Month: August 2021

When first starting up Death’s Door there’s an assumption that it’s going to be like every other hack and slash indie game out there. Those games typically feature overwhelming waves of enemies, a slow upgrade system, and increasingly-difficult bosses with more challenging patterns as time goes on. In some ways that is what this game is, but while other games’ entire hook is from that idea it’s the details around the mechanics of Death’s Door that make it unique and worthy of all the praise it’s receiving in recent days.

The only requirement in all of Death’s Door is to follow the path that the player is meant to walk on. There’s a story in this game and the story itself is intriguing enough, but how the player advances that story is entirely up to them. This little bit of player choice creates a game where everyone will approach scenarios differently and it makes those experiences unique. It also sets itself up to be one of those games that will be a great speedrun someday.

The Player Chooses How Powerful They Want To Become

When the average player starts up Death’s Door they’re likely to slash their way through every enemy they encounter, gain experience in the form of soul points, and eventually use those points to level up all of their stats. That is one way to play Death’s Door and it is completely viable, but it is arguably one of the more challenging ways to experience the game. Enemies are tough early on, and only grow more challenging as you progress, and some of the combat scenarios feel impossible to overcome. They’re also, interestingly, not required.

The big hook of Death’s Door is that, outside of main set piece moments, these combat scenarios are really nothing more than a way to grind out extra experience. Enemies respawn every time the player goes back to the hub world, or upon death, but progress always remains. The game actively encourages pushing forward instead of trying to slay what’s in front of you, and the only gain from combat is to become more powerful. Of course, becoming more powerful is one heck of a hook so abandoning combat altogether is likely not recommended unless you’re attempting a challenge run. Essentially, though, the player can choose how much combat they want to do. Experience is plentiful without fighting in every combat scenario so choosing when to progress is key to moving forward.

This gives playthroughs of Death’s Door infinite possibilities. Want to fight everything and become the most powerful reaper ever? Do it. Want to skate past enemies, move the story along, and only fight when necessary? That’s an option, too. The only limit placed on the player is story beats. Beyond that? Go nuts.

Death’s Door Is Going To Be An Amazing Speedrun Someday

Death’s Door feels like a speedrunner’s dream. Optimizing a run-through of the game to shave off the perfect amount of time is all about optimizing, and that’s what Death’s Door is built to allow. The game blatantly tells the player to be quick in their first 30 minutes.

Decisions like choosing when the right time to fight or run away, what exact skill to upgrade, and where is the best place to plant one of the finite healing seeds can add or take away time from a playthrough. While most of these decisions don’t have too much impact on the regular player, because of the ability to grind out experience or just keep dying until progress is made, it can make or break a challenge run. Specifically for speedrunners.

There are so many different options in how to approach a run and the game actively encourages experimentation. This variety is going to create a lot of really fun speedruns early on, because players are still learning how to best optimize the game. Eventually though they’ll have this down to a science, but progress is already being made in a big way. The game came out on July 20 and according to Speedrun.com there’s already someone with a time below one hour. Meanwhile, the developers at Acid Nerve say an average playthrough should take 8-10 hours. It wouldn’t be surprising to see someone have this down to half an hour at some point.

Speedrun or not, Death’s Door is a great game

Whether someone is trying to speedrun the game or not, Death’s Door is a great game worthy of everyone’s time. There’s a reason everyone who’s played it can’t stop talking about it and as more people get their hands on the game that chorus is only going to get louder. Don’t let Death’s Door slip under the radar, because we’re gonna hear it popping up a lot in December when Game of The Year discussions start.

Lil Durk has faced a lot of turmoil in his career, especially in recent months. Last November, the Chicago native suffered the loss of rapper and close friend King Von who he affectionately referred to as “twin.” Months later, death would once again affect the rapper as his brother, DThang, was shot and killed outside a club in their hometown. While Durk was not directly involved in these situations, the rapper is taking steps to avoid conflict in the future as a result of his music.

The rapper took to Twitter to share an announcement with fans on Thursday.

“I’m not mentioning the dead in my songs no more or performing songs with they name in it,” he wrote before signing off on the message as Big Smurk. It arrives two days after Durk shared a couple of tweets that reflected on the people he recently lost in his life. “Why every time somebody die they love you but when you here they don’t care …… love me now not later,” he wrote in the first post. In a second tweet, he added, “Von left us Dthang left us and I was lost.”

His messages come after Durk and his girlfriend, India Cox, reportedly exchanged gunfire with an unspecified amount of individuals who broke into their Atlanta home. While Durk and Cox were listed as victims on a police report for the incident, neither were injured in the matter.

