#grumble has thoughts

[annamarabella-grumble]

mass effect replay thoughts, episode 11

episode 1 / episode 2 / episode 3 / episode 4 / episode 5 / episode 6 / episode 7 / episode 8 / episode 9 / episode 10

haven't updated these in a while! we're almost at the end of mass effect 3 now lmao. thoughts on mass effect 2 for the meantime?

we killed mordin solus in cold blood; did the math and everything--i enjoy padok wiks' company a LOT more. christ, he's weird. i like him

i'm never fucking playing arrival again, i swear on wrex's bollocks. a tiny room and five pyros??? NO THANK YOU

speaking of, if grandpa hackett doesn't stop calling me on my damn bananaphone the minute i enter a system where he's committed another war crime....... THIS PHONE IS FOR BANANERGENCIES ONLY

during every playthrough of me2 i successfully repress the memory of that damn reaper skeleton. it punches me in the face every time

the amount of times during me2 that chat was like "oh yeah that's an old bug," including for bugs i'd not encountered on my own before???????

now what about mass effect 3?

meeting anderson again: I HEAR YOU'RE AN ADMIRAL NOW, FATHER! GOOD FOR YOU!

that lil pat of shep's tummy after months under house arrest. father pls (i love their dynamic so much)

as always, we're fetching garrus first, as is proper and correct. we're not romancing him in this one, and i love how so few of their lines actually change. they're not together, but they adore and rely on each other. there's no shepard without vakarian, ain't ever gonna change

you know whom i do not adore? kai leng. god, i hate that railroady flippy bitch

he's not scary, he's not even interesting, he's just a plot device. BORING

which reminds me (sob): shep's fully ready to jump thane's bones in the atrium of a hospital. down, girl

speaking of: we're in love with traynor now, she's delightful. we played sweaty chess

speaking of speaking of: every stream we have a ten-minute section where we talk about how literally everything about mass effect would be better if everyone was queer

yesterday we played omega dlc and my GOD. the belligerent sexual tension, cut it with a knife. bioware are cowards for not just letting aria and nyreen fuck nasty on the floor of any of the dozen elevators we were on. shep can watch, she'd like it

(if you also like it, listen to "temper temper" by black pistol fire)

the section with the adjutants prowling around in the dark is my favourite thing in the world, it's so well done

"ask the ghosts if honour matters" is a raw af line

i can't believe that mr vega asks if we can adopt that husk head and then it ends up in my cabin anyway

also can't believe how married messers vega and cortez are I LOVE THEM SO MUCH YOUR HONOUR

steeb :'((

i've been having a rough time and i think a hug from jimmy vega would fix me. just compress me, bro

LEGIOOOOON :'((((

oh my god when grunt does the thing and you think he's gone and then he comes stumbling out of the cave and collapses

love how shep is like A LIL HELP HERE and garrus comes swaggering up leisurely to collect his krogan son (we're not dating but we're definitely co-parenting)

ADAMS IS SO HAPPY HIS ENGINEER DAUGHTER TALI IS BACK

i love tali's character arc

WE CURED THE GENOPHAGE BITCHES

dalatrass can go and sulk for all eternity, don't give a shit. wrex did the right thing

oh lookie here, ashley magically isn't racist anymore! hate how there's no discussion of that in the game. the writers just quietly retconned that shit when it could've been a genuine example of growth--something the other members of the og crew all got lmao.

fuck cerberus

FUCK CERBERUS

can't wait to blow up all the reapers

[keitorin3]

HERE'S A THOUGHT~!

In the MCU, the Time Stone was found by the sorcerer Agamotto thousands of years ago.

"The Ancient One is the latest in a long line of Sorcerer Supreme, going back thousands of years to the father of the Mystic Arts, the mighty Agamotto. The same sorcerer who created the Eye you so recklessly borrowed."

—Wong

So this dude, someone who was according to official papers was "a being" who was not human. And from the looks of it found the stone on earth.

Now here is my thought about this, what if this guy found the Time Stone in the Crystal Cave all those years ago. It would make sense for the crystals in the cave to have been affected by the time stone and have the properties of possible futures.

The Birth Place of Magic.

Agamotto might have taken the time stone but some of it's powers still remained there in the cave. Druids and other magic folk revere and fear the cave, cause if not careful one could go mad with all the possible outcomes of the future.

Merlin, long after Camelot, ends up back in the Crystal Cave and witnessing all the possibilities of the future. He learns much but also goes slightly mad for a time.

