#andromeda-reinvented

[grimdarkfandango]

For the OC ask meme: 9, 10, 30. For all the blorbos.

let it never be said you ask for the least <3 ^_^

9: How does your OC handle their physical health? Do they take care of themselves?

Rhys and Key both: lol. lmao. lol and lmao. they have physical bodies only under duress. Key is probably slightly better than Rhys, because one of them needs to sprint out of danger and the other can misty step

Fil: has the body awareness of a toddler. falls asleep in his food. will eat until he barfs. will hyperfixate and forget to eat or sleep for days

Winter: somehow the most responsible of all of them?? training is as training does and that temple asceticism has ingrained certain habits in him. also all that cardio ;D

10: How does your OC handle their mental health? Do they take care of themselves?

HA. HAHA. YOU MAKE FUNNY JOKE.

Key is probably slightly better than Rhys and Winter, who've never seen a feeling they can't avoid (at least until Winter gets forcibly readjusted by Kitten into a functional person), but Key is also a workaholic runaway, so, bar in hell, etc

Fil has great mental health thank you (he left his baggage with his memories in an alleyway somewhere in waterdeep)

30: My OC and your OC are friends. This isn't a question. I'm not asking. (How do they respond?)

babe that's the entire premise of all of their existences <3

without fail, so far? they respond by becoming better people :) (art imitates life <3)

[undead-potatoes]

I've been informed that this technology apparently came from FIFA of all places, which is just so funny. The football guys figured out the hair and now Bioware is copying their homework (as they should)

I've snuck a few glances of people's Rooks now (a risky move, but I've not been spoiled so far), and the first thing that struck me is how nice the hair looks? I'm not sure if it's the lighting or the style or what, but the hair just looks so soft and fine and might genuinely be the best hair in a video game I've seen in a good while? From a Bioware game??? Wonders never cease

[angelknives]

"It's unfair to compare Veilguard to BG3!"

Err, no it isn't? A game supposedly in the same genre, made by a studio with experience in that genre, produced around the same time. How is that unfair? I love BG3 but Larian isn't reinventing the wheel. It's building on what works in this genre and (gasps) improving on criticism it got on its previous games.

But sure, let's not compare DAV to BG3, how about we compare it to:

Disco Elysium

Divinity Original Sin 2

The Witcher 3

Pillars of Eternity 2

Elden Ring

While all different, they all contain elements Bioware gutted out of Dragon Age: The Veilguard (like a good snappy title), to reach a younger broader new audience. These titles didn't gut themselves and were highly successful on every metric. And they all came out between DAI and DAV, so Bioware could have learned from that.

Especially as they already tried to dumped down, simplified approach with Andromeda and most people weren't happy with that either.

Oh and I forget one important game DAV could have learned from:

Dragon Age: Inquisition

[amorphousbl0b]

Something fascinating about Perseus is that his famous journey is a stitching-together of two separate myths.

First he kills Medusa, then on the way back he takes a random diversion to slay a Ketos and rescue Andromeda. This is hardly unusual for Greek stories, which often feature random diversions, but what interested me is that both seem to actually be explanations for things rather than the usual “a hero killed a monster here and that’s why these particular random crossroads are cool and important” formula these things follow.

First, the story of Perseus and Medusa is connected to the image of the Gorgon, a heavily widespread artistic motif. The gorgoneia are hideous heads that adorn architecture, shields, and coins all over Archaic and Classical Greece. They seem to have served a similar function to gargoyles in Christian myth, driving off evil spirits with their fearsome visage. And Perseus cutting the head from Medusa was the tale of how that icon came to be. Well, that might be a bit backwards: the story would’ve been around for quite a while during the Dark Age before it was written down in the 7th century BCE, around the time those gorgoneia started appearing.

Andromeda is entirely unconnected to this except by the single thread of Perseus himself. This is epitomized, in my opinion, by the recurring indecision over whether Perseus killed the ketos with his sword or with Medusa’s head. Did he even have Medusa’s head in the early tellings of the story? Were they connected later? Because what’s interesting about the story of Perseus, Andromeda, Cassiopeia, Cepheus, and Cetus, is that you might recognize all of those names from the stars. Every single character in this myth was a constellation!

Except Phineas, screw him I guess.