You can read his tweets in the posts above.

Schitt’s Creek will never truly go away, as the show will (hopefully!) remain rewatchable on streaming services for years to come. But the creators of the feel-good family comedy want to give fans one last parting gift.

Word came on Thursday that father-son team Eugene and Dan Levy had put together a Schitt’s Creek coffee table book. According to TV Insider, it’s set to be a farewell of sorts to fans of the show, as its title is the same as the emotional special the show put together to discuss its rise in popularity ahead of its final season.

Best Wishes, Warmest Regards: The Story of Schitt’s Creek is officially set to arrive this October, more than a year after Pop TV’s Emmy-winning comedy bid viewers farewell. The Schitt’s Creek tie-in book penned by the Levys is described as a coffee-table keepsake.

Released Tuesday, October 26, the publication will be available in hardcover ($40) and e-book ($16.99) formats. If the title seems familiar, that’s no coincidence as it was also used for the show’s televised farewell special.

The book is set to include character profiles of the cast, lots of photos, and some new details about the memorable moments from the show’s six seasons on air. There are also, of course, lots of wig images as well.

Other characters are also profiled and among other highlights are Moira’s endorsement of Herb Ertlinger Winery, Patrick and David’s first kiss, the Christmas Episode, and everything in between. Illustrated catalogues of David’s signature sweaters and Moira’s wigs will also feature in the must-have book.

For those still binging the show on streaming services, having a coffee table book to page through will be a great addition to the experience. But it doesn’t give them what they really want: another season (or a movie).

Few game genres lead players to spend more time on menu screens than sports games. The menus are where a lot of people have the most fun as they reconstruct rosters, create custom players, or create chaos with rule changes. The playing space is merely the playground for what takes place in the menus. The people who play sports games like this are also the ones who typically choose to mute the soundtrack of the game. After hearing the same songs constantly it becomes grating and they’d rather deal with silence than listen to the same tracks over and over again.

That is among one of the many reasons that pushed the NBA 2K series to begin expanding its library of songs. From 30 songs to over 100, NBA 2K has been making an effort to change how people feel a sports soundtrack should sound. However, their efforts at creating a soundtrack isn’t just expanding the list of songs and calling it a day. They know how many people put hundreds of hours into 2K all over the world, with many of those spent on menu screens and wandering The Neighborhood, which provides an opportunity. That is an audience they can expose to new music and a lot of their efforts with the last couple of 2K games, including the upcoming NBA 2K22, has been introducing lesser-known artists to their games. From up-and-comers to international stars, 2K wants their game to be a place where someone can discover their next favorite artist.

“We really wanted to shift the focus to being a platform for music discovery.” David Kelley, soundtrack curator for NBA 2K22 said to Uproxx. “And along with that looking to introduce not only new and up-and-coming artists from the US. But also around the world really kind of turn an eye towards the global soundtrack, the game is global and our audience is growing globally. So we really wanted to kind of focus on not only up-and-coming artists, but artists you may never have heard before, artists that [are] new and exciting and fresh for our community but also from the international community as well and really going global with the soundtrack.”

2K’s goal of going global and staying fresh with the soundtrack is very different from how the average sports game chooses to approach its soundtracks. The biggest sports titles in the world typically focus on bringing in established names and songs that people will be familiar with. There isn’t really anything wrong with this approach, because sticking to what’s known will cover the widest net of players, but in the modern age, it doesn’t bring anything to the player that they can’t do on their own. Most players have the ability to check out a top 40 or find trending artists on their own. They can also just play their own playlists through headphones, their phone, or over their speakers. Video games are always about adapting across the board and that’s what 2K wants to do with how it’s handling the soundtrack.

“There’s a huge community, a huge audience, [and we] wanted to engage people where they’re at.” said Kelley. “Instead of spoon feeding them things that are easy to find. You open Spotify [and] there’s 40 songs immediately in your attention that they want you to listen to. We want to try to take our curation a step beyond that, and a step further, and really get into those realms where we think our community would be interested in.”

Of course, it’s one thing to say that your goal is to offer new music to your fans, but it’s another to act on it. Beyond that, the process of getting people to actually listen to that music, is a whole different thing altogether. The way 2K is going about putting this new music in front of their players is actually the same solution to another problem sports games have — constant content updates.

