#he single-handedly upgraded this drama

[01432853]

Fighting for Love (2024) • EP 31

[anonymoushouseplantfan]

Episode 4

Royal wedding montage. No, Samantha Cohen didn’t tell you some weird Rainbow Fish story. That did not happen. 

Voices of journalists talking about how amazing she is and how she is going to change the family for the better. I guess the royal coverage is good…as long as they say nice things.

“I don’t know how I was so calm.” Drugs, Meghan. It was drugs. 

Wedding crowds montage. Same song as Four Weddings and a Funeral because these two think they are living a rom com. Celebrities attending the wedding. International coverage. Amal and George and the Beckhams. Will and Harry. No one mentions that it was Wallis Simpson’s car. She didn’t talk about the “real” wedding three days before.

There was no expectation, Harry. You were supposed to get married in Craithie Kirk because you were a man of the people. That was the first story that came out.

CWK talks about the dress. Doesn’t mention the Commonwealth flowers in the veil. No mention of the tiara drama or the egg debacle either. 

Bold choice going with the vampire bride shot. Yes, KC was important to you Meg. He single-handedly saved your train wreck wedding. Lots of discussion about the Kingdom Choir and no one mentions that they perform at all the Commonwealth events. 

They sold their wedding pics, just like Peter. They are soooooo tacky. They laugh about cutting the cake with the sword. That wedding cake was truly symbolic, a priceless collection of gold pedestals propping up a mediocre confection. Her mom ditched her for the celebs. That is hilarious. Of course she did.

Interesting that Meghan hasn’t looked happy once during this whole documentary, but she sounds truly joyful when talking about the wedding. That was the highlight of her life. 

Kate’s face in the wedding pictures is everything. Says it all. I wonder if Meghan sold a Kate pic. I haven’t seen one yet. Never mind, I just rewound and, sure enough, she did.

Interesting how they are appropriating narratives—she’s a hugger, writing in a new character, modernizing—that were created by the tabloids. Every single word this Archewell guy is saying was written by Camilla Tominey, Andrew Morton, or Valentine Low. He is parroting the royal experts Harry was mocking last episode.

Train trip with the Queen. Why does she wear a necklace in some shots, but not in others? They are splicing different interviews and using filters to make it look line one interview. This section was edited into incomprehensibility after the death of the Queen.

Grenfell. LOL, she makes it sound like she was in the UK when the tragedy happened. Wild. I like the Grenfell ladies but why are they spending time on this and not covering her current charities? 

Bitching about Nott Cott, which actually looks super cute. “I don’t know who lived here before.” Your brother, the heir, lived there before, Harry. You know that.

 That’s how she decorated it? Pottery Barn circa 2001? No wonder her domestic goddess career never took off. All of this just to upgrade from 2000s Pottery Barn to 2014 Restoration Hardware? But….they weren’t living in Nott Cott. They rented a Cotswolds farmhouse before the wedding and lived there until moving to Frog Cott. That’s why all these pics are of them getting dressed. They were just using Nott Cott to prep for London events. 

Wait, did they just bitch about their multi-million cottage in Kensington Palace being too small right after the Grenfell segment? Yes, they did. Wow.

Pregnancy. She sold her sonogram pictures. Australia. You weren’t showing already, Megs. There was no bump. Cue shots with no bump. This is epic gaslight. We can clearly see she’s not showing, but they flat out say she was.

Lol, she wasn’t that popular. Her polls peaked at 41% net approval after the wedding and dropped like rocks. And Australia wasn’t the turning point, Lucy. It was her dad talking to the media all summer long. Isn’t Lucy Harper a pr person? Shouldn’t she be able to interpret polling data? Headlines about how popular she was…including the 2018 Time’s Most Influential List, which is hilarious because they were sandwiched between Donald Trump and Saudi Arabia’s MSB. Yeah, the royals were really jealous of that. OMG, they show Meghan’s covers and its…Woman’s Day and Hello! Canada. One of the headlines is “Freddy Mercury’s Secret Wife.” 

Wait, now he’s happy because the media put Meghan on the front pages? They have a very strange relationship with the media. Hold on, he thinks Meghan outshone The Queen? Seriously?????? He thinks the frumpy brocade dress outshone The Queen? I remember calling that a hater cover because Meghan looked so terrible in it. No one thought she overshadowed The Queen. Literally, no one. 

Archewell guy speaking again.  He seems to think that the royals, who were desperately trying to cover up the epic disaster of the Australian tour—which included insulting the Australian government house, exaggerating an incident with a faulty heater, assaulting an embassy employee, walking out of a United Nations event, making a staffer cry in front of a reporter, wearing jewelry gifted by an allegedly murderous despot, and trolling her father by saying he hadn’t paid for her college—were jealous of how “well” she did in Australia. This is delusional.

Lol, now they are bitching about avocados. It wasn’t the avocados. It was her dad. They just jumped from blaming the royals for the bad press to blaming racism. First The Queen was jealous, then the staff were scared, then the media was racist and giving Kate better press…I’m getting whiplash. Pick a villain, guys! I can’t follow this argument at all. The Queen was upset because Meghan stole her Woman’s Day cover with Freddie Mercury’s secret wife so she leaked stories about Meghan’s favorite perishable fruit and the evil tabloids turned that into the racialized avocados of death? Whaaaaaat????? I love how Harry throws up his hands and says “well, if you can’t see it, I can’t do anything for you.” See what? None of this makes any sense.

BTW, they used the “Hurricane Meghan” headlines even though Meghan told Oprah she hadn’t heard about that. The Oprah interview also implied she never knew about the bump-holding headlines and they used those in the documentary too. Oprah read them to her and Meghan acted as if it was the first time she was hearing about it. The only headlines Meghan, according to their statements during the Oprah interview, was supposedly aware of were the “made Kate cry story” and the avocado story, and she laughed at the avocado story.

Walkabout in Liverpool. A member of the public scolded her about her dad. See? The problem was her dad. Harry and Meghan, however, blame family lies and the tabloids. Her dad was giving interviews right and left, and people were watching him in real time, complaining about how he was treated.  No one in the palace was leaking this. No one was lying about it. He was out there, giving interviews to anyone with a couple of bucks because he wanted to explain that he did actually pay for her school. Her sister was doing the same thing.

