that could happen in things. When we made our plan, I thought I had been thorough, that we had been thorough. I wanted to believe we were doing the right thing. The intelligent thing. Most importantly, I wanted to believe we were doing the helpful thing. I was optimistic. I was hopeful. And in the end we lost her…”

“Kagami...There is nothing wrong with being optimistic.”

“Did I say there was?” She snapped before her expression fell and she held Luka’s hand in both of hers, her eyes teared up as she looked at him. “I’m sorry.”

“I know you didn’t mean it Gami.”

“That doesn’t make it right.”

“Maybe not but you have already apologized. That’s what makes it okay.” 

“If you say so...I’m just not entirely convinced, but okay. It’s just, I love that you and Marinette are optimists. I liked seeing things positively for once and not always thinking what could or will go wrong if I didn’t do things perfectly. But the one time I do so, it bit me in return. I...I hesitated Luka. Now Marinette is gone, the media only reminds us of her akuma and only wants to speak of her akuma and not the wonderful person she is. Except maybe Nadja and Aurore’s blog. It’s all that’s on TV, then there’s the whole Agreste situation that I would prefer not to think about but again, the media is focused on it.” After Kagami let all that out it was like she deflated and sunk into the comfort of the couch. Luka decided to join in and just flopped himself back into the couch and just stared up at the ceiling. 

“Oh yeah...that. On one hand I can believe it, on the other I don’t want to but yeah let’s just...not get into that today. Maybe another day,” Luka grimaced at the memory of all the Agreste “rumors” flying around, and honestly he understood why Kagami would prefer not to think about any of that. 

“Or ever. That could be beneficial too.” 

“Gami. You know it’s better to face something than avoid it.”

“Perhaps, but avoidance sounds like the better option considering everything that has happened.” 

“Have you spoken to Adrien at all?” 

“No. Not since I found out he had no spine. And now...now I don’t even know how I would go about speaking to him. I do feel for him, but he’s not someone I consider a friend anymore. If anything he’s an acquaintance by necessity.” She huffed out with a shrug of her shoulder as she once more grabbed the remote for the TV and returned to channel surfing. 

“Yeah, I get what you mean. It’s....talking with Jules has been hard. It was hard before, but now it’s...I don’t know. I know she wants to talk to me, I try to talk to her, but she won’t talk to me. She used to before Lila. Then we fought...we never fought...but she didn’t want to listen to me about Lila and her screeching of a song. Juleka got mad that I couldn’t see the “true” Marinette. She said I was blinded by my...my feelings.” Luka preferred not to remember him and Juleka fighting but it had become normal ever since his sister had started listening to Lila Rossi. After everything that passed though, Juleka wouldn’t even look at him unless it was in worry, like she couldn’t look at him. Not because he wasn’t worth her time, but because she seemed to believe that she wasn’t worth his. 

 In the simplest of terms, it was heartbreaking. 

“Rossi has been exposed now though. She knows you were right.” Kagami said full of confusion, and Luka could admit it sounded confusing no matter how you looked at it.

“I think it’s because I-we- were right.” 

Luka glanced over at Kagami and saw her frowning, “She’s angry that you, that we, were right?”

“I think it’s more shame than anger. I don’t doubt there is anger there, but it’s most likely directed at herself.  Her song is all over the place…” He admitted with a sigh, he just wished that Juleka would open up to him like she used to so he could help. He didn’t know what was going on, but he knew that something was happening at her school and it wasn’t good for her or her classmates. He hated thinking his sister was getting bullied but with Marinette’s rise to fame as an akuma and her almost cult-like following and those who raised her to martyr status all around, he wouldn’t be surprised if the “Akuma Class” was being “taught a lesson.” 

“And yet she still won’t talk to you?” 

“It’s...complicated. We are both not the strongest talkers, but it has always been worse for Jules. Now with everything that has happened…” Luka let out a frustrated breath and ran his hands over his face. Before him or Kagami could say anything else to add on to the conversation they heard rushed footsteps hurrying down the stairs towards them. Immediately, Luka recognized them as Juleka’s footsteps. 

