#(the gunslinger has had like 8 and will certainly have more...)

[six-improbable-things]

Oh, and of course I have to mention the funniest room on the ship:

A tiny room at the bow that is just for the party's (and thus ship's) cat, complete with a tiny hammock, pillows galore, and the fanciest bowls on the whole ship.

The Tide Breaker (detail)

aka, More ship map shenanigans... I think this one might be the best one yet.

Pic 1: The captain's quarters, located under the quarterdeck. (Decorated for Zara Fairweather, but will belong to Rook when we actually play on this ship.) Pic 2: The armory and infirmary, located at the aft of the ship on the middle deck. Pic 3: The main hold, located on the lowest deck. (are you proud of me?? I finally decorated a hold!!!)

[ashcroft-writes]

20 questions for fic writers

I was tagged by @bluedaddysgirl! Thank you; this fits well into my master plan of attempting to be more alive online hahaha @unmarked-credits @xinambercladx @sinisterexaggerator Not obligated to do this, I'm just trying to be social and thought it may be fun!

1. How many works do you have on AO3? 5 🥹 I am baby compared to some people I see answering these

2. What's your total A03 word count? 512943 words!

3. What fandoms do you write for? Actively, right this second, Star Wars! I do have a huge Fallout 4 WIP that hasn’t been updated in a hot second, but I love it dearly and do wish to finish it one day.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

The Idiot’s Array

Rot, Dust, and Steel

Strong Hands

Homeworld Elegy

We can pretend this last one doesn’t exist lolololol (It’s the .hack Penguin Fic of DOOM, a reposting of my very first fic from the twee LULZ SO RANDOM era of my high school days. I like to have my history all together, and I own it, but goodness no one should read that.)

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not? Oh I desperately wish I still was. I used to, every last one, and I still read and treasure all the ones I do receive. Over the last couple years, my life kept getting quite… upended, however… and I my well of communication energy just… died… and this is also partially because I find it physically impossible to just say “wow thank u <3” in a few seconds; I usually get really into it! Still, the kindness and joy folks have left for me has been so deeply appreciated and cherished. I can’t help but want to go back and respond eventually (“Hi! I know this was left like, two years ago, but you pretty much gave me the gift of sunshine then, sorry this is so late <3”) Hopefully it won’t be weird.

(If you’re reading this and you are, in fact one of those whose delightful comment I have not responded to, hi, I see you, and thank you so much for the gift of sunshine)

6. What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? Ooo. So though my stories definitely contain some angst, they usually end in very hopeful ways. Even the one about the collective grief for a destroyed planet 😆 Especially that one!! The future yet contains light! So perhaps the answer’s actually in a story that I never finished and isn’t available anymore.

I had this series I was writing when I was a lot younger set in Sonic the Hedgehog. It has this character who had been a villain switching sides and helping the Sonic group win their fight, and thusly secure his own pardon and freedom, a redemption sort of story. And it ended pretty sunshine and roses for most! But for the POV character, he never really would belong among the victors. They gave him a ship and his freedom in payment, and he took it and left for a world he didn’t know, off to try and find some new life on horizons where he would be either at best a stranger, and at worst hated for what he’d done in the past. I suppose there is still some hope in all that! New chances, new beginnings. Like I said, I’m a hopeful writer. But it was the most uncertain and melancholy of the lot, for sure.

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? HA, almost certainly The Idiot’s Array; there’s a frickin’ romantic poem, a hopeful promise to see each other again, healing and reconciliation, and a man who flings himself out of the window dramatically in lieu of saying goodbye. What more could you want, I ask you.

8. Do you get hate on fics? Fortunately, no!

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? Sure have! The Gunslinger’s Paean series has been my first public work with a couple hot and heavy sort of scenes, mostly because at the time I was dying to write Cad Bane, who is an extremely blunt and direct character, told initially from the POV of someone bringing what he feels are shameful parts of himself into the light. Thematically, it just didn’t feel the sort of story in which smut should be anything less than on the page in every last detail where it had to be unpacked. I guess you could say they were the sort of scenes meant to reveal the changes in the characters because smut scenes are vulnerable scenes.

But judging how I’m talking about it, you might detect I’m running some obscure ace algorithm in my internal software that demands a very particular ratio of what it deems smut too unprompted 😆 AND THAT WOULD BE RIGHT AHHHH. I don’t write a lot of pwp, though I’m known to partake (and I hope this even answers the question lmao)

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written? Not really my thing, but it sure is a valid lifestyle!

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen? Not to my knowledge, unless you count the LLM-training data scraping of Ao3, which I suppose doesn’t precisely qualify as theft in the classical sense 😅 I do wonder if a shard of my characterizations will some day jump out at people using those chatbots. Weird to think about.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? Nope

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? I have not. I think I’d like to try some day, however, if I vibed with someone hard enough on an idea!

14. What's your all-time favourite ship? Hilariously, I don’t even write for this fandom I'm about to name. I HAVE NOT READ A SINGLE FIC AND THE FANART ARRIVES ON MY DASH WITH NO ACTIVE SEEKING. But Good Omens really went off with Crowley/Aziraphale! Gives me SO many warm fuzzies. What a great queer yearning story.

And I know, I know, that’s weird, someone probably expected me to say something I read/write for at the very least, but the character ships I adore exploring creatively genuinely exist on such a different brain circuit for me than the “fave ship I cheer for like a sports team” heh, though they are in no way lesser.

15. What's the WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? You know that Sonic the Hedgehog series I mentioned earlier? That. My remaining mojo-energy in the Sonic-verse is just not powerful enough to overcome the inertia of revisiting something YEARS AND YEARS gone, and I have too many works other works open and waiting, but I’ll always look on that unfinished beast with affection. Yes that means all other stories I haven’t updated in a long time I still intend to finish 🥺 Please don’t throw rocks 🥺

16. What are your writing strengths? I’ve been told it’s my worldbuilding and characterization! And boy howdy do I love doing those things, so I’m really happy I’m doing it well!

17. What are your writing weaknesses? I get real maudlin sometimes in my early drafts! A LOT of characters on my pages work through a complex array of feelings and internal monologues before I can wrest a moving story from their emotional morass. You would not believe how much I tone down in editing. And oh god I write a lot of words. Somehow my chapters are now often 9-12k words and I just can’t stop myself; they feel complete when they’re complete 😭

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic? I dislike it usually, because in my work I’m often trying to immerse my (sometimes monolingual) reader in the headspace of another person… and if that’s the case, and my character runs into someone speaking a different language than the story's overall text, there’s usually three outcomes:

The POV character understands the other language fully. In that case, the reader should likewise feel the understanding is effortless, or they might get jarred out of the flow of words and character headspace. So I just write the translation of the words, i.e.

“I really wish I had a pet raccoon,” said Talky McTalkerson in soft-spoken French.

The POV character does not understand the other language at all. In that case, why would they mentally be able to give us a perfect transcription of the foreign words for readers? In that case, the character experience really is:

The man was saying something in a bashful sort of French—at least I think it was French. But I didn’t understand.

The POV character partially understands the other language. In that case, the translation struggle might even be part of the reader experience, and remains immersive, i.e.

“I really wish I had a…” Talky McTalkerson was saying in his quiet French, my poor student-learner brain straining to pick apart the mumbled crumbs. Something about… laveur? Washing? “I really wish I had a new washer too,” I tried in solidarity, and he looked at me as if I was an idiot.

(Note, I do not speak French and picked it out of a hat for examples <3)

Anyway, I think some exceptions can be made for words that don’t have precise translations! I like to do that with some of my alien language stuff if talking about the words deepens some understanding about the culture and people who speak them.

19. First fandom you wrote for? Pokemon, when I was a wee sprout in elementary school. It was never published lol but it was so incredibly dramatic and terrible. And it rocked

20. Favourite fic you've ever written? I will never get over Homeworld Elegy. It gets a little less attention than its predecessor—ah, such is the fate of all sequels, especially when it's not quite the same sort of story! But it means just as much to me. I don’t know how I pulled it out of my brain in six months, though I think I was processing a lot at the time, and looking back at the themes, hoo, it makes sense. I’ve never written something quite that complex before, the multiple POVs, all the wholesale alien culture invention, the making use of a past and present timeline, and the endless little circles connecting the two right up until the end. That and bringing in a stable of OCs and hoping people would like them… and I think it all worked even better than I’d hoped. I had no idea if I could stick the landing writing it, but I’m so proud of how it turned out and the things it’s inspired in some of my readers since.

Here’s hoping the next thing I publish will continue the trend of being my new favorite thing!! I’m really excited about literally everything I’m working on!!!

[tiefling-queer]

For D&D character ask, for any and/or all of your characters;

1, 5, 8, 15, 23, 29, 64, 65, 69(Nice)

i’m gonna answer these for whichever characters have the most interesting answers, skipping some for repeats:

1. why did they choose their class(es)? their subclass(es)?

kip (wizard, school of necromancy): crisis of faith midway through grave cleric training, spurred on by him sucking at the whole cleric thing (9 wisdom babyyy) while also being a nerd (18 int babyyyy)

baylock (shadow sorcerer/rogue): the sorcerer part is a side effect from being born dead during a cataclysmic event that tore portions of the material plane asunder. the rogue part is because he got in with a bad crowd as a kid. he’s been gaining levels in sorcerer as he traverses the freaky magic wasteland, utilizes his magic more, and gets a little closer to death each time someone hits his squishy arcane caster frame too hard

izak (gunslinger, graveslinger): sometimes you’re a jaded teen-equivalent runaway bumming around the river kingdoms and some dude comes up to you and is like ‘im a neutral evil mercenary, but if you take this gun and learn to shoot, i can also be your dad’. and then later you’re a 20-something equivalent who just realized that you don’t actually want to be an evil mercenary so you run away again and this time some dude comes up to you and is like ‘i’m a priest of sarenrae and an exorcist, and if you believe you can be redeemed, i can also be your dad.’ and then you learn how to shoot ghosts so you can be useful while this guy teaches you about being a better person.

5. do they follow a higher power? what are their thoughts on divinity?

izak: (deep lore dump) izak’s family was, at one point, pious people, and it was some ancestor’s warped perception of what piousness is and what was worth sacrificing in the name of good that led to the entire mess that is izak’s face. izak’s a devout worshiper of sarenrae now and hopes to maybe be the assistance someone needs to put themselves on a better path the way brak was for him, but there’s still a part of him that believes that, because he’s a tiefling, he’s never going to really be saved, and that his soul will eventually belong to the asura it was promised to.

8. what are three songs that suit them?

sydel: buckets of blood by rufus rex (tw for self harm, link goes to spotify because i can’t find this track on its own on youtube), thank god that i’m not you by himalayas, and bruises by fox stevenson (full playlist here)

15. do they trust their party? why or why not?

kip: he trusts them with his life, he just doesn’t trust them to understand where he’s coming from. he’s hiding some really heretical opinions that he knows at least maya (the celestial warlock) won’t agree with. he doesn’t like to talk about his family trauma, his past, or anything that he thinks the party can use to cleverly deduce that the notes he’s been scribbling are about raising the dead and theoretical conduits, prices, and replacements for the soul (he’s a little paranoid and might be giving them more credit than they deserve)

baylock: baylock might trust morgran, but he doesn’t trust surina at all, not since she and the (presumed deceased) swashbuckler tried to use him as a scapegoat when they were being interrogated by evil government warlocks. and even then, he only trusts morgran to not leave him for dead. baylock’s a fiercely loyal person by nature, so he’s been trying to keep his party at arms length so he won’t be betrayed again. the closest he came to starting to trust them was right before he found out that they told the evil government warlock that they’d turn him in in exchange for their freedom when they were captured a while back (whether or not they actually intended to do so is irrelevant for baylock - he spent 5 years in prison after being his old thieve’s guild’s fall guy, he’s not about to let it happen again)

23. how do they feel about nicknames, titles, or labels that have been given to them? how do they feel about their name?

kip: kip’s given name is joffric ravenhall. he’s been going by the alias of ‘greenbough’ on the offchance that people have heard of his family or knew his father at some point, since he really doesn’t want to explain why he’s not a priest of the raven queen by now. ‘kip’, however, is what his family and friends call him, so it was a bit of a big deal to him when he told the party to call him kip, since he hadn’t been around anyone he considered family or friend in a few years. kip’s reeling a little bit over suddenly being called an ‘adverturer type’ - to him, he’s still just a transient weirdo who picks up odd jobs.

baylock: baylock craft’s name isn’t actually baylock craft (not yet anyway lol), he stole his late cellmate’s identity to take advantage of the jailbreak that came a few days too late. his name, ekleipsis caldor, isn’t exactly something he identifies with so much as what he was once called. his father never wanted him but got stuck with him when his mother bounced, so ‘caldor’ is more a formality than anything. ‘ekleipsis’ is the greek root of ‘eclipse’, for the eclipse he was born during - but moreso, ‘ekleipsis’ doesn’t mean ‘to be covered’ - it means ‘a disappearance or abandonment’. an event where the sun abandons the sky. baylock is a walking abandonment issue. he hasn’t taken a virtue name because he thinks it’s performative (which is where him officially taking the name ‘baylock craft’ as his name and not the identity of someone he’s pretending to be comes in - it’s the equivalent of naming himself for the virtue of rebellion without naming himself something stupid and embarrassing like ‘rebel’.)

izak: izak just got done being haunted by a ghost wizard who’s obsessed with names, probably because he’s had 4. izak was born dalethiel oakleaf back when he was an elf, but when he ran away after waking up as a tiefling he went by dally. then he was a mercenary for a while and his edgy mercenary name was viper. and then, when asked for his name by the cleric of sarenrae who rescued him in the wilderness, he said he didn’t have one worth giving, so the cleric told him he’d just call him izak then. that’s who izak is now, as far as he’s concerned, or at least who he wants to be. as he told the ghost wizard who tried to torment him with his birth name, that’s not his name anymore. dalethiel oakleaf was a young elf who died on his 50th birthday. izak’s got a perfectly good name, given to him by a kind man, and he doesn’t want to think about the time in his life he went by dally or viper.

karif: karif always introduces himself formally with his full name, in the family-given-familiar name pattern - ‘ixenvari karifgethisk fraurirthos, er, but you can just call me karif.’ this is because karif’s nickname, fraurirthos, the one his childhood friends and family call him, translates from draconic literally to ‘breathes secrets’. his nickname is snitch. he’s a little embarrassed about it. but ‘karifgethisk’ is a bit of a mouthful for those who don’t speak draconic, so shortening it to ‘karif’ suits fine.

29. who would they save? who would they be saved by? 

this has been a tough one, i’m not sure how to answer it for anyone.

64. do they value mercy or justice more?

kip: this honestly depends on his mood and your definitions of both ‘mercy’ and ‘justice’. he’s very easily led away by his emotions - both pity and compassion that could sway him to lean more towards mercy, and rage that tends to harden his heart and clear his head. he’s more than down to torture someone if he deems them evil, and he’ll destroy creatures like aberrations, fiends, and undead without a second thought, but he views life as a very precious thing - even when torturing an evil demon-summoning spellcaster, he still was trying to find ways out that resulted in that spellcaster getting out alive. this has come back to bite the party in the ass, since it was kip’s insistance that the party not kill all the guards on their little anarchy stunt that got them blackmailed to infiltrate the evil army of darkness, which is something he most certainly DOES NOT want to do.

65. what is holding them back?

kip: kip’s hang-ups about the soul and how he was raised are holding him back from becoming a stronger necromancer, while his grief and refusal to accept mortality hold him back from possibly still being some flavor of raven queen follower.

baylock: baylock’s hesitance and confusion over what he wants are holding him back from either fully embracing the rebellion or ditching it to get vengence

izak: izak’s self-loathing and fear of himself hold him back from interacting with people and forming meaningful relationships outside of the handful of people who’ve found out he’s a tiefling.