And here’s the Diana 2.0 stuff. Wait, she was going to kill herself…over the racialized avocados of death? I paused to re-read the transcript of the Oprah interview because I remembered the suicidal ideation story as being a lot more sympathetic than “the Kate story and the avocados made me want to end it all.” In that interview, they start with the tabloid stories, but then Oprah asks her whether she felt lonely and she talks about Harry working all the time and being all alone. She talks about not being able to leave the house and see her friends and also about the tours being exhausting and having to smile through it all. She also claims there were talks about Archie not being a prince and not getting security and how that was stressing her out. Then she talks about people being concerned about Archie’s skin color and then she talks about her suicidal ideation. That kind of emotional build-up is what Oprah brings to the table. That’s why she gets the big bucks. Here, they just jump from “our Australian tour was super successful” to “mean tabloid stories about Kate and avocados” to “I just didn’t want to live anymore,” and it’s not as powerful, particularly since the behind-the-scenes pictures they keep showing us are all happy pictures. 

Also, we skipped over the big show of support at Sandringham.  And Doria can also do the “one tear, left eye” trick. It must be genetic.

She wasn’t allowed to get help? Girl, they knew you were nuttier than a fruitcake. They would have sent you to a shrink in a hot minute. And they weren’t afraid about how it would make the institution look. Harry admitted to going to therapy and it went fantastic. James Middleton went to therapy too. They put up pics of Megs looking sad…and they are all from events that happened afterwards.

The households separated because of leaks? Bullying isn’t even going to get mentioned? No, it isn’t, and neither is the big social media campaign KP did to support Meghan.

I’m blown away by the fact that all this drama is about a story about bridesmaids’ dresses. The Oprah Winfrey interview was motivated by this one story about making Kate cry. The Archetypes podcast was about the story about making Kate cry. They made a six-hour Netflix documentary about a story about making Kate cry. There is now an entire subgenre of royal coverage based on Princess Charlotte’s bridesmaid attire. This one story has been living rent-free in Harry and Meghan’s heads since Fall 2018.

Harry keeps talking about trading stories and not playing the game. He totally planted the Rose Hanbury affair story as revenge for the “made Kate cry” story. Absolutely,

Happy Nott Cott Christmas.  She wasn’t allowed to text photos? Lol, you weren’t texting photos bc you were saving them for Netflix.

People Magazine article. I guess these were the friends working with the magazines. Wasn’t their privacy super important? Weren’t they in danger if their identities were revealed? That was the argument that was presented under oath to the court. Now it turns out she was just saving the reveal for the Netflix special. Baby shower. OMG, Amal Clooney making floral arrangements, wtf? Backlash because of course. 

They are gifted Frogmore Cottage. Archie’s birth. Vintage footage about royal births. She had a long-standing relationship with her UK doctor? How? Seriously, how? They couldn’t do the photocell at Portland Hospital? Didn’t Fergie do it at Portland? Twice?

Birth announcement drama. The problem wasn’t that you broke protocol, Meghan. The problem was that CBS got the exclusive and you lied to the press about the birth. They bring in academics to say it was about racism because of course.

Archie. They took a picture of the nanny with the baby in a mud cloth carrier, lol.

South Africa with Archie. They couldn’t do a hospital photocall with the baby, but now they are taking him on tour. Doria just said “it’s not the institution’s baby, it’s her baby,” but they are taking him on an official tour. They can’t be expected to serve their child on a silver platter for literally two minutes, but they can take him on a week-long tour. I had to double-back and check the dates because I felt this wasn’t nearly as jarring and contradictory when it happened, and it wasn’t. The tour was several months after the birth and they had already taken the baby (who was supposedly too young to fly to Balmoral for the summer) to Ibiza. They way they presented it in the documentary, however, sounded ridiculous.

BTW, no coverage of the Vogue magazine, Smartworks capsule collection, the summer vacations at Elton’s house, the private planes, etc…. All of these were roundly criticized (well, not the Smartworks capsule) and yet the only story that matters is the Kate story.

Lol, the Archewell guy just admitted the royals were afraid Meghan would cause an international row during this tour. Not afraid that she would embarrass the royal family with her activism, noooooo. Afraid she would cause an international row.

Tutu. Wasn’t this footage intrusive two episodes ago? Make up your minds, guys! Tom Bradby. Is she trying to spin the interview as an oopsie due to exhaustion? Is she saying Tom tricked her? She really thinks people are stupid. Also, she takes no responsibility for anything, not even the Uber-narcissistic “I trusted too much.” She’s not even capable of that.

{Edited: Apparently Harry is doing another interview with Bradby. Guess he didn’t really trick them then.]

Astroturfed supportive hashtag. Guess her huge investment in Twitter bots paid off. LOL, my kid squints at the screen and says “all the tweets have the same timestamp.” Yes, they do.

Oh, the Diana footage is a bad idea. You can tell she was trying to act like Diana during the Africa interview (so much eyeliner). They really do think she’s Diana though, and they planned their tours (Australia, Africa, big meeting with African leader, big tour with baby) to bolster that impression. It’s interesting that worthy projects (Smartworks capsule collection, Vogue, Morocco girls’ meetings Ireland tour, dog shelter) that would make Meghan look good, but don’t support the Diana narrative are simply not mentioned. The India hygiene project is not featured in the documentary, but the Diana-like pictures in traditional dress are. 

You Don’t Own Me for closing credits. Hahaha. Harley Quinn music. So appropriate. The music in the last three documentaries is better than the music in the first three. 

Husband and group chat both discuss the Diana 2.0 stuff. She really thinks she is Diana and the documentary is trying to present her as Diana. Everyone agrees that she is no Diana. The psychologist thinks she should have worn more eyeliner. The lawyer tells her that eyeliner wasn’t the problem. There isn’t enough eyeliner in the world to turn her into Diana. Everyone thinks the music is good. Much texting about how much the tiny cottage cost. Someone looks it up on Zillow and it’s an insane number. Many “but my palace was sooooo small” jokes. Many comments about a KP cottage, no matter how small, being much classier than a California McMansion. Many comments about the Archewell guy sounding slimy. 