Of note, none of the characters from the Medusa adventure are constellations. Not Danaë or Polydectes or Dictys or Medusa herself, all of whom were much more important to Perseus’s life than Cepheus who did absolutely nothing even in the one story where he matters. Unlike Heracles, whose whole life is an extended constellation myth, Perseus has this one incident, but it’s a dense one, producing five whole star formations from a single monster fight.

It’s hard to figure out when and from what this would’ve arisen, given all these transformations happened during the Dark Age before the reinvention of writing. Nonetheless, this is a great example of the evolution that I find incredibly compelling about studying mythology. Every tale has its seams, stitches haphazard or clean, reminders that this was a living culture and all of these stories we might fall into the trap of treating as fun fictions with quirky characters were as real as any of our modern religious texts and histories.

[felassan]

GamesRadar: Dragon Age: The Veilguard creative director on Mass Effect 2 comparisons and how the RPG draws from BioWare's past successes: "don't reinvent the wheel if you don't have to"

Interview | Exploring Dragon Age: The Veilguard's inspirations with creative director, John Epler

Excerpts under due to spoilers.

"Speaking on the comparisons, creative director John Epler tells me the team looked at BioWare's past successes – including Mass Effect 2 – when it came to The Veilguard's approach to storytelling, as well as choice and consequence. "I've been at Bioware for 17 years, so I worked on Mass Effect 2. Trick Weekes [Veilguard lead writer and narrative designer] worked on Mass Effect 2, there's a bunch of people who've been on a bunch of different games at Bioware" says Epler, who points to that tenure including Mass Effect 2's ending. "One of the things that we really wanted to make sure was that there was a sense of consequence [in The Veilguard] - not just to the choice you make, but to the content you engage with, the content you don't engage with." [...] Another struggle was making sure the actions you can take and the companion quests succeed at feeling meaningful, without your decisions "arbitrarily gating you off". As an example, Epler says that some original parameters started to "feel really artificial" – like completing three follower missions before something would unlock. The solution – having all of your choices wrapped up in the final questline, and making sure they all mattered in the end game – was an approach the team decided on to "give that balance of player choice". As a result, whether or not you chose to do something with your companions, there are still consequences to those actions. [...] Speaking on BioWare's previous two releases, Mass Effect Andromeda and Anthem, Epler says the team wanted to ensure The Veilguard "landed in a way that was satisfying and told a good cohesive story". To do that, the team wanted to play to the studios strengths by looking at what worked in past BioWare RPGs. Epler - who says he's a "firm believer in 'don't reinvent the wheel if you don't have to' - points to the Yakuza series as an example of a set of games that have found critical acclaim and success through this philosophy by taking place in a lot of the same places with different characters. "Obviously, that's not what we do," Epler continues. "But a lot of the things that we pulled into The Veilguard, like the ending, the general structure, and also – honestly, I think something that I really wanted to do for this one, that Mass Effect has always done so well – is I love big set piece moments in the story." [...] Epler highlights Veilgaurd's sense of spectacle and how it was greatly influenced by Dragon Age's rich lore. "I love getting [in] the Siege of Weisshaupt, having the face in the clouds. Elgar'nan bringing the moon and sun into an eclipse is still probably my favorite scene in the game," Epler says. "And a lot of that came down to us asking the [same] question each time: 'what is the coolest thing that we can do here, and does it make sense in the lore?' One of the stories of Elgar'non you hear in previous games is Elgar'non controls the sun and the moon. And it's like, 'oh, that's just a story' – actually, it's not. Elgar'non can actually do that. It's finding that reverence for lore that I think has always been core to Dragon Age, but also bringing that sense of spectacle and excitement." [...] as Epler recalls, there was one particular scene in the first Mass Effect that's always stayed on with him. "Part of the Mass Effect series' success in storytelling is they're not afraid to have those big set piece moments," Epler says. "And I mean, the Citadel walk in Mass Effect 1 is still, in my mind, one of the best final sequences in a game I've ever played.""

[source]

[adarkrainbow]

Hello! Love your ogre research, first of all. So something weird here, in my English translation of Ariosto the monster that threatens Angelica (the orca) is translated as “sea orc”, and the blind ogre who acts like Polyphemus (the orco) is translated as “land orc”. (And by extension “sea orc” evolved into a dragony thing in some modern fantasy books). Any idea why that happened instead of just calling them “orca” and “ogre” or something?

