#Retrieve Cyborg Delivery

[fogaminghub]

🎮✨ Dive into the action with Cyborg in DC Justice League Cosmic Chaos! Our latest blog post details how to complete the “Retrieve Cyborg's special delivery” task like a pro. Be sure to follow our step-by-step guide and claim your rewards! 🌌  

[tllgrrl]

Sweet Potato Pie by @tllgrrl aka Nefertiri Jones

SarahBucky Fleur De Louve Month 2023 - Week 1, Day 2 Prompt: “Sweet Potato Pie” | SFW

Sarah Wilson/Bucky Barnes, and Special Guest Cameo: Sam Wilson

* * * * * * * * * *

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

Sarah’s boys were already at the grandparents in Atlanta, and the original plan was that Sam would be in NYC with Misty, the restaurant would be closed until Friday, and Bucky would be home with her for a nice, quiet (maybe not so quiet) Wednesday, then the two of them would make a Thanksgiving Day drive to Atlanta to stay until Sunday, when the boys would come back with them to Delacroix.

That was the plan.

Then came the phone call, and there she was hearing about how some shit had popped off on the other side of the world in a place that she wasn’t privy to know for her own safety, and in the blink of an eye she was on the front porch, kissing Bucky goodbye before dawn…again.

“I’m sorry, nandi,” he said softly, his forehead touching hers.

“I know, baby. It is what it is,” she answered, pulling his dog tags over her head and onto his neck. “Just come back to me in one piece.”

“I will.”

“You better.”

“Save me some Sweet Potato Pie,” he says over his shoulder, walking toward the van.

“Me too!” someone yelled from the passenger seat.

“Ha! I’ll think about it, Cap.”

“You’re the meanest sister ever!”

“No she isn’t.”

“Yes, she is.”

“It’s called Tough Love, Samuel.”

“Just get in the car. You and that Tough Love bullsh—“

“Language!”

“What?!?”

She’s used to it by now. It’s sort of The Other Family Business: Superheroes.

This time, however, when the SUV drove off with her brother and her lover, the second the vehicle made that turn out of the driveway, she sat on the front step, and had a good, angry cry.

After a few minutes, she dried her eyes on her (on Bucky’s) t-shirt, and took a deep breath. “Okay. Enough of that…”

She got up, went into the house, picked up her cellphone, a notepad and pencil, pressed a speed dial number, and started making plans.

Evening, on the Other Side of the World…

Bucky dragged himself into the tiny old hotel room, dropped his backpack on the dresser, closed the curtains, checked the room for bugs...and bugs, then he turned on the old school TV set (complete with rabbit ears) and clicked the old remote until he found a futbol match.

He could still smell the light fragrance of Sarah’s hair conditioner, and feel her body against his when he kissed her goodbye.

“Damn…” he mumbled, reaching deep into his backpack and pulling out a small brown bag of plums.

“Happy Thanksg—“

Someone knocked on the door.

He retrieved one of his fixed blade knives from a compartment in the backpack, and waited.

Another knock, this time in a familiar pattern.

“Yo, Buck?”

Bucky opened the door to find Sam standing there with what looked like a box wrapped in a thermal blanket. There was also a smaller flat box sitting on top of it.

“Hey, come in. What’s all that?”

“It’s a special delivery. This goes with it.”

Sam handed him a six pack of a local beer, and pulled an envelope out of his jacket pocket.

“I got one too. Seems like we weren’t going to be spending the holiday away from…well, go’on open your envelope. I’m heading back to my room for mine.”

“What—?”

“Don’t ask me. Just open this envelope. Have a good evening, Buck.”

“Um…Thanks?”

“You’re welcome, Cyborg Man.”

Bucky heard Sam chuckle as he closed the door.

He moved his laptop to the bed and placed the boxes on the small table in the corner, opened the envelope, and picked up his cellphone, smiling as he dialed the encrypted number on the StarkTech phone.

“Hey, nandi.”

