#I think I made the first piece in 2020 or 2021 if I remember properly..

[ozzyeelz]

Redesigning my sea lesbians from while ago :3

[not-xpr-art]

my art inspirations vs my art (2015-now)!

a mini collection of artworks I've done over the years next to the work/artist that I based the style of my piece on!

when I'm basing my work on another artist's piece, I try not to just directly copy the composition, colours or brushstrokes of the original... instead I'm always interested in adapting the original style to my own in order to create more of an homage instead!

another thing I keep in mind is medium, since most of my works above are digital and most of my inspirations are traditional artworks, so I have to figure out how to adapt that artists style into a new format in order to keep it somewhat recognisable to the original!

list of artist inspirations & explanations included in this post are below btw

Gustav Klimt's The Kiss (1907) -> Wangxian digital drawing (2020), with a photo collage background made up of lots of golden things!

This is not the only piece I've done inspired by Klimt's work, but it's one of my favourites hence why I included it here lol! I love how Klimt combines realistically painted portraits with flat coloured backgrounds and patterns, the contrast is just so interesting to look at and is definitely something I use quite regularly in my own work.

Edvard Munch's The Kiss (1897) -> Destiel amalgamation traditional mixed media artwork (2021)

I was also inspired by a few other artworks but the pose is definitely based on Munch's work! I just love how the faces blend into each other that it almost becomes abstract, but is somehow still recognisable as a kiss!

Francis Bacon's 1972 Triptych -> Kaisoo painting (2015)

This is definitely one of the times my inspiration was more based on the ~vibes~ of the artist rather than anything in particular about one specific work lol! (so much so that I only know I based it on that particular triptych cos I wrote about it when I posted the artwork pfft...) Bacon's work isn't necessarily stuff I enjoy looking at (in fact it often makes me kinda uncomfortable), but I do like how expressive his work is!

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's In Bed (1892) -> A study from the film Weekend (2023) (which I haven't actually released properly yet shh you'll have to wait until June for that lol)

I didn't actually initially plan to be an homage to this painting, but about halfway through me drawing it I realised it was reminding me of something lol! Henri's (yes we're on a first name basis cos I cba to write his long ass surname pfft) painting evokes such tenderness, a moment in time commemorated in paint, and it's that same emotion I hope my own work emulates!

Caravaggio's Young sick Bacchus (1593) -> Jimin holding some fruit and flowers lol (2017)

Not the only piece I've done inspired by Caravaggio (or baroque painters in general), but I'm still very proud of this piece, even if the proportions are terrible lol! The chiaroscuro of Caravaggio's work still makes me weep honestly! Plus, kinda weird, but I really love the way he paints grapes lol!

Goosebumps book cover (?? possibly 90s or 00s??) -> BBC Wreck fanart (2022)

I grew up with the Goosebumps books, and though I didn't have this particular publication, I remember absolutely loving the cover art! It's honestly kinda mad it's taken me this long to do an actual Goosebumps based work lol! Also the cheesy taglines are some of my favourite parts of the covers and I spent WAYYY too long trying to come up with my own pfft!

Gwen John's Young woman in a red shawl (1917) -> Luna f(x) fanart (2016)

I remember seeing John's work in Cardiff and just fell in love with her muted colours and rough brushstrokes! I don't think I necessarily echoed her work that well with my own (since it's a difficult technique to do in digital), but I still like it nonetheless lol

Lucian Freud's Guy Half Asleep (1981) -> Park Kyung Instant fanart (2018)

This was actually one of the first times I tried to make an artwork that was done digitally but actually looked like it was traditional! I'd honestly really like to do more work inspired by Freud's cos I love the lumpiness (technical term) of how he paints people! It almost feels like you could reach out and touch their skin when you see his work!

Remedios Varo's Triptych (1960) -> BTS Rapline triptych (2018)

I can't even remember where I saw her work first but I knew that I wanted to do something inspired by her work since I absolutely adored her use of colour and the stylism of her figures and backgrounds! I also really loved how her triptych acts as this journey through each piece, which is something I tried to recreate myself and that Rapline triptych is honestly still one of my favourite pieces I've ever done lol :')

Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper (1495) -> EXO 'last supper in hell' fanart (2019)

This is one where seeing it next to the inspiration is honestly hilarious lol! I was actually more inspired by the music video for Monster, which has a part in it paying homage to Da Vinci's Last Supper btw! I haven't really done much work based on Da Vinci, even though I really like his painting and drawing techniques!

And that's all (for now)! I know I will forever be inspired by artists and artworks of the past (and present) so maybe in a few years I'll do another one of these compilations lol!

[makeste]

BnHA Chapter 292: You Say Jeans

Previously on BnHA: Horikoshi was all “well anyway here’s that Touya reveal I foreshadowed like a million years ago, viva la 2020.” Dabi was all “hello world, I’ve killed 30 people and today I’m going to explain to you all why” before he proceeded to explain ABSOLUTELY NOTHING but everyone was so distracted by his tale of child abuse and hero conspiracies that they didn’t much seem to notice. Can’t Ya See-Kun’s Shark Friend was all “IS THIS THE END OF HERO SOCIETY AS WE KNOW IT”, and Horikoshi was all “STAY TUNED”, and then Dabi set himself on fire and leaped off of Machia’s back like the chaotic evil, I-just-bleached-all-my-brain-cells weird little fire man he is, ready to burn everyone to crispy bits before they could even react properly to his whole big revenge speech. Fortunately he did not succeed on account of THE RETURN OF THE JING, THE JOAT, BEST FUCKING JEANIST, back from the dead by popular demand in what critics are calling “the best fucking comeback since Jesus himself.”

Today on BnHA: Best Jeanist snatches up Machia and the rest of the League with his fiber steel cables before you can say “more like BEAST JEANIST amirite.” Dabi gets all worked up and lights Hadou on fire which is a real JERK MOVE, and is all “THIS RIGHT HERE IS ALSO ENDEAVOR’S FAULT”, which, NOT SUPER CONVINCED ON THAT, BUT OKAY. Anyway so then he burns up all the cables holding him which is crazeballs btw, and then he and Shouto start fighting, and so basically the whole thing is a literal hot mess and we’ll see how that goes. Meanwhile Tomura wakes up and summons some Noumus, and poor Jeanist has to deal with those on top of the still-attempting-to-rampage Gigantomachia, and everyone else is all “we can’t help you on account of we’re all half dead”, and so it’s looking really bad. And then -- and I can’t stress enough how much I don’t even have the faintest idea how to segue into this next part -- the chapter ends with Mirio!?! just sort of POPPING UP OUT OF THE GROUND all, “SURPRISE, BITCH”, and it literally was so surprising that I am still just kind of speechless. WELL-PLAYED, I GUESS, lol wtf.

lol okay so the first page in the RHA scan is just the “three musketeers” movie promo image that we all already saw a few days ago. but it does confirm that (a) it is indeed a movie, and (b) that it’s set for a summer 2021 release! how exciting

okay so now back to our special Dabi edition of Making a Murderer

“ray of hope” oh hell yes. SAVE US MR. JEANIST

I guess he had a TV in his private hero jet or something?

gotta say, “dammit Dabi” does not even remotely sound like Authentic Best Jeanist Dialogue to me though. gonna need Caleb to see to this. well but what do you guys think? does Best Jeanist curse?? I personally feel like he’s one of those guys who NEVER EVER swears no matter what, except under the most hilariously trifling circumstances. like he’s eating an avocado one day and he accidentally stains the cuffs of his beloved jostume green and he’s all “FUCK”

btw how fucking rich is Best Jeanist though that he has his own fucking plane? the thought just suddenly occurred to me, you know? like even Endeavor, whose agency has its own on-site luxury apartment suites for all of his interns, still drives around in a dinky little car that Bakugou has declared to be too small. which, I guess we know why he felt that way now, seeing as the guy he previously interned with apparently gets around in Jeans Force One

anyway so back to the part where Jeanist shows up to save the day!! YEAH JEANIST WOOOOO

ILU JEANIST YOU REALLY ARE THE BEST!! HUGS AND KISSES!!!

lmao we just saw Gigantomachia take out like a hundred guys not ten chapters ago. and Best Jeanist shows up and takes him down in like two seconds. HOW DO YOU LIKE THEM APPLES LEAGUE OF VILLAINS. BET YOU’RE WISHING YOU’D TAKEN HIS QUIRK NOW, AFO. GET FUCKED YOU OLD SPUD

KACCHAN IS SO HAPPY TO SEE HIM AWW

SIDE NOTE, IIDA, YOU AND I ARE GONNA HAVE WORDS LATER ABOUT YOU ACTUALLY AGREEING TO PUT HIM BACK DOWN. YOU DO UNDERSTAND THAT THIS CHILD IS STILL DRIPPING BLOOD ALL OVER THE PLACE FROM HIS MULTIPLE STAB WOUNDS, RIGHT? WAY TO ASSERT YOUR AUTHORITY THERE. I THOUGHT YOU WERE THE CLASS PRESIDENT NOT THE CLASS CLOWN, COME ON NOW

LMAO DABI IS FRANTICALLY TRYING TO DO THE PLOT MATH

SHOULDA CHECKED MORE CLOSELY MY GOOD MARK. LOOKS LIKE YOU MISSED THE “MADE IN CHINA” STICKER ON THE BOTTOM. YOU HAVE BEEN BAMBOOZLED. OR ACTUALLY, I GUESS THE MORE ACCURATE WORD HERE IS JAMBOOZLED, AHAHAHAHA. JEANS

HOLY SHIT DABI

I legit almost thought that was Tomura for a second. you two look so alike now with the white hair and the crazy eyes

meanwhile, Shouto is still crying and it’s a lot to take, you guys. lotta feels

ffff come on Jeanist you better do something awesome again here, the mood of the chapter is starting to slip now

YES, GOOD, THAT’LL WORK

WELL YOU TELL ME, SPINNER. I GUESS THAT MEANS BEST JEANIST IS OFFICIALLY THE STRONGEST CHARACTER IN THE SERIES NOW. SORRY I DON’T MAKE THE RULES

ffff now Spinner is trying to wake Tomura back up. nah, how’s about we not do that

OH MY GOD HADOU YESSSS

MY GIRL OUT HERE WITH THE “NO THANK YOU” BOUT TO CURBSTOMP THE BIG BAD WITH HER QUIRK KSFHLKLK WHO HERE HAD “HADOU SAVES THE DAY” ON YOUR WAR ARC BINGO CARDS, YOU LOVE TO SEE IT!!

HEY!!!!

fucking son of a... fffkfkff... someone please reassure me that fire isn’t Hadou’s weakness. someone. anyone. also could someone please dial an ambulance and send them to Horikoshi’s house. but not just yet. first I’m gonna need you to wait about fifteen minutes or so while I take care of some things

well all right then, Dabi. so you wanna go on then and explain to us all how this, too, is somehow Endeavor’s fault?

oh I see, you’ve decided that since he’s responsible for “creating” you, everyone you hurt and kill is in truth really being hurt and killed by him! well now, that sure is convenient as fuck I guess

(ETA: that’s a nice effect with the panel sides getting all warped by Dabi’s quirk though, just noticed that.)

amazing how quickly you used up that sympathy card my guy. Shouto please kick his ass, I’m fucking done lol, you can all sort out the rest in therapy later

CAN SOMEONE PLEASE DIAL BACK DEKU’S EMPATHY STATS JUST A LITTLE BIT, HOLY --

“TODOROKI-KUN IS HURT THE MOST”, HE SAYS, WITH HIS ARM BONES SHATTERED INTO LITTLE TOOTHPICK-SIZED PIECES. I MEAN, HE’S PROBABLY TALKING MORE ABOUT MENTAL ANGUISH GIVEN THE CONTEXT HERE, BUT STILL. THAT’S ENOUGH HEROICS FROM YOU ALREADY FOR ONE DAY

NOOO JEANIST

LOTS OF SMOKE IN THE AIR RIGHT ABOUT NOW AND MY BOY’S STILL DOWN A LUNG. GOD DAMMIT

“if the number one suffers a total loss here, this country will fall to pieces” well okay, real talk though, I think the “country falling to pieces” part is pretty much unavoidable at this juncture. you all are just gonna have to try your best to pick up those pieces after the fact and see what you can do with them. if I were you I’d be less worried about the number one’s reputation and more concerned with the half-dozen child soldier interns who are still on the field and very much at risk of being burned to death should you suffer that “total loss.” please try to keep it together here for them

OH FOR FUCK’S

I really thought RockLockRock was gonna come into play here. USE YOUR QUIRK TO LOCK THE ROPES IN PLACE YOU DIP!! if he seriously just sits there and does nothing when his quirk could be the deciding factor I am cancelling his useless ass cute kid or no cute kid shfkjdls

(ETA: is he even there?? did he and Manual just hightail it out of there?? “well good luck, children.”)

also, we’ll put this aside for now to perhaps speculate about later, but what’s with Tomura remembering his dad’s house yet again in that far right panel?? and being itchy again?? I still have yet to fully work out the psychological mechanisms at work as far as his itchiness goes, so I’ll admit this is intriguing to me. it seemed like it was connected to his decay quirk, but then why is it acting up again now. what is this lol

yuh oh

forgot about these guys. looks like these heroes aren’t having such a fun time

oh fucksticks

excuse me ma’am but I don’t like this. you do know that my kids are all there, right. all burnt and impaled and broken-boned and the like. well except for Iida. he’s fine still. BUT THAT DOESN’T MEAN I FEEL LIKE WATCHING HIM GET TORN APART BY FOUR HIGH ENDS, WTF

HORIKOSHI YOU MOTHERFUCKER I SWEAR TO GOD

god fucking... okay look. Horikoshi. you win, okay!? congratulations, you win, this is your show and we’re all just sitting here at your mercy. fine. go ahead and just kill off everyone ever, then!! what am I even gonna do about it. stop reading?? fuck

this whole thing really went from zero to fucked before I could even blink huh. I really thought this was gonna be a turning point chapter for the heroes. shows what I know I guess??

meanwhile this motherfucker is just SCREAMING

ngl, if I wasn’t currently terrified on account of things suddenly taking such a drastic turn for the worse, this would be the coolest fucking thing I’ve ever seen. Jeanist my man, I hype you up like it’s my job because you are the greatest fucking meme character in the history of time, but make no mistake, you are also highkey WORTH ALL THE HYPE AND THEN SOME

seriously, though. don’t fucking mind him you guys, he’s just standing here in the coolest pose of all time taking on Gigantomachia all alone with one fucking lung because the substance pumping through his veins is COLD-BLOODED LIQUID DENIM, and DENIM FEELS NO FEAR

Best Jeanist really needs to get his own theme song. -- oh my god I just finally thought of a title for this post. lmao and it’s the dumbest thing. omg

MEANWHILE THE TODOROKI BROS ARE OFF IN THEIR OWN DRAMATIC LITTLE FIRE WORLD

which one do you think is the Mario and which is the Luigi. well, but I mean, Dabi clearly thinks that he’s the Luigi though and that’s why he’s so mad. nobody wants to be Luigi. what a life

THAT’S IT, SHOUTO!! POINT OUT ALL OF HIS HYPOCRITICAL BULLSHIT, I WANT ANSWERS

JUST TO CLARIFY, IT’S THAT NATSU, NOT SOME OTHER NATSU!! SO WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO SAY FOR YOURSELF!!

OH, WELL IN THAT CASE

BUT OF COURSE. THAT WOULD MAKE IT ALL WORTHWHILE, holy shit. okay I’m just gonna go ahead and say it, Dabi is a piece of work. I really thought this arc would make him more sympathetic at long last, but it seems like it’s doing just the opposite?? this is like an anti-redemption arc. I don’t relish the thought of venturing into the fandom tags once I finish reading this lol

(ETA: well folks, I’ve done it. and actually it was pretty interesting because there are apparently like ten different things that people are mad about, and so it’s like. each post is a new adventure lmao.)

so Shouto is all “BRUH HAVE YOU COMPLETELY LOST IT” and Dabi is all “YES”, basically? like, he says he’s completely lost his feeling for anything. omg. but you were so sweet. how does that even happen

“finally I can kill you” okay for real what the heck is your damage bro?? can we not. I like Shouto just the way he is, un-killed

oh shit and now the Noumus are here

cue Bakugou diving in to save his mentor, STAB WOUNDS BE DAMNED!! actually it would make more sense for it to be Iida, but if Kacchan is really fixin’ to go full Shounen Dumbass here then he might as well go all out, y’know

-- unless of course, Deku decides to activate another quirk??

“last I checked, the main character of this series was still me” OH? WELL I SUPPOSE THAT IS TRUE, SO PRAY TELL, WHAT HAVE YOU GOT LEFT UP YOUR SLEEVE YOU SUICIDAL BRUSSELS SPROUT

fucking love how he’s all “HAHAHA WITH MY NEW QUIRKS I CAN STILL DO STUPID SHIT EVEN WITH MY ARMS AND LEGS GROUND TO A FINE POWDER” btw. what can I say. Deku gonna Deku

FMMFHDKUHK W H A T

HOLY SHIT. HOLY FUCKING SHIT. WHAT THE WHAT. QUE THE FUCK

(ETA: okay look, all the love in the world to the brave scanlators who take time out of their lives to translate the leaks every week just so we can read the chapter a couple of days early like the addicts we are. that said, translating Mirio’s signature “POWER!!” -- which was already written in English in the original scan -- to “POG-CHAMP” is just a whole new level of wtfuckery from them lmao. is the Lida person back at it again?? amazing.)

MIRIO!?!?! SHOWS UP TO SAVE THE DAY?!?! POGS HIMSELF UP OUT THE GROUND TO BEAT THE NOUMUS LIKE IT AIN’T NO THING. JUST LIKE WE ALL PREDICTED!? I’M SORRY, DID YOU NOT SEE THAT COMING?? YOU MEAN TO TELL ME YOUR DAILY HOROSCOPE FROM ASTROLOGY DOT COM DIDN’T HAVE THAT ONE IN THE CARDS?? WAS IT NOT OBVIOUS?? TODOROKIS PLUS BEST JEANIST EQUALS MIRIO??

hot damn. Tintin really saw the writing on the wall with the impending Dabi Discourse and was all “NOT SO FAST” lmao. “HERE’S A BRAND NEW THING FOR YOU ALL TO DISCOURSE ABOUT” MIRIO YOU WILD CHILD. YOU GLORIOUS THUG

MEANWHILE LET’S NOT FORGET WHAT MIRIO HAVING HIS POWERS BACK ACTUALLY IMPLIES. HOLY SHIT. SUDDENLY WE CUT BACK TO ALL MIGHT’S OFFICE, ALL THE WAY BACK AT UA. ERI BRANDISHES HER TOKOYAMI-GIFTED BUSTER SWORD, A DETERMINED GLEAM IN HER EYE. “I HEARD YOU WERE TRYING TO HAVE A GIRL POWER ARC WITHOUT ME.” OH. MY. GOD

[puckngrind]

Columbus isn't home - J. Anderson

Summary: Josh returns to Columbus (winter 2021/2) for the first time since being traded.

Warnings: swearing, mentions of breakup, pandemic, rehab

Word count: 1,420

Puck ‘n Grind’s masterlist

“You don’t live here any more!” You screamed into your phone, ending the call then throwing your phone across the room. He didn’t live in Columbus anymore or the country for that matter. Josh was traded, sold his condo you two shared then blamed the border closer on his lack of return to Ohio before the season started last January. He found someone else to occupy his time in the year since you’ve seen him. While he wouldn’t tell you outright, the pictures didn’t lie. Punching the pillow and screaming again didn’t seem to help matters. Your phone rang again. Ignoring it and stepping outside into the cool winter air helped slightly.

The knock on the door startled you. “Ignore it.” You convinced yourself it was a salesman.

“Bells!” The recognizable voice shouted through the door. “Bells, damnit! I saw you standing at your balcony. Isabella!!” Josh’s voice got louder. A thud came from the door then silence.

Ding. The text alert lit up your phone from under the coffee table. Ding. Ding.

“Fuck off Anderson!” You thought you shouted but maybe it was a whisper. Closing the balcony door then fishing your phone from where you launched it you tip toe to the door to look out the peephole. Yup, Josh’s long legs spread into the hallway.

“I’m not going anywhere until you talk to me.” Josh sensed you were at the door.

“Why? Don’t you have a game tomorrow or something?” You pressed your forehead into the door. The unfinished business between you two making you want to open the door for him.

“Yes and I don’t care if I play like shit if it means talking to you face to face.” Josh stands, presses his hands to either side of the door frame then stares at the glass that keeps flipping from light to dark. “Just let me in Bells. Please?” You cursed how good he looked and even through the door how he was effecting your body.

“If I open the door what will change?” You stand your ground mustering up all the hurt and anger from the past year.

“We can close the chapter. I can apologize properly. Bells, please?” Josh brushes his fingers through his wet long locks. Reminding you of his 2019 cup run. Told him how much you liked his hair long and he kept it. You huff out of exhaustion then unlock your deadbolt. Slowly opening the door feeling Josh’s piercing blue eyes on you before even looking up.

“Come in.” Your voice shaky with a hint of annoyance.

“Thanks Bella.” Josh shuffled past you brushing his knuckles slightly against your arm as he made his way into your place. “Nice place.” He looks it up and down.

“Well, it was what I could afford after being suddenly evicted from my gorgeous condo… oh wait?” The venom dripping from each word.

“I really am sorry. I should’ve…” Josh stands a safe distance but you still feel the heat radiating between you.

“Save it. You attempted to apologize for the shit show that was October 2020 and I’m done hearing it. Why are you really here Josh?” Your arms cross over your chest.

“I needed to see you. I wanted to say sorry in person. This is the first time I’ve been back. I’ve missed…”. You put your finger up to stop him.

“Don’t fucking say you missed me! We both know you left your Columbus life and didn’t look back. Found new friends, new team, new girl. Don’t get all nostalgic on me now that you are back thinking we can just be fuck buddies when the Habs are in town.” You almost growl at him then make your way to the kitchen. Having this conversation needed alcohol. Knowing Josh would follow you slam a bottled water on the counter. The lid almost popping off with force. Twisting off your drinks top and chugging it like water made your head spin a bit.

“Bells. That’s not it at all. Could you calm down, please?” Josh stepped closer. “I think you filled in some holes that aren’t true.”

“Oh, you are smooth. Is that how you got her in bed? Convinced her we broke up? Introduced her to the wives? Let her wear a WAGS jacket to the cup final? Please enlighten me on what holes I filled?” Pressing your lips to your bottle again not wanting to break eye contact with him.

“Let’s sit on the coach, eh?” He puts out his hand but you walk past him to what was once his couch and sit placing your feet up so he had to sit on the other end.

“So, talk.” You had forgotten how you still loved him because all you could see was the hurt he caused.

“I fucked up.” He leans into the back of the couch.

“Sure did.” You nod.

“Bells, this was never the plan. Ever. Ask any of the guys.” Josh bites his lip then looks down at your feet.

“I did. You were going to propose. Well at least that’s what ‘the guys’ told me. Since you decided to ignore them too and I really didn’t have anyone else here beyond the family we made with the team.” Your fingers were still up in the air from the air quotes.

“You could’ve gone home to Cleveland, Bella.” Josh mumbled.

“I made a life here Josh. Remember? Job, friends, you. The only thing that left was you.” You snap.

“I’m a dumbass.”

“You could say that again.”

“I’m a fucking dumbass.” He repeats causing you to laugh a little. “Your laugh is contagious you know. I swear I hear it sometimes sitting in my apartment alone.”

“Alone?” You narrow your brow knowing she was living with him.

“Yeah. I told her I was still in love with you and sorry I lead her on the way I did.” Josh buries his face into his hands.

“Is that why your brother snapped me stating you were a fucking mess?”

“Probably.”

“Then why has it taken you this long to get back here? Say these things?” Your voice softened but guard still very much up.

“I wallowed in my parents’ basement for a good two to three weeks." Josh admits. "Four weeks according to your Mom." You insert.

"What?" Josh was confused. "Anyway, decided to find a trainer in Montreal. When the border opened I wanted to come find you but you wouldn’t return my calls or texts or anything. And I get it, because I hurt you probably more than anyone ever has or will. I don’t deserve you, Bells. I have never deserved you. You’ve always been too good for my idiotic self.” Josh sniffles causing you to look over at him. His sweatpants now wet from tears dripping down his arms.

“Josh.” You whisper. “I… I don’t know what to say.”

“I didn’t ask you to say anything Bella.” Josh sits up wiping his face with his sleeve which makes you giggle.

“You want a tissue there Anderson?” Pulling the box from behind the couch. Josh grabbing one with a nod. The two of you sat in silence. Not really knowing what to say but just sitting there feeling the weight of the situation. Finally, the words come to you lips.

"You did hurt me the most of anyone, ever. You dumped our entire world for, what? Money? I was ready to follow you anywhere and you didn't even give me a chance. Do you not remember the rehab? Our trip to Vail for your surgery? You were pushing me away and I wrote it off as pain. Then... then... You just left. Left. Found an upgrade on all aspects of life and moved the fuck on. I was left to pick up the pieces. Yeah, I still love you but I'm not sure I trust you. I'm not in love with you. But, yeah, Josh. I still love you and it fucking hurts."

"But you still love me?" Josh had a small glimmer of hope in his voice.

"J, you live in Canada not Columbus." You whisper out.

"But the fact that you still love me is a start, Bells." Josh turns to you.

"Is it?" You question looking deep into his eyes. "Columbus will never be your home again and I cannot just live in Montreal."

"You sure about that Isabella?" Josh shuffles around. You look down, eyes going wide.

"Don't!"

[smortbokuto]

Guilt.

warnings: my shit writing, fluff?? angst to the fucking bones, major character death, mentions of death, implied cheating.

pairings: ushijima x oikawa, iwaizumi x oikawa.

a/n: enjoy my trash <3

summary: realizations always hits in the end yet hits hard. Oikawa regrets his actions and will keep regretting for his whole life..

word count: 3.6k

Sequel

❛19th January, 2023.❜

Key rattled in the keyhole as he turned them open, the voice a bit to loud for the mood. creaking the door open of his once shared apartment, with him. putting down the umbrella, which had frozen dews decorating its covers, he raided the area with tired eyes.

The windows, dusty and tainted, allowing slight light to bleed into the room, the dusty floor, marked with different stains, being illuminated. the couches covered with a pale cloth, preventing them from getting dirty. the shelf in the other corner were properly visible with spider webs all over. the rug, that was once sparkling clean now looked like had hardened mud and slit all over.

taking off his overcoat and hooking it over the rusty hooks embedded over the wall with torn off wallpapers just adjacent to the entry. nostalgia had hit him like a boulder falling over something much smaller and frail, completely crushing him as he saw all the unevenly hanging frames with them. smiling. happy.

why, why? why. why?! why??

padding into the room he scrunched his nose in frustration at the creaking sound of the wooden flooring. god, he was so used to the marble ones now. this was so annoying. so weird.

why was he even here? ah, in a week new residents will being coming here to start a new life. just like how they both had started 6 years ago...

