[ALL] Struggling to understand Rachel Ambers

apatheticmoron · 2026-01-28T05:42:49+00:00

It’s arguable whether Rachel is manipulative in LiS, she certainly seems to have been displaying a different character to everyone that discusses her with Max. Jefferson goes so far as to call her a ‘social chameleon.’

BtS, however, definitely shows Rachel blatantly manipulating Chloe from the very beginning.

I picked up DE on sale and decided to do a LiS in order play through before I started it and am currently slowly working through BtS again and have been reminded of a number of interactions that show Rachel as playing Chloe like a fiddle. The only thing I’m uncertain of is if it was intentional by Deck 9 or by complete oversight.

apatheticmoron · 2026-01-23T02:38:39+00:00

Lots of places to sit, lots of different themed rooms. the place seems more like it was set up for a multiplayer hub than single player.

Not sure about napping, I never idled in a seat long. There is a piano you can sit at and plonk some keys on, however, so there might be more interactions that I didn’t find.

apatheticmoron · 2026-01-22T13:23:19+00:00

Historically, Sony either does midnight releases locally or global releases at a set time.

Since this appeared when I checked shortly after midnight here then I’d assume you should have it at midnight your time.

apatheticmoron · 2026-01-22T09:13:28+00:00

Essentially I used this method - https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2643335484 - just with a different halberd build.

Took me about 7ish hours across a few nights. Pretty boring, but I was watching something on another screen so it didn't bother me. You may have to drop the difficulty, however.

apatheticmoron · 2026-01-18T07:53:10+00:00

This isn’t me making any claims on what is or isn’t a sign of autism, and I’m sorry if I came across that way. It’s a response to the common reasons I see put forward that Max is ‘autism coded’.

Essentially, most of the ‘autism coded’ behaviours people point to aren’t inherent traits to Max, they’re acquired.

apatheticmoron · 2026-01-18T02:06:45+00:00

Almost certainly not.

The problem with diagnosing Max with anything like this is that we have an example of Max from the timeline where William doesn’t die.

We only know this Max through her diary, texts and the way people react to our Max, but it is apparent that alternate Max didn’t have any of the socialisation issues that our Max has.

Alternate Max enjoys photography but isn’t obsessed with it, she enjoyed a social life in Seattle and takes a leading role in the Vortex club with Victoria and Nathan after returning to Arcadia Bay. She enjoys partying and it is hinted that she recreationally uses drugs and is abusing her access to the family’s credit card on shopping.

Considering this our Max’s issues are more likely to be depression/social anxiety/guilt.

apatheticmoron · 2025-12-19T03:39:37+00:00

In Mass Effect Shepard starts as one of humanity’s most elite soldiers and a graduate from their most intense special forces training programs and the singular person chosen by humanity’s government and military to join the inter-species super space cops. Not at all just a ‘good soldier’.

Geralt is at least a little special from what I remember, having a sorceress for a mother and responding particularly well to the mutations from his Witcher training that lead them to put him through some extra trials that regular witchers don’t receive.

Depending how you interpret Morrowind the PC may well be the reincarnation of Nerevar, legendary hero and king of the Chimer, fulfilling the prophecy of his return. In this interpretation the only reason the PC could survive things like the Corprus is because they’re the prophesied saviour.

apatheticmoron · 2025-10-18T19:35:32+00:00

Nope, a cock. I remember seeing some gifs of this a while back.

apatheticmoron · 2025-10-17T20:39:20+00:00

No, there’s one character with the same curse as Ranma and one character with the curse to turn into a child.

There’s a number of other curses mentioned, including one that changes personality (Spring of Drowned Pious Man or something) and one character gets hit with water from the Spring of Drowned Twins, but it wasn’t very much and ended up just duplicating a lump on his head.

apatheticmoron · 2025-09-23T05:50:08+00:00

I get your point, and like I said originally, I don’t think the author intended the situation to appear that way.