“Hey yourself, mthandi.”

“Can I see you?”

“Of course. Hold on…”

Their screens both go black, then they see each other.

He gently touches her cheek on his screen, and she touches his cheek on hers.

“I miss you.”

“I miss you, too. Wait. Have you…? James. Open the boxes.”

“Boxes? Oh!!”

Bucky unwrapped the large box first and when he opened the seal, steam wafted out, and delicious aromas filled the room.

He couldn’t believe his eyes, or his nose.

It was a whole meal of turkey, dressing, greens, cornbread and slices of his favorite: Sarah’s meatloaf. There was even a separate container of a serving of gumbo.

“Baby…” he chuckled, eyes beginning to brim, “what…what did you—?”

“I figured, since we couldn’t be together like we planned, we could at least…well… shoot, I wasn’t gonna cry…”

Bucky was wiping his eyes as well.

“Sarah…this is just…did Sam get—should I go get—?“

“No. He’s good. Probably on the phone with Misty right about now. The two of us got together. She arranged to have a QuinnJet bring me to New York not long after you left. She knew the team’s prep schedule, so we did our shopping, spent a day cooking, and had the boxes loaded onto the transport before departure.

I asked Torres to make sure neither of you knew about the boxes until you were at your destination. Misty and I made him a combo plate from both of us.”

“I don’t know what to…Thank you, intanda. This is…”

“Close the box, put the heat blanket back on it, get cleaned up and comfy. I’ll wait, so we can have dinner together. Okay?”

Bucky wiped his eyes and picked up the small brown bag, showing her what was inside, “I was gonna have these plums.”

“Have them for breakfast. Your dessert is in the pie box.”

“My dessert is in Delacroix, where I should be right now,” he says in that tone that makes her toes curl in that good way.

“Boy, stop!” she giggles.

He hears Sarah giggle and it makes him want to run all the way back to Louisiana, Secret Empire wannabees and the Atlantic Ocean be damned.

He opened the box and she watched him bite his lip in anticipation. Bites his lip in that way.

She sees him bite his lip and she wants to run to him, Louisiana swamps and the Atlantic Ocean be damned.

“You’re still saving me a slice for when I get home, right?”

“Of course! I brought you over to Team Sweet Potato Pie. No way I’m letting you backslide back to pumpkin! Not as long as we’re—“

“Come’ere, you,” he laughs, walking the phone into the bathroom.

“Where are we going?”

“Getting ready for a quick shower.”

She can see his metal hand and the bathroom ceiling, then the phone tips forward and now she can see him. Most of him. He repositions the phone again and now she can see a goodly amount of him.

He reached into the shower, turned on the tap, then faced the camera, took off his shirt, and started unbuttoning his jeans.

“Want to tell me what you’re doing, mthandi?” Sarah said, before draining her entire glass of sweet tea because The Thirst was real.

“Taking a shower so I can get ready for dinner with my intanda,” he smiled. “Care to join me?”

“Are you taking your phone into the—“

“Sure am. What! It’s waterproof.”

* * * * * * * * * *

@fleurdelouvemonth 2023 - Week 1: “Food” - Day 2: “Sweet Potato Pie”

Also posted on The AO3.

Thanks for reading!

[yesterdanereviews]

Cyborg (1989)

Film review #647

Director: Albert Pyun

SYNOPSIS: In the near future, the world has become a post-apocalypse wasteland, and a ruthless gang is terrorising what is left of the United States. A female cyborg is sent to retrieve data from New York City and return it to Detroit in order to finish the development of a cure for a plague that is killing the survivors. She runs into a man who is fighting the leader of the gang, and asks him to escort her to Detroit...

