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Occasionally as an Australian you'll be talking to someone from overseas, and you'll discover a common phrase you took for granted is, in fact, not universally known outside of our country.

Turns out casually dropping "fuck me dead" into conversation will give unsuspecting Americans an aneurism.

The more you know.

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Everyone rightfully goes straight to recruiting Wrex because he's, you know, Wrex, but I love how if you wait until you take down Fist he'll stop Shepard by the elevator. Shepard and their squadmates think they're going to have some trouble when Wrex confronts them, but instead of him getting angry, he instead says he's not going to take credit for a job he didn't do and gives Shepard the money he got for said job! After that, he just politely asks if he can come with! It's such a little scene that hardly anyone sees, but I love how much it says about Wrex as a character.

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To add to this (and hoping not to intrude or derail the post), two things : something that's been said already, but which should be stressed, is that not only are fascist regimes inefficient, lawless and corrupt, they are terrible at winning wars, which is a big priority for fascists themselves and those attracted by them. Fascist regimes either lose wars (e.g. Germany and Italy during WW2) or actively go out of their way to avoid them to actually last (e.g. Franco's Spain). I first came across this perspective in this blog post by military historian Brett Devereaux, which I encourage you to read for the full argument.

Second, the obvious counter-argument from bootlickers would be : okay, but what if we get a real savior type, a strong hero who's infallible ? Not the dysfunctional idiots like Hitler and friends. To this I'd say : a) I sincerely believe fascism can't produce or attract anything but deadly, dysfunctional idiots, for hard-baked ideological reasons already outlined by others above. Ironically, it's an "ideology" of ressentiment.

Moreover, b) even if you look at authoritarian (not fascist) regimes with actual competent people running the show, the problem is at least twofold : 1) no one rules forever and no one is competent at everything. Even the most competent strongman can't know everything, do everything, run everything, and when they need to be replaced, it's a horror show : during power transitions, you're statistically likelier to get various shades of incompetency than in a democracy, if the regime survives, and it usually gets violent fast. Primogeniture in European-style monarchies (eldest male kid gets the funny hat) was a huge improvement over the Roman Empire's form of power transfer (e.g. none, i.e. down the line, whoever has the biggest legion left standing gets the funny hat), because there was no doubt as to who was gonna be king and no way for outside players to subvert the system ; to my knowledge, it's literally the one and only thing old-style monarchies are good at, and even then sometimes that fails (e.g. when your only heir is your adult brother, or the heir can't be defended from the spare, etc).

And 2) to come back to the subject at hand (people in charge of military policy in authoritarian regimes who are also competent at what they are doing), I'll take one of my fave examples, certified competent™ man French Cardinal de Richelieu from the horror show that is 17th century Europe. If you want a good start, I suggest reading this extreeeeeeeeeemely long essay/article on Richelieu's policies and principles, but basically, at the time Richelieu becomes chief minister of king Louis XIII, the main problem he's facing is : how do I keep France's long-standing enemies, the Habsburgs, from invading and conquering us, when a) they are currently the leaders of the biggest and wealthiest colonial empire with frankly unbelievable amounts of wealth paid in blood by the conquered Natives, and b) just about 100% of France's land borders are snugly next to Habsburg lands — meaning that France is quite literally surrounded by a hostile power with considerably more resources ?

The long and short of it is that, at great cost to the French people, and because Richelieu was quite competent, and because Spain's decision-makers were very unlucky, France wasn't subsumed by the Habsburgs. But a close examination of the situation will reveal that, at every single point, Richelieu was undermined by the various military officers he chose, because he was faced with the problem every single authoritarian leader has to face (and which is my entire point) : you need to give power to incompetent people who are loyal to you over competent people of questionable loyalty. Because in authoritarian regimes, the person in charge needs first to survive politically in order to be able to direct wars, and since your power is personal rather than institutional (i.e. you could be replaced at any time if you look weak enough to enough people with power of their own), staying in power in the medium-to-long term overrides what should be the only concern for winning wars : actually winning wars. Meanwhile, in a liberal democracy, your institutional position is stable, since the only way you can lose power is either by waiting out the end of your term or by quitting.

tl;dr : fascism is terrible at winning wars and at staying in power, it attracts and produces deadly incompetent idiots, and even if, by some frankly unthinkable happenstance a competent person was in charge (again, that's with obvious ethical and logistical failures aside), that Strong Independent Hypercompetent Man would run into the problems hard-baked into all autocracies — the need to have competent delegates and the inability to appoint them. If only there was a regime whose creation had been largely kickstarted by the intrinsic failures of autocracies, and in response to them— OH WAIT

The supposed efficiency and effectiveness of fascism was always propaganda: in reality, fascist regimes were deeply inefficient, hobbled by interpersonal rivalry, had institutions weakened or totally subverted by the personalist nature of leadership, and were deeply corrupt and lawless.