Sports games are notorious for being a $60-$70 game that is played for a month, put down, and then never picked up again. Sure the hardcore players will play all the way until the next game, but the large majority will eventually fall off. The only way to keep these people coming back is to consistently have something new to check out. A new game mode, roster updates, or events where they can get new gear for their player. So why not have something like that with music too? 2K20 and 2K21 featured a constantly updating soundtrack, but now that 2K is introducing “First Friday’s” for when those updates are pushed through, it turns it into an event players feel worthy of tuning in for.

“Now, we’re really trying to engage in a conversation in real-time with our community about. Here’s the music. You were going to be hearing from us,” Kelley said. “What should we be hearing from you? [The] contest that we did last year and the year before that was specifically, reaching out to our community to have them send us music really engaging in an [engagement] effort on the part of the NBA 2K to find new artists from our community that we can put on our soundtrack…We’re really looking to rather than leverage prestige big name artists, you know, as a pure marketing piece, the soundtrack for us really becomes a discussion with our community and really kind of an engagement piece about, who are you listening to? Who should we be putting on and then who do we think they should be listening to and putting on?”

So many companies talk about their community, how much they care about it, and how much they want to do for it. Those comments from developers are always genuine because it really is the community of these games that pushes developers forward with their work, but it’s rare to find times where the community can directly talk back to the developers and actually have an impact on what is going into the game. When that happens it creates a bond with the game where the players feel like they’re a part of it. A lot of the 2K community can see their own fingers on the soundtrack of the franchise, which is a cool experience that not many games offer, and creating unique experiences like that is why players keep coming back every year.

On Thursday, Rand Paul took a break from his usual gig, which is getting schooled by Dr. Anthony Fauci during Senate hearings over his ignorance of immunology. Instead of humiliating himself in front of a fellow doctor who’s far better at medicine than he is, he went solo, spouting arguably the most bizarre COVID theory yet, which is saying something.

The Kentucky Senator, famous for his perm and for getting the snot beaten out of him by his neighbor, was on Fox News for a conversation about whether vaccines should be mandatory. (See if you can guess where Paul stands.) He shifted the chat to other places, though, which took the current Republican line about surging COVID cases among conservatives — which they have been desperately trying to blame on immigrants, of course — and taking it in new and fanciful directions.

“They’re taking kids from down at the border who may have it, and they’re plucking them up and putting them all over the United States, as if they’re wishing to seed the country with a new variant,” he said, adding, “It’s an awful thing to do.”

Paul did have something nice to say about vaccines, though — all while attempting to slam Democrats, who’ve been urging conservatives to get them since they became widely available earlier in the year. “For those who are saying, ‘I won’t go to a restaurant unless we force everyone to be vaccinated’: If you’re vaccinated, you are overwhelmingly safe from hospitalization and death,” he said. “Mind your own business.”

So to recap: Even a guy who believes in a deranged and baseless conspiracy theory about Democrats infecting unvaccinated areas of the country with evil immigrant kids thinks the vaccines are effective ways to combat a disease that’s become more transmissible than ever. If even Rand Paul thinks they’re good, then you should get one.

(Via The Independent)

The Milwaukee Bucks have had to do some retooling of their roster after winning a championship, but will return the vast majority of their core pieces to try and repeat in 2022. Their Big 3 are all locked in long term and they managed an absolute steal by getting Bobby Portis back at a significant discount.

The lone departures have been PJ Tucker, who is headed to Miami on a deal that apparently made the Bucks balk at to the dismay of their fans, and Jeff Teague. Replacing Tucker will be far more difficult given his defensive presence, and it seems likely the Bucks will hope they can rely more on Portis initially and possibly try to address that void on the buyout market (where they are regularly active). To replace Teague, Milwaukee turned to an old friend in former Buck, George Hill, who just got waived by the Sixers.

According to Shams Charania, Hill will be signing with the Bucks on a 2-year, $8 million deal that will help bolster their point guard rotation behind Jrue Holiday, which was arguably the weakest part of their roster during their title run, particularly while they were without Donte DiVincenzo.

Hill was a relative non-factor for the Sixers last postseason and it remains to be seen what all he still has left to contribute in the playoffs, but he is someone who you can rely on for quality regular season minutes, at the very least, as an excellent shooter and hope that translates to postseason performance as well. Given Milwaukee’s long season and Holiday playing the Olympics as well, having someone to eat more regular season minutes that can keep the team afloat while Holiday is on the bench will be very important for Milwaukee next season.

