Nekohime Posts

Oh my, this looks awesome. A bit spendy, but it seems worth it. And yay for having toys! Which one is your favorite out of your toy collection? Care to give a review of some of your toys?

Holy heart attack diabetes, Jim! And lol at Koko's comment.

For April, I pick a substance that has addicted millions of people around the world...

*Iron Chef announcer voice*

CAFFEINE!!!

Of course any recipe with coffee is pretty much a shoe-in for this month, but you can also use tea, cocoa, chocolate, caffeinated sodas, caffeinated liqueurs... go nuts with the caffeine overload! Let's get hyper and wired this month!


Again, here are the rules:


Contest officially starts now and ends 00:00 PST (GMT-8) on May 1, 2012. No entries will be accepted after that time. Voting starts whenever I wake up on that day and will last for five days, after which we will announce the winner. Winner gets mad props, rep from me (and from others?) and the chance to choose the month after next's theme.

Weeeell, since you were the only contestant this month, you automatically win! PM me with your theme for May. ^_^

"Crappy" ending or not, ME3 probably has the best weapon designs ever.



I mean, just look at that thing. That Asari Disciple shotgun. It's just so damn fucking SEXY it gives me a boner.

It had to be posted.

Yeah, they don't name all the relays, and it's not so obvious in ME1, but in ME2 you can visit the Local Cluster (Sol System) and see that there is a mass relay right in the system.

Whatever, like I said, that is how I made sense of it in my head-canon. You don't have to agree, and I'm not saying that is THE definitive explanation. You can think it's bullshit, but I think it makes sense but was poorly explained in-game. Art is subjective, yada yada.

Sure, those are reasonable explanations for it, but it doesn't make the choices any less sucky. And in ME3, there are also ways to explain away why there were only three sucky choices. I mean, I guess it would be nice if Bioware actually went through with the whole conversation with the Catalyst so that we understand exactly WHY, but the reasons I can think of make sense in my head-canon.



Eh, there IS a relay in the Sol system--Charon relay, as in right next to Pluto. So IDK why people are saying it isn't possible for Joker to have escaped through a relay with the rest of the crew as he saw the Citadel exploding. Did people just forget about that relay or something?



I didn't say everyone was going to the FTC--I do hang around Kotaku and BSN as well, so I know it was just that one guy. But that did happen, and there have been a lot of people review-bombing on Amazon, Metacritic, etc., and that has been going on since Day 1 when nobody had even finished the game yet! I just threw those examples out as the kind of nerd rage that is unwarranted. I do disagree with the media outlets calling unsatisfied gamers "whiners" and whatnot, and the only time I used "entitled" was to say that yes, other people are entitled to their opinions that the ending sucked.

@Neko-chan, I don't know why people are saying it's a vocal minority against the ending, where people like me who actually LIKE the way it ended and defend it are the minority. A rather quiet minority, even. And when we speak up, we get called Biodrones, sheesh. There IS a vocal minority of people who just hate Bioware (mostly on Reddit, I think), so maybe the media outlets are conflating the two. And idk, even if what I did won't affect the ending per se, I still am replaying ME3 right now with my paragon Shep that I've played from ME1, just to see how the rest of the game plays out. I mean, just the Tuchanka mission can play out at least 8 different ways depending on what you did in the previous games, so it's not like the previous choices were totally invalidated. To use your Baskin Robins metaphor, I guess it's just how you look at it--whether the plot arcs are the ice cream or the topping.

Addendum: to me the whole self-determination and choice themes have been building up to the overthrow of Reaper tech and the Reapers themselves. If the Mass Relays, Citadel, and Reapers didn't blow up, I would have been disappointed. It's been said in the past games that the mass relays and Citadel are there precisely so that we develop along preordained paths, so throwing those shackles off would be the whole point of making sure that future species could be self-determining. Yes, the galaxy will never be the same again, but that's kind of the point.