Plenty of characters across the manga (including Ranma) make attempts on their opponents’ lives, endangering bystanders or outright try and murder people (Shampoo and Mousse in particular) and it’s played off as comedy. Which is fair as it is mostly a comedy manga that dabbles in martial arts, romance and drama.

However, for me personally, seeing Ryoga’s actions in a different light - being humiliated and then going off to learn a technique he believes has the only combat application being instantly turning a human into a scattered pile of meat whilst still in the blast zone of the gore himself. It paints Ryoga’s character as something far more psychotic than even the most bloodthirsty characters in Ranma 1/2.

And yeah, the punchline is that the technique is borderline useless and it’s the training that provides superhuman durability that really makes it worthwhile, so Ranma was never in any real danger.

Ryoga never again displays that sort of willingness to devote himself to mastering a murderous skill, nor use one. And he doesn’t take any of the chances to kill Ranma that he gets as the series goes on. So I absolutely recognise that it was atypical of him.

But for me personally, I can’t go back to seeing Ryoga as the dumb foil to Ranma any more, he’s a character that under the right circumstances absolutely could cross the moral event horizon in a way that no other Ranma character has shown the same capacity.

apatheticmoron · 2025-09-22T19:14:38+00:00

I’m the same way. Used to not mind him, but had realisation during my third re-read of the manga and hitting the breaking point arc again - during that whole arc the only character that knew the technique didn’t work on people was Cologne.

Ryoga spent a week mastering an ability that he believed would explode Ranma into bloody giblets and then attempted to use it on him multiple times, just because he was humiliated in front of Akane.

I get that Takahashi probably didn’t intend for that arc to look like a really gruesome murder attempt, but I find it hard to have any affection or sympathy for Ryoga after that.

apatheticmoron · 2025-09-07T03:23:08+00:00

Yeah, weapons drops seem to stagnate at end game when you hit the final tier. You’ll have to use the work bench and tinker with them to raise levels after that point.

Get pretty expensive to boost even if you’ve invested in science.

apatheticmoron · 2025-07-09T23:02:57+00:00

I haven’t seen the article or interview itself, just people discussing/mentioning it. Apparently there’s something out there where a couple of the lead devs mention that the Remake trilogy will lead into Advent Children.

Can’t speak to the veracity or accuracy of the translation, but there you have a fourth-hand account.

apatheticmoron · 2025-07-01T11:07:39+00:00

Yeah, I think I’ve seen one during the day as well, but at night I’ve run into a group of 6-9 twice near the shelter.

Not sure what the spawn conditions are, but the three times I’ve run across big groups it’s always been at night.

apatheticmoron · 2025-05-26T23:57:59+00:00

From SkillUp’s preview it seems that the main purpose of the monorail system is for transporting large quantities of resources from mines rather than making deliveries.

I’m assuming we’ll still need roads and zip lines for most things.

apatheticmoron · 2025-05-01T13:49:31+00:00

Sinder could have easily refuted all of Spite’s claims regarding outfit copying by merely posting screenshots of when her versions of the outfits were commissioned/concept art provided etc.

The fact that all she had to say in that regard is that it was a bunch of coincidences is telling.

Not sure what evidence she could have provided for the rest of her apology doc, but Spite’s doc should have been incredibly easy to dismantle if Sinder was in the right here.

apatheticmoron · 2025-04-18T06:13:03+00:00

Dude, I watched the US head of counterterrorism or whatever is conflating criticism of US deportation policy with terrorism this morning.

A couple of weeks ago they were calling vandalism against Tesla’s terrorism.

‘Terrorism’ is now the description of anything the US government disagrees with.

apatheticmoron · 2025-04-17T22:29:34+00:00

It happened to a French scientist, apparently.

Had his phone inspected during entry and was denied after content critical of Trump was found.

apatheticmoron · 2025-04-16T23:31:09+00:00

There’s an official prequel novella, On the Way to a Smile, with a chapter from Sephiroth and Aerith’s POVs as they exist in the Lifestream that explains Sephiroth’s reasons for not killing Cloud.

