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legionofpotatoes · 3 years

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we decided to watch all story cutscenes from the new resident evil village videogame on a whim, since it’s not really our cup of tea gameplay-wise but seems to be this massive zeitgeist moment that made us morbidly curious. And I know how much everyone cares about my thoughts on things I know very little about, so. let’s get into it huh gamers. and yeah spoilers?

for context, I’ve only played resident evil 4 and a small portion of 5. I also read the wikipedia entry for 7’s plot recently. all this to say I was only vaguely aware of how tonally wacky the series was going in

I also completely gave up following the plot of the mutagens’ soap opera, so that paid off in spades here as you might imagine

anyway so that baby in the intro. that baby’s head is just massive. humongous toddlerdome. when ethan finds the baby’s head in a jar later on. there is no way that head would fit into that jar. bad game design. no not even game design. basic stuff. one hundred years in prison for jar modeler

if I see a single functional hetero marriage in video games I will cry tears of joy. I understand their misery is kind of The Point irt them badly working through the hillbilly romp trauma but like. sheesh. at least set that up as an emotional story goal the plot will help resolve. but nope they start off miserable and it goes nowhere

I know I know the mia thing has a huge wrinkle in it but like. not really in terms of dramatic function?? set up a happy end to the re7 nightmare (miranda can keep up appearances for all she cares) and then take that all away from angry griffin mcelroy for manpain. it will still absolutely work to set up the dramatic forward momentum. why throw in this cliche Hollywood Tension in their marriage if you’re not going to address it oh maybe because it’s normalized as automatically interesting because nuclear families are a self-propagating pit of a very narrow chance at emotional happiness relying on social stigma to preserve their empty function oops my baggage slipped in yikes abort mission

I called him griffin mcelroy because I saw his face on twitter and. yeah. I will continue to do this occasionally. my house my rules

... fuck the reason I’m hung up on this is specifically because the rest of the game is so tonally dexterous (which is a shining point to me! more on that later!), and yet they felt weirdly compelled to create the aesthetic trapping of a family-at-odds trope without following it through too well. a sign of both the good and the bad stuff to come

but listen the real reason why I wanted to talk about any of this is to nitpick the fascinating backwards-engineered nucleus of the entire thing; in that this game essentially creates a melting pot of just SO many disparate horror tropes and then makes a no-holds-barred unhinged effort at weaving thick lore to piece them all together. it is truly a sight to behold. like straight up you got your backwoods fright night situation, your gothic castle vampires, your rural-industrial werewolves, and don’t forget your bloated swamp monsters over there, with then a hard left turn into robotic body horror, and the entire ass subgenre of Creepy Doll writ large, and the bloodborne tentacle monsters, and a hellboy angel bossfight, which rides on the coattails of a mech-on-mech pacific rim bonanza, and just jesus henry christ slow down

almost all of these are textural hijack jobs that don’t really get into the metaphor plain of any of those settings but the game sort-of makes an argument that the texture IS the point and revels in it. It is kind of admirable almost. The same reason why the intro felt boxed in and unmotivated is also why the rest of the game just blasts off of its hinges to the point of complete and self-indulgent tonal abandon. I kinda loved that about it. lady dimitrescu made sure to hold her hat down as she bent forward in mahogany doorways and then suddenly she’s a giant gore dragon and you settle in your temp role as dark souls man with Gun to take her ass down. Excellent??

this rhino rampage impulse to gobble up every horror aesthetic known to man comes to head when the game wrestles with its FPS trappings in what is the most hilarious solution in creating visceral player damage moments. Since most cinematics and the entire game is in first person, that leaves precious little real estate for the devs to work with if they really want to sell griffin’s physical crucible. To wit. This dude’s forearms. Specifically just the forearms. They are MASSACRED throughout the story. The poor man lives out the silent hill dimension of a hand model. by the end cutscene he looks like a neatly dressed desk clerk who had decided to stick both his grabbers into garbage disposal grinders just a few hours prior. like in addition to everything else it manages to rope in that tinge of slapstick violence into its general grievous genre collection except this time it IS for a lack of trying! truly incredible

but wait his miracle clawbacks from everything his poor paws go through are retroactively explained away, yes, but far too vaguely and far too late to console me as I sat and watched everyone’s favorite baby brother reattach an entirely severed hand to his wrist stump by just. placing it on there. and giving it a lil twist ‘n pop terminator-style. and then willing his fingers back into motion right in front of my bulging eyes. this game just does not care. it does not give a shit. and boy howdy will it work to make that into one of its strongest suits

cause generally speaking resident evil was THE premiere vanilla zombie content destinaysh for like a decade, right? and as the rest of the world and mainstream media started encroaching and bloodying its blue ocean it went and just exploded in every single conceivable horror trope direction like a smilodon on catnip. truly, genuinely fascinating franchise moves

yeah the big vampire milf is hot. other news; grass... green. although I do love the implication that her closet is just identical white dresses on a rack. cartoon network-level queen shit

apropos of nothing I’ve said there’s also this hobo dante-devimaycry-magneto man, and I can’t believe this sentence makes sense. anyway he made that “boulder-punching asshole” joke referring to chris redfield and it was probably the only easter egg that really landed for me and boy did it land hard. I have not seen him punch the boulder in re5, mind. I had only heard about how funny it is from friends. and here this dude was, probably in the same exact mindset as me, trying to grapple with that insane mental image. with you on that ian mckellen, loud and clear

I advocate vehemently against the shallow pursuit of hyper photorealism in art direction but I gotta admit it works really in favor of immersive horror like this. the european village shacks especially gave me super unchill flashbacks to my rural countryside retreat in western georgia. I could smell the linoleum dude. not cool

faces are weird in this game. can’t place it. nice textures, good animation, but the modeling template is... uuh strange? and the hair. it has that clustered-flat-clumpy look that harkens to something very specific and unpleasant but I just don’t know what. sue me

griffin’s mental aptitude to take all this shit in stride and end every seemingly traumatizing bossfight involving some fucking eldritch being yet unseen through mortal eyes by essentially throwing out an MCU quip is just. What the fuck dude? I mean that was funny how you casually yelled the f-word at a god damn werewolf that you considered a fairy tale an hour ago but are you like, all right?? it was swinging a sledgehammer the size of a bus at you, ethan

oh oh the vampires are afraid of cold and your last name is winters. I get it haha

Pro Gamer Nitpick: boss fights seemed a bit unnecessarily long?? idk why the youtuber we picked decided the ENTIRE propeller man fight counted towards the vital story scenes he was stitching together, but man mr big daddy lite there really had some get up and go huh??

why are they saying dimitrescu.. like that. is it really how you say that word or is the english language relapsing into its fetish for ending every single word with a consonant at all costs

I’m not saying it’s a dramatic miss of a twist in context of all that’s going on, but the “you died in the last game actually and have been DC’s clayface ever since” revelation is low-key. it’s. it’s just funny to me, I dont know what to say. century-old god-witch fails her evil plan after she mistakenly removes heart from what was definitely NOT just some white guy with eight fingers after all

chris realizing he’s about to become the player character and immediately swapping out his tsundere trenchcoat for the muscletight sex haver sweater

the little bluetooth speaker-sized pipe bomb he taped to his knife was nuclear?? really??? I must have missed something because that is just too good. I buy it though I totally buy it. chris just got them fun-sized nukes in his car trunk for, you guessed it, Situations

anyway this is all for now just wanted to briefly touch on how unexpectedly funny and tonally irreverent this seemingly serious game turned out to be. did not articulate any cathartic story beats whatsoever but my god it had fun connecting those plot points. he just fucking put his severed hand back on his stump and it Just Worked todd howard get in here

#text #another one in my bulleted review series with no rhyme or reason #sorry resident evil fans this could be a painful read pls turn away #i know almost nothing about it but i am gonna be super fake familiar and critical of this one hey ho

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axemetaphor · 3 years

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Hey, I'm that guy from ao3. I was wondering, do you have a specific place you get inspo for monsters in Auckland? I'm making a DnD campain in the J&D world, aaand I kinda need help haha. Yours are like perfect <3 (Also, if you wanna join us, you can, we haven't even had our zero session and we're not playing actual DnD, I don't know how to play that, so it's ok if you don't know that, it's super easy and fun i swear, you can get a link to our discord, love you)

:0 oh shit hi !! a jdate DnD game sounds cool as fuck! im really bad at games like that tho so im gonna politely pass on that one but wish y'all the best of luck!!!

as for making monsters my inspo is Kind Of Weird? i mean i look at a lotta horror art for sure (my favourite artist atm is Trevor Henderson aka slimyswampghost on most medias, u may know him as That Guy Who Made Sirenhead but he has a lot of other fantastic art as well!), but since i dont wanna feel like im rippin other people off i actually Dont often use that as inspo! aaaand heres where its gonna get a bit weird

aside from the times i pluck a creature from my nightmares (and boy, do i have a lotta material to work with there), i usually either look into folklore (bein mindful of closed cultures like, i believe most Native American monsters are off-limits for non-Natives to write; im white as hell so i try to stick to british/irish/more recent american shit) or... i look to this one game i played Obsessively when i was in elementary/middle school: Spore (which you can find on Steam i think or their hilariously hasn't-been-updated-in-a-WHILE website). I literally played it so much I can just kind of... imagine the whole creature-creator process. I think it’s a curse. I think Todd Howard cursed me for the crime of Having No Friends.

Now, if you dont wanna download a probably-poorly-aged EA game from 2007 (i dont even know if it’d run anymore if you Just Now bought it, i remember the security measures that thing had damn near broke the game before i could even play it, thanks EA) and play through the first two stages (theyre Long) to unlock the creature creator and all the Bits for it, you can either watch people play that shit on YouTube (Monster Factory is a favourite of mine, they did I Think a 3-video run of Spore) or,

You can also do somethin that I once did as an assignment for Character Design class: go to a random animal generator, let it spit out 2-3 animals (or as many as you like, i guess, but i find 2-3 to be a Manageable number) and mash those motherfuckers together! Hell, you can even start to mix in stuff like objects/minerals/whatever the fuck too. Make something that’s a dog, hammerhead shark, and the concept of entropy. Go nuts! Here’s an example, some shit I made for that class (which mayyyyyy appear in Auckland...... perhaps. if i feel like it) :

They can range from “cute” to “nightmarish” as you please! Fun fact, that spider/shark/scorpion is meant to be the size of a house. I honestly come up with a lot of messed up shit by just asking myself "What's the worst thing I can think of right now?" and then I just Go For It with whatever my brain's thrown at me. I did that with Nightmare E.T. and the fucked-up ostriches. 'Scary' is often a sort of personal thing for people, like phobias and shit, you know? Lookin inward can be pretty helpful there. Not like you have to make something of your phobias, just maybe run with something that disturbs you a little. If you press yourself for why it bothers you sometimes you can find something deeper and maybe more universal in it. I'm not talking about unearthing trauma or anything tho that likely Wouldn't Be Healthy just like... if you think spiders are creepy, ask yourself Why: is it the eyes? the legs? the venom? the way they just kinda creep up on you, like, you dont notice em til you see them? etc.

As for the monsters in Auckland while most of them aren’t gonna be references (maybe a few more in future chapters...) I will admit the “morning wood monster” is a reference to the Pokémon Trevenant; the "most fucked-up dog [Dave had] ever seen" was a creature from The Moomins just described as horribly as possible--I can't find it on the wiki anymore??? it was from the 2d animated one, though; the Shitsucker is a regular ol’ Wraith (following a specific mythos where they aren’t just Random Ghosts but beings that feed off negative emotional energy, I can't re-find which one I'm sorry lmao); and the haunted ship thing at the beginning is a vague reference to the Buzzfeed Unsolved episode on that big ass boat. Isn't directly tied to it (obviously, 'cause Buzzfeed Unsolved never has much Actual Ghost Activity, let alone one Throwin Shit At Em jhgfds), more just inspired by it.

Maybe when the thing is done, I’ll sort them all into one of three categories--references to stuff/folklore, things i had nightmares about, and things i just kind of thought up. Make a post on here about it, idk

wow! this was fuckin long. i hope at least some of that is helpful!! also im adding this here cause i just remembered some people use Spore to sculpt like?? beautiful monsters and shit?? like i Know i watched a “speedrun” of someone creating a beautiful ass dragon in it. there’s probably a whole community of people out there making epic and/or fucked up shit and you could watch them build it or just scroll through thumbnails for inspo, but i do feel like Building Stuff Yourself is best, cause it just kind of Feels Nice to make something yourself and go “hey man, look how fucked up this is ! scary, right?” and get that Success Feeling when the other guy recoils and goes "yeah man what the fuck though"

#i dunno i have always liked drawing/designing things that are just A Little Fucked Up #and i think im kinda good at it these days!#jdate #john dies at the end #auckland au #boy howdy do i hope this isnt too much of a ramble aaa i jsut get like passionate about design stuff!!#iwannabefixed #thank u so much for this ask and for all ur nice comments #i know i havent responded to All of them yet but im bad at that kjhgfd #dont have enough Mastery of Words to express the amount of grateful i feel but ill get there eventually #not sonic #asks #answered

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thequeenxofhearts · 4 years

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Jason Todd x Reader | Recovery 2/3

SUMMARY: Reader is home from the hospital, but now has to recover from the injuries, and emotional trauma.

WARNINGS: This chapters talks more about readers injuries, but not in full detail.

A/N: This was originally supposed to be two chapters, but I decided to write a third, which will be up soon!