On to the next episode.

[duckydae]

This is a new series where I take one of my favourite fanfics and write an in-depth review on it. 

Title: Black Pearl

Author: EXO-Dreamer

Length: 32 Chapters

Paring: Byun Baekhyun x OC x Do Kyungsoo

AU: Pirate

Status: Completed

Find it: (Here)

Premise: “The old tales speak of a notorious pirate that once sailed as the captain of EXO. They say that when he wasn't searching for hold, he was often found in the bed of women or single-handedly taking down a whole ship on his own. Legends say that it is Byun Baekhyun whose name robbed men curse under their breath, the name their wives desperately scream at night, and the name they say the sea calls its master.

But one fateful day when the boat is attacked along the marine, and all seems for naught, a stranger brings Baekhyun safely back to shore. Before the ship captain fully gains consciousness to see his saviour, he can only see a glimpse of her wavy black hair and the black jewel around her neck before she escapes without a trace into the ocean.”

Black Pearl is single-handedly one of the most immersive pieces of fiction you will ever read, despite the fact it is fan-fiction and Disney would kill us if we ever placed it above their so-called masterpiece of a series that is the ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ franchise. Let’s face it, it isn’t so much of a movie than watching Johnny Depp play, Johnny Depp.

But this, this is a whole new level. Honestly, skip the films and dive straight into this beast of a story – yes, pun intended. The story of the Black Pearl is based on multiple different pieces of media that has been tied rather smoothly into one entity. The first naturally being EXO’s, Black Pearl from their album Exodus, but you knew that. The second being, Hans Christian Andersen’s, The Little Mermaid and finally, The Princess Bride – which I actually didn’t know until I revisited the foreword.  

What makes it so good you ask? EXO-Dreamer’s world-building is mind-blowing. Every nook and cranny explored to its absolute fullest, which allows you to feel not only for the three centred protagonists but also be severely involved the others surrounding them which then leads into her fantastic use of characterisation. But, back to the setting. I’m not going to lie to you guys, I haven’t re-read this in a while so my knowledge isn’t to its absolute fullest because I just don’t have that much time anymore – oh, to be in High School again but I’ll try my best. To take an educated guess, this is probably post-golden age, based on a character in the sequel. Like, during the tiny sweet-spot just before it started to die-out, along everyone else for that matter because Cholera was oh-so rampant, especially among my people – manky water.

This story was a collection of things I love the most, so it was hard for me to turn away. I’m a history buff and my preferred area of expertise is the golden-age of piracy – love me some Anne Bonny not, only that but as a Baekhyun story. You mean the cheeky son of a bitch that is constantly neck and neck with dear old Kyungsoo? Sign me the fuck up. The icing on the cake was really just the Mermaid storyline, Ariel has been my favourite princess for as long as I can remember – No shade Merida but like, she’s got the hottest prince and you’ve just got my accent. There’re also a few little other details but I won’t dive into spoilers, just yet.

So, world-building, I don’t know about you guys, but I personally pictured this quaint little Island with a village-like aesthetic and I was loving every second of it. If you’ve ever watched Black Sails or played either Black Flag or Uncharted 4 you’ll know what I mean.

To jump into my favourite thing about this thing is the characterisation.

I’m actually not going to start with the two leads, because unsurprisingly they aren’t my favourites – I know it’s like my heart wants to harm itself. To start off, I’m going to jump into Yixing’s character, who is the designated socialite and knows everything about everyone – that’s why his hair is so big. It’s full of secrets. Yixing’s character, the more I saw of him the more endearing he became. Every witty comeback, every sly gesture to say I was #livingforit would be an understatement. I just picture this savvy guy parading around with a bunch of mischievous, filthy pirates, similar to a Korean mother in a drama would drag around her idiotic sons. His relationship with Baekhyun in particular is fascinating, Yixing seems to be one of few who can truly tame the crazy that is Byun Baekhyun.

This isn’t really them individually but rather as a unit, Jinjoo’s sisters were amazing. You could really tell the author really did create solid personalities for each-one and the way they protected their youngest sister played off well against the pirate crew. If I had to pick my favourites would be Sun-Hee and Krystal. Also, the set-up that they essentially ran their own tavern/brothel? – is it, I vaguely remember – was so refreshing. Funnily enough historically accurate, well sort of. Things like that were common in the Wild West for women to basically run the economy off the back of prostitution.

Okay, so cranking it up a little more I’m going to tackle Kyungsoo, which for me it is difficult – as I am currently reading through the sequel and my god does this scallywag get an upgrade, so my opinion on him heavily differs. Kyungsoo wasn’t a huge interest for me, I’d seen his archetype countless times before, so I knew what the gang were getting themselves into and if it came down to the wire, it would be Baekhyun that gets the girl. Kyungsoo in book one is just too pure for this harsh world but his friendship with Jinjoo was sweet. Buckle up boys, just wait until you read number two. Like fucking swoon alert, EXO-Dreamer resurrected my love for dark Soo and I am loving every second of it.

Before I get to Baekhyun and Jinjoo, I’m going to pick-apart something that I’ve never really noticed anyone do. Cameo’s, Cameo’s are rampant in stories like this and sometimes the work sometimes they don’t, but I really have to commend the author for getting it so damn right. Particularly in book two but here, the insertion of BoA was genius considering what she represents in real life within the K-Pop community. I’ll not spoil any of them but I legit screamed when I read two particularly cameos in book two. The names don’t feel shoehorned in, unlike most. What I’ve noticed is that most stories have them for the sake of having a cameo – similar to films. But in this it truly feels that a character was needed so let’s look through the rolodex of stars and see what actually fits the story’s need.

Okay, time to tackle the OC. Honestly, I really like Jinjoo. It’s not often I can read an OC that has agency, god I struggle with it all the damn time but seriously this one is so elegantly written and flesh out so well. Who knew a girl could have more than one emotion at a time! Her relationship with Luhan and her sisters is by far my favourite, particularly with Krystal.

