Hey y'all - I am looking to sell a couple of my cross-stitch pieces, specifically the Mass Effect ones: Spoiler: large images They could easily all go in a frame together, in a lovely spectrum of morality, but they would also be nice on their own. They are currently unbacked and unframed; I could frame one or more of them for you and ship them, or I could put iron-on backing onto them, or I could ship them as-is and you could do whatever you like with them. I'm asking $15 for each of them separately, $25 for two of them, and $30 for all three - and if you want them framed, that's $5 extra for a single or $10 extra for two or three together. Iron-on backing I'll add at no cost. Obviously shipping will be higher if they are framed - probably $10-15 to the States, not sure about anywhere else. If they are not framed I would imagine shipping would be no higher than $5 (and that's a high guess). Let me know if you are interested! I can ship them out as early as next week, depending on whether you want them framed (I'd need to go find a good one).
Anyone here know about a bug in me1 where eyelashes hover in front of the face? This only happens to humans, though, i'm not sure if the other races have eye lash textures.
ok so I've now reached Mass Effect 3, and while I really like the games, I am also extremely pissed off at Bioware. Spoiler: Angry rant about sexism, also ME3 spoilers It's absolute bullshit that one of the FIRST non-humanoid (aka not asari or quarian, which are both arguably very humanoid) alien female that we see in the core games is fuckin covered head to toe so you can't actually see any of her. I get that they were going for the shaman route, but. It feels like SUCH a goddamn copout. Like they're just throwing a cover on a krogan and going "LOL YOU CAN'T SEE WHAT SHE LOOKS LIKE OTHER THAN HER EYES, SO WE DON'T HAVE TO DESIGN AN ACTUAL FEMALE." And, like, I'd be absolutely fine if the females did look exactly like the males, but I KNOW that's not what's going on!! Because I've read bits where Bioware's like "we're struggling with how to make the females look feminine but still alien" GUESS WHAT FUCKOS, ALIEN SPECIES PROBABLY HAVE DIFFERENT IDEAS OF WHAT LOOKS FEMININE. FEMALES OF A DIFFERENT SPECIES DON'T HAVE TO BE SLIMMER/DIFFERENT. Look at a goddamn snake and tell me you can tell its gender right off the bat. Hint: it's really hard. And most of the difference isn't "the females are slimmer and curvier" The same goes for MOST SPECIES THAT AREN'T HUMANS. I'm just. So mad. There's not even really a reason she'd be covered head to toe in pristine robes. Because she was in a fucking medical lab. You know what makes doing medical tests really fuckin hard? LAYERS AND LAYERS OF CLOTHING. WHERE DID SHE GET THOSE CLOTHES, ANYWAYS? AND WHY ARE THEY IN SUCH GOOD SHAPE? And I'm mad about the implication that they were able to design these really cool looking aliens (turians, salarians, and krogans) and yet they didn't stop to think "maybe we should also design females at the same goddamn time" because who the fuck needs females, amirite?? /salt It's just. If you're designing a race, you NEED to think about what the females look like, right off the bat! Unless you're working with an asexual/agender race--but turians, salarians, and krogans are not that, they have males AND females, and so there should be ACTUAL FEMALES IN GAME FOR FUCK'S SAKE. Not having them in the game is ridiculously sexist, because it makes it feel like everyone "important" is male. Everyone you meet is male. It's so goddamn stupid. And the reasoning behind some of it feels really cheap and like really weak excuses. Like salarian females staying behind to do the politics, would be fine on its own, honestly, if it didn't come in conjunction with the krogan females also all being kept on their own planet, and then turian females being weirdly absent. And yes I know that there are a grand total of two salarian females that you can possibly meet before Eve, and I will give Bioware credit for that and for the fact that their faces look actually pretty similar to male faces! I do loke that! I'm just frustrated that both of those examples also hAPPEN to be ALSO covered in head to foot. Like. You CANNOT tell me that every single female salarian stays behind, that there isn't a single krogan female that decided 'fuck this noise I wanna explore the galaxy too' and don't even get me started on the bullshit of krogan "men are aggressive and females like to talk" I just. Ughhhhhhhhhh. There's so much latent sexism in all of this and it pisses me right the fuck off. Females being rare in ONE species might be fine. In THREE? That's too much.
@raginghearts I agree with you on most of what you're saying. The lack of female turians and salarians is absolutely inexcusable. Also, the fact that if you play Male Shep, you don't meet any powerful human women who are around you're rank is... rather insulting and frustrating. How easy would it have been to make Hackett or Anderson a woman? ME3 is my favorite game ever, but damn does it fuck up on the sexism front royally in a lot of ways. That being said, I actually really love how to krogan women are treated. Spoiler: possible ME3 spoilers At least in my interpretation, the narrative is showing how gender inequality, fueled mostly by women having little control over their own reproduction is toxic for a species and society. Krogan women are basically held hostage by the genophage in order to keep the species surviving. While it's a little extreme to say that no Krogan women would say fuck this shit I'm out, I think it does explain why few do and there's such segregation between the genders and such a different social structure. Men are disposable, reproductively speaking, and so there's no pressure to find other solutions. Women and children are far more valuable, and killing a child or a woman is much worse for the future of the species, and so their segregated society relies much more on diplomacy and talking. Even injuring a potential mother could have lasting effects on the population when they have to be constantly breeding just to break even. And this is /fixed/ when the genophage is cured. Women now have control over their reproduction and their reintegration with the men is good for the Krogan as a people. Of course, there are still problems with the narrative--it's not the pinnacle of feminism. While I'm a fan of Eve's design, raginghearts put it into context with the other races that does reveal a lot of sexism :((. I do think it's an interesting narrative though, and not one I'd expect to see in a lot of triple A games.