69 (nice): how would they describe their party members?

kip:

maya is... complicated. kip admires her pragmatism and her faith - it reminds him of his older sister, and he’s been missing that rock in his life. however, he butts heads with her a lot, because he finds her cold duty-bound outlook to be pointlessly cruel.

meera is wicked smart and talented, if a little misguided at times. he’s very big brother protective of her, always trying to offer her his dagger because ‘it’s a nice dagger’ (it’s +1)

amity is a good kid, and smarter than some may give him credit for. he’s fun to be around, and usually a level-headed presence, which makes it even more surprising just how ok he is with killing.

baylock:

morgran is an asshole, but is also probably the only person in the group who believes in this whole rebellion thing, so that counts for something. he’s decent people, can probably be trusted to see a mission through and not do anything completely stupid, but since he’s decent people he’s probably going to insist on staying on this path of lunacy with delusions of ‘taking down the Summit’. also, morgran shouldn’t be allowed to talk to anyone they meet, because he’s an asshole, and doesn’t bother pretending to be personable like baylock does.

surina is insane. she’s deranged, like everyone who tries to live outside the sanctums is. also just racist at times. when their cover gets blown or when they get mixed up with people they should be talking down, she’s gonna be the reason they all get killed.

porthos is was an idiot and a liability and just proved him right by running off and doing something rash and probably getting himself killed and also maybe compromising the whole rebellion which baylock doesn’t care about, so why does he feel like he should have done more to stop Porthos’ demise?

[reddus-sideblog]

Pathfinder Update Part 1

sorry about how stream of consciousness these are, and how I tend to write most of this with a focus on Tisiphone. She’s my character, and my little window into the world, so I’m sorry for not focusing too much on anyone else. Alright, story’s beneath the cut

So, after killing that necromancer asshole the group fled out of Freecliff, fleeing down Southwards towards the Velakan wall (the one that cuts the Northern part of Velakor off from the Southerlands). When they arrived the gate was closed, and a whole mess of people wanting to pass through have made something of a tent city opposite the Velakan Customs Bureau building. Tisiphone unlatched the horses to go let Tood and Threed graze and have some water from the river that ran outside the great wall (this thing was a true macro-structure, spanning the valley between two mountains).

Valka went to the customs house to see if he could get passage through the wall, and, despite lying about being some Pragian’s property, we had no luck. He did, however, manage to take some papers from the customs officer’s desk. He took the papers back to Tisiphone, and they put their heads together to look it over, and, it turns out he’d snagged some records on Pragian dragon-riders coming and going. And so, Kii came up with a terrible, hare-brained scheme: we chase down one of these dragon-riders and bully, buy, barter, or steal some way through the Velakan wall from him.

Last anyone had seen, the last dragon that had headed out from Velakor had headed out West along the foothills of the Southerlands side of the mountains, and on the manifest the last dragon-rider that had headed out was “Jodd the Butcher”, so obviously only good times were ahead. We headed towards Hollow Point, a town along the way, which would make a good point wherein to reorient ourselves and continue chasing this Jodd.

On our last night before reaching Hollow Point we camped at a clearing that had a shrine in it. We investigated the shrine and it was most certainly belonging to some horrific, evil deity with multiple rotted, ritually sacrificed bodies heaped there within. Now, no one in the group is particularly religious, but but, well, resting by this place seemed like the only option, so...we burned it down... (Valka looted a golden coin from a corpse, even. And Tisiphone remembered enough of the teachings from Meg and the church of Sarenrae to know that this was something that could not be allowed to stand). So it got burned down and we slept safely through the night (which honestly was more so safe from Nik’s ranger abilities).

The morning came, the evil deity’s shrine was mostly just a burned out husk. And after we had breakfast, and were packing up to head to Hollow Point a party of well armed men, about 8 or 10 of them, approached us in a semi-circle/crescent formation...which was not great. The group’s leader, a man on a horse, dismounted the horse and approached the lot of us, staring down Tisiphone the whole while.

He introduced himself as Marshal Brewer, and said “Tisiphone Eriny! You killed my two boys!” Tisi replied, without missing a beat “That was ruled manslaughter, ya ain’t got nothin’ on me!” and the Marshall replied “Well I’m sure this’ll be ruled manslaughter too!”

Valka had some hesitation, “He’s a lawman, sh-should we really be trying to kill him?!” Tisi replied, again without hesitation “Yeah, send him to see his sons, he’ll be plenty grateful”.

And so a pretty nasty fight ensued, during which Valka hopped through the Twin Orb to the alchemy shop’s office and got Schwartz and the two knights he has working for him to reload his gun, and to get the blunderbuss from the office, and to get the knights to follow him back through to aid us in the fight. The fight was a complete mess, Kii and Nik were ripping people apart, Tisi wasn’t having great luck (though she did kill a much younger gunslinger, even after warning him off). The other hired thugs got Nik confused for Tisiphone, as their leader had told them to “use fire bullets on the monster, as its weak against them” meaning Tisiphone and her general fear of flames. Unfortunately for them, Nik, as a tiefling, is largely immune to fire, so he basically laughed them off. Kii did some really cool attack where she turned into lightning and leaped across the battlefield, zapping enemies as she passed through them. Also one of the sorcerers summoned a FUCKING TRICERATOPS which was nuts, and thankfully it was unsummoned when the sorcerer was slain.

At the end of it, everyone was not too well off, Tisiphone was at half health, Kii had been knocked down, and I think Valka and Nik were mostly OK, I think? We were beat up, but the Marshall was dead, and so were the rest of them. The group looted them then tossed their bodies into the burning ashes of the shrine, though before that, Valka stole the Marshall’s clothes and used a potion to assume his identity before we rode into town.

That ends the previous session recap.

[theyearoftheking]

Book Fifty-Nine: Duma Key

Have you forgotten what we were like then

when we were still first rate

and the day came fast with an apple in its mouth

it’s no use worrying about Time

but we did have a few tricks up our sleeves

and turned some sharp corners

the whole pasture looked like our meal

we didn’t need speedometers 

we could manage cocktails out of ice and water

I wouldn’t want to be faster 

or greener than now if you were with me O you

were the best of all my days...

Duma Key was one of the best books I could have picked up right around spooooky season. I knew very little about it, and it was a well-written, suspenseful ghost story.

Edgar Freemantle survives a horrific accident that involves a crane crashing on his car. In the aftermath of the accident, he lost his right arm, his marriage, his successful business, and his house. It sounds like a bad country song. 

Edgar decides to deuce out of Minnesota (wise choice, friend. The Vikings are an embarrassment this season); and rents a vacation home in Duma Key, Florida. Edgar stays in a house he dubs “Big Pink” and starts feverishly painting. Big Pink definetely has some creepy vibes, and the sound of the ocean rushing over the shells underneath the house certainly doesn’t help. Edgar finds things washed up on the beach during his morning walks, and incorporates them into his paintings. As his body continues to heal from the accident, his walks get longer, and eventually he meets Wireman, the caretaker of the eccentric Elizabeth Eastlake. 

Kids. When someone is rich and crazy, they’re referred to as “eccentric”. When they’re poor and crazy, they’re just, well, crazy. #themoreyouknow

Edgar and Wireman take to each other right away, and Edgar learns more about Big Pink, and Elizabeth. Big Pink had been used in the past as an artist’s retreat; Elizabeth was a patron of the arts, and wanted to inspire local artists. Elizabeth herself is in a bit of decline: she’s dealing with Alzheimer's, and swings between blinding lucidity, and silent unknowing. It breaks Wireman’s heart. There’s a lot of mystery surrounding Elizabeth’s family, including the death of her sisters and father. But, when she’s lucid, she’s the sweetest lady ever.

In between hanging out at the Eastlake estate, Edgar continues painting. His daughter Ilse comes for a visit, and is impressed by her dad’s talent. They try to take a drive around the island, but Ilse becomes violently sick. Edgar later gets a strange message on his answering machine from Elizabeth, informing him the island is not a place for daughters. After Ilse’s departure, Edgar paints a foreboding picture, including a woman in a red cape. He’s not sure what it means, but he’s worried about Ilse. 

Edgar then discovers his paintings have power... there’s a long stretch that includes a killer named Candy Brown, and Edgar giving Wireman his failing vision back again. Also, he has a vision of his ex-wife, Pam with a new rose tattoo (on her boob! So scandalous!), sleeping with one of his friends, Tom Riley, and Tom’s increasingly suicidal thoughts. He calls Pam to warn her, she of course behaves like an ex-wife, but then later finds out Tom does in fact need his meds adjusted. Edgar for the win!! Save? Win? Either way.  Edgar remembers before his accident he liked sketching, but he never remembers being this good, or this powerful. Everyone is amazed by this talent, and they encourage him to show his paintings at a local gallery.

This my friend is the halcyon part of the book... Edgar shows his work at a gallery, all his friends come on a Gulfstream jet from Minnesota to see his work, they are proud of the physical recovery he’s made, and the talent he’s been hiding from everyone. The paintings all sell out, and even Elizabeth Eastlake is lucid enough to have Wireman bring her to the show. She looks at the paintings and tells Edgar what he already knows: he can’t sell those paintings. Bad things will happen to whomever owns them. There’s a curse at work. And then Elizabeth has a seizure and dies; which could perhaps be the most dramatic end to an art gallery exhibition ever. 

But the curse, y’all. Thankfully not all the paintings had been framed and shipped out yet... but the ones that have? Not good. Tom Riley drives off the road on his way to kill Pam. Ilse is drowned in the bathtub by an art critic. Edgar needs to release the spirit that is killing his friends and family. 

So, Edgar, Wireman, and Jack (the island errand boy) head over to the original Eastlake mansion (you know, where Ilse got so sick) to release a demon from a bottle, and capture her in a flashlight. Yep, you read that correctly. 

Even though I’m skimming over the end of the book, I’m doing it on purpose. This is truly some of Steve’s strongest writing. He captures a strong gothic vibe and runs with it. In a rare show of restraint, I’m not going to describe the last quarter of the book, and I’m going to encourage readers to pick it up, and fall head-first into the story. It’s part Bag of Bones, part Rebecca, and part awesomely spooky. It’s so damn good. Duma Key is hands-down one of the best Steve books I’ve read in a long time, and my timing was perfect. 

There were two Wisconsin references: a mention of Eau Claire, and the Packers. Woot! 

Also, there was one Dark Tower mention... at one point Edgar thinks how, “life is a wheel.” It’s ka, bro... ka is a wheel. 

Total Wisconsin Mentions: 40

Total Dark Tower References: 55

Book Grade: A-

Rebecca’s Definitive Ranking of Stephen King Books

The Talisman: A+

Wizard and Glass: A+

Needful Things: A+

On Writing: A+

The Green Mile: A+

Hearts in Atlantis: A+

Rose Madder: A+

Misery: A+

Different Seasons: A+

It: A+

Four Past Midnight: A+

The Shining: A-

The Stand: A-

Bag of Bones: A-

Duma Key: A-

Black House: A-

The Wastelands: A-

The Drawing of the Three: A-

The Dark Tower: A-

Dolores Claiborne: A-

Nightmares in the Sky: B+

The Dark Half: B+

Skeleton Crew: B+

The Dead Zone: B+

Nightmares & Dreamscapes: B+

Wolves of the Calla: B+

‘Salem’s Lot: B+

Song of Susannah: B+

Carrie: B+

Creepshow: B+

From a Buick 8: B

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon: B

The Colorado Kid: B-

Storm of the Century: B-

Everything’s Eventual: B-

Cycle of the Werewolf: B-

Danse Macabre: B-

The Running Man: C+

Cell: C+

Thinner: C+

Dark Visions: C+

The Eyes of the Dragon: C+

The Long Walk: C+

The Gunslinger: C+

Pet Sematary: C+

Firestarter: C+

Rage: C

Desperation: C-

Insomnia: C-

Cujo: C-

Nightshift: C-

Faithful: D

Gerald’s Game: D

Roadwork: D

Lisey’s Story: D

Christine: D

Dreamcatcher: D

The Regulators: D

The Tommyknockers: D

Next up is Stephen King Goes to the Movies; where he breaks down five of his favorite stories adapted into movies. I hope everyone has a safe, healthy Halloween weekend! Enjoy the last bit of spooooky season, y’all!

Until next time, Long Days & Pleasant Nights, Rebecca 

[shiru-ka-yo-archived]

GETTING  TO  KNOW  THE  MUN:

NAME :  Samantha NICKNAME :   Sam, Sammi FACECLAIM :   For myself? Nope. PRONOUNS :   She/Her HEIGHT :   5′4″ BIRTHDAY :   October 8 AESTHETIC :   Hm... Probably dark colors, earthy tones, and rainy days with a bit of overcast. LAST  SONG  YOU  LISTENED  TO :  You Give Love a Bad Name - Bon Jovi FAVOURITE  MUSE YOU’VE  WRITTEN :   Um... I really can’t choose, especially when my two faves are the ones that I currently have blogs for (Hanzo and Soldier:76). But, if I had to choose someone else, it’d probably be... D.Va or McCree.

GETTING  TO  KNOW  THE  ACCOUNT :

WHAT  INSPIRED  YOU  TO  TAKE  ON  THIS  MUSE :   Ok, so, me taking up Hanzo essentially all started when my friend, after the both of us kept hopping from server to server together, finally took up McCree since McCree was usually always taken. And, with it being a new server, it was first come, first serve. But, at first, I was like “Maybe my friend doesn’t want to do the one ship that we both really, really like” because reasons, though they were dumb reasons. But, after I told her what I wanted to do and her being like “Bitch, do it”, I quickly took Hanzo. And, even before that, I RPed as him on sites like Omegle and Shamchat, but it was never serious until I took him up as a role in that server and oops he got too relatable, send help.

WHAT  ARE  YOUR  FAVOURITE  ASPECTS  OF  YOUR  CURRENT  MUSE :   Hanzo, for me, is a character that I relate to, and that relatability is an aspect that I like and I tend to lean towards when I look at characters. So, on that front, the relatable aspects are what I really like about Hanzo. For example, the big thing that really got me was how he essentially was balancing everything on a thread and carrying such a heavy load with being the heir to the Clan and knowing what’s to be expected of him because of it and just everything else and to not fail. And, that really got to me, mostly because I feel like I’ve been put on such a higher standard being the oldest sibling and having good grades prior to college and seemingly not causing so much trouble that all of it’s culminated to me trying so desperately to be perfect and always in my parents’ favor and let me tell you that’s not the healthiest mindset. So, yeah.

WHAT’S  YOUR  BIGGEST  INSPIRATION  WHEN  IT  COMES  TO  WRITING :  Hm... It’s mostly music that I listen to. But, sometimes, it could just be seeing a certain quote online or just a spur of the moment thought that I can’t get out of my head and I need to type it down somewhere or I’m going to explode.

FAVOURITE  TYPES  OF  THREADS :   Truth be told, other than what my friends may say, I really like fluffy threads. Romantic or platonic, doesn’t matter. Just... Fluffy and soft threads are nice. And, yes, I really like smut. But, it’s not my all-time favorite.

