#passives

snap draggin

bites enemies for 10-15 dmg to health, and pings for Cas9 on map

or

pulls multiple enemies to a center point (like ash's snare) for 5-10 dmg, immediate release

take stalk

attaches to first enemy to come by, alerts Cas9 pins outline to them for 5 seconds, can plant multiple stalks

(kind of like Hound, but is triggered rather than instant and can only attach to one player at a time)

(...so sort of like ash’s passive but better)

branch out

creates a small platform to walk across, up to 6(stealing Catalyst's concept tact because I’m still bitter)

thorn down

thorny patch that deals damage and slows because Alec was right when thinking of it first

(fucking catalyst)

aloe there

pulls players within range to 1-2M away, causes 5-10 dmg to enemies(after typing it out, i thought “oh fuck that's just Roadhog's hook”)(or path’s zipline if you attach it to an enemy)

at bay / bushed away / bush back

pushes enemies back a small distance (like 2-5M) for a small amount of damage, pretty much a punch at a distance(might rework this because the image of it funny as hell to me)

patched up

something something health

power plant

something something shields

names without abilities

bark's bite

rough patch

plot twist 

thyme crunch

party thyme

hem locked

feeling vine

log in/out

I’m already dead set on his passive being called “Upsy Daisy” which, revives allies in a quicker time and gives them a small bonus of health

He was supposed to be named Catalyst because his ult relied on vials of catalyzing agents (technically they can also be called an enzyme). He holds out his bowl and you can choose to heal or harm and throw a distance (either the L or R button). Sort of like Moira? Only it doesn’t bounce around and is grounded, lasting for... 8-10 seconds? Not sure if that is a fair amount of time.

I remember when the dev’s were testing out abilities with the Dummy’s Day Out event. They had an ability that allowed an immediate heal for a certain radius. Problem with that included you being the center of the heal, and it also healing enemies (from this event, they fixed Mirage’s ult into ‘dance party’. remember seeing 6 mirages standing in a field? good times).

If you think it takes too much time, think of Newcastle’s, Path’s or Ash’s ults. You need to aim those strategically and can’t immediately spam throw them down without tact like you can with Lifeline’s, Caustic’s or Horizon’s. I mean you can, but it might not be as accurate if you want to plan things out.

So what does a sentence look like without this subject-introducing layer? Well, we should look for sentences that are short an agent — a doer to set the events described by the VP in motion. And when we search through our speech, it isn’t too long before we find just that.

One of the most familiar kinds of sentences that show up without an agent are passive sentences. With their familiar form of “be” and optional ‘by-phrase,’ their most notable feature is that they put their objects in subject position.

    (3a)    They took David’s sister.

    (3b)    David’s sister was taken.

And in our recent discussion on the relationship between active sentences and passive ones, we mentioned Burzio’s Generalization, which makes the observation that there’s a one-to-one connection between sentences that have no agent, and sentences which have no phrases marked with accusative case (e.g., the object pronoun “them” versus the subject “they”). We suggested this had something to do with the passive “be” and its accompanying affix “-en.” But when we get to chopping the verb phrase in two, we can develop a much more satisfying picture. To see how, let’s focus in on what the split really does.

In the episode, we said that one thing this new structure did was give ditransitive verbs like “put” some breathing room inside the lower VP, so that all objects — direct and indirect alike — could live in harmony.

Something else this does, though, is put the main object — which is something that normally shows up with accusative case (e.g., “put him in there”) — right beside our new, little ‘v’ and its agent-adding powers. And this puts us just a step away from understanding what’s going on: if we imagine for a moment that our little ‘v’ is in charge of adding agents and handing out accusative case to whatever’s right next to it, then we can ask what happens when it disappears.

Well, without little ‘v”, the agent for the sentence goes missing, and so does the ability to slap accusative case on anything! Two entirely separate things that shouldn’t really have anything to do with each other unexpectedly synch up, and we finally can make sense of Burzio’s Generalization. With that little ‘v’ pulling double duty, agents and accusatives actually go hand-in-hand.

Of course, passives aren’t the only sentences prone to pairing up with more object-like subjects. On top of alternating verbs like “roll” and “melt,” which we first used to introduce the idea of dividing things up, we find that some verbs always arrive agent-free. In “He deteriorated,” “he” plays no real role in what’s happening, and if you try to use an active subject, it just sounds weird.

    (4a)    He deteriorated.

    (4b)    *They deteriorated him.

And raising verbs like “seem” and “appear” work along those same lines; they don’t come with subjects of their own, and sometimes even resort to stealing one from the following clause. Splitting the verb phrase now just means that these verbs come without an upper vP.

    (5a)    It seems he’s psychic.

    (5b)    He seems to be psychic.

Even straightforwardly transitive verbs like “eat” and “sell” can drop their agents under the right circumstances, showing off what’s sometimes called the ‘middle voice.’

    (6)    This idea won’t sell easily.

Expressions like these have even found their way into the slogans of pop culture!

So passive verbs, certain intransitives, and even ordinary transitives can, and sometimes must, appear without this outer layer, fitting snugly into our new paradigm. And some languages even flag when this new structure of ours shows up, in spite of its often stealthy character. Italian uses a separate set of auxiliary verbs when in the presence of a vP (“ha” for “have”), as opposed to when not (“è” for “be”). And a similar verbal scheme can be seen at work in German.

    (7a)    Maria ha telefonato

              ‘Maria has telephoned’

    (7b)    Maria è arrivata

              ‘Maria is arrived’

    (8a)    Die Maria hat telefoniert

              ‘Maria has telephoned’

    (8b)    Die Maria ist angekommen

              ‘Maria is arrived’