u/ARROW_404

Avengers: An old man in a crowd stands up to Loki, knowing full well he can do nothing except defy him.

Avengers (comics) volume 3 #77: Kelsey Leigh, single mother of two, sees Thunderball knock Captain America unconscious, and grabs his shield to protect him long enough for reinforcements to arrive. She dies as they arrive. (But gets revived later, with powers. Still counts because she was a civilian at the time.)

Real life example: The "Tank Man", who stood in the way of tanks near Tiananmen Square in Beijing, in 1989, the day after the square had been forcibly cleared of pro-democracy demonstrations.

I bought the game on Steam years ago, and played a couple of hours of it, but then got bored and forgot about it. Three years later (about a week ago) I picked it back up, started a fresh save, and dived in.

I went in mostly blind, but I did look certain things up as I went along. A number of parts, especially finding certain story-relevant locations, I might honestly NEVER have found otherwise.

I loved the game. I spent almost every free minute I had on it. I love the sea, and even though it's an alien one, this game so brilliantly captures both the wonder and dread of it. I felt stressed the ENTIRE time, especially while underwater, but that honestly was part of the allure. It didn't go away even after I learned how to kill leviathans, thalassophobia doesn't go away that easily.

I spent most of the game sticking VERY close to the main base, and progressed very slowly. The lack of an in-game map was a serious handicap for me, with my terrible sense of orientation, but once I got a hang of using beacons (and always remembering to have one on me), it became much easier. There's still lots of locations in the game I've never even visited, though. Like, I only ever actually found one entrance to the Lost River and Jellyshroom cave, and I never ventured into the part of the crash site with multiple reapers.

Speaking of leviathans, I went out of my way to kill one of each variety. I killed the Reaper near the entrance to the Aurora, using the stasis then shank strategy, the (juvenile) Ghost by the colossal skeleton in the Lost River with the same strategy, and the Sea Dragon at the Magma Castle by latching onto its back with my Prawn Suit's grappling arm, and driving the drilling arm into it until it stopped moving. (Getting flung around by the leviathan is actually how I ended up running into the entrance, too!) I did look up how to kill them first, I didn't find it by accident. Sorry.

The safe shallows are still my favorite biome. I love colorful reefs. But the Lost River is a surprisingly close second. Desolate, isolated places are captivating. My favorite specific location in the game is the grove with the giant "tree".

I unfortunately don't see myself playing Below Zero or 2 any time soon. I'm just going to be too busy to get addicted to a game like I just did for this one, for a while. But I DEFINITELY want to play them. Plus, I think I need a break from thalassophobia for a good, long while.

10/10, the exactly appropriate amount of water.

Nothing as impressive as the MOCs I usually see around here, but I hope you enjoy it. I kept the build straightforward enough that I could have seen this being a set in 2007.

I've seen MOCs of improved Onua Mistika before, but most of them had builds so complex I could never see Lego making them. Owing partly to this (as well as my being a mediocre MOCist) I wanted to keep this one's build fairly straightforward. I kept him recognizably Onua- claws, bulky, hunched posture, and the same black, dark gray, and silver color scheme as he had as a Nuva- while keeping with the essence of a Phantoka/Mistika: boosters, wings, and a blaster.

The build is just maybe a bit too complicated to have belonged to a canister set, but not enough to be a titan.

What do you think?