BIGGEST  STRUGGLE  IN  REGARDS  TO  YOUR  CURRENT  MUSE : My muse in particular? No, not really. I mean, I do have the occasional writer’s block and mood drops, but that’s a me thing. Though, other things that pertain to RP: I have been god-modded a few times, though not as of recent and certainly not as Hanzo. Sort of god-modding, but people assuming what my character is and what they’ll do has happened, like, yes, we know Hanzo’s back story and I tend to stick to some of the canon, but this is my interpretation of Hanzo, not yours. If you do not like it, do it yourself or find someone who you think portrays Hanzo better. And, finally, though there are probably more and I just can’t remember at the moment, when it comes to NSFW RPs, I have the worst trouble being a Dom Top. Yes, I have done it before and I am willing to do it, but I really need to muster up that Dom Top energy because I have none.

tagged by stole from: @knucklecollision tagging: @buckleup-gunslinger @needsmoreteaow @blackwatch-cmndr @mcawesome-jesse-mccree @deadlockrcbel and you!

[metalgearkong]

Devil May Cry 5 (PS4/Xbox One/PC) - Review

4/27/19

Developed by Capcom, released March 8th, 2019

Devil May Cry is the series that ushered in the hack ‘n slash genre to the 6th generation of consoles (PS2/Xbox/Gamecube), effectively bringing the format to 3D with flying colors. Many other series have tried to emulate the success and style of DMC, but hardly ever matched its character and style. Even my friends and I referred to the original God of War as a “DMC clone,” despite it being the best series to mimic the DMC formula. Devil Macy Cry 5 is the incredibly long awaited sequel to Devil May Cry 4, which released a whopping 11 years ago. Luckily, it was worth the wait, and DMC5 isn’t a disappointment like so many other long awaited titles to release recently. 

In the city of Red Grave, devil hunter Nero (Johnny Yong Bosch) has started his off-shoot of the Devil May Cry business, in the form of a workshop on wheels driven by Nico, a brand new character to the series played by Faye Kingslee. Nero has his devil arm ripped from his body and the Yamato sword stolen by a mysterious figure. A demon king named “Urizen” is drawing power from the “Qilphoth,” a demonic tree growing and destroying the city, feeding off human blood for power. Nero and Dante (Reuben Langdon) have Urizen in their sights, but after a battle, Dante saves Nero’s life, and is temporarily defeated by the demon king. A month later, Dante reawakens, and is out to try again. It’s the fomulaic DMC plot: a new demon king or leader has found yet another new and unheard of way to open the demon realm to the human world, hell bent on power and destruction.

DMC5 uses the same engine as Resident Evil 7, and it shows. The graphical detail, lighting, animation, texture, and everything visual looks amazing. The game also runs at a smooth 60fps, rarely failing except under the most flashy and high processing moments of combat. I am so happy Nero and Dante’s fighting style and traits have remained intact. It gives a sense of continuity and consistency to fans of the series who are revisiting these characters. We spend red orbs from defeated enemies on an expansive skill list, slowly unlocking more combos and special moves for each of the three heroes. Now that Nero has a missing arm, Nico has manufactured a variety of new mechanical arms we can buy and equip. Each one of these arms adds something unique to combat, including a shocker, missile, grappler, drill, and so on. Nero is still a blast to play as, and while I miss his original devil arm, I can see why the devs went this direction in order to expand and add even more depth to Nero’s combat. 

Dante is still a total powerhouse. Not only does he have his iconic twin pistols, shotgun, gauntlets, and sword, he is still equipped with 4 separate fighting styles to keep the combat fresh (e.g. Trickster, Royal Guard, Gunslinger, and Swordmaster). It’s almost overwhelming what the combat options are, as you constantly want to switch between fighting styles, as well as mixing up melee and ranged weapons. Even at their base, Dante and Nero could carry an entire game with the moveset at their default. This makes the combat in DMC5 the best I’ve seen for the genre in years. No player will play the same, especially in the case of Dante. Some missions are specific to one character, but others let you chose who you want to play as. Red orbs transfer seamlessly between characters, keeping you from having to acquire the orbs individually.

The third main character, and most unique aspect of DMC5, is “V,” who happens to be voice acted by a good friend of mine, Brian Handford. He brings an entirely new type of combat to the series, in the form of summoning demonic creatures to do most of the fighting for him. The player can move V during combat, but your corresponding melee or ranged attack face buttons now affect the panther and bird respectively. During V’s devil trigger mode, he summons a giant golem to deal extra damage. V is like the spellcaster of the series, and getting used to his fighting style does involve a small learning curve. But once you get good at managing him, the bird, and the panther all at once, it gives us satisfying scenes of controlled chaos. He may not be my favorite of the three protagonists to play as, but I certainly think his fighting style and character was designed very well, and feels innovative for the series.

Like the other games, DMC5 is a strictly linear offline experience, something I’ve always liked more than the massive online competitive and multiplayer games of which the industry is full of. The devs at Capcom have stuck to their guns and I’m ecstatic DMC5 resembles its brethren so closely. The storytelling however, does not innovate or feel like anything special for the series. I would say this is one of the better stories, especially near the end, but I still think they could do better. The world in which these games take place are always isolated to just the experience of the heroes. I have no idea where Red Grave is compared to the other cities or locations in the other games, or have any reference of how prolific the destruction is outside of our perspective from the protagonists. I’d like to see regular people’s take on all these demon gates constantly opening, or simply for the main characters to recognize a bit of the bigger picture. 

DMC5 has the perfect level of difficulty, if you play on Devil Hunter mode (hard mode). The game recommends this mode for veterans of the series, of which I am, and I found it perfectly balanced. I can imagine how much easier it would be on the default difficulty, and seeing players not really taking advantage of the deep combat if enemies are so easy. In other words, play on Devil Hunter mode no matter what! Another problem I have with the game is the yellow orb mechanic. You find yellow orbs in the environments (at least one per mission), and they act like continues for when your die. A yellow orb can be spent, restoring your health & devil trigger gauges fully, picking your right back up, and the enemies get no health back. Personally, I had yellow orbs in the double digits, so when I did struggle with a boss fight, some engagement and tension was lost when I realized I could just keep spending yellow orbs until I defeated the boss, instead of having to play closer attention to their attacks and simply fight better.

DMC5 is one of the stronger games in the series, but it doesn’t beat DMC3 in my opinion, mostly because that game’s story, cinematics, combat, and challenge were so excellent. DMC5 certainly tries to elevate its level of storytelling, but the plot and characters still have a few too many conveniences and oddities (although it does get better near the end). V is a fantastic addition to the game, and his style of combat is one of the most unique I’ve seen in a game of this genre. Dante and Nero are still an absolute blast to play as, and their depth of combat is hard to comprehend, let alone learn fully. DMC5 is basically exactly what I could have hoped for and expected from these devs. This is a great game with excellent enemy design, fantastic combat, great graphics, lots to unlock, and is hugely entertaining. Recommended highly for fans of the series, or fantasy action games with swords, guns, combos, special moves, skill trees, and things of the like. 

8/10

[lawful-evil-novelist]

please! I do not know your drow characters, please tell us about them!

Ok, I have a lot of drow characters so I’ll try to keep this...short.

So a few of my characters were NPCs in campaigns I took to writing while working with certain original characters but eventually the characters morphed their own personalities separate from the NPCs they came from and honestly the only similarity left is like, they have the same name, class, and gender.  This includes like, most of the main characters of Page Prince.

The Xilbrindas brothers are numbered at three, Xandaer or Xan, Soluun or Sol, and N’arl.  Their house was destroyed when the youngest was around 8 or 9.

Xan is a few years short of 270 and is a fighter, he’s the oldest of the Xilbrindas brothers and is the most removed from drow society, deliberately so.  Xan is quiet and reserved, it’s pretty much a large question as to whether or not he’s actually nice or just doesn’t like murder.

Soluun is the middle brother at around 150, is a fighter as well and a gunslinger.  Soluun is the most typically drow-like of the brothers, basically, he’s clung to drow values as a way to cope with not having a family anymore.  Soluun and Xan hate each other but Soluun’s relationship with N’arl is a touch more complicated.

N’arl is the youngest brother, being only about 50 or so, and is the only spellcaster; he’s a wizard.  N’arl, separate from his fairly confident brothers, is a nervous wreck.  He’s constantly anxious and has a very low opinion of most of his skills, a sole exception being his skill with poisons and antidotes.

Nym is N’arl’s father, but he’s kinda the worst.  Nym doesn’t actually care about N’arl beyond “this is mine” and left N’arl to be raised by Soluun because he was constantly running around.  He’s a thief, backstabber, and all-around sucks.

Fel’rekt is one of two drow that are invested in making sure N’arl is safe and happy, he is the one better at that job but in fairness, Fel’rekt has the conviction of a bull and I love him for it.  Fel’rekt, as a side note, is also trans, thought that would be a good detail to add.

Krebbyg is that second drow, he’s also Fel’rekt’s boyfriend and is...he’s kinda quiet.  Like he cares about N’arl but that amounts mostly to him prodding N’arl in the ribcage and telling him to eat or threatening Soluun with sharp weapons when he’s a jerk.

Varis Baenre is a precious spoiled brat blessed by the drow gods and is fucking smug as hell about it, he’s great, he’s such a little shit I love him so much.

Lyssa is a drow rogue who is a ball stubborn anti-Lolth sentiment and her rejection of Lolth can be succinctly summed up by her own words: “Fuck the Bitch Queen of Spiders”.  So yeah Lyssa’s fun.

Jysanna Myafin is actually my only drow matron.  Jysanna is basically just a drow ranger and a mom at the same time.  Like a good mom, she knows what she’s doing and doesn’t treat her kids like crap.

Myrae Myafin is Jysanna’s eldest daughter, she’s a bard and is superbly extra, like, too extra for her own good but I love her anyway.

Vierda Myafin is Jysanna’s middle daughter, she’s a sorcerer-rogue multiclass and her motif is, surprise surprise, spiders.  Come on I needed one drow that had the spider motif might as well give it to the one whose nickname is Matron Slayer.

Nalfein 100% gets his name and premise from the Legend of Drizzt character that dies in chapter 1 of Homeland and I have no regrets.  He’s a drow necromancer blessed by the drow goddess Kiransalee, he is charming and frighteningly intelligent.  He’s basically the person that threatens you with a very happy smile on his face.

December is one of my first drow characters, she’s a sorcerer/fighter and has silver dragon blood in her veins.  December is best described by the anecdote of her both cowing an entire room of kobolds into submission and also by adopting like four of them.

Zarifrax is a lich, he is a dramatic as fuck lich and is also blind, like his matron stabbed his goddamn eyes out because he did something he wasn’t supposed to but she didn’t cut out his tongue, which is a only downside for the people who don’t like getting murdered with words.

Morgan technically doesn’t count because he’s only half drow but since the other half is sun elf I’m counting it.  Morgan is Xan’s boyfriend and a wizard.  He’s friendly and cheerful and has a biting wit, mostly to disguise a lot of self-worth issues because being half drow among sun elves is not a recipe for a happy childhood.

Savan is Varis’s technical guardian, he’s the drow in charge of Varis when Varis’s actual guardian, his uncle, is doing stupid shit, which is, granted, most of the time.  The best way to describe Savan is “Rosa Diaz if she were a drow”.

Mindra is a paladin of Eilistraee and is very eager to prove herself.  She’s that gay paladin in love with the moon, by the way.

Eryn Fey-Branche is a drow warlock who made a pact with a celestial being; she’s the drow I play for Curse of Strahd.  She’s a smartass with generally good intentions and has a small gift for mimicry.  She’s mimicked her boss on several occasions and also cusses people out in drow sign while talking to them.

Last but certainly not least is Izze, Izze is a small drow warlock who made a pact with the actual drow god of slimes and oozes, That Which Lurks, Ghanadaur, and is, while a typical little shit for drow, is also infectiously cheerful and friendly.

[tkmedia]

