#Mass Effect spoilers

[theshadyrodian]

When you meet up with him in ME2 re: Grunt’s Rite of Passage and he goes, “how many times have you stepped into a mess for your crew, Shepard?” gets me EVERY TIME.

He knows Shep so well and respects the absolute hell out of them. The other banger within this interaction is obviously when Grunt says someone is dead and Wrex goes, “of course, you’re with Shepard.”

I love my bff.

God I love Wrex. He's genuinely so insightful. Whenever I took him with me he's nearly ALWAYS the one who knew before it was obvious that we were heading into an ambush or that something wasn't quite right. When we met Vigil Wrex was the one who said as we headed down that he didn't think what was happening was Sarens doing. He says he knew Saren wasn't a good guy when he met him prior to the events of the game and he met him once for a few minutes. He speaks about only being good for fighting; but he was genuinely trying to do something about the genophage before he had to leave his planet AND he still DEEPLY cares about trying to fix it now even if he tells you it's a lost cause because krogans are too focused on other things. He claims his species is best at war and not things like science but he's just!! So clever and he clearly KNOWS on some level that a lot of what the Krogan experience is is based on their subjection/treatment in the galaxy. He enjoys jobs where his opponent is smart and good at what they do; and he is smart enough to be crafty and manipulate individuals such as when he got an employer to pay him to be a guard even AFTER he failed to kill the guy he was sent after. He is grumpy, but he cares about Shepard and he cares about stopping Saren. He's cynical and not sure that things can change for the better but he's also got this little nugget of hope in him that comes out so strongly at times. I love him. Best alien. Smart little guy. Best friend.

[catsharky]

As terrifying as it would have been, I like to think there was a moment of peace there at the end, among the stars.

-

So... this is the next part of the Shakarian comic, but it's not the big one I said would come next. I've made the decision to put that on the back burner for now and pick away at it a lot more slowly while I continue on with what I originally had planned. The next thing you see from me will likely be the Joker-centric part I mentioned a while back, but for now please enjoy this rare coloured comic in the meantime.

Part 1 • Previous Part • Next Part

[lunargazing-png]

i bought new brushes on clip studio paint so. everyone gets hurt /j

I had the idea after ME3 (specifically the destroy ending) that Legion and Shepard come back to life by merging their conciousness together.

[oonaluna-art]

Liara’s character development between Mass Effect 1 and 3.

As a history major, I’d probably be salty too.

—

[My Ko-Fi] [RedBubble] [Patreon]  

[josephkeller]

Honestly, Dragon Age has never been a series where the carryover from previous games has been anything other than superficially consequential. The original Mass Effect trilogy did a decent job of paying off previous decisions through meaningful interactions with characters in future titles (The square root of 906.01 is 30.1). But even then, the interactions were meaningful *personally*. They didn’t have an outsized impact on the story. Like, looking at DAI, the ruler of Fereldan, as determined by Dragon Age: Origins, doesn’t actually matter on an actual plot level. The consequences for the mages are functionally the same. Same with the identity of Hawke’s Grey Warden contact.

Incidentally, I’m actually a little nervous about how they’ll handle the state of the galaxy in the upcoming Mass Effect game, because the state of that galaxy is *very different* depending on what ending you choose. One of the endings (spoiler alert for a 12-year-old video game) essentially has the entire galaxy achieve harmony through mass DNA re-write. This is not a series that was meant to be followed up on in the way they seem to be choosing, so how they’ll achieve this without lighting 1/2 the fanbase on fire remains to be seen. My guess is that they won’t quite make it.

You know what? I think a lot of DAV's biggest plot weaknesses ultimately come back to DAI, because a lot of them can be summarized as "Why didn't they get into [thing that DAI set up]" and... the answer is that Bioware was never going to be able to meaningfully engage with those things, and they should've known that when they wrote them into DAI. The Divine, Kieran's existence, Urthemiel's soul, the Well of Sorrows, all that stuff DAI set up that people are mad DAV didn't focus on? All of those should have led to pretty big alterations in the worldstate, and the worldstate has to remain roughly the same for everyone. We were never going to get the massive impact those choices should've had, for the same reason the Warden's boon at the end of DAO was quietly forgotten about as soon as Dragon Age became a series instead of a standalone game: the writing just can't support choices that would create such massive divergences. Like... take Urthemiel. Whether or not Mythal got Urthemiel's soul (and by extension whether or not Solas potentially had the chance to take it) should have been a huge deal! It should've led to two pretty different paths! Except... it can't. Because Bioware can only write one story for each game they make, which means the critical path can't really change beyond flavour text and occasionally which character gets a cameo slot; Mythal didn't get Urthemiel's soul in every worldstate, so Urthemiel's soul can never be relevant to the main plot. And the thing is, they would've known that going in! DAI was the third game, they must have known that worldstate variation could never be more than flavour text and cameos! Hell, you can see Bioware scrambling to make all the Divine options more or less the same in terms of impact on Thedosian society in DAI, which was definitely done to make writing sequels feasible. So why did they write Mythal getting Urthemiel's soul into DAI? And it's the same for all those other big, story-changing choices. People have differing opinions on the merits of including variable flavour text just to say it's there but that's not what this is about; in terms of the actual plot the variables cannot be relevant (unless it's something like the Warden ally choice where every option is ultimately the same in terms of plot impact, and even that one's pushing it; it never is explained how Hawke ended up friendly with Loghain). I think when talking about choices from DAI that DAV didn't engage with it's important to take a second to ask yourself if Bioware could have written a version of events that worked equally well with every possible outcome of that choice and could be tweaked to engage with every variation without having any major impact on the main plot. If the answer is no I think it's better described as a DAI problem than a DAV problem, because it's not actually DAV's fault that DAI wrote checks it couldn't cash.