Baekhyun, ho, Baekie what have you done to me. I love this depiction of Baekhyun, is it the most faithful thing, no. Nothing is, but to say he wasn’t the least bit entertaining would be a flat out lie. Like this guy is Sparrow on acid, what I will say reading his sections with Jinjoo really took me back to my Hetalia days; we don’t talk about that any more. Baek was very Arthur-esque and I loved every second on of it. Sure, he starts of as that classic charismatic fuckboi we are warned about and you better believe he’s still that at the end, even so the captain gets a solid glo-up.

Plot? Was it predictable, no, not entirely but like they say; “It’s the journey, not the destination.” And it’s the journey I sign-up for. Personally, I do prefer the sequel, but I think that’s just because I’ve seen these characters grow, particularly Baekhyun and Kyungsoo.

Finally, what about the rest of our boys, well they’re there and they even get to shine too! Some more than others but I distinctly remember crying at one of Jongin’s side-plot rather than the main trios.

To close up I highly recommend this story to whoever just wants to throw themselves into something and feeeeel… because trust me hun, you will.

I will do El Dorado when it has been completed.

Next: One Of Us.

[junker-town]

What if the NFL had a quarterback-only draft today?

Lamar Jackson, Deshaun Watson, and Patrick Mahomes are among the NFL’s best QBs.

Every QB gets thrown into the draft pool on their current contracts. Who goes where?

What if every NFL quarterback were made available in a QB dispensation draft?

Who would go first? How would playoff teams recover from losing their signal callers? Who’d risk their future for the short-term boost of an accomplished, but aging, veteran?

Let’s give it a shot and shuffle the league’s QB decks. Every club takes a turn drafting a passer. This isn’t a ranking of NFL quarterbacks 1 to 32, though. Each team drafts based on its current roster and coaching lineup, so fit matters.

Age and contract status matter as well. Young and cheap are major assets for building a championship roster. Lamar Jackson will be saving Baltimore upwards of $30 million in salary cap space the next two seasons thanks to his team-friendly rookie contract. Patrick Mahomes may obliterate the league’s salary record in the near future, but he’s currently set to make just $5.3 million next fall.

Below, the teams are listed based on the 2020 NFL Draft order. The Bengals start us off. The defending champion Chiefs wrap things up. Every quarterback in the league — including backups, free agents, and this year’s rookie class — is eligible.

Here’s how this theoretical QB rundown shakes out.

1. Cincinnati Bengals: Patrick Mahomes (24 years old)

The reigning Super Bowl MVP and easiest pick in this draft. Pairing up Mahomes with A.J. Green, Tyler Boyd, Tee Higgins, John Ross, and Auden Tate would turn Cincinnati from the NFL’s least watchable team into a legitimate reason to buy Sunday Ticket.

2. Washington: Lamar Jackson (23 years old)

The reigning league MVP owns the NFL record for most single-season rushing yards as a quarterback and led the league in passing touchdowns while doing so. He’s 19-3 as a starter during the regular season. His playoff record could use some polish, but even if he’s done growing as a player, he’s an absolute monster capable of single-handedly swinging games. Washington needs that, because its offensive depth chart is just a picture of the Mongrovian flag.

3. Detroit Lions: Russell Wilson (31 years old)

Wilson is a perennial MVP candidate with Super Bowl bonafides. He’s also the reason the Seahawks refuse to slide into rebuilding mode following year after year of baffling draft decisions and shoddy blocking (99 sacks allowed the past two seasons). Now he gets to oversee a perpetual rebuild (bad) while throwing to Marvin Jones, Kenny Golladay, and D’Andre Swift (better).

4. New York Giants: Deshaun Watson (24 years old)

Watson goes from a franchise that just fixed a gaping hole at left tackle (albeit by giving Laremy Tunsil record-setting money) to one that hopes it has after drafting Andrew Thomas at No. 4 overall. Watson guided Houston — a team that went 1-11 in the games he didn’t start in 2017 — to a 24-13 record in his three seasons. He’s also responsible for the only Bill O’Brien playoff win that didn’t come against Connor Cook.

5. Miami Dolphins: Aaron Rodgers (36 years old)

Is Rodgers fading as he heads into his late 30s? Or were the past two seasons of good, not great, play the product of a lackluster cast of receiving talent behind Davante Adams? Even if it’s the latter, he’s made too many insane throws in big moments to be ignored. Plus, he’s younger than Ryan Fitzpatrick so ... youth movement in South Beach?

6. Los Angeles Chargers: Dak Prescott (26 years old)

STILL the best quarterback of the class of 2016. The Cowboys asked him to throw more than ever in 2019, and he responded with a career-high 4,902 passing yards (more than 1,000 more than his previous best) and a 30:11 TD:INT ratio. The Chargers, forever on-field drama magnets, get a player who led 14 game-winning drives in his first three seasons.

7. Carolina Panthers: Drew Brees (41 years old)

Brees was 40 years old last season and still finished second in the league in passer rating — albeit after missing five games with a torn ligament in his thumb. He may not have more than the 2020 season left in his NFL career, and the odds he’d leave New Orleans, especially to play for a division rival, are roughly zero. Still, there’s no denying his greatness.

8. Arizona Cardinals: Joe Burrow (23 years old)

This seemed like a good spot for Tom Brady — Larry Fitzgerald and DeAndre Hopkins! — until I remembered what an immobile veteran with a wavering deep ball would look like in Kliff Kingsbury’s system. I hated that idea and opted for a college quarterback who threw 60 touchdown passes last season, averaged more than 14 yards per completion, and who would absolutely lose his mind in Kingsbury’s adapted air raid.

9. Jacksonville Jaguars: Tom Brady (42 years old)

Brady remains in Florida, but doesn’t get the receiving upgrade of Mike Evans and Chris Godwin. Instead, he’ll throw to D.J. Chark, Dede Westbrook, Chris Conley, and Laviska Shenault Jr. His 2019 season was one of the least efficient of Brady’s career, though many of those struggles could be attributed to a disappointing surrounding cast in New England.