'hope they don't end up like me' he made a mental note to wish the new family his best wishes for their journey they were going to go on.

sighing he strode towards the shelf. the lights flickered for a tad bit longer than they were supposed to. smoothly he started to pick up all the frames, empty, with photos (memories), or broken, and tossed them into the box he had brought along. what of he left them here? will the new family know about his sins of the past? he doesn't know.

moving further inside he kept picking up all the small items of misery (memories) and tossing them into the box. he wished them to burn to ashes. Oikawa just couldn't stand the pictures, the letters, the small items, gifts, souvenirs he had received by Iwaizumi in the past. with a white face he kept collecting all the stuff from room to room in a way to wipe away the remnants of the life they both had created.

cursing mentally as he stood in front of the last room, bedroom. a place where they shared everything, emotions, bodies, love, everything. entering the room he took a deep breath, eyes tight shut as he felt a suffocating gust hit his face. his breath hitched in his throat as he saw an all too familiar room. he could see his 'wasted' years in this room, doing everything and anything.

he worked upon collecting all the stuff he wanted to get rid of. he wanted to get rid of his existence. he was so close to it. he could start a new life. a free one. just a bit of fuel and a spark of flame.

after what felt like ages he felt content with the filled boxes with all the soon to be burned memories.

free? free. free!

a satisfied breath left his lungs, turning into a hazy white puff as it mixed into the chilly atmosphere of the room. the sun had already gone down with the rise of a crescent moon hanging in the sky with gloomy grey clouds. an indication to a snowy day that comes along.

snow?

his heart pang in the traps of his ribs at the thought.

┊a smiled crept on the shorter male's face, face flushed in soft hues of pink as he scrambled out from the warmth of the bed, dragging his feet towards the glass window that were draped with soft white silk curtains.

"Toru, wake up." he had called out to the sleeping male, curled up in the bed who just groaned at the call of his name.

"what is it?" voice raspy, he drawled out.

"it snowed! its so pretty outside." he chided, his morning voice heavy yet a hint of excitement laced with it. ┊

snow. his favorite time of the season. Iwaizumi's happy season.

clicking his tongue, that had the room echo with the voice he tried to forget the small memory he reminisced just now. distracting himself he looked around the room for the last time.

'nothing should be left behind..'

nodding to himself he stood up from the bed edge he had been sitting, leaving the room. once and for all.

free.

free?

his leg hit the nightside stand, the dusty lamp disbalancing and falling down. ignoring he broken pieces he picked up the head of the lamp to keep it back only for his eyes to get stuck at the small opening of the drawer.

nope.

opening the drawer slowly his eyes widened at the slightly stained hardcover diary comfortably lying caged in there.

he knows. he knows too well to not reach for it. to not open it. to not trace the pages with the tips of his fingers. to not read the date entry.

yet, he did it.

❝7th December, 2018.

today it snowed. it looked so ethereal outside. today is special for me. its the first time it snowed while my living with Toru. I wish to see more days like these with him.

-Hajime.❞

The first entry of the page.

"tsk, what's the point to write it down?" the brunette vocalized his thoughts. the thought of writing something so trivial sounded so stupid. why would he even to take the pain to write it all?

and so he flipped to the next page.

smoothing out the page he hummed as he felt Iwaizumi's clear writing under the cold touch of his fingers. so selfish.

he read all the pages. all the dates. all the events.

their first slow dance together in the dim living room on a summer evening, their first time on a rainy night, their first fight on a mid autumn season and how Hajime wished to fix it as soon as possible. everything was there in it.

it was always about them. never him alone. oikawa was always a spotlight.

humming in satisfaction that maybe, just maybe, he will be free. glad at the fact that iwaizumi didn't hold a grudge against him in any of these small snippets of life jotted down neatly in a captive of pale pages and hard covers.

pages fluttered as he flipped to another page. his brows furrowing as he found the page blank.

flip. then another and another and another. all of them were blank. pale and empty. his heart clenched and stung at the empty pages. it felt like a void of emotions. not his emotions but his long ago lovers'.

he flipped again, pupils dilating slightly as he saw a new date entry. but his stomach churned as he read the date.

❛11th September, 2020.❜

A whole year? from writing everyday, why was there a pause of a whole year? he flipped back to the previous empty pages. the pages weren't torn then why a year gap?

'unusual..'

but he shook away the feeling and flipped back to the new entry that he was yet to read.

❝I miss him... he has been working so much. i am happy that he is doing something he loves but its been long since we had done anything like we used to do...❞

a rush of guilt travelled through the span of his veins. he had fell out of love weeks before this new entry. but- did Iwaizumi knew about this fact?

┊8th July, 2020,

"will you tell him about us?" a gruff voice spoke, lying on the same comfort of bed that oikawa shared with iwaizumi. the respective owner of the voice stared up at the naked form of the brunette who was indulging himself in smoking and puffing out his lungs. a try to erase out the smell of sex? maybe.

"not yet..." oikawa slurred out as he puffed another heavy thick smoke into the traps of the four walled room "..he is too blind in love to even think about me doing such thing."

"you are not being fair with him." the voice spoke again after silence covered over the room.

"listen," he was pissed. oikawa was pissed at the accusation. he knew it was right, the accusation but he didn't want to accept that. the fact that he had fell out of love. "it's literally my life and my lover, i don't need your opinion about it, Ushijima."┊

guilt filled his system at the thought about how sick and vile his move was against someone who loved him unconditionally.

if only he had tried harder. harder to be a better person, a better partner and a better human. but he didn't. pathetic.

feeling the guilt pump up in him he flipped the page again. empty, blank, pale pages. again.

❝17th November, 2020.

Its still the same... he returns late home. we don't eat our meals together, our talks are short and have no emotions that it used to carry. i miss it. i miss it all. i will wait.❞

"why? what the fuck are you trying to do here. Hajime? are you trying to give me a guilt trip?" he voiced his deafening thoughts. how selfish of Iwaizumi to take such a step against him. his own lover.

"its working. so stop..." his voice wavered. was he really qualified enough to be labeled as a 'lover' for Hajime? after what all he had done to the other man he deserved it.

"stop. I don't deserve it." he does. he does deserve it. he knows it too well.

he flipped. then flipped. sobs raked his body as he read all the different dates all throughout the winter season of that dreaded years, 2020. he read Iwaizumi's thought, insecurities on maybe he was not good enough for Oikawa and how maybe he was done with him but staying with him out of pity.

He flipped to the page where an all too familiar date was jotted down. He remembers everything. every action he had taken that might have ruined iwaizumi bit by bit.

┊9th April, 2021.

the keys jingled as they clashed with the glass key holder in the porch area. the brunette ran his fingers through his hair and sighed out tiredly. 'work' was exhausting.

"hey." a low voice greeted him at the end of the hallway.

"hi, have you eaten?" oikawa replied back as fast as possible not wanting to hear any questions from the man standing in front of him, arms crossed over his chest.

"he shorted man shook his head. "i was waiting for you."

"i was out with my friend after practice, we have already eaten. you should eat too." he didn't know the heaviness of the words he had thrown on the other male.

"oh, that's fine." Iwaizumi smiled as he tried to take in and digest whatever was thrown over him by the taller male. "by the way, i got a present for you. it's kept in the bedroom."

"present for what? what's the occasion?" oikawa was quick to whip his head to the direction of the other male, who had his back turned at him as he fumbled around the kitchen.

there was a silence, an awkward and a heavy one.

Oikawa, now anxious, took a step forward "hey, ushijim- Hajime, what's the present for?" shit. shit for fuck sake he messed up.

"hm? what?" displaying an act of not catching he turned to face oikawa, the soft smile never faltering his features.

oikawa was quick to repeat the question. to which iwaizumi casually told him it was their anniversary.

"it's okay, you have been working a lot." he had stated.┊

maybe if Oikawa was true to the man. maybe if he had tried harder to love him more and in a correct manner he wouldn't be reading this. maybe if he had given iwaizumi what he had deserved.

❝9th April, 2021.

oh, i was right... it hurts to know i was not good enough but maybe i deserved it. i hope he is happy with this other guy he is with.❞

his heart dropped to his stomach. why was he accepting that? he knew when he had uttered out that other mans' name then why didn't he confront? why did he stay quiet? why didn't he ask him to leave?

why? why? why? why?!

and then no answer to these why's.

his body went numb at how blindly Iwaizumi stood there for him even knowing he was an option. second one.

flip.

flip.

flip.

he sobbed more as he kept tuning the pages. few pale blank empty and few with dates and entries were he was not good enough for oikawa and he could have been better.

"Its not your fault. its not. stop!" finally breaking down he sobbed into the diary, staining the pages with his tears.

❝19th July, 2021.

i was... diagnosed. glioblastoma (GBM). it was undiagnosed all this time and... how will i tell this to Toru?❞

"why?! why are you still thinking about me??? you were-" too much. thats the right word for what he was feeling at the moment. how could he still love him and think about him even though he was practically dying? just why?

all the memories flooded in. all the years of time they took to build a loving relationship only for oikawa to burn it down in one day, over a fucked up reason.

it could have been so easy if iwaizumi had confronted and cut ties then and there only. he was being selfish.

there was a strong urge to just burn the diary there only and act like it all never happened. it was so easy to do it.

but,

can he really do it?

no, he is ought to drown in all the pending guilt and regrets that had been filling up all his holes, draining into his system till it was overflowing. he has to suffer.

he flipped yet another page.

❝27th August, 2021.

i have regrets. i don't want to carry them with me to a new journey. I wanted to love oikawa the way he deserved. i wanted to be him only. its selfish, i know. i was supposed to propose him on our anniversary. i was supposed to care for him and grow old and gray with him. it was all about him. it will always be about him. i love you Toru... i always will. i will be leaving soon. i want to watch you from the sidelines but i can't, not anymore. i will look at you and cheer for you still. be happy, okay?❞

was this really how it was supposed to end?

"why? why didn't you ever tell me about this?" his breath came out ragged and labored. it didn't matter right now.

❝16th September, 2021.

i still love you but i can't burden you with what i am going through not when you are finally happy. i happy that you can confine in someone now. i love you and i always will.❞

those were just mere words written over dead pages by someone that didn't exist. not anymore. then why was it affecting so much? why did it feel like all the words were the boulders that kept stacking on and on over Oikawa's lean body?

there were so many whys and no one to answer...

his last memory flashed before his red puffy eyes.

┊18th September, 2021.

the balls smashed hard against the gym floors. sneakers squeaking against the polished floors.

hair hanging over his forehead oikawa flopped down on the floor. leaning back on one arm as he sipped harshly through his bottle. he let out a satisfied hum as his thirst was satiated only to stop mid tracks as he heard a muffled vibration coming from his bag flopped beside him.

rummaging and fishing the phone out as easy as any other task but when he saw the familiar number flash he was hesitant. nonetheless he answered only for his throat to go parch at the not so familiar voice reporting something he could never imagine of.

"you were on Mr. Iwaizumi's contact. he is in emergency right now. he had collapsed during his regular visit here so please come here as soon as possible." the line was dead then.

hastily packing his stuff he ran out the doors and reached his car. his mind running miles per hour. questions filling his head up to a level where it was hard to breathe.

reaching there he grimaced as the smell of countless death and sterile filled his senses.

"are you Mr. Oikawa?" the voice came up from behind as he was filling up his entry at the reception. whipping his head back he met a man, much older than him, in white coat who looked concerned and... sorry?

"yes. yes i am. what happened?!" he trailed behind the doctor like any lost puppy would do with a stranger who was friendly enough to pet it only to get kicked in the guts.

the doctor stopped after few rooms passed. sighing he removed his glasses and hung them over his chest pockets giving it a company with two pens that were sitting comfortably in it. "he is, uh, critical. he used to come here for treatment due to his frequent headaches. today was different. he collapsed while we were going through some tests. looking into it, there are multiple organ failure right now. not much is left for him." it felt like the world has come to an end. the floor beneath hem felt like it had moved, eating him alive.

pushing past the doctor he entered the room. eyes blowing up at the view he was welcomed to. a man, so strong and healthy, tied to all sorts of machines, a tube, a mere fucking tube, helping him breathe.

"Ha- Hajime...." he could only whisper out softly. but only to response.

he looked so pale, so lifeless, his heart barely even doing its only job. it was cold to touch him, the normal warmth was not there anymore. even after trying to warm up his hand he couldn't bring the missing warmth back again. not anymore.

"please- please tell me what happened.."

there was a heavy silent. a deafening one. nothing was audible other than the faint beeps and slowed breathing of the man on the cold bed of the hospital.

he was not going to leave like this. he is not that pathetic and weak to just die on his lover. not before he could tell him he loved him and he always will. no matter what.

but?

he can't speak.

now what? love is something that doesn't need to be conveyed through words.

his cold thumb brushed over the warm knuckles of the man standing beside him. he looked like he was falling apart. oikawa's brown warm gaze widened as he looked down at iwaizumi. he looked like he was taking his last breath. he looked like he was ready to start a new journey. he looked happy. his eyes showed nothing but love. it kept showing love as his eyes dilated and stilled. the touch still reflected love even if it went limp and cold.┊

another sob. then another and another and another. he sobbed there. curling into himself. all the tears tasted like guilt and regret. none of them were salty.

"why did you tell the doc to not tell me about the disease???" he cried out. his lungs burned. they begged him to breathe but he couldn't.

regrets were there. guilt was there.

"i am sorry i was so selfish."

he thought he could be free of them. he was tied down. forever. no matter what.

maybe if he loved him properly. maybe if he loved him the way he deserved.

maybe if he loved the man named Iwaizumi Hajime.

too late.

[dgcatanisiri]

Welcome to DG’s Listing of Wish These DLC Existed, where I theorize, speculate, and just kinda generally throw ideas at the wall about DLCs for games I love that never happened and never will happen, but damn, I’d like to see them anyway.

Because I have ideas, I can’t get them made as mods, I don’t have time to make them into fic, and they’re never going to happen anyway, so why not put them up in a public place? After all, they’re tie ins to games I have no control over anyway, so it’s not like I’ll ever make money off of them anyway. And, as I’m not bound by any hardware limitations in terms of crafting ideas, or production cycles dictating when the game’s endpoint is, these can and do go on a great deal longer than the standard lifespan of a game.

A review of the format: There will be a name for the DLC, a brief synopsis, a reference to when this hypothetical DLC would become available/if and when it becomes unavailable, and then an expansion/write up of the ideas going in to them. Some ideas will have more expansion than others, because I’ve just plainly put more thought into them - in a lot of cases, I wrote them down just on the basis of ‘this idea seems pretty cool,’ and then gave them more context later on.

Feedback is welcome! Like an idea? Don’t like an idea? I welcome conversation and interaction on these ideas. Keep it civil, remember that these are just one person’s ideas, we can discuss them. Perhaps you’ll even help inspire a part two for these write ups! Because I do reserve the right to come up with more ideas in the future - these are the ideas that I’ve had to this point, but the whole reason this series exists is because I come up with new ideas for old stories.

So I HAVE actually been working on my ongoing series of hypothetical DLC to games that I love over the last year (it was the end of January 2020 when my last one of these got posted, this is going up at the beginning of May 2021). Which, yes, some is pandemic related because *screams* but... I was looking over what I’ve been working on, and realized that I was at about the combined length of my first two of these in my present examination, and I was only about a third of the way through the ideas that I had. I could either keep going and do these all at once in a massive post in like another year or two, or I could break it up into chunks.

So instead of waiting, this is going to be Part 1 of (I hope) 3 in an examination at ideas and possibilities of what additional content could have been made for Mass Effect 2, which for some is considered the best of the series. Me, I’m a little more critical of it. To me, this game is a textbook example of bridge syndrome, of the plot spinning its wheels to hold off on the payoff until the third part of the trilogy - the Collectors are, in practice, an entirely separate threat from the Reapers, even acknowledging the connection in the plot. We see this in the impact that the ME2 characters have in the next game - most are in side missions, all perform roles in the plot that literally can have them swapped out, even if it’s to the ultimate detriment of your War Asset count.

So in my mind, there’s a lot of room to make these DLCs, these glimpses into further areas of the world of Mass Effect at large. Because for me, what ME2 SHOULD have been was about making the alliances with the galaxy at large, rather than the big set piece of the Suicide Mission. We got some of this in ME2 proper, but that’s where the core of my focus and attention is with these DLCs.

Admittedly, I am aware of the difficulties of working around ME2 having both optional companions (Thane, Samara, and Tali don’t have to be recruited at all, Zaeed and Kasumi are DLC, many missions are available before you necessarily pick up certain companions...) and the ability to hold off on doing the DLC until after the Suicide Mission, where any or all of your companions may end up dying. However, for simplicity’s sake (because these things are long enough as it is without having a dozen variations apiece), we will assume that all companions are recruited and alive for the sake of plot advancement. Minds greater than mine can figure out how these would work without a given character – me, I tend to clear out the quest log before the Suicide Mission (aside from Lair of the Shadow Broker and Arrival, both of which are minimal on the squadmates from the rest of the game) and rarely let myself lose someone on the Suicide Mission, and since these are my ideas, we’re working in my framework.

Also, timeline note: Like ME2′s actual DLC, the fact that these would unlock at certain points in the game’s timeline does not necessarily reflect when they would best be played in the in-game timeline. Like Lair of the Shadow Broker and Arrival are (as I mentioned above), at least in my personal timeline, post-Suicide Mision content. BUT, they both become available to play after Horizon. Just because they unlock at certain points in the plot, that doesn’t mean that they best fit the timeline in that point. It was just a convenient way to organize things in my notes. So there will be ones that unlock at plot point A, but probably play best after plot point B. Players would be able to decide where they fit as it works for them.

Ghost of the Machine

A phenomenon is spreading across colonies in Citadel space. Machine cultists are cropping up on planets. Shortly thereafter, these colonies go dead quiet – often overrun by husks. To Admiral Anderson, this sounds like Reaper tech, and there’s only one person who he trusts to investigate the truth of the machine cults...

(Post-Freedom’s Progress)

So back to the machine cultists. In our last installment, there was Evolution, which featured them. Here, though, we’re looking at something that kinda resolves this little storyline. Y’know, since ME3 isn’t really going to have the time for this sort of thing. Which, sure, I’m saying this becomes unlocked before you can unlock this game’s machine cultist sidequest, but shush – just because it unlocks at this point doesn’t mean it has to be played at this point. This time, it’s not just about learning about the problem, but we’re also going to see what we can do to understand it, especially since we’re now acknowledging that this is a recurring problem within the universe and maybe we want to find a proper solution to it before stumbling blindly into it gets more and more people killed.

So this takes Shepard to a planet that’s making its first steps at colonization, yet again (because I am trying to be cognizant of what practical realities exist in the game development, even acknowledging that this is a hypothetical thing anyway – early colonization means limited extras wandering around out in the open and a self-contained area to play around in). Those seem to be the places where these devices mainly get uncovered, so that’s why this is here.

Of course, we have a situation where the devices are known about, so there’s an immediate lockdown, and the reason that Shepard and crew are getting sent out is because Reaper experience is needed – in the event that this colony can have anyone saved, who is it and how do we get them out safely?

I kinda look at this as revealing the process – the previous encounters were the parts that told us the existence of the metaphorical monster of this story, here we’re getting to see the “monster” properly in action. And I feel like this should be about also introducing some of what will become ME3’s foot soldiers among the Reaper armies – we know about the husks from ME1, now we’re going to encounter another for the first time. Probably the marauders. Given that they and the cannibals (who are so numerous in part because of the batarian worlds being first in the invasion path) are the most numerous in ME3 aside from husks, we should at least get to see them be pre-established because of their involvement ahead of time – they don’t get any proper introduction as is in ME3, just accepted as being there.

The honest general idea in this one is tying off this thread that was seemingly built, by way of being a repeated thread in both ME1 and ME2, but goes entirely unmentioned in ME3. Obvious reasons are obvious, but that’s why these hypothetical DLCs “exist,” to address things that the games didn’t have time for. (And that’s a big part of a lot of these, so... buckle up.)

Obviously, we have some of the supplementary material to work off of here – I’m specifically thinking of the Illusive Man’s comic series, Evolution. (Side note, TIM’s involvement there should probably also be part of the reason he’s quick to send Shepard in here – he knows what these artifacts can do.) You can read the wiki page as easily as this, but to quickly detail the important part, we know what these are through them, artifacts meant to ease the way for the eventual arrival of the Reapers by doing the huskifying work ahead of time, without the need for things like the Dragon’s Teeth (which... I want to bring these into this in some fashion, considering they seemed to have importance in ME1, but as the numbers of husks increased in the later games, they fell by the wayside – ME3 claimed that they were basically just to increase a subject’s adrenaline and spread the Reaper tech through the victim’s body quicker from the fear of impalement, and that seems like a lot of effort for little reward, since nothing indicates a way to come back after infection anyway).

So why are these on far-flung colonies, especially when the husks definitely don’t have the mental capacity to control ships and spread out that way?

Since, again, there’s no way to come back after infection anyway, that’s going to be one of the core questions. This seems like a highly inefficient way to set about conquering the galaxy. Why spread this if there’s no reliable method of getting it to go beyond any singular world? (Obviously, the original idea seems to be a) BioWare shock value and b) something to horrify the audience with no reason attached – so it’s time to add that reason). What is the purpose?

So that’s going to be a running thread, probably the major subplot of the story. Obviously, though, the first priority is Shepard trying to escape getting caught up in this colony that is descending into Reaper control. Also, since I said we’re introducing the marauders here, I think we need a turian contact on the ground – I almost said make them a female turian, introduce them to the world of Mass Effect well ahead of the DLC for ME3 (a-HEM!), but I also think that we’ve got another situation of seeing them get infected and die as a result – it IS a consistent point in this series that coming back from Reaper infections Is Not Done. And repeating that here makes it a consistent theme, considering Nyreen.

So while I still say there should be female turians making their appearance among the turians of the colony, our turian buddy is going to be a guy, just for the sake of not stuffing another named female turian in the fridge. I’ll get to a more proper introduction of a female turian later, promise. (And, I like to imagine, with the number of DLCs I’m writing up here, there’s some kind of ability to retroactively introduce female turians into the crowds in the base game as a “patch” through at least one of them, as well as into ME3 proper... Hey, this is all fantasy as it is, let me have that one.)

Anyway, the turian contact is going to be frosty with Shepard – he (I don’t have a name for him at this point) not only doesn’t trust Cerberus, he was also friends with Saren, making him distrust Shepard. While Saren was a traitor, it’s got an element of ‘guilt by association’ to have had close ties to him, so Shepard’s kind of a living embodiment of the hit to his good name. Even if he didn’t do what he did because of Shepard specifically, they’re still associated. But he is still on a mission and Shepard is here and willing to assist him, so...

That said, he’s a Cerberus contact – Cerberus may be human first, but, given the ME2 crew, they can cultivate non-human contacts and aid, and under the circumstances of this colony, being a joint endeavor of humans and turians (probably throw in some callbacks to the last edition of these hypothetical DLCs and mention Ambassador Goyle and the Planet of Peace story). He’s been influenced by Cerberus operatives because hey, it’s good for humanity and turians to make peace if there’s a greater threat, right? Shepard meets with him on the outskirts of the colony proper – in order not to be influenced, they’re acting as much outside of the colony as possible. (Come to think about it, it might be a good idea to make recruiting Mordin a pre-req for this, at least handwave him having come up with a measure meant to protect from Indoctrination and the effects of these artifacts.)

The artifact is already influencing colonists, of course, and our turian friend is ready to write them off immediately – they’ve read the reports, and indoctrination can’t be reversed. I picture a brief discussion about how horrible indoctrination is as a weapon, making the Reapers enemies into their servants, and so warping their minds and perceptions that they’d never be able to trust that any thought they have afterwards is their own, even if they could be saved. Because seriously, that’s one of the most unsettling things for me in this franchise.

The idea is, of course, to get in to where this artifact is and destroy it unseen. That probably means a stealth segment through this colony – honestly, do it like the batarian base in Arrival, I don’t think that it would be so bad. That offered some nice variation, if a little spare on interactable things. Here are going to be some interactable things, things you can get to if you’re good, pay enough attention to the line of sights and such, but will still risk discovery.

Those interactable things are going to be some of the background of the artifact and what’s the whole deal – y’know, codex stuff, things that aren’t essential to the story but good background. Lay some groundwork for the idea of what the Reapers want out of these things being left behind.

Stealth section comes before the inevitable action section, of course. Here, the artifact is in underground caverns (like normal) and our turian buddy sets out to make some quick scans, get the information they need. And, of course, it activates at his approach, zapping him with energy. He tries to shake off any effects but... Well, I already said that he was gonna get infected and die.

So here’s where we start seeing the husks show up. It’d be really nifty if we could get them in varying states of their evolution (or devolution, depending how you look at it), some people just having glowing eyes, others being full on huskified.

And, of course, our turian contact is now in the process of becoming a marauder. I’m thinking we’re having something of the same thing as with Saren here – now that the Reapers made contact with him, they’re framing him as their “herald,” the one who’s going to act as their instrument. Shepard rightly gets to point out the comparison, which does at least get some hesitation – he’s being indoctrinated, is in the process of becoming a pure Reaper tool, but isn’t all the way there yet, the process isn’t 100% immediate.

Also I figure this is a good time to really establish (in terms of ME2’s plot) that the Reapers are so interested in Shepard and why. Like, yeah, sure, we do get Harbinger’s whole thing, but that’s not really a dialogue where we get to ask questions. It’s not even an interrogation where Harbinger demands information. Harbinger just spouts out dialogue of “this hurts you” and such. That’s not really telling us anything. So, yeah, there’s the basic “Shepard defeated a Reaper,” but hey, let’s just get a little more out of it.

I mean, we can intuit what Shepard means for the Reapers, sure, but if it’s important enough to be a major motivation, it’s important enough to say outright, you know? So Shepard is a pinnacle for this cycle – they killed a Reaper, delayed the advancement of the cycle for a few years, that’s a bit of a big deal when it comes before the harvest proper starts up – and the Reapers (like Leviathan will later) want to better understand what makes them tick. If this is unique to Shepard or the human condition, and, if it’s the later, how to break this down to its basic chemical composition and make it their own.

Turian buddy is also here to mouthpiece the explanation for what the Reapers even expect to gain from this. Slaves who can’t operate the mechanisms that they’ll be using are poor servants. I figure it’s as much an intimidation matter as anything – prompt the effective burning of a colony without deeper investigation, sow some fear about the unknown and keep people staying to the comfortable and familiar areas of the space that they live in, corral them in the familiar patterns. It’s a plan with the intent of intimidation – it isn’t until the harvest that they need the servants, so until then, they just want the borders firmly established.

Seems simple enough, sure, but this is still a mystery as far as the game proper is concerned, and I am trying to work within the established structure of the trilogy, rather than come up with some massive reveal that changes our understanding of everything – if I WERE just going to rewrite the franchise, I could do that, instead of writing up synopses of add-ons to the main game, y’know?

Of course Shepard’s gonna get free – I’m thinking that it’s a rescue effort by some of the other crew on the Normandy (because it really bugs me that, when the game is focused around Shepard gathering up the “Dirty Dozen” for their “Suicide Squad” (look, I had to get that out of my system), they only take two members out on missions at a time, so hey, look, they get up to something while Shepard’s busy doing the dirty work. This being ME2, we have to shoot our way out even further to get back to the artifact, which is where our turian ‘friend’ waits.