Juleka burst into the lounge from the deck, one look at her and Luka felt his anger rise. His sister’s clothing was ruined, her jeans that she had painstakingly sewn the lace to the outer edges of herself were splattered in paint and if he wasn’t mistaken there were rips on the knees. Her shirt looked wet and paint splattered, as did her hair, and one glance at her only visible eye told Luka she had been crying. She seemed startled to see them there and for a while none of them spoke, the only noise came from the TV where it had seemed to stop on a news channel since Kagami stopped her channel surfing in favor of focusing on Juleka’s entrance.

As soon as Luka stood up to comfort Juleka, maybe ask who the hell did that to her, she just as quickly shouldered past him and ran into her bunker with a slam of the door. That was another new thing, though not unneeded, they both got separate rooms after...after Marinette had helped Luka convince his mom they deserved separate rooms. Especially because of Jules and his ages and the fact a curtain wasn’t enough privacy but then there was the fighting due to the Lila and Marinette situation. It was just easier for them all if he and Juleka got separate rooms, his mom agreed, he knew it was because she noticed the tense silences and the loud music coming from them both during that time. So Kagami and Marinette helped Luka clean out another bunker room that had been used as a storage room and then helped him move in. 

Luka didn’t know how long he stood there just looking at Juleka’s door but he came back to himself when he felt Kagami place her hand on his shoulder. He looked down at her to see her giving him a sympathetic smile and gave his shoulder a squeeze for comfort. It was grounding, but Luka’s heart still hurt at his sister’s refusal to talk to him or Kagami. He knew she needed him, and honestly he needed her too, he just wanted to be her brother again, and her be his little sister that was sometimes annoying but it was in a loving way. Everything had changed and Luka felt like he was on a sinking ship with nothing to grab onto for support except Kagami but he didn’t want to drag her down with him. 

“I just…” He started, his voice tight with tears.

“I know.” Kagami answered. 

“...Collège Françoise Dupont.” Both of their heads whipped towards the TV once they heard the name of that school. On the screen were two reporters that neither were very familiar with but they had seen the news channel in passing. 

“Is that right? An investigation?” The male reporter asked.

“That is correct Robert! It has been confirmed by inside sources that a full scale investigation will be launched on Collège Françoise Dupont! Not only for its horrible negligence against The Protector but because of new reports made by students who no longer fear having to be akumatized since Hawkmoth has conveniently disappeared. Apparently the number of calls to the Board of Education was just appalling. As were the reasons behind the reports.” The female reporter announced with a plastic smile, but if you looked it would twitch every so often like she was fighting to keep smiling.

“I would like to say I’m surprised Madeline, but that would ultimately be a lie.” Robert quipped back with an equally plastic looking smile. 

“Yes it would Robert.” The reporter called Madeline chuckled as she said that. “In other news still connected to The Protector, her parents will be getting an official apology from TVi Studios after said studio used footage of their daughter without permission written or otherwise.”

Luka and Kagami winced at the mention of Tom and Sabine as they knew the couple were having a hard time, but they had no idea that TVi Studios showed that segment without permission. Luka especially had a hard time believing it considering Nadja worked there and was a good friend of Sabine’s. Kagami looked particularly worried about this so Luka nudged her as a way to ask what was wrong. “Do you think they sued the studio? I don’t think M Dupain and Mme Cheng are in the right state emotionally to go through a lawsuit.”

“Well...they said it was an official apology so I don’t think they sued, which is good, because you’re right. They are in no state to go through a lawsuit or anything much at the moment.” Luka agreed.

“On to World News, there has been an amazing recent discovery in Northern Scotland. It has stumped the people, and historians. When we come back from the break we will talk about this historic find and what it means for the people of Scotland. See you after the break Paris!” Robert said before the commercials started up. Luka didn’t know why, but something told him that discovery was important.