So it really, really bugs me how so much speculative fiction and even casual discourse since has taken WW2 era propaganda about fascism at face value, and depicted authoritarianism generally and fascism in particular as an intrinsic tradeoff between the chaos and disorder of liberty and the order of repression. Fascism is not orderly! That was always a lie. There is a reason right-wing authoritarian regimes have mid performance at best and at worst collapse due to infighting and military defeat—they suck at running states!

Democracy is the ideology of order and stability. Democracy provides for stable succession and can sustain rule of law in ways personalist rule cannot. Democracy can create avenues of accountability to reduce corruption that authoritarian (or even one-party rule) could never contemplate. “Democracy is chaos” is a lie invented by fascists to try to discredit liberal principles, and the apparent “chaos” of interwar democracies was often caused by the fascists themselves because they did not believe in liberalism.

I think of this most often in the context of video games about politics where it is assumed that authoritarian governance gives you efficiency bonuses at some cost to happiness or freedom—but I think these mechanics are backward. Fascism and authoritarianism are good for the narrow ruling clique at the top, the people they personally enrich, but they make for brittle and weak states, and they often fuck over even the narrow ethnic group or core citizenry whose will they are supposed to be channeling. Starting World War II was very bad for almost all Germans and Italians!

By contrast political scientists debate if a consolidated liberal democracy has ever deconsolidated, and the biggest challenges to democratic systems of government have tended to come when those systems are illiberal (as before the American Civil War), or being sabotaged by most participants (as Weimar Germany, where neither the left nor the right were really interested in democracy).

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The Empire of Preys

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It is 2166CE when Voice-Dalatrass Tschastarissi finally dies, rearing the Salarian Union awake from the passive slumber of her decades-old regime. But while the iron-willed dalatrass Linron plots her route to power with the aid of a reluctant turian diplomat assisting from the shadows, her daughter Jurlan loses herself to the past, uncovering dormant truths that may better stay untouched —and several stars away, two asari sisters pressured by money and haunted by false-starts must decide whether to let their ambition threaten far more than their lives alone.

This is a story about the empires that cling on.

Read now!

***

The Empire of Preys is part 2 of the Halfway Homes series based on the Mass Effect universe. It is both a prequel and sequel to Halfway Home, but can also be enjoyed as a standalone. Contrary to Halfway Home, it will be released hopefully at the rate of one chapter per month, but realistically: whenever a chapter is ready.

It's a gen fic with a side-serving of romance (lesbian and straight), a deep-dive into my weird headcanons for salarian, asari and turian culture, an exploration of neo imperialism and the casual devastation that comes with soft power --and what happens when soft power no longer suffices.

This is a multi PoV story with the following cast:

Rhanda T'selvi, ex asari commando and current security freelancer on Illium

Nagatha T'selvi, ex financial adviser and current unemployed babysitter for her sister's daughter

Nemore Linron, aka the dalatrass Linron, yes this one

Jurlan Linron, her miracle of a daughter, a case in genetics whose image shapes opinion across the entire galaxy

Auren Cæpta, a chronically ill turian diplomat sent on Sur'kesh for a critical secret mission

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Thanks for all of this @assorted-things !

Salarian Image Reference Post - Virmire + UNC Assignments

Part 1//Part 2//Part 3//Part 4

This should be the last post in the series!

One of the indoctrinated salarians who attacks you in the Virmire base.

Private Menos Avot, of the Third Infiltration Regiment STG. You encounter him in the cells inside the base.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to get any good images of this guy, because he was shooting at me at the time! He's a sort of blue-grey colour.

Lieutenant Ganto Imness, whom you find in the second lot of cells.

I love that these imprisoned, indoctrinated salarians, whom most people probably wouldn't bother stopping to look at, all have different faces! I notice that they are all a much duller, more desaturated colour than most of the salarians we have seen up to this point. I wonder if this is an effect of the indoctrination + being kept in a cell with no natural light? White's tree frogs (among others) can apparently change colour depending on environmental factors such as light levels, temperature and stress, so I wonder if salarians are also able to do this? It might perhaps serve as an in-universe explanation for Kirrahe being such a different colour in ME3...

To round things off, here are some salarian mercenaries from (IIRC) the Helena Blake assignment, plus Dr Saleon from Garrus' loyalty mission.

I hope people have enjoyed these posts or that they have some useful reference images for artists!

