Terribly Random? This Is Normal For Me

Warning: This blog hasn't had its shots and tends to bite if you poke it. (An eclectic collection of random thoughts and musings, things I like, many fuzzy creatures, and pieces of my writing.  I really love answering asks and prompts!) [Icon art by nerdpatrole]

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I never played Ada’s campaign in the original RE4 - only the main story, so I have no idea how it went before but I am having

SO MUCH

FUN!

They gave me a grappling gun! And I can grapple gun melee!

I are stealth. And stab. And grapple gun. I finally get to run around all that scaffolding that I stared up longingly at while playing Leon.

Feel free to stop calling me, though, Wesker. I don’t need your micromanaging.

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My husband and I low key collect Pokemon cards. Cracking packs is our version of therapeutic gambling. And we both keep track of our cards via Collectr. We joke that we’re playing the stock market, because Collectr keeps track of the value of individual cards and also the over all collection. We’ve noticed certain… patterns over the years.

If you’re ever wondering how the general stress levels of the millennial population are doing, just check the price of Pokemon cards. The higher the price, the higher the stress level.

Took these screenshots tonight:

I’d ask if y’all are doing okay, but I’m a millennial, and I’ve definitely been better, so… uh… drink some water and hug your houseplant I guess.

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I love the little touches of world building and lore that they include in the more recent Resident Evil games. Like this, the photo from Luis’s lab in RE4 Remake:

No additional flavor text or scribbled note on the back, but you look at that and just know that these are people who either didn’t know or didn’t properly understand what their research would be used for.

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Me, watching today’s Nintendo Direct: Oh, damn! They’re finally giving an update for Kingdom Hearts IV. Some people are going to be really excited. I’m happy for them.

Me, as trailer continues: Why… why does Sora have normally proportioned feet? And why is this so jarring to me, a person who has never played a single Kingdom Hearts game in her entire life?

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I love me a messed up dream sequence/hallucination in any medium, so naturally I love that final leg of Leon and Ashley’s journey to the lab to remove the Plaga in RE4 Remake.

It’s just so cool to me, and today I discovered that it it is equally cool to fiddle with in photo mode.

So trippy.

[stealingpotatoes]

i don't know what older adults were on about when they said being a teenager was good <3

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Adults, when I was a teenager: High school is the best years of your life!

Me, as a teen: God, that’s depressing. I really hope you’re wrong about that.

Me, as an adult: Yeah, I have no idea what they were going on about. High school sucked. Being in my 30s is so much better.

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Me: I am a responsible adult with responsible adult money, who spends it on responsible things.

The responsible things:

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You know-

I’m starting to get the impression that Heisenberg doesn’t think that Ethan follows directions very well.

And I mean, in fairness…

He’s not wrong.

[edibleeyelashes]

In my first and second run I explicitly ignored the signs for like… 30 minutes while I went in every opposite direction to clear out the rest of the village. So I guess I was playing the game as god intended, because i definitely am the kind of the person who would need 5 different massive billboards to keep me on track 💔💔💔

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Me, too! Could practically hear Heisenberg drumming his fingers going, “The hell is taking him so long?! Should’ve used more yellow paint….”

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There is only one appropriate use for generative AI - making dumb memes to send to your coworkers.

Because if my job is going to force me to interact with Copilot, then, my god, am I not going to use it the way they want me to.

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Me: I wanna read more Resident Evil stuff, but there aren’t any more fics I’m interested in reading at the moment, and I’m too tired to write.

Me: *sigh* Time to break out the RE methadone.

Me: Hey, Devil May Cry fandom - written anything interesting recently?

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Listen, tumblr is the void made to be screamed into (and sometimes that void stares back at you and echoes a bit), and I need to scream into the void for a minute, because I swear this is something I and maybe two other people care about:

Holy shit, in RE8, they named the main antagonist, the lady Spencer worked with in his early days and the reason Eveline was created, Miranda.

Why do I care? Well, let me spoil a cult classic movie from 2005 for you. (No, seriously - major spoilers for Firefly/Serenity. They’re both over twenty years old but still really good.)