Does throwing Brady on a tanking team make sense? Nope! That’s why it’s an extremely Jaguars move.

10. Cleveland Browns: Carson Wentz (27 years old)

Here’s where things get difficult. There’s a host of good, not yet great, young-ish quarterbacks and heady veterans who make up the next tier.

I opted for Wentz — the quarterback the Browns traded back from possibly drafting in 2017. He arrives carrying the hope Cleveland’s massive upgrade at wideout (and to a lesser extent, tight end) will unlock the player who threw 54 touchdown passes against just 14 interceptions in 2017 and 2018. This could be my dumbest selection of the day, seeing as the Eagles may have drafted his replacement last week and have appeared very stupid doing so.

11. New York Jets: Jimmy Garoppolo (28 years old)

As much as a stately veteran like Matt Ryan or Kirk Cousins would fit here, Garoppolo’s ability to exceed expectations makes him New York’s pick. The 49ers signal caller was a few bad decisions away from being the reigning Super Bowl MVP. He’s also 21-5 as a regular season starter, and his 8.4 yards per attempt ranked third in the NFL last year.

12. Las Vegas Raiders: Kyler Murray (22 years old)

Jon Gruden loves Kyler Murray. His cheap salary would help Las Vegas continue to spend big in free agency and give a club in a new home a young, bankable star. The 2019 NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year wasn’t amazing in his debut, but he finished strong enough to showcase his potential.

Here’s what he did in his final eight starts as a rookie: a 65.2 percent completion rate, 217 passing yards per game, 6.9 yards per pass, 33 rushing yards (on 6.2 per carry) per game, and an 89.3 passer rating. The 13:8 TD:INT ratio over that span is worrisome, but that’s something Gruden can tolerate if it means getting his guy.

13. Indianapolis Colts: Matt Ryan (34 years old)

The Colts chose a prolific, experienced quarterback when they signed Philip Rivers this offseason. They do it again by selecting Ryan, a former MVP who completed a league-high 408 passes last fall despite sitting out one game in the middle of the season. Ryan had 11 300+ yard performances in 2019 thanks, in part, to a defense that kept him frequently playing from behind. He’ll get a boost on that side of the ball in Indianapolis, but the lack of Julio Jones could put his high-volume passing in a new light.

14. Tampa Bay Buccaneers: Kirk Cousins (31 years old)

Cousins’ two seasons since being freed from the shame treadmill that is the Washington franchise: 69.7 percent completion rate, 56 touchdowns, 16 interceptions, 255 passing yards per game, and a 103.0 passer rating.

Now he gets to whip passes at the Evans/Godwin combo Brady was forced to vacate in the draft.

15. Denver Broncos: Matthew Stafford (32 years old)

6’1 Baker Mayfield is probably the highest-upside player available. But Matthew Stafford is 6’3 — closer to the tall QB ideal general manager John Elway absolutely loves. Stafford’s more than willing to take chances downfield, as proven by his league-high average throw depth of 10.6 yards downfield last year. That makes him 100 percent the kind of gunner Denver wants launching deep balls to Courtland Sutton, Noah Fant, Jerry Jeudy, and KJ Hamler.

16. Atlanta Falcons: Ryan Tannehill (31 years old)

Tannehill is the draft’s X-factor. He’s a player whose 2019 season measures among the league’s best but who is also capable of reverting back to the ineffective form that ended his Miami tenure. The Falcons need a win-now quarterback to keep Dan Quinn’s employment hopes alive, and Tannehill’s ability to air the ball out would help keep a passing game that features Julio Jones and Calvin Ridley running smoothly.

17. Dallas Cowboys: Baker Mayfield (25 years old)

Mayfield could be the draft’s biggest bargain if he can harness the power that pushed him to MVP-caliber numbers over the second half of his rookie season (68 percent completion rate, 19:7 TD:INT ratio, a 106.2 passer rating). Playing behind an offensive line that allowed Dak Prescott to be sacked on only 3.7 percent of his dropbacks — and playing for a head coach who isn’t Freddie Kitchens — should spur an improvement in his return to Texas.

18. Pittsburgh Steelers: Ben Roethlisberger (38 years old)

The Steelers almost made it to the postseason with Devlin Hodges and Mason Rudolph starting the majority of their games. Bringing Big Ben back into the fold after he slid down the draft board makes more sense than hitting reset and starting over with one of the available, unproven QBs like Sam Darnold,

19. Chicago Bears: Josh Allen (23 years old)

Chicago’s facing a hard reboot following Mitchell Trubisky’s failure to become a franchise quarterback. Allen’s recent development makes him a better bet than Daniel Jones, another quarterback who wasn’t amazing playing college ball in the state of North Carolina but still enjoyed a meteoric rise through the pre-draft process.

Allen made the improvements necessary to guide Buffalo back to the postseason last year, upping his completion rate by a full six percent and cutting his interception rate nearly in half. He’s a capable runner (1,141 rushing yards, 17 touchdowns the past two years) who can exceed the production a healthy Trubisky provided. He’s also pretty cheap; Allen will count less than $13 million against the team’s salary cap through 2021.

20. Los Angeles Rams: Jared Goff (25 years old)

LA was forced to shed contracts this spring, somewhat as the result of Goff‘s massive extension after he led the Rams to Super Bowl 53. He rewarded that faith with a backslide in 2019.

Even a bad season in which his touchdown rate and yards-per-attempt figures shrunk and his interception rate rose, he’s still the quarterback who piloted a stacked offense to a 33-14 record the past three years. Sean McVay would be happy to have him back this late in the draft.

21. Philadelphia Eagles: Derek Carr (29 years old)

The Eagles worked hard to overhaul their WR corps this offseason by adding skillful deep threats like Marquise Goodwin, Jalen Reagor, and John Hightower to the mix. None of those wideouts are sure things, however, and it could behoove the Philadelphia to find a passer capable of efficiently moving the ball in the mid-range.