Next Chapter

[aion-rsa]

The Making of We Bare Bears: The Movie

https://ift.tt/2YUDRci

This We Bare Bears: The Movie interview contains spoilers.

We Bare Bears: The Movie is the perfect send off to the loveable Grizz, Panda, and Ice Bear that have been warming hearts on Cartoon Network since 2015. Their last adventure sees them going up against their own right to simply exist in the world as the government tries to capture them. The story is not only relevant to our times (where racism continues to show its ugly face) but also contains the melancholy that made We Bare Bears such a warm show alongside its trademark humor. It’s truly a special film that does the herculean task of wrapping up a long running series, commenting on the world, and just being the fun we need while going through dark times.

We spoke with show creator Daniel Chong for an in-depth discussion about the making of the film from its original conception to what Chong hopes fans take away from it. He also reveals how the film was reworked, adding a more serious tone to a mostly wacky series, and YouTube culture.

DEN OF GEEK: Let’s go all the way back and let’s talk about the initial process of how the movie came together two years ago. Did you pitch the story to Cartoon Network? Did they ask for a film? How did it go?

DANIEL CHONG: Yeah, they wanted a movie. They basically brought me into a room and they just said, “Would you be interested in making one?” And honestly, it was a call that I’ve been wanting for a while, because coming from Feature Animation, that’s where most of my career was. I felt very confident. I knew it was going to be difficult, no question, but I knew a little bit better what to expect making a movie.

I also felt that we had characters that could exist in a movie. They had enough emotional depth in them or capabilities that I knew that we could sustain them for a long period of time in a movie. So (Cartoon Network) suggested it and we were like, “Sure, we’ll do it.” But we had to write it while we were finishing episodes too. I think we wrote it over the course of a couple months, but at the same time, we were writing 11 minute episodes, and we were finishing episodes (in production).

A lot of it was just stacked for a while. It was a little stressful, but our two main writers, Mikey Heller and Kris Mukai, they really buckled down and were able to multitask and that’s how it got done.

What was the inspiration, the spark, for the initial story? What made you want to do the film that we are now getting to watch?

Read more

TV

New Power Rangers Showrunner Reveals Dino Fury Plans

By Shamus Kelley

The first thing that we needed was a sense of scale. We needed a really big idea. One of the big ideas in the movie is there’s a forest fire. Around that time, there were tons of forest fires happening in California and there were images that were floating around in articles of bears that had their paws bandaged up. It was a really sad scene but I think when I saw that, I immediately sent it to our writers and was like, “I think this is what our movie is about. I think this is the big climactic thing that’s going to happen in our movie. Something that involves fire and these bears dealing with a forest fire.”

I immediately knew that that’s something we’d never be able to do on a regular show, it’s just too complicated, it’s too expensive and too busy. But I knew if we had a movie, we should just go for it and do something ambitious. It definitely was also very high on the ambition scale. So I think that felt right. 

The second thing that I knew that started to coalesce was that we were basically going to use all the big themes that we’ve used in the show and put it into the movie. And almost, we were going to make fun of the show in the movie.

There’s a a scene where the villain is talking about all the reasons bears shouldn’t exist and walk around humans. In a way, it’s almost like we’re making fun of the show. It’s like, why are bears talking? We’re basically making fun of the cartoon concept that we’ve created and using it to give us a story, because then everybody’s like, yeah, why haven’t we questioned that? That is weird. Why are they walking among us?

And so it was a way to kind of make fun and point at our show and expose it, I guess, and then use that to really set the movie into motion. So I think those were two of the really big ideas that helped motivate where we were going.

You have a lot of serious things going on and you have a lot of comedy. Bagel Rat shows up in this movie! How do you achieve that balance when you’re telling a more serious story? 

It was a trial and error thing. I mean, honestly, we already had the show so we knew what a Bears episode looked like. But there were some moments when the emotions weren’t working because we had never gone there before and we didn’t know how to handle a certain levels of emotion.