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Salarian Image Reference Post - Captain Kirrahe and the STG

Part 1//Part 2//Part 3

I may or may not have taken a horrendous amount of screencaps of my Shepard's new best friend...

I've included one where you can see how the markings on the back of his head look... I have had to restrain myself from including too many images of him because. Look at him.

This chap is also a very nice shade of green. Unfortunately I don't think he survived Virmire, as he doesn't appear on the Normandy afterwards!

I love that the salarian NPCs have such a variety of face shapes rather than being different textures/colours applied to the same model <3

Here is Commander Rentola. I imagine that the colour of the stripes on the STG uniform denotes rank in some way, as he and Kirrahe have differently-coloured uniforms from the rest of the men.

This NPC is one of the darkest-coloured salarians I came across.

Aside from Kirrahe and Rentola, all of the salarian officers seen on board the Normandy after completing Virmire are different from the officers we see without their helmets while on the planet.

For completeness' sake, here are some images of the STG uniform with helmet from various angles + in motion.

The next post will cover the rest of Virmire + a couple of miscellaneous UNC missions.

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Salarian Image Reference Post - Noveria and Feros

Part 1//Part 2

I was able to combine these two locations as they don't have as many salarian NPCs as the Citadel.

Here's Administrator Anoleis from some different angles. I don't think I've come across his eye colour on any other salarians?

Some different angles of one of the Port Hanshan NPCs.

The hotel doorman has an interesting face shape.

This is the salarian businessman who is trying to get information on Anoleis. I've included several different angles so you can see how his markings kind of wrap around to the side of his head.

Here is Dr Palon from the Peak 15 base.

Ledra, the merchant from the Feros colony. He seems to have a more tan/yellow undertone than a lot of the darker brown-coloured salarians I noticed, who tend to be more orange/russet-tinted. (Compare the Port Hanshan NPC from further up this post, or Chorban from the Scan the Keepers assignment.)

That's all for Feros and Noveria - the next part will cover Captain Kirrahe and his STG team.

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Salarian Image Reference Post - The Citadel Part 2 - Flux, Chora's Den and the Citadel Tower

Part 1 of this post can be found here.

Flux's bartender is one of my favourite random background salarians. I didn't even try to adjust for the lighting here, but I love the contrast between his red eyes and the light blue markings...

Some assorted images of Flux customers - the last two have the same markings, seen here from different angles.

This guy in Chora's Den is actually a really nice olive green colour, but you have to crank the brightness in the photo mode up pretty high to see it!

This guy looks pretty similar to Flux's bartender but it's hard to get the camera close enough to see him properly.

This salarian also seems to use the same model as Flux's bartender.

To round off the Citadel part of this series, here are a variety of salarians found in the Citadel Tower. The topmost NPC out of these four is I think the only salarian I spotted with that specific colour combination (lilac and magenta) for their face markings.

The next part of the series will cover Noveria and Feros. I will update each installment with links to the others as I go along!

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Salarian Image Reference Post - The Citadel Part 1 - C-Sec, The Presidium and the Wards

I've been taking a frankly worrying number of screencaps of the colour, pattern and face shape variations in ME1's salarians during my first playthrough, so I'm going to collate some of them as a reference, as suggested by @redsafalloutfan! I will edit as I go along with links to the other parts of this series. Buckle up, because this is likely to be a very long post...

All of the salarians hanging around in C-Sec seem to be light blue - for whatever reason this seems to be the only area where you can find salarians in this colour.

Here's a couple of Chorban, who gives you the Scan the Keepers assignment, when you meet him in the Markets. It's kind of hard to adjust for the lighting in some of these areas, and I haven't done so for some in Flux and Chora's den especially, so bear that in mind in terms of specific colours.

This guy is probably the first salarian you're likely to run into when you first visit the Citadel - you can find him in the area just outside the ambassadors' quarters.

You can overhear this chap talking to a human woman about how the Keepers keep rearranging her office.

Some more Presidium NPCs.

This guy is one of my favourite Presidium NPC salarians - I love the contrast between the magenta markings and his eye colour. (Side note - does anyone with more lore knowledge than me know whether these type of markings are natural or some kind of tattoo/make-up? I couldn't find anything on the wiki...)

Here's the salarian attendant to the asari Consort.

Here's Schells the gambler - ngl I still feel kind of bad about not helping him build his cheating device...

I think Morlan (shown above) and Schells have the same face model - I like to imagine they're related in some way...

These NPCs from the wards/markets look older than some of the other salarians you can find.

I've had to split the section on the Citadel into two parts - Part 2, covering Flux, Chora's Den and the Citadel Tower can be found here.