Ah yes the Orlando Furioso. I meant to include this in my big "What makes an ogre" series but never got the time.

So... I have to admit I am not an expert on Italian language, especially old fashioned Italian language, and I also am no expert on the full Orlando Furioso (it is a very complex work I only got started on recently). But here's the thing...

It is well-known that the Orlando Furioso was put together by taking elements of Greco-Roman mythology and reinventing them completely. The Orco and Orca are this. The Orco is basically Polyphemus reinvented - but here with two eyeballs made of bone instead of one eye promptly gouged out. The Orca meanwhile is the sea-dragon of the Andromeda story given a new name. So far so good.

But "Orca" is not meant to evoke the sea animal of the same name, the "killer whale", and that's something everybody has to remind people of (even the Wikipedia article for the Orca in Italian points out it is NOT the "orca" as in the sea creature). Orca is used here as the male form of "orco" - and the "orco" is indeed the same name of creature used by Basile to designate his proto-ogres. The "uercos", which is just "orcos" spelled differently.

So should we translated "Orco" as "ogre" and "Orca" as "ogress"? Well... No, it wouldn't work. At least for the Orco it can work since he sports typical ogre traits and DID influence the rise of the ogre figure in France (I don't think it is a random choice if madame d'Aulnoy's ogres are cyclops). But the Orca clearly isn't the same kind of creature - it is a sea dragon, or a sea monster, or some big sea snake. So this hints at the fact that "orco/orca" doesn't actually translated, in the context of the Orlando, as "ogre"...

You see, by Basile's Pentamerone, the "orco" is clearly an "ogre" in the fairytale sense of the word - though some English translators decided to go for "ghoul" because they didn't understand why an ogre would have magical powers, unaware that ogres were originally sorcerers/fairies of their own rights. They preferred to evoke the shapeshifting Arabian demons, allowing for an easier explanation of "Oh yes the ogre turns into all sorts of animals and curses people when it can't eat them".

[Note: As I write this I realized "orchi" is apparently the plural of "orco"? Well... I'll keep calling them "orcos" for now, but another proof I am not expert when it comes to these things]

But the author of the Orlando Furioso seems to have had a different and more ancient meaning in head for "orco". If you ask me, what seems very likely (though I am no expert) is that "orco"/"orca" is here taken as meaning "man-eating monster". Not just a fairytale ogre, but any kind of creature that wants to devour human beings. As a result the "orco" is an ogre-like giant, while the orca is a sea monster-dragon. "Orco/a" is used in the same broad sense as how "fairy" could be used in the British Isles to refer to all sorts of creatures, or yokai in Japan - or at least, that's what it seems to me. This is probably why the translator chose to prefer the term "orc", more neutral and evoking the older roots and mysterious figures behind the word "orc" before Tolkien made it famous. Calling the sea creature "orca" feeds the confusion with the killer whale ; while calling the land monster "ogre" might remove the idea that he is another form of the sea creature met earlier. One could keep the cohesion by having "ogre / ogress" but it would be mistranslating to call the sea monster "ogress" when it is clearly not just a female version of the land creature. So ultimately I think this is why the terms "sea orc" and "land orc" were chosen - it keeps the unity, while pointing out that the term does not designate a specific type of being, more a large class of man-eating beings. You could easily go with "sea monster" and "land monster" too.

At least that's how I perceive things - but again I am NO expert and any actual Italian insight on this topic would be more than welcome.

[sapphim]

So I've heard about how mod-unfriendly Dragon Age Inquisition is (to the point that even changing walk animations isn't a thing I've heard of people doing). Do you think the developers do that on purpose, or was that an unfortunate side-effect of EA forcing Bioware to use Frostbite (which wasn't made for action RPGs, but shooters of all things)?

I can't imagine DAI was easy to develop, especially considering how weird everything is under the hood (like how changing skin tints might result in only a character's head changing), and the game being rushed. It's a miracle the game even got made in the first place, to be honest, considering all the limitations.

In the same way that the mod friendliness of the Eclipse engine is a direct result of it being developed for roleplaying games with player-created expansions in mind, the mod unfriendliness of the Frostbite engine is the result of it being developed for multiplayer shooters.