There was one scene that was a pivotal, emotional scene that was happening before the end of the second act. I remember one of the characters was just in agony. The first time it was pitched, the whole room laughed, and it wasn’t because it wasn’t boarded well, it wasn’t because the scene was written wrong, it’s just that we had never experienced that emotion with our characters and almost was like, “what are we doing? Is this right?”

Read more

TV

How Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts Codes Blackness

By Kevin Johnson

It was almost a defense mechanism in some ways. It’s like, this is too heavy, but that’s what you need to do in a movie. Once we put all the pieces together, it’s really just about managing tone and music can help a lot with that. It’s a balancing act, kind of like you said. It’s about finding where does comedy need to exist to lighten it and where do we need to just commit straight to the emotion and the drama? It’s really a trial and error and you just kind of figure out as you go.

But the nice thing is I’ve had this team that worked on this movie for quite a long time. We worked together, we had a really strong workflow, and we just could read each other’s minds. I trusted them, they trusted me and we just all held hands together and really just made a very long episode, essentially. It was a lot of business as usual in some ways where we just were kind of just doing it the way we’ve always done it.

I loved the focus on Grizz in this film. His dream sequence especially was very, very powerful. Talk a little bit about the focus on him and how he really finally has to take responsibility for some of his wacky antiques.

Yeah. I think it’s great that you pointed that out because it was kind of like a late decision to steer it more in his direction. The nightmare never used to really be centralized on him. It was a decision kind of a little later as we started seeing the movie a little better. It made sense because he is the one that’s carrying the burden of his brothers. He is the one that cares for them the most, he always comes up with the ideas, he’s the first one we meet in the movie, and he’s the one that basically has the most responsibility for this family staying together. It just made sense as we were making it. It’s like, no, I think he’s the one that has to lead the charge and bring everyone back together because he’s also the most flawed. 

He’s the one that makes the most mistakes and also pushes for things when people don’t want them because he just needs to be a leader. It was fun to find out how important he was going to be to the whole overall arc of the story. But it felt right, I think once we did it, that the older brother is the one that carries that burden.

Was it the nightmare scene originally focused on all three bears then?

The nightmare scene never existed before; it used to be something completely different. When Grizz remembers that flashback with him as a kid, that scene actually used to have all three bears remembering it. But as we got into the writing, we realized, no, I think Grizz is the most important person here. He’s the one that had the nightmare that exposed his vulnerabilities of how much he was concerned about the wellbeing of everyone. He’s the one that can make the most change and bring everyone together. 

I love that bit where he’s locked up and he meets all the other bears and they don’t speak human, for lack of a better term. That was so striking to me that, even though he doesn’t understand his own kind, he’s still willing to help them out. That’s just Grizz, that’s just what he would do.

Yeah, totally. Having bears is a big rule breaker for our show. I never wanted to have other bears on our show because it would make our main characters less interesting, but this felt like the right time to do it.

For me, it almost related a lot to being Asian American because I don’t speak my own native tongue either. So I know what it’s like to go back to my country and realize that there are people who have my same heritage but I don’t speak their language. We talked a lot about that experience when we went into that scene and how we would play the miscommunication or the recognizing each other, but at the same time, not being able to communicate.

It’s just so much of your own experience and I’m sure the experience of a lot of people who worked on the film as well. I’m sure it’s just countless experience but feels like it all filtered into the film and made it like the best episodes of the show. They’re very funny but also very, very personal.

Read more

TV

How Cardcaptor Sakura’s Queerness Broke Through Censorship

By Shamus Kelley

I think that is the key to what our show is. It’s the personal touch. Knowing that this story had a very personal message that I really cared about and experienced deeply is something that helps. But we try to give a voice to not just the writers or our directors, but even the story artists. We make it in a way that they also get to be participants in the writing and in the brainstorming so that they can put their contributions in. It becomes this amazing hive mind of, how can we make this as authentic of a feeling and experience as possible? I do think a lot of that is just getting the right team that gets along and just cares enough about the show or the movie. That even extends to the art team and the production.