Ever hear of a cast of people working on a project and are just immediately in? If not — and assuming you’re a comedy lover, of course — just wait until you hear this combo. According to a Variety report, Hulu has ordered a comedy pilot from Modern Family writer Steve Levitan and Party Down writer John Enbom starring comedy stars Keegan-Michael Key and Johnny Knoxville.

The upcoming pilot, titled “Reboot,” follows an early 2000’s family sitcom’s return to television when the show is picked up by none other than Hulu, making for a fun and cheeky touch. According to Variety, at its core the show is all about how a previously dysfunctional cast “must deal with their unresolved issues in today’s fast-changing world” in order to restore their show to its former glory. All in all, it sounds like we can expect to see something perhaps a bit similar to Netflix’s Bojack Horseman, well, minus all the talking animals and depressive episodes — hopefully.

Reboot marks the first new project for the Emmy award-winning Levitan following the ending of Modern Family in April 2020. Enbom, on the other hand, will be working on a revival of his cult-classic series Party Down while making Reboot, making for quite the fun coincidence. As of right now, no additional actors or a release date have been tied to the pilot, so here’s hoping we can catch it sometime next year.

The Delta variant has put a sticky wicket in a pandemic that was already febrile. Businesses that were planning on welcoming employees back to their offices this fall have had to rethink how they’re going to keep their staff safe. Some are going so far as to make vaccinations mandatory for those returning after a year and a half of at-home work. One of those is CNN, which is so adamant about stopping any further spread that they’ve already fired three employees who refused to get vaccines that scientists have concluded are not only very good at their job but also incredibly safe.

As per Variety, network president Jeff Zucker informed his staff in a memo that, because of what “experts expect to evolve with the virus in the weeks ahead,” the initial plan for everyone to return to in-person work on September 7 “no longer feels appropriate.” But when they do return they’ll need to prove that they’ve been fully vaccinated against the now even more highly transmissible disease. And to show he means business, Zucker informed them he’s already sacked people who weren’t complying.

“In the past week, we have been made aware of three employees who were coming into the office unvaccinated. All three have been terminated,” Zucker wrote. “Let me be clear — we have a zero-tolerance policy on this. You need to be vaccinated to come to the office. And you need to be vaccinated to work in the field, with other employees, regardless of whether you enter an office or not. Period.”

Zucker also made sure they knew that he was sympathetic to anyone who’s a bundle of raw nerves after spending the last 18 months terrified of a highly contagious disease that, even after highly efficient vaccines became available, isn’t fully going away any time soon.

“I think it is fair to say that we are all feeling a mix of anticipation, anxiety, frustration, confusion, and exasperation. All of that is to be expected,” Zucker wrote. “We all have decisions to make that impact so many aspects of our lives. I get it. If nothing else, the resilience and perseverance you all have shown for 18 months now needs to continue a little bit longer. But we will get there,” he said. “Continue to take care of yourselves and each other. And I will share more updates just as soon as we have them.”

The tl;dr version: Don’t listen to the Ron DeSantises of the world. Get vaxxed already.

(Via Variety)

While Kanye West has had his fair share of headline-making antics over the years, the rapper now has the internet talking for a very different reason. Kanye has been holed up in Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz stadium for some time in order to complete his long-awaited LP Donda. To celebrate the album’s impending release, Kanye began a 24-hour livestream from his tiny room. He appeared in his underwear at one point, confirming to the world a rumor that has been circulating for years: The rapper is quite endowed.

Talk of Kanye’s massive member has been floating around for a few years now. The rumor actually goes all the way back to the MySpace days, according to Jezebel, when the rapper allegedly had no problem sending a NSFW photo to any woman who inquired. Of course, a few of the photos circulated the internet like wildfire, where they were gawked at for weeks before eventually being deleted.

Kim Kardashian wasn’t shy in speaking about Kanye’s sizeable schlong, either. The rapper’s now-ex addressed Kanye’s anatomy on an episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians, which went relatively under the radar at the time. A pregnant Kim had been undergoing an ultrasound to reveal the gender of her baby. The doctor mentioned they were trying to look to see if Kim’s child had a penis, to which she cheekily responded: “It would definitely take after the father, so you would see it.”

Little, errr, Big Kanye’s cameo may have been brief, but the internet definitely noticed — and definitely had a lot to say about it. People flocked to Twitter to discuss the dong, with some saying they were more impressed than others.

James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad is a beautiful garbage dump of a comic book movie that’s so entertaining, so refreshingly bleak, it has mystified critics. A soft reboot of David Ayer’s grim and disjointed first entry, this group of homicidal maniacs and D-list villains that Gunn’s assembled for DC borrow more from their comic book predecessors. They’re weird. They’re bad. And yes, they’re f*ckable.