(Making something mod friendly is an active and not neutral state. You have to make that choice and commit development resources to making it so, and you have to do so right from the start. It can't be tacked on later on a whim.)

I know the talking point is that EA forced their studios to switch to Frostbite but the word from Bioware is that they would have needed to switch to an engine with more modern capabilities regardless and the choice to switch to Frostbite was made in-house for various reasons, including cost.

There were a multitude of problems coming from the top down that troubled development of Inquisition and Andromeda. More has been said on the failure of Andromeda because it failed so spectacularly (that article features a lot of quotes from the devs on the experience of working with Frostbite btw) but one of the more notable problems was not simply that the developers had to create the tools necessary to handle the required RPG subsystems (which is not in and of itself a problem! engines aren't born capable of everything, and this was meant to be faster and cheaper than creating their own engine from scratch like they'd done before) but that because of the way the development timeframes on Inquisition and Andromeda overlapped, both teams had to independently reinvent the wheel on a lot of systems, rather than be able to benefit from each other's work.

That said a lot of the specific things you're noting don't indicate that Frostbite is mod unfriendly. They're just weird quirks of how things happened to be implemented. Eclipse has those things too. Hell, changing a character's skin tint in DA2 may result in only their head changing as well! And although DA2 wasn't built with mod support in mind the way Neverwinter Nights or Origins were (and they quite frankly couldn't with the time and money they were given) that's not a condemnation of the engine. The things that make Frostbite mod unfriendly (as opposed to mod neutral) are the ones you don't see, under the hood. Hell, I can't see those things either, I just have to take it on the word of the developers who created the modding tools.

[evesaintyves]

989 words, for @remadoramicrofics prompt "haunted."

Read it below or on AO3 🎸

Tonks's old bedroom floor is a mess of rumpled t-shirts and her rattiest underpants. Five days since Remus took off his ring, knotted the strings on his traveling case, and told her he'd made a terrible error. All she's done is sleep. She dozed off on the macrame throw pillow and it left a crisscross red rash on her cheek, went downstairs before she noticed, and her Dad gasped, "Dora?" 

She just fled back upstairs without breakfast.

It's not even her throw pillow. Mum has snuck them in her old room sometime since she's been gone. Other things, too, an elegant white bowl to hold all the knuts and plastic hair clips and ticket stubs that were scattered across her chest of drawers. Mum's things, minimal and clean, make Tonks's stuff, the fairy lights and the thrashing band posters, seem like they're trying too hard. It's just like her last year at school, the stress-cracking of all the faultlines between who she is and who she is supposed to be. She was constantly reinventing herself back then—a new chin, a chelsea cut, a ring in her eyebrow. But she's not the only one in charge of her body anymore. It's making decisions without her.

And it's so shit to want Remus here to settle behind her on her squeaky old bed, tuck his bony knees into the parenthesis of her legs, stroke his skinny fingers up her arm and say, like he does, that he's sorry—but at the same time to want to scream at him so hard he vapourizes into a fine red mist.

In the afternoon, her mother does her two-tap no-time-to-pull-your-knickers-up knock and comes in with cups of tea.

"Your father tells me you've been looking ill."

"I'm not."

Andromeda sits on the side of the bed.

"You were a terrible pregnancy," she says. "I'd have sworn you were trying to fight me from the inside."

Tonks pulls her knees to her chest. "This one's a scrapper. I can tell already."

Andromeda smiles into her cup.

Tender moments have a way of making Tonks show her belly. Her mother doesn't say much, just sits and keeps her company, and before long Tonks is compelled to overshare. That she isn't even sure Remus ever really loved her, but maybe loved an idea of her that she led him on into believing while they were still just awkwardly clicking teeth in stolen moments at headquarters; an idea worn smooth and shiny by those months they were apart.

Almost as soon as she married him she was up the duff and puking, breaking out in spots faster than she could morph them away. Still having dreams that Sirius was just tilting on his heels—suspended in the moment he might have been saved—waking up choking. Remus seemed perturbed that she could spend hours staring at the telly, not watching, just trying to shush the noise in her head. It seems so stupid now, but she'd really thought that he, of all people, would understand.