Paragon/Renegade choice here – do we try and reach out to him, get him to help us blow the artifact to hell, or just jump straight to the boss fight? By this point he has some additional help, by way of our introduction to a harvester – these were dropped into ME3, on Menae, with no exploration, and non-Reaper ones were meant to be enemies during the development of this game, so call this the natural evolution of matters. We’re introducing the marauders and the harvesters ahead of time, explaining the lack of fanfare that these enter the “proper” storyline with. The difference is if our turian friend is aiding us or the harvester, the harvester being our big end boss for this DLC.

The harvester gets killed, the artifact is blown up with the turian (he chooses to remain if Paragoned, a reminder of the permanent effects of the indoctrination process and how this is something that can’t be fixed – hammer home some of the fear and anguish that will be impacting those left behind from the inevitable fighting). Shepard returns to the Normandy for a debrief (I do kinda picture Miranda being involved in that, because, again, squadmates get additional dialogue here, and she IS the ranking Cerberus officer). Also some set up about discussing about Cerberus efforts to better understand indoctrination (foreshadowing for Henry Lawson’s experiments on Horizon next game).

Post Game Followups:

ME3: Indoctrination has seen further study, providing a war asset. Dialogue changes to reference Shepard having encountered marauders and harvesters before.

 Commander Shepard

The Suicide Mission is coming, and the Illusive Man has asked for all of Shepard’s companions to have their heads cleared. Now it’s Shepard’s turn. Their burdens have remained – the loss of the Normandy, the death on Virmire, and their death at the hands of the Collectors. The rest of the team has to clear their heads, and now so must Commander Shepard.

(Post-Horizon)

Yeah, why is it that, while we’re dealing with having to clear the heads of our crew, our PC, who has canonically been killed and resurrected, does NOT have to do this? So, yeah, Shepard needs a good head clearing. (For the record, I have written a fic of this: Lazarus Risen, and that’s effectively where I’m going with this, so if you’re so inclined, check it out instead of reading this, since while the recap is shorter, the fic itself is not too long.)

So, if you don’t want to read that, my idea when I made the fic was to explore both the idea of “Commander Shepard’s loyalty mission,” or the one where Shepard clears their head, AND the thought of just what the heck required Shepard to take all their companions on a mission and leave the Normandy vulnerable to the Collector attack after obtaining the IFF. Now, I’m saying that this mission unlocks after Horizon, but in my mind, that’s when and where this mission takes place. I just don’t know how to implement it within the game design that presently exists, so we’re gonna leave that open to player interpretation.

So the starting point of the fic (and thus, this DLC – like I said, that’s effectively where I’m going with this) is that Kelly Chambers, in her role as the Normandy’s official unofficial counselor/therapist, has recognized that Shepard has a lot of trauma associated with their death and resurrection they have not worked through, and so that’s gone into her reports to the Illusive Man. Mister Illusive contacts the Normandy, declaring that Shepard’s going in to a Cerberus facility, along with their crew, for a full psychiatric workup – the mission is too important to not have all these issues dealt with before going into things.

A bit of fun with this, on the basis of it being why Shepard is taking their whole squad off the ship, is that there’s the opportunity for some banter and genuine crew interaction, something that is sadly missing from the base game itself. Since I’m me, and this is about what I want from these, this is also an opportunity for some character stuff with Shepard, both playing referee (maybe getting a chance to recover some of the loyalty divisions from the confrontations if need be?) and getting to be able to better build and display the growth these characters are going through from seeing their loyalty missions resolved (cuz you DO resolve all the loyalty missions before activating the Reaper IFF, right?). The whole point of doing them was to clear their heads, encourage growth, and the thing is, we don’t get much of that forward arc in ME2, with ME3 just catching us up later. At least half the point of these is some retroactive continuity to smooth out the trilogy’s edges, after all.

Moving on. The arrival at the Cerberus Station (I am assuming this is the same one from the early part of the game, the one Miranda and Jacob take Shepard after they escape the Lazarus facility, though it doesn’t have to be, just a convenient use of model reuse) is uh... complicated. After all, Shepard’s motley crew is not exactly Cerberus approved (even if TIM authorized it – remember how Brooks in Citadel will mention that “Cerberus was a human organization bringing in aliens”?). There is a stir. A handful of situations have to be defused before everything properly gets under way.

This isn’t in my fic because that was focused on the one thing, while, as DLC, this would have to fill out some additional content to justify the time spent and the resultant price tag players spend to buy it, but I kinda figure this is where we can start seeing where the dissent is for Miranda in particular (probably Jacob too), given her Cerberus loyalties. This is a Shepard-focused mission, but I do see Miranda having a relatively decent role in any sidequests, character bits, and dialogue, given that we presently have in her a Cerberus loyalist right up to the point that she sees the human Reaper in the endgame. Especially if she isn’t part of the endgame squad, I feel we should have some material that connects those dots somewhat. I mean, I expect all the characters SHOULD get some, but Miranda in specific is the one with the almost explicit arc of taking her from Cerberus loyalist to her “consider this my resignation” remark to the Illusive Man at the endgame.

The Cerberus station director (my fic said her name is Doctor Nuwali, so we’ll be going with that) tries to organize the chaos that is Shepard’s squad (Shepard being as helpful or obstructionistic as the player chooses to allow, because Cerberus and authorities figures are always fun to poke at, and we’re getting both of those rolled up in one). Building off the above point with Miranda, there’s also clearly tension between her and Nuwali – Nuwali is, in many ways, a reflection of who she was at the start of the game, the pure, uncompromising believer to the cause and the results-driven focus without acknowledging the human cost, while Miranda has been in the position of growing and developing and questioning (Like I said, connective tissue for her character arc).

Nuwali directs Shepard into a private room for their psych evaluation, insisting on the separation of Shepard from the squad. (Just go with it, it’s for plot purposes.) Within is a prothean artifact, and it begins to react at Shepard’s arrival. It flashes-

-and Shepard finds they’re now in the Virmire facility. This is the requisite combat segment stuff that I can brush past during the recapping. The point is that they’re making their way through the geth to the area where the bomb was deployed, to find Ashley or Kaidan, whoever was left behind on Virmire (even if they were left with the distraction team and Shepard didn’t go back for the bomb, Shepard is guaranteed to have been at the bomb site, not the other area, so...).

They assist Shepard in clearing out the geth and then go into confrontation mode – “you’re working with Cerberus now, what the hell?” You know all the fan debates about why is Shepard working with Cerberus, given the horrors they uncover in ME1, especially if you roll a Sole Survivor (and, considering that is the default Shepard background, that’s clearly BioWare’s preference, so it’s not even like this shouldn’t come up – DLC is better than nothing, you know?).

Yes, we’re doing a “defending your life” style thing here. Hey, the game could use that, considering how Cerberus is the bad guy and we’re working with them. We deserve a more critical examination of this concept.

It’s a bit of a verbal joust – Ashley/Kaidan question what Shepard’s doing, their purpose in working with Cerberus, why they aren’t just leaving, how they could have tried to turn them in to the Alliance and the Council after they were given the Normandy and use the information in the ship’s databases as evidence of the Collector threat? There were ways for the story to progress that weren’t this deal with the devil. Shepard gets to acknowledge their points, struggle to justify what they’re doing. Emphasizing that this IS a deal with the devil, and if Shepard doesn’t find a loophole out of it, they’ll be condemned alongside Cerberus as well – not blowing them to hell in the here and now can make them culpable for their future activities, especially if Cerberus tries to bank on the idea of “Commander Shepard worked with us” (like they do with Conrad Verner in ME3).

Call it “preempting the ‘we should have been able to side with Cerberus’ discussion” that cropped up after ME3 – people, we ARE talking about a xenophobic terrorist group, how were they EVER gonna come out of this series looking like the good guys in the final analysis?

The ultimate point is that this is not a good situation – whatever good might come of Cerberus in general, Cerberus cannot be trusted. Ashley/Kaidan point blank ask can Shepard truly justify staying with them, doing the Illusive Man’s bidding, regardless of their good intentions. And I don’t really think there’s a good answer here – again, in my head, this plays as the mission Shepard’s on when the Collectors attack the Normandy, and, because I make sure to do all the loyalty missions before going to the Collector Base, Shepard is about to cut ties with Cerberus by way of a massive explosion (because I’d never trust the Illusive Man with the Collector Base), this is basically laying groundwork for that moment.

If you don’t do things that way... Well, sorry, but this is my hypothetical DLC, so we’re playing things my way.

Anyway, this sends Shepard on their way to the next installment of “defending your life.” Because we’re absolutely following the Rule of Three here, so there’s more than just the one segment. More requisite combat stuff happens, this time fighting through the Citadel tower again. At the end is Saren. Because why wouldn’t we have an encounter with him when Shepard is doing questionable things in the name of defending the galaxy?

He, of course, is rather smug about the fact that Shepard is allying with the devil in the name of fighting the Reapers – to him, it comes across as something of a victory, because here Shepard is, the person who came after him for his alliance with Sovereign, having made his own deal with the devil. If Ashley/Kaidan were the angel on Shepard’s shoulder, the voice of their conscience, telling them that they are making a mistake working with Cerberus, Saren is here to be the devil on the other shoulder, pointing out all the value there is in working with them, in doing whatever the mission calls for to put an end to the Collectors and the Reapers.

One would hope that this kind of rhetoric from the villain of the first game would make it very clear that Cerberus are the bad guys. As if to drive the point home, Saren also brings up that Shepard was rebuilt by them – with what is certainly Reaper tech. Shepard has begun the process of ascending to the Reapers level, what’s some more, melding more with their tech, bringing that melding, that joining, that unification of organic and machine, to the people of the galaxy, of doing the Reapers a favor and acting as their instrument in raising up galactic civilization?

Things of course descend into a firefight (because we’ve got to have our action quota). This time, Shepard gets to pull the trigger and personally kill Saren – sure, I get satisfaction out of persuading him to shoot himself, and I can always take the other options if I’m really pressed to face off against him, but I want the visceral satisfaction of having Shepard standing over Saren themselves and pulling the trigger.

It’s the little things, you know?

Anyway, because Rule of Three, this proceeds Shepard to the third point. They are back on Lazarus Station. No combat this time, just proceeding through the halls until they find themselves in the spot where they met Jacob in the prologue. Here, they see Miranda and Liara, discussing the act of giving Shepard to Cerberus to rebuild. While at first they’re talking to each other (whether or not you want to interpret this as Shepard somehow having heard the conversation or this just being Shepard’s interpretation, that’s up to you – we’re already in the center of Shepard’s mind here, does that really need explaining?), eventually, Shepard gets to speak, raise concerns, raise their voice.

Shepard gets options – do they understand and appreciate what was done to them, the resurrection and effective drafting into Cerberus? Or are they angry and pissed off – they were dead, and then someone else comes along and decides not to let them rest. For me, this has always been an issue of bodily autonomy, where, with Liara using the reasoning, and I quote, that she “couldn’t let [Shepard] go,” SHE is the one deciding what to do with Shepard’s body. Whatever you might say about what that did to make the galaxy a better place... Was it what Shepard would have wanted done with their corpse, to be handed off to a terrorist group culpable in acts of horrific deeds so that they could play Frankenstein with it? This is, in the games proper, just completely ignored – the one option to be angry is about Liara hiding this from them, not about her DOING it, and in ME3, Shepard – without player input – frames Miranda and the Lazarus Project as “giving them back their life.”

Yeah, no. I can forgive Miranda’s actions, given her characterization is actively about her going from looking at Shepard as a resource to be tapped to a friend (or possibly lover). It’s not perfect, but it’s still part of her arc, and she does at least make an apology (even if the writing doesn’t focus on the part I want it to, that ME3 conversation being focused on her wanting to implant Shepard with a control chip).

But I NEED to be able to express anger at Liara in some way just to like her, considering her canonical reason for doing this is all about HER – not that she considered Shepard the only one in the galaxy who could stand against the Reapers, but that SHE couldn’t let Shepard go. When in my games, she has no right to that. She’s not the one my Shepard’s are in a relationship with. So what those who romance her probably see as an act of love and devotion, I, not romancing her, can’t see it as anything but an act of obsession. And, even if I have to limit myself to a mental simulacrum of her, because there’s not a better place to include such a thing in these DLCs, it will help me, because it’s at least acknowledgement that hey, maybe Shepard is kinda pissed about people making decisions about them for them.

*ahem*

Right, so, where were we? Right, the reaction to Miranda and Liara discussing what to do with Shepard’s body. So as Shepard reacts, this prompts appearances from Ashley, Kaidan, and Saren, all of them playing Greek chorus about the decisions made about Shepard and how Shepard is reacting to them all. And yes, now we have both Ashley and Kaidan, regardless of who was left on Virmire, because why not – if we have one of them showing up for this DLC, why NOT include both of them? You’d have both actors in the studio anyway, so... Basically this is the big character confrontation where they all make the points that fans can debate and nitpick over when they bring up this topic, until finally the question gets put as, effectively, “well, however you feel about it, it has been done, so what are you going to do now?”

And to answer that, Shepard has to reenter the room they woke up in. Because we’re not quite done here yet.

Yeah, that whole conversation piece? THAT was the third “fight” or “combat” scene of this sequence, done in dialogue. Think the Atris confrontation in KOTOR 2, a verbal standoff. The actual interaction that Shepard has to face in the operating room... is themselves.

And their mirror image is offering similar questions, now wanting Shepard to respond, rather than having other characters voice opinions for them. How do you play Shepard’s reaction to their death and resurrection? To the fact that they are spending this game working with Cerberus, who is responsible for a traumatic event in roughly one third of all Shepard histories? Who Shepard uncovered multiple instances of their mad science in ME1 that crossed every ethical line? Who have it repeated rather consistently, is a humanity-first organization who will put human interests (and Cerberus interests, claiming they’re the same) ahead of galactic ones? If the Collector Base has (or is) a Reaper weapon, do they legitimately trust the Illusive Man with this power? Does Cerberus or the Illusive Man REALLY deserve any loyalty from Shepard?

Think of this as “stage two” of the verbal boss battle.

So, the confrontation with themselves concludes with, effectively, Shepard making their decision for going forward – the idea is that it has all been a mental debate, Shepard talking to themselves and coming to a conclusion that they needed to make. The general idea probably is one that, if you’re an obsessive fan with a penchant for filling in the gaps of canon (hey how are you?), you may have imagined these kinds of thoughts and discussions and conversations happening, but isn’t it more satisfying to actually have them take place on screen? And two, Shepard confronting themselves is, in and of itself, always a big deal. As I said at the beginning, this is Shepard’s loyalty mission, done to clear their head. How could it not result in Shepard facing themselves and asking themselves these big questions directly?

When Shepard officially makes their decision for the forward march, you know, figuring out how to handle Cerberus from here on in, which basically come to, effectively, use them for their resources and cut them loose at the end of the crisis or cut ties now and let the chips fall – since, after all, aside from Miranda and Jacob, whose loyalties to Cerberus are already wavering, Shepard has a squad full of the most dangerous people in the galaxy, so they could handle a mutiny of any kind (and, on the player end, there’s the knowledge that, while all this is taking place, EDI is getting unshackled and effectively is capable of running the ship) – they’re kicked back to reality.

And yes, those are the only two results of this, because, just to hammer it home, Cerberus is NOT. THE GOOD GUYS. The Illusive Man is not secretly good, he’s just using the “humanity needs protection” line to justify his actions and attitudes that are about seizing power. And anyone who thought that we would, should, or could side with Cerberus come ME3 was kidding themselves.

Granted, with this line of thinking, I’m not sure what the motivation would be to give Cerberus the Collector Base at the endgame (I mean, I never have, so...). Maybe the idea of “indoctrinate yourself, get taken in by the Reapers, you bastard,” but... That doesn’t seem right for Shepard’s characterization. Eh, like I said, much of this is based in how I play in the first place, so if you want to try and figure that out, feel free, but my list, we go by my way of approaching things. Because that’s just how I roll.

So I haven’t explained what, exactly, this prothean artifact is. Well, it’s effectively nothing more than a plot device, but let’s say there’s a note that becomes interactable, that basically talks up the artifact as being what I’ve called it so far, something that is meant to allow the user a chance to directly interact with themselves, face the truths they deny. Again, this really is a plot device meant to allow the circumstances of the plot, and while I could go into the details of how I assume it works, it really just needs to exist, but that’s my handwave excuse to justify how it worked. It works very well, thank you for asking. The reality is the how is less important than what it brings up.

So, Shepard is back in the physical world, and sets about putting the ideas into motion – the Illusive Man wanted them here? Yeah, no. Not doing that anymore. Shepard gets their crew out of there, upsetting doc Nuwali (giving the impression that there were some sketchy ideas in mind for Shepard’s companions when they were alone themselves, invasive procedures that they’d knock them out and see if they could take them apart and put them back together, now loyal to the Cerberus banner that sort of thing) and has a brief chat with Miranda as they fly back to the Normandy.

...You know, which, based on my time table, is currently under Collector attack. Fun times!

Post Game Followups:

ME3: The artifact as a war asset, reports about Nuwali being captured by Alliance officers while in the process of having attempted some of those ‘sketchy ideas’ she’d meant to enact on Shepard’s companions.

The Lights of Klencory

The planet Klencory is rumored to hold secrets regarding ‘the machine devils.’ Admiral Hackett of the Alliance has suspicions these are references to the Reapers, and has been secretly investigating these. Now, a team of Alliance soldiers have vanished out there, and he’s calling in Commander Shepard as a specialist, along with an old friend...

Bonus Companion: Ashley Williams/Kaidan Alenko

(Post-Horizon)

So back on the old days of the BSN, before Arrival came out, the speculation was, after Lair of the Shadow Broker, that the successive DLC would feature Ashley or Kaidan, give them the same treatment Liara got by featuring them in a DLC. One of my favorite ideas featured the concept of the “machine devils” of Klencory. You know, the planet blurb from ME1 where a volus is digging into a planet in search of evidence of “lost crypts of beings of light,” the indication being that he’d had his mind scrambled by a prothean beacon. So, hey, guess where we’re going?

I mean, obviously Illium, duh.

Actually, that’s not a bad starting point. Illium in general seems to be fairly neutral territory – sure, technically a planet in Citadel space, given its an asari world, but with many Citadel laws relaxed, it makes for a place where “an Alliance operative” will meet with Shepard (We’re starting by way of a letter from Hackett, for the record) without it being considered suspicious behavior by those looking in who are not in the know about the tacit support that both Hackett and Anderson are offering Shepard. There’s a lot of questions coming into this on Shepard’s part, given that, at this point in time, they’re not really an Alliance officer, and yet this is apparently something that is getting them called on? Probably means Reapers.

It gets complicated once Shepard arrives for the meeting and finds Ashley/Kaidan is their contact.

So, before we go further, I want to acknowledge, by the nature of having any real contact between Shepard and Ashley/Kaidan between the encounter on Horizon and the opening of ME3, I am effectively breaking one of my cardinal rules for these, namely the idea of not screwing with the pre-existing structure of the games’ plots in allowing Shepard and Ashley/Kaidan SOME form of genuine contact and communication, to the point of a chance for a legitimate conversation about things and where they stand with one another (Yes, the previous entry was bending that rule, but this is an outright breaking of it).

Thing is, this is one thing that really SHOULD have existed in the games proper, I shouldn’t have to have built something up to include here, and I will 100% die mad about it. Ashley and Kaidan got shafted by BioWare’s handling of things, and I’m not willing to forgive it (if you follow my liveblogs of replaying the games, you’ll know I frequently complain that Arrival really was gift-wrapped to serve this function, and yet it doesn’t so much as mentioned Ashley/Kaidan). So yeah, we’re having an opportunity to address this stuff right off, it’s taking place in the game “proper” (for a given value, considering all of this is made up, but...). I’ll get into how this will impact their interactions come ME3 in the “Post Game Followups” section, for now, we’re just going with this.

Also on the “to note” element, I am mostly going to refer to Ashley/Kaidan in the sense of swapping them into place for one another, since, obviously, they are mutually exclusive at this point in the trilogy. But I do want it understood that I am not viewing them as interchangeable characters but as individuals. Just... If I stop to explain all the little differences of how they interact with Shepard in this, the variations of what they say and do on the character level, I’d basically be writing this out twice, which this is going to be long enough as it is, you don’t need to read the plot summary twice, and I certainly don’t need to write it twice. Assume that, even if not explicitly indicated, there ARE differences in behavior and dialogue that are reflective of them as separate characters and people, even if the overall plot must go forward regardless of how differently they’d react as individuals.

And you might want to pay close attention, since there will be a lot of use of “they” pronouns ahead, since Ashley/Kaidan is more awkward to write and I make it a point to not address the player character (in this case, Shepard) by one gender or the other in these write-ups, given that that’s variable, so things might get a little confusing if you’re not paying close enough attention to the context.

So... The meeting with Ashley/Kaidan begins... awkwardly. They’re uncertain how to really react to Shepard – sure, the encounter on Horizon means they know that Shepard is back, but now they’re really having to deal with this particular reality. So they’re going to aim to jump to business. Alliance intel has intercepted some messages from mercs hired out near Klencory, which got Admiral Hackett paying attention to things happening out there – like Shepard will acknowledge, between the circumstances of this meeting and the quick summary of the reason for the mercs all being out there, this sounds like it’s connected to the Reapers. Hackett wants to have Shepard as a “special consultant” as the Alliance has someone (re: Ashley/Kaidan) investigate (“consultant” since Shepard may not have had their Spectre status restored, so it gives them legitimacy either way). It could, potentially, just all be a massive coincidence. But since when are things ever “just” a coincidence?

Ashley/Kaidan are willing to use the Normandy as transport – Hackett figured that, between the stealth systems, and the lack of official Alliance authority in the area, the Normandy is the better option for getting there without being told to get lost. The bigger question is how they’ll be received – it’s not like merc gangs take well to outside interference, and the Alliance having any jurisdiction out there is questionable at best. But they should at least TRY to go in with civility. If this volus billionaire spending all this money on this (his name, for the record, is canonically given as Kumun Shol, so hey, less work for me, having to come up with a name!), then if he hears from someone who seems to be taking him seriously, it might get them invited in explicitly.

Obviously, though, if they’re hitching a ride on the Normandy, if things remain unspoken, the trip out there will be very awkward and seem longer than it is. So they have to address Horizon. They’re not going to apologize for not joining Shepard – Shepard is still operating on a ship flying Cerberus colors, even with good intentions, that is a betrayal of their oaths to the Alliance, Cerberus are terrorists and xenophobes, who want to secure human dominance. But they will acknowledge that they reacted to Shepard’s return in a way that wasn’t their best. I am not going all the way to “they admit that they were wrong,” because based solely on the information that they had, they handled things as best as they realistically could. But they will regret that things ended on the terms that they did.

Shepard gets to respond to that – are they accepting that it was a bad reaction to unexpected information, do they still hold a grudge, whatever. The conversation continues to a point of conclusion – Ashley/Kaidan don’t trust Cerberus, they want to trust Shepard, but the connection between the two at the moment makes that difficult, and they don’t know how to bridge that gap as things stand, but they’re going to try this.

We will be coming back to this, never you fear. But, of course, that’s more for the ending than it is the beginning, and this one conversation is far from the end.

Klencory is a world with a toxic atmosphere, so they first have to gain access to a semi-decent landing zone near where Shol has established himself. Because, naturally, he’s not interested in visitors – the brief communication we get with him is him effectively talking himself into the idea that Shepard is “the agent of the machine devils,” which... I mean, considering the prothean beacons and communications with the Reapers, it’s not crazy that he goes there, even if (by the rest of his actions), Shol’s gone a little nuts.

Shooty shooty bang bang, fight through the exterior guards and into the facility proper. Ashley/Kaidan are a little uncomfortable about what’s gone on – this really isn’t how they pictured things going, given the legitimate credentials they were supposed to be coming in with, and they can recognize the fighting is because of Shol not giving them an alternative, but it does still make them feel like they’re acting as little more than the thugs they’re dispatching.

Call this a reaction to the fact that Shepard doesn’t exactly get much of a differentiation in the game themselves. Particularly when they can call out looters on Omega while swiping whatever’s not nailed down.

This is another conversation that’s going to be part of that “coming back to” thing – assume there’s some kind of tracking metric for all of this in the same vein as how ME3 tracked how Ashley/Kaidan responded to Shepard as a lead in to the confrontation during the coup. Just, I’ll get to how that all plays out at the end.

Because a band of mercs aren’t enough to hold off Shepard, Ashley/Kaidan, and the third companion (yay party balance), they reach Shol’s central command. He’s a little batty, but it finally gets through to him that Shepard is not the agent of the machine devils. He is skeptical of Shepard being the savior from them, though. Instead, he wants Shepard and company to do something for him.

There is a vault. A vault none of his men have come back from. Shol declares that, if Shepard can enter, learn its secrets, and survive, then they will have proven themselves to be salvation from the machine devils. Since this is the advancement of the plot, Shepard will have to go ahead with this, even with the natural objections of Ashley/Kaidan (and, probably, Shepard themselves).

Another pause for a dialogue – Ashley/Kaidan are skeptical of Shol’s motives, and believe it may be too dangerous to just do what he says. Especially considering that he’s clearly not entirely stable. This is a situation that really calls for calling for backup. But there’s really not the option of waiting, because if they don’t do as Shol says, he’ll throw all his mercs at Shepard – even if we’re assuming that Shepard versus countless mercs ends well for Shepard (because, after all, it’s Shepard), it’s just a senseless loss of life.

Going in is a set piece of suspense. Think the Peragus mine, with a dash of Korriban for good measure, from KOTOR 2 – lot of littered corpses, this creeping and foreboding unease and feeling of being watched, this overbearing expectation of SOMETHING appearing down every dead end... Build the tension. This is a place that, the littered dead aside, no one has entered in thousands of years, it should absolutely be a place that could chill you to the bone. The examination of anything should feel like it’s disturbing the dead.

You know there’s some ancient security device active, right? I mean, something’s killing the people who trespass here. Obviously, it has to be something that will put up a fight as our end boss, and it needs to be something that is able to last a long time. I’m thinking an ancient robot (my mind is going in the direction of something similar in design to the ancient droids of KOTOR’s Star Forge), a last defense, left behind by a precursor to the protheans.

Yeah, it feels like an underwhelming result to me too, but it makes logical sense all the same – we have some evidence of things from prior cycles, not just the prothean cycle, making it through to the next ones, not the least of which is the plans for the Crucible. Seeing as how that bit of intel is just dropped into our laps come ME3, this is at least making it functionally foreshadowed, if indirectly, by actually showing us ancient technology that is still functional and viable even after more than fifty, a hundred thousand years. Plus the foreshadowing of things surviving to this cycle in the vein of Javik. Things lasting this long in forms beyond just ruins at least makes all of that happening in ME3 at least have some groundwork laid in these prior games – otherwise, we only have a few codex references to ancient civilizations, as opposed to it being an actual component of gameplay, things that the player MUST interact with.

