DTR: They’re still together!!! True love is real.

Although this list is usually reserved for fictional couples, the real-life courtship between Tsubasa and Shion on Japanese reality show Terrace House: Opening New Doors was easily the best, most life-affirming story line on television this year. To put it into context, I’ve spent more time thinking about Tsubasa and Shion’s happiness than I have my own. And their love story is truly epic. (Hollywood could never.) To recap:

Tsubasa is the captain of her local ice hockey team with dreams of one day going to the Olympics. She’s sweet and kind and has never really had a boyfriend because she’s kept her feelings guarded following her mother’s death. Meanwhile, Shion is a tall, half-American model with a runway fashion sense who seems aloof at first but is really just awkward. Shion eventually becomes enamored with Tsubasa’s talent on the ice and sunny disposition — because how can you not!!! — but he still had reservations about being in a Relationship with her. That is, until she took the train to Tokyo to buy him the perfect scarf for his birthday. In that exact moment, he falls in love with her, and spends the following weeks just trying to confess his feelings. When he finally asks her to be his girlfriend, and she shyly agrees, he says, “Thank you for being my girlfriend.” It’s so pure.

Tsubasa and Shion’s romance was unlikely at first, but that’s what made it so wonderfully endearing. Who doesn’t want a love like that?

An interplanetary visitor has arrived at asteroid Bennu.

On Monday, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft reached the relatively small asteroid after an over two-year journey through the solar system. The 1,600-foot diameter space rock, about the height of the Empire State Building, is of great interest to scientists as the lump of rubble and organic materials might provide a future fuel depot for deep space missions, and likely holds ancient clues about our solar system’s formation. 

Now that OSIRIS-REx — short for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer — has arrived at Bennu, the eight-foot-long spacecraft will spend more than a year and a half surveying the asteroid, in preparation to carefully descend to the ground and perform its ambitious, primary mission. 

In July 2020, NASA intends to send OSIRIS-REx to the surface of Bennu and gather 4.4 pounds of rock, put the rocks in a sturdy capsule, and then blast back to Earth. If all goes as planned, this asteroidal bounty will plummet down to the Utah desert in 2023. 

It would be the first-ever asteroid sample return by the U.S. 

Bennu is an attractive exploration site for quite a few reasons. For one, it’s close to Earth — as far as space goes, anyways. Every six years, Bennu passes within 185,911 miles of Earth.  

But because Bennu naturally spins through Earth’s space neighborhood, there’s a slight potential that Bennu will travel dangerously close to Earth in 2175 and 2195. “Bennu is one of the ones we are watching,” Dante Lauretta, the OSIRIS-REx principal investigator, said in August. 

Accordingly, NASA wants to know exactly what Bennu — and asteroids like it — are composed of, should future engineers have to use lasers or still-unknown technology to deflect the ominous space rock away from our planet.

Bennu may loom large in other futuristic ways, too. 

NASA scientists suspect Bennu might contain bounties of valuable resources that can be used for future deep space exploration. Specifically, Bennu holds clay deposits, and embedded in clay is water. This is significant because water is composed of hydrogen and oxygen, two necessary components for rocket fuel. In short, Bennu could be an extraterrestrial gas station for future endeavors into deeper space, places like Mars, and beyond. 

Although the OSIRIS-REx mission has futuristic potential, the mission — if fully successful — will shed critical light on Earth’s distant past, some four billion years ago. Bennu is believed to be a well-preserved, ancient asteroid, containing cosmic fragments older than our solar system. An asteroid like Bennu, which contains frozen water, may have brought water to Earth during an ancient collision — a collision that ultimately may have allowed life to flourish on our humble blue home. 

We tend to be drawn to stories where underdogs become heroes – this is true in the magical world of Tolkien, as it is in the Mortal Engines world of Philip Reeve that Peter Jackson and Philippa Boyens recently brought to the big screen. 

In the case of the real world, Jackson says the recent elections in America show signs of a generational change that give him hobbit-like hope for the future.

Mortal Engines will be hitting cinemas 8th Dec.

Image: Lucasfilm Ltd.

Columbia Sportswear is about to strike back with a fancy, new winter coat for Star Wars super-fans add to their holiday gift lists.