Carr hasn’t gotten much recognition since his MVP-adjacent 2016 season, but there’s only one thing he truly does poorly as an NFL quarterback; hold on to the football while diving for the end zone. He attempted the fewest deep balls of his career last fall thanks to the Raiders’ lack of targets, but he was rock solid in the intermediate game. He completed 78 percent of his passes from 0-19 yards.

22. Buffalo Bills: Tua Tagovailoa (22 years old)

The Bills took a chance on a big-armed college passer in 2018. They do the same here with Tagovailoa, who was a better collegiate quarterback (by a mile) than Josh Allen but brings several questions about his health following last year’s dislocated hip. He’ll look great in Buffalo’s continually evolving offense.

23. New England Patriots: Teddy Bridgewater (27 years old)

The Patriots could swing on higher-upside quarterbacks like Jones, Dwayne Haskins, or Sam Darnold. Instead, Bill Belichick’s refusal to spend anything more than a Day 3 pick on a quarterback indicates he may be more interested in veteran help to replace Tom Brady. Bridgewater, fresh off a 5-0 stint as the Saints’ spot starter, is used to filling in for a future Hall of Famer.

24. New Orleans Saints: Philip Rivers (38 years old)

Out goes one prolific passer who used to play for the Chargers. In comes another. Michael Thomas may be the perfect eraser for Rivers’ increasingly erratic throws.

25. Minnesota Vikings: Sam Darnold (22 years old)

Darnold has been in the league two years and is still one of the youngest starting QBs. He improved steadily throughout 2019 as long as he wasn’t seeing ghosts in the Patriots’ secondary, going 7-6 as a starter in an otherwise ugly Jets season. He threw only four interceptions in his final eight games to go along with an efficient 93.3 passer rating. Now Minnesota gets to see if he casts off some Kirk Cousins vibes once freed from Adam Gase’s influence.

26: Houston Texans: Daniel Jones (22 years old)

Jones swaps out Dave Gettleman as his GM for Bill O’Brien. He may be cursed.

Jones somehow had three different games where he had at least four touchdown passes and zero interceptions. He also had seven games with multiple turnovers, including so, so many embarrassing fumbles. He is the Schrodinger’s Cat of second-year quarterbacks. Houston is perfect for him.

27. Seattle Seahawks: Cam Newton (30 years old)

Being able to avoid pressure is a prerequisite for a Seattle quarterback. Newton can do that — though his injury concerns suggest this could end poorly for the Seahawks. Still, they get a former MVP who may just need a change of scenery to put his last two disappointing seasons behind him.

28. Baltimore Ravens: Drew Lock (23 years old)

As tempting as it would be to snag Dwayne Haskins and once again show Washington how developing a franchise QB is done, the Ravens have a special place in their heart for anyone who makes Joe Flacco expendable. The Broncos scored 15.9 points per game in their 3-8 start without Lock. They averaged 21.4 in a 4-1 finish with the rookie in the lineup.

29. Tennessee Titans: Jacoby Brissett (27 years old)

Tennessee took one roughly average quarterback and turned him into found money when it traded for Tannehill last offseason. Brissett is another buy-low passer with the capability to throw a gorgeous deep ball. The former Patriot looked like a real franchise building block in the Colts’ 5-2 start, but a Week 9 knee injury sapped his effectiveness in a disappointing finish.

30: Green Bay Packers: Justin Herbert (22 years old)

They already drafted Aaron Rodgers’ real life replacement in 2020’s first round. Herbert’s availability allows the Packers to follow up on that instinct with a more productive college quarterback.

31: San Francisco 49ers: Dwayne Haskins (22 years old)

Haskins was a monster in college, but he struggled in his NFL debut with an undermanned Washington team. He’d get an immediate upgrade and the opportunity to fulfill his potential with the Niners — and he’s got the upside to make his drop all the way to 31 look downright stupid.

32: Kansas City Chiefs: Ryan Fitzpatrick (37 years old)

This is partially a win-now move and partially because I want to see some FitzMagic involving Tyreek Hill, Travis Kelce, Mecole Hardman, and Sammy Watkins. Would Gardner MInshew or Jordan Love be better forward-thinking moves? Yep. Would Jameis Winston, Andy Dalton, or Nick Foles provide similar instant gratification and a longer runway to the future? Probably.

But the NFL is better when Fitzpatrick is given the green light to close his eyes and chuck it deep. Kansas City is perfect for that.

[entergamingxp]

Ghost of Tsushima review – a likeable, if clunky Hollywood blockbuster • Eurogamer.net

Quite early on in Ghost of Tsushima, you’ll be introduced to its dramatic, one-on-one duels. Two warriors, a dozen yards apart, face each other down across the divide. Up close: narrowing eyes and crumpled brows. Hands hover at hips, knees bend, feet press down into the earth, muscle, sinew and fingers tighten. Then – bang! – combat. It’s a cracking moment, especially the first time you give one a try, and it’s also a cracking example of what Ghost of Tsushima’s all about. These heightened standoffs begin with shot-for-shot facsimiles of that famous scene from Yojimbo, an Akira Kurosawa classic that’s both a mirror of older westerns and an inspiration for the ’60s greats.

Ghost of Tsushima review

Developer: Sucker Punch

Publisher: Sony

Platform: Reviewed on PS4

Availability: Out on 17th July on PS4

They’re also, once you’ve done a few of them, slightly flat, the enemies you battle mostly re-using the same attacks and movements of ones you’ve faced before, and the concept quickly becomes a little overused, predictably occurring at the end of certain quests, and generally lacking the complexity to require more than a few tries each time. Like the game itself, they go for authenticity through facsimile – recreating moments without the requisite weight and context. And, like the game itself, they’re lacking a little depth. Despite the immediate and undeniable thrill, the gloss can be just a little too quick to wear off.