WORD COUNT: 1284

Previous chapter: https://thequeenxofhearts.tumblr.com/post/620167346577965057/hospital-jason-todd-x-reader-13

“Hello, and welcome to Good Morning Gotham, I’m Sarah Howard. It has been nearly two weeks since an explosion in a small house outside Gotham City took the life of Y/D/N Y/L/N, and police Commissioner, James Gordon, confirmed that the explosion was caused by a bomb, left by the Joker. Y/D/N Y/L/N’s only daughter Y/N, survived the explosion, but has been left with severe injuries. Mr Y/L/N’s funeral was held yesterday at Gotham Cathedral.”

You heard Jason mutter something from the kitchen. You didn’t hear what it was, but you guessed it was probably something about the news; he hated the news.

“Gotham’s own Batman has been seen around the city every night since the explosion, as the Joker has yet to be arrested for the crime. Other vigilantes, including Nightwing, Red Robin and Batgirl, have also been seen searching for the clown. But question is, will they find the Joker before he kills someone else?”

You heard Jason come in from the kitchen, he snatched the remote off the arm rest of the couch, and he changed the channel.

“You shouldn’t watch the news, baby. It’s all lies anyway.” He said, and he put the remote onto the coffee table and returned to the kitchen, leaving you to watch the cartoon he had put on, Tom and Jerry.

Normally you wouldn’t have minded watching cartoons, you and Jason got up early on Saturday mornings to watch Scooby-Doo, Tom and Jerry, and Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries, but since you had been out of the hospital, Jason had been extremely protective, and he hadn’t left your side since you came out of the hospital.

He did not like to leave you on your own and had only been out on patrol once since you came out of the hospital, but he came home early when you didn’t answer your phone. Leaving Nightwing on the roof of Wayne Enterprises, Jason raced home thinking the worst had happened, but when he arrived at the apartment, he found you asleep in front of the TV.

Your arms were still bandaged, and they had to be covered with burn cream every morning, afternoon and evening, as well as your legs but you were grateful that the burns on your legs were not as bad as the burns on your arms.

Jason made sure your cream was applied and you took your antibiotics. Jason has been looking after you every day, and he never failed to do anything for you. Every morning he made you pancakes with strawberries, blueberries, and chocolate sauce. At lunchtime, he would make you a sandwich, or sweet potato fries, or he would cut up a watermelon and you would watch TV together, maybe a movie or watch cartoons. At dinner, he would make you your favourite food, or he would order take out; Big Belly Burger and Dominoes Pizza were always your first choices.

You were grateful to have Jason, and have the care he was giving you, but you missed your dad dearly. It had been less than 2 weeks since you lost him and you were not expecting the pain to go away quickly, but it made it harder to carry on when the news were reporting about it 24/7.

“Do you fancy going for a walk later, Babe?” Jason asked as he plopped onto the couch next to you.

“I don’t know, Jay.” You responded. You had not been out of the apartment since the incident, only to go to your doctor’s appointment, you had another one due at the end of next week.

“Come on Y/N, you need to get out of the house.” Jason replied, “I won’t let anyone hurt you, and Bats will be out on patrol tonight.”

You sighed, “I don’t know if I’m ready.”

“Of course, you are, you’ve been out to go to the doctors.” Jason replied, brushing the backs of his fingers against your cheek.

“That’s different Jason.”

“How?” Jason asked.

“People will see me.”

Jason sighed, you looked away from him and stared down at your bandaged arms. “Hey, everything is going to be ok.” He said softly.

“What if reporters see us? You know what they’re like, Jay.” You replied.

“Sssh.” Jason pulled you in close to him and you wrapped your arms around him. “You’re going to have to get out of the house at some point, it’s not good for you to be inside all the time.”

“Things are different now, Jay.”

“How so?”

“I’m not the same.”

“Do you think I care about that?” Jason asked, “You’ll always be my Y/N, everything is going to be ok.” He smiled and leaned in to kiss your cheek. You smiled.

“Alright?” He asked, you nodded, “That’s my girl.” He smiled.

Jason’s phone began ringing, he had left it on the kitchen counter, he got up to get it. You looked up when Jason said, “Hi Bruce.”

You studied Jason’s face while Bruce spoke, you didn’t know what he was saying and all Jason kept saying was ‘uh-hu’, ‘yeah’, ‘ok’.

You weren’t sure if it was good news or bad news, you wondered if it was even about the Joker, or maybe it was something else entirely.

Jason hung up the phone.

“That Bruce?” You asked, Jason nodded, “He and Tim are going out soon, they think they’ve found where the Joker has been hiding.”

Your eyes widened, and you sat up, “Where?” You asked.

Jason chuckled, “If I tell you, you’re going to want to find him yourself, aren’t you?” He asked, you shrugged.

“Baby, listen, Bruce will find him, he’s going to take him back to Arkham when he does, and then you won’t have to worry about him.”

“He’s gotten out of Arkham many times before, Jay.” You added.

“I know, I know.” Jason said, lowering his head. You knew Jason wanted to kill the Joker, you could tell just how furious Jason was at the hospital when Bruce had explained to you both what had happened on the day of the explosion.

You knew Jason would have searched for him by himself and killed him too.

“What if he gets out again?” You asked. “Then I’ll talk with Bruce and make arrangements for him to be taken to a more secure facility.”

“You wouldn’t kill him?” You asked.

Jason looked away from you, he stared down at his hands. “I’d want to.” He muttered. “After everything he has done, all those civilians he’s killed, he’s killed me, almost killed Barbara, almost killed you.”

You studied him. His hands were fisted, and you could see his jaw was clenched, “Do you think Black Gate could hold him? Or Belle Reve?”

Jason shrugged, “If they can’t, then I’ll kill him.”

A few hours had past, and you had fallen asleep on the couch after Jason changed your bandages.

Jason stood in the kitchen, waiting for a phone call from Bruce or Tim, regarding their capture of the Joker. He stood at the kitchen counter looking through a cookbook, wondering if he could make something out of there for dinner, or just order from Big Belly Burger again.

As he was flipping through the book, his phone rang.

“Bruce?” He asked, followed by a sigh, “Ok, I’ll be there soon.” And he hung up.

He stared at you for a few seconds, deciding whether he should wake you up, or just leave you sleeping, and leave a note on the table.

“No.” He muttered and began to gently shake you awake.

“What is it?” You asked tiredly.

“Bruce and Tim caught the Joker, they’ve got him at the GCPD.”

You jumped up from the couch and put your coat and shoes on.

#Jason Todd x Reader #Jason Todd x You #Reader insert #Red Hood x Reader #Red Hood x You #Jason Todd #dc comics #batman

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radreactions · 4 years

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First off love your blog. Your so much fun to read, and your reactions are great. So in the truest spirit of Fo4, how about the companions reacting to Fo4 glitches? Gonna let YOU surprise us with what glitches they are.

Damn this was fun! I even added a few pics of my own experiences 😂 Enjoy!

Ada -

She stops and turns, gazing at the young man enjoying his dinner on a floating plate, sitting backwards in his chair with a table right behind him. She glances up at Sole, the little light on her processor unit blinking rapidly overtime as she tried to make sense of such an impossible scene. "Hey George," Sole greets overly casually, as if nothing was wrong it the world. "Good food?" The physics defying man looks up with a grin. "Oh the best! Molly just got in a new shipment of bloatfly, it's the best I've ever had!" Sole glances to Ada, that little light rapidly picking up in speed as George places down his now floating knife. "Good to know, thanks Geroge." They walk off but Ada remains still, staring uncomprehendingly at the poor man who just wanted to enjoy his dinner. He didn't know a series of "!Error!" messages were flickering throughout Ada's HUD.

Cait - "Ohh THAT is the creepiest goddamn shite I have ever seen." She mumbles, clutching her shotgun tightly as she watches the bones of a long forgotten corpse jump and rattle around on the ground. "What'd ya do ta it?" She demands, casting Sole an accusing look, a single skeletal leg fluttering up between them before dropping back down again. "I don't know," They replied, face pale. "I stepped over it and my boot must have caught on something." Suddenly the whole thing lurched upwards almost to the roof, causing the both of them to yelp and jump back, before it calmly floated to the ground where it finally lay still. "Fer fuck's sake, I thought goin' clean was supposed ta stop me from seein' shite like this."

Codsworth - "Oh heavens!" He gasps upon seeing the settler pumping water. If he had a chest, he'd place a hand over it. As it was, his pincer was clutched dramatically to his hull as all three of his optic units focused themselves on the headless settler who just made as if to wipe sweat from their nonexistent brow. He turns to Sole then, shocked and more than a little disturbed. "Sir/mum, are my optical units malfunctioning or are they suffering a severe case of a headache?"

Curie - "Oh! Mon Dieu! I seem to be...structurally compromised!" She gasps, pushing with all her little body's might against the ground she had suddenly fallen through. The concrete was at her waist and despite how hard or fast she kicked her legs - seemingly underhindered by soil that was alarmingly nonexistent below the surface - she just couldn't get herself up. Sole tried pulling, as did Dogmeat, but alas to no avail. "This will pass, yes?" Sole's noncommittal shrug certainly didn't alleviate her worry. But hey, on the bright side, she decided to study this rare phenomenon of intangibility while it lasts.

Danse - He could feel it burrowing around under his feet. He could hear it squealing and hissing, hungry for his blood. His eyes tracked it's movements through the sights of his weapon, finger halfway depressing the trigger in preparation for when it finally makes it's move. A silent, breathless moment later and suddenly it burst through the ground in a raucous explosion of soil and rock and fury....only to sail right over his head and up into the sky. He watched, shocked, as the radscorpion hissed and clicked it's pincers metres in the air above the treeline, it's tail whipping about in a frenzy as it sailed away into the distance, never to be seen again. "Danse?" Sole called, emerging from behind the Red Rocket and startling him. "Did you get it?" He lowered his weapon and scratched his head, still trying to come to terms with the fact that he ACTUALLY saw that. "It...got away?" Sole gave him a questioning look but didn't press the matter further. Even hours later he was still thinking about it, brow pinched in confusion, bewildered mind wondering where the heck the thing ended up. What if it was still out there? Looking for him? Waiting for the perfect moment to strike? He shudders.

Deacon -

"Umm. Sole? Uh, a little help? Gravity is...well...I think I must have broke it. In related news, guess who's looking fabulous?" *tilts shades, gives a wink* "That's right, it's me!"

Dogmeat - He bounds ahead of Sole, panting excitedly because Sanctuary and all his friends are just over the rise and he's got a new collar on and wow, doesn't he look fancy! Just as he turns his head to check on his companion, he see's them disappear. Immediately, he stops in his tracks and tilts his head in confusion. That's a new trick. Is that normal for humans? He knew they were a little weird but...how did Sole DO that? And where did they go? He looks left, he looks right, he sniffs around for a bit and still can't find them. Where...? Suddenly he hears them screaming and there, falling from nowhere above him, they tumble from the clouds shouting words that would normally cause his tail to hide between his legs. He winces when they hit and trots over to give them a questioning lick. "Fucking Todd fucking Howard. Mister 'it just works'. Yeah right you sonofa-" Suddenly they're gone again and he hears "Are you fucking kidding me?!" shouted once more from above. He sits down and sighs. This could go on for a while.

Gage - "Now how in the...?" He shields his eyes as he gazes up towards the roof of the dilapidated pre-war home where a caravan's Brahmin stood, chewing calmly on a peice of yellow straw. "That ain't the weirdest shit I've ever seen, but it's up there." He grimaces as the thing lifts it's tail and shits through the rafters, a grin spreading across Gage's lips when he hears cries of disgust from the occupants within. He looks to the Overboss and lifts a mischievous brow. "Wanna make their day even worse? My caps satchel is feeling a little...light."

Hancock -

"Whoa! What the hell is this? And why the hell didn't I get an invitation?" He turns to Sole and waggles an eyebrow, already removing his trenchcoat. "You gonna join in or do you like watchin'?"

MacCready - He couldn't stop it. He just COULD NOT stop it. "Seriously, I'm freaking the fu-heck out here, Sole!" he yelled, paddling for his life in thin air. He was walking fine one moment, then suddenly his body developed a mind of it's own. He's swimming. On land. And he can't FUCKING stop it. Sole, laughing, kept backing up a few steps of which MacCready couldn't help but following with a big kick of his legs and a stroke with his arms. "Help me out here, for fu-argh-God's sake!" Sole just kept laughing and backing up, resolutely deciding for him that he's gonna kick their ass as soon as this humiliating ordeal is over.

Maxson - He stared in horror as Paladin Danse approached him, all words seemingly lost in the face of this...this...ABOMINATION. Gone was the power armour, despite the clunk of each of Danse's steps, and in it's place was freakishly elongated limbs that Danse didn't even seem to notice. "What the hell?" He demanded. "Where is your designated power armour, soldier?" In the past he had wondered if Danse was one of those soldiers who took to liking their armour way too much, but this? This was...certainly unprecedented. "I'm wearing it, Elder." Danse replied, a questioning furrow on his brow. "What are my orders, Sir?" Shaking his head, Maxson gave them and immediately reached for a bottle of bourbon once Danse's freakishly long back was turned. He was pretty sure, as Danse made his way through the Prydwen, that he heard suprised screams followed by gunshots.

Nick Valentine - He watches disbelievingly as Sole shoots down another raider. "Nick, are you gonna help or are you just gonna stand there and look pretty all day?" They shout, promptly reloading the clip in their gun. Their UPSIDE DOWN gun, that they seemingly still operate as if it were the right way up. Their left hand was grasping nothing but thin air but still looked as though there was something clutched in their hand. He could see the trigger being pulled, but their finger was miles above it. "Uh...sure...sure." he replies, still watching as Sole aims through the upside down weapon, literally through the stock, and still manages to hit their target. "You just...have a little something on your piece there." They look at him before looking down at their upside down gun, giving a sheepish grin as they wipe away a bit of congealed blood. "Thanks, Nick." They promptly go back shooting and he watches, noticing the muzzle flash appearing at least thirty centimetres above the actual barrel. "I need a hard reboot." He mutters.