THOUGHTS/ANALYSIS: Cyborg is a 1989 sci-film. Set in the typical post-apocalyptic wasteland of Mad Max ripoffs (and post-nuclear America too, I suppose), a plague is ravaging the survivors, and scientists in Detroit send a cyborg to New York City to get data that can help them complete a cure. While there, a gang tries to capture her so they can control the cure, and she seeks the help of Gibson Rickenbacker to escort her back to Detroit. The whole setup is very typical of this type of film, with the lone lead character who has abandoned his humanity rediscovering it as he is forced to accompany other people on a dangerous quest across the wasteland. There's nothing that really sets the film apart from the oh so many similar films of the time. There's some decent action that mostly revolves around Van Damme's kickboxing expertise, but it's all fairly par for the course.

In a film where one of the main characters is a cyborg, Van Damme still manages to come off as the last human character: his line delivery is barely audible, and clearly struggling with speaking English at some points. The villain is just your typical unhinged psychopath that doesn't offer anything interesting, and everyone else is equally as dull. There's some decent practical effects with the whole cyborg, but nothing too remarkable. The film really fails to embrace its best aspects: the fight scenes, and too much stunted dialogue upsets any sense of pacing. Probably not the worst of these types of movies, but Cyborg fails to really offer anything interesting, and doesn't capitalise on the few things it does competently.

[ultrahpfan5blog]

Rewatching Snyderverse Part 2 - Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

Before this movie came out, I was unimaginably excited. I am a 90′s kid, so I grew up watching BTAS and STAS and then Justice League and Justice League Unlimited. So watching Batman and Superman interact on screen for the first time was something I was so ready for. Plus, on top of that we had Wonder Woman in the movie as well. There was no way this movie could be less than awesome. I hadn’t loved Man of Steel, but I thought it was decent enough that Snyder could build on it if he kept his worst impulses a bit more restrained. Unfortunately what happened was that he just doubled down on a lot of things that I had a problem with in MoS and introduced a host of new issues as well. When I had initially walked out of the theatrical edition, I was desperately trying to convince myself that I liked the movie. It took a couple of more rewatched to get over my denial that I really didn’t like it much at all. I watched the UE much later and while its an improvement, it doesn’t convert it into a good movie.

Firstly the good parts, Ben Affleck essentially carries the film. When he was cast, I was indifferent because I hadn’t seen enough of him to have an opinion either way. But he was really good. He’s not quite Christian Bale, but Bale had the benefit of better writing. But he really delivers as the bitter and hardened Bruce Wayne/Batman. He carries off the charismatic womenizing business man side as well as the brutal Batman side of the character with equal ease. Jeremy Irons is also an excellent Alfred. I quite enjoyed how Snyder made the Bruce/Alfred dynamic more of two colleagues working together compared to the more father/son relationship of the Nolan movies, Irons really delivers the only bits of humor in the movie. Gal Gadot as WW was a surprise bit of casting. I didn’t think much of her as an actress from the F&F movies and sometimes her dialogue delivery is still a little suspect but she was quite a badass as Diana/WW. And her appearances and scenes, especially alongside Affleck, are pretty good. The visual aspect of this scene is impeccable. There are some glorious shots accompanied perfectly by the score. The shot of Superman saving the girl from a burning building and the people treating him like a god, the Superman memorial sequence, its all very well shot and composed. The entire opening sequence is glorious and you truly get the weight of the horror that regular people would have experienced when the battle of Metropolis happened. You can never make complaints of Zack Snyder as a visual director. The action is superb. The Batman warehouse scene might be the most badass superhero fight sequence I have ever seen, rivalled only by the Spider-man 2 train sequence and TWS highway fight. The Batman and Superman titular fight is also well done as is the final fight sequence. There are interesting ideas planted in this movie. The idea of a world grappling with the existence of Superman and how he fits within our society is genuinely fascinating.