10 Fantasy Thoughts: Is Cooper Kupp your 2021 fantasy saviour?

What a week for individual performances.Derrick Henry and Aaron Jones followed up lacklustre Week 1 performances to win plenty of matchups. Aaron Rodgers did what Aaron Rodgers does with a monster bounce-back performance. Austin Ekeler was used heavily in the passing game with nine catches on nine targets. Just like we all thought. Well, some of us. Week 1 overreactions are almost always followed by a market correction, so maybe keep the hot takes to a low whisper instead of shouting them out to the world. It’s very unbecoming. But hey, if people want to make it known that they think Robert Woods is washed or that Saquon Barkley suddenly became a bad running back, then be sure to seek them out and offer to take those “terrible” players off their hands. Do them that service, take that weight off them on this journey, almost like their Fantasy Sherpa. And then crush them. (All weekly rankings courtesy of Fantasy Data) 1. Cooper Kupp’s revelation I will be the first to say that I thought that the biggest benefactor of Matthew Stafford heading to Los Angeles this off-season would be Robert Woods. Through the first two weeks of the year, it’s becoming apparent that I might be just a little bit off. Kupp has been nothing short of brilliant in the first two weeks, compiling back-to-back top-10 weeks, including the top spot in this week’s finish. He has 21 targets which places him in a tie for fifth among wide receivers, 16 catches (tied for first) and 271 yards (third) with Stafford under centre and occupies a ridiculous 37.5 per cent target share. It feels like every time the Rams get possession that Kupp is going to get an opportunity to score because he constantly looks like he’s wide open. Sean McVay is also unleashing Kupp out wide as opposed to the slot where he’s primarily been deployed from since his rookie year. That percentage of slot snaps has dropped from 73 per cent in his sophomore year in 2018 to 44 per cent through the first two games of 2021. Alpha wide receivers don’t play out of the slot and it seems as though the Rams have found their alpha receiver. Kupp is going to have an off game here and there and I expect Woods is going eat a bit more into Kupp’s target share, but make no mistake about it, Kupp is going to have a monster year. 2. Derek Carr, the unlikely addition to the QB1 group Steady. Decent floor. Capped ceiling. Great second quarterback. Those have been terms used to describe Derek Carr’s fantasy relevance since coming into the league, but we might be seeing him turn a corner and maybe, just maybe, he’s actually as good as we’ve seen in the first two weeks. It’s certainly early in the schedule, but it’s not like Carr has been up against cupcake defences to start. Baltimore’s D has playmakers and the Steelers basically shut down the Bills’ aerial attack in Week 1. He currently leads the league with 817 passing yards and has four touchdowns to one interception, while occupying the QB8 spot. With the Dolphins on the docket next, it looks like another matchup that Carr can exploit, especially considering that this Raiders offence looks like it has some pretty good pass catchers outside of Darren Waller. Henry Ruggs appears ready to take the next step forward after not living up to the rookie hype of being a high first-round pick last year. Hunter Renfrow is a reliable slot receiver and Bryan Edwards has all the tools to become a good receiver at this level. All this while the running game hasn’t been too great and Josh Jacobs is dealing with an injury. Carr is going to have to be on top of his game in the coming weeks as he gets the Chargers, Bears, Broncos and Eagles in the four games following Week 3's Dolphins game. By then, we should have an accurate assessment of where Derek Carr fits into the QB1 conversation. Something tells me that this is for real. 3. The Mike Williams we’ve been waiting for He’s had a 1,000-yard season and a 10-touchdown season, but both did not occur at the same time. We’ve been drawn in by his tantalizing talent and incredible ability go make absurd leaping catches, but we’ve never seen the consistency that warrants a regular spot in your lineup. Enter new Chargers offensive coordinator Joe Lombardi, formerly of the New Orleans Saints, with Williams in a contract year and you've got a recipe for success. Lombardi talked up Williams in the off-season and is using him like he used Michael Thomas with the Saints. Justin Herbert even talked about his skill set and also wanting him to get the ball more. We’re now seeing the fruits of these discussions. Williams is currently the WR5 (tied with Amari Cooper) and has 22 targets in the first two games, parlaying those into 15 catches for 173 yards and two touchdowns. That’s the good stuff right there. I, for one, have been a big proponent of Williams ever since he was drafted out of Clemson and I’ve drafted him basically every year he has been in the league, so this one feels good. 4. Brandin Cooks = Automatic Cooks may be the most underappreciated fantasy player that we’ve seen in a long time. All he does is get the job done and his ADP almost never reflects his production at the end of the year. Last season, Cooks was the WR17 in 15 games with 81 catches for 1,150 yards and six touchdowns on only 119 targets. In five of seven seasons (including his rookie year where he only played 10 games), he has accumulated at least 65 catches, 1,082 yards and five touchdowns. It’s a pretty impressive resume that probably doesn’t get enough credit, especially in fantasy. The question now becomes, can Cooks still thrive with Davis Mills as the quarterback in Houston following the hamstring injury to Tyrod Taylor. What we know is that there isn’t a lot of competition for targets and that Houston is going to have to throw a lot in order to stay in games, so I will bet on Cooks getting plenty of looks and still manage to be in the WR2 or WR3 conversation going forward. 5. Teddy Bridgewater, the Wild (AFC) West’s newest gunslinger In a division that includes Patrick Mahomes, Justin Herbert and Derek Carr, Denver needed to being to have success through the air to stand a chance to stay alive in the AFC West arms race. Teddy Two Gloves was always perceived to be a dink and dunk type quarterback as evidenced by his Air Yards Per Target last season which had him near the bottom of the league for starting quarterbacks. Something has changed. It could be the poor competition faced so far as the Broncos took on the Giants and Jaguars, or it could be that Bridgewater has finally been unleashed. Through the first two weeks, he sits fourth in Intended Air Yards behind Trevor Lawrence, Derek Carr and Tom Brady and fifth in Completed Air Yards behind Brady, Carr, Daniel Jones and Justin Herbert. What we can deduce is that Teddy is slinging it early on. The Broncos offence has been very good through the first two games and gets a peach matchup against the awful Jets in Week 3. Teddy Bridgewater has become quite the fantasy asset in Denver with a plethora of weapons at his disposal and if they continue to let him sling it, we could really see him stay in the conversation as an every week starter and a back-end QB1 by the time the season is done. 6. The Cowboys RB timeshare…really? One of the Cowboys running backs is RB12 and the other one is RB26. My guess is that you’ve figured out that Pollard is the RB12 and Elliott is the RB26. Yes, the above statement is accurate. “It has to be because Pollard is making the most of limited opportunities though, right?” Incorrect! Pollard has 23 touches compared to Elliott’s 31, so yes, Pollard is making the most of his opportunities (7.7 yards per carry and seven catches on seven targets), but the workload is a lot closer than it has been in years past. Elliott just doesn’t look like nearly the same player that we saw two years ago and looks more like the player that we saw last year. So maybe this is just what he is at this point in his career. On the other hand, Pollard looks great seemingly every time he touches the ball. You’re going to start Elliott every week, but now you’re going to have to start Pollard every week until we are given a reason not to. The thought process is that the workload going forward is going to look very similar to what it is now, but there’s also a chance that if Zeke doesn’t perform that we could see Pollard get even more looks as the season progresses. 7. The Patriots backs are relevant again The best thing that happened to the Patriots running backs was to get rid of Cam Newton as the team’s signal caller and bring in a less athletic, more accurate passer in Mac Jones. That much has been evident over the first two weeks of the season. Damien Harris has taken over as the lead dog in that backfield and established that he’s going to be the guy to get the bulk of the carries. We’ve also established that James White is back after a tumultuous season last year where he dealt with great personal loss and injury. There is a very good chance with Jones at the helm that both Harris and White finish as top-30 running backs. Harris because of his workload and usage in the red zone looks like a virtual lock. For White, it comes down to how much usage he’s going to get in the passing game. With 13 targets (18 per cent target share) through two games, he’s on pace for 110 targets and if that holds up, he should be a great return on value, especially considering he was way down everyone’s draft board before the season started. The Patriots look like they’re back to being the Patriots we had seen for so many years prior, except for, you know, that Brady character. 8. Is the Vikings duo of receivers now a trio? It’s early in the season, we are all aware of that, but some times, some things happen that make you raise an eyebrow. There was obvious hype surrounding Justin Jefferson after his incredible rookie season and even though plenty of people were down on Adam Thielen, he certainly didn’t become a bad receiver overnight. But nobody expected what we’ve seen out of the third member of what might now be a trio of good receivers. KJ Osborn has been a revelation early on in the season for Minnesota, currently sitting at WR19 with 12 catches, 167 yards and a touchdown on 15 targets (18.5 per cent target share) and has been a great complement to the two great receivers ahead of him. The likelihood of this production is due to the injury of Irv Smith Jr., the lack of talent at the tight end position and Thielen and Jefferson drawing top coverages. Jefferson and Thielen are going to get theirs, but Osborn is worth an add in deeper leagues, especially because we have to think that the Vikings are going to be throwing the ball a lot this season. If Jefferson and Thielen go down with injury, Osborn is an easy WR3 play but could even pay dividends as a high-risk, high-reward flex play with those two in the lineup. 9. Patience is a virtue with Hollywood Brown There’s a very good chance that we overlooked Brown’s finish to last season where he was the WR13 from Week 12-17. Yes, he did have five touchdowns in that span and yes we know that is a fluke stat, but you know what, he’s been a touchdown machine since Week 5 of last year. In that stretch of 14 games he has 10 touchdowns, so he could just be on a hot stretch, but it’s worth noting. Through two games this year, Brown is the WR8 with 182 receiving yards, two touchdowns on 16 targets and looks like he’s becoming a lock for your lineups every week. We know that some receivers take some time to adjust to the NFL game and Brown is probably that guy. It also helps that he’s becoming a focal point of the passing game (28 per cent target share) while rookie Rashod Bateman is on the sidelines and Mark Andrews has scuffled a bit out of the gate (eight catches for 77 yards) because this Ravens team is still going to need to have some success in the passing game to make a run in the AFC. Hollywood has arrived. 10. The Weekly “Mike Tolbert Vulture Awards” Ricky Seals-Jones This is one of those rare occasions where a player vultures a touchdown and it was on a great play. Seals-Jones made the most of his lone catch, going for 19 yards and a touchdown but making a great grab in the corner of the end zone on a pass from Taylor Heinicke. I’m sure Logan Thomas managers were thrilled by this. Andy Janovich The Browns fullback not only vultured a rushing touchdown from both Nick Chubb and Kareem Hunt, but he also outscored Clyde Edwards-Helaire, James Conner, Nyheim Hines and was decimal points behind Jonathan Taylor, Alvin Kamara and Miles Sanders. Janovich’s two carries resulted in zero yards and a touchdown. Can’t make this stuff up. Jauan Jennings Jennings is outscoring Brandon Aiyuk in fantasy scoring just like you all predicted. He had two catches for 17 yards and a score in the Niners win over the Eagles and followed up the San Francisco train of touchdown vultures after they doubled up on the award last week thanks to Trey Lance and Trent Sherfield. Darrell Williams This one was easily my favourite vulture line of the week. Williams was a pre-season sleeper to take away work from Clyde Edwards-Helaire (and even outscored him this week), but you’re not going to get very far with his line of three carries for -2 yards and a touchdown. He averaged 0.7 yards per carry and still outscored the RB1 on his team. I love fantasy football. Read the full article

[wazafam]

The Impractical Jokers gives fans a chance to watch four friends pull unimaginable pranks on one another. The challenges they do are so embarrassing that hardly anyone would want to be in their shoes, and yet they're so funny, fans can't help but laugh along with them. As if the regular challenges aren't bad enough, the punishments at the end of episodes are often several times worse.

RELATED: Impractical Jokers: Most Cringeworthy Punishments, Ranked

Since the punishments are meant to punish the Joker who lost the most challenges, they'd naturally have to be something the Joker doesn't want to do. Still, some of the punishments are so intense and shocking, it's hard to believe that the Jokers were able to pull them off.

10 Firefighter Training

Before Impractical Jokers, Q was a firefighter. Q felt that the other guys didn't take that too seriously, so he decided to punish them by making them each go through rigorous firefighting training. Joe's training starts first, and to do it, he had to chop at a roof to allow the fire to escape. The only problem is that to break open the roof, he had to tear through a giant photo of his daughter on the roof.

Next, for Murr's training, he had to climb down the side of a burning building. Down the way, he met several people who have been on the show before, like Dr. Contacessa and Sloppy Joe. Finally, for Sal's training, he had to climb up a ladder truck, but he was too afraid to do it. Eventually, Q sprayed him and the others with a water hose until they admitted they respect him.

9 Meeting Danica McKellar

Not too many people get to meet their crushes from their childhood. Although Murr did, it probably wasn't in the setting that he had hoped for it to be. For one of his punishments, he had to interview his childhood crush Danica McKellar, who played Winnie Cooper on The Wonder Years. Not only did he have to interview her, but he was also oiled up and only wearing his underwear.

What's big about this punishment was that the guys were able to bring someone as famous as Danica McKellar onto the show. It solidified just how popular and recognizable the Impractical Jokers show was becoming.

8 Captain Fatbelly

"Captain Fatbelly" is one of the most memorable punishments the Impractical Jokers have ever done. It was funny and everyone looked like they had a good time, even if it was a little bit dangerous. In the punishment, Joe was dressed as the fake superhero dad Captain Fatbelly and put on top of a tram car. Joe had to do things like save doll versions of his dog, or else the tram wouldn't move forward.

RELATED: Impractical Jokers: 10 Funniest Punishments On The Show, Ranked

The punishment had such a large scale that it's hard to believe that the guys pulled it off. Joe was dressed as a superhero and put on the actual Roosevelt Island tram car, and he seemed to have fun doing it. This was one of Joe's most shameless moments, and it's nice that everyone involved enjoyed it.

7 Marrying Sal's Sister

Sal's sister Jenna is brought on to the show multiple times, but arguably the biggest time is her wedding with Murr. For one of Sal's punishments, he was strapped to a hand truck and brought inside a church, where he had to watch Murr marry Jenna.

What made this so gut-wrenching for Sal was the fact that Murr and Jenna's marriage was genuinely real. Even though they shortly annulled the marriage, it's still shocking to believe that everyone agreed to this, as now Murr teases Sal about being Jenna's first husband.

6 Zombie Apocalypse

Another time Sal's family members got involved is when his nieces were brought in for one of his punishments. For this punishment, Sal had to go down in the sewers, where he found his two nieces calmly standing in a cage. The key to get them out was also surrounded by a huge group of zombies.

While the zombies may have been actors in disguise, the whole thing certainly looked convincing. It had such a huge scale, and there were so many fake zombies, that it's hard to believe the guys setting something like this up. It also showed Sal that he'd much rather watch zombie movies than star in one.

5 Sheriff Q

The punishment where Q becomes a fake sheriff was so elaborate and immersive that it's unbelievable it was put together. The punishment begins with Sheriff Q having to stop a poker player from cheating, almost like a poker movie. Unfortunately, things don't quite work out for him, and he's beaten up and thrown out of the saloon.

RELATED: Impractical Jokers: 10 Pranks That Went Too Far

Later, he has to stop an outlaw from blowing up the town with dynamite, before escaping into a heap of horse poop. Finally, he has to have a draw with one of the fastest gunslingers in the west. He loses the draw, and thus Sheriff Q's misery is over. This was one of the rare narrative punishments in the show, which made it even more special.

4 Joe's House In Wrapping Paper

Joe happened to be due for a punishment just as his birthday had come around, so the guys decided to celebrate it by covering his entire house in wrapping paper. The walls, the floors, and even all of the furniture were individually wrapped. Not only that, but all of Joe's photos were replaced with embarrassing pictures of him.

With the level of time and patience wrapping up Joe's entire house would have taken, it's unbelievable that it actually happened so quickly. Even if the other guys didn't actually do it themselves, it's interesting how this was pulled off without Joe knowing about it beforehand.

3 Murr Skydiving

For many people, skydiving is such a daring activity that they would never dream of doing it. Unfortunately, Murr didn't have much of a choice, as the other Jokers tricked him into doing this punishment. When Murr first showed up, he thought it was an ordinary challenge, where he and the other Jokers would be teaching people how to jump out of a plane, in case of a plane crash.

However, when they were out there, he soon learned the real reason they were there, and it was too late to get out of it. Given that Murr was so scared to skydive, it's hard to believe that they still went through with the punishment. Luckily Murr's first time skydiving went well, even if he was scared the whole way down.

2 Spiders On Q

One of Q's deadliest fears is of spiders, and the other Jokers decided to take advantage of that for one of his punishments. For this punishment, Q was strapped down to a table, and several tarantulas were placed on top of him. He couldn't move, or else they would add another tarantula on him.

RELATED: Impractical Jokers: 10 Pranks The Guys Couldn't Go Through With

Because of how extreme Q's fear of spiders is, it's hard to believe that the guys went through with this punishment. Though he might be able to laugh about it now, it certainly looked uncomfortable for Q during his time there.

1 The Tattoos

When Q, Sal, and Murr each had the most losses at the end of an episode, Joe decided that their punishment would be for each of them to get a tattoo. Q probably would have preferred an Iron Man tattoo, but instead, his tattoo stated that he was 38, lived alone, and had three cats. Murr's tattoo is a ferret skydiving, because of his skydiving punishment, and also because the other Jokers often say he looks like a ferret.

Sal's tattoo is of Jaden Smith, mostly because Joe found it funny. It's hard to believe that the guys went through with this, given that these tattoos will last forever. For example, Q will always have that tattoo for the rest of his life, even though he isn't even 38 anymore. As something like this could break friendships, it just goes to show how strong the bond is between the guys.

NEXT: Impractical Jokers: Every Season From Worst To Best, Ranked (According To IMDb)

Impractical Jokers: 10 Biggest Loser Pranks We Still Can't Believe The Guys Did from https://ift.tt/3fDB0gm

[exilesofembermark]

Game Dev Update | 3.12.18

“THIS is what I see on my screen.” - Your Opponent

So proud of the Victory image from the UI work we’ve been doing, figured we’d better show the other side of the coin this month. Hopefully, you won’t see this screen too much (unless you’re playing me, in which case enjoy this screen-- remind me I said that on launch day).

Last update, we gave a follow-up to our publishing announcement, detailed the Exiles end-of-battle sequences, and introduced concepts for Archmage Edyrin Zaan, who played a key role in Embermark’s Collapse many, many years ago. This time around, we’ve got gameplay and crafting updates, a look at Edyrin’s cohort and warcaster friend Elle Manigold, info on our coming First-Time-User-Experience (your intro to the game) and a look at how we’re going to try and quickly tell you story elements as you pass through this fantasy world we’re working on.

CRAFTING EVOLVED

The crew here at Gunslinger is working at a fever pitch right now, implementing all of the learnings we’ve had over the course of the last several months about everything from combat (which has been detailed in dev updates here and here) to systems to the way players build characters over time. We’re aiming at a result that brings build strategies to the forefront, communicates what happens during battle in a much more straightforward way and increases the tastiness of loot.

And that’s what we’ll cover this time around-- loot and how crafting has evolved. The loot system is pretty straightforward-- A Common item-- say, a sword, has specific stats on it (how much damage it does, any affects to the player’s core stats like Strength). A Rare Item has a prefix-- say, Mighty. Making a Mighty Sword. That prefix has up to 2 stat effects as well (like a plus to STR and CON). An Epic item has a prefix and a suffix-- say, of Shenanigans and that suffix comes with stats or special effects of its own. Making a Mighty Sword of Shenanigans. Legendary items are bespoke designs and very special and delicious.

Before the current design pass, you could Craft random items for a specified slot (like your Chest or Head) as well as Salvage stuff you didn’t want and create items from specific recipes. You could also Upgrade items, which wasn’t super interesting-- it was just the equivalent of leveling an item.