But yeah, the threat may be underwhelming, but the payoff is what it guarded – the last remnants of this ancient culture. The corpses have been preserved, given that it’s a bunker into the planet’s mantle – the toxic nature of the atmosphere now came about because of the Reapers, though, of course, this is only spoken of in the material available as “the machine devils.” There could be a great wealth of information among this stuff.

Thing is, now that the threat’s dealt with, Shol wants his prize. He spent years of his life and a great deal of his money on this, and now he wants to use it – and, because he still is a paranoid bastard, he’s not particularly inclined to uphold his end of the bargain, having expected to have Shepard and the “guardian” of the tomb (for lack of a better term) kill each other. He just wants all of this to increase his own fortune – he’ll sell everything within to the highest bidder and damn what the Alliance, the Citadel, anyone might be able to get from the archives. Giving it to private collectors – like, say, the Illusive Man, or even any interested faction of capital-c Collectors (as in “the enemies we fight throughout ME2”) – will enrich him and it doesn’t matter what that information might do to help make the galaxy ready for war against the Reapers.

Now, normally you would think this would lead to a Paragon/Renegade choice. BUT, instead, we’re going to have a variation moment for Ashley and Kaidan. They’ll deal with Shol, but in unique ways. Ashley, having marine hand to hand combat skills (as she mentions in character discussion during the first game), manages to get close and disable the volus’s suit enough to render him unconscious, while Kaidan uses his biotics to get the same result. So they get to have a moment of protecting Shepard (not necessarily “saving” them, because a volus getting the drop on Shepard would certainly be an embarrassing way to go, but definitely helping them sidestep a situation).

NOW’S the time for the Paragon/Renegade choice, dealing with Shol himself. He is an obstacle, considering that dealing with the legal claim to this cache of information leaves the door open to some sticky situations as a result – the last thing they need is to have anything that might be useful be wrapped up in the legal battle. But he DOES have a valid claim. Just unilaterally taking this place from him is questionable at best – even if Shepard’s still a Spectre, are they REALLY able to just come in and declare the location to no longer be the property of the individual with the legal claim on it? Likewise, there’s a lot of sticky issues with the idea of killing him – after all, as mentioned above, he does have a bunch of trained mercenaries on hand, and it’s reasonable to try and walk out without adding to the bloodshed. But if it’s made clear that his madness has overtaken him (which, I mean... it kinda HAS), then there’s room for the Citadel to be able to legally seize his assets, including his claim on Klencory and its vault. But this still means institutionalizing a person because they’re inconvenient.

That’s the choice – institutionalize Shol and seize his assets, despite the subsequent legal battle that he and his kin can draw everyone in to, or cut through the red tape preemptively, kill him, and claim what amounts to squatter’s rights, since with him dead, no one else is there to take charge of the archive, whatever it contains. Ashley/Kaidan are going to say they have no intention of letting Shepard kill Shol (because that would certainly always be a line for them), but there will be a Renegade interrupt to take that choice out of their hands anyway, and Shepard can make an argument that, if they don’t do SOMETHING, Shol’s men will come in and try to kill them, while if he’s dead, that denies them their paycheck (because for one time ever, can we just have the mercs give up and run off once the source of their paycheck is dead?!). Shol certainly isn’t going to tell them to back down, and “survival instincts” have never been at the top of their hiring priorities.

Ashley/Kaidan will have some words about the decision Shepard is making, but they can be swayed to understand Shepard’s motivations, at least, in the moment, though any disagreements they have are more in the “waiting for a more opportune moment” than “what you say goes, Commander.” More on that shortly. With that matter resolved, Shepard calls for a pickup.

Back on the Normandy, Shepard and Ashley/Kaidan are having an informal debriefing in Shepard’s cabin (save the jokes for the end of the scene everyone, we’ll get to that). They do a brief discussion of what the likely followup will be – the fact is, the Reapers are probably already uncomfortably close at the moment already, so there’s not likely to be much opportunity to examine this place too much before they show. Still, every little bit is going to help.

The big thing is going to be how Shepard’s handled things through to this point. This was an accumulation metric (in the same style as Aria showing mercy on Petrovsky or not during Omega), so the various Paragon/Renegade decisions through to this point will lead to their reaction. Paragon Shepards get Ashley/Kaidan acknowledging that Shepard is still someone they respect, and that perhaps this whole Cerberus alliance was one of necessity. Renegade Shepards are leaving them questioning what Cerberus is doing to them, and are they really the person that they once were.

That leads to the question of where they stand if they’re a romance – like with Liara in Lair of the Shadow Broker, this leads to a romance rekindling, but only for Paragon Shepard, because that’s the version that has shown that Shepard is still the person they followed to hell and back, still the person they loved.

Yes, while I try and offer reasonably similar options for both Paragon and Renegade versions of Shepard, this is dependent on that. Because it’s about setting their concerns at ease, about listening to them and allowing them to be angry and upset and come around. Renegade Shepard will have shown they don’t care about that, so why WOULD Ashley/Kaidan take them back?

Anyway, insert “debriefing” joke here.

And, y’know, a reminder that, in these DLCs I’m writing, we’re going with the assumption that Ashley and Kaidan both were bisexual romance options back in the first game, and it’s an option to rekindle for both gendered Shepards.

After the interlude (however it plays out), there’s the discussion of what’s coming next for Ashley/Kaidan. They’re returning to the Alliance, of course – with Shepard’s official ties still in limbo, taking them out of the official chain, Hackett has made them a floating troubleshooter at points where he suspects Reaper involvement in some fashion, be it machine cultists and husks, Collectors, or what have you. However they feel about Shepard, Hackett is still seeming inclined to trust them on this, so they expect that the intel will still reach Shepard as they do their work. They make it clear they expect this to be the calm before the storm, and when the fight starts, they know Shepard will be on the front line. Paragons get them promising to back Shepard up when the time comes, Renegades get them hoping that they’ll still be on the same side when that happens.

Post Game Followups:

So here’s the part where, typically, I’d talk about how this impacts War Assets for ME3. But this is giving the ability to resolve the major Ashley/Kaidan element of ME3 before we even get there (like we should have in the first place...) and that means we have to deal with that. To that end, I obviously have left the door open for the lack of trust by way of Renegade Shepard, and that’ll go through things as they are, the same as if this DLC didn’t exist (I mean, it doesn’t exist anyway, but... You know what I mean!). The alternative for a Paragon completion is that there will be a distinct lessening of the tension between Shepard and Ashley/Kaidan in ME3, leading to some serious dialogue changes on Mars – more of an acceptance, instead of distrust.

I’m also thinking that, with the air cleared, there’s no moment of hesitation among them during the Citadel Coup, that it basically defaults them to trusting Shepard, regardless of how much they interact with them in Huerta and “clear the air” of Horizon. After all, Shepard already allayed their concerns with their practical involvement, gave them the chance to see them as the person they were, rather than the possibility that they were no longer the person they trusted. This changes the dynamics of their earlier interactions, and if you have rekindled the romance during the debriefing (no I’m not going to stop using that gag), then the dialogue will have more romantic undertones, the conversations more focused on matters of both them and the future together, trying to figure out if they even have a future, what with the invasion commencing, let alone where they stand with one another in that future.

I feel like I should have more done here, really, but I am really, genuinely TRYING to remain within the basic structures of the games as they are with this, because I totally could trash them and rebuild them from the start, but that’s defeating the purpose of this as additional material to the games, so that’s the most I’m offering on that. I want to do more, Ashley/Kaidan deserve a bigger and better role in ME3’s plot (which I’ll be trying to address further when we get to the ME3 hypothetical DLC, but that’s not here), but I’m trying not to totally rewrite ME3 as it is, that would probably be its own long involved project, and this is already ongoing. The original version of events can still be involved in the game proper, as the Renegade version, but that won’t be the only version any more.

Oh, and, we’re getting some war assets out of the place we discovered. That feels like an afterthought here, though. This has been about Ashley/Kaidan and their relationship with Shepard, more than anything, and we really did deserve this as much as Lair of the Shadow Broker.

 The Omega Heist

An old contact of Miranda and Jacob’s draws them – and Commander Shepard – back to Omega, where, with the merc bands decimated, an old threat they thought they’d dealt with long ago has reemerged. With Commander Shepard’s help, they must try their utmost to put this genie back in its bottle before it’s unleashed on the whole of Omega – and, potentially, the rest of the galaxy!

(Post-Horizon)

Considering Omega’s status as the dark reflection of the Citadel, the answer to it in the Terminus Systems, I just really want to explore it some more. Tie in to that, Miranda and Jacob have great prominence when they’re literally your only crewmates, but the second you start picking up the rest of the crew, they start falling off the map. Given that they’re our viewpoints into Cerberus as an organization, this feels like a mistake. Cerberus spends both the preceding and following game as enemies, and I think we need to spend some time at exploring why either of them would even fall under Cerberus and the Illusive Man’s sway.

It begins with Miranda asking to speak to Shepard. I’m gonna assume that, considering the unlock pattern of loyalty missions, this is most likely going to be played post-loyalty mission for both of them, since they’re both the first to unlock. Just to firmly establish where the characterization is going in to this. So both of them are at a point where they’re starting to question their loyalty to Cerberus (hence why I’m considering it a default that, in particular, Miranda’s loyalty has been obtained).

She’s heard from a contact on Omega about something that she wants to get Shepard involved in. The meeting moves to her office, where Jacob joins them. This concerns a mission they’d both undertaken shortly after their first mission together (see Mass Effect Galaxy, the mission Jacob talks to Shepard about having lost his faith in the Alliance over). They had an assignment to dispose of a biological sample – their assignment had been not to ‘get curious’ and investigate what it was, just get rid of it. The orders had come directly from the Illusive Man, so they were actually obeyed.

Jacob had been suspicious of the whole thing – when you’re moving something that you’re not supposed to investigate, it’s usually something that could blow up in your face. He opted for a little extra security monitoring, with Miranda agreeing and having kept track of it. That’s why this is now coming to her attention. They still don’t know what this was, but they can’t imagine that it getting let loose where any idiot could stumble across it would be a good thing.

So we’re returning to Omega. Personally, I’m disappointed that there’s no real change in Omega as ME2 carries on, even though you have to both clear out merc gangs and an active plague in the course of the game – recruiting Garrus and Mordin are mandatory quests, after all, so their joining the crew, their recruitment missions, these have to happen regardless of anything else Shepard may decide to do. So we’re getting another hub area on Omega besides Afterlife and the Gozu District market place. If Omega is the Citadel of the lawless Terminus Systems, then it can certainly fit in more of this (plus give more life to this place that, we know, will have people threatened come ME3 and the Omega DLC there).

Our central hub sector will be a safehouse established near the Kenzo District (picked because beyond existing as where Garrus had his run-in with Garm, we know nothing specific about it, so it can be used however the plot needs it to be). Under the circumstances – meaning “since we stored dangerous material on Omega without even speaking with Aria on the subject” – the idea here is stealth. Shepard, Miranda, and Jacob arrived via a transient shuttle rather than via the Normandy, and did so hopefully with some element of stealth. It’s not that Aria is going to be a threat here, just that she wouldn’t be happy learning about this going on under her nose and Cerberus is trying to cultivate some of her resources (sort of tie-in to the Cerberus takeover of Omega come ME3).

Their contact is my chance to get that female turian I mentioned a ways back into things – a turian trader who I’ll name Naevia (what, I’m a Spartacus fan and the reference makes me smile). The biological sample has fallen into the hands of a gang that’s trying to take up the space left by the biggest gangs of Omega losing their leadership (I’m thinking one of the gangs from our last edition of hypothetical DLCs, from “The Clean-Up,” because continuity!).

It’s around here that Shepard does ask the most important question on the subject that I think we’re all thinking – why the hell was this dangerous and hazardous sample kept rather than destroyed? Naevia admits she thought the same thing, but she was paid enough not to care, just to watch it. Miranda states that there was a possibility of using it for something in the future – this is a sign of her beginning to waver, because she can’t really justify the use of this sample, the fact that, though they’d been told to get rid of it, the “disposal team” had kept it, and were keeping it in a place with a population.

Granted this is a long standing tradition with dangerous science, but still, it needs to be called out.

The important thing is that it’s there, on Omega, and in particular when the station is already in the recovery process of a plague that targeted every race except humanity – there is still a lot of anti-human resentment on Omega, and the last thing that Cerberus should want is a human-spawned crisis breaking out (because no matter where the sample came from, a human organization, known to have a humans-first bent to it, was the group that stashed it here on Omega). Hence our presence.

We’re gonna have plenty of time to talk with Miranda and Jacob, so assume character conversations sprinkled here throughout (much as I cite it as reason that I don’t particularly care for their loyalty missions in comparison to others, that their loyalty missions also only have one ending, that once you start the mission, the only resolution is obtaining their loyalty, makes for a useful method of characterization trajectory here). This is here for the sake of exploring and deepening their character arcs, their division with Cerberus from the endgame, given that they’re both set against Cerberus come ME3, so we’re going with that.

We also get to spend some time with Naevia and getting a new perspective with the turians – she is a free agent, sort of like Vetra ended up being in Andromeda, in the sense that she’s a rebel to the status quo of turian military discipline. She’s looser and less rule-bound. She lives on the fringe of society and that shapes her reactions. She has no need for the turian rules of combat and prefers to take preemptive action – the rules of combat are a great idea in theory, when you have enemies who will respect them. But the Terminus is full of people who won’t. And, while she hasn’t been read into the Reaper matters, she is clearly picking up on the undercurrent between Shepard, Miranda, and Jacob.

Now if you’re assuming that this is leading to Naevia turning out to be involved in matters with this sample... Well, that’s definitely going to be a thing to follow, but let’s just keep going for now.

And yes, I have been cagey about what this sample even is. Remember, that’s because it’s a mystery even to Miranda and Jacob – they were still in a point where they were willing to listen to the Illusive Man’s orders without questioning them. The assumption was that the team they were giving it off to was a proper disposal team, and the failure of either of them to investigate it beyond his word. Y’know, the idea being they’re both starting to push themselves to look beyond the word they’re officially given by their boss and question him.

So… investigative work. We’ve already been over how in these summaries, that’s not where I focus on, not having a layout or anything to work with and such. So I’ve given the core ideas of character work and plot that plays out over the course of things, let’s cut to the climax.

The sample is being held by one of the gangs and a member of the Cerberus disposal squad. Because hey, look at that, a Cerberus agent went rogue and started killing all their guys, Commander Shepard, can you take care of that? He explains just what this sample is – a contaminant that can devastate a planetary atmosphere, hence why it was being kept on Omega, a space station. Of course, the problem with it is that it won’t discriminate and a rapid atmospheric dissolution will kill human lives as well. This is one of those things that it’s actually entirely justifiable that the Illusive Man didn’t want to use... y’know, if it weren’t for the fact that he still kept it, but...

Anyway, here’s where we come to Naevia’s sudden but inevitable betrayal, citing the profit to be earned – it’s easy enough to live on ships instead of a planet, so she’ll come out of this fine. Shepard gets the chance to shoot her with a Renegade interrupt, and look at that! She WASN’T betraying the team, just pretending to in order to slide a knife in the bad guy’s gut. It doesn’t kill him, and it still leads to a fight, but it’s easier if you don’t take the interrupt (because as much as I like the interrupt system, I think there should occasionally be consequences for taking a quick and reflexive response rather than the more considerate and thoughtful and examinative approach to a situation).

A multi-stage boss fight ensues – basic ground troops, interspersed with standard LOKI mechs, a YMIR mech joining the fight with reinforcements, and then a gunship. Maybe the gunship peels off midway and lets in another YMIR mech, just to really hammer the ‘boss fight’ element, or at the least let that be a higher level difficulty challenge. I mean you can only do so much with the mechanics of the game to create boss fights, right?

Anyway, Naevia is either dying, laughing at how her turncoat act was too effective, or she’s made it through with a few scratches and is patching them up as Miranda and Jacob are recovering the sample. Here’s the expected Paragon/Renegade choice of destroying the sample or storing it somewhere else – I can even see a reasoning for keeping in the idea of ‘once knowledge exists, it can’t just be destroyed, we need to study this to be able to devise a countermeasure.’ It’s a sucky one, for the record, but it’s a way to justify the Renegade stance.

This is where you see the culmination of Miranda and Jacob’s development. Jacob is open about wanting to correct their prior mistake of leaving this sample around to be used by anyone who might try to actually use it. No matter what, he sees no possible good coming from it and wants it destroyed. Miranda is conflicted. Her trust in the Illusive Man tells her that it would be right to hold on to this, it’s a weapon that could protect humanity if the aliens were to attack them – which is something that can’t be discounted as a possibility, considering the batarian hostility and the general aggravation of other races like the turians (see the previous Hypothetical DLC entry for more expansion on why I consider that a thing gets brought up). But she also knows that if this exists, then there’s a chance humanity can’t control it. She is looking to Shepard for guidance on this – she’s not turning to the Illusive Man’s standing orders here.

When the group returns to their safehouse, they find Aria there. Because this has been happening on Omega, and it’s her business to be fully aware of what’s happening on Omega. She thanks Shepard for disposing of that little business – if the sample was spared, she does imply that she knows about it, but, so long as it’s leaving Omega, she’s not going to be concerned about it. After all, she only cares about Omega’s interests. But, as a reward for what Shepard’s done for Omega, from the plague to Archangel to this (plus, potentially, dealing with Morinth, given that was the presence of an Ardat-Yakshi on Omega), she is offering a reward for Shepard – a penthouse suite.

Yes, I’m letting Shepard get an Omega apartment. I mean, okay, having one right before the Cerberus takeover of Omega come ME3 is not exactly the most prime real estate, but hey, Shepard deserves a place to relax, right? Plus it also comes with access to a special Omega market, a place where Shepard will be able to purchase any weapons or upgrades they might have been missed in the course of their missions (and any that get added through the DLC, including these). Because really, we should be able to have access to those things somehow, as in the game as is, if you miss it, it’s gone forever.

Anyway, Miranda and Jacob will also have follow up conversations when they return to the Normandy, discuss the way that things have played out and how they’ve evolved as people in the course of the game. Because as I said at the start, the two of them, in terms of their character development, kinda falls off the map in the course of the second half of the game. So they get a little additional content that helps fit them into the big picture of their character arcs.

Post Game Followups:

ME3: If Naevia survived, she’s an available war asset in regards to her underworld connections and such to send help Shepard’s way. If it’s kept intact, the sample also has some benefit for Alliance scientists in the study of reversing its effects and how to restore ravaged worlds. Also some additional content in the Omega DLC, though I’m not sure about the details of that right now.

And, y’know, since Naevia’s existence means that we have a female turian model built and developed circa ME2, this SHOULD mean that there are female turians scattered throughout both further DLC (as in ‘assume their existence in further installments, even if it goes unsaid’) and (because now they’d “exist” prior to the release of ME3) there would be numerous turian females in ME3 as assorted extras and such. Should go without saying, but I’m saying it. There will still be a few important female turian NPCs I introduce in further installments, but these are now part the standard background NPC collection.

 Battle Scars

Alliance officers on shore leave have been disappearing from the Citadel with no trace. Ambassador Anderson suspects there’s more to this than the standard dangers of a space station that’s practically its own world. Though Shepard is in a questionable position among the Council, they’re the one person Anderson can trust to solve this.

(Post-Horizon)

The Citadel being so limited a space in ME2 always bothered me. Y’know, I get the thematic idea, that ME2 was about exploring the darker underside of the galaxy at large. But I liked the Citadel. There was a lot about it to explore, all things considered – we’re talking about the galactic hub of politics and commerce. This really should be a major location, no matter the game. And as I’ve said elsewhere, there could be a whole game set on the Citadel with room for more. So yeah, we’re doing this here, exploring an area of the Citadel that we never got to see before.

There are Alliance officers going missing and Anderson gets Shepard involved. Obviously, the synopsis covered that bit. The idea here is that we’re going into areas of the Citadel that normally, Shepard has no business in, and in areas that are more like vacation areas. You know what this means? It means we’re going to have non-combat segments, in the same vein as Kasumi’s mission. There’s gonna be an extended sequence of Shepard out of combat armor in this one, because Shepard is not being called on to be a soldier but to infiltrate and be seen as a civilian more than a combat fighter. (I’m thinking this is going to involve a new casual outfit as well.)

And we’re gonna say that this is happening at an exclusive resort, meant to be a location that’s relaxing – a resort on the Citadel, effectively. It’s primarily a place for Citadel-aligned soldiers (Alliance and other races) to recover after combat, a therapeutic place for soldiers to get treatment for their PTSD (think a place where they’d probably have sent the PTSD asari in ME3 to if there wasn’t an existential war on). It’s why it’s a popular place for these Alliance soldiers to be, and we’re also going to rate it as having the highest success rate as a psychological and therapeutic facility in the known galaxy (because, being on the Citadel, why wouldn’t a place like this have a reputation of being the best, given how the Citadel is effectively the metaphorical center of the galaxy) and it’s a bit of a mixing bowl of Citadel culture, which allows for the rest of the party to come along.

I’m going to stick with mandatory companions here for a handful of reasons – one, Shepard’s got an eclectic band, and I feel like if they walk around a Citadel resort with Grunt and Legion, for example, that’s probably going to blow their cover. For two, I like the idea of mandating some pairings and developing the relationships more. Last entry was about Miranda and Jacob. Here, I’m thinking... For a resort, I honestly lean towards Samara and Kasumi, characters who, respectively, can blend in with “high society” and can pass through unseen by others. Kasumi, of course, does her cloaking to accompany Shepard – she does prefer going unseen. Samara, though, is playing at being a Matriarch – given the setting, let’s say that she’s pretending to be looking for a facility for her rambunctious daughter who is ‘disgracing’ the family name – sort of playing on her own history with Morinth (because Samara’s method that way), while still being a role she plays.

Yes, I’m aware that Kasumi is a DLC character, not everyone necessarily has her, but hey. If you’re playing DLC in the first place, you’ve probably collected other DLC, particularly a new companion, we’re just gonna roll with it, because I’m not going to develop an alternative without her, so consider them connected – I don’t know, say they got packaged in a sale together or something. This is all hypothetical in the first place, remember, does it REALLY matter that she’s not in the base game?

Shepard, of course, is going in as what they’re looking for, an Alliance officer looking for leave. This way there can be a solo segment, and the tension of “will Shepard run into trouble they can’t handle on their own before their companions come to their rescue?” Obviously, there does have to be some addressing of Shepard’s fame and notoriety, but it’s not like Shepard’s not doing other things that are putting their famous mug in places they shouldn’t be, particularly when it comes to involving Kasumi (The Hock heist, anyone? How, exactly, was the most famous human in the galaxy supposed to keep a low profile there?). So we’re just gonna handwave that, like you do.

As always when these are investigative sequences, I’m just gonna gloss over that part for the sake of convenience – the basic facts are that we have a lot of suspects with no clear motive at the outset of things. You know, get your basic archetypes wandering around – look at any show that features a recovery center, you’ll find them, I’m not gonna go into detail on the incidental characters.

The trick is that Shepard is going to be doing their initial investigating solo – they have to get entrenched before their companions show up (given that Samara’s cover is going to have her supposedly only there to look the place over, rather than sign herself in as needing “treatment” and Kasumi is going to be cloaked, searching for the things that Shepard can’t get access to – yes, for the record, I’m setting up for a Big Damn Heroes moment, I would think that would be obvious). They’ll meet with the above mentioned archetypes, learning details.

The details are more for the flavor – how well does Shepard figure out the scheme (which I’m getting to) before the villain shows up to explain in a monologue? Because, y’know, what villain doesn’t love explaining their nefarious deeds with a monologue? Shepard figuring out more and more of the plot before they confront the bad guy will impact the way the end fight goes down – figure it all out, you can sidestep the big final confrontation, figure most of it out, the fight’s significantly easier, stick to the bare minimum, it’s the hardest it can be.

This of course gets Shepard caught by our villain of the piece. So, what’s going on? Well, it’s an attempt by one of the doctors at this facility at cooking up the same shady shit Cerberus has, in the form of cyborg soldiers – the soldiers who have been kidnapped have been converted into these cybernetically enhanced soldiers. Problem is, they’re mindless automatons – higher brain functions didn’t survive the implantation process. So while these six million credit men are superior soldiers for combat, able to shrug off the kind of injuries that would cripple any other organic soldier, probably even have like nano-tech that speeds up any kind of healing and recovery process, they’re ONLY for combat, there is no human mind, no individual still alive in these shells – they’ll do as ordered because of the computer control chips in their heads, but only because those chips fire off the impulses needed.

“No glands, replaced by tech. No digestive system, replaced by tech. No soul. Replaced by tech. Whatever they were, gone forever.”

This is a point that I wanted to bring up in Miranda’s chat about “disposable soldiers” – the concept of soldiers being disposable is the kind of thought that cleans up war, something that the very idea is MEANT to be “dirty.” When you have these disposable soldiers, something that replaces the flesh and blood troops, you’re now in a position where going to war is not a difficult choice – you’re not sacrificing anything in the fight, because your best and brightest are safely out of the line of fire. When you don’t fear war, you’re going to turn to it as the first option, not the last. And, as pointed out by the use of Mordin’s quote above, at some point, your “disposable soldiers” become exactly what the Collectors are, mindless automatons who perform the duties of their masters, and, because of that distance, their masters’ own humanity erodes, because they never have to get their own hands dirty, while their servants are incapable of arguing with the orders.

This is when we get the aforementioned Big Damn Heroes moment, where Samara and Kasumi rejoin the party – since I’m assuming Shepard is being restrained at the moment, we have Kasumi Overload the controls and get them loose while Samara covers her by biotically handling the guards (because there are always guards).

So we get to that ending of how the boss fight can go down – Shepard gets to argue about the whole “disposable soldier” thing, bringing up and expanding on the above argument. If they uncovered all the details of the plot prior to the point they’re found out and taken captive, they can talk the doctor out of the inevitable fight (they still can choose to fight, of course, but the option is there to avoid a fight altogether) and have them shut down the project, effectively take their “prototypes” of these cyborg soldiers off life support and let them all die out (because, again, it’s the cybernetics that are even keeping them alive at this point), they can try and fail because of a lack of information, or they can actually agree with the idea, just that this doctor isn’t the one to be controlling them – it’s a valid choice, after all, to have a viable standing army to face the Reapers with.

I did debate making that last an option, just because I am morally opposed to the idea, but I am trying to respect that the Paragon/Renegade division was meant to be more than “goody-two-shoes versus puppy-kicking-monster,” and approach it from a level of “win with morals versus ends justify the means” – if you’re looking for something that can face the Reapers, like Shepard is aiming for throughout the trilogy, then a pragmatic approach says “we can use this resource, and I’ll deal with the moral weight of it later.”

Thinking about it, this does kinda make a flaw of the Kasumi-Samara team, because I do struggle with seeing how they’d just casually go along with Shepard saying “zombie cyborg army? Sign me up!” But maybe the Justicar code says that, regardless of origin, their existence has purpose and use, while Kasumi is horrified at the idea of using – and defiling – the dead like this. Basically, I want there to be a shoulder angel-devil scenario here, but I may not have selected the right companion pairing for this. Still, I’m not going back and rewriting this to make that work, so we’re just going to acknowledge that and move on – they’re both on the team, and there are other Renegade choices Shepard has available that they both just accept, so we’ll accept that.