It really makes a difference when they care about what’s being said and what the message is. I think everyone really understood what we were trying to say and really got behind it and really valued it. It really helped the production just move a lot better.

On the more fun side of the film, and the show set the precedent for this, but We Bare Bears gets YouTube and video culture more than any other kid show out there. Since the Bears were so obsessed with it in the show did that mean it had to become a plot in the film as well? 

It was always in the DNA of the pitch of the show. I think it’s a risky thing and not a lot of shows want to do it because it can verge on the cringy side. It can also get outdated really quickly and become too topical or too in that moment. So you really always will run the risk of those things when you introduce internet things. 

But we just went for it. I hadn’t quite seen it done a certain way so I just said, “I’ll put my own spin on it and I’ll find a way to make it so it doesn’t get outdated too quickly.” And so our first episode was called ‘Viral Video’ and it was about the Bears trying to make a viral video. It was always embedded in the DNA that internet culture and those things were going to be inherent in the film.

Read more

TV

We Bare Bears The Movie Reminds Us Of The Series’ True Message

By Shamus Kelley

TV

We Bare Bears Does Episodic Cartoons Right

By Shamus Kelley

As we started bringing in different story artists and different writers, they were all very young, in their twenties and they all were internet cultured kids and it was a big part of their lives. So  I just said, “Let’s just go for it. You guys should just write what you guys know and push the things that are funny to you on the Internet and let’s put it in the show.” 

I still have to sit through it and if I don’t get the reference enough, I’ll probably have to tell them not to do it. But that’s just kind of the balance that we do. In the movie we just exploited it to the 10th degree. I mean, they did the most cringy viral video you could have imagined, and it almost worked that they were all outdated memes because it had to fail. Then we go into this animal commune and we basically get to expose all these new internet animals, which was really fun to do. We just used the movie to go all out on everything.

Is this film the last time that we’re going to see the adult bears? Is this their final adventure?

My belief is that We Bare Bears hopefully will be a show that can continue on in different ways, not just in spinoffs. I think to me, it’s the perfect vessel for something that could be reinterpreted or carry on for a long time, hopefully, and re-envisioned. I��d like to think that there will be a future where we’ll continue to see Bears for a while, as long as we can keep it interesting.

Note: This interview was conducted before Daniel Chong publicly announced that the film was the finale of the series and that he’d be departing Cartoon Network to work on a unnamed project. He did provide us with a quote reflecting this, which can be read below.

It’s been an incredible journey making We Bare Bears with a crew that I absolutely adore. I’m heartened to know that the response to the show has been so positive, and that I can leave knowing that we brought something good into the world.

After this film comes out, what are you hoping that people take away from it?

It’s funny because I think when we made it, we definitely had a very pointed message that we were very aware of and were thinking would be very relevant. That is one aspect of it but if the movie is not entertaining and not bringing people joy, it fails. It can’t just be a piece of a film that just has a message. So to me, especially when the pandemic hit, I think it became very real to me that maybe a bigger purpose for this show might just be to make people happy and to just bring joy to them. More and more, especially after a pandemic and honestly, to some degree, even now with everything else happening, I do get a lot of messages from people just saying how We Bare Bear’s has been able to be something that’s just made them happy in spite of how horrible things are in the world.

They enjoy seeing the bears and it kind of de-stresses them or makes them feel hopeful. I think that more than anything, if the show can aspire to attain those things? That is good enough. That is a goal that is already exceeding expectations. The message is there if people want it or people want to receive it, it’ll always be there and they can read into it however they want.

But I think for me, if people just like the film enjoy it and it brings them hope and joy? I think that is good enough for me. That’s kind of where my head space is at right now. Maybe it changes in a week, but that’s how I feel right now.