To make the Forge more user-friendly and increase the fun part of loot management, we’re making the following changes:

Salvage is moving over into your main inventory in the Character screen, since that’s where you usually want to get rid of stuff

Everything you can make is now a Recipe, even the random stuff (so there will be a “Forge Random Sword” recipe as well as a “Forge Mighty Sword” recipe)

Upgrade is replaced with Transmute. So instead of simply leveling a sword from low to high, now you can change its attributes with a reroll, like changing the item’s STR buff into another stat like SPD or CON, depending on how you roll. This will be a feature with limits-- you won’t be able to turn anything into anything else. You can change one attribute, but that will lock the others. 

EDYRIN ZAAN - NOW IN COLOR

Last Update, we shared the sketch concepts for one of the pivotal characters of our fantasy drama -- the Archmage Edyrin Zaan, who started the wheels turning toward the collapse of the continent and the otherworldly shenanigans that made Embermark a forbidding, chaotic place. 

Now we’ve fleshed him out a bit, and he will be making appearances throughout your journey across the land (see the glimpse at the Narrative System below). Is he friend or foe? You may have a hand in deciding...

(btw, if you’ve been paying attention to the Dev Updates, that staff may trigger your imagination)

ELLE MANIGOLD: THE CATALYST

Edyrin didn’t come upon the dangerous practice of summoning-- or of manipulating Mystic power-- alone. He had help.

Enter the deadly warcaster, Elle Manigold, whose story will be revealed over time. Her upbringing, her power and her relationship to Edyrin all had massive ramifications on the continent that’s come to be called Embermark. Have a look at the visual development of this battlemage, who you may or may not fight (but you will definitely want her weapon).

THE TPWER HAS A BEACH BALL

Our friends at Industrial Toys (the studio Gunslinger was born out of) sent us a housewarming gift for the new space we moved into a little over a month ago. It’s a ridiculously large beach ball that caught some infamy momentum on Reddit, given its potential to inflict terror and bodily injury. We’re currently trying to figure out what to do with it. Suggestions welcome in the Exiles forums.

THE NOT-A-BAT

“There are no rats, bats, wolves or skeletons in Exiles.” - TheWizard on multiple occasions

Fine, I lied about the wolf thing (but see-- ours are cool). Well, this is most certainly not a bat. But it is a horrible flying face-eater, and you don’t want it eating your face when you encounter it in its various ecosystems (out in the jungle, deep in the caves, etc).

This nasty is well on his way toward giving us a base for flying enemies, so stay tuned for his color, model and flaps next Update.

THE FIRST TIME USER EXPERIENCE (OH, AND THE NARRATIVE SYSTEM)

We’ve been threatening testing for a while now, and while I’m not reporting a date for that yet (*sideyes the Exiles in the Discord channel), I am reporting a plan. With the gameplay evolutions and the PVE system coming online, it’s time for us to get the game ready for a new player to experience it. Thus, our next big milestone is a working First-Time-User-Experience (FTUE) that teaches the basics of the game and levels a character to about Level 10. With that comes a couple of new systems-- the Tutorials System and the Narrative System. 

The Tutorial System isn’t super exciting (I mean, I’m excited about it, but sharing the part of a game that many players go “can I skip” isn’t what I’m all about right now, so suffice it to say, there will be one, it will show you what to do to get started and then it will get out of the way for your climb to heroism).

The Narrative System is more exciting -- to share, anyway. One of the ambitions of Exiles is to tell a sweeping fantasy story in many ways directed by players’ actions. The system we’re building to tell that story lets us do just that. There are three parts to it:

1) Trackable Items

Just about anything players do in the game is tracked-- the fights, the wins/losses, the enemies killed, the foes bested, the factions helped or hindered, the narrative choices one makes, the aggregate leveling done, the events outcomes, you name it. This provides the Exiles designers a bed of history from which to trigger events and tell stories about what’s gone on in Embermark. 

2) Talking Heads

Seen below, this is your paged spoken-word info. Characters will appear on-screen, point you toward important stuff (Quests, new map locations, events) and disappear. You’ve seen this a million times in games, but we’ll make it easy to digest quickly.

3) (Human) Written Episodes

After every Season (which is currently a month of real-world time), Episodes of Tales of Embermark will be published, outlining the ongoing narrative and player actions that went down during the preceding Season, creating a historic log from the beginning of the game and hinting at things to come. 

FROM BANDIT TO BOSS

Along with the FTUE comes a string of baddies for players to smash (or be smashed by). Wildewoods, the Zone that you see above and the training grounds for new players, has all sorts of nastiness to encounter, including wolves, ogres, elves (who aren’t really nasty, but they will shoot you with poison arrows) and a scheming band of bandits known as the Darkeye Syndicate. 

We’ve shared in the past our method of creating endless variation for NPCs (particularly humanoid NPCs), and this is the first in-game implementation of that system. The Quests we’re designing to onboard a new player will involve these thuggy outlaws, a semi-organized rabble preying on new Exiles and the folks in Wildewoods alike, all built off of the same model, using gear that’s reusable for player characters. 

And I couldn't resist a quick shot of the bandits’ Cutlass ^... cuz it’s got a skull on it.

And I didn’t claim there wouldn’t be spiders, did I? Cuz there are-- and they’re also going to chomp your face:

We just rigged it up yesterday (see video), so we should be incorporating our 8-legged enemies into quests and battles very soon.

DON’T FORGET TO REMEMBER…

We’ll keep sharing details as we head toward testing (remember to PM TheWizard on the Exiles forums with your device type if you want in on closed testing & beta later), and you can count on early impressions from the testers throughout our various channels.

If you haven’t already, follow along with Exiles development on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. And if you haven’t, I’ll find you. And SMITE you.

CONNECT WITH OTHER EXILES

If you want to hear about the game, ask questions or connect with others who are helping the development team think about features, design and narrative, hop into the Discord Channel for live chat and say hi– it’s a friendly crew with plenty of daily/weekly/sometimes-planned shenanigans.

BONUS: A BASHER

Because it’s not an RPG without a ridiculously large, painful-looking 2-handed basher:

BONUS BONUS: ETHEREAL VARIANTS, ANYONE?

Ethereals in Embermark aren’t from here. They’re from... over there. Thus, the Ethereal NPC we’ve shown in the past isn’t necessarily always going to be one of fire-- or of heat-- or of an elemental variety. Sometimes, they’ll be from/of/based on other makeups. Take a look at this video from our VFX crew (of one!) showing how many setups we might explore...

(and for those of you in a clicking mood, here’s that Ethereal dying-- he seems almost... surprised)

[junker-town]

The next era of star NFL QBs is way more fun than the last

The NFL is in good hands with young quarterbacks like Lamar Jackson, Patrick Mahomes, and Deshaun Watson.

So long, era of homogenous quarterbacks.

The NFL of the 21st century had been getting pretty stale, especially at the quarterback position. In 15 of the last 16 Super Bowls, Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, or Ben Roethlisberger was one of the starters.

Those three quarterbacks, along with Drew Brees, Eli Manning, and Philip Rivers, were all drafted between 1998 and 2004. And all six of them are in the top eight on the all-time passing yards list. Five of those six are still in the NFL.

They represent a golden age of passing that will have a lasting impact on the record books — and one led by a rather homogenous group of quarterbacks. They mostly looked the same, talked the same, and largely played football the same way.

They’re all traditional pocket passers who — for the most part — played, or still play, the position by the book.

That era is ending now. Luckily for the football watching world, the next generation of stars is here and it’s something entirely different. The young group of quarterbacks drafted in the last four years is brimming with personality and rewriting the way we think about how the position can be played.

Lamar Jackson, the dual threat

The closest thing we’ve ever seen to Jackson was Michael Vick in the early 2000s. Vick never played as well as Jackson is playing for the Ravens in 2019, though.

Jackson’s an MVP frontrunner in only his second season. He has a passer rating in the triple digits and rushing stats that rival some of the best running backs in the league. He’s certainly the only quarterback in the NFL who could pull off the spin move that vaporized two Bengals defenders on a 47-yard rushing touchdown in Week 10.

LAMAR. JACKSON. @Lj_Era8 TO THE HOUSE ‼️‼️ pic.twitter.com/DcR8A7S2Vy

— Baltimore Ravens (@Ravens) November 10, 2019

There’s a long list of quarterbacks with enough athleticism to rush for a first down, if necessary. Jackson’s one of the few quarterbacks in the history of the NFL who’s just as terrifying throwing the ball as he is keeping it for himself.

And his uniquely electric play on the field is paired with a personality dripping with swag.

Victory Monday Mood @Lj_era8 pic.twitter.com/hbbmcsTGP0

— Baltimore Ravens (@Ravens) November 11, 2019

He’s not lacking in self-confidence at all, but Jackson’s also quick to heap praise on his teammates instead of reveling in it himself. Given how many doubters he’s already had to face in his young career, it’d make sense if Jackson wanted to rub his success in the noses of haters. But revenge isn’t his motivation, even if Jackson does like to take playful jabs at the critics.

"NOT BAD FOR A RUNNING BACK." - @lj_era8 pic.twitter.com/GjdOeR5xWa

— Baltimore Ravens (@Ravens) September 8, 2019

Jackson’s a dynamo with a skillset unlike any other in the NFL right now, and fortunately he has a coach who encourages that individualism instead of working to rein it in. The result is the same kind of scoring machine who racked up touchdowns nonstop at Louisville.

The long-term viability of a quarterback running 15-20 times per game is a worthwhile debate. For now, though, Jackson is a weapon with a style all his own.

Patrick Mahomes, the cannon

The Chiefs quarterback has a 50-touchdown season and an MVP award under his belt and he just turned 24. He’s a no-look-pass-throwing, ketchup-loving quarterback with an outrageously strong arm that’s capable of making any throw.

It’s not only the deep bombs — although there have been plenty of those. Mahomes can also do things like throw a jump pass across the middle of the field that turns into a touchdown.

Mahomes hit em with the jump pass and Mecole Hardman did the rest @PatrickMahomes @MecoleHardman4 pic.twitter.com/FKlTWQ97bq

— The Checkdown (@thecheckdown) November 10, 2019

He’s athletic and fast, but it’s the cannon attached to his shoulder that makes him dangerous whether he’s rolling out or sitting in the pocket. Either way, a flick of his wrist can turn into a touchdown at any given moment.

#SomethingSpecial The broadcast view did not do this play justice. There's no one else with the creativity, athleticism, and arm talent to execute this play. 35 yard flick of the wrist, off platform, across his body with velocity that he needed to get it there. Mercy. pic.twitter.com/KQJYYeougk

— Kent Swanson (@kent_swanson) October 8, 2019

That his absurd ability comes with a goofy voice and, occasionally, a pair of jorts is a bonus.

Mahomes missed a couple games in 2019 after dislocating his kneecap, and yet another MVP award still doesn’t look impossible. Mahomes is going to be burying teams with prolific passing assaults for many years to come.

Deshaun Watson, the warrior

There are a lot of different labels that would work as a descriptor of Watson. Ultimately, it’s his blend of skills and his “never quit” mentality that makes him special.

For his entire career, he’s had to deal with a porous Texans offensive line. His tendency to try to create big plays in the face of pressure is part of the reason the third-year starter has already been sacked over 100 times. But that same instinct to keep looking for a play downfield has evolved into a huge problem for opposing defenses.

Even kicking Watson in the face won’t stop him from finding a game-winning touchdown.

.@DeshaunWatson is unbelievable. #WeAreTexans : CBS : NFL app // Yahoo Sports app Watch free on mobile: https://t.co/a16R5wPShJ pic.twitter.com/f2Fss30161

— NFL (@NFL) October 27, 2019

When pressured in 2019, Watson has six touchdowns, one interception, and a passer rating over 90. That elusiveness and relentlessness was on full display in Week 9 when the Jaguars only managed to sack him once, despite recording a pressure 12 times.

A joy to watch in LDN!@SubwayUK's Player of the Week... @deshaunwatson @HoustonTexans pic.twitter.com/3qEg2DoGxM

— NFL UK (@NFLUK) November 6, 2019

Watson has elevated his already stellar play in year three of his career. And it’s really easy to root for a player who donated his first NFL paycheck to cafeteria workers affected by Hurricane Harvey and has recently developed a reputation for elaborate breakdowns of defenses in press conferences.

A sizable extension is probably coming soon for Watson, and that’s a no-brainer for the Texans. They’ve found their franchise quarterback.

Dak Prescott, the gunslinger

Early in Prescott’s career, he was just a game manager for a team that was built around running the ball. Prescott’s job was to avoid turnovers and keep the chains moving.

Now, those days are long gone. The Cowboys’ fourth-year quarterback can put the offense on his back when Ezekiel Elliott gets shut down. Prescott has become a player more than willing to fire into tight windows.

Even in the loss, Dak Prescott consistently defied the odds against the Vikings, completing +6.5% of his attempts above expectation. 5 of Prescott's 10 most improbable completions of the season came in tonight's game, including 3 to Amari Cooper.#MINvsDAL | #DallasCowboys pic.twitter.com/AZYuQujdnm

— Next Gen Stats (@NextGenStats) November 11, 2019

Some of those throws become turnovers, but most are turning into big plays for the Cowboys. That’s why Prescott still has a passer rating above 100, even though he’s near the top of the league in interceptions. He also leads the league in Total QBR, an ESPN formula that measures just about every aspect of quarterback play.

While Prescott doesn’t draw much attention to himself, he’s a standup guy off the field who throws away his trash correctly and isn’t a bad “dancer” to boot.

Dak dancing to Suavemente pic.twitter.com/UV0eEsc42i

— Hector Diaz (@iamHectorDiaz) November 11, 2019

Just a few months ago, “gunslinger” wouldn’t seem like the right way to describe Prescott’s spot on this list. But it’s a surprisingly fitting title for Prescott, who’s ranked in the top five in touchdowns, passing yards per game, and interceptions in 2019.

Carson Wentz, the escape artist

The Eagles haven’t given Wentz much help in 2019. Few teams have more dropped passes, and his receivers aren’t getting much separation. That’s the biggest reason why Wentz — a player who was on the doorstep of MVP honors in 2017 — is near the bottom of the NFL in completion percentage.

One of the only reasons Philadelphia is in the postseason hunt anyway is because Wentz is freakin’ Houdini.

Carson Wentz just did THAT. How?pic.twitter.com/h4YmmlaX5J

— NFL Update (@MySportsUpdate) September 16, 2019

Wentz is a shocking amount of slippery for a player who’s 6’5, 237 pounds. However, the key to his escapability is his ability to make tough throws, whether his feet are underneath him or not.

Really impressive throw from Carson Wentz to deliver this ball in stride outside the numbers from the far hash while getting his foot stepped on pic.twitter.com/QX4mcQ66Lj

— Brandon Thorn (@BrandonThornNFL) October 15, 2019

Off the field, Wentz supports charitable causes through his foundation and — like Prescott — doesn’t say much that garners attention. But his wheeling and dealing in the pocket makes the Eagles offense always worth watching.

There are other sensational young quarterbacks in the NFL who could soon earn a spot on this list.

Kyler Murray is quietly compiling impressive statistics for a rookie, Gardner Minshew may eventually retake his spot as the Jaguars’ starter, and it’s still too early to give up on the idea of Baker Mayfield and Jared Goff eventually returning to their 2018 selves.

Mayfield set a record for touchdown passes by a rookie last year, but his sophomore slump could easily be the fault of first-year head coach Freddie Kitchens. Goff is playing behind an offensive line that’s suddenly a disaster. They both can still have promising futures.