And, y’know, I have a personal preference for Paragon at these decision points, and would probably stick to choosing to wipe out the zombie cyborg soldiers myself, and these are my ideas so I roll with what works for my decision making process, so nyah.

This still leads to the question of what, exactly, should be done with this facility – this is the head of the place we’re talking about as being responsible, with them out of commission (either being killed by Shepard or taken into C-Sec custody, depending on your choice), it’s entirely possible the place will be shuttered, or at least in chaos for a time, and that means all of its current residents are going to be kicked out – this is one of those “well intentions doesn’t change negative results” scenarios. Of course, Anderson will try to step in and do something, but... He can only do so much. Especially with having to clear out the devices and secret lab material and such, there’s a lot in this that just... is not going to have this place in a condition to be what it’s meant to be. Especially if things turned into a fight with the doctor and trashed the place.

Shepard themselves can only do so much – they can make a recommendation, but ultimately, there will be a board decision. They can offer a suggestion, a way for the staff to try and focus going forward, but it’s going to mean downsizing their care in some fashion – either they focus only on the immediately at-risk patients, going in the way of ‘if you’re not an active threat to yourself or others, you have to find somewhere else to seek treatment,’ or they limit themselves to just the care of a single species, because the psychological experts for multiple species is a resource drain.

And this one is NOT a Paragon/Renegade choice. It’s player’s best take on the subject, because there is no “right” choice in this scenario. Either way, someone is getting screwed over. You can hope sending the not at-risk patients won’t exacerbate their conditions, but you can’t be sure of that – especially when it comes to people who have been there for some time, PTSD and other conditions won’t just go away, they need to be managed and treated, and if you go from one facility and one medical professional to another, that can throw off your recovery. And you can specialize in the treatment and wellness of a single species, but what about the members of the other species? What about the “melting pot” nature of the Citadel and how, realistically, reinforcing those barriers between species only makes it harder for these species to get along with one another?

It’s a “no good choice” scenario, and I think it’s worth a discussion with Anderson at the end (rather than back on the Normandy with all the companions, just because I don’t think the game can really account for everyone there having an opinion). Though let’s also give a follow-up conversation with Kelly – y’know, the therapist – and let her have more to do in this game.

Post Game Followups:

ME3: If the doctor was taken in to custody, they’re among the Cerberus scientists during the mission on Gellix – Mister Illusive stepped in to get their work under his banner, and, like Gavin Archer, Shepard’s involvement eventually made them hesitate to do his bidding. If the cyborgs were kept on, they’re a decent strength war asset.

 The Batarian Connection

A Cerberus vessel goes missing out near the batarian border. While the Collectors are still the first priority for Commander Shepard and company, the Illusive Man is concerned this may be the first stage of a batarian incursion of Alliance space. He tasks Shepard and company with recovering the missing ship. The batarians, however, have other ideas...

(Post-Horizon)

We hear a lot of talk about the batarians making slave grabs throughout the first two games, and the Colonist background has this as a part of the things Shepard has been through. But we don’t actually see it. And we probably can’t manage to see the absolute worst horrors of the batarian slavers, but that’s not the full point of this.

No, the point is to start showing another face to the batarians. See, we’re going in with the idea of the batarians slavers we’re after handing off the captives they take – of various races, though krogan and turian are not likely, given their own, more aggressive nature (maybe useful in gladiatorial rings... We might be coming back to that before these DLC are done), and the quarians aren’t going to be as numerous, that still leaves humans, asari, salarians, and other batarians. And we know from Mass Effect 3, having the Cannibals being introduced in the first segment of the game, the Reapers have access to a lot of batarian genetic material, so they’ve already spent a lot of time developing how they intend to repurpose the batarians into the servants they need to wage war in this cycle.

Codex material speaks of how the Collectors want certain specific types of people to collect, and that is going to be what’s happening here – while the Collectors main focus in the game is to gather up humans to turn into Reaper slurry, we’re also looking at the other races, because there’s a history of the other races being taken by the Collectors for various unknown reasons. It wasn’t clear if there would have been an intent to build additional Reapers out of the other races – an asari Reaper, a turian Reaper, etc. - or if they’d just be left to rot, possibly slurried alongside the humans and just put in the same shell. To build off the idea of “organic preservation” of the species who consist of a cycle, I’m going to assume that they would be fused into a Reaper of their own, though there’s room to argue they were going to just be pulped into the same Reaper or left as the Collectors of the next cycle. But my ideas, my interpretation of things. And if BioWare wants to fight my interpretation, hey, should have included it in the game.

So yeah, the batarian slavers we’re coming across were going to offer the Collectors more of those captives of various races and such. The idea here is to not just have a look at the horrors of batarian slavery, but also an upfront acknowledgment that the batarians do this to their own people as well. The crappy situation for your average batarian is reduced to codex and one-liners, so we don’t actually have this knowledge available for the common players, and this is a thing that needs correcting.

We’re also going to have an encounter with a different Collector ship (just to avoid too much of the whole “small universe syndrome” of the same ship dogging Shepard for two years – it wasn’t until ME3 and James’s backstory that I got the impression that the Collectors had more than the one ship, since they made this one ship out to be this major force). Because, really, if the Collectors taking colonies was something of a plan B when the Citadel didn’t open, then they should be readying themselves for more than just humanity to be taken.

Among the batarians is a sense of distrust – batarian propaganda says the galaxy hates them, and, because we get the slavers and mercs running around in the games, the audience is probably not inclined to disprove that theory (particularly if there’s a Colonist Shepard doing the run – because I say so, there can be plenty of statements from them on the subject that fit the background specifically, because it’s nice that these are all theoretical and I can throw in whatever I like). Still, the general idea is that Shepard does feel a moral responsibility to save them, even if, as in the case of Renegade Shepard, it’s just in the name of preventing the Collectors get their claws on them.

But, thing is, ME2 offers no ship piloting mechanic, and I’m not bringing that in. And, y’know, I still get war flashbacks of getting ambushed by Sith fighters in KOTOR. So that means that the Normandy heads off, Shepard ordering them to find help (we’re gonna say that this is taking place somewhere near the batarian-turian border, so the Normandy can go find a few turian ships – going back to my idea of “shaking up companions” concept, I don’t have any particular choices to go with Shepard this time, but this makes it almost mandatory for a companion other than Garrus to come along, since Garrus can sway the turians to come to the rescue of alien nationals – and this ship ends up crashing, with Shepard and companions still on board – as are the freed slaves.

And we’re not crashing on a habitable planet. Because while there’s the helmets and all, I feel sometimes like the franchise as a whole underplays how much the atmosphere of planets being conducive to life as we know it is kind of rare. So while the cargo hold, settled in the heart of the ship and surrounded by the various additional decks of the ship, makes it through, there are portions of the ship that have been vented into space.

And the Collectors are coming.

Shepard gets to make a Paragon/Renegade “inspiration” speech to the captives, recommending that they get to trying to save themselves. Paragon will get a majority on their side, Renegade only a particularly brave soul. This one would be the Paragon’s contact/coordinator, just so that I can have a clearly identifiable person to turn to. And, yeah, we’re punishing Renegades here, but here’s the thing about this – we have stolen people, taken prisoner, made into slaves, about to be handed off to aliens who are only known to the galaxy as kidnapping and experimenting on people who never return, and then crashed on a deadly planet, with their only shelter pocked with holes letting out the valuable atmosphere that keeps them alive. I’m sorry, but being an asshole to these traumatized people? Even in the name of saving their asses from said kidnapping and experimenting aliens, they are NOT going to be ready to take up arms and fight. Read the room.

So, it becomes a game of causing enough losses to the Collectors for them to retreat for the Normandy to arrive with rescue vessels. Cat and mouse combat, with interspersed dialogue with our batarian coordinator (Making a name up on the spot... Kahvahr). That’s giving the expansion on both him as a character, talking about himself – a political exile, he spoke out against the Hegemony’s attitudes and practices, that they are so isolationistic that the necessary trade with the Citadel races, trade that could reduce their reliance on slavery, is killing them, which led to him attempting to leave, an attempt that ended up putting him into the hands of the slavers he argued against, and he’s certain that the Hegemony’s leaders basically gave him up. Talk about the beauty of Khar’shan, as a planet and place, something more tangible for us the audience of this place that we never get to go – he speaks longingly of these natural wonders he doesn’t expect he’ll ever see again.

The aid of the batarians Kahvahr leads can offer some combat segments getting avoided, but I do want to include some elements of the Collector faction from ME3 in combat segments all the same, the Collector Captain in specific. Because these things never appeared in ME2, so let’s remedy that.

And our end boss is going to be some variant of the Collector drones we see in Paragon Lost, which are these giant sized Collectors. So they get some additional tricks and are a clear case that Shepard is now facing the worst forces the Collectors can throw at them. Because I figure you can give them some interesting additional boss tricks.

The turians arrive and the Collectors withdraw, so Shepard gets to pass on what to do with these batarians – treat them as refugees who are seeking asylum in Citadel space or ship them back to batarian space. Because the thing is... batarians in Citadel space are probably not going to have things pretty well. Like there’s a reason we see batarians on Omega but not the Citadel. And a lot of these batarians still have families in the Hegemony. So there’s a very real argument to the idea that they’d be better off going back. It’s probably bull, considering the Hegemony’s leadership (and definitely bull on the basis of the Reapers being about to steamroll the batarians in between games), but... It can be made.

And it also speaks to how well Shepard is responding to Kahvahr – Kahvahr makes it clear, batarian slaves tend to be those who speak out. How much good can they really do going back to the Hegemony? Sure, you can argue that it’s in the name of encouraging rebellion against the Hegemony’s leadership, but realistically? It’s signing a death warrant – if this attempt at silencing him didn’t work, the Hegemony will likely just go straight to killing him.

And maybe Shepard’s okay with that – the whole reason we’re doing this is because the portrayal of batarians through the rest of the series is almost exclusively them as an always chaotic evil antagonistic force. What do they contribute to the galaxy, right? But this whole thing has been to help paint the batarians in a new light – now, shipping these batarians back to their people isn’t a mercy but a death sentence. What can I say, I like that script-flipping. But, as always, it is a choice for Shepard, for the players. Because apparently, people who play these games like the chance to play the asshole. Fine, you can, but you’re definitely getting judged for it.

Post Game Followups:

ME3: If given asylum, a batarian militia will have formed, both the survivors of the crash and of batarian refugees, wanting to aid the Citadel forces, Kahvahr himself as an asset.

 Shadow Dance

Shepard’s connections to Cerberus have not gone unnoticed. A Spectre – Vexx Liranus – has decided that they are a key component to Cerberus plans (not untrue) and that their capture or death would be useful in combatting Cerberus (definitely untrue). With a fellow Spectre nipping at their heels, Shepard has to face what should be a comrade in arms in a deadly game of cat and mouse!

(Post-Horizon)

We meet three other Spectres in the trilogy, and only one of them, Jondum Bau, in ME3, is actually an ally. This is turning that on its head – all things considered, Vexx Liranus should be an ally. After all, we’re talking about a fellow Spectre, working for the Council, and Cerberus IS using Shepard for their plans, so taking Shepard out would make sense.

It’s just Shepard is a good guy, working with Cerberus as more an alliance of necessity, rather than any ideological alignment. And while I’m sure if you had a chance to sit down and talk to another Spectre, they’d probably eventually come around to the idea, well... Where’s the fun in that.

So Vexx. We had Naevia above in “The Omega Heist” as our “first” female turian for the trilogy, though she does potentially get killed. So we’re gonna have another female turian here, just to really sell the “no fridging female turians” concept. She is a badass turian soldier, like I want a planet with an “r” name to say she had a major incident on so that she can be “the Raptor of [wherever].” Because I love alliteration. I picture her being voiced by Claudia Christian (who was a favorite of mine to voice a female turian back before we knew anything about Mass Effect Andromeda, and while I’m absolutely a fan of Danielle Rayne’s performance as Vetra, I still regret that lack, so I’m making this happen here).

As for the actual plot, we’re gonna start on a small waystation location. It’s a standard resupply place, in the vein of like those Fuel Depots or something, a place like the Citadel but smaller. Because I think that space stations are an underdeveloped aspect of the Mass Effect universe. Like in Star Trek, there are Starbases and Deep Space Stations (such as DS9). Surely the various militaries of the Citadel races are doing the same, building their own stations that act as refuel and resupply, as well as standard rest and relaxation – Spacer Shepard will talk about living on ships, but I don’t see a child actually being raised on military vessels. But a space station that acts as a rallying point and home base for a vessel? That I’ll buy.

So this begins with the Normandy pulling in to one of these types of stations. You know, a little bit of a supply run, something simple. Things do not go according to plan, though, because, y’know, why would they, we wouldn’t have a plot if they did.

It begins simply. They settle in for a resupply, Miranda suggesting that the operational crew get a chance for some break time, Kelly adding that crew like Rolston and Hadley should have an opportunity to contact their families. That’s how we get here. As Shepard proceeds to look through the market, we get other angles of Vexx monitoring and observing Shepard. Shepard will begin to get that feeling of being watched, and that’s when she makes her first strike.

Now, yeah, I say right off in the synopsis that Vexx is a Spectre, but in the story proper? This is going to be kept quiet for a while. Sorta like how Vasir gets this intro that kinda clearly marks her as someone who we’re going to have to fight later, Vexx is getting the appearance of being a straight up antagonist. Because in her mind, she IS an antagonist to Shepard. She just believes that she’s the protagonist of the story, specifically because of Shepard’s ties to Cerberus, coming to this place in a vessel flying Cerberus colors, operating with a Cerberus crew. In her mind, she has discovered a threat to the Citadel and the Council.

While I’m still on the “give the companions more of a role” train, in this case, we’re going to see Shepard cut off from the crew – they come under fire from Vexx, they give the command to evacuate the station, return to the Normandy, and get out until they give the signal. Paragon Shepard wants to minimize casualties, Renegade Shepard wants to handle this themselves – Vexx interrupts their leave? It’s on now.

This leads to a chase through the station, and finding that she’s gotten things pretty well set up for this chase – I figure at some point, Shepard comes across like a secured bunker she’d been using as a command base, finds logs that have been tracking them since they landed on Omega at the start of the game. (Timeline being what it is, meaning as variable as it is, I’m gonna say that this is taking place functionally around, say, the Collector ship mission.)

That discovery is also when her Spectre status is made clear. Now, while there’s a good chance that Shepard’s had their Spectre status reinstated (thank you Dad!miral Anderson), well, we still need a plot here. Vexx doesn’t believe Shepard’s claim to have Council approval – after all, she certainly can’t just casually check this out while on a mission, Spectres are supposed to function independently of the Council. And she’s pretty good with the “better beg forgiveness than to ask permission” approach – Shepard helping Cerberus, even as a double agent, is a threat (for a less competent example of why, see how Shepard helping Cerberus in ME2 leads to Conrad Verner preaching Cerberus values in ME3).

The hunt continues. I’m basically picturing this functionally working a lot like a lower-levelled version of Arrival’s Project Base level, just with like security drones and such, and Vexx popping in and out of combat range. This is a hunting mission, on both sides, and the idea is that Shepard (and, by extension, the player) should feel like Vexx or her drones might show up around any corner. If nothing else, call it useful practice and experience.

Now, I said before I wanted to avoid stuffing our first female turian in the fridge. While Naevia could survive, she also could die. So I want to guarantee that at least one female turian of prominence is introduced without killing her off. That means that we’re going to have to find a peaceful resolution, as well as an alternative that allows the bloodthirsty playerbase to be satisfied.

That means an outside agent, a third party, getting in on this. I’m thinking a krogan merc with a grudge and a krantt and a blood oath against Vexx he’s more than willing to extend to Shepard, the Spectres, and the Council – with Vexx, it’s personal, having tangled with her before, with Shepard, they’re in the way, and with the Spectres, they work for the Council, and the Council gave the go-ahead on the genophage, so hey, it’s a good day to be him.

This eventually leads to, after some three-way combat, Shepard suggesting a truce for the time being – the krogan (Vargan, for want of a name) is a bigger threat to them both at the moment, since he’s distracting them and endangering the station as a whole. Vexx sees the wisdom in this and is willing to work with Shepard.

This gives a little more time to explore her, now that Shepard can talk to her. Vargan’s grudge stems from her disbanding his merc pack a while pack – they had ideas similar to the Blood Pack and Clan Weyrloc (re: Mordin’s loyalty mission), just without the aid of any salarian scientists. Maybe they’d sought out Okeer (possibly part of the reason that Okeer became a “very hated name,” as Wrex puts it? I don’t know, I’m spitballing here). Whatever the goal, however, she managed to put a stop to it, enough that Vargan was stripped of his clan name – given the structure of krogan society, I figure that in doing that, a krogan loses all right to even attempt to mate with the females, a big blow to a proud krogan leader, basically leading him to a voluntary exile from Tuchanka. That he still has a krantt after that still speaks to his skill and prowess, but also makes it clear that these are his only allies in the galaxy.

Shoot-y shoot-y stuff happens, yadda yadda... We’ve been over how writing about combat in these write-ups is boring. End result, we learn more about Vexx, develop and establish her further, give her this likeable air now that we’re on the same side, and get to Vargan, taking out his krantt in the process. Now that he’s alone, he is ready to die. He got everyone loyal to him killed, that means he’ll never regain a clan name now. He wants to die.

Typically, Paragon/Renegade decisions are a clear binary of “good means letting people live, bad means letting people die!” But here, Paragon is understanding the krogan mindset – he wants to die because he will never have a place in krogan society if he lives. He got his krantt killed, so he will never be able to gather a krantt again. He will never have that trust again, and so his death is the only way he can have an honorable ending. Meanwhile, Renegade is saying “no, I’m not going to grant you the mercy of death, live with your failure.” And doing that will likely mean he will strike out and go on some kind of suicide run (indeed, I picture that result being a news announcement overheard on the galactic news points).

Because I like the idea of twisting the Paragon/Renegade assumptions around – the idea behind it is supposed to be more nuanced than “good = blue, bad = red,” but in context, a lot of the use of the system through most of the series is a lot more binary. So this is showing the flip side of both ideas’ general attitudes – you are saving more lives and respecting his attitudes and beliefs by killing him, while knowingly leaving a threat to others that you KNOW he’ll act on by keeping him alive.

Vargan defeated, it comes back to Shepard and Vexx. She’s more impressed by Shepard at this point. Paragon Shepard showed an understanding of non-human mindsets, and that more than anything makes her hesitate to paint them with the same brush as Cerberus. Renegade Shepard showed enough martial skill that she’s concerned that things will only reach the point of a stalemate, and likely do too much damage to the station for it to continue operation.

So she offers Shepard what she’s going to call a deal – keep to the Terminus Systems, like they have been, and she’ll let things stand as they are, with the added note that, if their Council reinstatement is genuine, she’ll also send a letter with a fuller apology after the DLC concludes. Yeah, it’s basically going back to the status quo, but one, I’ve been clear that my goal is to make these slot in comfortably with the existing game, and two, back to the in-universe justifications, it also means that she can prevent other Spectres from coming after Shepard – after all, we learned with Saren, the only real way to respond to a Spectre going rogue is to send another Spectre after them. If Vexx is in Shepard’s corner, it prevents other Spectres from coming after them later.

Probably should lead to a line or two in reference to Vexx from Tela Vasir, depending on when Lair of the Shadow Broker is played – alternatively, I suppose Vexx should have some comments about Vasir’s death as well, but I did say above that I see this functionally being roughly around the point of the Collector Ship in the timeline, and I always view Lair of the Shadow Broker as taking place after the Suicide Mission, and my write-ups, my timeline. Moving on.

Shepard has to agree to this, because see above: not fridging female turians when the trilogy is so bereft of them in the first place. We don’t kill Vexx. Because, really, that would mean that Shepard would have killed three of the four fellow Spectres they encounter in the course of the trilogy, and their numbers are said to only go to about a hundred or so. That’s a three percent fatality rate for the Spectres, and a seventy-five percent fatality rate of meeting Shepard. Someone has to think those numbers look bad. So, in accepting the deal, Vexx walks away and Shepard calls the Normandy for a pick up.

Post Game Followups:

ME3: Vexx has a sidequest on the post-Coup Citadel, regarding her work with the unifying of turian and krogan forces. Given Shepard having contributed, she’s asking them to join in her efforts. Complete that and she gets to be an asset and there’s a boost for both of those groups as well.

 Underworld

Illium is home to many elite in the galaxy. It’s called the gateway to the Terminus Systems. But it’s equally a warning that there is as much danger in Illium’s shadows as on Omega. And now a high-profile Alliance official goes missing there. Ambassador Anderson asks Shepard to investigate as he keeps the disappearance quiet, and Shepard gets drawn into a web of conspiracy...

(Post-Horizon)

Illium seems like it should be a bigger deal, don’t you think? I mean, in ME2 we get three hub worlds in Omega, the Citadel, and Illium, but Illium is introduced after Horizon, being locked to (on console) disc two, and, while Lair of the Shadow Broker gave us more of Illium in general... Hey. Let’s explore more. Cuz now we can open up some new areas that can stick around and still be explorable after the DLC ends.

We open with a message from Anderson – “one of our people went missing out on Illium, I’d like you to look into this as a favor to me,” that sort of thing. This official is an ambassadorial figure from the Alliance to the asari (so, for the sake of a name, I’m in a Power Rangers mood right now, I’m gonna call her Kimberly Hart). She’s been attempting to shore up some diplomatic ties – I’d figure this would include matters like getting stronger ties between the asari in the name of gaining access to teachers for Grissom Academy, better relations in the name of biotic rights, that sort of thing.

Illium, being a free trade world, is a place where these kinds of negotiations take place without government oversight – I figure, based on things like the asari on Noveria in ME1 who wants to protect asari patents by getting Shepard to help her engage in corporate espionage, the asari government is extremely strict about their “secrets” while humans, who are still struggling to get a handle on what to do with first and second gen biotics, are willing to take on free agents more than like the commandos and such. Also, don’t want a repeat of Vyrnnus, so the turians are definitely out. It’s “asari free agents” who they’re looking at bringing on for this.

But with her having gone missing, that’s concerning – again, we have the asari being fiercely protective of what they view as their copyrights (which I do want to have a running theme here surrounding the idea “how do you copyright something that has this melding with the life it is bonded to?” – amps working as they do, mapped to biological systems as they are, this seems like it borders on trying to patent people in the process, since they’ll gain full maps of the people those amps are implanted in). Anderson wants Shepard to go in, since they’re off the official books.

Now we return to that earlier concept of mandatory companions. Because of the matter of biotics, this feels like a mission that Jack pushes her way in to – both because she’s been the subject of biotic experimentation, and she wants to ensure that this doesn’t turn in to the Teltin facility all over again, and to help give some foreshadowing for her becoming one of Grissom Academy’s teachers next game. Additionally, I’ll go with Thane as the other companion for this – he’s done work in Illium’s criminal underworld.

Now then, to our central hub of Illium. We’re on a different city than Nos Astra, but it’s going to have a similar flavor to it, in the same way that Azure still felt like it wasn’t all that out of place alongside the trading center. Nos Vidia, I’ll call it (sounds suitably asari, anyway). It’s not as major a hub of intergalactic trade and commerce, meaning that Shepard and company are going to stand out in the crowd.

This is also one of the more “crime” areas, where the black market has moved in. We have Eclipse symbols on the wall and, while they’re not wearing the uniform, many of the people around here are obviously in the gang. Which also makes Shepard stand out. Thane, however, manages to bring up a former contact, someone who has been able to stay alive this long, meaning they’re skilled enough that they’ve survived.

The contact is an asari I’m gonna call Kassria. Kassria has picked up some Eclipse chatter that references our missing ambassador. That means Eclipse has her, but it’s not clear so much if her being taken is because of her getting in the way of Eclipse as a gang or if the Eclipse are working for some asari company.

We pause for some talk about the various asari copyrights, explore that conversation, with Jack having quite a few words on the subject of trying to make people property. That kind of thinking creates situations that create the same kind of science as Teltin. Thane offers something of the drell perspective – he’s the one who argues that he was raised and trained as a weapon for the hanar, and that he was not responsible for the lives he took. Who owns the abilities, the user or the one calling for their use? (I mean, there’s an obvious answer, but Thane’s bringing up the alternative to this – the people who are broken down and made into weapons at the hands of others.)

Like actually, let’s make that aside a point of having Jack and Thane – in Jack’s eyes, Thane’s attitude towards the people he’s killed is much how Cerberus would have wanted her to have ended up, as a weapon for them to point, pull the trigger, and give no concern for the ways that it impacts the person who acts because of that order.

It’s the same argument that we have with Miranda – the idea of “disposable troops” does not make it a matter of saving lives, just a matter of how war becomes easier, having these weapons to unleash upon others with no risk to the people who are supposedly being protected by them. It’s a way of absolving yourself for creating slaves by giving them some higher purpose.

This really is going to be a turning point with Jack’s arc proper, with how it leads to her being a teacher, because she wants to protect the young biotics. It’s not just about her protecting the kids at the Ascension Project from ending up tortured like the kidnapped victims at the Teltin facility. It’s also about reclaiming and maintaining personhood.

And while it’s hard for me to really give the separation theory Thane speaks of (we ARE going to come back to issues of the drell in general a few DLCs from here, so consider this to be foreshadowing and set up for that bit), I’m going to try and offer his point of view – that of “if you hone someone to only be a weapon, to only look at the world from that perspective, is it really on them as an individual that they proceed to see the world from that viewpoint?”

Of course, yes, I’m aware that the inherent flaw of ALL of this is that we’re not talking about drell youths giving themselves up to the hanar in the fulfillment of the Compact or with “different brain structures” to humans. It’s the tangent that they end up on because they’re along for the ride, and Shepard eventually has to get them back on track – finding Ambassador Hart. Whether or not the asari corporations are intending to use people as weapons, the Eclipse sisters presently have her held captive, and this means staging a rescue operation.

I want to take this chance to get a better idea of Eclipse’s organization (which, by extension, showcases the ideas that are moving the other merc gangs in the series). Like, what goals do they really have – Blood Pack are basically chaotic berserkers who want the world to burn (which, fitting, considering the general krogan mindset following the genophage and the vorcha having a complete lack of survival instincts because they never needed to evolve them), while Blue Suns have the veneer of respectability, acting as private security. But when we meet Jona Sedaris in ME3, she’s a raving psychopath, ready to kill anyone in her way. So what does the Eclipse gang want? I mean, besides the obvious of money.

Kassria is a former Eclipse sister, so she offers this insight – Eclipse doesn’t even really know itself. The non-asari members are almost leaning towards biotic extremism, given how the other races tend to mistreat and look down on the biotics among them, which makes them angry and want to lash out at those who’ve hurt them. Meanwhile, the asari who join in are often driven by other motivations, given that all asari have biotics – some are outcasts (purebloods, in pureblood relationships, or people with the Ardat-Yakshi mutation – let’s just assume Samara will have shared about her loyalty mission by the time this mission is unlocked so we don’t have to have the characters explain this to Shepard), others are maidens looking for glory (think Elnora the mercenary from Samara’s recruitment mission), some are obsessed with killing (like Sedaris), and some are just looking for a purpose.