Do you have any other messages to share with either the fans of the show or just any other things that you want to put out into the world?

I’ve been thinking a lot about what making Bears has accomplished, and how I was able to use it to represent my culture and normalize things in episodse that would otherwise be considered so foreign. With everything going on now- I think it’s even more obvious the value of having more diverse animated shows, particularly with African American creators and what that could contribute to pop culture and the way we see the black community. Especially since so many kids watch animation, it would be so formative. My hope is that studios are making a concerted effort to fix that. And I hope I can help contribute to that change with the resources I have.

Stay tuned to Den of Geek for more about We Bare Bears: The Movie as Chong discusses the more serious side of the film and how it tied into the core message of the series.

The post The Making of We Bare Bears: The Movie appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/38p8KJ0

[gyrlversion]

Cyber-attacks are the newest frontier of war, and can strike harder than a natural disaster. Heres why the US could struggle to cope if it got hit.

Imagine waking up one day, and feeling like a hurricane hit — except everything is still standing.

The lights are out, there is no running water, you have no phone signal, no internet, no heating or air conditioning. Food starts rotting in your fridge, hospitals struggle to save their patients, trains and planes are stuck.

There are none of the collapsed buildings or torn-up trees that accompany a hurricane, and no flood waters. But, all the same, the world you take for granted has collapsed.

This is what it would look like if hackers decided to take your country offline.

Business Insider has researched the state of cyber warfare, and spoken with experts in cyber defense, to piece together what a large-scale attack on a country like the US could look like.

Nowadays nations have the ability to cause war-like damage to their enemy’s vital infrastructure without launching a military strike, helped along by both new offensive technology and the inexorable drive to connect more and more systems to the internet.

What makes infrastructure systems so vulnerable is that they exist at the crossroads between the digital world and the physical world, said Andrew Tsonchev, the director of technology for cyber defense firm Darktrace.

Computers increasingly control operational technologies that were previously in the hands of humans — anything from the systems that route electricity through power lines, to the mechanism which opens and closes a dam.

“These systems have been connected up to the wild west of the internet and there are exponential opportunities to break into them,” said Tsonchev. This creates a vulnerability which experts say is especially acute in the US.

Most US critical infrastructure is owned by private businesses, and the state does not incentivize them to prioritize cyber defense, according to Phil Neray, an industrial cybersecurity expert for the firm CyberX.

“For most of the utilities in the US that monitoring is not in place right now,” he said.

One of the most obvious vulnerabilities experts identify is the power grid, relied upon by virtually everyone living and working in a modern country.

Hackers showed that they could plunge thousands of people into darkness when they knocked out parts of the grid in Ukraine in 2015 and 2016. These hits were limited to certain areas, but a more extreme attack could hit a whole network at once.

Researchers for the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) are preparing for just that kind of scenario.

They told Business Insider just how painstaking — and slow — a restart would be if ever the US lost control of its power lines.

DARPA program manager Walter Weiss has been simulating a blackout on a secretive island the government primarily uses to study infectious animal diseases.

On the highly restricted Plum Island, Weiss and his team ran a worst-case scenario which requires a so-called “black start,” in which the grid has to be brought back from total deactivation.

“What scares us is that once you lose power it’s tough to bring it back online,” said Weiss. “Doing that during a cyber attack is even harder because you can’t trust the devices you need to restore power for that grid.”

DARPA staged what a cyber attack on the US power grid could look like in November.

(Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency)

The exercise requires experts to fight a barrage of cyber threats while also grappling with the logistics of restarting the power system in what Weiss called a “degraded environment.”

That means coordinating teams across different substations without phone or internet access, all while depending on old-fashioned generators that need to be refueled constantly.

Trial runs of this work, Weiss said, showed just how fragile and prone to disruption a recovery effort is. Substations are often far apart, and minor errors or miscommunications — like forgetting one type of screwdriver — can set an operation back by hours.