Old Longfellow - He squints into the sky, watching in half amusement as the mudcrab drops from thin air and splats on the ground only meters away from him. "Well," he grumbles, his white eyebrows lifting a little as he turns to look at Sole. "That's new."

Piper Wright -

"Umm. Blue? You're seeing what I'm seeing...right?" She timidly shuffles closer to the giant pink behind of what she can only assume is a Brahmin and stares at the way it is seemingly stuck THROUGH the solid concrete wall. "Is...is it still alive??" Suddenly it moos and she jumps back in shock, clutching Sole's arm as if for dear life. "I can't tell if that came from the front or the back, but either way...what the heck do we DO with it?"

Strong - The sound he made was almost defeaning in the dark and stuffy subway station. It was also creepy. VERY fucking creepy. Sole has never heard a sound like that before and they desperately hope, as Strong remains doubled over laughing, that they'll never have to hear it again. On the ground, where they've just killed a lowly ghoul, it's corpse was spinning like a beyblade and was apparently the most hilarious thing Strong has ever seen. "Are you done yet?" They ask impatiently, but get nothing but another roll of creepy ass laughter that finally prompts them to move on into the darkness without him. At least ghouls were a lot less scarier than...whatever THAT was.

Preston Garvey - He and Sole were gazing out over the ocean just after successfully winning back the castle from the queen mirelurk, her corpse being promptly dissected by the Minutemen in the courtyard behind them. "Wow. Not that long ago, I never would've thought we could-" He cuts off because just as Sole turned to look at him, the ocean suddenly became a flurescent green rectangle stretching endlessly before him. "What the hell?!" He sputtered, eyes going wide. Sole turned back and the ocean promptly reappeared. "What?" they asked, turning to look questioningly at him. Again, the ocean flickered and the almost blindingly bright green glared up at him. "The ocean!" He exclaimed, pointing. Again, they turned and again, the deep blue of the ocean reappeared. "Preston, this can't be the first time you're seeing the ocean." They turned back to him and he had to squint from the brightness of the most hideous colour green he's ever seen. He shook his head, breathed a sigh, and decided that he'd help cut up that monstrosity after all. At least that thing was meant to be green.

X6-88 - "Sir/ma'am, you seem to have displaced your ammunition cartridge." He states calmly, gesturing to Sole's left hand where one seems to be lodged through their palm, an end sticking out of both sides. It looks painful and he silently commends them for their handling of it. "What do you mean?" They ask, lifting up the hand in question. "I have it right here." He frowns, noticing that their fingers are clutched around air roughly the shape of the cartridge. "Are you feeling alright, X6?" He doesn't know what to say to that, or when they go to place the damn thing in their satchel and it magically floats through their fingers. Literally THROUGH their fingers. For the next couple of hours on the road, he runs a self diagnostic and feels like screaming when it comes up normal.

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arecomicsevengood · 3 years

Text

TOP TEN OLDER MAINSTREAM COMICS I READ THIS YEAR

I kept track of all the comics I read this year, and not all of them were new. I have no idea who this will help or benefit but at least the circumstances of me only listing the completely arbitrary older work I read for the first time this year will deter anyone from arguing with me. However, for the sake of possibly being contentious, let me mention two comics that fall outside the top ten, because they’re bad:

Trencher by Keith Giffen. David King did a comic strip about Keith Giffen’s art style on this book in issue 2 of But Is It... Comic Aht that everybody loved, and made me be like, ok, I’ll check it out. But it’s basically just a retread of Lobo in terms of its tone and approach, but without Simon Bisley. I don’t really know why anyone wouldn’t think Bisley is the better cartoonist. Also, those comics are terrible. Thumbs down.

The Green Lantern by Grant Morrison, Liam Sharp, and Steve Oliff. I bought the first year of these comics for a dollar each off a dude doing a sidewalk sale. Found them sort of incoherent? I haven’t liked a new Grant Morrison comic in ages, with All-Star Superman being really the only outlier since like We3. This is clearly modeled off of European comics like Druillet or something, and would maybe benefit from being printed larger, I really dislike the modeled color too. But also it’s just aggressively fast-paced, with issues ending in ways that feel like cliffhangers but aren’t, and no real characters of interest.

As for the top ten list itself, for those who’ve looked at my Letterboxd page, slots 10-8 are approximately “3 stars,” 7-4 are 3 1/2 stars, slots 3 and 2 are 4 stars, with number one being a 4 1/2 star comic. The comics I’m listing on my “Best Of The Year” list that’ll run at the Comics Journal alongside a bunch of people are all 4 1/2 or 5 star comics. This is INSANELY NERDY and pedantic to note, and I eschew star ratings half the time anyway, because assignations of numeric value to art are absurd except within the specific framework of how strong a recommendation is, and on Letterboxd I feel like I’m speaking to a very small and self-selecting group of people whose tastes I generally know. (And I generally would not recommend joining Letterboxd to people!) But what I mean by all of this is just that there is a whole world of work I value more than this stuff, and I’ll recommend the truly outstanding shit to interested readers in good time.

10. Justice Society Of America by Len Strazewski and Mike Parobeck. Did some quarantine regressing and bought these comics, a few of which were some of the first comics I ever read, but I didn’t read the whole thing regularly as a kid. Parobeck’s a fun cartoonist, this stuff is readable. It’s faintly generic/baseline competent but there’s a cheap and readable quality to this stuff that modern comics lack. Interestingly, the letters column is made up of old people who remember the characters and feel like it’s marketed towards them, and since that wasn’t profitable, when the book was canceled, Parobeck went over to drawing The Batman Adventures, which was actively marketed towards kids. It’s funny that him and Ty Templeton were basically viewed as “normal” mainline DC Comics for a few years there and then became relegated to this specific subset of cartooning language, which everyone likes and thought was good but didn’t fit inside the corporate self-image, which has basically no aesthetic values.

9. The Shadow 18 & 19 by Andy Helfer and Kyle Baker. I’d been grabbing issues of this run of comics for years and am only now finishing it. Kyle Baker’s art is swell but Helfer writes a demanding script, these are slow reads that cause the eye to glaze over a bit.

8. The Jam 3-8 by Bernie Mireault. I made a post where I suggested Mireault’s The Jam might be one of the better Slave Labor comics. Probably not true but what I ended up getting are some colored reprints Tundra did, and some black and white issues published by Dark Horse after that. Mireault’s art style is kinda like Roger Langridge. After these, he did a crossover with Mike Allred’s Madman and then did a series of backups in those comics, it makes sense to group them together, along with Jay Stephens’ Atomic City Tales and Paul Grist’s Jack Staff, or Mike Mignola’s Hellboy, as this stream that runs parallel to Image Comics but is basically better, a little more readable, but still feeling closer to something commercial in intention as opposed to self-expression. Although it also IS self-expression, just the expression of a self that has internalized a lot of tropes and interests in superhero comics. If you have also read a lot of superhero comics, but also a lot of alternative comics, stuff like this basically reads like nothing. It’s comfort food on the same level of mashed potatoes: I love it when it’s well-done but there’s also a passable version that can be made when depressed and uninspired. But drawing like Roger Langridge is definitely not bad!

7. WildC.A.T.S by Alan Moore, Travis Charest, et al. I wrote a post about these comics a few months ago, but let me reiterate the salient points: There’s two collections, the first one is much better than the second, and the first is incredibly dumbed-down in its nineties Image Comics style but also feels like the best version of that possible, when Charest is doing art. Also, these collections are out of print now, a friend of mine pointed out maybe they can’t be reprinted because they involve characters owned by Todd McFarlane but Wildstorm is owned wholly by DC now.

6. Haywire by Michael Fleischer and Vince Giarrano. I made a post about this comic when I first read a few issues right around the time Michael Fleischer died a few years ago, but didn’t read all of it then. This feels way more deliberately structured than most action comics, with its limited cast and lack of ties to any broader universe, but it’s also dumb and sleazy and fast moving, and feels related to what were the popular movies of the day, splitting its influences evenly between erotic thrillers about yuppies and Stallone-starring action movies. The erotic thriller element is mostly just “a villain in bondage gear” which is sort of standard superhero comics bullshit but it’s also a little bit deeper than that. The first three issues, inked by Kyle Baker, look the best.

5. Dick Tracy by John Moore and Kyle Baker. These look even better! A little unclear which John Moore this is? There’s John Francis Moore, who worked with Howard Chaykin and was scripting TV around this time, but there’s another dude who was a cartoonist who did a miniseries for Piranha Press and then moved on to doing work for Disney on Darkwing Duck comics. Anyway, Kyle Baker colors these, they’re energetically cartooned, each issue is like 64 pages, with every page being close to a strip or scene in a movie. I’m impressed by them, and there’s a nice bulk that makes them a nice thing to keep a kid busy. (For the record, my favorite Kyle Baker solo comic is probably You Are Here.)

4. Chronos by John Francis Moore and Paul Guinan. I was moving on from DC comics by the late nineties, but Grant Morrison’s JLA was surely a positive influence on everyone, especially compared to the vibe there in the subsequent two decades. These are well-crafted. There’s a little stretch where it uses the whole “time-traveling protagonist” thing to do a run of issues which stand alone but fall in sequence too and it’s pretty smooth and smart. The art is strong enough to carry it, the sort of cartoony faces with detailed backgrounds it’s widely agreed works perfectly, but that you rarely see in mainstream comics. The coloring is done digitally, but not over-modeled enough to ruin it.

3. Martha Washington by Frank Miller and Dave Gibbons. A few miniseries, all of which sort of get weaker as they go, but all in one book it doesn’t feel like it’s becoming trash as it goes or anything. When Miller dumbed down his storytelling in the nineties it really was because he thought it made for better comics, the tension between his interest in manga and Gibbons’ British-comics classicism feels productive. I do kind of feel like the early computer coloring ruins this a little bit.

2. Xombi by John Rozum and JJ Birch. Got a handful of these on paper, read scans of the rest. This is pretty solid stuff, not really transcendent ever, but feels well-crafted on a month-in, month-out level. I read a handful of other Milestone comics, and a lot of them suffered from being so beholden to deadlines that there are fill-in issues constantly. This is the rare one that had the same creators for the entirety of its run. There was a revival with Frazer Irving art a decade ago but I prefer JJ Birch’s black line art with Noelle Giddings’ watercolors seen here. They’re doing an early Vertigo style “weirdness” but with a fun and goofy sense of humor about itself. I haven’t read Clive Barker but this feels pretty influenced by that as well. (The Deathwish miniseries is of roughly comparable quality. I read scans of the rest of that after I made my little post and, yeah, it does actually feel very personal for a genre work, and the JH Williams art with painted color is great.)

1. Tom Strong by Alan Moore, Chris Sprouse, etc. I got bored reading these as a teen but getting them all for cheap and reading them in a go was a pretty satisfying experience. It’s partly a speed-run through Moore’s coverage of the concept of a comic book multiverse seen in his Supreme run, minus the riffing on Mort Weisinger Superman comics, instead adding in a running theme of rehabilitating antagonists whose goals are different but aren’t necessarily evil. It’s more than just Moore in an optimistic or nostalgic mode, it also feels like he’s explaining his leftist morality to an audience that has internalized conflicts being resolved by violence as the genre standard.

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fallout4reactsblog · 5 years

Note

Companions react to in-game glitches and other inconsistencies happening around (/being used by Sole)? Flying on an engine, cars jumping around spinning at crazy speed, corpses/items moving like they're possesed, settlement structures hovering in the air with a single ladder piece attached, people "swimming" on land, instantly getting all items from a smallest piece of meat... (Just not normal gameplay features like saveloading and Pip-boy stopping time, but 100s of items in pockets will do)

Cait: She wiped the sweat off her brow, letting her ball bat hang loosely at her side. A trail of blood followed her fingers as her eyes surveyed the room, taking in the blood, guts, and general gore that now decorated the floor and walls. Her and Sole sure had made a mess.

They folded their arms, a satisfied smile on their face. “The loot’s gonna be great. You take that half of the room, I’ll take this half?”

“Yeah, alright.”

She moved toward her half as sole crouched down in front of a man whose head had been cracked open like a walnut, brain spilling out of the ruined shards of his skull. Without hesitation, sole picked up a lump of brain flesh, turning it over in their hands before sinking their fingers in.

“Sole, what the fu-”

Her words stopped short as sole pulled a 10 mm pistol from the chunk, looked it over and made a face, then tossed it to the side. They pushed their hand in again, this time emerging with a stimpack, which they tucked into their pocket.

“What the fuck?” Cait whispered as sole pulled out several pieces of armor, a set of road leathers, and a tattered but still-intact box of InstaMash.

Sole looked up, the box still in their hand. “What’s wrong?”

“You just- all that- from one chunk of brain?”

“Uh, yeah? That’s the stuff they had on them. Not much of interest.”

“Normal people don’t do that.”

They just laughed.

“I’m serious, sole. That’s fucked up. You can’t pull a pistol out of somebody’s brains and not expect people to look at you funny!”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

Curie: “Madame/Monsieur, do you think that man is… alright?”

“Which one?” Sole looked up from their drink, peering around the bar.

“The man over there, who is having a seat on, ah, nothing.”

Sole squinted toward where Curie was pointing, and sure enough, some strange man was relaxing next to a table, seemingly comfortable in a ninety degree squat. He took a sip of beer as if to prove it.

They hummed, eyebrows furrowed. “Goodneighbor folks sure are strange, huh?”