But unfortunately, Snyder does a lot more wrong in this movie than he does right. Firstly, I just felt embarrassed for Henry Cavill in this movie. Any charisma and warmth he showed in MoS is just sucked dry by the layers of misery the film just piles on. Cavill spends the entire movie just scowling and grimacing and I don’t even feel I can blame him because that’s what Snyder has him do. Its just a royal waste of an actor who looks like he is the perfect casting for the role. Amy Adams has a reasonably substantial role and Lois and she’s fine, but it feels throughout that the film is trying to find a way to keep her relevant because they have committed to the idea of her being the key. There is an entire sequence where she throws away the Kryptonite spear, then has to retrieve it, and then almost drowns in the process. That’s where the film feels like its trying way too hard to give Lois Lane something to do. Like with MoS, I just don’t buy the Cavill and Adams chemistry and therefore its all the more difficult to accept the idea that she’s the key to Superman. Jesse Eisenberg is pretty terrible as Lex Luthor. I don’t know what Snyder was thinking. Again, I kind of have difficulty laying blame on Eisenberg because he gives a very Eisenberg performance, which is what Snyder must have been going for. It just doesn’t work at all. He just comes off as an unstable person right from the beginning. There are one or two scenes where he hits the right note, but otherwise its a very cringey performances and it really affects the film negatively. There is a whole host of talented actors who are wasted like Holly Hunter, Laurence Fishburne, and Diane Lane. 

The film is just so over plotted. Its like 3 movies fighting for space in one movie and it works against each movie. There is a compelling Batman movie in here, along with a pretty dull Superman movie, along with a Justice League setup film. The theatrical edition had some terrible editing and there were subplots that just didn’t make sense. The UE is definitely a more coherent movie as it makes the africa plot make more sense and gives some of the scenes more room to breathe, but the truth is that I was bored for about 2 hours of the UE. So much of it is just dull conversation and posturing between characters. The only parts where the film comes to life is when Affleck and Irons are on screen. I have no problem with an action lite superhero movie, but then the dialogue and the situations need to be compelling and not so monotonous. The film also just does not have enough time to suitably come up with a reason why Batman and Superman would want to fight. I mean, I really liked Affleck but the justifications he comes up with to want to straight up murder Superman make no sense. He’s a bit of an idiot and gets manipulated by Lex way too easily. If you really pick apart the Lex Luthor plot, it would unravel so easily because it relied on some many things that were beyond his control. Superman’s reason to be against Batman has a bit more in the UE, but its still not enough. Then there is the completely ham handed Justice League setup. I mean, someone who has no idea of Injustice or deep DC mythology would have no clue what the Knightmare sequence was and what the Flash cameo meant. I now have more context having read what Snyder planned to do, but at the time it didn’t make any sense. We still have no clue why Bruce is having these future memory flashes/dreams. Not to mention the ridiculous JL setup videos, set with logos for all the heroes. The idea that someone at Lexcorp spent the time to come up with the superhero logos for WW, Flash, Aquaman, and Cyborg was just too funny. Its just the most lazy way to do a JL setup. Of course there is the infamous Martha scene which is a ridiculous scene no matter how you choose to explain it. I know what the point was. Doesn’t make the execution an less silly. Then on top of that we get thrown into a Doomsday/death of Superman story in the last half hour. Doomsday basically looks like a big mutated turtle. I recognize that Doomsday is not the most nuanced character, even in the comics, but surely he deserves better than this. There have been animated films and cartoons that have adapted Doomsday much better. Like with MoS, this film also ends with an three back to back action sequences with no room to breathe, though I admit that I enjoyed the action sequences here more than in MoS.

Anyways, the film ended up a big disappointment for me and a lot of my issues stem with decisions that Snyder clearly made with the characters and with the story. The UE was definitely better but not by a huge amount. The theatrical edition was a 3/10, and the UE was about a 4-4.5/10 for me. I have heard that ZSJL is the best of his DC movies. Hopefully that turns out to be the case.

[rekkingcrew]

Rek DMs, Some Thoughts

Buckle up, it’s Edge of the Empire tabletop Roleplaying time.

Yeah, I know I don’t post here much. I’m still doing the devaron’s angels thing, which is scratching a lot of my online itches, and I’ve got a part time job and full time parenting. 