@Kittenly Spoiler: more potential ME3 spoilers lol I haven't yet gotten to the point where the genophage is cured, so I am actually looking forward to seeing some of that change brought about! And I do definitely understand the reasons behind the separation and I do see the potential for some sort of narrative/commentary there, but... the way it's pulled off, and in conjunction with all the other races having sort of similar "we keep the females separate because of reasons" feels a bit like it still has those sexist undertones. And I will admit part of my problem with that is that the whole "men are disposable but women are invaluable but only because of childbirth" thing doesn't feel like it makes sense to me, especially in a race that lays eggs instead of getting pregnant. Because in that case hey guess what, men make up half the requirements for childbirth! If you have no men then you have no babies. And there's no reason for females to be protected while they're pregnant because, hey, krogans lay eggs. To Bioware's credit, though, I DO really like the idea that was presented in ME2 of it being an HONOR to be chosen by the females to go breed. That was a neat idea and I wish it had been a bit more prevalent. Like, if it had been emphasized more that maybe krogan females are even more terrifying than the males and you don't dare go against their wishes because they will fuck you up. Bunch of warlords, is what I'm saying. That would've been cool. Or like, maybe if while you were on Tuchanka in ME2 you came across a small band of rebel females who were just like "WE FITE U. WE FITE EVERYTHING. FUCK OFF" And I will agree that Eve's design is nice and if I were to take her design out of context, I'd love it. The outfit looks so cool and I like it and I do kind of like her being this mysterious figure. But in context it feels wrong :/
@raginghearts Spoiler: more ME3 Yeah, I don't think we're really in disagreement. Despite how much I like the quest, it DEFINITELY has unfortunate sexist undertones, especially in the context of how the rest of the females are treated. Also, the narrative tends to flipflop on the egg thing. Because Eve describes having stillborn. Which is not something I typically associate with eggs. And a lot of the narrative seems to imply a more pregnancy like than thousands of eggs. So either bioware forgot what they were going for or I really misinterpreted things. I'm not sure what I personally hc on that front :/
@Kittenly Bioware, forgetting their own lore and/or presenting two very contradictory facts? Must be Tuesday! Seriously I will never be over the fact that in Dragon Age they literally forgot an entire moon. Just. Suddenly there was only one moon instead of two. Personally I like the idea that krogans do lay eggs because it's just a bit less human. I also headcanon that they have a bit of a tadpole stage, because why the fuck not :'D
The Dragon Age world is a dark and grim one, full of dangers. Sometimes... a moon just doesn't show up again. Its family might grieve, but they have to move on. Nobody survives for long if they allow themselves to care too much about any one particular celestial object.
I have the trilogy and keep meaning to do a play through. I have it for the 360. Pretty sure this means I have the ending so awful that I don't even have current spoilers for it. Would I need to get a month of Live to find the revised ending...
No, the extended ending is free on the store front. It's classed as DLC, so you should be able to get it where ever you usually get DLC. The paid dlc (Citadel, From Ashes, and Leviathan) for ME3 are all borderline necessary. From Ashes and Leviathan add a ton to lore, and the Citadel is the best fucking thing I have ever played ever. It's kind of awkward starting ME3 without playing Arrival (ME2 DLC), but ehh. you get over it pretty fast.
I don't usually get DLC anywhere, because the only times I ever did were when I had XBox Live. :|a I can check out if the system lets me try to find the extended ending, though. I'll keep those in mind! Fortunately, I lost my ME1 save file, and got frustrated with the relatively generic ME2 Shepherd. So I'll be playing through all of them (and crying at the game mechanics change when I do). It'll be a little while til I hit ME3, especially when there's things like Minecraft and Undertale to distract me with their relatively shorter and combat-optional play styles.
Katrina Shepherd, colonist war hero vanguard is in progress. Eta things I don't miss: unskipable cut scenes. Eta 2 or accidentally skipping dialogue options in my impatience and reloading to get the good grenades. Twice.
ALSO the combat looks so smooth in this and I am super hype for that. I cannot wait. I'm literally vibrating with excitement over the goddamn combat, say nothing of the story yet.
If nothing else, the people going "it's gonna be just like Inquisition!!!!" are gonna get a rude awakening with the combat. Third person shooters play so differently from third-person rpgs that it really does affect the way you view the rest of the game. (And if I see one more FAKE MASS EFFECT FAN saying that they stole the individual ability cooldowns from Dragon Age and not Mass Effect 1, I will call them a fake fan to their face. In the pit. Meet me.)
I'm also really wild about the return to world exploration. The missions and terrain got a little repetitive in ME1, but god I loved the beauty and the breadth of the galaxy.
Right? Yeah, the Mako didn't handle very well, but I loved exploring in it. More than anything in the world, the exploration aspects of ME1 are what keep bringing me back to playing it instead of skipping it for the story. I think that's why I like the Firewalker DLC in ME2 so much too.
I didn't really "get" ME1 the first time I played it - got stuck at the Citadel and never moved forward. But I think the moment I really fell in love with it, during my second play attempt, was when I was trudging through some early side mission - possibly Rogue VI on Luna? - and accidentally looked up at the sky - and went oh shit. So lovely and big and lonely. That and the semi-plausible scifi science drew me in. Now I'm just talking about how much I like Mass Effect. But I guess that's not off-topic for this thread.