“I do not think he is well.”

“Maybe he’s just had a bad dose of Jet? Or too much to drink?”

“Best not to stare, I think. It is not polite, oui?”

They laughed a little and turned into their drink. “I suppose so. let him do what he needs to do.”

“At the very least, it will be an excellent workout for his thighs.”

Danse: He’d pinch the bridge of his nose, if not for the power armor, so he settled for folding his arms instead.

“Sole. Carrying all of that junk around is just going to slow you down. Let it go.”

They huffed, shoving another tin can into their pocket. “They have more uses than you think they do.”

“Is the same to be said for the empty beer bottles?”

“Actually,” they said, scooping two up and shoving them into the same pocket, “it is.”

“The alarm clocks?”

“Even more useful.”

“The typewriter?” he asked, watching them shove a whole one into the chest of their vault suit, never to be seen until they found a workbench.

“The most useful of all.”

He eyed how smooth the pockets of their suit were, despite the number of items he knew they were carrying. He was surprised they had room for junk at all, given the number of weapons, ammunition, and armor they were carrying.

“Sole, how strong are you, exactly?”

“Not sure,” they replied, scooping up a screwdriver and a hammer, tucking them into the same pocket the tin cans and beer bottles had gone into.

“Better question, how do you manage to pack all of those items into your pocket?”

They looked down at the pocket, which hadn’t even begun to look full. “I don’t know. I just put stuff into there until I can’t carry any more.”

“That works?”

They shrugged. “Somehow. How do you think I get you to carry all that stuff?”

His eyebrows shot up. “I’m carrying things?”

“Uh-huh. You’re great at it.”

“What am I even carrying it in?”

They just smiled at him. “Does it matter if I take it all out after?”

“Yes. It does.”

They refused to answer, and all Danse could hope was that they didn’t try to store things in his power armor joints.

Deacon: “Hey, sole, come over here a sec.”

Sole wiped the super mutant blood off their arm, flicking it to the side as they picked their way over to him. “What’s up?”

He pointed wordlessly at the body of a super mutant that was slowly sinking into the ground, headless. Sole stood silently at his side, watching the Earth slowly devour the carcass, inch by inch consuming it. They seemed to stand there for hours as it sank. There was no sound, no wet sucking or movement of Earth. Simply a super mutant defying any laws of physics that Deacon had ever known.

When all was said and done, and the last of the body had disappeared, Deacon nodded sharply. “His soul and body are with Todd now.”

Sole stared at him a moment before laughing, an ugly snort-laugh that turned their voice up an octave. “Todd? Who the hell is Todd?”

“I don’t know,” he said, giggling a little himself. “Someone who likes super mutants I guess.”

“He must like them a lot!”

They laughed a moment longer, then sole sighed and reached into their pocket for a tin can. Solemnly, they placed on the spot that the super mutant had disappeared.

“Here lies Howard, consumed by Todd. May he find his peace.”

“Howard is a terrible name for a super mutant.”

They stuck out their tongue at him. “I don’t see you coming up with any ideas.”

“Super mutants need weird names, like ‘Blood’ and ‘Guts’ and, uh…”

“Hamburger,” sole supplied.

He nodded sternly. “Exactly. Now you’ve got the hang of it. Here lies Hamburger. May he find peace with Todd.”

Sole placed another tin can on top of the other with a flourish, and they walked away, discussing other good super mutant names.

Gage: “Boss, I’ve got a question.”

“Shoot.”

“How, uh, solid would you say the average ghoul is?”

“Depends on the ghoul. Bloated ghouls are about ten percent, because they’re all, y’know, bloated. Your standard run-of-the-mill crazy ghoul is about forty percent. They get pretty squishy because of the rads. Sane ghouls are a solid eighty, which is higher than the human seventy, because they lose a lot of soft tissues.”

“So they should not be able to be halfway through walls?”

They hummed thoughtfully. “Not unless they’re in a hole.”

He eyed the wall the ghoul was stuck in, nudging it with the butt of his gun, and determined it to be quite solid. “No hole. Just a ghoul through a wall.”

“Gage, ghouls can’t go through walls if the wall is solid. Someone chopped a ghoul in two and mounted it on either side of the wall.”

He poked at it a little more. “It’s definitely in one piece, boss.”

“Gage.” Their tone was warning. “I’m going to come over there, but if I find out you’re fucking with me, or pulling my leg, I’m going to kick your ass. Got it?”

“Yeah, sure.”

They appeared at his side, almost scarily quiet. He gestured to the body vaguely, half-disgusted.

“Yeah, they shouldn’t do that.” Sole nudged at the thing with their boot, making a face. “Just leave it.”

“Doubt I could get it out of the wall anyway.”

They snorted, then leveled their pistol to put one round in its back. Gage leapt away as the wall suddenly decided the ghoul shouldn’t be in it and launched it across the room. Sole’s hand shot out as if to protect him, and they stared at it a moment.

“Just leave it,” he echoed.

“No kidding.”

Hancock: He stared down the road at the body of a now-dead raider, one hand gently rubbing his forehead. He turned back to sole, who was now shaking out their wrist. He looked back down the road.

“Damn, this batch of Jet is fucked.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I swear you punched that guy all the way down the street.”

“Oh, uh, yeah. That actually happened.”

“Huh?”

He peered back down the street, suddenly trying to put reality together where he thought there was only illusion. “So, how strong did you say you were?”

“Definitely not strong enough to punch a guy down the block, I’ll tell you that.”

He considered that. “So the Jet’s not fucked, but physics is?”

They laughed. “Seems so. Gravity decided to not come in today.”

“Hey, he earned it. Hardest worker around. Let him take a vacation, right?”

“As long as I don’t go floating off, I’d love to keep punching people and watching them fly away.”

“Pretty entertaining if you ask me.”

They turned to him with a mischievous smile. “Bet it’s even better on Day Tripper.”

“I’ve got some of that. Right, ah, here.” He pulled a bottle of pills from his pocket, shaking it enticingly.

“Well, let’s go find some more raiders and see if we can make it happen again.”

MacCready: He stretched out, listening to the bones in his back pop. “I say we call it a night. It’s dark, and I’m getting tired.”

“I could go for a nap,” they replied, though they didn’t look all that tired. “I think that Outpost Zimonja is close to here, we can catch some shuteye there.”

“It’s safe?”

They chuckled. “Should be. I built the place myself.”

“I guess it’ll have to do then,” he said teasingly. “Though how good your judgment is, no one knows.”

“Jury’s still out,” they replied, happily playing along, “but the other settlers aren’t complaining yet.”

They made their way to the settlement, sky darkening around them. Sole pushed through the gate at the front of the settlement, and showed him past the turrets and guard tower to the rest.

It was small but otherwise cozy, and sole beckoned him over to the workbench. “I need the stuff you’re carrying for me.”

“Sure.”

He rifled around in his pockets, passing every item to sole’s outstretched hands. That it took a few minutes was expected, but after the tenth desk fan and thirtieth ball peen hammer, he was getting suspicious at the amount of stuff he was finding on him. How did he carry that much weight? It seemed, well, impossible.

“That should be it,” they said after nearly twenty minutes, tucking a handful of pencils into one of the workbench drawers. “Thanks.”

He stared down at his thin arms, trying to imagine how he hadn’t even noticed all the items he’d been carrying. “What the heck did you do to me?”

“Oh, with all the stuff you were carrying. I just asked you to pick it up. You don’t seem to notice when I ask you to grab it for me, as opposed to when I hand it to you myself, so I just asked you to grab the junk I couldn’t carry.”

“But- I- I don’t-”

They slapped a hand on his shoulder. “Try not to think about it too hard. Let’s just get some rest, okay?”

“Sure,” he said, but the way his thoughts were spinning told him he wouldn’t be sleeping at all.

Nick: “Sole,” he said, honestly trying his hardest not to laugh, “you can’t do that.”

“And why not?” They grinned at him, hands on their hips, clearly pleased with their work.

“It’s just- It’s not right sole. You can’t put beds in walls and expect everything to be okay.”

“I think I can,” they replied. “The settlers can sleep in it just fine.”

“How the hell do they do that?”

“Simple. They lay in the wall too.”

That was enough to make Nick Valentine, synth detective, lose his composure, and he burst out laughing. Not a small giggle, either, a full laugh, one that left him doubled over and leaning against the wall for support. He hadn’t laughed so hard in a long time, but the thought of some poor settler laying in a wall to sleep had him in absolute fits.

When he finally calmed, only a smile lingering on his face, he gestured to the half-inside, half-outside bed and simply said, “How?”

“Oh, silly Nick,” they teased. “It’s on a rug! Don’t you know that if it’s on a rug, it can do anything? I can put beds through walls, I can put bookshelves though walls, I can put anything through a wall, as long as it’s on a rug.”

“Oh my God.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, still smiling. “I don’t even want to know how you figured that out. So you saw the ways you could break all the rules and immediately decided you’d put beds through walls.”

“Of course! What else does one do with such power?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. Are you going to put the bed back inside?”

“Heavens no. Then it wouldn’t be funny at all, just boring. It’d look like every other house out there.”

“It does add a certain, ah, uniqueness I suppose.”

They bumped his shoulder with theirs. “Now you get it.”

Preston: “Sole, when I asked you to build a settlement in Hangman’s Alley, you know this isn’t what I meant.”

They shrugged. “You said to build a settlement, so I did.”

He raised an eyebrow, still staring at the supposed settlement they’d built. A single staircase touched the ground, and the rest of the building expanded from that, hovering above a grid of garden plots that held the crops and water pumps that fed the settlement. As impressive as it was, he couldn’t imagine it was safe.

“I know what you’re thinking.” They spoke before he could even open his mouth. “I promise that it’s safe. I just got tired of building the same old buildings over and over again, so I wanted to do something different. I tested it before I let anyone in and I did the math, and I swear that it’s not coming down anytime soon.”

He glanced over at them, and though they were his general, all he saw in their eyes was a need for approval. Maybe a hint of embarrassment at having been caught, but mostly a need for him to trust them and like it as much as they did.

“Well,” he sighed, turning back, “it’s definitely new. And practical, given the small space.”

“Do you like it?” Their voice was so hopeful, so bright, and yet so fragile.

“Yeah,” he said with a smile. “I like it a lot.”

“Do you want to have a look inside.”

“I’d love to.”

X6: “You cannot fly.”

“Yes I can,” they said cheekily.

“No, you cannot.” He folded his arms. “Not without the assistance of some sort of machine.”

They held their hand out. “Give me your jacket.”

He raised an eyebrow, clearly conveying his displeasure with that idea.

“I promise to give it back,” they huffed. “I’ll even clean it for you after. I just want to show you that I can, in fact, fly.”

He considered the offer a moment, then begrudgingly removed his coat. Their face lit up and, for a brief moment, he almost didn’t regret it.

“Alright, X6. Watch and learn.”

He watched, slightly curious, as they laid the coat on the floor, the crouched down and positioned themselves so they were standing on it. He almost protested their dirty boots on the leather, but they had offered to clean it, so he decided against it.He simply observed them grab to solid handfuls of fabric, getting a good hold on it, and then he watched them jump.

And somehow, they stayed there, floating in the air on top of his coat.

He slid his glasses down his nose, and softly murmured, “Holy shit.”

“See?” They jumped again, rising further into the air. “I told you I could fly.”

“You did. My apologies, ma’am/sir. Though I would recommend you bring this to the attention of our scientists immediately.”

They released their hold on the coat, falling gracefully to the floor. “Why, you think they’d be interested?”

He leveled a stern look at them over his glasses. “You just broke physics, ma’am/sir. I think the term ‘interested’ is an understatement.”

566 notes · View notes

immortalpain · 3 years

Text

MELODY FRITZ

age: 39

pronouns: she/her

sexuality: bisexual

occupation: art teacher

species: werewolf

faceclaim: bryce dallas howard

PACK MOM (tw; death, murder)

born and raised in bellport. her mother was an alpha of a pack within the town.

she grew up around werewolves, but was always reluctant about triggering her curse. the last thing she wanted to do was kill someone. luckily, her pack was understanding, they never forced anyone to trigger the curse and treated untriggered wolves the same.

she would always go out of her way to take care of those after the full moon, hating seeing her family suffer.

while she spent most of her time with the pack, her mother tried to encourage her to socialise with kids her own age.

that was when she met becca. her best friend, and the reason she realised she liked girls. she never said anything, keeping quiet about the underlying feelings. the last thing she wanted to do was ruin her friendship.

when becca moved away, and they lost contact - it broke mel’s heart, but she tried not to dwell on it. perhaps it just wasn’t meant to be.

it was during that time, she met todd. he was charming, and she instantly found herself enchanted by him.

her mother had always drilled into her that unless she knew they were safe, she ought to keep her family heritage a secret.

melody had thought he was safe, especially after they’d be dating for a year. she told him, and even showed him her pack’s meeting place. she thought she could trust him.

todd turned out to be a hunter. a vicious one at that, with a personal vendetta against werewolves. he killed her mother, and then turned against her, too. it turns out, he’d been using her the entire time to get to the pack, he just needed her to confirm it.

she killed todd in self defence, and triggered her curse the same night she lost her mother.

despite her father never blaming her, melody never quite forgave herself.

some of her former pack moved on, but those who remained fell under her leadership. the ones that stayed didn’t blame her. she’d been young and impressionable.

art had been her escape, and she desired to teach it, staying in bellport to study.

a couple of years later, she spotted someone she’d not seen in years. becca. the sight of her old friend brought a smile to her lips, and when she overheard the woman saying “fuck me,” she returned with a quip as if they’d never been apart (”let me take you on a date first”)

after that, they began dating. melody never would have expected it, and she had been weary after what happened with todd, but this was becca. things had always been easy with the other.

she knew she needed to tell becca, but the fear of the last time she told someone her secret, it ended in the death of her mother - scared her into silence. and as the time went on, and they got married, it became harder to tell her.

wanting to raise a family, they tried through a sperm bank, but it was expensive, and kept failing at first. then they tried adoption, and unfortunately, it looked just as bleak.

then, luck struck them at the same time, the next time they tried the sperm bank, melody got pregnant - just as they got approved to adopt.

they decided to go through with both, and ended up with nellie and freddie.

freddie, due to melody carrying him, inherited his mother’s werewolf genes - a fact she naturally, has yet to tell her wife.

they basically raised the two as twins, as they came into their lives at practically the same time.

their kids are now five, and melody works at the school teaching art.

she usually takes most stray werewolves into her care, keeping an eye on them, no matter how old they were.

when theo had come into town ten or so years ago, despite his attitude, melody made it her mission to befriend him, always telling him she was there if he needed her, and helping out when the pack of teens came to him.

she knows she needs to tell her wife, she just doesn’t know how to anymore.

wanted connections;

old pack members !! maybe some that stuck with her, or old ones that left because they blamed her but came back??

give her friends!!

stray werewolves she’s practically adopted too. she will mother you.