"My mother used to tell me," Andromeda says, "that I'd better stop all my moping about, that men don't care for girls who brood. And that I'd never get married and out of her hair, acting that way."

"What did you say?"

"I didn't say anything. I made a plan and then I climbed out my window in the middle of the night. Your father picked me up in his old car and took me to his parents' flat—you know the story. Let me tell you, Nymphadora—" She pins Tonks with a look. "—how much brooding I did in his old bedroom. I was a wreck. The room smelt of some horrible potion he used on his model railway. The carpet crunched underfoot. And I was worried about what was going to happen to—to some of the people I left. I was crying every night. Waiting until your grandparents left for work in the morning to creep into the kitchen like a ghoul. I had..." She pulls her posture up straight. "Difficulty adjusting, at first."

Tonks's throat is getting tight, and tears are needling the rims of her eyes. It's not just that she's grabbed for that kind of love story and missed; it's also that her mother never talks to her like this—spilling the way Tonks sometimes does, talking fast, saying things she probably shouldn't. It makes the world feel all the more unfixably cracked.

"Dad—Was Dad...?" Tonks can't even finish, her voice is cracking and squeaking. She curls forward and hides her face in her mother's sleeve.

"He'd lie with me—and touch my hair. He used to tell me if I didn't eat I'd disappear and it was going to be very difficult to explain to the officiant why he had an invisible bride."

She says it gently, sadly, as if she knows what it'll do to Tonks, and she's right. It's full waterworks now, the type Tonks has always sworn she wasn't going to do over a bloke. It's coming out her eyes and nose, it's thick and salty in her mouth, it's getting all over her mum's silk blouse. She's going to hate that. Tonks flops back against her pillows, sniffling, wiping her face with her palms, automatically morphing the puffiness out of her eyelids.

Her mother turns to inspect the shiny web of snot Tonks has left on her sleeve. Her face gets that pinched, long-suffering look for just an instant. Then she takes Tonks's empty cup of tea and stacks it in her own, and tucks Tonks's feral bedhead back behind each ear with her cool fingers.

"Supper's at seven," she says. "Your father's trying out a lasagna."

She shuts the door behind her when she goes, and it's just Tonks and the frenzy of the rock bands on her walls: forever joyfully flailing, forever faithful to their own silent beat.

image: egon schiele, woman lying on her back

[andromeda--system]

hey for all our mutuals, our blog used to be fuit--gummy but is now andromeda--system on account of us wanting to reinvent our internet persona to not just be a jojo meme. the banner is staying the same tho, that shit slaps.

[rustingcat]

My mass effect 3 thoughts!

Mass effect 3 is the perfect example of consequences and continuation of a series. While mass effect 2 somewhat diverted in stracture and story from the first one (mainly because they needed to reinvent a lot of mechanics as the old ones were really out dated), but its story felt disconnected from the first one in many ways. I can't blame it really, it wanted to give bigger depth to characters and to explore more in regard to the lore of the world, but it still felt a bit too high of a jump.

Mass effect 3, on the ither hand, was build on top of everything that was established and used that as its base, using every setup the previous entery left it, and executed it beautifully. You have many unique interactions and story beats with characters you saved and connected with 2 games ago that enriched the world so much and made each one feel special. I can't think of many games that ever managed anything like that.

The mechanics are, of course, greatly improved. I can run! Like properly run! It's amazing! There's also fewer meaningless planet scannings, and overall, it feels more fun to play.

I think this game has the best cohisivness when it comes to side mission plots. They feel much more interesting and connected to the main plot as a whole than previous games. Also, as a bonus, this game has some amazing DLC content, with the citadel DLC being probably the best mission to play in the entire trilogy! It was a love letter for the franchise in every possible way. Just dont make my mistake and accidentally start it as soon as you get it, this is the kind of missions that want to play right before the end (I would highly recommend checking the names of those mission just to make sure).

The relationship with your crewmates is also far more dynamic. They can be found in different places on the ship or on the citadel, often with unique dialogues and interaction either with you or with another character.

I felt like the main story woreked better overall than the second one, continuing and interwining the choices and reletionship carried over from the previous games. It was the perfect conclusions to this serious all the way. Well, up until the very very end. I knew the ending was mixed, but I didn't expect it to come so late.