A worst-case scenario would require interdependent teams to coordinate these repairs across the entire country, as much of the population waits in darkness.

But even an attack on a seemingly less important utility could have a catastrophic impact.

Maritime ports are another prime target — San Diego and Barcelona reported attacks in a single week in 2018.

Both said their core operations stayed intact, but it is easy to imagine how interrupting the complicated logistics and bureaucracy of a modern shipping hub could ravage global trade, 90% of which is ocean-borne.

Itai Sela, the CEO of cybersecurity firm Naval Dome, told a recent conference that “the shipping industry should be on red alert” because of the cyber threat.

The world has already seen glimpses of the destruction a multipronged cyber attack could cause.

In 2010, the Israeli-American Stuxnet virus targeted the Iranian nuclear program, reportedly ruining one fifth of its enrichment facilities. It taught the world’s militaries that cyber attacks are a real threat.

Read more: The Stuxnet Attack On Iran’s Nuclear Plant Was ‘Far More Dangerous’ Than Previously Thought

The most intense frontier of cyber warfare is currently Ukraine, which is fighting a simmering conflict against Russia.

Besides the attacks on the power grid, the devastating NotPetya malware in 2017 paralyzed Ukrainian utility companies, banks, and government agencies. The malware proved so virulent that it spread to other countries.

Hackers have also caused significant disruption with so-called ransomware, which freezes computer systems unless the users had over large sums of money, often in hard-to-trace cryptocurrency.

An ongoing attack on local government services in Baltimore has frozen about 10,000 computers since May 7, getting in the way of ordinary activities like selling homes and paying the water bill. Again, this is proof of concept for something far larger.

In March this year, a cyber attack on one of the world’s largest aluminum producers, Oslo-based Norsk Hydro, forced it to close several plants which provide parts for carmakers and builders.

Norsk Hydro was hit by a cyber attack on Tuesday, March 19.

(Terje Pedersen/AFP/Getty Images)

In 2017 the WannaCry virus, designed to infect computers to extract a ransom, burst onto the internet and caused damage beyond anything its creators could have foreseen.

It forced Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, to shut down production for three days. In the UK, 200,000 computers used by the National Health System were compromised, halting medical treatment and costing nearly $120 million.

The US government said North Korean hackers were behind the ransomware.

Read more: Trump administration goes on media blitz to blame North Korea for massive WannaCry cyber attack

North Korean hackers were also blamed for the 2015 attack that leaked personal information from thousands of Sony employees to prevent the release of “The Dictator”, a comedy movie about Kim Jong Un.

These isolated events were middling to major news events when they happened. But they occur against a backdrop of lesser activity which rarely makes the news.

The reason we don’t hear about more attacks like this isn’t because nobody is trying — governments regularly tell us that they are fending off constant attacks from adversaries.

In the US, the FBI and DHS say Russian government hackers have managed to infiltrate critical infrastructure like the energy, nuclear, and manufacturing sectors.

The UK’s National Security Centre says it repels around ten attempted cyber attacks from hostile states every week.

Read more: US security officials say Russian hackers could shut down nuclear power plants and electric facilities in America

Although the capacity is there, like with most large-scale acts of war, state actors are fearful to pull the trigger.

James Andrew Lewis, a senior vice president and technology director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Business Insider that the fear of retaliation keeps many hackers in check.

“The caveat is how a country like the US would retaliate,” he said. “An attack on this scale would be a major geopolitical move.”

Despite the growing dangers, this uneasy and unspoken truce has kept the threat far from most people’s minds. For that to change, Lewis believes the world needs to see a real, large-scale attack with real collateral.

“I’m often asked: How many people have died in a cyber attack? Zero,” he said.

“Maybe that’s the threshold. People underappreciate the effects that aren’t immediately visible to them.”

The post Cyber-attacks are the newest frontier of war, and can strike harder than a natural disaster. Heres why the US could struggle to cope if it got hit. appeared first on Gyrlversion.

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