#muse; melody fritz

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disappearinginq · 4 years

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Tag Game

I was tagged by both @amandagaelic and @waitingforthestarstofall

1. What was the last movie you watched in theaters? I think...either Little Women or Knives Out (for the second time).

2. What’s your favorite game to play? One that I call Murder Mansion, but I think is actually called Betrayal at House on the Hill or one called Bang! - mostly because it was the most hilarious introduction to a game I have ever had where I got to play a trigger happy unlimited round packing Sheriff who everyone was trying to kill and my besties from the dawn of time were in fact my loyal deputies.

3. Chocolate or vanilla? Vanilla, if I must only pick between those two.

4. What’s the last show you binge-watched? Yellowstone or Locke & Key

5. Do you have any pets? Oh dear. Yes. Three cats, two horses, and three dogs (though technically I might own a third horse, who knows at this point?).

6. What’s your favorite fairy tale? Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.

7. Who’s your favorite superhero? Batman - not the one that they keep portraying as an abusive asshole like Howard Stark, but the one who legit went to court to keep Jason Todd as his son and dipped out from being Batman and Bruce Wayne social obligations when Jason needed him and collected orphans and tried to make sure they wouldn’t turn out like him.

8. Who’s you favorite Disney Princess? Pocahontas or Tiger Lily probably, though I was never really a fan of the princess movies. I liked Treasure Planet and Great Mouse Detective where there were zero romantic subplots or princesses.

9. Where’s the first place you’re going to go after the social distancing is over? ALASKA. BECAUSE THAT WAS THE PLAN BEFORE THIS HYAH! SHITSHOW!

10. Cookies or Cake? Cookies. I am weirdly not a fan of cake.

+ 10 questions from @teenwolf-theoriginals:

1. which show could you watch over and over? Lucifer, Daredevil (and add-ons), Republic of Doyle

2. favourite song lyric? " I choose my eyes wide open/And my heart half-broken every time/Over the gilded golden shackle/And the reassuring sentimental lie.”

3. favourite season of your favourite tv show? Lucifer season 4, Daredevil Season 1, and...whatever season ends with Jake Doyle getting kidnapped and locked unconscious in a shipping container bound for Mexico

4. what never fails to make you smile/happy? Cirque De Sewer videos on Facebook (ren fair comedy show with cats and rats and a former ballerina).

5. how are you doing with all that’s going on in the world (virus, having to do social distancing, etc)? I feel really weird saying this, but the quarantine is working out freakishly well for me. My sister, who hasn’t lived nearby since 2010, came to visit for our mom’s 70th birthday just before the travel ban, so she’s been here for a little over 2 weeks now, which is the most I have seen her in 10 years. We live in a small town on a farm, so I have a lot to keep me busy outdoors without having to go to public outdoor places. My job is 100% capable of being 100% remote, we always buy from the warehouses when we have coupons so we have plenty of food and paper goods, we have puzzles out the wazoo to keep us busy when the weather is bad, we have a huge garden every year so if this keeps up we’ll have all our own food and eleventy billion movies and crochet projects, etc. I’m also a hella hermit normally, so this is not really all that new. Little mad I can’t go help a friend paint their house, but eh. Small price compared to a lot of others.

6. we all love new music to listen to, name an artist that is underrated/you think people should check out? Janet Devlin. Irish/English folk singer I found on Spotify.

7. tv show or movie? TV show. I love the level of character development that can happen when given the opportunity.

8. favourite holiday? Thanksgiving. All the food. And less work than Fourth of July, because July means I get roped into directing the town parade and half a dozen other things because my parents get me to.

9. a song that describes you? “Psycho” by Ava Max.

10. describe your tumblr in three words? Themed = for chumps.

+5 questions from @macspaperclips

1. What is your favorite hobby? Crocheting, or writing

2. What is your favorite book? Or/and a really good book you’ve read recently? Six of Crows duology - a heist series that I got sucked into thanks to fan art and then finding out the main male lead can’t stand human touch and I was like SOLD.

3. What is your favorite Ship that will never happen (Or hasn’t happened yet)? Not a shipper. I hate ships, because inevitably, ship wars ruin everything. And in some cases, really make me question sanity or mental health of some people. Said I didn’t like a female romantic lead, next thing I get is death threats, and I am totally the type to back track a URL, hunt you down in the real world, and brain you with a hammer. It’s not good for my anger management.

4. If you could spend the day with any living celebrity, who would it be? Harrison Ford, because it would be on his ranch in Jackson Hole.

5. The best worst movie you’ve ever seen. A movie that you know objectively is trash but you can’t help but really enjoy it. The new Robin Hood with Taron Edgerton, or the Four Musketeers.

My questions (answer these if you’re tagged, then come up with some questions of your own, and then tag people):

1) What is your MBTI and/or Enneagram Number? MBTI - I had to look this up - INFJ or ENFJ, depending on how you want to interpret that first letter.

2) What TV episode is your all-time favorite? The Hay Burner on Bonanza,

3) What does happiness mean to you? Lack of desire

and tagged on because I was in fact tagged by two people @amandagaelicquestions:

1) If you’re a fic writer, do you reply to every review? And if so, how long do you wait? I have only recently started getting over my weird phobia of responding to reviews (I also am rather new to AO3 and it was a little hard or impossible to do in FFN.net), so some stories in the smaller fandoms like Magnum, I have tried to respond to all of them, and it takes anywhere from a day to a month, but in Lucifer...oh dear. It’s daunting, and I keep freaking out because I haven’t finished the behemoth that is Damnatio despite it being years, so I don’t want to respond back to everyone saying “I HAVE NO IDEA WHEN I AM FINISHING THIS” in between severe writers’ block.

2) What color Starburst is the best? Of the original? Pink. Of the options of outward packaging? Blue.

3) Skittles or M&Ms? M&M’s

4) If you were to learn any new language, which one would you choose and why? Bold of you to assume I would learn only one. I am actually taking...four lessons through Duolingo? Irish, Welsh, Spanish, and Hawaiian (Was learning Navajo, but I made it to food and WTF....nope, kicked my ass).

My questions:

If you could be anything else, what would you be?

If you’re a fic writer, what would you guilty pleasure fic idea that you won’t write because you don’t think anyone else would read it?

Is there something you wish you knew more about, and if so, what is it?

tagging: @dragonnan, @rohanrider3, @sofasurf, @buckky, @ariaadagio, @get-whumped, @itsjustdg

If you’re busy or otherwise not feeling it - as always, feel free not to play. If you weren’t tagged, I also mean you. You can come play too.

#games we play #asks #tags #tag you're it

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fostersffff · 5 years

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Lying Video Game Developer Alignments

Hideki Kamiya, Lawful Good: Technically never lies, just tells people asking for things to fuck off. After it’s revealed that the things are happening, he tells those people he loves them and is incredibly thankful for their support.

Ed Boon, Chaotic Good: Will make direct eye contact with you and lie through his teeth about not having any plans for the thing you want, only to reveal it was a lie days later with an elaborate trailer and the biggest shit-eating grin you’ve ever seen.

Masahiro Sakurai, Lawful Neutral: Honestly believes he was never going to do the thing he said he would never do, but always does. He should really know better by now, but his overwhelming pessimism blinds him.

Peter Molyneux, Chaotic Neutral: Honestly believes he was going to do the thing he said he was going to do, and has never once done it. He really should know better by now, but his overwhelming optimism blinds him.

Sean Murray/Hello Games and No Man’s Sky, Lawful Evil: A man/studio put in an unenviable position of having a small indie game put in the center of a hype storm for 2+ years. Knowingly lied about the state of the game and features, multiple times, but was likely under intense pressure from all sides to do so.

Todd Howard and Bethesda Games, Chaotic Evil: A studio with all the money and prestige in the world that can’t be bothered to update their deteriorating 15+ year old game engine or pay for quality assurance, and instead are content to release games they are fully aware are riddled with problems and just lie about them instead.

#video games #Hideki Kamiya #Ed Boon #Masahiro Sakurai #Todd Howard

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text-to-speech-impediment · 5 years

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THE VAULT IN OUR STARS

An Opinion Piece on How Bethesda Survives (And How You Can Change Them!)

A/N: I wrote this op-ed for funsies. As you may know, I am known to warm myself at a corporate dumpster fire from time to time, but this one is especially close to my heart. I may replace with an actual edited version but for now, just enjoy it in its raw & unpolished glory. If you’re a Bethesda fan, you’re used to it anyway.

In the words of Todd Howard, “I read on the internet…that sometimes it doesn’t just work.”

Indeed, after just over two weeks since its 14 November release date, Bethesda Softworks’ release of survival multiplayer sandbox “Fallout 76” has more than merely failed to impress most of its players. The game has garnered an infamously low average score of only 54% on popular game journalism site, Metacritic. It fares no better on Youtube, with dozens of popular influencers obliterating the high expectations of even the most devoted fans of the Fallout franchise; but this will not be another essay to dishonor the multiple technical, immersion and storytelling woes that plague beleaguered “Fallout 76”. That’s for another essay.

This criticism is one that many previous public complaints have touched on, flirted with, but seldom fully explored while caught up in the disappointment they had in “Fallout 76.” Specifically, this essay is leveled broadly at Bethesda Softworks LLC, the video game publishing division responsible for “Fallout 76”, as well as ZeniMax Media Inc., the parent organization of Bethesda and many other well-known game developers such as Arkane Studios, id Software and more. The upper management of these companies is removed from all but the finances of their industry; they are abusing both their content creators and consumers to calculated effect, remaining foggy at best on the aim of the products their teams are producing and out of touch with the end user’s interest.

What more can we say against corporations of this staggering size? Corporations and mergers, time and again, continue to exploit art production and consumption then shrug off the backlash by driving screws into their overworked employees and letting them take the fall with the public. Unless we look at past events, this trend of blame shifting isn’t obvious. It’s hard at the moment to see that Bethesda Softworks’ colossal failure to recreate their previous endearing successes with fans in “Fallout 76” didn’t happen overnight.

It is for this reason that I sit on my soapbox today, somehow about to make an analogy of the gaming marketing industry by using Hazel and Gus from good ol’ John Green’s “The Fault in Our Stars.” Never did I imagine I’d see those concepts together, but here I am smashing them together like this is fanfiction(dot)net. Don’t get too excited, though, because none of the wholesome aspects of Hazel and Gus make it into this analogy; no, this essay is all about the essence of what happens when you take a beautiful thing and strip it to the bare bones. Being a gamer in today’s culture of parasitic marketing is roughly akin to being desperately in love with a dying cancer patient. With their pants down and tumors exposed, Bethesda is giving us a rare glimpse into exactly what has made them cancerous: a lack of Vision (not to be confused with Activision.)

You see, Bethesda doesn’t have a vision. If you asked Todd Howard today what Bethesda’s vision was, his response would essentially amount to “get bigger, bigger than we’ve ever seen before,” and you would never be quite sure if he meant to say it would be the games, the bugs, or the pocketbooks that would be getting “bigger.” Bethesda has no vision because they are blinded by what I like to refer to as the survivalist mindset, cancer that has spread through their higher management and public faces so quietly for so long that Bethesda has only just noticed it rearing its ugly head. They have ventured through the past 20 years producing games that fans would merely refrain from harshly criticizing. If only they had seen their culture of undiluted survivalism in time to integrate it into “Fallout 76.”

To see the birth of this cancer that is killing Bethesda, we will travel back in time to 31 October 1998, when “The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard,” along with its related title “An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire,” were both resounding “commercial failures,” according to Stephan Janicki of Computer Gaming World. These two disappointments brought Bethesda to the edge of bankruptcy before ZeniMax Media swooped in and claimed them as a subsidiary in 1999. In the following years, Bethesda Softworks knew they had to succeed, or they were done in the eyes of both their corporate overlords and their fans. This is when the panicky, survivalist mindset set in. Feverishly they worked until, in 2002, they released “The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind,” and Todd Howard was relieved to find that “It just work[ed].” Upon the laurels of Morrowind, Bethesda skipped happily into the sunset, bringing us many more beloved titles like “Fallout 3,” “The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion,” “The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim,” “The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – Legendary Edition,” and “The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – Special Edition.”