Even if they never get there, the NFL is in good hands. For the first time in a long time, there’s a variety of personalities and styles at the quarterback position. That’s a new phenomenon — and it’s a blast to watch.

[phoenixfire-thewizardgoddess]

solly/zhanna/miss p ideas

>They take turns cooking, Soldier is the best, Miss P can't cook for anything (bc she's lived off of like, sandwiches and whatever she could find at roadside cafes)

>Zhanna always makes meat dishes.

>Soldier enthusiastically introduces them as his lovely lieutenants, and once headbutted a man through a wall for daring to touch Miss P on the butt

>Zhanna usually kicks ass, but he was closer

>They love cuddles, but it took a bit for Miss P to get used to human contact again bc she was almost always Alone for her work

>Miss P gets kisses, esp. if the other two sense she's getting sad or withdrawn or anxious about the past... Solly goes for forehead or cheek, sometimes a brief kiss on the lips, affectionate but not anything more Zhanna covers her with kisses, and sometimes it leads to something more, but mostly she just ends up holding her through the moment.

>Zhanna's new prosthetic is as useful as the gunslinger, has a lot of attachments.

>All the raccoons are named, have a collar, and their own little beds. They treat them like children.

>Soldier occasionally wanders around naked, covered in honey... and the other two can usually be convinced to join in.

>Despite what people think, he';s very clever in some ways. Always knows when one of them needs to talk, or to have something... just shows up with a fluffy raccoon to pet or chocolate, or a hug. He's big on hugs.

>Zhanna and Soldier work out together, they enjoy it. Miss P loves watching them...

>Zhanna and Soldier tend to do it everywhere, especially now that Miss P doesn't get startled by flicking on the kitchen lightswitch at 2am to find them making a mess on the bench... Sometimes she lends a hand, sometimes she watches, mostly she just goes about her original task until they're done.

>When they first moved in together, Miss P had her own room. It still has a bed in it, just in case she wants time alone/space to think... Zhanna would visit her there, and Soldier would occasionally bring her things... until what was between them developed enough that she felt comfortable sharing their ridiculously large bed.

>They share a massive bed. Miss P is usually in the middle, with Soldier and Zhanna to either side as protective barriers. They feel she is safe, that way and Miss P has no objections... except that it was a pain to realise you had to pee early in the morning and your partners are wrapped around you like octopi.

>Generally, they pair off for bedroom activities... whether they're in the bedroom or not. Zhanna is most spontaneous, and will surprise them mid-task, but always checks for that they want it too... no is always an option. Soldier is a very empathetic man, and gets excited if the others are; though he does occasionally proposition the others first, or turn them down. He likes physical reminders that they are still there. Miss P is bolder, recently, and she chases down the person she wants to hold her, or bang. It depends on what she needs. They helped her vocalise her desires... bc at first, they assumed she just wasn't into that, as she never said anything -but eventually Soldier asked to clarify. And she was like, "Oh, I thought you two didn't want me like that?"

And thus the miscommunication was settled.

Miss P has had the opportunity to try things with Soldier, just to see how she feels. It doesn't disgust her or anything, and she loves him in a certain way; but it's not like with Zhanna. Though he is very skilled with his mouth, shockingly so, and offers her relief when Zhanna is away on business.

When the three are together, Zhanna is the middle point, the one moving between them. Certainly they might interact with each other around her, but not the same way as you'd expect. IT took a while to find something that worked, but they found it.

>Shopping is always An Experience(TM) with those two. Miss P tries to do it herself, but someone salways accompanies her... it's fun, don't get her wrong, but the reality is it takes three times longer with their 'help'. And they always get impulsive things.

>Miss P dislikes gardening, reminds her of all the graves she's dug, really. But she loves the flowers Soldier grows; Zhanna too, because flowers rarely grow in snow.

>They don't have to work, but occasionally take little missions all over the world. (Scout is regularly asked to babysit the raccoons, bc he's close enough to fly in for a week or so, and also he seems to have their respect. Miss P never wants to know how he won it). They are a unit to be dealt with.

>Heavy & Medic visit frequently, coming to see them and make certain all is well. Engie and the others swing by too, when they're in the area; not often for some of the more international members.

>Sometimes Miss P jolts awake at night, terrified this was a lie... but someone always shushes her, talks her through it.

>She originally fell into old habits. Barely sleeping, running on coffee, filling the boot of the car with quick-lime and a shovel for 'just in case'... the other two were horrified, and concerned. She'd fall asleep then jerk awake, shuffling off, some days... and it freaked them out a bit. Zhanna would take the coffee away, Soldier would wrap her up in a blanket, and one of them would carry her to the bedroom with its shut curtains. And they'd sit with her, as she mumble about needing to do some task or other, her tired mind trapped baack in the days of clipboards and checkmarks against chores...

Sometimes they'd stroke her hair or pat her back, Soldier tried to sing to her but he'd get too into it and get loud. The raccoons would nestle around her, and eventually she'd fall asleep. For a day or more. It was a concern. They'd greet her with food, having hidden the coffee.

It took a while to break the cycle.

>Zhanna still recalls killing Miss P, it haunts her sometimes, especially when she sees the woman look at her with love in her eyes. Reminds her how indifferent she had been in that moment...

Soldier always reminded her that it was okay, he'd poked her back to life! Miss P was STRONG and SMART and BEAUTIFUL like Zhanna and Soldier LOVED them!

She'd smile, and the feeling of guilt would fade... but it would return.

>Merasmus was a periodic hazard. Sometimes it would be a mass invasion on the household at certain times of year... othertimes you'd just randomly find him sipping coffee in your loungeroom, manically giggling as he read a house and garden magazine.

>Everything changed, however, the day that Zhanna realised she was pregnant. She called her brother to make his doktor-husband confirm it; Heavy came too (to make sure Medic didn't give her anything to make it a human-ape hybrid, bc he kept making concerning 'well i'll be a monkey's uncle!' jokes and Heavy was SUSPICIOUS).

Soldier was DELIGHTED!

Miss P was... happy for them, but definitely not herself upon hearing the news. Melancholy and withdrawn. Took them a bit to realise it, actually.

She thinks it changes everything, binds them closer together, and starts to plan for her future. They're confused when she said she was going to stay with a friend for a bit... but distracted.

She didn't have many, it was a bit hard to trust people when  you were a mercenary and all. So she calls Spy, after checking into a hotel, and drunkenly sobs the situation down the phone...

He's mid-assassination but makes time for her. Always does. He kills the guy and is back in America within the day. The first thing he does is take away her wine and shove her into the shower, clothes and all, before turning on the water. Between them, he gets the mess of heartbroken Miss P out of her attire, washed (even does her hair), dried, and bundled into sleepwear.

She's asleep in minutes. His wife said that particular tactic had always worked with her boys (of which Scout was number 8), whether they were four and tantruming, through to adulthood. Never failed.

In the morning, he talks to her about the situation; and realises what's happening. He calls Scout to come and stay with her for a bit (he's closest, and over that blasted crush thankfully, though of all people why the BUSHMAN instead?), and the runner does. He talks about everything and nothing, distracting her, whilst Spy goes to speak to the other two.

Zhanna and Soldier are wandering about their town, searching, asking, trying to locate her. Spy collects them both, returning to their home to talk. He outlines that Miss P left because she felt she would no longer be part of this... triumvirate.

They're scandalised, having not realised Miss P would be anything but delighted over the prospect of THEIR baby...

Zhanna is 100% for kicking down the hotel door, and Soldier is right there with her, but Spy talks them into just calling first. It might be overwhelming to have them explode on her.

The phonecall is long, and emphatic, they tell her this changes nothing, except that she will be a mother too. If she wants. "Can be oddly sexy and close aunt, if you wish, little violet" Zhanna says off-hand, and Miss P laughs herself to tears on the other end of the line.

"I'm sorry... I was being silly" she sobs at them, but they hush her. IT was reasonable, if you thought the people you loved more than life were abandoning you... though she was wrong.

"Lieutenant, you have to tell your fellow officers if something's amiss in the ranks..." Soldier explained, and she promises to, if there's a next time.

They come to get her; Scout has 'helped' her pack (shoved everything in her bag haphazardly). And it's a little weird for everyone... Scout and Spy leave them to it, to do whatever it is their relatively new Father-Son bond allowed them to.

Miss P refuses to sleep in the middle that night, not elaborating why. Zhanna takes the position, and the other woman curls around her like a shield; fingers idly trailing across the slight bump, deep in thought. Soldier is to the other side, quietly watching them from under a mound of raccoons... he's excited, but can sense Miss P is doing something.

The other two have just about dozed off when she speaks. A quiet, "I'm sorry about this..." followed by a pause, and then, "...but I promise to make it up to you."

Just as one of them was going to reassure her that wasn't necessary, they realise she's not talking to them.

"You will be a good mother also, little violet..." Zhanna says, startling her. "This is your child too, da? You, and I and Soldier will be the best parents ever..."

"We have had good practice with the Privates here..." Soldier adds, gesturing to the raccoons.

"Da, the best. And they will learn from the best..." Zhanna assures, kissing Soldier, then turning to kiss Miss Pauling.  

"...thank you, for letting me part of this too. I swear I'll... I'll peel the flesh off a man's face as he screams before I let anyone hurt the baby..." Miss P says, adamantly. And Zhanna laughs, amused and delighted.

"Have no doubt you would, little violet, but you are a part of us... as is the baby. We are a family, da? I am pleased you will share this with me." And she does.

Life grows slightly more complex as the baby grows; the house floods with so many items and gifts for the baby it's hard to move about. Soldier keeps bringing home cute onesies for the baby... and they almost always end up on the raccoons. Which is fine, they have heaps.

Lovemaking is different, chores are different. But not in a bad way. Zhanna finds the way they kiss the swell of hr belly, show attention to her ripening breasts, is adorable.

Soldier massages her back if it gets sore, and Miss P works on her legs when they ache. She was not sick, her mother never  was, but the whole scenario does give her headaches sometimes. Medic offered something to help, which thankfully had no side effects.

Every ultrasound makes things a little more exciting, a little more nerve wracking.

And when it finally comes time, Zhanna has both Soldier and Miss P by her side. Supporting her as their child emerges, shrieking as loudly as her parents, into this world.

It is a relief to see the child after all this time. Soldier just about pulls a Lion King, to announce her to the world. Zhanna never tires of looking at her little face. Miss P was hesitant, until the little weight was put in her arms and she realised she would never, could never, abandon this infant.

Their child is raised with two mothers and a father. The first few weeks are made easier by this fact, as someone is always able to pick her up, feed her, bathe her, respond to her cries, etc. Even if they are exhausted by it.

By the time she is one, their daughter commands a legion of raccoons and the mercs have all practically worn allegiance to her. Though a few of their gifts had to be confiscated on  the grounds that she might die if they exploded...

>She is two years old when Miss P finally confronts the other two about an idea she's had for some time now, worrying herself inside and out over how they would take it. Miss P speaks to them, says that she would like to bring their next child into the world, however possible. Not to tie them together or anything simply... it is something she wants to do.

They work out the logistics, Soldier is the father but exactly how that came to pass is their business alone... and the cycle begins over again; culminating in another infant, another raccoon-overlord in the household... and another child with two mothers, a father, a sister, eight mercenary uncles, and so many raccoon-siblings at this point who could count?

(Plus merasmus, who was like a great uncle- aunt- er, merasmus.)

[kcaruth]

Movie Mania: Top 10 of 2018

This one was difficult. Those who have followed this blog for a while will know that for the past two years I have done a top 15 list of favorite films. That is largely because 2016 and 2017 cranked out so many great films, and I could not restrict myself to 10. However, 2018 turned out to be a rather lackluster year for film, in my opinion. Sure, there were some high points, but overall it was disappointing. It was actually easy to stick to a list of 10 this time, and those 10 films are all deserving of praise. I just wish they had some tougher competition to go up against. I digress, though. I now give you my spoiler-free list of favorite films of 2018.

Honorable Mention: Bumblebee

A collaboration between Travis Knight, the director of Kubo and the Two Strings, and Hailee Steinfeld? Count me in!

I stopped following the Transformers franchise after 2011′s Transformers: Dark of the Moon. One can only endure so many mind-numbing Michael Bay explosions before all of his or her brain cells die out. Here is a fun exercise that one of my college professors taught me; try it next time a Michael Bay Transformers movie comes on. Every time there is a cut, tap a pen or pencil or clap your hands. Frankly, it is quite overwhelming and hard to keep up with, and it is difficult not to notice every single unnecessary, jarring cut after becoming conscious of them through this exercise.

Contrast that with 2018′s Bumblebee. At Knight’s direction, the film forgoes most of those flashy explosions in favor of a more intimate approach to actual character development. Knight wisely chooses to keep the audience grounded and focused on the human characters, namely Steinfeld’s Charlie Watson, a teenage girl who is still struggling to come to terms with the death of her father while harboring resentment of her mother for remarrying. As far as the robots go, while the other Transformers movies went overboard with filling the screen with as many Decepticons and Autobots as they could, Knight really only has the titular Bumblebee and a couple of Decepticons hunting him down, ensuring that the action scenes and the film itself do not feel too bloated. Bumblebee is the course correction that this franchise so desperately needed.

#10: Eighth Grade

I was cringing throughout the run time of Eighth Grade, but somehow that is a compliment to this film. Uncompromising in its excruciating honesty, Eighth Grade hits the bullseye when it targets the audience’s empathy for an anxious 13-year-old during her last week of eighth grade named Kayla Day, played by Elsie Fisher. As his debut feature film, writer-director Bo Burnham has stated that he drew inspiration from his own struggles with social anxiety, so the script feels genuine and absent of any Hollywood edits. While Kayla is certainly the main focus of the film, Burnham provides a surprisingly touching character arc for her single father, Mark, played by Josh Hamilton. Mark desperately attempts to connect with his teenage daughter, but it seems like all she cares about having a connection with is her phone and social media. With themes of mental health, heavy use of social media, and sexuality, Burnham delivers one of the most uncomfortable scenes I have ever sat through in a movie theater, which is most likely exactly how he intended it to feel.

I cannot help but compare Eighth Grade to 2016′s Edge of Seventeen, another coming-of-age comedy-drama about a teenage girl by a debut director. If I was given the choice between the two films, I would pick Edge of Seventeen, which I believe is much more re-watchable, garnering that intended empathetic response from the audience with half the cringe. Both are brilliant, but those who have not seen Edge of Seventeen should do themselves a favor and give it a watch.

#9: Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

With so much hate and negativity in the world today, Morgan Neville’s documentary about Fred Rogers is a shining beacon of hope that restores one’s faith in humanity. Using archival footage as well as interviews with those closest to Rogers, Neville paints an intimate portrait of the man who welcomed audiences into his neighborhood through his pioneering television program. Without deifying Rogers, Neville shows how this American treasure dedicated every fiber of his being to teaching children how to be upstanding human beings who care deeply for one another, despite our differences. This documentary proves that Rogers’ lessons were not just for children, though. In fact, Won’t You Be My Neighbor? often feels like a one-on-one session with Rogers, encouraging audience members that they are all capable of good through simple acts of kindness.

#8: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Unfortunately, this American western is sure to fly under most people’s radar because it was a Netflix release that I do not recall having much fanfare and advertising. Written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, this film is an anthology of six different vignettes set in the American West. Sporting a stellar cast with the likes of Liam Neeson, Tim Blake Nelson, James Franco, Zoe Kazan, Brendan Gleeson, and more, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs flexes the Coen’s signature style of dark drama and black humor while impressively tackling all of the sub-genres within the greater Western genre.

