#doing a replay because dlc

[asleepinawell]

something terrible happened here

[boyfrillish]

The other day, I was going through my Switch screenshots from Sword to try to find something else and remembered all of the Emotional Pain™ from up until the Final battle lmao

Anyway, yes, these two sillies still give me All The Feels in all the ways, for like 8 whole months and counting now. The OTP ever

[thanatos-nightshade]

Im so sorry i played Our Life: beginnings and always and not only has it sucker punched me with bittersweet feelings of life and change and relationships but its also thrown me into brain rot hell of it. Im sorry if ocean boy cove floods your feed get it? Its a pun

[papervo1d]

picking up bloodborne again, it's like an every three months thing now. continuing on from where i left my character before, at byrgenwerth about to fight rom. but i don't want to do that yet. so chalice dungeons time :)

[mossyflowers]

IT'S ALL FUN AND GAMES UNTIL THERE'S ONE MILLION TARGETS AND THEY'RE ALL TRYING TO KILL ME AND THERE'S A TIME LIMIT AND A FUCKING. SCORE COUNTER. HELL ON EARTH

[caracello]

tthere's . there's. there's a mod that adds dog and god as companions in tthe basegame and you can recruit god/the merged doggod from JACOBSTOWN!!!

[quirkypossum]

I can't not take Anders on like every quest in DA:2 but goddamn im crying in the club over him in Legacy...

[corpocyborg]

ooh apparently there’s a mod that makes v speak in japanese with goro/hanako/anyone else where it makes sense. perfect for my bilingual corpo v headcanon. like... her parents worked for arasaka, she probably grew up planning to work for arasaka one day, she canonically visits japan as part of her work in arasaka counterintel... why wouldn’t she have learned japanese?

(on the other hand it’s also funny to imagine that v speaks perfect japanese but just doesn’t tell anyone about it in case it becomes a strategic advantage one day)

[curiouslavellan]

son of a bitch I got Miranda killed in me3

[silusvesuius]

i haven't played skajrim in so long that i only got the chance 2 pick it up again today ; sky pics i liked , i forgot there was even an anni update lol... I just walked around for 2 hours

[the-promise-has-been-made]

hey Monk Maz Koshia's 'wait, why is there boss music?' battle theme slaps so hard!

[foxstens]

replaying parts of brotherhood trying to get 75% sync and its kinda fun

[425599167]

Fallout: New Vegas is all about rebuilding society in the Mojave, and the three given factions all attempt to do so by recreating the past. The NCR models itself on the now-destroyed United States, with all the problems involved. Caesar created the Legion in the image of Rome because he believed it could best thrive in the wasteland. Mr. House is arguably the most forward-thinking with his focus on technology and eventual interplanetary travel, but he still rebuilt New Vegas from his nostalgic recollections of the city. Building on the past isn't wrong, the problem is these three factions don't appear to be learning from anything that happened.

NCR characters never directly acknowledge that they're following the example of a society that destroyed itself. Caesar criticizes them for this, believing the republic functioned best while under the quasi-monarchy of Aradesh and Tandi. But Caesar ignores how 1) Rome also fell and 2) he's confronting the same problem as a brain tumor is on the verge of killing him. Even if you treat his tumor, he's still mortal. Caesar was given an education, and his knowledge of strategy and history let him build the Legion, which he then made anti-intellectual and revisionist. The society he created cannot replace him, and will fragment when he dies. House is more contemptuous of the pre-war world, but he still brought it back, and specifically assigned the Omertas with the role of ruthless mobsters who will kill anyone in their way. Apparently he thought that was a good idea.

This extends into the DLCs, too. Elijah plans to use the Sierra Madre to wipe the slate clean and restore the Brotherhood of Steel to their position of unrivaled power, with himself back as Elder. Every day, Joshua Graham feels the pain of being burned. The Think Tank scientists are all stuck in loops, stuck in the past, stuck with their flaws centuries after believing they overcame their humanity. For all my grievances with Lonesome Road, it fits the pattern, as Ulysses saw a new society forming, saw it burn, and couldn't move on. If you let Ulysses live, he has similar criticisms of the NCR, Legion, and House. They're all idealized recreations, like the Vera Keyes hologram. Let go, begin again.