She suggests that, if given something better, Eclipse might be a valuable asset for Shepard – not just in biotics, but also in their mechs. It’d be something to use when the Reapers come calling, not that she knows about the Reapers, just that she can figure that whatever Shepard’s up to, they’ll want an army at their back (because we’re still ME2 here, so this means we don’t know that Aria will be assembling the merc gangs under her banner).

This leads to an assault on the Eclipse base and trying to reach Hart before anyone proceeds to try and kill her or worse. As we continue, we find out that there is a high-ranking Eclipse member among this group – Jona Sedaris.

Yes, that’s right, we’re going to be responsible for her getting locked up come ME3. Obviously, this does mean she’ll survive the inevitable conflict and boss battle, but hey, we’re gonna have other things to deal with in the final analysis, so hold all questions to the end.

The Eclipse sisters and the techs with their mechs are heavy throughout the place, but eventually, we reach the place they’re holding Hart. She’s been roughed up a bit, but she’s alive. She’d made contact with an asari firm who’d claimed to be willing to trade some “asari patents” in the name of cross-cultural cooperation, but Hart got suspicious of what was happening. Turns out, she was being used – the company (a minor company, not one of our major equipment suppliers from the actual games, that she had gone to them in the name of avoiding those big names) was going to give her access, only to revoke it and claim that she had stolen these patents. That would give them an opening to start consolidating biotic patents in a human market, because humans would now be running amps and implants with copyrighted asari material, and, by extension, that would mean the company would own those human biotics.

That, of course, gets Jack’s ire up, and she’s ready to tear the place apart – people aren’t things to be owned. Even Thane’s ready to join in – even accepting his claims of lacking a responsibility for the lives that his employers hired him to take (again, we’ll be digging deeper into this in the future), this is trying to force people to be under the control of this company – based on his reaction when Shepard suggests that the Compact between the hanar and the drell constitutes slavery, Thane’s definitely not on board with that idea. And even on Illium, a planet with legalized “indentured servitude,��� this contract is definitely sketchy – but it would be just legal enough that the company leadership would be able to get their foot in the door, and make it harder for human biotics to be able to exist without “company oversight,” giving them access to the human biotics before they have a chance to stabilize their position in human society.

It’s some further asari haughtiness, the idea of asari like Erinya, the lawyer who holds the contract to the Feros colonists, that the asari are “better” than the other races. The asari in charge of this company are of the belief that only the asari “deserve” biotics, and want to keep all biotics in the galaxy under their control. These asari in particular don’t see any race other than asari as even deserving of evolving out of the primordial muck. Not a mainstream view, but one that we do have foundation for existing in the universe proper, and, let’s be honest, it’s not hard to imagine this being a thing anyway based on our world (We’ll touch on these themes in more detail later). And this idea, especially combined with the asari willingness to indulge in “indentured servitude” on Illium, if no where else, gets taken to its natural endpoint – they see human biotics as little more than pack mules, livestock.

Short step from there to going along with batarian or Collector ideas, but really, it’s not like we don’t know exactly where that endpoint is from our history.

Obviously, Shepard is a walking contradiction to those ideas, so combat is the only way through. Sedaris might be an unrepentant murderer, but we do still have to take her into custody – this is where Kassria comes in, taking her down and intending to hand her over to the authorities in the name of getting a slice of the Eclipse pie with her out of the picture. It won’t be a clean takeover, which will justify why Sayn is running things for Sedaris outside of prison instead of Kassria (who would DEFINITELY just leave Sedaris to rot and probably arrange an ‘accident’ for her), but it’s getting her more power.

As for the company, they’re JUST on the side of legality – the efforts of Eclipse on their behalf were by way of verbal contracts, and no lawyer on Illium is going to take the word of a mercenary over those of these high-ranking business officials. Hart swears that she can make things hell for them, lose them some very lucrative contracts with the Alliance. Thing is, that also makes her job all the more difficult, now that she’s been found out having attempted to make these grey legality ties for the sake of “getting an edge” in the biotics market – they have the resources to make this a fight that, meanwhile, would set the cause of human biotics back. (Which, as we’ve been over in other write-ups, actually is a bit of a thing that has some deeper ties in to the overall universe that the people of this setting are still working on figuring out.)

The Paragon/Renegade choice here becomes the rather obvious “do we take the option that handles this cleanly but lets the bad guys escape responsibility, or the messy alternative that may not even get the result we want?” choice. Because the thing about asari litigation is that they can afford to tie things up for decades without concern for the “short term” consequences. So if this DOES go to courts, they can wrap things up and keep them there for a long time – which will impact how things go for the human biotics, the whole idea of ‘owning’ people because they have these abilities. Because then their legality, their agency, their right to choose for themselves would be being litigated, and being done so in the court of aliens.

It doesn’t feel GOOD to me to have it left like this, honestly, but I don’t really see this as something that is supposed to have a conclusion that feels good – we’re talking about issues of corporate ownership of individuals, and the truth is... that exploitation just goes on, it doesn’t resolve itself with a few showy displays of violence. It gets caught up in red tape and paperwork, and people lose, even as they win. And the point of this has basically been, at its heart, to show that the “underworld” isn’t the black and grey markets that scrounge a semblance of society. It’s the businesses who will crush people underfoot then complain about the mess they stepped in. The design of a lot of the locations introduced in ME2 had this cyberpunk dystopia look to them, but only really focused on the criminal gangs – the core of this is approaching the white collar criminal element that was not shown off as much, how it encourages both further street crime and the depersonalization that comes from treating humans as a commodity.

Jack is pissed either way because this is all kinds of bullshit – it’s Shepard who points out that as angry as Jack defaults to, this is, for once, her being pissed at something beyond herself, where it’s not just that she wants to cause mayhem, but that she wants to make things different for others. To do something to protect future human biotics, kids who are in need. It’s her actively wanting to find a way to make a different, not just chaos.

As for Thane, he is still drell, still a proponent of the Compact (again, we’ll be coming back to this issue), but he does understand how easy it is to see something ostensibly done to the benefit of people turns around and is used by malicious actors to take advantage of them. It’s one of those things that he certainly understood in the abstract, but it’s another thing to see in practice. He leaves it on the note that “this has given me much to consider.”

As for Ambassador Hart, she knows that either way, she’s tanked her chances for getting the instructors that she’d been hoping for. Basically, the diplomatic ties she’d wanted from the asari government are off the table, given the combination of asari tied to the company and just general political embarrassment at the fact that all of this even happened – they want to ignore it, paint things over in pastels, and she is a living embodiment of the event to the asari, able to bring up the reality at a time of her choosing. The asari would rather that this go away, rather than have this constant reminder. Still, she’s grateful for Shepard’s rescue – the Eclipse might not have actively been planning on her death, but it wasn’t a good position. And, at this point, she can at least salvage a career going forward. Maybe not with the asari, but there’s a chance that relations with the turians have thawed out some.

Post Game Followups:

ME3: The fate of the company plays a part in War Assets – being tied up in legal red tape, they’re not able to contribute to the war effort, or, in a magnanimous show of “inter-species cooperation,” they’re sharing some patents with the other races. Additionally, Ambassador Hart shows up for a sidequest after the Cerberus Coup, making another go at the effort, now that Grissom is gone and the human biotics are here – might as well make the effort to get these asari instructors anyway, and she wants Shepard to help her out with smoothing the ruffled feathers (since this would still be in that period of time where the asari are still trying to avoid joining the active war effort).

Also, while this wouldn’t really impact anything via saved game import, I also figure this would at least tie in to Andromeda, that several human biotics joined the Initiative in the name of getting away from the corporations who want to hold them as “patented property” and such. Probably would be a way to help at least make Cora’s arc tighten up a little – it’s not just that she thought she’d only be a “useful freak” as a human biotic, as opposed to an asari commando or an Initiative Pathfinder, but that in getting away from Citadel space, she’d be allowed to just be, to find out who it is that she is beyond her biotics, rather than have to have her biotics “registered” with a corporation who’d exploit them and her. Not sure how to incorporate that into Andromeda proper, but it’s something that would be acknowledged.

End of Part 1, link to Part 2 forthcoming.

[randomoranges]

i’ve had the stupid initial scene in my head for like a week. also thoughts on tattoos and such and significance and the magnitude of things unsaid in the past that get to finally be aired out in the present and such. 

more rambly thoughts hahahaha. 

Ricochet

Winter 2020? Early 2021???? Idk. 

 Edward ghosts his fingers over the petals of the rose before him and lets them dance over the lines that compose the patterns and colours of the flower. He’s always been fascinated by the combination of flowers and leaves that overlap and twine over Étienne’s vine tattoo, ever since he had first seen it, what now feels like ages ago. It’s always been his favourite, for some reason, even before the extra additions. He lets his fingers go on their own quiet exploration, re-appropriating the feel and contrast of colours and shapes, until they come to rest by one of the few flowers that differ from all the others.

 He remembers the first time he had taken notice of it, late one summer night in the early nineties. He had thought it a trick from the light or some clever projection of his mind, and so, he’d never really mentioned anything. With time, he’d check, to make sure that the one different rose was still there and he had tried not to think about what it could mean – what it could represent. The possibilities. Étienne had offered no clarification and he hadn’t asked questions about it. Instead, he had let his fingers trace the contour and the petals, had memorized the different shades of colour of it and had dared to hope.

 Now, he knows better.

 Edward lets his fingers shift direction and land on the latest addition to Étienne’s vine tattoo. It’s a little over a year old and a little brighter than some of the other flowers. He traces over the curves of the petals and he might be imagining it, but he swears he feels his boyfriend’s heart rate pick up ever so beneath his fingers. He smiles softly, before he places a tender kiss to the spot where his fingers had just been – to the flower right over Étienne’s heart and then looks up to find green-hazel eyes quietly observing him.

 He resettles against Étienne and lets out a content sigh, happy to be here with him – despite everything.

 “What would you have done?” He starts to ask as he resumes tracing the different flowers and leaves that twine and twist over Étienne’s torso, “If I – if I didn’t feel the same – about you?” He finally asks, breaking the comfortable silence they’d been resting in. It’s a question he’s been thinking over for a little over a year now and it’s mostly curiosity and a sense of comfort around Étienne that brings him to ask it. He no longer needs to wonder and hope and fear for his relationship with Étienne; he gets to let his guard down and enjoy the hugs and kisses and special attentions without second guessing himself or what it could mean.

 Étienne shifts and slides down so that they can be at level and offers him a quizzical look. Edward shrugs; he’s genuinely intrigued. He obviously knows how he felt then. However, it had taken him a while to acknowledge the fact that he still felt something for Étienne and the whole thing had turned even more complicated with Calvin in the picture. How could he still have feelings for Étienne when he had Calvin? Calvin who kept trying. Calvin who didn’t give up on him. Calvin who was patient and gave him space and kept circling back when he was being obtuse and afraid. How ungrateful was he being to Calvin by still liking Étienne? After so long. After everything they had gone through.

 And then – and then did he really still like Étienne that way? Or did he simply miss having him as a friend? (Had he ever even liked Étienne? Had it been mere infatuation? Or a desire to be like Étienne?) Would he be content with having his best friend back or did he still want more?

 The questions and the anxieties had done a number on him; had kept him tossing and turning and had eaten away at him. He would have loved to share these thoughts with Calvin, but he’d been afraid his boyfriend would have taken it the wrong way – would have called him cruel and would have called him terrible things for potentially being in love with two people – would have asked him to choose.

 He’d kept his mouth shut.

 He was lucky enough as it was.

 He needn’t be greedy.

 There was no sense in rocking the boat when he and Étienne barely even talked anymore. He could keep his wayward thoughts to himself and try to focus on not messing up his relationship with Calvin in the meantime. He had done a poor enough job in the first leg of it anyways. A damn near miracle Calvin hadn’t gotten up and left him there to rot, really.

 So he’d done that. Done his best to put those thoughts away and move on – properly – silently, but every time he heard Étienne’s name mentioned his ears had perked up and he’d tried to find out how his former-friend-former-lover was doing. He’d dropped questions here and there, asking sometimes Élyse, sometimes another of Étienne’s friends how he was doing if he came up in a conversation and he most certainly never did try looking him up on social media.

 Eventually, somehow, they did end up reconnecting. Miraculously. He’s still unsure as to how that happened, but he’s thankful they did. Their tentative new friendship had been welcomed, even if it had oftentimes felt like one-step forward and eight steps back, but – it had been good, nice even. A welcomed surprise.

 Edward had just been glad that he could speak to Étienne again.

 But, reconnecting with him, even in all its tentative steps, had brought forth the feelings he thought he had buried deep inside. They resurfaced, stronger than ever, and even when he’d tried to suppress them, again, they’d only just lingered more, ever so insistent and demanding of his attention.

 He’d felt like a monster. For still wanting Étienne. For feeling like he was betraying Calvin and everything they had been carefully building for the past few years. He – hated himself. For still being in love with Étienne. So he tried harder. To hide it. To bury it and kill it off once and for all.

 It, naturally, hadn’t worked.

 Eventually, he’d admitted to it. He’d told Calvin about all of it, unable to keep it to himself any longer. Everything from the past up until this point, no glossing over, no hidden parts, just the ugly truth of it all and the shame of his heart.

 Edward had braced and prepared himself for all the terrible ways Calvin would most likely react. He wouldn’t blame him for it, really. It was already a miracle that Calvin had come around from his initial reaction to his coming out decades ago and had actually developed feelings for him; Edward didn’t expect any more. Calvin had done his share, it was his problem if he was fucking it up, again. (And what did that say, when everything good he ever had in his life he managed to screw up?)

 However, somehow, miraculously, Calvin had been – really good about it, considering. There hadn’t been any major outbursts, no fights, no breakups and no broken hearts. Edward clearly hadn’t given him his just credit.

 They’d talked it over. Calvin had expressed his own fears and concerns, mostly that Edward would end up leaving him, but Edward had been quick to clarify that this wasn’t the case. He still loved him, but he also – still felt something for Étienne. He just – didn’t want to have to chose. He didn’t want to settle and he didn’t want to give up, but – he’d do his best if – if Calvin asked him to. Calvin deserved that much. It wouldn’t be fair to Calvin to jeopardize everything they had for an old flame.

 Luckily, Calvin had been kind to him. A little uncertain, a little afraid, but kind.

 Edward had – hesitated, in his next step. Hadn’t wanted to rush in. Had carefully waited and observed, for a while, unsure how to really proceed anyways. There were still many unknown variables, notably,  had Étienne ever felt anything for him, and if so, had he managed to move on or not and if not – was he still – did he still want to – try?

 But that’s in the past now. He gets to enjoy his relationship; no questions asked and finally be without needing to worry. He’s glad and relieved it worked out. He’s content – happy, really. It finally feels like he’s got it together – that all the important pieces have been gathered.

 “Not gotten a marigold tattooed on me, for starters,” Étienne answers and laughs. Edward rolls his eyes, but it’s fond, even if a little exasperated. Étienne grins at him before he reaches over for his hand and places it back on his chest. It’s warm, even if Étienne always complains about being cold, and he feels the constant beat of his heart. It’s reassuring.

 “Be serious,” He chides and Étienne sighs and twines their legs together, growing silent for a moment as he thinks it over.

 “Well, I suppose I would have made a better effort to move on,” He shrugs, figuring it’s a simple enough answer, but – there’s more. If he’s being honest with himself, there is more. Edward waits patiently and keeps tracing over the flowers on Étienne’s tattoo, again. An old habit he’d been fond of, one he’s thankful he can rejoice in again.  

 “I mean – I never even thought you’d still like me that way, considering you were with Calvin. And – I didn’t care – well, not really. You could’ve had a full harem of men at your disposal. I just – wanted to be your friend again. I wanted to hang out with you and go out on the town without it being loaded. I didn’t want to second guess whether you’d flinch away from a hug or if you’d read too much into swinging my arm around your shoulders and such. I missed being friends with you. Wanted to pick up the phone and gab away for hours and hours about the stupid crap we’d done, seen, heard and such. Watch a movie or a game and unwind together. Have fun, go out, have you over and not have you think it meant anything more than just being your friend. I wanted that more than the sex and the relationship.” He sighs as he tries to form the right words to shed light on his own feelings. It’s still not his forte – talking about his feelings, but for Edward’s sake he tries. “So, yeah, woulda been okay with it, I guess. I mean – there would’ve been disappointment, but – that would’ve been on me. We fell out ages ago, you moved on, time I did the same, and such.” He shrugs and looks away from kind hazel eyes. He feels inadequate as he tries to give Edward a coherent answer, but he finds solace in knowing that it’s at least the truth.

 Edward chuckles and pokes his boyfriend’s chest. He thinks it’s endearing how Étienne’s cheeks have coloured dark red and how his blush trails down his neck and to his chest. He presses a kiss to it for good measure and then another.  

 “M’glad it worked out though – that you still like me as well and all. Didn’t completely toss me out of your life. That we’re trying to make it work and that we can still also be friends.” He admits in a quick rush of air, blush growing even more.

 Edward gathers him in his arms and holds him close, before he places another kiss, this time to his cheek. Étienne wraps himself around him and hides his face away in the crook of Edward’s neck, where it’s nice and warm and safe,  and this, at least, is easy and less – complicated.

 “For what it’s worth, I’m also really glad and – relieved.”

 Étienne chances a glance back to Edward’s face and, maybe, Edward looks a little as to how he feels. Still surprised by this outcome, thankful obviously, and maybe just a little overwhelmed and in awe that this is real – that they get to have this and try not to mess it up. He resettles, the ricocheting thrum of his heart beating underneath Edward’s fingers, but he doesn’t mind. “’Love you,” Étienne murmurs and Edward tightens his hold on him for a second. He has this now. He gets to have this, somehow, and he swears he’ll do his best – that they’ll do their best not to mess it up.

 FIN

[aion-rsa]

“God God – Whose Hand Was I Holding?”: the Scariest Sentences Ever Written, Selected by Top Horror Authors

https://ift.tt/3kHWU1Y

Many people have a very intimate relationship with books. And horror books can get under your skin like no other medium, whether you’re peering at a scary novel under the covers as a youngster or devouring new or classic horror as a grown up. Good horror writing sticks with you. 

For Halloween we’ve attempted to round up some of the scariest sentences ever written – and who better to ask for their recommendations than some of the finest horror writers and editors around? We asked some of our favourite experts to tell us the line that scared them most and why. Any suggestions of your own? Let us know in the comments.

To Serve Man by Damon Knight

Scariest sentence: “It’s a cookbook,” he said.

Is there a better whammy of an end line than this? Ten to one you’ll know the story that precedes it: Seemingly benevolent aliens, the Kanamit, arrive on earth, promising peace and prosperity. The aliens are as good as their word, and start whisking “lucky” humans off to their planet for a “ten year exchange programme”. A U.N translator, who (rightly) thinks this is all too good to be true, sets about translating the aliens’ favourite book, which, from its title, “To Serve Man,” is assumed to be an innocent handbook. It ain’t (see the last line). The story and its funny/bleak ending has haunted me since I first read it as a ten-year-old, way too young to consider that it could be read as an allegory about the horrors of colonialism. Back then all I could think about were the people the Kanamit had lured aboard their ships, unaware that they were destined for the table (or the Kanamit version of Masterchef). It still gives me chills. – Sarah Lotz author of Missing Person out now from Hodder. 

I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison

Scariest sentence: “I have no mouth. And I must scream.”

If I tell you the name of this Harlan Ellison story, it’ll give away the last line… “I have no mouth. And I must scream.” I remember when I first read that ending, only to find myself caught in a loop where those two sentences kept echoing through my head. Reading it again right now, it’s still hard not to pinch my lips as tightly together as possible and try giving the ol’ lungs a good bellow. Still sends shivers down my spine. – Clay McLeod Chapman, author of The Remaking, out now from Quirk Books

Read more

Movies

How Hulu’s Books of Blood Movie Taps The Mind of Clive Barker

By Don Kaye

Cabal by Clive Barker

Scariest Sentence: “She knew what men afraid, and afraid of their fear, were capable of.“

According to some criminologists, the root cause of many violent acts isn’t anger but fear. Fear of rejection, of failure, of abandonment, of loss. In this early novel by Barker, the link between fear and violence is only subtly hinted at–which makes it all the more frightening. He alludes to the heroine’s personal history with violent men, leaving the reader to fill in the blanks. – Andrew Schaffer, author of Secret Santa, out 10 November from Quirk Books 

The Sibling by Adam Hall

Scariest sentence: “He’s put the clown in her room,” Lorraine said quietly.

As a species, our goal is to keep clowns out of our bedrooms and living spaces and yet here’s some monster deliberately inserting a clown into someone’s room, ignoring the fact that since at least the dawn of time clowns have been mankind’s natural predator. The resigned tone of that “quietly” really drives home the horror because clearly this is not the first time. – Grady Hendrix.

Squelch, John Halkn

Scariest sentence: “It still doesn’t make sense to me. Moths attack sweaters and fly around light bulbs. They don’t devour humans.”

It doesn’t make sense to me, either, but if moths have stopped attacking our clothing and started attacking our bodies then count me out. I’m done. – Grady Hendrix.

Night of the Crabs by Guy N. Smith

Scariest sentence:“What a beautiful night,” Pat remarked, as they passed alongside the barbed-wire fence which enclosed War Department property. “If only we didn’t have to worry about giant crabs.”

Sometimes you just wish you lived in a simpler world. – Grady Hendrix.

The Farm by Richard Haigh

Scariest sentence: “The pigs,” then her control snapped. “Look, they’re coming out,” she shrieked. “Oh, sweet Christ. The pigs!!”

Every time I leave the safety of New York City I fully expect this to be the last sentence I hear as I am devoured by angry livestock. – Grady Hendrix, author of The Final Girl Support Group out July 2021 from Titan Books

The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum

Scariest sentence: “I’m not going to tell you about this. I refuse to.”

That’s half of chapter 42 from Jack Ketchum’s The Girl Next Door. And The Girl Next Door is a novel that, just as Joe R. Lansdale says at the head of his story “The Night They Missed the Horror Show,” doesn’t flinch. So, if the narrator is looking back to having seen something that even he can’t put on the page, then . . . how bad must it be, right? I’ve talked to other readers of this novel and they’ve told me about chapter 42 as if the narrator actually fleshes it all out for us, and they (myself as well) all flinch as if traumatized from having had to read those words. Except they never did read the words of what actually happened. But that’s Jack Ketchum, for you. He doesn’t need to actually say it on the page to get it into our head. Worse, this is a chapter that never leaves you, either. Worse than that, you kind of become complicit just for reading it. – Stephen Graham Jones author of The Only Good Indians, out now.

In the Hills, the Cities by Clive Barker

Scariest sentence: “In Popolac a kind of peace reigned. Instead of a frenzy of panic there was a numbness, a sheep-like acceptance of the world as it was. Locked in their positions, strapped, roped and harnessed to each other in a living system that allowed for no single voice to be louder than any other, nor any back to labour less than its neighbour’s, they let an insane consensus replace the tranquil voice of reason.” 

As a much younger person, reading this story for the first time, I was overtaken by awe at the imagery; not unlike Mick who chooses to hitch a ride on the impossible doomed giant made of city denizens. Re-reading it now decades later, the story and these lines fill me with bone-deep dread. Like the referee/car thief and Mick’s lover Judd, I cannot bear to view the inevitable fall. – Paul Tremblay, author of Survivor Song, out now from Titan Books. 

Home Burial by Robert Frost

Scariest sentences: ”Don’t – don’t go.  Don’t carry it to someone else this time. Tell me about it if it’s something human.”

The line here that I consider scary is ‘Tell me about it if it’s something human.’ Because of the implication that people may carry within them things that are not human. In this case, I imagine the ‘it’ that may not be human to be something so deeply felt and instinctive that it is pre-language – and so pre-human, almost. Something primordial that requires translation or mediation – and perhaps in that, change or diminishment – in order to be sensible to another sentient being. It is the suggestion that maybe our most fundamental aspects or thoughts – our most important feelings – cannot be properly communicated that is terrifying, to me. It makes me think of each person as a dark pool, with their lived experience and true feelings becoming manifest at the bottom, and the communication of these things to others being only what is visible through the surface of the water, from above.

As much as I do believe that all communication is imperfect, and that it is difficult for people to know each other truly, I take comfort from two things – one is love, which is, I think, a kind of deep, fundamental knowing and acceptance of each other. The other is fiction, which (in my opinion) is often an attempt at translating ideas and feelings that, coming from our deepest places, we don’t otherwise have the language for. – Tom Fletcher, author The Witch Bottle, out 12 November from Jo Fletcher Books.

The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub

Scariest sentence: “You’re the herd now, Jacky.” 

I read King & Straub’s The Talisman when I was 15, at a time in my life when I’d said goodbye to one bunch of friends and hello to another, and the friendship between Jack Sawyer and his werewolf friend Wolf resonated strongly with me. In Wolf’s culture werewolves are farmers and fiercely protective of their herds who they protect by locking themselves away every month. The problem is that Jack and Wolf are on the run and Wolf’s change is coming upon him, and there’s nowhere to shut Wolf away. So when Wolf turns to Jack with blazing eyes and says this, it’s simultaneously a promise of protection (‘I will die for you’) but also a warning (‘I will tear you to pieces’). The chill with which Jack realises that his best friend loves him but will probably kill him anyway has stayed with me ever since. – James Brogden, author of Bone Harvest, out now from Titan Books

Read more

Movies

I Am Legend: Why Can’t Matheson’s Masterpiece be Done Justice on Film?

By Dan Hajducky

I Am Legend by Richard Matheson

Scariest sentence: “The watch had stopped”

I think a lot of us can relate to the feeling of getting caught up in our work and letting the hours pass us by without much thought. In the case of Robert Neville, the central figure in Richard Matheson’s seminal I Am Legend, getting lost in the hours is the most horrific thing he could possibly do. The simple four-word-sentence that has scared me more than any other in all my days of reading is “The watch had stopped.” If you’ve read the story, I’m sure you remember how those words burned into you. – Rachel Autumn Deering, editor of Hex Life, out in paperback from Titan Books on November 10 2020

One for the Road by Stephen King

Scariest sentence: “And I think she’s still waiting for her good-night kiss.”

I’m not easily scared, but occasionally I get a real chill up my spine. Shirley Jackson did that with the last line of The Haunting of Hill House. But if we’re talking about one line that lingers, that still makes me remember the way it felt the very first time I read it, I have to go with the last line in Stephen King’s short story “One for the Road,” from his collection Night Shift. It’s a vampire story, a sequel to ’Salem’s Lot, about a family whose car is trapped in a blizzard on the outskirts of a town plagued by vampires. That last line is “And I think she’s still waiting for her good-night kiss.” There, I just felt it again. That shiver. All these years later, it still works on me. – Christopher Golden, editor of Hex Life, out in paperback from Titan Books on November 10 2020

The New Mother by Lucy Clifford

Scariest sentence: “Now and then, when the darkness has fallen and the night is still, hand in hand Blue-Eyes and the Turkey creep up near to the home in which they once were so happy, and with beating hearts they watch and listen; sometimes a blinding flash comes through the window, and they know it is the light from the new mother’s glass eyes, or they hear a strange muffled noise, and they know it is the sound of her wooden tail as she drags it along the floor.”