Each of the vignettes are tied together by death in some form or fashion. While my ranking of them changes from day to day, my favorite and least favorite remain consistent. It is virtually impossible to not fall in love with the first vignette, “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs,” which is about a cheerful outlaw known just as widely for his singing as his gunslinging. The final vignette featuring a handful of characters cramped together on a stagecoach ride called “The Mortal Remains,” on the other hand, feels somewhat out of place and ends the film with a bit of a dud. Along the way between these two vignettes, however, viewers encounter enchanting tales of a bank robber, an impresario and his artist, a prospector, and a wagon train on the Oregon Trail.

As the Coen’s first film to be shot digitally, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs boasts some impressive cinematography, especially when it comes to wide sweeping shots, like any decent Western should. It also features a wonderfully delightful score that I desperately hope gets an Oscar nod. Not a week has gone by since I have watched this film where I do not find myself humming one of the songs or music from it. The acting throughout the different vignettes of the film is topnotch, and the actors look like they are having a blast in their roles.The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is a fun time that leaves viewers longing for more time in the American West. For those who cannot find the time to sit down for the whole film, I must urge them to at least watch the first vignette about Buster Scruggs, which is worth the price of admission on its own.

#7: Isle of Dogs

Set in a dystopian Japan, Wes Anderson’s stop-motion animated Isle of Dogs tells the story of a boy searching for his dog on Trash Island after an outbreak of canine flu. Voiced by an all-star cast including Bryan Cranston, Jeff Goldblum, Scarlett Johansson, and Bill Murray, Isle of Dogs is an epic adventure with its fair share of plot twists along the way. Alexandre Desplat provides a brilliant score for the film that matches Anderson’s comedic quirkiness and thematic choices. I would not consider myself a fan of Anderson’s distinct film style, but I do consider myself a huge fan of dogs and enjoyed Isle of Dogs. (Get the title of the film? Pronounce it out loud quickly. I Love Dogs.)

#6: Game Night

Game Night made me laugh out loud like I have not done in a long time at the movie theater. Starring Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams, the film follows the hilariously ridiculous premise of a group of friends whose game night gets wrapped up in a criminal escapade. In addition to Bateman and McAdams’ great, fun chemistry as the husband and wife duo of Max and Annie Davis, Jesse Plemons’ portrayal of Gary Kingsbury, Max and Annie’s weird neighbor, delivers some moments of pure laughter. For a film that is high on laughs, Game Night manages to string the audience along with its surprisingly competent mystery, complete with reveals and twists that both shock and amuse viewers. Be sure to stick around for the credits and post-credits.

#5: A Quiet Place

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a big baby when it comes to horror movies. I absolutely loathe jump scares and will watch horror movies through my fingers if I am forced to watch one. However, I had heard so much positive buzz about John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place that I could not allow myself to make this list without seeing it first, and boy am I glad I summoned the courage to see it. A Quiet Place is a masterclass in tension, tone, pacing, sound design, and character development.

The plot centers around the Abbott family in a post-apocalyptic world inhabited by blind monsters that attack any source of sound with their heightened sense of hearing. Nothing is known about the origins of these monsters, only that they have wiped out most human and animal life on Earth. In this hopeless world, Lee and Evelyn Abbott struggle to fill their children with hope for the future.

The performances in A Quiet Place are some of the best of the year. The actors have an added degree of difficulty of having very minimal to no dialogue during the entire film, so their facial expressions and body language have to do most of the talking. One of the more impressive feats of A Quiet Place is the characters communicate in American Sign Language, and the actors actually learned ASL for the film. Millicent Simmonds, who plays Regan Abbott, is deaf and knows ASL, so she was able to help her co-stars with ASL, make corrections, and suggest improvements.

Krasinski has said that A Quiet Place is all about parenthood. Along with this theme, the film contains many Christian images and themes that are fascinating to pick apart and ponder. With so much depth, A Quiet Place delivers an original story that grips audiences. Although I did not see it in theaters, I am sure that people could hear a pen drop in their viewings.

#4: Bohemian Rhapsody

For all of its inaccuracies, creative liberties, and unevenness, Bohemian Rhapsody took the world by storm as the highest grossing music biopic and reinvigorated a love of Queen and its leading man, Freddie Mercury. Rami Malek runs away with the film as he disappears into his role as Mercury, so much so that audience members might have to pinch themselves to remember that they are not watching the real Freddie Mercury. Seriously, Malek has to be a surefire Oscar contender for this performance. Not only does he masterfully recreate Mercury’s mannerisms and moves onstage, he also channels his pain and feelings of isolation to bring audiences a fully realized depiction of the superstar. The supporting cast is good too, although Malek’s stellar performance does overshadow them, through no fault of their own.

For its finale, Bohemian Rhapsody gifts audiences with one of the most moving, memorable set pieces in all of film for 2018, the 1985 Live Aid concert. In a word, it is epic. Bohemian Rhapsody teaches lessons of acceptance, love, individuality, and the power of music and leaves viewers wishing they could have had a few more years with the amazing Freddie Mercury. This is one of those instances where the majority of critics should be ignored. Even if viewers are new to Queen, they should not miss this film.

#3: Green Book

Bolstered by fantastic performances by Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali, Peter Farrelly’s Green Book takes a relatively unknown true story about a concert tour to the Deep South in the 1960s with African-American pianist Dr. Don Shirley (Ali) and his driver/bodyguard, Italian-American Tony Vallelonga (Mortensen), and tackles its subject matter without being too heavy-handed and maintaining respect for its characters. The script treats Vallelonga and Shirley as real human beings. Contrary to most film tropes, neither completely changes his character after a single event or incident. Instead, that change occurs slowly over the course of their road trip. Both men learn from one another, despite their disparate backgrounds. Mortensen and Ali are both worthy of Oscar nominations, though I think I would give the edge to Mortensen.

For a film about racism, identity, and the dangerous Jim Crow South, Green Book remains accessible to all audiences. It is full of heart and is brimming with that feel-good aura. As Mick LaSalle wrote in The San Francisco Chronicle, Green Book is “so big in its spirit, that the movie acquires a glow. It achieves that glow slowly, but by the middle and certainly by the end, it's there, the sense of something magical happening, on screen and within the audience.”

#2: Annihilation

I have not stopped thinking about Alex Garland’s Annihilation since it came out way back in February. Garland, the director of one of my favorite films released in 2015 Ex Machina, puts together an impressive cast starring Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson, Tuva Novotny, and Oscar Isaac to deliver a truly intoxicating film that leaves audiences deep in thought well after the credits roll. Based on Jeff VanderMeer’s novel of the same name, Annihilation follows a group of scientists who enter a mysterious quarantined area known as the Shimmer. Inside the Shimmer, flora and fauna undergo uncontrollable mutations. The scientists explore the Shimmer in an attempt to learn its secrets and discover what happened to the military team that was sent in before them.

The atmospheric, bone-chilling score sticks in viewers’ memories and adds to the intense tone of the film. Speaking of tone, Annihilation might bring audiences to the verge of suffocation because of how breathtaking it is. It has possibly the scariest, most dreadful scene of any film from this decade that comes from the stuff of nightmares and leaves audiences haunted. For all of its terrifying elements, however, this sci-fi film also showcases some downright gorgeous scenes that let the imagination run wild. Unlike many sci-fi films these days, Annihilation is not afraid to slow down and let scenes marinate in viewers’ minds. With so many avenues to explore as far as themes go, from ethics to grief to depression to humanity’s propensity for its own self-destruction, Annihilation is a film that should be talked about for a long time to come.

#1: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

This was the easiest decision on my whole list. No other film came close to the number one spot after I saw Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. I remember seeing trailers for this film throughout 2018, but I did not have high expectations for it and almost blew it off. After all, with all of the Spider-Man films we have had in recent years, how could this one stand out apart from its animation?

The hype is real. Spider-Man is one of the most well-rounded films of 2018. It expertly balances its genuinely funny comedic moments with its emotionally moving dramatic ones. It takes risks that pay off with its bold storytelling, which is full of charm and satisfying superhero action. There is obvious care and attention to detail poured into every frame of this film, a work of art that is a love letter to superhero comic books. The creators of the film wanted it to feel like "you walked inside a comic book," and they hit it out of the park. The computer-generated animation works in concert with line drawings, paintings, dots, and various comic book art styles to make the film look like it was created by hand. It even has word boxes and bubbles that somehow are not too obstructive or distracting. As Todd Howard, the director and executive producer at Bethesda Game Studios, is famous for saying, “all of this just works.”

For such a large ensemble of characters voiced by ingenious choices like Mahershala Ali, Hailee Steinfeld, and Nicolas Cage, Spider-Man gives each of them equal footing while keeping the spotlight squarely on Miles Morales (Shameik Moore), the new Spider-Man. Lily Tomlin voices what may be my favorite version of Aunt May, and many other Spider-Man staple characters make great appearances.

The soundtrack is catchy and fits the bill for what a kid Miles’ age would listen to. There are tons of Easter eggs for hardcore Spider-Man fans to uncover, and there are pop culture winks and nods that most people familiar with the Spider-Man franchise will understand and enjoy. Of course, the late, great Stan Lee has a touching cameo, one of his best yet.

Every part of this stand-alone story feels fresh, and the characters have so much depth to them. It is hard to come up with an original concept that reinvents the superhero genre, but Spider-Man has done just that and more. This revolutionary, culturally important film was a joy to watch, and it may go down as the best Spider-Man film yet. Certainly, it has to be a serious contender for the best film of 2018.

The following are a list of all of the films I saw from 2018, in no particular order:

·         Green Book

·         The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

·         Pope Francis: A Man of His Word

·         My Hero Academia: Two Heroes

·         Black Panther

·         Annihilation

·         Game Night

·         Ready Player One

·         Isle of Dogs

·         A Quiet Place

·         Avengers: infinity War

·         Deadpool 2

·         Solo: A Star Wars Story

·         Incredibles 2

·         Ant-Man and the Wasp

·         BlacKkKlansman

·         Bad Times at the El Royale

·         Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle

·         First Man

·         Ralph Breaks the Internet

·         Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

·         Aquaman

·         Bumblebee

·         Bohemian Rhapsody

·         Bird Box

·         Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

·         Eighth Grade

My 2017 film list: http://kcaruth.tumblr.com/post/171040800751/movie-mania-top-15-of-2017

My 2016 film list: http://kcaruth.tumblr.com/post/156340406236/movie-mania-top-15-of-2016

[starlight-is-your-guide]

1. My Guardian's name is Ashton Finch. I think "Ash" is a cool name for a Gunslinger, and Atticus Finch is dad of the year every single year. But in my headcanon, Ashton wears the Celestial Nighthawk, and that's sort of his "superhero" name. Ashton is "the" Guardian, and I figure that at a certain point a mythos will have formed around him. Children talk about The Nighthawk that killed Oryx and drove out the Red Legion.

2. Ashton's Ghost is named Sputnik. I thought a Russian name would be cute because Ashton was rezzed in Old Russia. Sputnik roughly translates to "fellow traveler" or "companion" so I don't think it could be more perfect.

3. My favorite weapon was always the Last Word. But not only is it not in D2 (yet) but it also probably still canonically belongs to Shin Malphur. It think Sunshot is Ashton's canonical handcannon. Liu Feng forged Sunshot, and I think it would be interesting if she also forged the Celestial Nighthawk helmet as well.

4. Ashton rarely participates in Crucible any longer. The Nighthawk tells himself that he’s much too busy aiding the Vanguard in more “practical” ways. Truth be told, even if he had the time, he doesn’t enjoy hurting other Guardians whatsoever. Cayde-6′s recent death has significantly altered Ashton’s perspective on Guardian mortality.

5-7. Ashton was born to be a Gunslinger, and there’s nothing he’d rather be. But he greatly respects the capabilities of his allies, and often thinks about what it would be like if he was a Titan or a Warlock. Ashton’s closest friends are a Voidwalker and a Striker, which are easily his favorite disciplines of their respective classes (thought he may be biased).

8. Ashton would probably take the knife game, being a Hunter himself. When his Warlock friends go on long-winded rants, he usually tunes them out... and while Ashton respect Titan tradition, he prefers not to partake.

9. Ash doesn’t have a very serious personality, and he absolutely can appreciate a goof. He doesn’t spend extended periods of time planning elaborate pranks on fellow Guardians, but he certainly can find the humor in confusing warlocks with his frabjous vocabulary.

10. Cayde-6 would doubtless be Ashton’s closest friend among the Vanguard. With the current state of things in Forsaken, Ashton would be closer to Ikora by default. But that’s because he always kept a very professional relationship with Zavala, considering he’s the Vanguard Commander.

11. Obviously Ashton would kill them all, but if we’re playing a game: eff Skolas, cuz he a kang, marry Calus because he’d buy the Eververse set for me, and kill Ghaul, because he violated the VAULT.

12. I think that with Ashton being “the” Guardian, he might not actually have any other hobbies. The personality that I picture for him is that he has this eagerness to help people, especially the Vanguard, and he rarely lets himself relax, much to Sputnik’s dismay. Ashton does love the holidays, like The Dawning and the Festival of the Lost--specifically for the goodwill that they bring--and he is always eager to dress up and decorate for them. (Ash also has an insatiable appetite, and would consider "eating" a hobby of his. Dancing isn't so much a hobby as it is a way of life.)

13. Ashton almost always wears the Celestial Nighthawk helmet. I was very partial to the KD Bogatyr 2.0 set (Vanguard set from Cayde during Year 3 of D1) with the Predawne shader. During the course of Destiny 2, I imagine that his armor changed a lot. He started with the Frumious (parade) set and lost it in the Red War, and had to work his way back up, wearing the the vendor gear of each planet during the course of the base game (and probably the expansions) until re-earning the parade set and eventually the Solstice of Heroes set (with solar glow) just before Forsaken. Right now, Ashton is still cobbling together a cohesive outfit, but safe bet is on Reverie Dawn with New Monarchy Diamonds.

14, 17. Asthon and Sputnik are best friends. Sputnik is always by Ashton's side, and he has plenty to say. Ashton hasn't experienced a moment of silence since he became a Guardian. Silence feels unnatural. If Ashton ever had to face solitute, he'd struggle with it immensely. He'd never harm his Ghost.

15. Ashton isn't scared of storms. He's really not scared of anything. He is always confidant that he and his friends are going to be okay, and he rarely is concerned, even when faced with legitimately threatening situations.

16. Ashton doesn't know who he was before he died his first death. Zavala doesn't like when Guardians snoop around their past life, and Asthon personally believes that who he is now is what matters. That being said, there's a feeling in the back of his mind that there's someone out there that he's doing this all for--besides the Vanguard, besides the City and all the people in it--but he can't remember anything about her, and some things are best left forgotten.

18. I mean. I'd try anything once... But Ashton would almost certainly not be romantically involved with an alien race. Not without a significant emotional connection. Awoken, absolutely. Exo, it's certainly possible.

19. Shin Malphur is Ashton's personal hero, as I imagine he is to many Gunslingers. The duel between Malphur and Yor at Dwindler's Ridge is an iconic (if not stereotypical) tale of good triumphing over evil. If Ashton were able to speak with Shin Malphur, he’d want to know more about what it was like to become a Guardian while having lived in the same era. Ashton is from a very different time, and he doesn’t have memories or people around him that knew what he was like in his first life.

20. The Takanome Rangers planted blue flowers along the roads that they guarded in order to guide travelers home to the growing City. Seeing the fields that those flowers have grown into brings a smile to Ashton’s face. 