[everythingmasseffectdd]

The thing about Garrus Vakarian that makes him such a 10 is that he came out of fucking nowhere.

In the first game I felt mid about him, even a little low-key concerned because he had some alarming ideals and I just had people closer to me who did the job better. Wasn't too sad to see him go.

And then there was the whole harrowing fiasco that was ME2 where he just fucking ajzbeinrbfusjanwb... And his reveal was such a roller coaster, such a colossal relief and horror and relief again. And the ride or die thing, because if you thought I was letting the emotional support vigilante out of my sight after that, think again.

I think I was like 10 hours from the end of ME3 (and WAY too far up another romance route), when the realization knocked me flat on my ass.

I love Garrus Vakarian.

Wtf am I doing with [xyz]?!?!

Holy shit, I LOVE him.

Embarrassing, honestly. He's pixels. I'd had game feelings before but... like via the main character, not like... hit me with a sack of bricks, stop dead in my tracks on a random Tuesday, moment of complete clarity type feelings. The Garrus thing really does sneak up on you though, lmao. Full arc. 10/10. Such damn good writing. Love that little sniper forever.

[wetsocksinbed]

when I tell you I had a fucking meltdown

[abislwise]

The ABCs of Mass Effect, according to Reddit

Second place finishers:

[tragicblondie]

COMMANDER AVELINE SHEPARD spacer • ruthless • infiltrator • paragade

[todayontumblr]

Wednesday, November 8.

Mass Effect fanart.

Yesterday was November 7, known to Mass Effect fans as N7 Day. Today, as you may have discerned, is November 8. And so, we thought to ourselves, why not celebrate N7 on N8 and stretch out the celebrations for another 24 hours? It's crazy, sure—but it might just be crazy enough to work.

Voila. Hey presto. Here's some #mass effect fanart. You deserve it, quite frankly. 

[johaerys-writes]

So I finished ME3 last night and respectfully.... what the fuck was that lmao

[catharsis-scrawled]

[bharv]

Just redid Virmire and what I liked about those choices and the devastation to your team there was that there are a couple of different emotional threads being pulled here.

The first is that the Wrex decision is one of the first big ones that really rewards paragon or renegade behaviours. If you have been too measured you cannot save him. That is a gut punch if you have played it safe! It subtly tells us that we have to, as Shepard, be willing to either be overly generous in our approach or ready to work outside of the system if we want to be able to truly change what is happening around us. I think it’s a neat moment. I’ve had many playthroughs where I wasn’t there at that point.

The other thing is the big decision between two companions, who I think people forget sometimes have also been primed by the narrative as your main guys. What I think is often forgotten is there are TWO decision points here - who arms the bomb and who you save. You have a practical choice (it makes sense that Kaiden arms the bomb as the senior officer and Ashley is on front lines from a skillset pov, though either can do either job and are skilled enough to do so) but then you also get the choice of where you go to support.

That second one is a much more emotionally driven decision to me. The mission is to make sure the bomb goes off - Shep can justify it, but going to the front and trusting the specialist is a bending of the orders. They should see the job through. But maybe they’re emotionally compromised! Maybe they’re already in love with that person! Maybe they want to save as many people as possible in the evacuation! This combined with the earlier decisions is where the meat is.

It’s an old game, but there’s some neat stuff in there

[catsharky]

There we go, 3/3 of what was supposed to be one big part!

This isn't the end, though the next part isn't going to be about Garrus so he will have to stay in grief limbo for a bit. Just while I give a certain someone else a bit of time in the spotlight! Then we'll be back to give the poor boy a break.

Part 1 • Previous Part • Interim Comic 1

[littlegalerion]

The fanfiction scene for Dragon Age is about to get insane. With the recent leaks on Veilguard, I just wanna say: write your own ending. We ain't getting a good conclusion, and we deserve one.

So come forth, great multiverse tides of fanfiction stories, and show me your conclusions to the great Dragon Age franchise's story!

[msunitedstatesjames]

Man, poor Dr. Chakwas. What did this woman do to get all the deadly experimental technology shoved directly into the room next to the medbay with only one puny door standing in the way?

First of all, she's got the AI core in there, which considering the galaxy seems to be under constant threat of imminent techology based destruction from one group or another, has got to be a little anxiety inducing.

Then they find some mysterious talking Geth who may or may not want to kill them all, and the crew is like, where do we stash this dude? How about right next to the medical center?

Then they recover the body of "Dr. Coré," who just nearly murdered multiple crew members of the Normandy, and they're like, "Yup, let's dump this in here completely unsupervised. That's fine." And then EDI gets involved and a fire breaks out in there and Dr. Chakwas has really gotta be like, "For fucks sake, now what?"

Like, couldn't they have found some storage space for any of this that was next door to someone with more immediate defensive capabilities, like, I don't know, the genetically perfect Krogan, the merc slaughtering vigilante, the multiple extremely powerful biotics, or even, dare I say it, the Quarian tech expert? (Though to be fair, Tali probably would have destroyed most of these if left unattended with them.)

Hell, I'm surprised they didn't shove Javik in there, too. He may not be deadly tech, but at this point you might as well just stick the only known survivor and avatar of vengeance of an ancient race in there. Dr. Chakwas is used to potential death loitering on the other side of one unlocked door.