Fantastic to hear. Glad you can join in.

We’ll be watching S1 E3&4 this Saturday, June 20th between 3:00 and 5:00 pm EDT.

Paywalled for me in Canada.

I find that I am less and less willing to invest enthusiasm in American productions as they don’t get enough commitment from their streamers to make it worth it.

Apple seems to be make two season commitments for most shows, but generally they are following the self-destructive pattern of Syfy. There’s only so many times one can be burned.

As I said, the images were posted on Reddit by someone who loves both Cdramas and Star Trek.

I’ve checked privately with the creator and they asked to watermark the images. They shared the watermarked versions with me by private messaging and agreed to let me post here.

This person is a professional vfx specialist working in television who did this for their own amusement. They have asked me to avoid sharing more detail on who they are which I believe is fair.

If you aren’t aware that there is a certain amount of directed compositing in many CGI engines for vfx and game design, I don’t know what to say.

Using generated render to rough up an idea can be part of the process.

Pursuit of Jade reportedly cost the equivalent of $100 million for 40 episodes and certainly looks like it.

S-tier cdramas are quite well funded now. I just watched the current day 2025 science fiction thriller Mobius on Netflix. It was at the production level of any American or European show.

The creator is a professional vfx artist who was playing, and has included a watermark for that reason.

Yes, AI is part of their toolkit, but these were not just a case of asking a gen AI tool fabricate something.

Got it.

I generally think of the vertical market niche as under 25, not a large slice of the fediverse.

I don’t see though how vertical pagination is much different than social media on phones, which we’re all fairly accustomed to.

I don’t think this is targeted to our age group at all.

The vertical format is grown in anime and Asian dramas as well.

China is starting to be competitive with vertical short dramas specifically produced for the US market.

This is interesting.

The vertical manga/manha/manhua format is where new GenZ audiences can be found.

I’m going to infer that Deadline made a typo, but I copied it verbatim from their listing.

As with other wild populations, the animals’ health, ecological sustainability and whether they are reservoirs of infectious disease would be the paramount concern.

Not sure that the current provincial government has the credibility in evidence-based decision making to be able to sustain any interventions.

As Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), Carignan is a General not a Lieutenant General.

It’s really unfortunate when a basic error doesn’t get caught in the vetting of an article as it undermines the rest of the story.

https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/corporate/organizational-structure/chief-defence-staff/cds-bio.html

I’m down for this one.

The link has just gone to my partner for upcoming gift occasions 😉.

Know the show, but this is real life, regrettably.

Getting into the panels / speaker sessions was always my top priority.

Sometimes they have sessions with production or other behind the scenes creatives. Those are always amazing.

The vendor hall is always worth checking out and it’s fun to mill about and see the cosplayers.

Depending on whether you like that sort of thing or not, paying to meet and get a photo with a cast member or to get an autograph (usually two separate things) is a popular activity.

While I won’t be travelling to the US anytime soon, I think it’s great that Creation is getting back into regional cons.

I used to attend them in the late 80s and early 90s and they were a great entry point for newer fans and those who didn’t want the mass experience of something like STLV.

I think that they do more to build a franchise for the long haul than the megacons.

That makes sense!

Definitely there was local control over availability. I recall shopping for gifts and seeing walls of SW toys but no Trek in Ottawa.

Even in Canada, I don’t recall that they had wide distribution. They were also marked up quite a bit from the US price (well beyond the exchange rate). I saw them mainly in specialty stores, not Toys R US and department stores.

That was a very time limited counter example, and were largely unavailable outside the US.

And it may be a really important factor in explaining the loyalty of millennial guys in the US to the franchise vs other demographics and countries.