Lauren Davis, Author at Gizmodo

Thanks to time travel, Hipster Companion did everything before it was cool

New companion Jenna-Louise Coleman hasn’t even been on an episode of Doctor Who yet, but she’s already a meme. That’s because she’s the Hipster Companion, on the cutting edge of everything in time and space. The Hipster Companion tumblr is the bespectacled brain child of the fabulous Jill Pantozzi and Chris George. There are only…

io9 Lauren Davis

Jaime Lannister vs. Cthulhu, written by George R.R. Martin

While the rest of us have been trying to figure out who will win the NCAA Championship, or what’s the worst scifi movie of all time, A Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin has been occupied with much weightier matters, like who would win in a fight between Jaime Lannister and the…

io9 Lauren Davis

Concept Art Writing Prompt: The Glamorous Astronaut

Will we still have fashion shoots in our spacefaring future? This week’s flash fiction challenge features an astronaut who looks more ready for the runway than liftoff. So why is she pairing a spacesuit with such dramatic eyeshadow? Come up with a short story and post it in the comments. This unlikely astronaut comes from…

io9 Lauren Davis

Adorable renditions of comics’ greatest tragedies

Who knew that death could be so cute? Tony Fleecs shrinks comic book heroes down to size, turning their most tragic moments into something weirdly adorable. I can’t decided if chibi Jason Todd and thumb-sucking Jubilee make these moments more or less disturbing. Tony Fleecs [deviantART via Geek-Art]

io9 Lauren Davis

This fantasy-themed bed and breakfast lets you sleep inside a Trojan bull

If you’d like to sleep inside a fairy tale (and not the parts where you’re being eaten by wolves or danced to death by enchanted shoes), you might want to pay a visit to La Balade des Gnomes, a quiet bed and breakfast where you can live out your fairy tale dreams, including one inside…

io9 Lauren Davis

The worst ways to screw up the Avengers movie

We have just a little more than a month before we see Joss Whedon’s big-screen vision for The Avengers, and while we’re hoping for the best, we’ve all seen some truly terrible interpretations of beloved superheroes. But what’s the worst that could happen? ItsJustSomeRandomGuy, of the fabulous “I’m a Marvel, I’m a DC” videos, created…

Movies Lauren Davis

Google Maps Quest View turns your commute into an RPG

I don’t know if Google Maps is gifting us with an early April Fool’s Day prank, but I hope Quest View sticks around. Click on the right-hand corner of your Google map to see your local landscape transformed into a pixelated video game map, complete with mountains and trees in the appropriate places. You even…

io9 Lauren Davis

A deaf girl leads a quest to right a spell gone wrong in the webcomic Runewriters

Magic can be a tricky thing at the best of times, but it’s even less predictable where demons are involved. Severian is a Runewriter, a magical shapeshifter who helps keep his city safe from demonic aberrants. But when an experimental spell taints his body with aberrant magic, Severian must rely on the one person he…

Books & Comics Lauren Davis

Hunger Games PSA posters remind you to spay and neuter your muttations

The Hunger Games is no stranger to propaganda, but the posters in Panem look a little different. After all, why would the Capitol tell you to stay in school or use your words when you can win bloody glory in the Arena? College Humor devised these parody posters (perhaps putting the “mock” in Mockingjay?), imagining…

io9 Lauren Davis

Here there be White Walkers in stylized Game of Thrones maps

We’ve seen tons of attempts to map the Song of Ice and Fire world, but J.E. Fullerton’s maps are an especially good fit for the medieval-inspired setting. His grand maps of Westeros and the regions beyond the Narrow Sea are filled with representative figures that capture the character of each part of George R.R. Martin’s…

io9 Lauren Davis

Eerily realistic monster sculptures wish you sweet and screaming dreams

You wouldn’t want to encounter Thomas Kuebler’s silicone sculptures in a dark museum hallway. His monsters and madmen, with their stretched skin and rotting teeth, look just a breath away from lurching to horrific life. A former toy and animatronics designer, Kuebler has turned to his personal passion: creating creeptacular characters, each with its own…

io9 Lauren Davis

Fashion designers sketch their own versions of Katniss’ fiery couture

For the citizens of the Capitol, the media love affair with Katniss Everdeen begins when she rolls in on that ceremonial chariot, a cape of fire blazing behind her. A crew of non-Panem fashion designers offers their interpretations on that crucial fashion choice. InStyle magazine asked a group of designers to come up with sketches…