But they never grew out of that survivalist panic. Like cancer, it festered in the background, that burning fear of “commercial failure,” which is a euphemism for rejection by their fans. Bethesda’s near-death experience had scared them. Their aversion to conflict and attempts to please every consumer instead of maintaining a focused design and lore quickly made them the endearing dweeb of game developers, merely slapped on the wrist for repeat performance flaws that would break the fans of other developers. “Cute” bugs in coding dating back several releases, consistently shipping products with technical difficulties unbecoming of a $60 price tag, multiple rerelease announcements and story-writing so poor that it’s common for players to joke about blatantly ignoring the main plot of the game, often for hundreds of hours, in favor of the things Bethesda did capture: exploration, immersion, and lore.

That brings us to the jokes. After Skyrim-related content pervaded their 2017 E3 press conference, it began to dawn on Bethesda’s corporate half that all those Bethesda memes were laughing at them, not with them. Shaken by flashbacks of Tiber Septim’s conquest of Hammerfell in “The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard,” Todd Howard and Bethesda’s upper management knew they couldn’t sit by idly and allow for history to repeat itself. They couldn’t accept hearing rejection from fans, even if it meant directly ignoring their feedback. Tunnel vision set in in the wake of more Skyrim jokes and criticism over their Creation Club microtransactions. The cancer was consuming them and the only way to heal their fracturing friendly persona and silence their critics was to get bigger, bigger than we’ve ever seen before; but at E3 2018, two decades after their initial “commercial failures,” their realization came many years too late and they didn’t snap out of their survivalist mindset in time.

Their bigger-than-we’ve-ever-seen-before came in the form of “Fallout 76”, not an ambitious venture objectively but very ambitious for Bethesda Game Studios Austin Branch, formerly known as BattleCry Studios LLC, who had never coded a project using Creation Engine, which Bethesda has been using exclusively since 2011.

But wait! say the studious fans of Bethesda. If Creation Engine has only existed since 2011, why does “Fallout 76” have bugs dating back as far as Morrowind? Creation is based off a much older engine called Gamebryo (known as NetImmerse until 2003). A much older engine that has successfully supported huge multiplayer games, most notably the critically acclaimed “Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.”

If the core of Bethesda’s Creation Engine is a game engine that can create an enjoyable multiplayer experience, then why can’t “Fallout 76” do the same? Well, spread this funny honey on a biscuit, baby, because the answer is more cancer!

The fact that Bethesda has recurring bugs dating back over multiple releases suggests that, rather than taking time to address technology advancements, Bethesda’s survivalist mindset has grown upon Creation Engine like a tumor, strapping framework on top in half-baked layers, as quickly as possible, reducing the flexibility and independence of asset files into a fragile, unstable, monstrous whole.

I genuinely do not believe that Bethesda Game Studio Austin’s game developers were incompetent or lazy. Since the “Fallout 76” announcement at E3 2018, many have suspected disorganization in Bethesda’s management as they encountered a truly new set of obstacles for the first time. No one knew what “Fallout 76” would become, not the end users and certainly not the management of Bethesda Studios that for years had ignored the desperate need for ease-of-use coding with conservative couplings (files dependent on other files). They threw BGS Austin, a relatively new team that was inexperienced with designing Creation Engine worlds, into a hyped AAA release with an enormous fanbase; and what it became was an unacceptable byproduct of that insidious culture of corporate survivalism. Bethesda officials became so concerned with what the public thought of them that they never thought to check. They fixated on getting bigger than we’ve ever seen before until their creation became confused and codependent. They obfuscated what brought fans to Bethesda in Morrowind and kept them coming back through every hiccup and every rerelease: the fun to be had in exploration, immersion, and lore, but most importantly, the Vision.

Oh, what a situation Bethesda finds itself in now! Even though they’ve finally seen a backlash from setting profit margins before considering their team’s capacity, many feel this call-to-god moment has come too late. Losing the reverent trust of large portions of their fanbase, they must either find a way to fix their cancerous, bloated Creation Engine or risk losing their Bethesda aesthetic by developing a costly new engine to proceed. Bethesda knows this, and they desperately hope that no one else does because they also realized that by promising not only a decade-anticipated new “Elder Scrolls” release but a new game franchise as well, they’ve already allocated most of their resources. They can’t go back on their promises now without a complete “commercial failure” from fans already stretched thin by “Fallout 76;” now more than ever they need all hands on deck. There is little time and money left to dedicate to the enormous undertaking of designing a new game engine from scratch, much less the even more arduous task of unscrambling Creation Engine, now so distorted that their employees don’t know how to fix it anymore or they would, just to stop seeing memes about Skyrim and floating Scorched Zombies. It’s hopeless. It’s arguable that they deserve help after insulting fans with the lack of focus and attention for “Fallout 76,” multiple buggy rereleases of a buggy title from 2011, and the general sense of not understanding what made a compelling story. They do not deserve sympathy for the vague unease of having to create your own purpose, a job which Bethesda has shifted to its fans to avoid facing its fears from 20 years of trying to please everyone for their own pride and not in the spirit of their consumers.

Bethesda may not deserve our help, but many still believe that The Elder Scrolls does, that Fallout does. If you’re one of those people, there is something you can do, and it’s to ignore the cries to boycott all Bethesda products “forever.”

Bethesda owns the intellectual property to The Elder Scrolls and Fallout; and while Bethesda is an abusive, frustrated company with—seemingly—a vision of self-destruction, they do still care what you think because of their all-consuming fear of the Redguard. But ZeniMax Media owns them, even the neurotic Todd Howard, and ZeniMax Media has only ever cared about your money. You cannot refuse to agree to buy the game you want Bethesda to make and still expect it to arrive, but you can refuse to pre-order their games and indulge in microtransactions for as long as it takes. The game industry’s security and stock values are heavily dependent on fan loyalty, digital merchandise sales and pre-orders. This money gives them their security blanket in case they create “Fallout 76.” Wrapped in their blankies, the management of Bethesda and ZeniMax Media will keep their narrow vision and continue to use their development teams as bad press sponges unless they experience some genuine fear of “commercial failure.” If consumers reject their vision, they will change their vision for money; because Truth is, the game was rigged from the start.

#my writing #bethesda #zenimax #fallout 76 #fallout #fo76 #fo76 beta #fallout 4 #skyrim #the elder scrolls #writeblr #writing #article #humor art #long post #vidya games

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jeanvaljean24601 · 4 years

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The Best Open Worlds in Video Games

Video Games offer their players boundless escapism, and while that’s sometimes in the form of a really compelling linear story, there’s a special place in our hearts for a big open world you can easily get lost in. To that end, we’ve put together a list of our favorite open worlds in gaming. It’s worth noting that this isn’t a list of IGN’s Best Open-World Games™, but rather our favorite worlds in and of themselves - whether they’re made up of miles of untamed wilderness, countless blocks of urban sprawl or fall somewhere in-between, these are the top 10 video game open worlds.

You can check out the video above, click through the gallery below or scroll down the page for the full list. Let us know in the comments what was on your list that didn't make ours!

10. Sunset City (Sunset Overdrive)

In a world turned upside-down - or, maybe in some cases it’s more accurate to say inside out - by an energy drink apocalypse, the unique urban landscape of Sunset Overdrive was keen on changing the rules for what it meant to traverse a giant metropolis. Rather than relying on running or driving, it's over-the-top means of traversal sets Sunset Overdrive apart from other open worlds. By enabling rail grinding, wall-running, and comically huge bouncing on nearly every surface, Sunset Overdrive's city became a zany fun house that was a blast to get around in and also perfectly mirrored the game's off-the-wall sense of humor. Add that to some wonderfully designed setpieces, like a medieval-themed roller coaster and towering skyscrapers wrapped in rail lines, and Sunset City quickly became the perfect place to blow up hordes of mutated goons with unparalleled flair. x96 tv box

9. The New World (Horizon: Zero Dawn)

Horizon: Zero Dawn’s world is a gorgeous sandbox of dramatic locales peppered through with huge, dinosaur-like machines intent on murdering you; it’s much more fun than it sounds. Snowy mountains beg you to climb them, dense forest-land house unseen horrors and calcified skyscrapers now serve as platforms to get from A to B. There’s still a thrill seeing an enormous Thunderjaw stomping round in the distance - this is as close to a proper dinosaur game as we’ve had in the last 10 years, and the threat it houses at its core is wonderfully tempered by the gorgeous trappings that surround it.

8. Kyrat (Far Cry 4)

Even though the most recent entry in the series added some additional vehicular mayhem, Far Cry 4’s Kyrat offers some of the most spectacular sandbox action that gaming has to offer. The lush forests, snowy mountains, and farmlands of this fictional Himalayan country are densely packed with open-ended activities, dangerous wildlife, and plenty of nooks and crannies to explore for secrets. Add in the fact that you can roam the wilds with a friend in online co-op and you’ve got a tasty recipe for an insanely good time.

7. San Francisco Bay Area (Watch Dogs 2)

Watch Dogs 2’s version of the Bay Area is slightly more condensed than its real-life counterpart, but if you can’t physically travel to San Francisco, this is definitely the next best thing. From the Painted Ladies to the Golden Gate Bridge, all of SF’s biggest landmarks are here, and the city’s melting pot of cultures is pretty well represented across the varied neighborhoods.

Full of interesting side activities and secrets to uncover, Watch Dogs 2 is virtual tourism at it’s best - even if its traffic is unbelievably light and the game’s story about our descent into a high-tech corporate dystopia somehow manages to be less depressing than the real thing. android tv box

6. The Caribbean (Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag)

While plenty of Assassin’s Creed games offer hyper-detailed recreations of historical cities across the globe, few offer as satisfying a blend of worthwhile exploration and diverse gameplay as the crystal blue waters of Assassin’s Creed IV’s Caribbean setting. Okay, and the Atlantic coastline a couple of times.

Point is, whether you were skulking about the streets of Nassau, diving for treasure in old wrecks, hunting sea monsters or sinking ship after ship after ship, Black Flag’s nautical playground may not be the biggest world the series has ever seen, but it still remains the best it has to offer, and hands-down the ultimate simulator for those of us wishing to become the scourge of the high seas.

5. Skyrim (The Elder Scrolls V)

Despite being the fifth entry in a beloved franchise full of historic characters and moments, the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim provides the perfect introduction to the massive Elder Scrolls universe. Featuring a wide variety of biomes from ice-capped mountains to grassy farmland and medieval strongholds, the beauty of Skyrim is in its interwoven connection between nature and civilization.

Each town is ripe with personality and factions that introduce you to story and gameplay options you may have not considered. Been roaming around the tundra’s of Whiterun with nothing but a sword and board? A quick stint in the Dark Brotherhood just West of Falkreath will have you hooked on the life as an assassin. Skyrim’s world facilitates exploration in a literal sense; traversing the landscape step by step, but also an exploration of its mechanics through the environment and citizens of the province. It’s a world so well-detailed that we know we’ll see Todd Howard put it on PS5 and the Series X, and we probably won’t even be mad.

4. The Continent (The Witcher 3)

From the fields of White Orchard to the mountains of Ard Skellig and the cobbled streets of Novigrad, the world of The Witcher 3’s is endlessly fascinating to explore. Not content to design just one of the most visually impressive fantasy landscapes in recent memory, CD Projekt Red packed every corner of its massive world with engaging content.

Whether it’s something as simple as clearing a bandit camp or discovering a hidden chest at the bottom of a lake, or kicking off an elaborate hunt for new witcher gear or to stop a monstrous beast from terrorizing a remote village, Geralt’s adventures across The Continent offer players one of the most fully-realized sandboxes ever. Coupled with some of the best-written side quests in modern games, The Witcher 3’s vast and varied world is one players can easily lose themselves in for dozens, if not hundreds, of hours.

3. America, 1899 (Red Dead Redemption 2)

No matter where you are in the massive world of Red Dead Redemption 2, be it the muddy livestock town of Valentine, with its wooden buildings and rustic charm, or the grimy and growing metropolis of Saint Denis, or from snowy peaks to gator-infested swamps to thick forests or flat deserts, the sheer assortment of ecosystems and environments seamlessly stitched together to make up Red Dead 2’s simply magnificent world is almost as astounding as the wild level of bespoke detail injected into every single nook and cranny of the map. Few open worlds are quite as uncompromisingly hand-crafted as the edge of America’s final frontier as depicted in Red Dead Redemption 2.

2. Hyrule (TLoZ: Breath of the Wild)

Few video game landscapes evoke the sort of wonder and mystery that Hyrule manages in Breath of the Wild. From the moment you step out onto the Great Plateau, you're met with sweeping vistas in all directions, and it's no secret why your adventure begins on top of a towering plateau: you're broadly encouraged to glide down and begin exploring in any direction you choose. Hyrule never tries to box you in or control your desire to explore the unknown, and despite overwhelming danger in certain areas, Breath of the Wild smartly ensures you have all the necessary tools to access every part of its gigantic map.x96q tv box

Perhaps most important of all is its reliance on hiding just secrets behind every corner: another eye-catching locale to investigate, another shrine nestled away to be completed, or another mysterious spot where a Kork is almost certainly waiting for you to find them.

1. Los Santos/Blaine County (GTA 5 / GTA Online)

The layers upon layers of utterly bonkers granular detail across Grand Theft Auto V’s world is second to none, even seven years after its original release. No corner of its immense world is untouched by Rockstars designers, from the cramped vestibule of an isolated rural bar to the pockmarked surfaces of Los Santos’ decaying freeways. Just walk a block or two and take note of the individual storefronts or the unique graffiti as grass sways and trash flutters by.

No part of this world, whether in single-player or in GTA Online, feels or looks like another. Besides, name another open world where you can ride a rollercoaster by the beach, base jump off a mountain or skyscraper, then hop in a monster truck or weaponized big rig for a mad-max-style vehicular deathmatch. It simply can’t be done.For more game-ranking goodness, why not check out our picks for the top 10 modern RPGs or the best PS2 games of all time.