Benny may be a weird mix of dangerous and absurd, but he contrasts the other factions well. He jumped at the chance to join House, fought his tribe's previous leader to make it happen, then planned to take down House, too. House dismisses Benny as not understanding complex technologies due to his tribal upbringing, but he built a computer lab attached to his suite and studies technology as best he can. Benny doesn't want to relive the past, he wants to move forward, he wants something better. You can kill him and take his role, or, when facing certain death at Caesar's hands, he'll explain his vision and ask you to see it through.

After replaying everything, though the other endings have understandable support, I think the Independent route fits the story's themes best, the only one where something definitively new is being built. The Courier isn't remaking anything. Part of this is simply open-ended roleplaying, allowing the player to imagine the character's completed goal. If you choose one of the other three, the Courier can work to correct their faction's flaws and counter the destructive nostalgia affecting them. The Independent ending isn't necessarily the "best" for the Mojave, the Courier's morality and a hundred other decisions determine that, but it is the most compelling conclusion to the story.

[rallamajoop]

Resident Evil 7 and Mia's secrets

(Oh, did you think I was done talking about Mia? Not even close! >D)

Coming into this fandom late, I was surprised that popular fanon has it that Mia never does come clean to Ethan, post-RE7. Sure, RE8 depends on Mia not having told Ethan he died in Dulvey, but that has nothing to do with her own past with the Connections (and far more to do with Ethan's own denial, but that's a whole other thing).

Myself, I’d taken it as given that the scene where Ethan learns the truth must have just happened off-screen. Because, disappointing as that omission is, the whole damn game is leading up to it.

And having replayed RE7 lately, I realised there'd be no better way to explain my take than to catalog every time the game spells out to us that Ethan knows Mia’s keeping secrets and wants answers, and that Mia herself wants to come clean.

Heck, it’s just about the very first thing we learn about them.

“Ethan... You were right. I did lie to you. I shouldn’t have, but…”

Ethan's not actually stupid, and Mia's secrecy has obviously strained their marriage for some time. And as soon as Ethan finds her, he’s asking questions.

Here, he’s mostly asking who did this to you; it's way too early for real answers. But then Eveline takes control, shit goes down, and next we see her, it’s in her recorded message from the “Mia” video tape.

“There’s so much you need to know.”

When Ethan finds Mia again under the old house, he’s angry and has every right to be, and he doesn’t pull any punches.

“I always wanted to tell you…”

But Mia’s memory’s still a mess, and Lucas interrupts. Ethan’s next chance to ask questions comes in the boat, and he wastes no time.

“You had something to do with this, didn’t you?”

Mia’s a little more defensive here, but she’s not lying about the holes in her memory. The game’s gearing up for the big reveal anyway, and the writers aren’t about to let her spoil it early.

If you choose Zoe instead of Mia, Ethan spends the boat ride asking all the same questions, only louder.

“I knew Mia was hiding something.”

But in the end, what do we get?

Whoever you choose, Ethan only gets a few brief moments with Mia after she frees him from Eveline’s mould, and no explanations are offered. But if you do pick Mia, then we end with Ethan flying away with her in the helicopter, saying only, “Mia's back and she wants to start over,” and I’m left going, wait, what? Haven’t we skipped something here?

In defence of the fanon consensus that Ethan never finds out the truth, that does seem to be the ‘canonical’ intent ‒ at least inasmuch as there's this one throwaway bit about Mia not wanting Ethan to know buried in a bonus text file only available with this one overpriced DLC for RE8. That’s it, that’s as much explicit recognition as this thing ever gets, one way or the other. And fucking hell, but that's a let down.