Then at some point he travels and finds Kamar-Taj. There he can feel the Time Stone but much more powerful then the cave. It calls to him, recognising Merlin as a worthy wielder or fellow kin.

Now I'm completely for the concept of Merlin being Magic itself and if Magic came to be in that cave, Merlin is a part of the time stone as we saw in the first episode of Merlin where he basically stopped time saving Gaius and slowing it down saving Arthur.

If the Infinity Stones were created by the Big Bang from 6 singularities, what if there was a 7th one.

Magic.

Diverse and capable of all 6 aspects of existance.

Making Merlin one of the very few to be capable of touching the stone itself, along with the other five.

What do you think?

[pyrrhiccomedy]

Lisbet - The Devil's Alchemist

The first attendant to the antichrist was his death-touched squire;

The second was his fairy wife.

Lisbet was the third.

Born a trapper's daughter, raised an iconoclast: she was proud and peculiar, literate and skeptical, blunt and awkward and unbending in the wind. The devil was nothing to her until proven otherwise. This witch-touched great lord was a man like any other. She spoke plainly, thought clearly, and with her bow and her dog and her knowledge of the wood, in the face of censure she could always walk away.

The antichrist knew that he would never find another Lisbet: a genius, a free thinker, a slow-growing but powerful tree. It took years for her roots to find purchase in the alien soil he had transplanted her to: years of self-doubt, uncertainty, unhappiness and frustration. But in his garden of thistles, thorns, and arrowroots, he made room for a great oak.

It grows more quickly now. The shade from its canopy begins to creep out across the world.

She has invented the cannon; guessed the nature of the Emperor-Wolf; wrapped the mantle of the alchemist around her shoulders; never knelt to anyone.

Her brain crackles with strange fire. Her hands grope out to find the levers of the world.

[house-of-mirrors]

me wondering why I'm feeling so grumbly tonight then remembering ah, the chronic pain disorder and physical therapy was rough

[burning-sol]

that post is how i find out about aphrodites hades II sprite and im SOBBING what a glow DOWN... ARGH... WHAT DID U DO MY MY GIRL'S SHARPNESS??? HER BEAUTY WAS UNMATCHED... AND NOW SHE LOOKS SO MUCH MORE CONVENTIONAL I'M POUNDING MY FIST AGAINST THE FLOOR.

i didnt rlly think much abt the hades II designs because id only seen the shit abt chaos like "well.. a downgrade (imo) but the other sprites are probably okay" and when i finally check i am HAUNTED. ARGH....

[jellyfishvibes]

Getting hella frustrated about zelda wikis and how limited each are but not insane enough to join the wiki team to add all the shit their missing

[cherrymoonvol6]

.

[tchotchkez]

😮‍💨

[sorry for the hardcore tag rants, y'all]

[corvigae]

So I know that gameplay-wise in BG3 you can only romance one origin character at a time...but also in the little story I'm writing in my head as I play my Tav has 3 weed smoking girlfriends and you can't change my mind

[annamarabella-grumble]

thoughts about bioshock, episode 1

episode 2 / episode 3 / episode 4 / episode 5

i’m currently recording a bioshock let's play series (remastered edition), and here’s some thoughts on last weekend's episode

this game has everything: hyperindustrialism, unethical experiments, body horror, and: ghosts 👻

protest signs: “we are not your property” the first thing that you see — good news! citizens had self-awareness before they were rounded up and killed!

the parasite loves free markets, free health care, and free men (yes, love not having to pay for men)

“beauty is a moral imperative”

but Steinman is also bored with people having two eyes and ears and only one mouth, so

“you promised me pretty!” having a fistfight with “why do we force the beautiful to mingle with the plain?”

art, science, industry — the great minds needed to build a better world. only, apparently under the fucking ocean was the only space for it.

Steinman/Cohen, Suchong/Tenenbaum, Ryan/Fontaine

what is "beautiful"? what is "good" art?

science to achieve ends by all means necessary

science to understand what makes humans as they are

industry, unfettered by regulations

industry to “evolve” humanity

greed corrupts, power corrupts, and Ryan reads too much Ayn Rand

what Steinman says: beauty is moral imperative!

what Rapture hears: he’s going to give us cleft chins and huge boobs

what Steinman means: listen, you’re all too symmetrical

what Steinman really means: conventional beauty standards are broke. i’m going to create a new beauty standard that is so grotesque and hideous

what Ryan says: I chose Rapture

what Rapture hears: this is where we can be free! Rapture is all we need?