One year ago, the outdoor apparel company fired up all of Star Wars fandom with a line of winter coats inspired by Luke Skywalker’s, Princess Leia’s, and Han Solo’s Hoth costumes from Empire Strikes Back. They were gorgeous, pricey, and difficult to obtain. (I still covet that Han Solo one.)

In other words, a perfect gift item for collectors and super-fans, just in time for the holidays. Now, Columbia is back for a second Empire Strikes Back-inspired piece of outerwear. This one is much more of a deep cut, however.

On Friday, Dec. 7, the clothing brand will open up orders for the $500 “Empire Crew Parka,” a new jacket inspired by the ones worn by crewmembers on the Hoth set of Empire Strikes Back in 1979. It’s a more obviously Star Wars-branded jacket than the trio featured in 2017’s so-called “Columbia Echo Base” collection — named after the fictional outpost where Rebel forces took refuge on Hoth — but it captures a similar sense of style.

Take a look for yourself.

For comparison, scroll down for a video from Columbia Sportswear featuring clips from the 1979 Hoth set. You can see the original crew jacket in action here and note the similarities.

(Note that the original crew jackets from the Hoth set are rare and don’t go up for sale too often. One sold at auction in 2017 for close to $8,000.)

A Feb. 2017 post on StarWars.com called the actual crew jacket a “grail among grails for crew collectors,” thanks in large part to the fact that each piece of outerwear was custom-made for the Empire Strikes Back crew. 

The crew for Empire filmed during heavy blizzard conditions. To prepare all the crew members for the harsh filming conditions, each person was issued a custom snowsuit which consisted of a blue parka with hood, matching pants, boots, two sets of socks, long underwear, mittens, a thin balaclava, a knitted balaclava/cap, and ski goggles. The entire outfit is color coordinated in matching blue. 

The post goes on to note that the knitted cap and parka specifically were customized to be Star Wars-themed. Only a few dozen were ever made, and — because they were functional outerwear more than they were movie memorabilia — efforts to preserve them were minimal.

Columbia Sportswear’s new unisex replica is a near-spitting image of the original design, right down to the patch placement. The jacket features a detachable (and adjustable) hood, a waterproof outer layer, and is thick enough to keep you warm in the midst of Hoth-like weather conditions.

This is very much a “while supplies last” kind of release, and if 2017’s Echo Base collection is any indication, these jackets will sell out and become collector’s items in their own right relatively quickly.

Orders for the Empire Crew Jacket open on Dec. 7 at 12:01 a.m. ET . The jacket will also be available at select “Columbia-branded retail locations” in the U.S., Canada, Europe, China, Hong Kong, Japan and Korea. 

“I’m the luckiest guy on planet Earth,” the 20-year-old said, in between making the #MendesArmy contingent of the crowd go wild for “In My Blood,” “Treat You Better,” and more hits. The falsetto-flaunting “Lost in Japan” was a highlight, as was his cover of Kings of Leon’s “Use Somebody,” but the real treat came when he brought Khalid out for a rare live duet of their moving collab, “Youth.”

Troye Sivan‘s music career has been quickly heating up, with the artist clocking the release of his second album, Bloom, headlining a tour, releasing collabs with Ariana Grande and Charli XCX, and recording a Queen cover this year alone. But one thing convinced him to (briefly) hit pause on that passion to return to another: Boy Erased.

Sivan had been “waiting for the film that ticked all of the boxes,” he told The Hollywood Reporter, and upon reading the script about surviving gay conversion therapy, “it was immediately clear to me that this was the thing that I wanted to do.”

In the movie, Sivan plays Gary, who befriends main character Jared (Lucas Hedges) when they join the same conversion program. The story sparked memories from his own coming-out and inspired him to audition. “[That] was my worst nightmare before I came out, that my parents were not going to accept me and they’d want to fix me,” Sivan said. “Many people are not as lucky as I’ve been in regard to family and friends being supportive, so any opportunity I can get to help change that, I’ll jump at it.”

For Sivan, knowing that these programs are still legal in most of the country and seeing the LGBTQ community’s rights constantly in question has only added to the urgency of the film. Fortunately, he’s already felt the positive impact the movie has made. “We’re hearing people’s stories and hearing people sharing their past [experiences] with conversion therapy or if they’re in a tough spot with their family,” he said. “The movie is serving a purpose in real life.”