The scariest sentence ever is from The New Mother by Lucy Clifford. The strange tone of the writing, the situation in the story and the fact that the new mother is not in any way human… – David Quantick, author of Night Train, out now from Titan Books 

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson 

Scariest sentence: “God God! Whose hand was I holding?” 

This scene perfectly conjures the feeling of being afraid in the night. Distance, time, sound – all the natural laws of the daylight world grow slippery and loosen. It’s a unique sensation – no other fear has the visceral, unhinged quality of cold terror in the dark. Shirley Jackson puts all of this on the page – she takes Eleanor and the reader into that same heightened, accelerated state, she makes our hearts race, she makes us feel alone, disoriented, lost in the night with only a friend’s hand to cling to. And then she saves us – the lights come on, our heart rate slows, and the rational world seems to settle into its proper channel again. And at last Eleanor sees: the friend whose comforting hand she held in the dark has been on the other side of the room all along. – Catriona Ward is the author of The Last House on Needless Street out 18th March 2021 from Viper Books 

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TV

The Haunting Of Hill House: How the Extraordinary Episode 6 was Made

By Louisa Mellor

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

Scariest sentence: “God god – whose hand was I holding?”

It’s from a scene about two-thirds of the way through the novel. Eleanor and Theodora go to sleep in their adjacent beds in one of the many bedrooms in Hill House. They sleep with the lights on because of previous frightening incidents. But Eleanor wakes in the night to find the room plunged in darkness, and hears an eerie voice muttering from the next room. The darkness and the frightening sounds go on endlessly, and Eleanor is filled with a mounting sense of dread. She reaches out blindly for Theodora’s hand and holds on tight.

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But when the lights finally come back on, Theodora is several feet away, sitting up in her own bed, too far away for Eleanor to have touched her. So the hand she was holding belonged to someone or something else. It’s a brilliantly oblique bit of horror – the realisation that the monster was right alongside you, inside your guard – and every adaptation of the novel references it in some form or other. But I don’t think you can beat Jackson’s chilling, deadpan prose. – Mike Carey author of The Trials of Koli, out now from Orbit Books

Read more

Books

Who Was The Haunting of Hill House Author Shirley Jackson?

By Don Kaye

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson 

Scariest sentence: “No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.” 

I’ll be surprised if no one else has picked these sentences, although maybe not, because I’m blatantly cheating for choosing the entire first paragraph of The Haunting of Hill House. It is a classic of looming dread, and it’s probably generated more commentary and criticism than any other first paragraph in a horror novel. I love it. – Ellen Datlow, editor of the Best Horror of the Year annual series.

A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay

Scariest sentence: “It was so dark it was like nothing was there in the room but us. Only the nothing was actually something because it filled my eyes and lungs and it sat on my shoulders.”

Paul Tremblay perfectly captures our universal fear of the dark in these two lines from A Head Full of Ghosts. That made the flesh on my skull crawl when I read it. The wording is simple but so effective: in one, two, three increasingly creepy instances Paul transforms what’s simply darkness into the tangible, the intimately dangerous… as darkness tends to do. – Thomas Olde Heuvalt, author Hex and Echo, forthcoming from Nightfire in 2021

Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs

Scariest sentence: The Black Meat is like a tainted cheese, overpoweringly delicious and nauseating so that the eaters eat and vomit and eat again until they fall exhausted.

I read Naked Lunch in high school and it was a mind-destroyer. Thankfully, it is also a mind rebuilder. You can turn to any page and find sentences that bewildered, disoriented, horrified, and excited me. So that’s exactly what I just did: I opened the book randomly to page 55 and found one. Disgusting, delightful decadence! – Daniel Kraus, coauthor with George A. Romero of The Living Dead, out now from Tor Books.

The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe

Scariest sentence: “And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.“

It’s ‘illimitable’ that does it for me, though the capitalisations and the against-the-advice-of-grammarians superfluous first and second usages of ‘and’ add quite a bit.  That first ‘And’ – the one your teacher told you not to start a sentence with – is a pointed touch and does a lot of work, indicating that all the bad stuff in the rest of the sentence is a consequence of what’s gone before in the story … which, this season, seems like the most pointed tale of mystery and imagination ever written. – Kim Newman author Anno Dracula 1999 Daikaiju out now from Titan Books.

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

Scariest sentence: “In the unending, crashing second before the car hurled into the tree she thought clearly, Why am I doing this?  Why am I doing this?  Why don’t they stop me?” 

Discussions of the prose of Shirley Jackson’s monumental The Haunting of Hill House tend to focus on its famous opening paragraph.  Certainly the beginnings of both the novel’s first and second chapters offer a wealth of riches for scholarly consideration, rhetorical analysis.  Yet it’s this long sentence from the novel’s second-to-last paragraph that comes to mind if I’m asked to name the most frightening line in the book.  Indeed, it seems to me one of the most frightening sentences of any novel or story I’ve read.  Obviously, there are lines whose immediate impact is greater, which have a more substantial visceral effect (Clive Barker’s fiction is rife with these).  But I’m not sure any echo in quite the same way.  At this moment in Jackson’s narrative, Eleanor Vance is being made to leave Hill House, the dwelling with whose structure her personality has become entangled and confused.  Seemingly unwilling to be separated from the place, she steers her car straight toward an enormous tree at a curve in the driveway and steps on the gas.  “I am really doing it,” she thinks, “I am doing this all by myself, now, at last.”  This would be an awful enough end for Jackson’s protagonist, but with the sentence that follows and finishes the paragraph, she gives the screw a final, diabolical turn.  Eleanor experiences a moment of clarity, which tells us that her thoughts of just a line before were not clear.  She is not accelerating toward the tree of her own volition—or, not only of her own volition.  Something else is at play here, some other factor.  Is it the “whatever” Jackson has described walking in Hill House, the unspecified, (possibly) supernatural force (which might be any one of a number of ghosts, or an aggregate of those ghosts, or the house itself, brought to occult life by the peculiarities of its design)?  Or is it some submerged part of Eleanor—guilt at her role in her mother’s death, or anger at her expulsion from the group brought to Hill House to study it?  She doesn’t know, and she is trapped in her unknowing, as the final instant of her life stretches on and on, “unending.”  Her ultimate motivation obscure to her, all she can do is wonder why no one is stopping her.  With hideous irony, the power, the control Eleanor was celebrating a moment prior turns on her, her freedom becoming the freedom of death.  The line passes as quickly as the crash it describes, and in its speed, it’s easy to miss everything going on it.  To say it’s another example of Jackson’s skill as a writer feels somehow inadequate, as it doesn’t get at the way the sentence braids claustrophobia, terror, and confusion.  It’s the kind of writing that haunts you in quiet moments, long after flashier, louder lines have faded into silence.  It’s the kind of writing that reminds you of the horror story’s particular power, its reach and its resonance. – John Langan, author of The Fisherman, out now.

Pet Sematary by Stephen King

Scariest sentence: “Sometimes dead is better.”

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Nobody says this line better than that guy in the first Pet Sematary movie who used to play Herman Munster. Although John Lithgow did his best. King struck on an age-old wisdom when he showed us the folly of trying to bring people back once they’re gone. Just as WW. Jacobs did in The Monkey’s Paw and Shelley demonstrated (albeit piecemeal) in Frankenstein. You’ve got to be careful what you wish for. Sometimes, dead really is better, and far less likely to come back and stab you to death with a scalpel. C.S. O’Cinneide is the author of Petra’s Ghost, out now from Titan Books.

Pet Sematary by Stephen King

Scariest sentence: “Darling,” it said

This line has to be read in the context of an entire, brilliant novel that went before. It’s really not something I want to give away, because of spoilers, but if you’ve read this one, even hearing the final line again should send a shiver through you. The writer was at the top of his game – and that’s saying something – and it remains his most terrifying novel.  Here’s the line: “Darling,” it said. – Tim Lebbon, author of Eden, out now from Titan Books 

The post “God God – Whose Hand Was I Holding?”: the Scariest Sentences Ever Written, Selected by Top Horror Authors appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[madebyjen]

A monologue to 2022

I always knew what I was supposed to do when it came to life, go to school, be a responsible person, keep to yourself, and most importantly graduate college and get a job teaching. Yet the year 2017 meant the start of high school and a series of events I used to wish would end. 2018 I felt blinded by a narrative of pressure and searching for something that made sense. I didn’t know who this new person was, or why I was doing what I was doing. However I, being stubborn, would struggle back and forth with this inner battle of going back to who I was, which many wanted or embracing this new person I was, which the people I was surrounded by at the time wanted. 2019 was quite honestly a blur, I was on the edge of a precipice into a very frightening abyss. Telling myself I had it all under control, I clung even tighter to the little bit of sanity I had left, the little bit of control I found in my vices. In the end, it didn’t matter how tight I held on or what I wanted, because 2020 would knock the wind out of me. It felt as if I blinked and there I was laying on the floor of the entrance of my home staring at the ceiling, in an empty house. Growing up I thought I knew low, I thought I beat the odds of the stats about abused children, that I was just fine. I hated terms like survivor and victim because even then I refused to acknowledge what I really was. 2020 taught me low, real low, the reality that I had finally shattered and I couldn’t find a single piece from the fall. Even if the world hadn’t fallen apart with me alongside it, it was bound to happen. I had truly disappeared. 2021 I remembered I liked to do art, the feeling of wind on my face, and learned to say the word survivor without feeling like a fraud. I learned how to get up again, how to be a version of myself I was at peace with. School was still all I had until it wasn’t. Letting people in again was terrifying and like life I blinked and they were already in. Only it brought a different smell to my home, a different light, and I stopped thinking about what could go wrong. I just let myself find out. 2022 is coming to a close and I feel a bittersweet goodbye. I learned and experienced a lot. I learned that drinking water and properly sleeping can solve a lot of things. I learned that maybe the boy who put gum in your hair in math class didn’t really do it out of malice but just out of sheer dumbness. I learned that the boy I found interesting and annoying all at once, and had forgotten would come back and further hold my interest and annoy me all at once again. I learned that school and being a responsible person are nice attainable goals, but sticking to a spreadsheet and hiding in the pages of books isn't a life. I may have always known what I was supposed to do with my life, but I feel as if I’m finally learning how to live it. I can honestly say for the first time in my life I have experienced a year of peace. It wasn’t a perpetual state of euphoric bliss, but if it was then it wouldn’t be real. It wouldn’t make the days of actual bliss matter. I learned that I can talk entirely too much or not enough. I learned that maybe instead of running from the things I wish to hide from, to instead embrace them a little bit more gently because I like to believe that everything that has happened from 2017 to now has allowed me to get to where I got this year. To think if I went back and did things differently that perhaps I wouldn’t experience things with the people I did this year, maybe it was better, maybe it was worse, all I know is I’m happy with the person I’m becoming and the life I’m starting. So while this may be saddening to know these moments have already been lived, for once, I can’t wait for what 2023 has in store for me.

[hapuriainen]

Hapuriainen’s Animation & Comics & Games of 2021

I started this way earlier but it’s almost May already... But anyway here’s the 2021 annual roundup for archival purposes.

Manga

Attack on Titan

Well this was a thing. I don’t think the ending was completely unexpected or against the kind of themes the story had, but I still didn’t like it and in the last 4 or so chapters my enthusiasm plummeted. Though most of my dislike for the ending stems from the fact that it had a ship I hate. A later revisit may get me to appreciate some elements of the ending more but right now I don’t feel like touching the series at all.

One Piece

My interest towards One Piece keeps reaching all time lows. I still have little idea of what’s at stake in the current arc and there are far too many characters, most of whose names and affiliations I can’t remember. Lately it’s been endless action scenes where the main characters feel mostly unnecessary. But at least Robin got a decent fight after almost two decades and I still like Yamato. Hopefully we’ll get out of Wano this year.

Other manga: Witch Hat Atelier, Case Study of Vanitas, That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime

Awards given: Best non-romantic relationship (Noe & Vanitas)

Animation

Digimon Adventure tri 5-6, Digimon Last Evolution, Digimon Adventure 2020

Finally managed to get these off my list. I was very excited for all the nostalgia when Tri was first announced, but in the end watching it was a complete chore when the characterisation was bad and the plot was unnecessarily complicated and managed to drop the ball on the major elements it introduced. Last Evolution was a lot more enjoyable for me since it was a single contained story that knew what it was doing.

Adventure 2020 on the other hand was also a huge disappointment, for not doing anything interesting with the characters and having way too much Taichi/Agumon shilling. Worst part was when the cast split towards the end so I thought we could get even a couple of episodes without them, but in a rage-inducing moment they kept popping up all the time anyway for no other reason than to take screen time away from other characters. I’m aware that there’s a lot of nostalgia reasons why I like the original Digimon Adventure, but I still think there’s a lot of things it did far better than the reboot.

Yashahime

Another huge nostalgia related disappointment. The plot is far too complicated for a setup that wouldn’t need to be more complicated than “the kids of the characters from a show you like go on an adventure!”, and I really don’t care all that much for Towa and Setsuna and their drama. But I am still here for Moroha and her family reunion at least delivered properly.

Awards given: Best Side Girl (Moroha)

Zombieland Saga

I have never in my life been into idol shows, or zombies, but this one had such good character designs that it’s always been on my radar. Though ultimately what made me watch it was that I thought the manager was really funny in the OP. 

Awards given: Best character designs

Other anime: Blue Reflection Ray, Umi Monogatari, Nanatsuiro Drops, Fairy Ranmaru, Inari Konkon Koi Iroha, Futari wa Precure, Tropical Rouge! Precure, Magia Record s2, Yuuki Yuuna is a Hero s3 (already discussed these on my magical girl blog)

Awards given: Best Girl (Laura, from Tropical Rouge Precure), Worst girl (Nanatsuiro Drops), Biggest WTF (YuYuYu’s confusing timeline), Worst Romance (Nanatsuiro Drops), Best OP (the song for Fairy Ranmaru)

Pompoko, From Up on Poppy Hill, Mirai no Mirai, Tenki no Ko

These had been on my watch list forever. None of them raised particularly strong feelings in me, Pompoko was kind of meandering, Poppy Hill had nice slice of life moments but I didn’t care for the relationship drama, Mirai expected the audience to be more interested in a toddler than what I’m able to afford to a movie, and Tenki no Ko had too many elements that relied on teenagers behaving impulsively for me to really like it. However the yolo scene in the hotel was great.

Awards given: Worst Boy (Tenki no Ko mc-kun)

Raya and the Last Dragon, Onward, Soul, Luca

Liked Soul the best, Onward had a good ending, Luca did nothing for me and I really didn’t like the character design, and did not enjoy Raya.

Awards given: Worst Side Girl (Sisu)

Games

Breath of the Wild

What replaced SNK as what I’m into the most. At first I played until Hateno lab in 2019 and put the game on hold for over a year because I couldn’t stand the horses and returning to the game wasn’t inviting at all. But then I finally got to it, ditched the horse and played over 100 hours. I like the open exploration, colours, angst and characters so much and I’m currently on my second playthrough. Can’t wait for the sequel.

Awards given: Best Boy (Link), Best Side Boy (Revali), Best Romance (for once I actually ship something and it’s Link & Zelda here), Best visuals, Best Work

Hyrule Warriors Age of Calamity

Was hesitant to pick this up since I’m very bad at anything resembling an action game, but I wanted more of the botw cast and this was the only option. Thankfully the easy mode practically plays itself, and after several missions I really got into the game and had a lot of fun with the gameplay and character interactions. The story sucks though and I hate what they did with Link... (as in they did nothing with him)

Awards given: Best Music

Plans for 2022

Botw2 is what was looking forward to the most but now it’s moved to 2023...

But the new Pokemon generation is coming out this year right?

Evangelion has been on my watch list since 2014, maybe I’ll eventually get to it if I keep including it.

I’ve completed Skyward Sword earlier this year so it’ll be on the 2022 list if I manage to write one

Tiger & Bunny 2 and Spy x Family just started!

Tokyo Mew Mew New in summer

[bambinidelmare]

Smultron Dress Pattern Review 2022/03/25

Date started: 03/06/2022

Date completed: 03/25/2022

Oh this dress, the moment I saw it I knew. Summer comfort galentine time.

This was the first project in such a long time where I felt absolutely content sewing it. Despite minor hiccups in the process, my heart swelled as it came together so quickly, and with ease. I found my purpose. The why I create in me.

I could not trust myself to remember to lengthen the dress so I took the time to trace off the lengthened pieces and even used the second printing of this pattern to create a duplicate copy so I would not worry about cutting on the fold. As a mercurial being, anything that requires my fast-moving brain to remember is a lost cause and I will end up with a high low dress quicker than you can say “bananas.”

Size Sewn

I made a size 2 of view B. I love the style of view A but think elastic is a friend of Satan and avoid wearing it and/or sewing with it at all costs.

Mods

Generally, I lengthen the torso by 1”. That is a standard mod for me. In this case, because the dress was bias, I omitted this to see how it would sit on my body. My friend is taller than me, but I knew the length of the dress would likely work in our favor.

I lengthened the dress by 14” as per Sanna’s Instagram tutorial as we are the same height 170cm (5’7”). I ended up using my very special gingham fabric for this make from Merchant and Mills and it is 140cm (59”), making the ability to not cut a bias dress on the fold a puzzle in my small California living space with so much on the floor from our recent move.

After lengthening I realized I should have checked the side seams because they did not match up and I was left with some excess I need to trim away. I am used to working with a lot of notches to match up seams properly (from training in school), and the next time I make this I will true up the seams and add notches to ensure everything works out the way I anticipated. 

One really confusing thing that I have observed in sewing two of Sanna’s patterns now is that F & B pattern pieces seem to both be facing the same direction, which means, if you are not particularly careful, you may seam the wrong sides together. I noticed this on this make, and with the Hallon dress as pieces one and two are not mirrored but face the same direction. To stay on track, I make sure I label the pattern pieces with side back, and CB, etc, to prevent this from occurring.

Now that I can afford quality materials, I am going to keep most of my fabric shopping with Merchant and Mills and Tessuti as I am very sensorial and prefer the weight, quality, and feel of their linens and silks.

The straps ended up being one of the straps because I found them way too long for where I prefer dresses to hit bust wise. I also am unable to turn straps with a loop turner or other methods (no I don’t need suggestions, I went to school for this and am simply not good at it), so I did a fold over and stitch method. Shortening the straps also reduced the gaping at the underarm I noticed on other makers dresses on IG.

I lined it up to the selvedge edge because I worried about running out of space but had a solid 5 inches left therefore, the next dress will not be lined up to the direct corner. The reason I lined up to the selvedge initially was not only a worry of space but also a worry that on my limited floor space I would miss the true bias and cut the pattern off grain, skewing everything. I tend to confuse easily, so I spend a good few evenings reading and re-reading pattern instructions until I am fairly certain I know where things will be cut and what mods to make.

Making a toile is something I do 95 percent of the time but in 2020 and 2021 I lost a lot of steam in the toile process. It seems like in 2022, I can use all the fitting knowledge I expanded on since 2010 to current and work from my toiles to make garments I love and wear. 2020 and 2021 were heavily influenced by sewing instagram, albeit marvelous to connect with community, I found it incredibly distracting on staying focused on my aesthetic and what I want to sew for fun.

In closing down my sewing pattern side of business, I realized that it took all the fun out of making for me. I really need a partner to release patterns with as it requires a ton of effort, time, and motivation to release creations into the ether. I spent so so much to bring my patterns to the community and barely made any sales. It costs a lot to release patterns too! As a projector (HD), I simply don’t have enough energy to keep a pattern business running alongside my music career, single parenting a teenager, and my bookkeeping business.

As long as I’m not too tired to sew, it can be super fun to work with my motivated energy on a project. This space will share a lot more of my self drafted makes and possibly even some small sewing projects that can be completed in an afternoon or two (hello instant grat).

This dress came together in a morning and a few afternoons and will likely become a gift for friends for many years to come.

This dress in particular, is a surprise gift for a dear friend who is expecting, and although I had hoped I would be able to give it to her at her baby shower yesterday, sometimes I am just too exhausted to say “ambition take the wheel”, and am leaning into letting myself rest.

I highly recommend if something is bias and you have the capacity to cut it (sans fold), you print two and create a very big pattern piece as I did. That was not the intention, initially, I planned to sew one for my daughter but she saw the dress and politely declined, which made my heart flutter as it enabled me to be embrace my maximalist-ness and let my freak flag fly.

In the end, I decided to trace the pattern off for my mirrored front and back pieces  so I could cut a size larger than a 2 in the future. Transferring the markings with care.

Overall, it took me longer to piece this pattern together with the mods than sew it. I think it took less than two hours on the machine. For longer dresses, one of my design teachers recommended a machine-sewn hem so you don’t trip on the dress or get a heel caught in it. Despite my preference for hand sewn hems, her advice resonated and I follow that sewing order unless something is short enough I won’t trip on it. Especially because certain times of the year I can be very trippy.

In crashing into sleepiness after a morning of pattern cutting, I accidentally lengthened view A instead of the back piece for view B which signaled it was time for a break.

Final verdict of this dress is to use a lightweight material. Although the linen is lovely, the weight is a bit too much for the straps and I imagine my friend will start to feel it as the linen tugs due to the sheer length of the garment.

I think I will keep my iron under the couch. That seems like a good place for it.

If I invite the spirit of practice into my work maybe I can find more joy in the small moments of simply being.

In the practice of saving all my scraps, the lovely, larger pieces will be added to a quilt I have in progress for this year. The itty bitty pieces though, are going to be recycled. I still can’t comfortably get myself to put them in the trash, but they sure will look great somewhere else. (edit: I later threw some teeny itty bitty pieces away in the new era of letting go of things Serah).

I am still releasing the outdated need to save my fabrics for the perfect project. There are very important items like some special silks from Tessuti Fabrics that I am saving for some self-drafted makes I will be starting this Spring to wear in high Summer. Thank goodness my energy is finally returning. Kudos to a good night’s sleep and recharging with those you love.

What are you making this Spring?

Written under a Sun in Pisces and a moon in Taurus feeling like home is starting to feel a bit cosy again.

Project 001/012 of 2022 is a gift. What will project 002 be? Stay tuned for more.

[binderliketheschoolsupply]

1/2/2022

It’s funny how you blink and it’s been six years since you’ve even journaled! Digitally! I scribble a bunch in random notebooks, but then they get lost in moves, break-ups, shifts in your fundamental being. I spent all of yesterday hungover as fuck, which is hilarious in a self deprecating way because 3 weeks earlier I had taken so much pride in the fact that I had given up alcohol. I did other things, but like, I’m sure none of it helped. 

I smoked a bunch of cigarettes and sort of felt like New Years Eve felt like nothing was the perfect way to end a year that felt like, well, nothing. If I had to categorize my emotion for 2021, I will remember it as: void. I think I felt so many things in 2020 I decided to take a year off from processing feelings, caring about consequences, and in general, feeling connection with other people. I didn’t make new friends, or really nurture or enhance many of the ones I had. It’s like when you buy a new plant and you swear you’ll remember to water it, but you’re a piece of shit but thankfully it’s a snake plant and somehow survives anyway? Yeah, that was me to everyone I knew this year. 

People would want to hang out and I’d avoid. They’d ask me to dinner and I’d invent excuses about how my roommate’s boyfriend tested positive for COVID so I couldn’t make it. It’s as if I had literally no other room in my heart to add any additional feelings in; I really fucking refused to have them. I started therapy, and left a job that I thought made me feel shitty? I think what I really felt is the need to be heard — that someone was going to continually push me towards MY goals instead of actually fighting for them. I feel bad about the way things dissolved there, but like any breakup, time really does seem to smooth over all the rough edges of things. It was a mutual choice that felt really fucking dramatic at the time. Sometimes it’s nice to have those moments because you’re like almost 30 and everyone expects you to just be chill but you just want to fucking SCREAM. I went on some trips this year. Thumping clubs and sipping a water bottle full of Tequila as we walked the sunny streets in SF. I called out of work twice on that trip and laid in the shower of a fancy hotel in the Tenderloin for two hours. I went to San Diego, surprisingly a lot with a good friend of mine. It felt healing. It was probably the most alive I’ve felt this year because it all seemed so adventurous. I actually had a lot of good happen this year! I moved towards full time freelance, my finances felt somewhat in my control. I felt properly medicated for the first time in maybe my adult life? 

Like I am writing this all out and it’s clear I had FEELINGS about things, but it was all underwater, muffled, and a private conservation I was only having with myself. 

Red’s grandma’s both sent me Christmas gifts, and I think that is when I truly processed that my own Grandma had passed during the pandemic. What I mean by process is that I took time out of my day to ask myself: “OK, how do you feel that your grandma will never be able to wish you a Merry Christmas?” I wrote down in the notes app of my phone “pretty shitty.” I guess what I mean is that therapy taught me a lot of tools to think about my emotions, but I don’t really feel them. I’ve had people ask me if it’s my medications, but I like feeling nothing in this moment. An unexamined life is not one worth living, brain on smooth, blah blah blah. I guess I’ll be here, every fucking day for a year to ask myself a simple but, I suppose, effective question: How do I feel?  Today, I feel like feeling again. Also, yesterday I didn’t feel anything but the need to shut myself off from the world and this is my journal so fuck you.

[dearsleyart]

research of Links from initial bibliography

1. BOOK - 2001. Friendship. New York, NY: Morrow.thesebooks from the MILK collective are some of my favourite photography books. i remember looking at them as a child and being transfixed by the photos and how they caaptured a moment of someones life and their story. I think that way of telling someones story through one moment in time and no words is really special. i also love how honest and imperfect some of the pictures are - they feel spontaneous and truthful. the way their book 'love' portrays youth is also quite special, i think it captures those feelings of connection and raw love in its most innocent form, when nothing bad has happeend yet and you can enjoy the sweetness of a kiss in a caravan or the joy of an ugly laugh.

1. PODCAST - Bbc.co.uk. 2021. BBC Radio 4 - Forest 404. [online] Available at: <https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06tqsg3> [Accessed 9 March 2021].I listened t this audio work over a few days as i was working on an illustration and was completely entranced by its narrative. I liked how it wasn't quite an audio book or an audio play, but wasn't just music either. I think the mix of narrative with soundscaping was fantastic and intersperced with interviews of current topics in relevance to the climate and nature was what made it so interesting and fresh. I really liked the balance between noise and story and fact. I think i would like to pull some of this balance into my own work

2. GRAPHIC NOVEL - Coe, J., 2014. Art schooled. London: Nobrow Press.this graphic novel is a brilliant interpretation of what its like to be in art school and i think takes a brilliantly funny approach to representing the different characters and archetypes you meet and the stories they have to tell. I like the style of illustration and limited colour palette and think it captures the feelings of inadequacy or lack of certainty that many young people in their first year feel. I love the cynicism and taking the micky of the 'fine art' world, but also the honesty and fondness within the ups and downs of the story

3. ONLINE ARTICLE - GAY TIMES. 2021. School is out. Many young people are not - the impact of lockdown on LGBTQ youth. [online] Available at: <https://www.gaytimes.co.uk/life/school-is-out-many-young-people-are-not-the-impact-of-lockdown-on-lgbtq-youth/> [Accessed 9 March 2021].'For so many closeted young people – including some Just Like Us  volunteer ambassadors – moving out of home for college, university or  work is an opportunity to come out and build a support network. Meeting  other LGBTQ young people and moving away from home has been a  life-changing experience for many of us, who kept our identities hidden  from our families for many years.'I think this highlights the importance ofconnection and friendhsip and the toll this had on young peoples mental health and wellbeing from a social perspective - how hard has it been to reintegrate into social groups? how has it felt to leave old friendhsip groups and start new ones whilst in a pandemic. has uni been hard? have you changed? have you had to reintroduce yourself to old friends as a new person?   5. BOOK - Hall, J., Birkin, S., Li, H. and Hans, J., 2020. The art of drag. London.This book is brilliant for information about drag, but its also a super playful way of illustrating. i like the bold colours the artists use and the graphic style. i would liek to be influenced by the varying styles of illustration and the styles of drag to help bring that pop of illustration to any future zines i do.