TL;DR: agree to disagree. Yes, I would have liked more explanation of the story/outcome (even just something like this but, you know, more serious), as the Retake ME people say, but I liked the endings as is, and it's my opinion that providing a different ending would be detrimental.

I will probably be called a major Biodrone for what I say here, but this is why I thought the endings (save for green) made SO much sense in the context of the game, or at the very least, in my head-canon. Major spoilers for anyone who hasn't finished it, duh.



IDK, I guess this is where the "every Shepard is different" thing comes in because my renegade "victory at any cost" Shep would TOTALLY choose the red ending. It was what everyone was expecting, after all--a way to destroy the Reapers, damn the consequences. My paragon "omg we have to save EVERYONE!" Shep probably wouldn't like any of the choices, so I understand how it can be out of character for her.



Yes, the Godkid's logic was totally wrong, but to me, it was a programming constraint. I mean, it had to be some sort of VI or AI itself, no? It cannot and will not think of truly novel ideas until it is fed to it, possibly even hard-wired, as the choices were via the Crucible. It tells you to choose between 3 sucky choices because it is not programmed to know anything else. Yes, my paragon Shep would probably have wanted to talk Godkid's ear off and convince it to call off the Reapers without color-coded explosions instead. And maybe my renegade Shep would want to tell the Godkid to fuck it and just take a chance with the combined fleets. But that's not what Godkid was programmed to do--it was probably only there to keep watch over the Citadel species and bring in the Reaper armada once the species got to dicking around with AI. The Crucible changed things a little, but the Catalyst is still constrained by its programming.

Now, before you say it doesn't make sense, even EDI and the Geth are bound by their programming constraints. You can change EDI's personality based on how Shep answers her questions, but even so, she mentions many times that she is still bound by her programming. An advanced VI/AI who has been stuck in the same mindset, and who has seen the same thing happen over and over, for millions of years would be even more bound by said programming, and therefore harder to convince.



Yes, we love Shep's indomitable will no matter what. But to me the whole of Mass Effect was less about that and more about about Shepard's willingness to make the difficult choices out of what was available and taking chances. It is still self-determination, but throughout each game your choices are limited by history--both yours and the galaxy's. I mean, the whole series itself tended towards just 2 or 3 choices for each event (paragon, renegade, and neutral IF there was one), right? And sometimes, even if you think that isn't what YOUR Shep would do you have to make a choice anyway. So to me, the ending was just another extension of that. Shepard has been making sucky choices all they way through each game. In ME1, isn't it illogical that you can go back to save Kirrahe's group, but you still have to let Ashley/Kaidan die? Can't you at least choose to sacrifice Kirrahe for Ash/Kaidan instead of sacrificing them WITH your teammate? In ME2, why are the only choices destroy or send to Cerberus? Where is the "send to Alliance/Council" option? In ME3 you have to screw over a lot of people--the Salarians to get the Krogan, the Geth to get the Quarians (if you don't have enough points) or vice versa. Sometimes you win and get them both. A lot of the times, you don't and somebody dies. But even if it sucks, Shepard makes the best out of the limited choices given anyway.

Yes the whole series gives you a lot of choices, and we can see how it affects everything on a personal level throughout the entire game. However, those choices ARE tiny details compared to the history of the whole galaxy and the cycle that has lasted for millions of years, and yes, that is the whole--albeit disappointing to many--point. Shepard is, after all, only one person. There's just something very poetic about that and I was glad that it wasn't all "rah rah the day is saved." I was disappointed at the implementation, but goddamit, I like my space operas tragic.

I do agree that the "green" ending made no sense though, although like I mentioned, I was expecting space magic to a point. Maybe it would be better if that was the "fuck it, let's take a chance with the fleets; everyone gets destroyed, and the cycle continues" ending instead.