I’d really planned on doing regular updates of what happened each session. Aaaaand that didn’t happen. Which is a shame, I’d love to be able to have those summaries to look back on. But here’s the short version:

The gang, who are a crew of space chancers and criminals rolling around in a stolen police ship, were doing odd jobs together for a while, including some for the empire. Their contact, a Pantoran spymaster whose cover was as a children’s entertainer, congratulated them on their most recent heist job (where the campaign started in medias res), and gave them a new job: deliver a mysterious sealed orb to the leader of the peskiest rebel cell in the general area, led by a Rodian pirate by the name of Cheng Maxeda. They said maybe, took the orb, and then checked around and picked up a delivery job for their local Hutts going the same direction for some extra cash. 

They were brought in because the Hutt shipments had been interfered with by somebody. Their Hutts weren’t sure who, but were damn sure they were going to pay. The gang defeated a whole crazy mess of people who were being lead and bolstered by a falleen who had been surgically altered to boost their pheromone output. Then they picked up the package and made the poor decision of looking inside. It was the carbonite frozen but still living body of the cop who’d previously owned their ship that they were now knowingly handing over, because they couldn’t bring themselves to cross the Hutts. 

Moral issues aside, it was an easy job, they got well paid, the team failed a bunch of social roles and divulged more information than they should have to the Hutt point man, and Brick, the party’s wall of meat, got signed up for a pit fight. He won his round, but imperial troops broke up the match before he could win completely. TK cornered but lost a rebel bomber, and Eshi got contacted by a rebel who recognized him from a bit of backstory. Nyla chased down one of the other gladiators, an old clone with a sword who’d entered the fight because the prize included a bacta dunk and he had a friend who was hurt and dying after being caught by the Hutts trying to bust up a slaving operation. And that’s when the bomb went off, destroying some major imperial instillation bits and projecting a 40 foot holo-image of Cheng the punk rock rodian pirate queen striding across the smoking crater proclaiming she had come to liberate the outer rim. The party was presented with three job options: 1) after Brick’s pit win, the Hutts were down some muscle for a convoy and ready to pay reliable thugs 2) the rebels were looking for a study ship to bust up the hub of a spy satellite network 3) the clone and his weequay buddy (Edge and Horm) still wanted to stop the slave convoy (which was, as the party figured out, job 1). They opted for job 2, leaving town amidst a firefight with the imperials, and brought along Edge and Horm, providing Nyla with a sword fighting trainer who’d studied under a jedi, without being a jedi himself. 

The guys busted up the satellite base by hijacking a shipment truck coming in (I’d provided them information for a couple of routes, including asteroid hopping amidst giant vacuum-proof winged frog monster creatures, and they figured this best matched their skillset). Inside they found tech that looked a whole lot like our droid character TK, a completely brainwashed cyborg engineer, and the control rods that were their target. TK, who is a droid with multiple program personalities, suddenly and without warning displayed a program personality they had never seen before and destroyed the computer mainframe, remembering nothing afterward. The cyborg also had hardware a good deal like Nyla’s, and contained a message begging for help from someone held against their will and being moved between facilities. They blew up the station, retrieved valuable tech, and flew off, triumphant, to get their payment from the rebels. 

The rebels welcomed the gang, who got to know the faction a little bit better. TK nearly started a gunfight, Nyla got a haircut, and Brick and Eshi developed mouse droid beer pong in order to provide historically unique droid bits to an eccentric collector for the last bit Eshi needed to build his machine from the prototype he’d stolen from the corporate sector in his backstory, which runs on two kyber crystals and provides a similar benefit to the force power “foresee”. He used this to figure out the sphere they were carrying contained an intensely virulent ship killer plague that would likely kill them as well, and they resolved to throw that in the sun. The gang foiled an assassination attempt on Cheng and got a new assignment: break her old pirate buddy out of maximum security prison (again, they were presented with several possible assignments, some of which tied in to other plots.) Nyla and Cheng also worked out mutually that they were both force sensitive. 