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Still, much of Ghost of Tsushima is enjoyable enough. Developer Sucker Punch has definitely aimed high with its first full-length effort since InFamous Second Son, way back at the start of the generation in 2014. The much-trumpeted inspirations here are the stirring epics of samurai cinema. It’s a tough genre to crack, nevermind the potential for awkwardness in an American realisation of feudal Japan. Namechecked directors like Akira Kurosawa, who gets his own grainy, black-and-white mode in Ghost of Tsushima, are known for their lengthy epics of extraordinary nuance, adapting – and arguably mastering – the works of Shakespeare, or chipping away at the great problem of the human condition. Next to inspirations like that, Ghost of Tsushima is never really going to compare. It lacks the nuance and the depth, or the dedication, even, to telling a good story itself – as opposed to telling a story that simply keeps out of the way of the mechanics – and the slack left by its story isn’t picked up in those mechanics, either. But it has a kind of Hollywood, popcorn charm, which shouldn’t count for nothing.

In Ghost of Tsushima you are Jin Sakai, a samurai of noble birth, tasked with almost single-handedly fending off a Mongol invasion of the feudal Japanese island he calls home. In doing so you’re forced to evolve, from staid and honourable samurai to the Ghost, master of underhand tactics. And therein lies your central conflict, as the screenwriting gurus would put it: Jin has to defend the people of the island, but he does so at great cost, abandoning tradition, honour, and everything that comes with it. It’s a bit of a cliché – and one that happily departs from Sucker Punch’s stated aim for authenticity, when you read historians’ arguments that for most samurai in feudal Japan, there was no such code of honour at all – but Ghost of Tsushima is good at carrying you along with the drama.

As far as stoic male video game protagonists go, Jin Sakai sits somewhere in the middle, but he’s played with likeable subtlety by Daisuke Tsuji, who leads a fantastic voice cast. It’s a shame they don’t benefit from Kurosawa’s framing – for a game inspired by cinema, Tsushima sure does like a default over-the-shoulder.

It’s helped by some stellar voice work from a cracking cast, including a turn from the magnetic François Chau, of Lost fame, as a curmudgeonly master archer Sensei Ishikawa, and an imperious Patrick Gallagher as the big bad Khotun Khan, a fictional descendant of that famous one Ghengis. There are some stirring sequences, too, especially when Sucker Punch digs a little deeper into its characters to mine their pockets of rage, or just finds an excuse for another heroic charge, while the family-political intrigue is at least more accurate to the period than the lengthy monologuing on honour and tradition. And there’s a stunning, sweeping score to accompany it all, capable of dragging you up from even the deepest mid-game cutscene malaise, carrying you across rolling landscapes and striking wonderfully at the story’s noticeable highs.

What it lacks is the grit to go with the melodrama. Samurai tales are, famously, much the same as what we’d more quickly recognise as westerns, and as such they’re reliant on certain things to really work. One of them is that grit, or rather a sort of tangible earthiness, that comes from a particular grounding in the world. There have been obvious examples of earthy cowboy games recently but the best illustration in this case remains The Witcher 3, which told a similar story of a stoic, semi-outlawed warrior riding into villages and solving problems with his sword, but did so through the immense weight of its world, through the detail and humanity of its side stories and the intimacy of its smaller, quieter moments. There are countless others – Assassin’s Creed’s now known for its side stories that bring levity, heart and mystery, and the first Red Dead Redemption has even been cited by Sucker Punch as inspiration.

As far as the bulk of side quests go, ‘Help! The Mongols!’ is about as sophisticated as it gets.

This is why Ghost of Tsushima feels so frustrating. Side quests are the beating heart of a good outlaw story, the secret to a great samurai game that so many others not set in feudal Japan have managed to master. For Sucker Punch they seem to have been almost an afterthought. There are effectively four kinds of quest in the game: the main story, one-off side quests, mythic quests, and “tales” – multi-step quests – that are tied to a specific named character. The character tales are far and away the highlight – Lady Masako and Ishikawa’s standing out among them, thanks to the strength of the performances and melodrama of the stories – but they’re sadly over before they really begin, and the actual activities involved are still far too limited. Follow a character, track some footsteps, fight some enemies and maybe grind out some instant-fail stealth sections, onto the next. There’s some minor variation on this for the mythic ones but not much – not enough – and the standalone ones are worse, often feeling like a procedural patching together of pre-set objectives and activities, wrapped in the loose-fitting context of another unnamed peasant crying for help from the Mongols. The only reward for your time with them is a nudge of XP or some upgrade materials, as opposed to a chance to really bed yourself into the character or the world itself. They’re a huge disappointment.

In fact, if you pick at the surface of Ghost of Tsushima it all starts to quite worryingly unravel. The world as a whole is beautiful – utterly, undeniably, oppressively beautiful. Such colour! Everywhere you look, it’s crimson, windswept fields and forests of golden yolk. Sunsets and oceans, beaches and snowy mountain peaks – environments of improbable range for a temperate island of Tsushima’s kind, set to broad, enrapturing splashes of orange and teal. The vivid green bamboo jungles, the ephemeral fireflies, the swirling, milky petals that rise and fall with the wind – a wind that could be a game of its own, a magic thing bending everything around you. It’s a sign of a studio that’s mastered the tech, with a console generation’s worth of experience behind it, but what it’s missing is the maturity or restraint to put it to use. Ghost of Tsushima’s bursting with undeniable beauty, yes, but beauty of the obvious, in-your-face kind, the kind that doesn’t offer much thematic or tonal subtlety but makes a great ad for HDR OLED televisions. It’s an odd thing to find a problem with – an excess of sumptuousness – but Sucker Punch is best imagined here less as master painter than overexcited barkeeper, serving up shot after shot of wincingly concentrated emotion, slamming the table and pouring out another – bigger moon! more falling leaves! make it a double! – before you’ve gulped the last one down. It’s a bit much.

Ghost of Tsushima is absolute photo mode fodder. It’s gorgeous, but conceptually that beauty is a little shallow.

More troublesome is the construction of Tsushima’s open world, which is technically open but best described as closed. It’s a big area – there are three parts to the island, the second and third opening up after you reach the end of the first act plenty of hours in, and they contain all the breadth of those wildly varied biomes outlined above – but the sense of closedness comes from how little mystery there is to it. In fact, there’s really no mystery at all, once you get to know the way the game works.