21/29. Ash really likes to eat. He loves sampling the diverse cuisine found throughout the Last City. Spicy Ramen will always be his favorite place to grab a bite, doubly true since Cayde's death. He’ll also try just about any extraterrestrial flora and fauna, even when Sputnik warns him that something is poisonous. Prepared meals by alien races, like the Fallen or Cabal, are always worth a try. The Awoken living in the Reef have developed completely unique dishes from the people of Earth, and Ashton makes sure to take the time to grab something new each time he visits the Reef. He enjoys tea and coffee, and drinks a ton of water. He's not much of a fan of soda, or anything carbonated. Although no self-respecting Hunter would turn down a dare to drink them all at once.

22. Ashton loves consuming media about the Golden Age. He wants to see humanity return to it's former glory; and books and films about or created during the Golden Age are his favorite. If the stories are romantic, even better. Ashton's closest friend shares his infatuation with the Golden Age, and they watch films together and recommend books to one another.

23. Asthon very much likes to dance, and will find any reason to do so. He'll listen to any genre of music, so long as it suits his mood. His favorite pre-Golden Age songs since Forsaken’s storyline would be "Go to the Light" by Murder By Death, and probably Highwayman.

24. Ashton lived in a small apartment in the Tower (until it was destroyed during the Red War). I’m not sure where I get this assumption from, but I figure that there are hundreds of floors in the Tower that are reserved as barracks for new recruit Guardians. When they finish their basic training and have the glimmer, they can get their own place out in the City. Ash never found the time to move to a bigger place, before the Red War. After the Tower was destroyed, he got himself a far less humble loft. Ashton keeps his quarters decorated with the many interesting things he brings home from his exploits through the solar system. A colorful quilt with a Russian Matryoshka doll pattern is hung on his wall. Fossils from each celestial body he’s visited are in a display case (he really doesn’t like the ones that talk to his brain--he gives those to the Warlocks on the rare occasions he finds them). Miscellaneous keepsakes have their own shelf; things such as a subway card from Freehold, a bottle of the yellow stink-water from Venus, and some of Xur’s strange coins. Sputnik has a case for the Ghost shells that he likes to show off, but dare not wear himself.

25/26. Ashton loves the City and visits it as often as he can. He especially enjoys interacting with children. Children, above anything else, are what give Guardians a reason to keep fighting. When the Nighthawk visits, children crowd him and ask to hear a story or to see a knife thrown at something, or to play a game. Ash and his friends like to go out and eat together. Cayde-6 and Ash have shared a handful of meals at Spicy Ramen establishments.

27. Asthon respects Lord Shaxx greatly. Definitely man-crush tier.

28. Ashton typically sleeps like a log. However, since Cayde’s death, and even beyond his avenging, Ashton has been sleeping poorly and has been experiencing nightmares.

30. Other Guardians gravitate towards Ash because he doesn't give up and because he's humble. He does what must be done and he doesn't consider any task to be impossible. His courageousness is second only to his endearing aloofness of the imperfections of the Vanguard. His friends say that his greatest strength is optimism. Ashton values realism when he seeks advice from his allies. Many Guardians are more knowledgeable than Ashton is in just about any field of study; he relies on his friends to explain Hive lore, or what exactly it is that Thanatonauts do. Guardians that take the time and possess the patience to kindly help their allies are the sort that Ashton surrounds himself with.

Questions for you to answer about your guardian or guardians:

Assume these also mean their plural versions. Also reblog this with your answers when you see this and tag a friend if ya want! I wanna learn about your OCs!!!

1.) What is your guardian’s name? What does it mean? What inspired you to choose that name for them?

2.) What did your guardian name their ghost? What does it mean? What inspired them to choose that name?

3.) What is your guardians favorite weapon of choice? What mod do they use for it? Do they have a masterwork on it and if so, how many enemies have they killed with that weapon?

4.) Do they participate in the Crucible often or do they just go to complete the daily challenges?

5.) If your guardian had to choose to be another class, what class would they pick? Or would they stay the same?

6.) What is their favorite subclass within their own class?

7.) What is their favorite subclass in a different class?

8.) Would they rather receive a titan kiss ( a hard ass headbutt that mostly results in death ), asking a warlock a question that might result in a long explanation, or deciding to play the knife game with hunter and bet at high stakes?

9.) Would they prank other guardians or just their close friends? What kind of pranks would they pull?

10.) Which vanguard memeber to they like to hang out with the most?

11.) Who would they fml out of Skolas, Ghaul, and Calus?

12.) What kind of hobbies do they do in their free time? Are there any particular skills they have that help them with this hobby(s)?

13.) What is their favorite armor set and what shader do they use for it?

14.) Do they prefer silence or are they unbothered in loud areas?

15.) Are they afraid of storms? If so, is there a specific reason why?

16.) Who were they before their ghost revived them? Do they know about this and if so how or what did they use to learn about themselves?

17.) How close are your guardian and their ghost? If they are not close, would your guardian kill their ghost and choose to answer the darkness’ calls?

18.) Would your guardian engage in a romantic relationship with Fallen, Cabal, Hive, etc? If so, what do they find attractive about the species?

19.) Who is their favorite lore hero? Example, Jolder, Saint-14, Andal Brask, etc. Why is this person their favorite and in what ways do they inspire your guardian? What would your guardian say if they were face to face with them?

20.) Does your guardian like plants? If so, what kinds? Do they prefer flowers or trees or shrubs? Would they start a garden?

21.) If your guardian became obsessed with something, what would it be?

22.) Do they like reading books or watching movies or both? What genres are their favorites? Does their fireteam have the same taste?

23.) What kind of music do they like? Do they dance around anybody in any situation or in the privacy of their quarters? What would their favorite song from the Golden Age be?

24.) What does their living space look like? Are there a bunch of pictures around or do Knick knacks cover the shelves? Do they enjoy bright, neutral, or dark colors? Would they purchase a fur rug?

25.) Do they travel around the city often? If so, what are their favorite places to go and who do they go with? Are the civilians ever excited to see them or do they give them a look because of precious mishaps that resulted in property damage?

26.) Are they good with kids? If not, how do they react when a child tries to talk to them? If they are good with kids, what kind of things do they do to entertain them?

27.) Are they in love with Shaxx?

28.) When your guardian sleeps, are they stiff and stay in one spot or wild and kick off the sheets? Do they have nightmares often and if so, about what? How often do they sleep?

29.) Do they enjoy coffee, tea, soda, or water? Would they mix all of these together and drink the liquid on a dare?

30.) What about their personality attracts other guardians to them? What is it about other guardians that attracts your guardian to them?

[megsblackfirewrites]

Working With The Reaper: Chapter 8

Chapter 8

“Everyone in position?” Hanzo asked.

“Eyes on the targets,” Jack confirmed. “Genji looks like shit, but he’s still alive.”

“Good luck,” Reaper growled. “We’ll be here when you need us.”

Hanzo glanced at Jesse and touched his hand. Jesse smiled and gave him a quick kiss before he placed his hands behind his back. Hanzo snapped the trick-cuffs over his wrists and put his hand between Jesse’s shoulder blades.

“Operation underway,” Hanzo said.

“Standing by,” Jack replied. “Initiating radio silence.”

Hanzo heard the line go dead and took a deep breath. He gave Jesse a shove forward and headed down the hallway to the parking garage. Jesse walked ahead of him, pretending to struggle as they headed for the drop off. The parking garage was full of cars and would provide plenty of cover if a firefight broke out. It was definitely going to happen. Hanzo had no doubts about it.

Talon wouldn’t want to let him get away with Genji. They wouldn’t want anyone to know about the exchange. They’d kill him and Genji in a heartbeat if they were able to. He knew that Jack and Reaper wouldn’t let that happen.

Hanzo did his best to keep his expression neutral as he pushed Jesse ahead of him. Genji looked terrible; his eyes were blackened, blood was dried and flaking off from his nose and lip, and he looked like he was having a hard time remaining upright. Jesse growled beside him, but didn’t move as the Talon operative stepped forward.

“It is good to see you, Hanzo Shimada,” he said, the white mask he wore keeping his face hidden. Hanzo could still hear the smirk in the man’s voice. “It would have been unfortunate if we had to kill your brother.”

“You wanted The Gunslinger,” Hanzo growled and shoved Jesse forward. “Here he is. Now give me my brother and we’ll put this whole business behind us.”

The operative let out a sharp order and Genji was dragged over to Hanzo. He caught his brother as they let him go and grabbed Jesse instead. Jesse fought the hands as he was dragged forward, his eyes darting all over the parking garage. Probably already mapping out a number of different escape routes to help him get to Jack and Reaper faster.

“That concludes our deal,” the operative said before he lifted a gun. “Thank you for your help, Hanzo; it has been most useful.”

The man’s head exploded before he had a chance to fire. Hanzo winced and held Genji close, backing away quickly as Jesse threw the cuffs off and started throwing punches at the men holding him. The sharp crack of shotguns and a heavy pulse rifle filled the air as Jack and Reaper opened fire.

“Get Genji out of here,” Jack ordered as the line flared to life. “We’ll handle these guys.”

Hanzo hauled Genji up against his chest before they started heading back up the hallway. The proximity sensors that Hanzo had set up around the perimeter started going crazy and he swore. There was back-up waiting in the wings and they hadn’t realized it until now. Really observant of them.

“We have more people moving in,” he said over the comms.

“It’s Petras,” Reaper snarled. “I was wondering when that coward would show up. Hanzo, take an alternative route out of here. He isn’t here to help you get your brother to safety. He’s here to protect his assets with Talon.”

“You sure of that?” Hanzo asked as he looped Genji’s arm around his shoulders.

“Positive,” Reaper said. “Get going.”

“Han…I’m sorry,” Genji murmured as Hanzo dragged Genji across the parking garage and up to the elevator.

His car was parked a safe distance from the building. They only had a quick jog to get Genji to safety and cleaned up.

“Save your strength, Genji,” Hanzo soothed as he closed the doors behind them and hugged his brother close.

“They’re going to kill everyone,” Genji whimpered. “You, me, Gunslinger, Jack, Reaper. They won’t stop until we’re all dead.”

“They won’t get that far,” Hanzo said. “Nothing can stop the Reaper.”

Genji let out a soft sob and Hanzo held him as they sank to the ground.

“Where’s your gun?” Jack demanded as he opened fired on Petras and his goons.

His boss hadn’t even stopped to ask what was going on. He’d taken one look at Reaper and started shooting. Good to know where the man’s priorities were. Definitely not with keeping the innocent lives safe; fucking bastard.

“Can I get to cover first?” Gunslinger demanded as he hopped behind a car. “Not all of us have military grade guns, Jack! I have six bullets to deal with these fuckers!”

Jack snorted as he ducked down to reload his pulse rifle. Reaper was below him chasing after the straggling Talon agents. He didn’t need to see him to know that his lover was having the time of his life. He shook his head and lifted himself back up to start firing again. Oh, how he wished he could share that sort of carnal ferocity.

“This doesn’t have to be this way, Captain,” Petra growled down the commline. “The vigilantes have been playing you. Put your gun down and we’ll talk about this.”

“That before or after you pump me full of lead?” Jack demanded as he shifted his gun to start shooting at another goon that had just emerged from behind a car.

“After if you keep this attitude,” Petras snapped. “Don’t you see the benefit of working with groups like Talon? They do their business as they please and we don’t have to worry about the general population’s welfare.”

“Talon is a terrorist group; they will turn on you the first chance they get,” Jack snarled.

“Not if I am useful,” Petra laughed hollowly. “And I am very useful.”

“Keep your shady shit to yourself; I have no interest in it,” Jack snapped.

“I don’t want to paint you as the bad guy, Jack,” Petras sighed as a loud beeping filled the garage. “But you leave me with no other options.”

“Jack, move!” Reaper shouted.

Jack vaulted over the railing and dropped down onto the roof of a car. It did little to soften his fall and his knees screamed in protest as he rolled off of the car to the ground. He bolted for safety as the stairwell he had been standing on gave way. The explosive charges reduced it to a pile of rubble in the time it took Jack to get to a safe position.

“Well done; you just cost the business several thousand dollars’ worth of property damage,” Jack snorted. “I’m sure Mr. Oxton is going to be very pleased.”

“Now might not be the time to mock the guy that almost blew your ass away,” Gunslinger pointed out.

“I was almost blown up,” Jack smirked behind his facemask. “I’m allowed to mock whoever the hell I want. Three coming in on your left.”

“Thank you,” Gunslinger laughed before the bullets started flying again.

Jack broke in and out of cover, shooting at Petras’ goons as he moved. He didn’t know where Reaper and Petras were throughout the chaos, but he suspected that they were fighting each other. Reaper was probably incredibly horny right now from all the fighting. He really should have been focusing on the fight, but he was distracted by the thought of Reaper pinning him to a car and humping his ass roughly until he begged for his cock.

“Watch your six!” Gunslinger shouted.

Jack ducked behind a bumper and grit his teeth. Focus, old man; now is not the time to be thinking about sex. He twisted and fired off three rockets, rolling out of the way of the bullets flying around him. He glanced around and spotted Reaper backing away into an alcove, firing on the men advancing on him.

“Hold the line,” Jack ordered as he bolted forward.

“Don’t you go playing cowboy on me!” Gunslinger laughed as he continued firing on Petras’ goons.

Jack laughed as he hurried towards Reaper. He fired on the goons, injuring two of them so that Reaper could move forward and finish the other two off. Reaper nodded his head before tapping a shotgun against his mask.

“Petras took off; if we hurry, we can catch the bastard,” Reaper growled.

“Lead the way,” Jack nodded. “I have a bone to pick with the bastard.”

Reaper moved his mask and grinned at Jack. Jack rolled his eyes playfully before he lifted his mask up. They shared a brief kiss before they hurried onwards. Of course Reaper would want to kiss him after everything that happened. Jack was surprised they weren’t already fucking against the wall. He certainly wouldn’t have turned down the opportunity to get his rocks off if Reaper was as hard as he guessed he was.

Petras had managed to corner himself between two high concrete walls in a subsection of the parking garage. He was spitting and cursing, glaring up at the tops of the walls as if they had personally offended him. Jack lifted his rifle up to his shoulder and stared down the sights. One move and he was filling the man full of lead.

“That’s far enough, Petras,” he said. “Put your hands where I can see them.”

“Are you playing cop now, Captain?” Petras demanded as he turned around. “A little late for that, isn’t it?”

“I could say the same for you,” Jack replied. “What were you thinking taking bribes from Talon?”

Petras let out a low laugh. “You think you’re better than me, Morrison? You don’t know anything about what I’ve done to keep this city safe,” he said. “There’s more to every story than just whichever pretty pictures flash the brightest.”

“I know what you’ve done,” Reaper growled. “You gambled and bribed your way to the top. You didn’t care who got trampled under you. How pissed were you when your partner got the promotion you wanted, Petras? How much did it make you foam to know that your partner, a relative nobody compared to your heroics, got to call himself ‘Chief’ while you were forgotten about?”

“Don’t try to act clever with me,” Petras sneered. “You really think you know anything, Reaper?”

“I know more about you than you realize, Petras,” Reaper growled. “I want you to pay for what you’ve done, but I know that won’t happen if we go through the regular channels. How many pockets have you lined in your career, charlatan, to ensure that the courts are always in your favour?”

Petras’ jaw worked back and forth as he stared Reaper down. “You think you know so much, don’t you?” he growled. “You know nothing. Absolutely nothing. Everything I’ve done is for the good of Overwatch.”

“Don’t bullshit me, Giovanni,” Reaper laughed. “You haven’t ever been able to pull anything on me. The good of Overwatch? What a crock of shit. The only thing you care about is your own worthless hide.”

Petras stiffened before he slowly pulled a handgun from his belt. “You will show me your face, Reaper,” he hissed. “Or I will take everything from you.”

“With that little thing?” Reaper sneered. “Try me.”

Petras smiled before he pointed the gun at Jack and fired. Jack’s eyes widened in horror and he screamed.