#Andromeda problems

[3584-tropical-fish]

Last day! Thank you for running this @podcastgirlsweek !! It was very fun :)

Free space!

Just a doodle page of some of my faves that I spent far too much time on for a doodle page, but I like it

[lilithofpenandbook]

au where when a Death Eater is killed, they can actually not die, on one condition:

Their heart must be pure.

This doesn't mean they never ever did anything wrong. That's impossible if you're human. No, this means that whatever they've done, it's for a selfless reason. That whatever bad they've done for selfish reasons, they've fully regretted, repented, and set out for redemption. That in their heart of hearts, they are no true Death Eater, because true Death Eater have no compassion, or selfless love. Selfless Love is a pure thing, and if that exists in the heart, then they may survive being killed.

And there's another thing: they return to the physical state they were in before taking the Dark Mark. It's all effectively "wiped clean", as it were. Of course, the actions remain, as do the mental scars, but the physical body is now back to when it was still pure of this evil as a little nod to the purity of their heart.

During the second war, then, there are a few Death Eaters who do not die. But only the fewest:

The most famous example? Severus Snape, who is all but a mere child, barely touching adulthood. Who's small and underweight, whose body is still riddled with scars from the Good Guys. Who's so young it's frightening to think he became a death eater at this age because there's something so broken and fragile about him. How did he manage to survive through that?

And then... And then there's Bellatrix. Bellatrix Black.

Who... Who's a literal child.

[here-for-a-good-time-hopefully]

Anger management coach: What brings you to the class?

Andromeda: Because I got into a fight with my sister’s boyfriend

Coach: Tell me about this fight, what going on?

Andromeda: He’s a douche lord so I hit him

[secretsimpleness]

Storytime, when I started a second playthrough it was mainly because I craved sudoku. Female Ryder (custom), Scott Ryder / Mass Effect Andromeda (c) Bioware

[ask-princessandromeda]

Luke, ur dad's kinda hot tho-

Luke: That doesn’t excuse him a fucking asshole-

[nellasbookplanet]

Mass Effect is this really interesting case study of male-as-default vs female-as-default in non human species, because they give us such prominent examples of both.

Turians, salarians, and krogan all have women, yet none are seen on screen until the third game, and even then we get like, one of each in minor roles. Less prominent species like hanar, volus and elcor all have male voices, despite hanar being canonically genderless and volus' gender being considered a 'mystery'. It would've been easy to include female voice actors to any of these, or have an alien with a typically "male" sounding voice be referred to by she/her pronouns (frankly that would make sense for elcor and krogan, but by the time we finally get a krogan woman she sounds just like an ordinary human woman). And this isn't even getting into referring to genderless aliens with neutral pronouns, which seems to never have occurred to anyone as an option (fair enough, they/them pronouns weren’t exactly mainstream in 2007).

But no. The idea of gender as removed from human defaults to male, either visually, vocally, or in terms of pronouns. Voices meant to sound genderless, such as Legion and the hanar, still have male voice actors. None if of this is ever in-game commented upon. It’s just How It Is. The only species other than human in which we see a fairly equal balance of men to women is the quarians, interestingly one of the most human looking aliens outside of asari.

With the all female asari however, not only are they designed to look explicitly human (which they then in-game try to weasel themselves out of by going 'but ALL species find the asari hot, not just humans!' as if we don’t all have eyes), we are also beaten over the head with it constanly. Every single bar you walk into, there are half naked asari dancers. You are constantly hearing background chatter about how hot they are. A genderless character coded as female HAS to be explicitly and traditionally hot, while anything removed from that defaults to male.

The closest we get to non-human looking women is the rachni queen (which I'm guessing is only because of the age old trope of the queen of an insect hive mind) and EDI before she is given a body (at which point we are again beaten over the head with 'non-human coded as female (EDI) has to be hot' vs 'non-human coded as male (geth) get to be actually removed from human').

[enbysiriusblack]

thinking about how different but also similar andromeda and sirius' disownment/running away was.

andromeda leaving, not because of ted, but because her family were were so prejudiced and corrupt. they all knew she was going to leave, it was an ultimatum- us or him. and she loved her family so much, but as soon as they made it clear she had to choose, she knew she had to leave them, because they didn't truly care about her or anyone else's happiness. druella and cygnus were fairly calm about it, as soon as she made her choice she was no longer their daughter. bellatrix was outraged, pleading for andromeda to stay and then refused to acknowledge she had ever existed once she had left. narcissa was sad mostly, she understood to a small degree and kept some of andromeda's belongings but never spoke to her again.

sirius leaving because he couldn’t cope. he had seen and experienced life and family outside of his own and ached to have that for his own. he had long realised his family weren't good people, and had twisted views which he despised and couldn't remain to be a part of. he left suddenly in the middle of the night, the evening before having gotten into a terrible fight with his parents and realised he had to go because it would only get worse. orion cared more that sirius was meant to be the heir than the fact he was losing his child, walburga was furious at the loss, being stuck with the wrong child and blamed the potter's for everything. regulus felt betrayed that sirius had left, that he didn't care enough to stay.