Spanning the island are a litany of fixed, more or less identical locations-of-interest, which all involve a set interaction and a set reward (and all of which you’ll be led to by the game’s clunky, if admirable attempt at using nature for navigation – gallop past a nearby point of interest and a golden bird will appear, piping up incessantly in invitation to follow it to whatever that undiscovered spot may be). Those points of interest never change, though – they never deviate from the set list of things to do that you can check off from lists in the menus. So there are hot springs which you press R2 at to bathe in and increase your max health; fox dens, where you follow a mewling, over-adorable fox to a shrine, which you press R2 at to increase your max charm slots; bamboo strikes, which do at least give you a very brief, quick-reaction button-pressing minigame to beat before their designated reward (there’s an accessibility option for turning off the time-sensitive element, if that sounded worrying to you).

Haiku spots, another point of interest, might be Sucker Punch’s most egregiously fawning decision, and a key example of where they’ve gone wrong. You look at one of three preset points and press X to select a line of Haiku. It’s such a lovely idea, with some nice writing, but practically it’s all back to front, taking an act of observation and conscious mindfulness and making it one of passive follow-the-dot. An attempt at poetry through literalism.

I could go on, but the point is sooner or later you’ll realise this is it. A bird will chirp and, after slavishly following them until now, you’ll decide the bird can do one, actually, because it’s just going to take you off your path to something you’ve already seen and done a dozen times before. Even the rarer, more elaborate activities like Shinto Shrines – locations that sit atop mountains and cliffs, requiring a spot of ultra-light, golden ledge guided platforming to reach – start to wear thin after a couple climbs. The result of it all is a busy world, full of activities, but one that soon feels paradoxically empty of things to do.

A brighter, if still imperfect part of Ghost of Tsushima is its combat. In melee, Sucker Punch has created a kind of Arkham-Sekiro hybrid, which works relatively well. Enemies all have a guard meter as well as a health meter, which will need to be broken for you to really get in there with the pointy end of your katana and do some damage. Much of your success will come from successfully countering, as is the Arkham style: you can dodge and perfect dodge, dodge-roll, parry, and perfect parry, all of which feel snappy enough – although I’d like some attack-cancelling to feel a tad sharper. And while there are unblockable enemy moves, marked with a red symbol – hello Sekiro – most of these can be turned into parryable ones with an early upgrade in the skill tree (Ghost of Tsushima has something between seven and ten skill trees, depending on how you look at it – don’t ask), which unfortunately takes away much of the tension and skill.

The world is so darkly lit and densely packed that often you can’t actually see what you’re doing or where you’re going, so the game resorts to overt and heavy-handed methods to compensate. Trademark golden climbing ledges is one. The guiding wind is another: a great idea for reducing ugly UI that soon becomes an aesthetically pleasing version of the infamously passive big Bioshock arrow.

Where it gets interesting is stances: there are four stances in the game, each granting new heavy attacks effective at breaking the guards of a certain type of enemy. You unlock them and their respective skill trees one at a time – with another slightly repetitive open world task of killing certain numbers of Mongol leaders – but once you do the combat gets noticeably more interesting, becoming a much more conscious exercise. At its most satisfying, you’ll be facing swollen numbers of varied enemies, requiring you to rapidly switch between stances as frequently as every enemy attack, so as to clash swords, break shields, charge archers, parry spears and slash brutes as effectively as possible. In these moments of intimate violence, the music soaring, enemies cowering and crumpled, Jin clad in some imperious armour lashed with rain and soaked in mud, Ghost of Tsushima feels glorious, and also truest to its soily roots.

The problem is they come too rarely – there are a smattering of climactic battles in the story that open with a bang, before swiftly fizzling out – and too late, with the enemies only getting really varied and dense towards the end and the game falling into the usual RPG-lite trap of dishing out its most enjoyable gimmicks after a load of time without (or hiding them behind mythic quests, some of which are only accessible after certain points of the story). It struggles with the camera, which sits too low and close over the shoulder, and doesn’t come with an option to lock onto an enemy. It sounds minor, but can result in annoying hits from enemies out of shot, an awkward inability to act and look around at once, or worse still a totally obscured camera altogether, if you get too close to an object or wall.

In motion Kurosawa mode is stupidly pretty, and lip syncing aside – oddly, it’s not synced to Japanese dialogue – there’s real attention to detail in the conscious application of shade, grain and sound. It’s more than an Instagram filter, and makes me wish Sucker Punch had payed as close attention to samurai games as they have the aesthetics of the films – in focusing on the latter they seem to have missed the basics of what makes them great.

Ghost of Tsushima’s stealth, meanwhile – which is prominent enough to be the driving force of its story, and technically half of your own arsenal – is frustratingly unsystemic and largely underbaked. It’s very much stealth-lite, closest to modern era Assassin’s Creed with even fewer toys, and so you’ll be frequently defaulting to the usual suspects: X-ray vision, throw a jingly distraction bell, pop a smoke bomb if you get in trouble and try again. All of that couples meekly with a range of insta-fail stealth missions and yet another selection of excessively crunching, crackling and squelching neck stabs.

It’s desperately frustrating, because I maintain that Ghost of Tsushima is still, largely, quite fun. The problem is it’s an easy, breezy, lite beer kind of fun – the kind that Sucker Punch is known for, after all – and the blanket genericism of it just doesn’t sit well against such a po-faced tone. It’s another game fallen victim to the palatability blender, coming out the other side as a slightly formless smudge of every genre, without a mastery of any. Going back to Ghost of Tsushima’s roots, as an American game inspired by the comics and the movies of Japan, in a way it’s quite apt. It’s what happens when you want to pay homage, but don’t want to add anything new of your own. It’s Hollywood.

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/07/ghost-of-tsushima-review-a-likeable-if-clunky-hollywood-blockbuster-%e2%80%a2-eurogamer-net/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=ghost-of-tsushima-review-a-likeable-if-clunky-hollywood-blockbuster-%25e2%2580%25a2-eurogamer-net

[labseraph]

It's tough when the second ML has oodles more charisma and nuance than the first ML ...

Fighting for Love (2024) • EP 31