For a project he felt this passionately about, Sivan wanted to contribute as much as possible, so he “pushed, and pushed, and pushed” to write an original song for the film, he previously told MTV News correspondent Josh Horowitz. “Basically, from day one on the set I was, like, on this campaign in my head to get some music in the movie.”

Without any official go-ahead, the “My, My, My” hitmaker started sending songs to director Joel Edgerton and inviting himself to music meetings until eventually, his beautifully haunting ballad with Jónsi, “Revelation,” was born.

Watch Sivan talk about the song below.

Travis Scott turned his Astroworld Tour stage into a raucous roller coaster ride this year, and now he’s putting his full theme park on display in the new video for “Yosemite.”

The Nabil-directed vid finds Travis and Gunna rapping from aboard a private jet while a kid (possibly a younger version of La Flame) falls from the sky and lands in a thick, mystical jungle. As he begins to explore his supernatural surroundings, the kid stumbles upon a giant stone Travis head and proceeds through the mouth, only to find a run-down amusement park like the one that gave Trav’s album its name.

Nav is noticeably absent from the visual, but Travis, Gunna, and the pint-sized explorer give you to plenty to look at. Check it out below.

The laid-back “Yosemite” is the latest single from Travis’s chart-topping Astroworld album. It arrives the same week as the Houston MC’s sold-out, two-night run at Madison Square Garden, as well as Skrillex’s dizzying remix of the Drake-featuring “Sicko Mode.” The Astroworld ride, it seems, is far from over.

Image: Kevin Winter / getty

Ariana Grande has another accomplishment to add to her ever-growing list: breaking YouTube. 

The pop singer dropped the much anticipated music video for her hit song “thank you, next” on Nov. 30, and in the process managed to overload the online video platform. Well, her devoted and passionate fanbase did, anyway. 

That’s right, according to YouTube, the service was unable to handle the barrage of comments on the video after it went live — prompting someone at YouTube to compare “thank you, next” to another famous internet moment. 

“the thank u, next video was so good, it broke the internet (or at least delayed YouTube comments from posting for a bit),” read a tweet from Team YouTube. 

It appears that the “thank you, next” video, which at the time of this writing has over 9 million views on YouTube, pulled in so manny commenters that YouTube couldn’t keep up with them all. 

But don’t worry: Your opinion can still be read, just a little bit later than it typically would.  

“Comments are still working on the video,” YouTube reassured us all in the same tweet, “they’re just delayed!”

Which, frankly, is maybe a bad thing. After all, Ariana Grande managing to finally free us from the tyranny of the YouTube comments section would be yet another remarkable accomplishment to add to that aforementioned list. 

Oh well, there’s always next time. 

Get in, loser! Ariana Grande‘s much-hyped “Thank U, Next” video is finally here, and it’s everything you dreamed it’d be.

As previously teased, Ari took cues from four iconic early-2000s rom-coms (most ambitious crossover event in history?!): Mean Girls, Legally Blonde, Bring It On, and 13 Going On 30. The Sweetener singer channels Regina George first, flipping through her own “Burn Book” with pics of her exes (the Pete Davidson page, it must be noted, has “i love u always” and “sry i dipped” written on it, as well as the possibly BDE-referencing “HUUUUUGE”). Ariana and her real-life BFFs then channel the Plastics with their own “Jingle Bell Rock” dance, complete with a Kris Jenner cameo as the camera-wielding, pink sweatsuit-wearing Mrs. George.

From there, Ari recreates the tooth-brushing scene from Bring It On with Victorious co-star Matt Bennett, plays with her own dollhouse à la Jenna Rink in 13 Going on 30, then storms Harvard with Toulouse in tow for a Legally Blonde-style finale that proves “Thank U, Next” and “bend and snap” go hand-in-hand. Other notable cameos include Jennifer Coolidge (Legally Blonde‘s Paulette), Jonathan Bennett (Mean Girls‘s Aaron Samuels), and Troye Sivan. See it all in the video below.

Ariana’s fetch new video arrives during a huge week for her — she premiered a new docu-series, Dangerous Woman Diaries, on Thursday, and she still has the No. 1 song in the country with “Thank U, Next,” as “Breathin” continues to climb the charts. What, like it’s hard?!