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bgb16999 · 7 years

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Repeated viewings and horror

I was listening to a discussion recently about sequels to horror movies. Several of the participants in the discussion asserted that a sequel featuring the same villain couldn’t be as scary as the original, because “once you’ve seen the villain, they stop being scary.” The same people also claimed that any work of horror fiction would not be as good the second time you read/watch it, for the same reason.

Upon hearing this assertion, I thought about my favorite works of horror, and I don’t believe that assertion is true. In fact, I think the best horror gets better upon repeated viewings, not worse. Of course, since I barely every watch movies, my favorites are all plays and musicals.

Let’s start with one of my favorites: Sondheim, Bond, and Wheeler’s Sweeney Todd. We get to see the villainous title character in the very first song, and he remains on stage for much of the show. Yet, the aura of terror he projects is not in any way “diminished by overexposure.” Instead, we get to see the inner workings of Benjamin Barker’s mind. We see as he progresses from a refugee just trying to find his family, to someone who will kill to silence blackmail, and then to being driven to kill by revenge. Seeing everything unfold only adds to the dramatic power when we witness Todd’s ultimate change in heart, as he concludes “they all deserve to die.”

Jumping to a slightly more recent example, from the first moment we see Thomas Parker in Laurence O’Keefe’s Bat Boy, there is no question as to what kind of a person Parker is. The very first thing we see Thomas do is threaten to kill his wife’s son in front of her unless she has sex with him right away. There really is no doubt in the audience’s mind that he is the villain of the story. And when he concocts his Grand Plan, he doesn’t hide it from the audience; he sings his plan to us as he is thinking of it. The people he does keep it a secret from are the rest of the cast.

That means that when Parker kills his first victim, we know why he’s doing it, and we know how he intends to frame his step-son for the killing. Had we just seen him start randomly killing people, or had we seen minor characters start dropping dead without knowing who the killer was, the show wouldn’t have had the same effect. Ruthie Taylor, Parker’s first victim, is not a particularly important character. We don’t really know much about her. The reason we care about her death isn’t that we’ve lost a major character (since we haven’t), it’s because we care about the killer’s motivations and objective. Knowing who the killer is from the beginning makes Parker a better horror villain.

And since we know what Thomas Parker’s plan is all along, he is no less powerful the 10th time you’ve watched the show as the first time. Between the first time I saw Bat Boy and the second, I listened to the music more times than I’d like to admit, and my appreciation for Parker as an antagonist only increased on subsequent viewings.

Stepping back in time a few centuries, Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Macbeth both contain elements of what would later become the horror genre. Both of these plays have been analyzed extensively by people who write much better than me, so no analysis I give of them would offer new insights. Yet, these proto-horror plays have remained popular centuries after their original production. That fact indicates that repeated readings/viewings of Hamlet and Macbeth do not diminish their appeal.

Jumping forwards in time again, let’s consider Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey’s Pulitzer Prize winning Next to Normal. Even though he is in some ways a symptom of a real mental illness, Gabe has many characteristics of the classic horror villain. He cannot be destroyed, and always comes back to haunt the protagonist. Even when Diana loses her memory of everything else, Gabe finds a way back to remind her of him. And, as he says himself, Gabe "feed[s] on the fear that's behind your eyes." Nevertheless, Gabe is present on stage for the entire show. The fact that Gabe is always visible is what gives him his power as a psychological horror villain. The reason he is scarey such a strong antagonist is because you can't get rid of him. Like Di herself, the audience sees that Gabe is always there, always present, always talking. He cannot be forgotten, and there is no escape. By making sure the audience sees Gabe all the time, the writers give the audience a sense of what life is like for Diana. By seeing, and not merely being told, what Di is experiencing, the audience can understand why having to see Gabe all the time is such a debilitating mental illness. Even when Di herself leaves, Dan still sees Gabe, "the one who's always been there." Had the writers decided to keep him off-stage for most of the show, we wouldn't get to see inside Diana's mind, and the impact of the story would be nullified. Being a constant visible presence doesn't weaken him from "overexposure," it makes him into a worthy antagonist.

I’d be remiss not to mention the two modern musicals which have “horror” in their titles, even though I am not sure that either are actually horror. The first is Howard Ashman and Alan Menken’s Little Shop of Horrors. As in the previous examples, the villain in this play is on stage the entire time.

In Litte Shop, we get to see Seymour's progression from an ordinary person, to someone who is willing to kill if the person he is killing is really bad, to someone who is willing to kill his surrogate father to cover his own tracks. Then we get to seem his decision to continue killing at all costs, to keep his romantic relationship, before ultimately feeling remorse and trying in vain to redeem himself. Through everything that happens, the Audrey II is onstage, either in Seymour's hand or in the background. Even for scenes not set in the shop, many productions keepy the larger Audrey II puppets on set for the later parts of Act I and all of Act II. Seymour is onstage most of the time because the story is told from his perspective. Like Sweeney Todd before him, the fact that we get to see Seymour's motivations is what makes him a powerful character. And like with Gabriel Goodman, the Audrey II's precense continuous precense onstage allows the audience to feel the protagonist's inescapable horror. Even when Seymour is nowhere near the plant, he still has thoughts about the Audrey II in the back of his mind. In the show, by keeping the Audrey II onstage the entire time, we are getting a window into Seymour's mind, in which the evil alien plant is always present. Once again, prolonged exposure makes the antagonist a more powerful villain, not less.

The other famous musical with "horror" in the title is The Rocky Horror Show. There isn't really a "villain" in Rocky Horror. However, this show does present a nice counterexample to those who claim that horror loses its power upon repeated viewings. Whilst the original Rocky Horror Show has only moderate popularity, the film adaptions has a cult following, with people rewatching it year after year. The fact that rewatching the Picture Show continues to be popular speaks for itself.

There may be some works of horror which rely on a shock value that is diminished if the audience has seen it before. I contend, however, that that is a weakness of those particular works of fiction, not of horror as a whole.

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tripstations · 5 years

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These are the passengers you don’t want to be sitting next to on a flight

An economy passenger makes himself at home. Photo: Alamy

What’s the strangest thing you’ve seen a passenger do on a plane? If you said, “Change into pajamas midflight,” then maybe you were on my red-eye from Orlando to Frankfurt, Germany, during which a passenger disappeared into the restroom and emerged in a nightgown.

It happens more often than you’d think. John Gray, who owns a company that sells gift baskets in London, admits to changing into his jammies on long flights.

“I like to wear my Pikachu onesie,” he says. “It’s super comfy and helps me get a good night’s sleep on long-haul flights. I usually get a smile from everybody who sees me and nobody has ever said something weird.”

Brave man, John.

There’s a subset of airline passengers such as Gray who take hitting 30,000 feet as an invitation to make themselves at home. And then some.

“Children in pajamas on a plane are one thing,” says Barbara Warrington, a retired occupational therapist from Incline Village, Nev. “Grown-ups are quite another – and, I would suggest, a no-no.”

But wait. Isn’t there a waiver for first-class passengers in those lie-flat seats? Yes, suggests Lauren Guilfoyle of Emirates Airline. Her air carrier hands out sleepwear with “moisturising” qualities to first-class passengers. “The natural ingredients of shea butter and argan oil are released as you move, so your skin stays moisturised and protected,” she explains.

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Well, if you have $12,000 to spend on an airline ticket, I suppose you can wear anything.

For the rest of us, April Masini, an etiquette expert based in New York, has the following advice: “Adults should not wear pyjamas on a plane.”

They are, she says, “exhibitionists looking for attention,” and you should probably expect more and stranger behaviour from them, especially if the flight is long.” (For the record, Gray says that other than wearing his jammies, he’s never done anything unusual on a plane.)

Whatever it is that causes some air passengers to put on their pyjamas prompts others to take off their shoes – and even their socks. This is a strange thing, because on land, these people wouldn’t dare place their shoeless feet on, say, a restaurant table. It can also turn ugly when those same passengers feel it’s acceptable to rest their feet on the seat backs or armrests in front of them.

“It’s a personal-space invasion,” says Lori Geoffroy, a frequent air traveller from San Francisco who channelled her distaste for this type of behaviour into her business. Her company, Ickerz, sells a line of novelty stationery products featuring cartoon animals stuck in (I’m not making this up) “smelly situations.”

“It’s annoying,” Geoffroy says, “when people put their feet on the armrest of the passenger in front of them – and it’s even worse if they’re shoeless.”

Todd Brown remembers a recent flight from Hong Kong to Istanbul. A man across the aisle calmly removed his shoes and socks and began clipping his toenails. “After finishing his toenails and fingernails, he then got a bottle of clear nail polish and proceeded to start painting his nails,” recalls Brown, a sales manager from Newtown Square, Pennsylvania.

So what can you do if you find yourself getting a very close look at a fellow passenger’s pedicure? From my experience of mediating travel disputes, both in the air and on the ground, your options are limited. Dirty looks only ratchet up the tension. Your best move is to move. Find an empty seat or ask a flight attendant to reseat you. Don’t make a scene.

If another seat isn’t available, try hanging out in the galley in the back of the plane. You may have to take your seat if you hit turbulence, and a crew member might shoo you back to your seat during meal service. But it’s preferable to the alternative.

At best, the bizarre behaviours of other passengers can make your summer vacation memorable. Amy Bloomer, a professional organiser who lives in Baltimore, recalls an overnight flight from Washington to Zurich during which she sat next to the oddest passenger ever.

“She got up to go to the bathroom and then emerged with a full head of hot rollers,” Bloomer says. “I marvelled at how she was able to sleep so easily with a head full of plastic.”

In the morning, she asked if Bloomer would be bothered if she removed the rollers in her seat.

“I said that would be fine,” she recalls. “She told me she had a photo shoot shortly after we were due to land and she wanted her hair to be perfectly coifed.”

OK, then.

Maybe it’s best to take the oddness in stride. Flights don’t last forever, and most of the unusual behaviour isn’t offensive but may be photo-worthy. Of course, there’s an Instagram account for that: @passengershaming, which is run by Shawn Kathleen Howard, a former flight attendant.

But you should probably wait until after you land to share your image of the barefoot passenger or the seatmate in rollers.

The Washington Post

See also: How airlines work to make extra-long flights bearable

See also: The ‘disgusting’ habits of plane passengers (and which class is the worst)

Christopher Elliott

Aug 12 2019

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junker-town · 5 years

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9 burning questions to get you ready for the NFL preseason

Let us help you catch up with the biggest (and funniest) NFL storylines before the new season begins.

The NFL preseason officially kicked off with a football-like experience at the 2019 Hall of Fame Game. But even if the Falcons-Broncos preseason opener wasn’t especially eventful, training camps across the country have left no shortage of drama across the league.

Stars like Ezekiel Elliott and Jadeveon Clowney have avoided practice while posturing for new contracts. Others like Michael Thomas and Robbie Gould walked away from the bargaining table with lucrative deals. Position battles pit veterans against newcomers for the honor of announcing their names and alma maters on Sunday Night Football.

So what have we learned so far this summer? What are the biggest questions that still weigh heavily across the league? We gathered SB Nation’s NFL team to gauge the early run-up to the 2019 regular season.

How would you describe the 2019 preseason, using five words or fewer?

Christian D’Andrea: Catch man got paid.

Michael Thomas has emerged as one of the league’s brightest stars and the perfect complement to see Drew Brees through to retirement. And after making 229 catches the past two seasons, he was set to earn ... $1.148 million this fall. That led to a holdout of which the Saints wanted no part, and Thomas returned to practice in July having secured the richest contract an NFL wide receiver has ever seen: a five-year, $100 million extension with $61 million in guarantees.

Adam Stites: Run men don’t get paid.

Ezekiel Elliott and Melvin Gordon each have two Pro Bowl nods and a strong argument as a top-five running back in the NFL. They’re both sitting out of training camp in an attempt to get a new contract. Neither appears to be making much headway. The Chargers reportedly don’t want to give Gordon any more than $10 million per year, while the Cowboys don’t appear to want to give Elliott Todd Gurley-type money.

Which training camp storyline are you following most closely?

Stites: The Giants should stick to their plan of bringing Daniel Jones along slowly and patiently. Will they, though?

Not much about Jones’ college career at Duke suggested he’s ready to take the reins of an NFL team as a rookie. But the thing about big, talented quarterbacks with cannon arms is that they can wow in practice — even if they’re not quite ready to handle all the things that come with a live game.

Jones is getting rave reviews so far in camp for his deep ball. That means you can count on people to start calling for Jones to replace Eli Manning once the Giants’ 2019 season inevitably looks like the last two Giants seasons. How loud those chants for Jones will be, and the likeliness that the Giants listen to them, depend on how good Jones is the rest of August.

Sarah Hardy: What are the Cowboys going to do about their Dak Prescott-Ezekiel Elliott-Amari Cooper trio?

It always seemed like a foregone conclusion that Jerry Jones would give each a new contract before the season started. That could still be the case, but as we inch closer to Week 1, no deals have been reached and Elliott is threatening to miss time during the regular season.

But let’s say that it all gets worked out as expected and the “Big 3” are extended as September rolls around. By the time the situation is resolved, how much time will Elliott have missed in practice? And will it affect their rhythm on offense at all? Two years ago, Le’Veon Bell sat out the entire preseason before returning for the Steelers’ first game of 2017. He carried the ball 10 times for just 32 yards and it took him weeks until he found his stride.

The Cowboys don’t want the same thing to happen with Elliott, the backbone of their offense.

D’Andrea: The small-scale changing of the guard for the Patriots’ offense.

