Morning Ramble 378: World’s Grave, Prison, and T-Shirts

As usual, I’m all over the place with my Morning Ramble today taking a further look at American Gods, finishing off the World’s Grave in Destiny, and looking to pre-order merchandise for Comic-Con 2017…less than a month to go.

Destiny: Finishing with the World’s Grave

Well, last time I got close. I made it past wave upon wave of baddies, took out a slew of knights, and blew up the Siphon Witches with headshot from my sniper rifle. But…I didn’t get past Telthor the Unborn before I had to log off.

Today I head back to the World’s Grave to finish off what I started.

The Siphon Witches are just so cool looking, but other than rapid fire shots, they’re not too difficult since they don’t move too much. It’s pretty easy to snipe them and then get down to the rest of the swarm.

Getting through wave upon wave, I worked my way to where I wanted to be. Waiting for Telthor with my ultimate ready – I wasn’t gonna take any chances this time.

Finally after what seemed endless waves, I get Telthor in my sites and take him down.

The fighting of the mission accomplished, I examined what turned out to be a shard of the Traveler and set him free. I was rewarded with a boost to level 13 and more missions to take on next time.

For more on my travels, check out my Destiny journal.

American Gods: The Prison

In this installment, I continue to look at The Bone Orchard and specifically the Prison scenes from about the 7:28 mark to about 14:47 when Shadow leaves the relatively sheltered life of the facility.

So basically after we’re introduced to the show by way of the Vikings trials and death, we’re thrown into a prison where we meet Shadow Moon played by Ricky Whittle.

Here we see Shadow making a wry observation that the best thing about prison is you don’t have to worry about if they’re gonna get you since “they” already got you. And I can see this comment as being relevant to the belief systems and gods that flow throughout the story, who I’m pretty sure are gonna make a play at getting Shadow on their side.

His next words also look to be telling about his character since he claims he’s willing to believe things when there’s evidence and reason to believe but not when its something he can’t see. So while Shadow’s not superstitious, he’s open to influence given the right circumstances. He then says he feels like there’s an axe hanging over his head even though he can’t see it…perhaps he’s a bit more open to faith than he let’s on. With his comments on his belief system made, we flash to a gratuitous glimpse of a bunch of white supremacists playing with a noose…regardless of the foreshadowing, how’d they get that in the prison yard without the guards going crazy?

Anyway, we next see Shadow talking with his wife on the phone with only 5 days to go until he’s released but he still feels a ominous foreboding that I think Whittle expresses pretty well. I know him from The 100 where he played one of the more prominent Wildlings but he’s being asked to act a lot more to carry this series than his supporting role in that show required, and so far I’m liking what I’ve seen.

The next big scene is the actual bone orchard the episode gets it’s name from. Shadow dreams he’s in a forest with dead trees and skeletons littering the ground.

There’s a huge tree in the center of this forest that “marks” him by scratching his cheek with a branch and then we see it drop a noose from another limb…Shadow wakes up. Actually, he’s buzzed awake by a guard.

It turns out the warden needs to speak with him. We learn he was sentenced to 6 years for aggravated assault and battery and had served 3 of those years and was gonna be released on Friday. But they’re letting him out early on account of his wife dying in a car accident that night. Guess that foreboding feeling had a basis in reality after all.

So, based on these few scenes in the prison, I’m thinking we learned a few things:

• Shadow’s had an interesting past and is not afraid of violence.
• He loved his wife (Whittle showed some good emotion in his scenes featuring her even though he was on the screen by himself) and she him (at least that’s what she’s said).
• Something’s going on with that noose they keep showing.
• He was well behaved in prison and was gonna be released early anyway.
• I think Shadow pretty much represents “everyman” in that he’s willing to believe things that he can see, that he has a good reason to believe, or that he has a strong feeling about, but he is somewhat skeptical.

Next time I’ll take a look at what Shadow does when he leaves the prison and the first impression of Mr. Wednesday.

Comic-Con 2017: Con Merchandise

Comic-Con merchandise was announced this week and is available for pre-order from their website.

They’ve got 5 different designs for t-shirts, book and tot bags, tiki mugs, and baseball caps. This year, they’re requiring that you have a badge for Comic-Con 2017 to order shirts and stuff, and you need to go through the Member ID system. Personally, I’m liking the Jack Kirby Centennial and of course the standard Toucan and I need one of those hats.