u/TheRoaringTide

So I did the Kentucky tour a few years ago, and while I plan on doing one again to visit my favorite distilleries, ignore ones with poor shops and hit ones I just missed, this year I want to do one with an easier drive. As a Florida native, and who finds ASW and their Fiddler bottles to be his new hotness, I need to see what their distillery, shop, and grounds are like.

Same with Chattanooga. They’re so wacky, creative, and experimental. Even if it doesn’t work for me, I love that they basically throw EVERYTHING at the wall and don’t care what sticks.

I was wondering if anyone had a recent tour at Chattanooga, or especially ASW. I couldn’t find a single post about an ASW tour on this sub, and I’m hoping they’re worth visiting.

Bonus round: We’re probably going back to Jack Daniels, because we’ll be in Tennessee already. Is there anywhere else in Georgia or Tennessee that we absolutely have to hit?

What are people who play Borderlands but don’t watch every youtuber’s videos and copy their builds supposed to do about platting the new raid, or even beating them without it feeling like we’re beating our heads against the wall?

Before the patch murdered him, I was playing a fun as hell Sticky Torgue Scoot n Shoot Amon who could waltz through most UVHM 6 content, and I had other guns to fight small bosses. TK’s Wave, Darkbeast, and a few others in my pack. My coop partner is playing an Incarnate Vex without Bloodshot and having a fun time, just having infinite ammo and blasting things to smithereens.

Then the patch drops. Torgue stickys are annihilated, and this new raid is multitudes more difficult than Bloomreaper. Their adds feel like they have as much health as either boss’ shields in phase 1, especially if you go to ‘hell’ for the final phase, which makes getting up from FFYL basically impossible.

Everyone complains that C4SH is dead, that everything is ruined, that the game is over. 24 hours later, there’s a dozen videos on this subreddit of people ‘one-shotting’ raid bosses with underbarrels, punchies, gatling-ing them with C4SH who it turned out survived just fine, and doing whatever they want, as long as they play EXACTLY WHAT THE YOUTUBERS SAY THEY SHOULD.

But what should us casuals do? I can plat Bloomreaper on 5 about half the time. I managed it on 6, but it’s a pain in the ass. My ‘immortal’ Amon built can survive for a looooong time against these raid bosses, but I didn’t even make it to heaven or hell in 3.5 minutes, much less think I had a shot at a platinum.

No, my Amon build isn’t perfect. It could be better, more idealized, blah blah and yada yada. But isn’t this why we have three skill trees? If Berserk Amon is the only way to play the game, why do the others exist? Why does C4SH have anything but Gloam? Why does Vex have Trouble or Clones? Why does Harlowe have anything but Sidekick? Why doesn’t Rafa just have shoulder shotguns?

Why does anyone think this is okay? I know the game is still young, sort of, but it needs to be better.

As a reader of Ruby Dixon and Kimberly Lemming as far as my favorite sexy romantic authors, I found myself looking for something darker. I left the bookstore with Butcher & Blackbird. I’m sad to say I won’t be purchasing books two or three in the series, and am back on the hunt for something more appropriately romantic AND dark.

I liked Sloane’s opening chapter. The idea of killing her target and getting trapped is a good one, especially when she’s fighting starvation and only has a dead man to eat, and while their meeting was fine, Rowan’s first point of view was horrific. It felt like his every other inner thought was ‘She’s not wearing a bra’. Man, you’re a serial killer. A successful chef. An attractive, charismatic man. You’ve no doubt seen naked women before, and this one is still nearly starving to death. Settle down.

I might have enjoyed the pace more if their competition had been monthly or even quarterly, but yearly just feels too far out. I know they need to time research, and yada yada, but man. It’s just too long. The instant lust from both characters, the lack of any police presence, and just their general being made sure I never really felt any stakes throughout the book. The title of this review actually comes from my partner, who came up with it after I described the cannibalism scene.

When it came to their first kiss: Sloane. Girl. You were just beaten, kicked in the head so hard his entire boot is imprinted on your face (but your cheek and orbital are intact), your shoulder is dislocated, and your ribs will be sore for literal weeks as explained in the book. You just vomited your guts out because of the Texas Chainsaw murder house (which was hilarious, by the way), and you two just start devouring one another? How was THIS not the grossest thing in the book? She had to taste like stomach bile and the last meal she ate!

Then, after having her shoulder set in a sling and being allowed a bath for all of five minutes, she has vaginal sex twice, has her face fucked (apparently), and then Rowan wakes up in the middle of the night to anally fuck her with NO PREP. At least he used lube?

Once they had sex, it just felt like the book slowed down the plot and the book was just about sex, and ultimately, they stopped being serial killers and just became two people. Sure, they killed a couple more, had the engagement, and David ended up being one (legit didn’t see that coming), but these two people are WAY too normal to be the Boston Butcher and the Orb Weaver.

If this book had been darker, more cartoonish, or leaned into a more sadist / masochistic relationship from the getgo, I would have been into it. I was expecting them to be like Otis and Baby from Devil’s Rejects (or the other two Rob Zombie movies), except a more attractive Otis, and ideally not siblings. Instead I got two people that didn’t feel written to be serial killers that seem to vomit up the contents of their stomachs whenever they ended up in another serial killer’s den, and now they’re just going to live a normal 50 Shades of Grey kinda life together.

If it’s your kind of thing, I’m happy for you. I would never truly yuck somebody’s yum, but this just isn’t for me. Definitely looking more other dark romance, though, especially if it’s going to focus on the dark. Not Haunting Adeline, though. I don’t need problematic books on my shelf.