The prison break went off well. It was a sort of siberian gulag set up on an ice planet, plus some eight foot carnivorous burrowing worms- yeah, those walls are pretty short, prisoners, but where are you gonna run? The gang picked up some extra supplies by agreeing to break out a Hutt operative while they were there anyway. After some exciting sky battles, Nyla and Eshi turns the ship’s forward shields into a battering ram. They made short work of the guards inside, but discovered that there was an unexpected other party there- a wookie bounty hunter who was looking into the disappearance of the guy they handed over to the hutts. That guy was a tough fight even for the team’s big heavies, and they set a load of prisoners free to help them- taking the risk that the maximum security violent shipjackers would not decide to jack their ship to escape. Luckily between the two heavies and the giant devaronian pirate they just released, they were able to intimidate them into just accepting a ride off planet. Nyla, meanwhile, fought the wookie’s cat beast in an enclosed tunnel and nearly died, but won a pretty hard solo battle, enabling her to pick up the Hutt contact and a delirious nautolan who she had a force feeling about. Eshi forgot he was a reptile and went out in the ice with no coat, then defeated his own personal corpsec bounty hunter’s attempts to come at him with robots. With great success, they headed back to rebel space, got paid, and received a message that their former imperial employer was officially fucking pissed at them. Also, the nautolan was force sensitive and having visions of the inquisitor who tried to murder Nyla. 

Faced with mounting tension and the inability to continue lying to each other, the team pretty much spilled all their secrets to each other in the absolute most fun room mate meeting I have ever witnessed. Nyla is a force sensitive ex-imperial pilot ace, TK has an extra personality, Eshi has an I-assassinated-a-king level bounty and a machine that tells the future, Thirteen (the bothan spy) knew all this and told no one, Brick likes light beer, etc. They decided they really need to murder the children’s TV spy master as their next move. Their bothan spy provided them with a dossier on him and his six lieutenants. Nyla and Thirteen went to go meet the spymaster and try to throw him off, and had to fight the stealth assassin lieutenant, which they survived. Eshi hacked the slicer lieutenant and stole her state of the art surveillance droids. Brick checked up on the Hutt-embedded spy and learned she was a pretty awful person. He also ended up scheduling a rematch with the douwutin he beat in the pit fight, who the Hutts later dropped a word in that they wouldn’t mind if he just happened to kill in that fight. The group’s one cop friend, a red-string and corkboard conspiracy melitto, got attacked by assassins, because the spies and the governor were working against each other. Nyla and TK accidentally killed the master of disguise spy lieutenant without realizing who he was. They turned the surveillance droids on the Hutts and found out the Hutt-embedded spy was working against the spymaster as well. 

The spymaster was scheduled to attend the Chancellor’s day gala on Naboo, which is fancy far outside of anything the party is probably capable of pulling off, but I wanted to give them the opportunity to try. One of the spy lieutenants there, a slimy alderaanean lesser noble, has found a packet of forbidden information that had been stolen and hidden there, and the spymaster is going in person for the hand-off. Rebuffing an offer from the planetary governor, the group made a very temporary alliance with the Hutt spy to kidnap the noble spy and use him to force a meeting with the spymaster on their terms. And that’s where we are now. 

___

All in all, I’m really pleased with how this is going. I’m having a lot of fun and my players are absolutely great. I’d... assumed that would take less time to type up, and it’s leaving out a whole lot of stuff. I started this in October, so that’s about seven months worth of weekly sessions. That it breaks pretty easily into arcs, I feel, speaks pretty well for what I’d intended of it. I have SO MANY FUCKING named NPCs. It’s over 50 at last count. Factions are helping a lot. Each faction has a main plot that’s going to move along no matter what the PCs do, hitting beats whenever I need something interesting for the background. 

I’d like to keep making some posts here about what I’ve learned, what’s worked and what hasn’t, and about each player and their character. I personally think it’s interesting, and it helps me collect my thoughts. But for now I think I’m going to bed.