Even if we assume that Mia’s desire to come clean goes away once her memory comes back, why would Ethan just stop asking? He’s been asking questions the whole damn game – was clearly asking questions long before the game began! Knowing that Eveline was controlling people doesn’t explain what Mia had to do with it all. Now he’s suddenly all, ‘killed the bad guy, saved the girl, everything’s fine’? Was all that ‘a door closed’ bullshit supposed to be him accepting he’d never get answers? Why?

There are workable ways to spin Ethan never finding out. You could suggest he just accepts that Mia’s memory is gone (hell, for all we actually see of the ending, Mia genuinely might have lost her memory again after Eveline sucked her back into the mould). After all the trauma Ethan’s been through, you could also suggest he’s gone directly into denial, refusing to face anything that might threaten his ‘happy ending’ with Mia. You could even suggest that that bit with Eveline saying 'I can make him love you' is her actively wiping Ethan's suspicions away. There's some lovely, subtle horror in any of these possibilities ‒ I would genuinely love to see all of them explored in fic! But none of them actually come through in the ending we get, and that omission is the single biggest issue that makes that conclusion to RE7 unsatisfying to me.

The whole damn game has been building up to the big confrontation where Ethan finds out the truth and (eventually, if not immediately) finds a way to forgive Mia, so we can still have our happy ending. As much OTT hate as Mia gets, the game is consistent in portraying her as someone who is painfully aware of how bad she’s fucked up, regrets it, and is committed to doing everything she can to protect the man she loves from the fallout of her mistakes.

I cannot overstate how willing Mia is to die to save Ethan, from the very moment she realises she's infected. She does die to save him if you choose Zoe over her. It's so much of why I ship them do hard.

But most frustrating of all, denying Mia the chance to come clean denies her any chance to explain herself. How did she get involved with the Connections? Did she know from the outset who she was working for? Did she genuinely buy into the idea they were finding ways to win wars without losing soldiers on battlefield, that the human casualties of all their work was worth it? If not, why did she keep working there? Was she slowly frog-boiled down to the deep end, did they have dirt on her, did she fear they might kill her if she tried to leave? What excuses did she make to herself as the months or years went on?

It's possible Mia’s the kind of hypocrite who doesn’t care about the human casualties of her employer, just as long as she and hers are okay, but nothing we see from her sells me on that interpretation. And even if she ever was, it's even harder to believe she's still that person after all she's been through.

It aggravates me that the games never gave us answers, not just because I want explanations that cast Mia in a sympathetic light, but because not giving us answers leaves this huge hole in her character. I'd even take explanations that cast her in an unsympathetic light, as long as it all ties together.

It irritates me even more because, even if Capcom wasn’t up for giving Ethan and Mia the big emotional confrontation they deserved, the solution was so simple: let Ethan find Mia’s diary on his way out of the ship. The whole goddamn franchise is filled with diaries and documents where characters lay out their backstories and motivations in ludicrous detail – why does Mia never get one? Just give us a handful of entries dated over the years, laying out her own feelings and anxieties about the job she’s doing. It would’ve been so easy!

It irritates me nearly as much that, even in the few corners of this fandom sympathetic to Mia, no-one seems to be very interested in answering these questions in fic or shared headcanons (and if there are examples out there I don't know about, please do link me to them!) How much did Mia know about what she was getting into when she started working for the Connections? Was it the job she kept telling herself was just until she could find something better, only for that ‘something better’ to never come along? Did she have stains on her record that made it hard to find another job? How much of her lying was a misguided attempt to protect Ethan, and how much was simply about protecting herself? There's so much to explore here!

This is also where I mention that I've already put my money where my mouth on this one, and written up my own take on Mia's backstory, and how Ethan might have found out the truth. You don't have to agree with my version, of course ‒ I mean it when I say I'd love to see other people's ideas too. Heck, I'd even be up for versions where Ethan ultimately can't forgive her, just as long as people come at it from the angle of looking at Mia as a character, not just a one-dimensional-villain.

But of course, I'd still prefer to think about versions where these two do find a way to make it work. It takes a lot to make me ship het this hard, but these two stealth-badasses have pulled it off with style.