I have so much to say about it, but I also don't want to spoil anything! So if you're interest to hear my thoughts, feel free to dm me.

I felt like the combat was utilised way more in this game than the others. I could be wrong, but that's just what I felt. I definitely reached the point when it got repetative and boring. There was a larger selection of weapons and mods to pick from, but if it wasn't a sniper, I didn't care.

In conclusion, I'd say that it was an epic conclusion to this trilogy and more than worth your time. (Especially the citadel DLC.) The series as a whole is amazing, and if you hadn't played it, I recommend giving it a try.

Out of the three games I think I still like the main story of the first one the best, it felt the most cohesive and natural with enough mystery to keep you intrigued (despite the very dated game mechanics). The second game really raised the bar when it came to consequences, and dove much deeper into the characters' lore, and I also feel like had the best atmosphere and variaty of mission typs. But the third one had the best interactivity when it came to the relationship with your crew mates, best consistency of combining main story and side mission and of course the value of your choises from all the previous games.

I'm very glad I played this trilogy. Thank you to everyone who pushed me to continue after the first game! Is Andromeda worth playing? Had anyone actually played it?

[magdalyna]

tagged by @sparklingbinjuice

rules: put the "on repeat playlist" on shuffle and share the top ten results, then tag ten people to do the same! Thank you for the tag!

Alpha Zulu by Phoenix

Foundations of Decay by My Chemical Romance

Monsters by All Time Low ft Blackbear

The Last Of The Real Ones by Fall Out Boy

Lane Boy by 21 Pilots

Happy Face by Jagwar Twin

Synchronize by Milky Chance

I Feel Like I'm Drowning by Two Feet

Bones by Imagine Dragons

Boy Division by My Chemical Romance

Tagging: @fans-on-the-run @waxjism @stele3 @idyllspace @laughingfishandr @andromeda-reinvented @dreamfaerye @dirtydirtychai @this-onegoes @sinsensory

[perseus-veil]

my thoughts on the veilguard

i finally finished the game last night and my brain is a mess after a long week of work so none of this is gonna be concise and will take jabs at braindead takes but whatever this is my house <33

gonna do this in pros and cons and under the cut if anyone is remotely interested in reading it!!

pros

the writing/story - i don't have a problem with the writing at all. all three acts were banging, especially act 3 where everything becomes more urgent and fast paced. i felt like i was playing a dragon age game, and that didn't change the entire time. - only having three choices carry over didn't make me upset or angry (unlike like some of y'all), and expecting to be able to carry over every choice you made from inquisition was crazy. how many important choices from dragon age 2 carried over into inquisition? not many. i know what choices i made in the past and how it shaped thedas and that's enough for me, i didn't need to go through it all again just for the sake of getting a random codex page or character mention. - i really enjoyed solas and rook's dynamic, especially when it all comes to a head and he traps them in the fade. manipulating and moulding them into someone similar enough to himself to take his place in the prison of regret only for them to escape by themselves (and with varric's help) because unlike solas, they know how to move forward. insane to me. i'm chewing on live wires.

companions - every companion is wonderful and beautifully written. i love how most of the story is based around them, instead of each of them just having one throwaway companion quest that does jack shit for their development. - in my playthrough, i chose treviso over minrathous, so i ended up with a hardened neve. i love that rook has to work hard to prove that they really care about her and her home, and that earning her trust fully is no small feat. it's so cool that she doesn't simply follow rook blindly, and spends a good chunk of time trying to help back home before returning. - also i really loved how regardless of loyalty and depending on your choices, some of your companions can still die. choosing between harding and davrin took me back to mass effect 1 where you have to save either kaidan or ashley, and inquisition where you have to choose between hawke and a warden, which i thought was so cool. i ended up choosing harding, as she's been there since the beginning. it makes sense to me for her to be the first to fall. very fitting, loved it.

romance - i romanced lucanis for my first playthrough. not having much content didn't bother me, as it made sense story wise. he's been in an underwater prison for a year, tortured and tormented, so naturally he's gonna be slow to trust anyone, and like a hardened neve, you have to work to earn it. and in the end, it's so worth it.