Now listen here: every comic book superhero — or antihero in this case — can hit it. They’re all world-saving, muscle-stacked, stamina-sporting “pick mes” that audiences can’t help but lust after, just as Stan Lee intended. But Gunn’s motley crew of thirst-trapping scumbags hit the market at the perfect time, on the heels of a pandemic-driven drought that’s made the masses so randy, a grown man in a polka-dot onesie has sparked the erotic imaginations of some of the best minds of our generation: fanfiction writers.

So, what’s left for us to do but rank these sexy slime buckets by using the Scoville Scale — a helpful tool meant to determine a food’s spice level that we’ve now dragged to such perverse depths, even that hot wings show wouldn’t be able to stand the heat.

Here’s our ranking of every member of The Suicide Squad based on how thirsty they are. (If you blame anyone, blame Adam Driver in that centaur commercial.)

16. Weasel

We’re not here to shame anyone’s kink, but we could not, in good conscience, rate this humanoid ferret any higher on the spice scale. Would he make a fantastic contestant on that Furries-friendly Netflix dating show? Yes. Is his distaste for children relatable and, thus, kind of attractive? For some. But there’s a real possibility of fleas with this one, and if you lived through the Great Bed Bug Infestation Of New York in the early 2010s, you know nothing kills the mood quicker than the smell of insecticide and rubbing alcohol.

15. The Thinker

It’s truly unfortunate that The Suicide Squad chose to disfigure the hottest snack Britain’s given the world since the Bakewell Tart, but here we are. Peter Capaldi plays The Thinker, a villain who poses just as much danger to his teammates as to the oversized starfish they’re battling in the film with his heightened intelligence and devious schemes. Normally, those qualities make for a desirable bedfellow, but can you imagine bumping uglies with the human equivalent of the Coronavirus spike protein? In the middle of the pandemic?! Anthony Fauci did not invite Olivia Rodrigo to the White House for this.

14. Savant

Michael Rooker’s Scoville ranking here is firmly in the “poblano” range. (It’s what white girls mean when they say they love spicy foods.) His character Savant is silent but deadly, a hot trope that will most likely make the vanilla crowd lose their marbles. He’s got a troubled backstory: he wanted to be a hero until that elitist vigilante the rest of the world calls Batman told him he wasn’t good enough, so he became a blackmailing villain with unnervingly good aim and a love for hack-a-sack. He’s quirky, he’s flawed, he has waist-length extensions we’d love to post-coitally brush for hours. Can we fix him? No. Will we torture ourselves trying? Duh.

13. Javelin

Now, Javelin’s backstory is one we can root for. A former Olympian, we can only assume this egotistical Point Break poser realized the parasitic relationship between athletes, and the IOC wasn’t worth it and decided to earn his bag by wielding a giant toothpick for profit instead of pretentious praise. He’s a rebel with an accent and a big stick. Need we say more?

12. Ratcatcher 2

The daughter of an odd Batman adversary, this new addition to the DCEU seems to be one of the few characters with some sort of moral center. She’s young and hopeful, and I have a bad feeling she’ll be dead by the end of the film, so really, it’s best not to get attached. But impending death doesn’t hurt her spice ranking as much as her rat-whispering antics. Look, I loved Ratatouille as much as the next millennial but who wants to horizontal mambo with a bunch of sewer rats watching? Find a new hobby and then come see me.

11. Boomerang

Again, the seductive power of a foreign accent cannot be understated here because Boomerang is the kind of grimy, gold-tooth-sporting piece of shoe gum one would normally bar from their personal chamber of secrets. It’s 2021, we must have standards. But, we can move past the very clear proof that Jai Courtney’s maniacal thief doesn’t bathe for the promise of what else he might be able to do with that boomerang.

10. Mongal

The daughter of an O.G. Superman villain, Mongal hails from a planet called Debstam IV. She’s a warlord who possesses super strength and could challenge Henry Cavill himself in an interplanetary cage match. In other words, she could break you in half, she’s hot enough, and your only choice would be to thank her.

9. T.D.K.

Nathan Fillion is the king of snark, an actor who’s found a way to build sex appeal on the back of pithy dialogue and self-loathing anti-heroes. He’s a cinematic power-bottom, and he’s perfectly cast here as The Detachable Kid, a Mr. Pibb-chugging criminal whose only superpower is being able to detach his arms and legs. He’s likely annoying and incompetent on the battlefield, but one can’t help but be intrigued by the possibilities of two sets of removable limbs in the bedroom. (What?! Like you weren’t thinking about it?)