[ageless-aislynn]

Prayer circle for Georgette (my computer). The demons overcame her with just 15 minutes of up time tonight.

Pretty sure the demons live in the Nvidia card because that thing 👿GROWLS 👿 like you wouldn't believe when it becomes possessed hangs up.

In what I'm sure is a total coincidence, Dell has an emergency Nvidia driver update now available, marked critical for system stability. I installed it immediately, if not sooner.

Now, please say it with me, frens...

Dear Lord,

Please remove the demons from Georgette so she can be the awesome computer friend she was meant to be and we can have many fun times together playing Halo (and the various other games in my Steam account that can't be installed right now), vidding and GIFmaking as well as just surfing the Internet without dying multiple times.

Amen.

[roguerambles]

I’ve fallen back into Andromeda Six.

I’m so in love with the entire crew, dear god--

[northern-passage]

“dread wolf is the second act of inquisition” pssst ur correct. silas was originally meant to be the mid reveal twist after killing corypheus (and then the dlc takes place as the first act of the second half of the game) and then you kill/defeat solas (with the main story only play being around 40-80 hrs rather then the current 20-40) but due to crunching, serious budget cuts, me:a issues in other departments, technical difficulties, MULTIPLE rewrites and generally just. poor handling from ea, the game got majorly sliced (hence the amount of side quests vs the size of the worlds in the game and it being so empty) and then even dreadwolf having a million behind the scenes issues. i think it’s on its third rewrite now.

yeah, i knew it was bad but i've never really fully looked into the extent of what happened. it's really unfortunate :/ i worry about da4 not even for the game itself but for bioware. it's obvious EA is doing what they always do which is 1. be soullessly fucking greedy and 2. absorb and destroy their competitors, whether it's intentional or not. it's a miracle imo after andromeda and anthem that bioware is even still going forward with da4 (but it seems like it will be the final nail in the coffin and EA is the one holding the hammer). i hope they can finish and put out something they're proud of, at the very least :(

[tastytofusoup]

I remember the plot of a novel, but that doesn't mean it's real

[lunapwrites]

One of the things that I've been grappling with recently has been the realization that my parents were probably worse than I ever knew. And I'm finding this out sort of secondhand via watching my youngest brother slowly coming to the same realizations, and watching the older of the two just... kind of socially implode. Partially because of his own fuck ups but mostly because he's 110% a product of his environment and refuses to fix it because he's convinced he doesn't need to. (He agrees when I point it out but then later regresses and insists that it's everyone else who's wrong.)

I just keep mentioning things that I'm now realizing are really deeply fucked up, and my partner has a brief my brother in Christ moment before pointing out several instances in which he witnessed that exact thing occurring while I sat there completely unfazed. And then pointing out other things that I had told him about after the fact but hadn't registered as negatives, which I initially wave off, and then it happens again - only now I'm paying attention. Y'all ever gaslight gatekeep yourselves? 0/10 do not recommend.

All of this to say that my knee jerk impulse was to wish I hadn't gone so hard on the references to the Black family dynamics in LTL, only to then realize that no, actually, this is still probably a really good 1:1, and I should keep using it as a framework.

Anyway I'm starting therapy again this week. And I'm probably going to write a companion piece for Sirius to process some things, so. We'll see if that ever sees the light of day lol.

[proffbon]

[the-stray-liger]

The thing with inquisition is that a LOT of fucked up stuff does happen in it, but Bioware's lost some of it's ability to portray stakes effectively over the years (mass effect Andromeda had the same issue) like, if you take a step back, what happened to the orlesian wardens? Fucked up! The time travel bit? Also fucked! A single chunk of red lyrium was what drove kirkwall over the edge, and inquisition is fuckin swimming in the stuff and all the problems it creates. But the writers just don't give it all the same weight stuff like that used to get, either out of purposefully going for a different vibe or just missing the mark. And this is coming from someone who really did like inquisition, but you're 100% right that there's a horror shaped hole missing in the presentation

YES EXACTLY you put it into words much better than I could. I think the story could be angsty and horror-y because there are scary and intense things that happen, but the writing lacks edge because the stakes are like. Sure you get to judge this asshole and send them to jail. Nothing changes in the world after you make a decision. Your choices don't have weight or real consequences on the world around you besides MAYBE a drop in approval from a companion.

I also enjoyed Inquisition! Finishing it brought me to tears! I adored the companions (most of them)! the romances were beautiful! but it doesn't feel like a dragon age game because it doesn't feel like your choices matter and everything feels disconnected from the events that are developing in front of your eyes

[yoan-le-grall]