what Ryan means: someone’s gotta pull the great chain and it ain’t gonna be me

what Ryan really means: plain old industrialism isn’t good enough. i’m going to create an economy that is so oppressive and inescapable

the first two hours of the game giving you a dose of Ryan and Steinman is a great introduction to what built Rapture: the self-victimisation of men already in immense power over others, but burdened with governmental and ethical oversight. “Petty concerns,” indeed. and it hands you a hero in Atlas, who won’t “leave you twistin in the wind,” who doesn’t even know you but promises to help you. it just happens that there’s something you can do for him. and you’re already in his debt, so why not?

debt doesn’t only appear as a narrative theme in Bioshock Infinite; it’s already here. Ryan owns the city, Ryan owns the scrip, the store, the stone under your feet. no-one is free, in Rapture. and as you burrow deeper and deeper into its leaky guts, neither will you be. all power flows into the city, but none can ever leave.

[dutybcrne]

Thinking of Kaveh with Unhinged partners again

[iknaenmal]

WHY! IS! IRL FRIENDSHIP! SO HARD!!!!!

[redacted-metallum]

Why do I feel like a bad person for wanting attention.

[imaginejolls]

i keep wanting to write but feeling very stuck and also kind of uninspired, even more so bcs it feels like nobody cares about my writing. and like yes i write things down just to get them out of my head so they don't take up space & fester, but i like sharing them with likeminded individuals, of which it feels like there is 0

[kelpiemomma]

i really need to draw khan and emmet hanging out bc they would be such buddies. ingo hates how quickly they bonded bc khan took one look at emmet, at how excited emmet is to battle, and seemed to Immediately like him (it only bc khan had already bonded w ingo, but like hell will he ever admit that. that proves he has emotions! he has to hide those.) khan & emmet battling each other. khan takes over for ingo sometimes on the multi trains except he and emmet get so into battles that they need a chaperone to keep them from getting too rowdy bc somehow (???) they've managed to destroy a couple of train cars??? khan challenges the subway himself (he battles using himself but also his pokemon. he'd rather battle using himself, but ingo and emmet get awfully concerned when he faints so he stops doing it so much). khan and emmet discuss battle tactics (khan insists "offense is the best defense" and "go balls to the walls immediately on attack" and emmet argues for better strategizing and well rounded move pools) and help each other train, offering suggestions and tips and "hey, let's try this maneuver" or "i think it would be better if you did this move first".

not that they don't enjoy an off day, but they definitely bonded well over battles.

[victorluvsalice]

Okay, now that we've established that I probably love taking in-game pictures of my OT3 a little too much, let's actually get into the gameplay, shall we? Starting with me spotting a potential problem in the greenhouse after hanging all those pictures -- namely, poor Bugs the garden-bot was sparking a lot as he helped Elmer tend the plants -- and when I hovered over him, his tool tip indicated he had ZERO DURABILITY. O.O I hastily had Alice go out and turn him off, half-expecting him to explode as I have heard these bots will occasionally do -- fortunately, he did not, though he was most definitely busted after that! I had Smiler come and pick him up to repair on the robot bench while Victor and Alice took over helping Elmer finish up caring for all the plants (after a change of clothes into more appropriate gardening attire). When they weren't flirting, anyway. XD Look, as you might expect, Victor was feeling VERY romantic after renewing his vows with his wife and officially marrying his nonbinary partner. Loads of kissing was gonna happen. :) <3

Anyway, farm chores continued throughout the morning, mostly because I didn't want to leave before the greenhouse harvest and thus possibly end up with ANOTHER load of produce in the household inventory. Victor tried bonding some more with his bees, who weren't having it (though he was able to successfully get their beeswax and honey), then did a mass weeding as Alice watered and the various flowers and fruit and veggies actually spawned in. He gathered all that up and evolved those plants who could be evolved (everything is slowly but surely moving toward perfect quality!), while Smiler, done with robots, tended the chickens and Moory the cow as per usual. Everything was going pretty well --

And then it started thunderstorming. Which meant that Alice and Smiler kept wanting to go shower in the rain. *heavy sigh* Most annoying part of having Erratic Sims, I swear...though, admittedly, seeing Alice doing the laundry while naked was a little bit funny. XD Anyway, I figured this was a sign that I should wrap things up already at the house -- Alice did the laundry, put some clothes on, and made sure Kelly was in a good mood for the "pet sitter" that would be invisibly taking care of her and Shadow while they were all away; Smiler made sure Elmer was off, took a moment to reply to all their Simstube comments, grabbed their drone to make some island videos, and fixed the downstairs toilet; and Victor was the one to grab the phone and send them all on their Sulani vacation! :D