[atomictomb]

Fallout Fan Theory: The Cloud

So I have a theory as to what the cloud is in Dead Money. I've been researching others opinions and everyone I've seen as been summed up "created by some experiment" or "chemical weapons". But I don't think that's the case. I think it's something already existent.

Let's start off with the characteristics of the cloud.

Corrosive

Blood red

Seen as a vapor, but also as residue

Toxic to inhale

Symptoms from coming in contact including: trouble breathing, burns, death

Smells like copper/metallic

This sounds to me like bromine. Bromine is a naturally occurring halogen with the atomic number 35 on the periodic table. It is highly corrosive and at room temperature, is a liquid that gives off blood red fumes. Due to the location of the Sierra Madre, we can assume that it is well above room temperature which explains why we may see more cloud as a gas than liquid, and explains why we can find residue to scrape up. Now why would it be there in the first place?

Common uses of bromine include:

Water treatment

HVAC refrigerant

Fire retardants

Preservatives

Well drilling and precious metal mining

Which could explain why it was first discovered in ventilation, as it is one of the most common refrigerants in HVAC. Now you may argue that it was still part of an experiment, but we never find evidence that they made the chemical. At the Z-43 Innovative Toxins Plant in the Old World Blues DLC, they're studying chemicals toxic to humans. Perhaps one of the studies was to see what prolonged exposure to bromine would do.

Another thing mentioned about the cloud, is how it seems to have preserved the area. Bromine is used as a food preservative. BVO or Brominated Vegetable Oil is used to preserve processed foods and beverages, though due to bromines toxic nature, is banned from use in several countries.

I replayed Dead Money and Old World Blues to get this information because I do not trust Fandom wiki. I also spent way too long researching bromine. I'd like to clarify that I am by no means saying I'm necessarily correct. I'd also like to clarify that I am writing this at 4 am. So I'm sorry if this is a jumbled mess. I am sleep deprived. Do with this post what you will.

[hamofjustice]

y'know, it's funny, from replaying pokemon scarlet / violet basegame, i'm pretty sure if you're not internet poisoned, then one of the most memorable things about nemona could be that she only battles you half or less of the times that she checks in to help you because she wants it to be perfect and fair for you and really doesn't want to annoy you, to the point it almost seems like she's making excuses NOT to battle you, not that she's a wild dog that's stalking you and will not leave you alone. one of her earliest character establishing moments is looking directly into the camera with puppy dog eyes and apologizing profusely for wanting a rematch because she had fun

she's in the gyms because she's also doing the gyms! she gets really embarrassed that it looks like she's following you around and decides not to battle you to prove she's not! if she is, she's probably following you because geeta asked her to, and clavell literally said she should take you under her wing! she usually gives you advance warning that she's going to be taking you on soon!

in particular, once you're out of the tutorial she talks to and helps you without battling you for the first three badges of her own questline

it's always, like, clavell and geeta being like 'smh get a load of this girl, she needs to back off, who does she think she is, gary oak?' with their body language. the "oops, nemona didn't realize that cutscene didn't heal you" thing the game keeps doing feels kinda forced.

maybe it's just pokemon writing being what it is (i really don't know why they act like she'd use her champion team against your starter, she just picked a starter, what are you talking about. make her look overeager in a way that makes sense with her character or anyone over the age of 5 please) but the way nemona actually is not matching the way everyone talks about her seems to be a thing in universe and out, and i want to remember this rather than fall into a telephone game of what the plot actually was

if anything, I wish she was less afraid to annoy the player, and more present in the game! y'know, appearing in the sidelines during gym battles with the rest of the crowd rather than the text simply saying she was, for example

idk, I wonder if things would be different if the most vocal pokemon "fans" didn't hate characters interacting with them. maybe I want a brock and misty with me the whole game. maybe biri biri and after the rain are the experience I want

acting like the character who puts our enjoyment above her own and is afraid to annoy us still annoyed us is how we get a DLC that never mentions her or the other main characters of the story in 9 months of promotional materials and, maybe someday, a gen 10 with no friends at all.