io9 Lauren Davis

Batman and Bane will punch literacy into preschoolers’ brains

Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies have offered grim and mature take on the Dark Knight. But at least one set of The Dark Knight Rises tie-ins aren’t aimed at the older, violence-consuming crowd. Instead, they’re aimed at children who are just learning to read. A full month and a half before Nolan’s final bat-film hits the…

io9 Lauren Davis

Hong Kong engineers want to expand the city by building parts of it underground

While other cities grow by building out or up, Hong Kong is looking to increase its usable space by building down. An urban planning initiative is exploring the possibility of burying some of the city’s more unsightly facilities underground, freeing the above-ground land for future development. Hong Kong’s Civil Engineering and Development Department is currently…

io9 Lauren Davis

Tacocopter could be the unmanned future of food delivery

Is this the death knell of the delivery guy? A group of aspiring to start delivering tacos via unmanned drone straight to your feet. Unfortunately, the FAA isn’t so keen on the idea. Star Simpson (whom some of you may remember as the MIT student who accidentally triggered a bomb scare at Logan Airport in…

io9 Lauren Davis

Neil deGrasse Tyson admits it was creepy to discover he was a meme

Neil deGrasse Tyson isn’t famous just for his contributions to the field of astrophysics. His face is also plastered across countless rage comics as the “We’re dealing with a badass over here” guy. So how does Tyson feel about his memetic fame? In an interview on The Verge’s web talk show, On the Verge, Tyson…

io9 Lauren Davis

Storyboard comic predicts Michael Bay’s explosive Ninja Turtles cheese

Now that we know that Michael Bay is taking the “mutant” out of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, what other unpleasant surprises does he have in store for our reptilian martial artists? One storyboard artist has applied his predictive powers to imagine an alien turtles movie packed with faux hip-hop slang and, of course, explosions.…

io9 Lauren Davis

What if Roger Corman or Alfred Hitchcock directed The Hunger Games?

Gary Ross is getting rave reviews for his faithful adaptation of Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games, but what if a different director imposed his or her own peculiar vision on the dystopian murder competition? These movie posters imagine how Katniss and company would fare in the hands of some very different moviemakers. Darren Franich and…

io9 Lauren Davis

Watch the ocean currents turn the Earth into a living Van Gogh

Who knew that our ocean currents were constantly painting Van Gogh’s Starry Night across the planet? This visualization, created by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio, captures the surface currents that danced and twisted across Earth’s oceans from June 2005 through Decmeber 2007 while transporting heat and carbon through the waters. Perpetual Ocean…

io9 Lauren Davis

How will we get around in the post-apocalypse?

One of the irritating things about many post-apocalyptic movies in TV shows is that everyone drives everywhere, with little thought about alternative modes of transportation. But how will we get around after armageddon? We weigh the post-apocalyptic transit options. Top image by Dave Schmidt. Hopefully, down the line, we’d see groups of people teaming up…

io9 Lauren Davis

Lauren Davis

Thanks to time travel, Hipster Companion did everything before it was cool

Jaime Lannister vs. Cthulhu, written by George R.R. Martin

Concept Art Writing Prompt: The Glamorous Astronaut

Adorable renditions of comics’ greatest tragedies

This fantasy-themed bed and breakfast lets you sleep inside a Trojan bull

The worst ways to screw up the Avengers movie

Google Maps Quest View turns your commute into an RPG

A deaf girl leads a quest to right a spell gone wrong in the webcomic Runewriters

Hunger Games PSA posters remind you to spay and neuter your muttations

Here there be White Walkers in stylized Game of Thrones maps

Eerily realistic monster sculptures wish you sweet and screaming dreams

Fashion designers sketch their own versions of Katniss’ fiery couture

Batman and Bane will punch literacy into preschoolers’ brains

Hong Kong engineers want to expand the city by building parts of it underground

Tacocopter could be the unmanned future of food delivery

Neil deGrasse Tyson admits it was creepy to discover he was a meme

Storyboard comic predicts Michael Bay’s explosive Ninja Turtles cheese

What if Roger Corman or Alfred Hitchcock directed The Hunger Games?

Watch the ocean currents turn the Earth into a living Van Gogh

How will we get around in the post-apocalypse?

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