animations/art style - i know i've said it before but the facial animations aren't that bad. even then, i don't really care because mass effect andromeda is one of my all time favourite games and the animations in that are still. not great. veilguard's animations don't have shit on the disaster that was andromeda when it came out lmaoo - bioware have a habit of reinventing the wheel and changing art styles with every dragon age game, but i do really like veilguard's style. it was never gonna look like inquisition, a game that's Ten Years Old, so idk what some of y'all were expecting. i don't care that it looks a lil cartoony, it's nice to look at.

environment/locations - we finally got to fuckigng go to kal sharok. i know it wasn't for long or that much but!! it was enough <33 - every location is visually stunning, i could've spent hours just wandering around aimlessly looking at everything and taking pretty pictures. next time i plan to turn most of the ui off to take it all in. - i also don't get the hate for that lil purple tinge to everything, especially in arlathan forest. it's pretty. what the fuck are you talking about.

combat - i LOVED the combat system in this one. i had to play on pc (which i don't normally do) and i chose the easiest difficulty because i'm mostly here for the story, but the combat was so fun and engaging, and i enjoyed having to actually pay attention to it as opposed to just holding down a button to attack and not needing to worry about much else. - also the combo opportunities with companions was s o cool to play around with. we blowin everyone up to absolute shit babeyy

cons

(i don't actually have many cons so i'm just gonna bang em all out here) - i really hated how they literally nuked the south. i'm not mad about the lack of choices carrying over, but i am a little mad about the fact that every decision i made over three games turned out to be all for nothing. why did they do that. hello. i'm ignoring it <33 - i do really love how they included the option of having a trans or non binary rook, but characters actually saying 'non-binary' in game sounded. strange?? like it just doesn't fit in a fantasy setting because it's a real-life modern thing?? idk this one isn't a big deal i don't mind so much. also my gender is Whatever so don't come at me - while i don't want my companions threatening to kill each other all the time, i do miss having more conflict. there were plenty of opportunities for that, like with bellara and taash's banter regarding artifacts and the lords' 'dalish advisor'. you can't have such a diverse group of people and not have some type of conflict, it just doesn't seem natural otherwise.

anyway that's it i'm not gonna say anything else because i don't want the deranged girlies coming after me <33

[opinions-about-tiaras]

Did discover really get good? If I hated seasons 1 and 2 (but loved the characters!), will I enjoy seasons 3 onward?

Hoo boy. Okay. That's... a question.

So Discovery deserves a modicum of credit; they realized what they were doing was... not working, and that they needed to either stop, or completely reinvent themselves. They elected for the latter.

The most concise way of describing seasons three onward comes from @abigailnussbaum, who has said that "they basically decided to just make Andromeda."

And they did that, and it works SIGNIFICANTLY better than the first two seasons did.

However, I still wouldn't call it good, because the premise they went with is in the Picard family of bullshit; namely, "what if we destroy the Federation in a completely contrived, nonsensical way that clearly only exists so that Our Heroes can pick up the pieces and put it back together to demonstrate how awesome they are."

If you can get past that, S3 onward can actually be called good. They really get their shit together. However, I cannot. Discovery hasn't EARNED the privilege of its cast being able to carry along a storyline of that magnitude, in the same way, for example, that Captain goddamn Archer hadn't earned the privilege of carrying Surak's fucking katra.

[flightyquinn]

There is exactly one case where I call "forced diversity" on a fictional setting, and that is when the writer is just being painfully unsubtle.

That's what takes me out of my fantasy. Hamfisted writing. Not just overt mentions of social issues either. I'm mean when the dialogue makes you go, "Who the hell talks like that?" or "That was kind of a lot to dump on someone you've known for all of this one conversation."

Like the character in Mass Effect Andromeda who, from the first time you talk to her, will reveal not just that she is a transwoman who came to the far frontier of space to reinvent herself, but also her deadname. That's pretty damn forced. She was specifically trying to get away from people who knew the old her, but she'll tell you upon your first meeting? That's, "we need players to know we included diversity, but we don't want to waste resources on having to actually get to know the characters before they'll admit personal details about themselves."

That's my standard. Is what the character is saying situationally appropriate? Does it break the fourth wall? Does it sound natural?