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Watch: Carl Sagan schooled B.o.B. on his flat Earth theory more than 30 years ago

Follow @the-future-now

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i was informed op is a terf so here's that photo of gisèle pelicot again, with source. merci gisèle ❤️

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Rhianna Pratchett confirming her father wouldn't be a """gender critical""" activist (whatever the hell those GCs stand for) if he were still alive

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i wish i could see this picture for the first time again

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Life on the Seafloor

Some habitats are very consistent from planet to planet across the universe. The bottoms of deep oceans generally experience similar conditions—extremely high water pressure, zero sunlight, and a constant rain of organic debris known as marine snow. Thus, organisms on the deep sea floor of Veteris developed common traits in parallel to their counterparts on Earth. The darkness eliminates the need for most pigments, so most creatures are rather drab. In order to grab bits of food from the water column, many utilize grasping appendages covered in sticky setae. For every scrap of nourishment that can be found here, there is a creature that has evolved to exploit it. Far from being a desolate wasteland, this seemingly inhospitable environment is full of bizarre, perfectly-adapted inhabitants.

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I can't stress enough how much the John Green debacle was an early example of how cancel culture and purity culture combine to make people feel righteously justified to engage in harassment.

John Green, during his time on tumblr, committed the heinous sins of...being neurodivergent and talking openly about it, earnestly interacting with fans in a very direct and unfiltered way, and writing about teenagers navigating first love and sexuality while he himself was an adult. The worst things he ever did were be a little cringe or misspeak, for which he was always prompt to apologize (often whether he really needed to or not).

Yet despite the former two being things tumblr claimed to love and the last one being true of 99.99% of YA authors, in this case a large segment of tumblr users steeped in the early 2010s resurgence of purity culture decided that these things were suspicious and predatory, and used that as an excuse to justify some truly awful behavior.

Which is really all that cancel culture is: the normalization and even celebration of the process of misapplying morality or ethics to dehumanize someone for the express purpose of justifying whatever pain and suffering you want to inflict upon them. Basically, deciding "this person is bad, so I am exempt from affording them basic respect and human dignity, and am allowed to cross any and all otherwise uncrossable lines in order to punish them without damaging my own moral or ethical standing."

Contrary to popular tumblr lore, the infamous "cock monologue" was not the sum total of the harassment, or even the worst of it. Callout blogs issued long lists of "receipts" about how terrible John Green was, most if not all of which were either taken out of context or completely refutable. His works were torn to shreds by people who'd never read them, as evidenced by much of the criticism being obviously and blatantly counter to the actual contents of the books.

Not that it mattered. Once the John Green hate party reached a certain level of critical mass, it became less about who he actually was or what he'd done, and more about proving you were a good person by hating him. That's the natural conclusion of cancel culture, after all: virtue signalling by identifying yourself in opposition to the cancelled parties. They're bad, and I'm good, so I hate them! Or, more often: They're bad, and I hate them, so I'm good!

Before it was over with, John Green had been accused, with no evidence, of being everything from a Nazi to a pedophile and subjected to hate mail and death threats. He eventually left the site for the sake of his own mental health, and because he no longer felt comfortable engaging directly with fans in the same way he once had.

Yet even now, with the benefit of hindsight, and even among those who ostensibly reject purity culture and condem bullying and harassment, very few on tumblr take what was done to John Green as seriously as it should be taken or condemn it as thoroughly as it should be condemned. Which I think is something we need to at least consider doing, given the increasing rise of purity and cancel culture online, and given the recent influx of professional creators eager to interact with fans on a more direct level than they have on other social media.

And my concern is not purely, or even primarily, for the Mike Flanagans and Lynda Carters of the world. I'm far more concerned, actually, for the small, independent or self-published creators in this space, and how much even a very small level of visibility gives too many people a feeling of carte blanche to engage in harassment.

I myself have less than 3k followers on here, a handful of popular posts, and zero notoriety or consequence outside of tumblr whatsoever, and I've been repeatedly told to kill myself for saying such innocuous things as "I don't think censorship is the cure for the world's evils" and "maybe learning the history of communities you want to participate in would be a good idea."

Thankfully, all it took for me to stop the harassment that came my way was to block those few individuals. But there have been many instances over the years of small creators or just random tumblr users that got a bit popular being stalked, doxxed, swatted, and harassed to the point of leaving the site and dealing with serious mental health issues as a result. It has never been just John Green. John Green isn't even the worst example. And tumblr has never learned its lesson.

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hey look over there what's that *throws these at you*

disco elysium ultra compressed for free

sacred and terrible air english translation // group ibex version

disco elysium art book

full soundtrack by sea power // bandcamp version

disco elysium script explorer with audio

FAYDE (more accessible wiki of dialogue trees but without audio)