Aaaand, the ending animations was why I said I didn't like the lazy implementation/animation. I can understand why Joker would try to leave. The Citadel blew up, with Shep presumably on it and dead, and between checking if Shepard is alive or trying to outrun the explosion to save the ENTIRE REST OF THE CREW, Joker would probably pick the rest of 'em, you know? I can't understand how your teammates suddenly got on the ship either--I think I would have been better if Bioware put the dying scene instead for more bawling my eyes out factor... as if I didn't do that enough already. The Geth/EDI dying doesn't bother me--both of them are a full-fledged AI with Reaper code (EDI incorporates the Reaper IFF, remember?), so it is understandable that if the red explosion destroys anything Reaper-y, then they'd get caught in it too. It's just the, to use HokutoCorpse's term, Skittles part that bothers me. It's lazy that they just reused almost everything instead of creating whole new animations for each end, but not necessarily bad in the way that most people are complaining about.

Like I said, I can understand why people are majorly upset/disappointed and think it sucked, and even I understand the outcry, even if I don't agree that it was THAT bad. But the levels of nerd rage it's getting--people bombing review scores, even complaining to the BBB and FTC!--is, IMO, wholly unwarranted. I guess it all boils down to whether you can make sense of it with your head-canon or not, and whether you like tragic open ended things or not. I can, and I do, but I can understand why others hate it.

I do love this game--it was an epic journey and I'm not disappointed at the endings themselves, only the seemingly rushed/lazy implementation and animation.

Space godkid/AI made sense. The red and blue endings made a whole lot of sense to me. The green ending did not make a lick of sense to me, but sci-fi IS full of space magic and plot holes, so I was sort of expecting something like that.

Spoilery side note: I didn't like the blue ending initially, but after reading this fanfic, I was like omg, this totally makes sense in that sort of creepy dystopian way. I can totally imagine Shepard becoming the new Catalyst.

I mean, of course other people are entitled to say "omg it sucks WORST ENDING EVER" but to me, it was fine and didn't really warrant the levels of nerd rage it's getting.



I know, right? Soldier, eugh. I usually play as Femshep Vanguards/Sentinels. Tried Sheploo as a soldier and I had to stop because 1) couldn't stand the voice acting and 2) soldier class is boring. Engineer is easily the best class, but with the way I play it's a bit OP.

Can't answer most of your other questions, since I'm a girl, lol. But material-wise, as long as you stick to phthalate-free and BPA-free materials, it should be fine. They do label the toys as such, so it's easy to find safe materials. Silicone is the best, imo, but other materials can be ok too. For a primer on sex toy materials, see here.

For care, most sex toys only need to be washed gently with soap and water, so it's not that hard.

Uh, Plan B is NOT chemical abortion. It's birth control. Medicinal abortion would be something like MTX or RU-486.

This is why we NEED more sex education in this goddamn country.

My ME3 N7 CE is coming in tomorrow. Boo shipping. =< But yay for acronym salad.

Well if he means "classical" in the sense that it stands the test of time after hundreds of years, well, we'll never know in our lifetimes. I think some rap does have the potential to do so, just like some poems still speak to us years and centuries after they were written.

Favorite cereal: Honey Bunches of Oats, with marshmallows stolen from Lucky Charms.

@Circe: I don't enjoy a lot of rap, but I definitely love old school rap where it's all about the message and the flow of words together. Stuff like Jurassic 5, The Roots--it's poetry. I may not necessarily like it, but the musician and writer in me appreciates the art anyway.

They feel like despair and loathing.

Eh, I have fantasies about some male friends but not others. Heck, since I'm bi, I have fantasies about some of my female friends too. More than my male friends, actually.

But it doesn't matter whether I find them sexually attractive or not; sexual feelings do not preclude them from being my friends. I can respect them for who they are and not reduce them to their fuckability.

But that's part of what psychiatrists doooooo~

I mean, not to junkies, unless it's part of a methadone treatment regiment...

edit: and ohai to Epi!

Ah, university stress, how I miss it...