(Oh, and regarding the person who said they couldn't perform surgery? Incorrect. You'll find that many ancient peoples had surprisingly advanced knowledge of surgery. They might not have been doing organ transplants, but there's evidence of "primitive" civilizations doing surgery using anesthetic and taking measures to prevent infection. The "Edwin Smith Papyrus", for instance, is a 1600 BC treatise on surgical treatment of trauma - including spinal and head injuries, and gynaecology.)

[satashiiwrites]

Writing Goals 2025

I actually met my 2024 goals. I finished 10 fics, two of which were 100k+ monsters. Let’s see if we can do something slightly different this year.

2025 writing goals:

Goal is to finish ten of my already have parts posted wips. Can totally finish more than ten fics or fics that I haven’t started posting yet, but the goal is to clean up the wip folder so that most of my fics are completed. No specific word goal. This is the year I finally clean up the list below.

Fics completed in 2025 (blue highlight counts towards goal of 10:

none so far

Total words posted to AO3 in 2025: 27,366 words (updated 22.01.2025)

January

Words posted in January: 27,366 words

From Scorched Earth A Phoenix Rises

Chapter 10 (4,258 words) posted 18.01.2025 Chapter 11 (3,300 words) posted 26.01.2025

Home Found, Chapter 17 (3,562 words) posted 20.01.2025

Jersey Boys, Chapter 3 (2,283 words) posted 01.01.2025

Keeping our Promises (I’ve Got Your Back)

Chapter 4 (3,213 words) posted 04.01.2025 Chapter 5 (3,555 words) posted 11.01.2025

A Foothold in Andromeda Chapter 2 (10,495 words) posted 20.1.2025

February

Words posted in February: 0 words

From Scorched Earth, A Phoenix Rises

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Home Found, Chapter 18

Jersey Boys, Chapter 4 (3,491 words) posted 02.02.2025

Keeping our Promises, I’ve Got Your Back

Chapter 6 (2,221 words) posted 04.02.2025

Chapter 7 (4,609 words) posted 05.02.2025

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

A Foothold in Andromeda

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

All WIPs by fandom

Mass Effect/Mass Effect Andromeda

An Andromeda Tale Part 2 and Part 3

Reinventing Scott

What Happens in Vegas

To Follow

The Marks We Leave on One Another

Your Guide to Andromeda

If I See You In My Dreams

Recurrence

Shipwrecked

Death, Rebirth and the Jackal

911 Verse

Christmas for Cowboys

Alley With A View

A New Versión of Forplay

The First Spectre

An All Time High

Welcome to the Jungle

Mele Kalikimaka

What Becomes of the Broken Hearted? (Hanai Bobby POV)

Untitled first shift together fic (part of An Endless Knotting)

Keeping Our Promises (I’ve Got Your Back)

Buddie Twisters

From Scorched Earth a Phoenix Rises

Chicago Fire

Happy Little Accidents of Fate (part of An Endless Knotting)

Teen Wolf

To Catch a Fallen Star

Untitled Connie the Librarian fic (Firefighter!Derek verse)

Mayans MC

The Outlaw and the Cartel Boss

Moon Knight/Suits

Cousin Harvey

Hawaii 5-0

Mana’olana

A Marriage of (IN)Convenience

Jersey Boys (2024 NaNo)

MCU

Scintillation

Foundation

Reunion

SWAT

A Final Vow (Part of the Hanai series)

Eureka

Home Found

[basiliskonline]

There was a music meme and i drafted it to do later and then noticed it was referencing a specific "playlist" which confused me so i had to google it. Turns out it was a spotify thing, which I don't do, so instead I'm just gonna randomize my winamp playlist and tell you what I got!

inspired-ish (but not tagged in) by the meme by @andromeda-reinvented

Danzig - Lilin

Zelda Reorchestrated - Light World Overworld Redux

Carly Rae Jepsen - Money and the Ego

Nightwish - Nymphomaniac Fantastia

Dead Kennedys - Night of the Living Rednecks

Type-O-Negative - Black No. 1

Powerman 5000 - The Son of X-51

SNSD - The Boys

98 Degrees - True to your Heart

Ke$ha - Godzilla

Sure I'll tag a few people (either do the original "repeat playlist" from spotify or just set up your usual playlist and randomize)

Tagging the following 5 to do it (or if you just wanna):

@icanhasnaow

@justkaylar

@irenedbloodrose

@legendaryvermin

@friendlyneighborhoodmadscientist