Tom Brady will be working with a sparse cupboard of targets thanks to Rob Gronkowski’s retirement, Josh Gordon’s indefinite suspension, and a shallow group behind them. The team’s offensive line has to replace its left tackle following Trent Brown’s departure and will be without one of the league’s top run-blocking tight ends now that Gronkowski’s gone.

The good news for New England is there’s reason to believe the replacements it’s got can be plug-and-play additions to a championship roster. Isaiah Wynn was a first-round pick in 2018 and could provide an easy transition from Brown after missing all of last season with a torn Achilles. N’Keal Harry, a 2019 first-round pick, has the chops to lift the receiving corps, but it’s been undrafted rookie Jakobi Meyers who’s shown out in camp so far.

I’m still not sure what’s going to happen at tight end, however. Especially with a 38-year-old Ben Watson set to miss the first four games of the season due to a PED suspension.

Kennedi Landry: I’m really interested to see how the Cardinals’ first-year head coach Kliff Kingsbury and rookie quarterback Kyler Murray adjust to the NFL game.

More importantly, is the offensive line going to be able to protect Murray? The Cardinals — whose offensive line has been in shambles for years — at least improved in the offseason by trading for Marcus Gilbert and signing J.R. Sweezy.

Murray has dazzled so far in training camp, but how much of that will translate into real action? Consequently, is Kingsbury going to be able to have the same type of success that Sean McVay has had with the Rams?

Charles McDonald: All eyes are on Lamar Jackson.

The Ravens went 6-1 with Jackson as their starting quarterback last year and now he’s fully in the driver’s seat. If the reports at training camp are any indication, Jackson appears to be ready to take that next step as a passer:

In joint practice with Jags, Lamar Jackson was 15-of-22 (68.1 percent) during 7-on-7/team drills. Jackson started off hot, connecting on 9 of his first 10 throws before tailing off. Overall, he's throwing the ball with a lot of confidence in training camp.

— Jamison Hensley (@jamisonhensley) August 5, 2019

Head coach John Harbaugh also said he was “very impressed” by Jackson’s performance in a joint practice against the Jaguars.

I’m excited about the potential of this offense if Jackson can take flight as a passer. We’ll see how it goes in the actual games, but the Ravens have the look of a team that can get a lot better on offense.

Which early-season NFL injury has you most concerned?

Stites: How can you not be worried about Andrew Luck’s calf, considering how the last few years went for him? He had the nagging shoulder injury from hell, which started in 2015 and then cost him his entire 2017 season. Now he has a calf injury that’s been bothering him for three months. Luck thinks he’ll be back in time for Week 1, but recent history has provided Colts fans reason to hold their breath.

Hardy: While I’m definitely worried about Luck, the Giants are also quickly running out of receivers. Dave Gettleman made his bed by trading away Odell Beckham Jr., who perhaps put a curse on the position on his way out.

Sterling Shepard is dealing with a fractured thumb, Corey Coleman is out with a torn ACL, and Golden Tate is facing a four-game suspension to start the season. The rest of their depth chart includes Bennie Fowler, Cody Latimer, Russell Shepard, Alonzo Russell, Brittan Golden, Reggie White, and Da’Mari Scott. Did I make up one of those names? You decide!

McDonald: I think Antonio Brown might have the strangest training camp injury I can remember. His feet are absolutely shredded with blisters — or frostbite?! (Google a picture, if you’d like.) Either way, he’s been unable to practice in camp up until this point.

Normally, a player of Brown’s caliber missing practice in August wouldn’t really matter. However, he is is trying to ingratiate himself with a new quarterback, coach, and system — the reps are actually pretty valuable this time around. We need to find out exactly what happened to his feet and exactly how long he’ll be out.

Which position battle is the most interesting?

McDonald: Case Keenum, Colt McCoy, and first-round pick Dwayne Haskins are all competing for the starting job in Washington.

When I was at practice, Haskins showed the most talent, but he had some inconsistencies taking snaps under center that need to be ironed out. McCoy and Keenum don’t have the raw talent that Haskins does, but they have a little better control of the offense without the “wow” plays.

How Washington’s season unfolds will likely determine how fast it takes Jay Gruden to put Haskins in the lineup. If things start to go south and the team takes a nosedive, Haskins could end up getting the nod during the season.

D’Andrea: The entire Texans’ offensive line battle. Houston has the chops to be a legitimate Super Bowl contender, questions about Bill O’Brien’s postseason record (1-3) notwithstanding. It won’t get there without a healthy Deshaun Watson in the lineup. In 23 career games, the dual-threat passer has been sacked 81 times. This includes an NFL-high 62 sacks last season.

The Texans haven’t come up with much of a solution yet. They signed Ryan Kalil and drafted two more linemen this year, including 2019 Day 1 pick Tytus Howard. But no one’s quite sure how the Houston offensive line will look once the curtain opens on Week 1. Will Howard begin his career on the interior of the line as he ramps up his weekly schedule from FCS foes to NFL ones? Does Kalil have enough left in the tank to be an above-average pocket protector? Where will Julie’n Davenport wind up?

The Texans’ offensive line is still a mess, but there’s a fair amount of raw talent there. The question is whether Houston can mold those raw ingredients into a proper wall.

Hardy: No one is going to pay much attention to the Dolphins this year (or maybe ever), so I’ll throw them a bone and go with the competition between Ryan Fitzpatrick and Josh Rosen. Fitzpatrick has been the favorite all along to start the season opener, but Rosen has made strides recently. Can he fight off the Fitzmagic now, or have to wait until the fairy dust wears off in, like, Week 3 or 4?

And whenever Rosen does start, will he look like the rookie who struggled with the Cardinals, or like an invigorated former first-round pick ready to make his old team regret ever letting him go?

Which team helped itself the most this offseason?

D’Andrea: The easy answer here is the Browns, who gave Baker Mayfield an All-Pro receiver by trading for Odell Beckham Jr. and made things easier for Myles Garrett by adding Olivier Vernon and Sheldon Richardson to the team’s pass rush. They aren’t the only team to make strides — but aside from maybe the Raiders, they’re the team that made the biggest splash.

Stites: Yep, it’s the Browns by a comfortable margin. The Raiders did some much-needed work on their defense in the draft and got Antonio Brown, but the clear winners of the offseason were the Browns.

Which camp moment got you most hyped for the upcoming season?

D’Andrea: As a classically educated professional, I had always been taught the proper way to punch a hole in the side of an about-to-be-shotgunned beer was with a key. Baker Mayfield, however, that a sturdy incisor will work just fine.

"I just don’t like the idea of my franchise quarterback spending time at a baseball game. I mean, what are you doing, @bakermayfield? You don’t see guys like Aaron Rodgers shotgunning beers. Just not a good look. Go watch some film." - @ColinCowherd (probably) Legend. pic.twitter.com/IUCW1Kp4s3

— Cleveland Indians (@Indians) August 4, 2019

The man did this to hype up a team he doesn’t even play for, and they rallied for the win. Imagine what he’s going to do in the huddle this fall.

Vijay Vemu: Unlike last season, Khalil Mack will actually play in training camp for the Chicago Bears. Now in his first full offseason with the team, Mack is making even more plays in training camp. He’s giving the Bears’ first-team offense fits and is just making things look too easy. He also showed off his unreal strength in this simple drill.

Just look at Leonard Floyd’s face when Mack does this.

Khalil Mack is so strong it’s dangerous @fiftydeuce (via bearscapital/IG) pic.twitter.com/tF6iQgZyxV

— B/R Gridiron (@brgridiron) July 31, 2019

Landry: Drew Brees throwing to tight ends!

The Saints’ offense doesn’t lack production, but they haven’t had a true threat at tight end since Jimmy Graham was traded to the Seahawks in 2015. The Saints signed tight end Jared Cook in March and he and Drew Brees have connected on more than a few touchdowns in training camp so far.

Red zone drills: Drew Brees connects with Jared Cook for the TD. Feel like this won't be the last time I type this. #Saints @FOX8NOLA pic.twitter.com/CoVPY6DvKA

— Garland Gillen (@garlandgillen) August 2, 2019

What’s been the funniest moment of the preseason so far?

Stites: Just Quinnen Williams being delightful.

No comment @QuinnenWilliams pic.twitter.com/BIFB7BYQLc

— Jets Videos (@snyjets) August 3, 2019

Bless you. Thank you.

Hardy: Never tweet, unless you’re Jen Vrabel weighing in just how much her husband wants to coach the Titans to a Super Bowl:

Not mad at all, I actually offered to help with the process. https://t.co/3OIGgMtbtb

— jen (@JenVrabel1) July 12, 2019

Landry: Cam Jordan wearing socks with his own face on them. I can only hope to ever love myself that much.

.@camjordan94’s socks and shoes for #SaintsCamp pic.twitter.com/2LBudd7Y4A

— New Orleans Saints (@Saints) August 5, 2019

D’Andrea: Malcolm Jenkins got the DJ at Eagles practice to hype the team up by playing some Grateful Dead. The playlist ran through six songs, which by Dead standards suggests practice was at least eight hours long.

Here's the full Dead playlist at practice: Bertha Mama Tried Big Railroad Blues Playing in the Band Drums and Space (a long one) Me and my Uncle After that DeSean went over and told the guy to change the music

— Reuben Frank (@RoobNBCS) August 5, 2019

McDonald: Colts quarterback Jacoby Brissett and Steelers quarterback Josh Dobbs had a hilarious exchange on Twitter. Brissett asked, “If the sun is hot how is outer space cold?” and got a response from Dobbs, who majored in aerospace engineering at Tennessee. Dobbs told him that space is a vacuum and doesn’t have air and Brissett replied with this beautiful tweet:

I’ve never put my hand inside A vacuum.

— Jacoby Brissett (@JBrissett12) July 10, 2019

How is Twitter free?

Any good fights yet?

D’Andrea: Oh, totally. Jordan Lasley earned his release from the Ravens for fighting multiple teammates and then chucking a football into a pond:

Here, you can kind of see the ball Jordan Lasley threw into the nearby pond shortly after his fight with the DBs. pic.twitter.com/AQyrDw8509

— Jonas Shaffer (@jonas_shaffer) July 29, 2019

Because subtlety is dead, the Raiders claimed him off waivers and will now make him a weekly fixture on Hard Knocks.

Lonnie Johnson also got kicked out of a joint Packers-Texans practice for balling too hard and running head-first into opposing receivers at approximately 140 mph, so expect him to get a nice long look in Oakland if Houston releases him at the cut-down date.

McDonald: When I was at Washington camp, there was a brawl after pass-rush one-on-ones. Jon Allen and Tim Settle were popping off at a few offensive linemen and then a fight broke out afterwards. The players involved said there are no hard feelings though; this stuff just happens when it’s hot outside.

Which Week 1 matchup are you most looking forward to?

Stites: Are the Browns for real? I wanna know, you wanna know, we all wanna know. A Week 1 matchup against the Titans — presumably with a healthy Marcus Mariota — will be a good litmus test. And hey, it’d be nice to find out if the Titans are going to be an actual contender, finally.

It’s also possible that neither of those questions gets answered.

Vemu: The one I’m looking forward to is when the Colts head west to the face off against the Chargers. Both teams have some questions to answer in their opening game, especially if the Chargers are without Melvin Gordon.

The Colts bounced back last season thanks to the return of Andrew Luck, and we even saw a Pro Bowl season from Eric Ebron. Darius Leonard was an All-Pro and anchored a defensive unit which finished 10th in points allowed. All eyes will be on Luck’s health and if Indianapolis can take another step forward. There are a lot of more marquee matchups in Week 1, but this Colts-Chargers game will feature two teams that made surprising playoff runs last year and are looking to do the same this year.

D’Andrea: Last year’s Packers-Bears opener saw a hobbled Aaron Rodgers lead Green Bay back from a 20-0 third quarter deficit and put an early stain on Chicago’s slate. This ultimately meant nothing — the Bears still pushed forward to the NFC North title while the Packers went an underwhelming 6-9-1 — but that opening night showdown stood out as one of 2018’s most exciting games.

These two sides will run it back on Thursday night to kick off the season Sept. 5, giving the world a chance to see if the Bears’ success is sustainable and if the Packers’ decision to spend big on defense — while making few major offensive changes — was enough to push Green Bay back into contention. It’s only Week 1, but this primetime showdown in Wisconsin could set the tone in the division for the rest of the year.

Landry: My immediate thought was Packers-Bears, but then I looked at the entire slate of games and that made me want to sit around for days on end to watch football. I think the one I’m most interested in watching is Chiefs-Jaguars. The Chiefs are coming off a great season and AFC Championship Game appearance, while the Jaguars are ... not.

But, the Jaguars did sign Super Bowl LII MVP Nick Foles, who is a considerable improvement at quarterback over Blake Bortles. Even the dangerously truthful Jaguars corner Jalen Ramsey has been impressed with him. I think Week 1 will tell us what to expect from the Foles-led Jaguars and show us just how good the Chiefs still are.

Hardy: After gorging on football all Sunday, it’s easy for withdrawal to kick in the next day, so there’s nothing quite like the feeling of “oh right, MORE FOOTBALL” on Monday night.

We’ll get a doubleheader of Texans-Saints and Broncos-Raiders, but it’s the first one I’m especially curious about. Last season, both teams began slowly before turning things around and cruising to the playoffs (where their fate was, uh, not kind). Neither team can afford that kind of start this year with the schedule it’s staring down, though. The Texans have to play the Chiefs, Patriots, Ravens, and Colts (twice) in 2019. The Saints’ next three opponents after Houston are the Rams, Seahawks, and Cowboys. Yikes.

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