In Serenity (2005), the movie made to give the prematurely cancelled show Firefly a decent conclusion, we find out the true source of the reavers, who have a source of dread and fear throughout the series. Reavers are basically like the lycan in RE8 but kinda scarier because they can 1) fly spaceships and 2) get creative. Turns out the reavers are from a planet that the Alliance government tried to erase from history, because an experiment they had done went horribly wrong. A drug that they introduced into the planet’s air processors, that was meant to keep the population calm and docile, killed 99% of the planet’s population and turned the remaining 1% into reavers. And what was this planet’s name?

Miranda.

Kay. Done shouting now. As you were.

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Excuse me, I need to take a moment to break out the red string and thumbtacks because I have a THEORY about Miranda’s plan in RE8 (which is mostly just me trying to explain the RE-typical plot holes that CapCom loves to just blithely ignore).

After the boss fight with Heisenberg, Miranda says that, with Heisenberg gone, Ethan “no longer [has] a lead.” To me this says, Miranda knew about Heisenberg’s plans and considered them a potential problem on at least some level, and she didn’t want him working with Ethan. She also thanks Ethan for getting rid of her “false children” for her during the final boss fight, which means Heisenberg was right that she was using Ethan to do her dirty work. So then why choose to let Heisenberg throw Ethan into the Gauntlet at the beginning of the game?

Because she knew that Ethan would get out.

The Gauntlet is locked from the inside with a plain old deadbolt. Anybody inside can open it, but only Heisenberg can lock it from the outside with his powers. Seems a little counterintuitive - you generally don’t leave the lock inside the cage. Also, there are additional falling-ceiling-spike death traps after the meat grinder wheel that don’t activate on Ethan’s way to the exit. Nobody bothers to check if Ethan is actually dead, yet Heisenberg somehow knew where Ethan was at all times to provide appropriate narration, so he should have known that Ethan hadn’t been killed. That scoop in the wall that is just deep enough for Ethan to survive the meat grinder wheel sure is awfully convenient. And when you first meet him, the only place Heisenberg could have come from is the exit of the Gauntlet - there are no other ways he could have gotten into the room without Ethan noticing. That thing was designed to be escapable. I think Miranda was counting on Ethan escaping.

Miranda knows Heisenberg is planning to throw a coup and that Ethan somehow managed to survive Louisiana and kill Eveline. Miranda is supposed to be smart, so she does the smart thing - divide and conquer. She’s the one who set Ethan on the path to the castle at the beginning after all as the old witch lady. Miranda needs Ethan baying for blood and seeing the lords as enemies, and what better way than run him straight into Heisenberg without warning? The man’s got a temper, he hasn’t had a healthy social interaction in decades - the only way that meeting can go is badly. Heisenberg introduces himself by stabbing Ethan? Perfect - Miranda couldn’t have asked for a better outcome. The “family meeting” also neatly establishes the lords as enemies in Ethan’s eyes just by association alone. Miranda basically ensures that Ethan isn’t going to even consider Heisenberg’s offer of a team up by choosing to have Heisenberg throw him in the Gauntlet, and Ethan’s tunnel vision for rescuing Rose takes care of the rest. Why give each lord a flask if not as bate to bring Ethan straight to their doors?

Ethan bulldozes through the lords just as Miranda planned, and then she kills him since he’s outlived his usefulness to her. Everything works out exactly as Miranda planned it.

Except Ethan gets back up, and Miranda’s plan falls apart, because that’s the one thing she never considered happening.

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Welp.

I finished the game.

Naturally, I am now depressed.

Now if you’ll excuse me-

I need to go reread all the fix-it fics.

Because Ethan and Rose deserved so much better.

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He’s here again!

On the one hand, yay! Fave character on screen!

On the other hand, noooooooooo! That means the boss fight is up next. I don’t wanna have to kill Heisenberg!

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The drama of the forge

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A little lighting tweaking and boom!

I can actually see Heisenberg in the screenshots I took! Huzzah!

No one in this game has good communication skills.

Karl, maybe start with, “Did you like the weapons I left for you?” for your “Let’s Team Up and Murder Miranda Together” elevator pitch.

And, my god, Ethan, at least ask how the only person, who is just straight up offering to help you, is proposing to “use” your daughter to defeat Miranda before telling him to fuck off. You’re the one who used the word “weapon,” not him. If the plan sucks, then you can tell him to fuck off.

(…also, I really want to know what the plan was. How do you weaponize a baby?)

Now stop picking fights with the only lord who hasn’t been actively trying to kill you.

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No jokes this time - just dramatic screenshot dump because this game is very pretty.

So dramatic.