6. FILM - IMDb. 2021. Moxie (2021) - IMDb. [online] Available at: <https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6432466/> [Accessed 9 March 2021].This perfectly encapsulates the spirit of zines and in a kind of american high school grl power way brings really important issues to the frefront and uses zines as a form of rebellion to unite people and fight the system - which is what teenagerhood is about!?

8. ONLINE ARTICLE Si.edu. 2021. Museum Conservation Institute Time Capsules. [online] Available at: <https://www.si.edu/mci/english/learn_more/taking_care/timecaps.html> [Accessed 9 March 2021].'Electronics are a problem. If you include video or audio  tapes or compact   disks, the equipment to play them back may not be  available when the time   capsule is opened. Furthermore, the tapes or  disks may have deteriorated.   Include instructions on any intended  playback equipment. For computer tapes, add   a written copy of the  software, and identify the computer type.Polyvinyl acetate (PVAC) or PVC, including plastic  food wrap, will   deteriorate even in a sealed capsule and release  acetic acid and hydrochloric   acid, respectively, as they age.In   general, properly processed, fiber-based,  black-and-white photographic prints,   preferably treated with gold,  selenium or poly-sulfide toner, keep best.   Photographic films coated  on a polyester base rather than an acetate base are   more stable. Color  prints and slides can fade even when kept in the   dark.Newsprint is acidic and deteriorates easily. A local  museum or library   should have names of paper conservators. The  alternative is to make photocopies   on archival quality paper  (high-alpha cellulose) with an alkaline reserve of pH   7.5-8.0.Objects   made of rubber should not be placed in time capsules since rubber deteriorates   over time, releasing sulfur.All   wood, especially oak, gives off acid vapors  and must be sealed away from   electronic equipment or metal articles,  especially those made of lead, or   lead-containing alloys, in the time  capsule.Textiles   should be clean and insect free. Characteristics of fibers that might be used in   a time capsule:-   Cotton: Acts as a humidity buffer if temperature changes.       - Polyester:   Stable.       - Silk: May deteriorate in oxygen atmosphere.       - Wool and Hair:   Contain sulfur; may outgas and corrode metal.' Thinking of teh actual physical needs of encapsulating time - how a lot of our modern day materials such as mobiles and ipods, flash drives etc. we use to keep memories and moments of time are all inconvenient materials to physically use in a time capsule. would there be something timeless that can replicate memorialised digital things in a formal way. someting more organic or anatomical like preserving things in a formeldahyde tomb or wrapping digital things in a silk time capsule?

9. ONLINE ARTICLE - Sleek-mag.com. 2021. The Photographers Documenting Youth Movements through the Ages. [online] Available at: <https://www.sleek-mag.com/article/youth-movement-photography/> [Accessed 9 March 2021].'Society's obsession with teen culture is a fairly recent development. In  fact, the transitional stage between childhood and adulthood was once  almost non-existent and the adolescent stage of life was skipped due to  societal obligations like war, work and family. In the aftermath of two  World Wars and the Great Depression, however, came a huge generational  gap between parents and their children, who no longer aspired to settle  down just yet. A revolution ensued, and young people across the world  began to do their own thing, bringing about new fashions, music and  opinions.' Have we missed an important year of our lives, a key trasitional year from teenager to adulthood? has this had an effect on us as a group of young people?

10. PODCAST - Spotify. 2021. DUET. [online] Available at: <https://open.spotify.com/show/1B3T1suTjHitjFHZWqXBxm> [Accessed 9 March 2021].I loved listening to this podcast where 2 people share a few songs they like and the stories connected to them. i like hearing the memories connected to teh songs and what they evoke when played. they can be super personal and intimate or be a shared song and expereince. there are definitely songs that are indicative to certain period of my life or certain stages of lockdown which i associate tracks with so I think as part of my interview questions i'd like to ask them what tracks they associate with this period of time.

Kordic, E. M.   (2016, September 11). Youth culture expressed through iconic art pieces.   Retrieved from Widewalls:   https://www.widewalls.ch/magazine/youth-culture-art-photographers 'Specifically dominated by musical tastes, slang fashion and questionable hairstyles, youth culture is distinguished by the unique experience of social reality  and can be perceived as an artifact of growing up. Each generation  brings its own little rebellions, trying to construct their own identity  and what sets them apart.' 'artifacts of youth' - what artifacts of youth would i have? it would be interesting to see what artifacts my peers wuld have - maybe i could recreate them or memorialise them somehow

Unknown. (n.d.). Grown   up in Britain: celebrating 100 years of youth culture. Retrieved from the   museum of youth culture: https://artsandculture.google.com/partner/museum-of-youth-culture'The early Disco underground parties were not a far cry from the New York  Ballroom circuit at the time where black and Latino queer and  transgender folks also found a safe space to be themselves and a  community to thrive in. Both scenes were an escapist haven of  inclusivity for those who were rejected and marginalised by mainstream  society; they were places where LGBTQ folks could truly celebrate their  identities and their sexuality.'https://artsandculture.google.com/story/EgUREYLZH7U13g I think its important to look at the history of these spaces and the comfrt and freedome they have broght to so many years of queer youth, but in lockdown we haven't had those spaces and has there been a setback for individuals self expression without these spaces?

[togayornottogay]

New Year, New Us

Happy New Year Readers!

As we bring a close to 2020, I believe that it is important that we look back at the challenges and successes that we have experienced in the previous year. I remember thinking on December 31st, 2019 that 2020 was going to be my year, that I was going to grow, excel, and become some semblance of what I thought I would be by the age of 31; however, I did not anticipate a pandemic changing our lives radically. Through the challenges, success was still possible. 

The new year found me as a newly single person, out of a toxic relationship, I saw myself rebuilding myself this past year. Getting back in touch with what I found important, what I enjoyed, and what made me happy. My successes include getting back into the full-time workforce, getting a car, rebuilding relationships, getting promoted, loving myself (and someone else), as well as getting out on my own. The world looks different now, I can see hope, positivity, and enjoy waking up daily. I no longer dread getting out of bed and wondering what I am going to wake up to. Most importantly I found myself setting goals, doing new things, and pushing myself to grow and develop.

Following any relationship of significant length, I found myself in a rebound relationship. Blinded by the attention and treatment I had not experienced I told myself I had found love again, but it was an experience needed to remind myself that I had goals, and I had wants and needs of my own that I was refusing to settle on. I refused to settle for anything less than what made me happy, and for the first time in my life, I stood up for myself in a relationship. I communicated my needs, and that they weren't being met, and ultimately I moved  on from something that was meant to be a lesson on to something much better. 

I moved on to a relationship with myself. A relationship where I saw myself for the person deserving of love that I felt I never knew before. I had grown to accept that I was going to have to settle for only half of what I was wanting in life. I accepted that I did not deserve to be loved, that the hurt and pain I experienced in life was a norm for me; However, I saw for the first time, meaning and purpose. I saw that I could have happiness without months of hardship and drama. 

The whole experience took me back to my high school days, when over the loud speaker, our principal would end every day with the words, "Make it a great day, or not, the choice is yours." and while I did not understand it at the time, the words clicked for me. I have a choice in what I allow in my life, I have a choice in what I accept. No, things will not be  100% perfect, but perfection is in the perspective.  I can chose to allow drama in my life, I can chose to allow negativity; but if I chose this I am choosing to repeat the same cycles that have landed me in bad situations in the past. Just as I can choose to allow these things; I can chose to not allow them. 

I decided to surround myself by positivity and encouragement. I found saying, quotes, scripture, anything that inspired me, and put it in places that I would see every day. I began to speak my mind when things bothered me, and speak up when I felt mistreatment was happening (regardless of how receptive the individual was of it). And through this, I weeded through a lot of drama, a lot of anxiety, and I found not only happiness in myself, but found the light of someone that believed in me. That understood my past, accepted it, and realized that it does not define who I am now but merely shaped it. He accepts me, I accept him, and most importantly we communicate. Something bothers one of us, we say it. We discuss plans, we make goals, we want to see each other succeed and improve.

Yes, 2020 was long, it was crazy and unpredictable and there were times that a month felt like a year; but it was also filled with growth and understanding. I am excited to say that 2021, whatever it may bring, I am prepared for. I am setting individual goals, we are setting couple and relationship goals, and through the joined strength and determination (as well as accountability) we will reach those goals. 

What were your challenges this year? What were your successes? Do you have any goals that you have set? 

I have set one goal that I want to share with my readers, I love to write. Writing brings me joy and I find myself in the zone when I am writing. So for 2021 I am going to write 1 post a week (minimum) and will try and use a "This week in LGBTQ+ history" as the theme for each week. This is a project that I am taking on as a goal so that I can remember what is most important to me, passion. If you cannot find passion in your life, enjoyment in what you do, then why continue doing it?

So I leave you with this piece of advice: Don't make a resolution for yourself that you are going to forget by the middle of January, make goals for yourself that you not make but make properly. Make SMART goals. 

Specific

Measurable

Achievable

Relevant

Timely

And make them smarter by making them 

Exciting (to you)

&

Review/Reward - Review your goal regularly and reward yourself at certain intervals. 

Embrace your loved ones, stay safe, and wear your mask!

– Joey ToGayOrNotToGay.

[markwatkinsconsumerguide]

Consumer Guide / No.105 /  Platinum selling composer,  Stephen Hillier , talking Dubstar and more with Mark Watkins. 

MW : How old were you when you first dabbled at song writing, and what did you “compose"? 

SH : There was a piano in my parents’ house in Welling, South London. I took some lessons, loved playing but wasn’t interested in reading music. So I would make up little tunes so I had something to play. I was ten. Despite having taught songwriting at Universities since 2004 I still don’t like reading music. I get by, just don’t ask me to direct a light opera.

MW : When did you decide you could make song writing / playing keyboards a career? 

SH : That was an accident. I started writing songs as opposed to “tunes” around the age of twelve. I heard David Sylvian say that he’d simply ‘given it a go one day’ and discovered he could do it. I thought that sounded cool, I’ll try it. I found it easy, so I just started writing and wrote loads. I haven’t stopped since. I didn’t think much about songwriting until many years later. I assumed everyone wrote songs, because everyone I knew did! 

When I met Chris (Wilkie) in Newcastle at the end of 1991, I was looking for a bass player to accompany me singing my songs. And I intended to use my songs simply so the new act would have something to play. That approach went on for a while, but… it turned out that Chris was a much better guitarist than me so I stopped playing, and when I found Sarah in 1993 I realised she was a much better singer than me. So I stopped singing. That left writing, so I focussed on that. And have done so ever since. 

MW  : How were Dubstar formed, and why did you leave the group in 2013? 

SH : I met Chris in Walker’s nightclub in Newcastle towards the end of 1991. That was where I wrote ‘Anywhere’, and it’s closure in early 1992 inspired ‘Stars’. I was looking for a bass player to form a band with, he played guitar so that wasn’t going to work. But we got on well, and loved the same music (Cocteau Twins, The Smiths, Durutti Column). 

When we started out it was the two of us on guitar. Different guitars though. Otherwise that could have been awkward. I discovered Sarah in the summer of 1993 when her boyfriend, who was someone I knew on the Newcastle music scene, accidentally left a tape he had made of his “girlfriend” at my flat in Jesmond. That was Sarah singing his songs. I was stunned by how beautiful her voice was. She had an effortless purity that really moved me. I’m not sure her boyfriend was keen on us meeting, but I persisted. We got on well.

After that I got sidetracked by something else and forgot about Sarah until she rang me up reminding me that I said we should do something. I was a bit embarrassed to have been so flaky, so we got to work immediately. And that was that, Dubstar was born, although we were called The Joans at the time. I finished working with Chris and Sarah in January 2014. I’d written and recorded two as yet unreleased albums 

https://www.dubstar.com/unitedstatesofbeing

https://www.dubstar.com/unitedstatesofbeing2

and felt that by that point the act had run its course. As I wasn’t interested in playing the nostalgia circuits, I decided to move on. The 25th anniversary of the release of Disgraceful is a good time to revisit some of the memories though, which I've done largely by accident. I discuss it here: 

https://www.stevehillier.net/dubstar-25/2020/10/9/dubstar-lost-and-foundland

MW  : Pick one track each from Disgraceful, Goodbye and Make It Better and  share some memories of the making of...

SH : My strongest memory of making the Disgraceful album was hearing the mix of ‘Anywhere’ come back through the speakers at RAK Studios with Stephen Hague. It sounded INCREDIBLE, like a hit. I loved it. That was the first time I’d heard one of my songs properly recorded and produced. You can’t go back to working on a four track after that

In terms of Goodbye, I remember the process of rediscovering ‘No More Talk’. It was a song I’d written at school, and although we already had more than enough songs for the second album, I felt I should include it, at least propose it. It was a freezing cold January in Newcastle in our studio at the Arts Centre, with me all alone, hunched over this tiny hard disk recorder putting together an arrangement for a song I’d written ten years earlier. That’s show biz! 

Make It Better was made in a very different way from the other two Dubstar albums, largely because we were living in different cities by that point. Me in Brighton, Sarah in Manchester and Chris in Gateshead. But there are so many stories about the making of that album. 

My favourite was that when I was in the middle of doing the first load of demos, I got a call from the record company. Apparently The Corrs were interested in doing a cover of ‘Stars’ and do I fancy meeting them at their Brighton show next week? I thought…yes. So I met the act, who were lovely as you would imagine. We had dinner together and when I dropped into the Brighton Centre to catch their sound check they stopped playing their song and broke into ‘Stars’, it was quite something. My song never sounded better than in that moment. The Corrs didn’t cover ‘Stars’ in the end. 

There’s more to this story, a LOT more… you can read the stories behind the writing of every Dubstar song at 

https://www.dubstar.com/

MW : What projects are you currently involved with?

SH : Coming up, there will be a second DUBSTAR: Lost and Foundland collection released in December 2020. I’m finishing that off now. I also have a collection of Christmas piano pieces out 4th December, 2020. Then there is the second Dubstar Preludes collection in January, 2021. Currently, Dunstar Preludes, Vol.1 is available now : . 

https://open.spotify.com/album/7B7yeG9FRjBNssvUGUSrhd?si=3SpaeFADSyOnMXnTCiUJwg

And then I’m launching an entirely new act in late January 2021. More details to follow, but what I can say is that it’s a return to songs with proper singing on them, rather than the instrumental piano pieces I’ve been releasing during this past year. I’m very excited about this, and was intending to launch it this year except for the pandemic. It’s the first time I’ve started a new act since Dubstar! I’m working with an artist from 4AD records on their new album too, which is VERY exciting. You will be able to find details of all of these project here : 

 https://www.stevehillier.net/

MW : You live in Brighton, what do you enjoy seeing and doing in the City?

SH :  I moved here in 1997, it was a choice of London for my career or Brighton for my state of mind. I chose the latter and have never regretted it, not for a moment. I don’t think I could live anywhere else in the UK, certainly not in England. 

When we had nightlife (!), Brighton was the best city of anywhere I’ve lived. I love the architecture. Brighton has extraordinary contrasts, Georgian Crescents next to newly built student accommodation, Victorian Squares opposite modern structures such as the i360. 

You can spot the history in this city from the buildings. The corruption of the 1960s and 70s developments, the Pavilion of course. The new development on the Level. Even the road I live on has mad history… the developers ran out of money as they built the road, so the houses get smaller as you go up the street. That was in 1895. 

MW : Tell me about your experiences on the last bus ride, taxi ride and train journey you had? 

SH : The last bus ride I had was from our office in the centre of Brighton back home. Tried to scan the bus’s computer network using the USB socket they provide on every seat. I discovered… nothing. 

The last taxi ride was one weekend in November (2020). The Uber drivers ‘round here have a habit of taking your job, getting to pick you up but taking someone else off the street… then stating to Uber that they declined your fare because you didn’t have a face covering. We flagged a regular cab and spent the ten minute ride home exchanging anecdotes about how bad Uber is. For the record, I really like Uber. 

My last train journey was returning from Bath to Brighton after a gig last February (2020). It was mad, there was a storm. The train was packed, every service into Paddington was cancelled, so we had to get off at Didcot Parkway… four hundred people on a platform in the rain and wind wondering what the hell they were going to do. I realised we were going to be stuck here on the platform for hours so got back on the original train and returned to Bath. I was thinking I’d stay in a hotel for the night, but I was on a promise of Thai meal that night so decided to hire a car and drive instead. I made it to the Red Snapper in Brighton in time. Apparently the rest of the passengers were stuck at Didcot Parkway for three hours in the rain. Some are still there now. 

MW : Coronavirus - do you feel the government should give financial assistance as well as moral support to the music industry? 

SH : This is not a simple question to answer. I do think the music industry in the country should be supported through the pandemic because it’s a source of employment for thousands, and a valuable export for the UK. I think the industry should be supported better in general, but not in the way it’s being done now. I think this country should take a leaf out of the approach that the Scandinavians have, on just about everything frankly, including taxes and fiscal policy! Free higher education including in the Arts, and proper ongoing support for arts venues. I’m talking grants, in order that their crucial role in forming communities is recognised and bolstered. And yes, that means spending money on music and arts projects that aren’t otherwise financially viable. 

MW  : How have you fared personally during Lockdown? What have you learned about your own character? Other people/s? 

SH : Lockdown has been… interesting. The biggest change for me was not travelling (I’ve spent the last twenty years living between Spain and Brighton). So I had a lot more time on my hands. That was initially daunting, a bit scary, then incredibly liberating. It led to a fabulous creative period for me. I wrote ‘Inside Outlines’ over a matter of three days. I‘d seen people doing gigs in their kitchen and thought I’d give that a go… and quickly realised it wasn’t going to be interesting enough for even me to watch. So I wrote, and wrote and wrote. And started releasing music under my own name for the first time. Also, I started working on the piano versions of my old Dubstar songs during the last days of the lockdown. Someone had contacted me on Twitter to remind me that Stars had been released twenty five years ago on that day. I’d entirely forgotten about the anniversary, so quickly put together a piano version and wrote the story behind the song so I could mark the event in some way. My wife told me that was a great idea, why not do another twenty five, one for each year. She meant, “story behind the song”, I thought she meant to record another twenty five piano pieces so went off to my studio and stayed there for a month. That was how DUBSTAR: Lost and Foundland began. I’m currently working on volume three. 

https://open.spotify.com/album/18DQiZMPfIvb7HqRtukpA9?si=mgSnZK3URe--KcSSxFTP4Q

What I have learned about myself is I have benefitted greatly by staying in one place for more than a couple of weeks. I haven’t done that since 1995. 

MW : What are you looking forward to doing this Christmas, regardless of Lockdown? 

SH : We would normally spend the latter part of December in Copenhagen, which is the cosiest city I know. I lost a Danish friend to breast cancer in 2018 and it hit me hard, very hard. I make going back to Christianhavn  and Christiania a kind of pilgrimage to her memory. That doesn’t look like it’s going to be possible this year. So instead, I’m going to get a big Xmas tree and put it up in November. I normally have the tree up until Easter, which isn’t mad at all if you think about it, so this year it goes up early and stays up until the pandemic is over. 

© Mark Watkins / November 2020  

[jacknicholson1963]

HMS Queen Elizabeth – her first week at sea

On the afternoon of 26th June HMS Queen Elizabeth put sea for the first time. This was a significant milestone in modern Royal Navy history. She is the first British aircraft carrier completed since 1985 and the first true aircraft carrier in the world designed to operate 5th generation fixed wing aircraft.

A good week for the RN…

The RN still has many long-term problems and challenges but can look back on the past week with great satisfaction. Besides the successful departure of HMS Queen Elizabeth, The RN now has 3 ships assigned to NATO duties. HMS Sutherland will join the latter part of NATO anti-submarine exercise Dynamic Mongoose off Iceland, HMS Duncan is about to assume leadership of Standing NATO Maritime Group 2 which will enter the Black Sea. HMS Enterprise will deploy to the Mediterranean as the flagship of Standing NATO Mine Counter Measures Group 2. A Wildcat helicopter from HMS Monmouth working with RFA Cardigan Bay, operating in the Indian Ocean saved the life of a sailor from a sinking oil tanker. The second MARS tanker, RFA Tiderace was accepted off-contract from the builders in South Korea while the first ship RFA Tidespring has left dry dock in Falmouth as she progresses towards becoming operational next year. Finally, the order for the first three Type 26 Frigates was officially announced on 2nd July and steel will be cut in August.

The story of QE’s first week at sea is best told using the stunning official video and images of this mighty ship, in her natural element at last…

Leaving the basin

Monday 26th. 16.00 A fine demonstration of seamanship and teamwork. Eleven tugs took this ship out of the basin and through a very narrow lock with inches to spare. Not even a scratch on the paintwork.

Under the bridges

Monday 26th 23.40. Low tide at midnight meant the ship had to pass under the Forth bridges in the dark. As had been carefully calculated, she cleared the bridges with jut a couple of meters to spare. From a media perspective, the timing made a live broadcast of the spectacle a non-starter. Darkness made getting the “money shot” photo of the ship going under the bridges technically difficult. Her planned return to Rosyth, at some point halfway through her trails period, may provide another better photo opportunity.

At sea

Overall media coverage of QE going to sea was pretty muted. Her arrival in Portsmouth sometime in September or October will make a more compelling story as the ship comes into her home port where thousands are expected to be watching. Despite the great photos, it should be remembered that in some ways QE is akin to a newborn. Apart from light machine guns she is unarmed, is still owned by the builders and will not be an operational warship until 2020. Just one week into her trials programme she has not ventured far into the North Sea and returned to anchor at times. She has conducted short passages and racetrack courses testing ship handling and gradually building up to higher speeds, reportedly going above 26 knots.

This view of the two islands on her starboard side gives a real sense of scale. Note the communications mast in the lowered position ready to pass under the bridges.

Flying the blue ensign, at anchor in the Firth of Forth.

Looking purposeful and assured

The Queen joined by two Dukes. HMS Sutherland and HMS Iron Duke arrived to escort her for a couple of days.

Urban myths abound

The empty flight deck of QE on trials has inspired the further repetition of the urban myth that she is “aircraft carrier with no aircraft”. This is not the case and F-35s will fly from her next year. Although the F-35 programme is delivering more slowly than everyone would like, the UK will own around 20 of the aircraft by the time HMS Queen Elizabeth achieves initial operating capability in 2020. Even if there were squadrons of aircraft ready to go, the ship would not be embarking them on initial sea trials. The first aircraft to land on the ship was a Merlin helicopter on a simple sortie to deliver a few supplies and exchange personnel.

Some in the media became overly-alarmed that Russian naval units and aircraft are likely to conduct surveillance on QE. Obtaining acoustic and electromagnetic signatures of naval vessels is a routine task conducted by most militaries on each other. From now, and for most of her sea-going life QE is likely to be escorted by RN units, possibly with an RN SSN nearby to ward off other submarines that may attempt to get shadow her. So far QE has been operating in shallow and noisy coastal waters where submarines would struggle to glean anything very useful.

Laughably the Mail on Sunday warned that HMS Queen Elizabeth transmitting on AIS during her trials posed a security risk and would “allow Putin to track her with a smartphone app”. (AIS is a statutory navigational safety requirement, even for warships in coastal waters for reasons of safety and common sense. Obviously, it can be turned off when needing to be covert, but a ship conducting trials is not attempting to hide).

Many media outlets continue to repeat the total falsehood that computers aboard QE use the insecure and outdated consumer Operating System Windows XP, supposedly leaving her vulnerable to cyber attacks. Most of the RN surface fleet currently uses Windows for Warships, a much modified and more secure OS, based on Windows 2000 with little in common with Microsoft’s consumer offerings. However, QE does not have any Microsoft software on board and uses a completely new system called Shared Infrastructure. UK Defence Journal has investigated this matter in detail.

A fine day to be at sea. So far trials have been conducted in mostly benign weather conditions and calm seas

4.5 acres of flight deck

Friendly fire from an Army-centric press

Journalist Max Hastings, was the self-proclaimed “first man into Port Stanley” after the liberation of the Falklands, a victory only made possible by aircraft carriers. Frothing at the mouth in the Daily Mail, Hastings demanded the QE “be scuttled”. Almost every line of his anti-carrier rhetoric is false or a distortion of the truth. The Times, which should know better, ran an editorial probably delivered straight from Marlborough Lines, rehearsing old complaints that aircraft carriers are too expensive and the Army’s dire state is their fault. The Guardian was a slightly kinder in a rambling piece about past naval glories, trying to cast the carriers as an outdated throwback and concluding they are “ugly”. It was, of course, the same media who were (rightly) castigating David Cameron back in 2011 that we had no aircraft carriers during the Libyan campaign.

Back in 2014 we wrote an antidote to the all the partisan and ill-informed criticism we predicted the carriers project would receive as they progressed.

Another milestone reached. The first aircraft pictured taking off after making the first deck landing on the ship. A Merlin Mk2 of 820 Naval Air Squadron had the honour

Mine’s better than yours…

The Defence Scretary, Michael Fallon rather unwisely taunted the Russians by saying “When you saw that old, dilapidated Kuznetsov sailing through the Channel, a few months ago, I think the Russians will look at this ship [QE] with a little bit of envy”. Although it is true that QE will eventually be far in advance of the ancient Kuznetsov, it should be pointed out that she will be unable to properly conduct combat operations before 2021. The Kuznetsov’s air group is unimpressive but she carries a battery of potent anti-ship missiles while, in part thanks to Fallon, the RN will have no heavyweight anti-ship missiles at all by next year. The Russian surface fleet is mostly old and they have not managed to build a new major surface combatant since the Soviet era. However, the Russian Navy is still very much more powerful than the hollowed-out Royal Navy by any measure. Their surface fleet may be semi-obsolete but it is their submarines that are the real cause for concern.

Perhaps the most evocative image of the week. QE with her escorts foreshadows the future when the RN will be able to field a carrier battle group again.

  All images and Video courtesy of The Aircraft Carrier Alliance, MoD and Royal Navy/HMS Queen Elizabeth

from Save the Royal Navy http://www.savetheroyalnavy.org/hms-queen-elizabeth-her-first-week-at-sea/