8. Rick Flag

Let’s be real, Rick Flag was a bit of a stick in the mud in David Ayer’s Suicide Squad. Luckily, Gunn’s given Joel Kinnaman a bit more personality in this interpretation. Flag is less jaded, more naive, and definitely funnier here — all qualities that don’t necessarily elevate him from f*ckboi status, but certainly make him a more desirable f*ckboi. You’d smash, but you wouldn’t tell your friends about it.

7. Amanda Waller

Viola Davis is clearly relishing her chance to play a cold and calculating girlboss in The Suicide Squad and her character, Amanda Waller, seems as callous as ever when this new mission gets underway. Her fanatical patriotism is obviously worrying and she poses the greatest threat to every other character on this list, but, as Henry A. Kissinger once said, “Power is the greatest aphrodisiac.”

6. Polka Dot Man

There’s an episode in Liz Meriwether’s New Girl, in which two men attempt to humiliate themselves, sharing their darkest, most depressing truths to satisfy one hot girl’s sad kink. But, if Polka Dot Man had graced that episode, the competition would’ve been over before it even began. That’s because this guy, the dumbest character in the DC Universe, is a walking advert for antidepressants — only, like, before you start taking them and your serotonin levels out. He’s just sad, all the time, and there’s something incredibly appealing about that. It’s sexual kryptonite for the socially awkward introvert crowd, and really, isn’t that who these movies are made for anyway? Don’t be surprised if David Dastmalchian and his multi-colored onesie become the film’s breakout sex symbol.

5. Blackguard

The Pete Davidson effect is real y’all, and it’s catapulted Blackguard, a truly unremarkable villain, to the upper echelons of our Scoville spiciness scale. I’m not proud of it but greater women than I have fallen victim to this particular brand of Staten Island dirtbag charm which is in full display here as he plays a beefed-up, gun-slinging version of his brainless SNL alter-ego, Chad. Blackguard is a fairly forgettable comic book villain, though he’s the only one ballsy enough to unironically rock a purple ponytail. Sans comical coiffure, he’s just another frat bro mucking sh*t up but dammit, Davidson’s BDE continues to prevail.

4. Bloodsport

Idris Elba is a hot one. The kind of hot one Rob Thomas writes songs about. The kind of hot that could forego Instagram for printing out pictures of himself and handing them out to strangers on the street, and no one would say a word. And as Bloodsport, he’s a grumpy zaddy who once put that self-righteous do-gooder Superman in the ICU — the most impressive feat anyone on this team has achieved so far. So yeah, Bloodsport is the chocolate habanero of our dreams. Sorry, not sorry.

3. Peacemaker

Peacemaker may be a lunatic who thinks placing a chrome toilet lid on his head counts as a superhero costume. He may be a bro-ish beefcake who has modeled his entire personality off a warped sense of hollow patriotism. And he may be the biggest idiot on the team, which, in itself is an eye-opening accomplishment. But he’s played by John Cena, a very attractive human who happens to be comedically gifted enough to make straight-guy jokes about penis-covered beaches funny. He might wear his t-shirts two sizes too small, but he knows that starfish is a slang term for butthole. He’s a man of contradictions who is motivated by noble ideals and willing to get his hands dirty for them. You could probably get him to do some freaky sexual acrobatics in the name of peace and liberty is all we’re saying.

2. Harley Quinn

Every iteration of Margot Robbie’s deranged court jester is swoon-worthy, but the Harley Quinn of James Gunn’s dreams is a cultural reset. She’s here to ruin your day and look good doing it. The character is at her best when she works within a team and when she’s not chained down by that abusive clown-for-hire. Harley Quinn is fully in her Hot Girl Summer season here, and we’d happily let her break our knees with a baseball bat whenever she had a passing fancy to do so.

1. King Shark

Here, at last, is our entry into the internet simp-dom of The Suicide Squad’s meatiest snack monster. The Humanoid shark himbo of our dreams, King Shark is both villain and anti-hero in the comics, a creature who’s allied (and fought against) Aquaman, Super Boy, and Task Force X on numerous occasions. Still, humans are his favorite option for a quick bite so you’ll never really be sure whether he wants to “Nom Nom” on your private bits or your more vital organs. But hey, risk is expected when you’re riding for a demigod with a dad bod, right?

‘The Suicide Squad’ streams on HBO Max and arrives in theaters on August 6.