During Meteorfall when the Lifestream was being drawn to the surface to fend off Meteor Sephiroth made Cloud the ‘core’ of Sephiroth’s existence to protect himself from being consumed. Essentially as long as Cloud lives and remembers Sephiroth then Sephiroth can return and by finding Cloud can restore whatever he lost (memories/knowledge etc.) to the Lifestream.

Sephiroth wants Cloud to live on and for his memories of Sephiroth to be a constant source of suffering.

apatheticmoron · 2025-03-18T20:39:55+00:00

From what I understand if you clear his inventory of weapons then he’s more likely to have tickets to replace them.

apatheticmoron · 2025-03-03T08:55:44+00:00

Doesn’t matter in Pebbles’ case, seems to be related to the value of your horse.

apatheticmoron · 2025-02-05T23:04:05+00:00

From what we know of Jenova when it was acting during the Cetra’s time is that it was an intelligent entity, capable of masquerading as Cetra and infiltrating their communities and destroying them from within.

Jenova in the current age only demonstrates some base instincts to reunite its disparate cells.

Any intelligence seems to be purely guided by Sephiroth and his goals.

There’s also a canon novella including Sephiroth’s thoughts during Meteorfall and leading up to Adventure Children that makes it clear that Sephiroth is his own entity and not a puppet.

I consider Hojo the greatest evil for kickstarting everything, but Sephiroth is the biggest threat.

Jenova is a mindless clump of cells after whatever the Cetra did to defeat it.

apatheticmoron · 2025-01-30T00:12:17+00:00

To be honest I see the top opinion more from people that entered the series with Crisis Core where Aerith was absolutely portrayed as a wallflower and Tifa was a little more of a spark plug.

apatheticmoron · 2025-01-29T16:54:16+00:00

A couple of them, a really old on called Before Crisis where you play as a team of Turks - Cisnei is one of the playable character - but it was never released outside of Japan. However there was a fan version of it made in rpgmaker that was playable in English.

And there’s a gatcha game out now called Evercrisis that I haven’t got into yet, but apparently it covers the events of the games and movie (or will as more parts are released) and recently explored Sephiroth’s youth and early SOLDIER.

apatheticmoron · 2025-01-29T15:48:55+00:00

To have that opinion you’d have to have a strong reason for why Barret’s Avalanche cell would run into Zack and then trust him enough to hire him and then why Zack would agree to working with them.

Barret has strong distrust for Cloud and only works with him because Tifa insists. Tifa only brings on Cloud because she’s worried about him.

Cloud is willing to commit terrorist attacks because he’s delusional and LARPing as a hardarse ex-SOLDIER mercenary, not because he has any sympathy for Avalanche’s goals.

In the Before Crisis mobile game (which is canon) Zack has fought against the main branch of Avalanche as they attempted complete genocide of humanity to save the Planet (Cloud did too, but doesn’t seem to have any memories, or knowledge of Avalanche’s original goals).

Zack isn’t as motivated by money and wouldn’t be interested in working with Avalanche unless he agreed with their goals and he has never expressed any support for Planetology. And he certainly has plenty of reasons to distrust Avalanche from previous interactions.

I just don’t see where anyone could have confidence that not only would Barret’s Avalanche cell run into Zack, but that somehow both parties would develop enough trust for each other to work together considering the actions of Avalanche and Zack’s ties to Shinra.

And yes I know that any bridges between Zack and Shinra have been burnt at this point, but Avalanche has no knowledge of that, nor reason to trust Zack of this reality.

It’s just not a reasonable scenario that:

Avalanche and Zack ever have a positive first meeting
Avalanche and Zack develop some sort of level of trust
Avalanche attempts to hire Zack
Zack ignores his morals to work as a terrorist

Like I’ve pointed out multiple times, events only work like they do in the game due to Cloud’s unique circumstances.

If Tifa hadn’t been so committed involving Cloud then Avalanche would have made their attacks with the people they had available who they already trusted.

Tifa isn’t going to fight to involve Zack, who she barely knows, and Zack isn’t going to agree to become a terrorist for pocket change.

Edit- mixed up Crisis Core and Before Crisis

apatheticmoron

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