#baby who is plot relevant for about 20 minutes before being handed off for the rest of the movie

[voidartisan]

Spent the entire afternoon in the kitchen with my roommates making food for friendsgiving yesterday and i think it officially qualifies as a religious experience

[professorspork]

ANOTHER BUSY DAY IN THE ANDROMEDA GALAXY

I started the day running errands on Havarl, culminating with finishing off Jaal’s loyalty mission! I took Vetra with us thinking ‘hey, if anyone knows sibling dynamics...’ but then she factored into all of that absolutely 0%, lol @ me. but no matter! Jaal was super flirty as we made our way to the Forge, and it was adorable when he was like “HERE MEET MY FRIEND SO YOU CAN SEE AKKSUL IS WRONG” and bodily dragged me toward his siblings. their fight was absorbing and intense; I LEGIT GASPED WHEN HIS SISTER SHOT HIS BROTHER. LIKE!! the whole confrontation with Akksul felt super weighty and I really enjoyed it-- keeping my trigger discipline to not shoot that dude was really hard! there was a split second there where his bolt was headed toward Jaal’s face and I was like “if I kill off Jaal in his loyalty mission I’ll be so upset” but nope it all worked out, he has a bitchin cheek scar now, and the respect of his people, and I got a forehead touch so y’know. i melted. GOSH. then I died laughing at Akksul’s not-apology email.

now Jaal wants me to meet his mom(s) but Helen said that’ll lock in the romance, so I’ll probably wait just a little longer so I can uh keep having FWB sex with Peebee and ?maybe??? flirt with Vetra at some point? altho I teasingly called her MOM last time we were in Kadara Port so maybe not. (Jaal still hates it there, he’s so grumpy and it’s cute, but I digress)

this one got even longer than usual so doing a cut

one thing that I really like, that the game navigates in interesting ways, is that to the angara, we’re all just “Milky Way people.” like. so much of the original trilogy is about navigating the differences between all these aliens, and like, some of that is here too, esp with the krogan, but it’s actually really neat the way we’ve flattened out. and even with the krogan it’s still night and day-- like. comparing what Tuchanka is like in ME2 when Wrex is still solidifying his status as warlord is miles away from what it’s like for me to wander around New Tuchanka or, especially, just run into random krogan out and about (like the nice water scouts. WHY COULDN’T I JUST GIVE THEM THE WATER? but I’m getting ahead of myself). I know some of it has the Watsonian explanation of, like, only forward-thinking, open-minded krogan would be interested in the Initiative in the first place, and some of it is the Doylist explanation of ‘well people really liked that Charr/Ereba romance so let’s have more sweetie pie krogan’ but like. overall. it’s interesting, and I’m sure there’s more angles I haven’t considered.

I traced more of those comm buoys for Addison and learned that the doctor she’s obsessed with ran away to get pregnant! I definitely read that whole situation as Addison being in love with this lady and tbh it still doesn’t refute it? but I won’t get any more progress until I make a new outpost. the whole idea of ‘the first human baby born in Heleus’ thing is really cool, though, and I’m invested.

then I went to Elaaden! I feel some kind of way about Lexi diagnosing all of these scavengers with Brain Disease, but I can’t put my finger on it exactly-- other than, I guess, my general discomfort with pathologizing criminality. I was glad she said we couldn’t vaccinate people without their consent, but the whole thing smacks as very... self-conscious on the part of the game creators? like they thought people would say “hey it’s a huge plot hole that the Initiative screened every person before putting them on the arks and yet so many of them do crimes, explain that to me” and they were like “oh yeah shit that makes no sense, it’s not like people faced with the existential crisis of being in a brand new place 600 years away from everything they’ve ever known with no way back and not enough resources and multiple things wanting to kill them might just make desperate, risky choices, that’s not good enough, obviously we need to explain it with BRAIN DISEASE.” come on.

I made it to New Tuchanka, where the postings on the terminals are literally my favorite part of this whole game. THE ONE KROGAN WHO WANTS GINGERBREAD. THE ONE WHO DOESN’T WANT TO FOCUS ON CONS AND SUGGESTS A “PRO-VERSATION.” THE ONE ABOUT THE “PROBLETUNITY” OF MATING SUGGESTING WATCHING KRANTT HARDLY WAIT. THE ONE WHO INVENTED BLOOD RAGE FOR GUN TURRETS. but also, the best one, my favorite one of all: KRANTT THE RAGENING LARP. there is nothing I would not give to play Krantt: The Ragening.

I sort of tripped and fell and decided to finish Drack’s loyalty mission even though I intended to do more Elaaden things first, and that was a blast. Vorn is so presh! and also Drack is my dad so there’s that. I loved that Vorn helped save the day with a poison vegetable, and I love that Kesh pretended not to like the flower he got her. it was like-- okay. real talk, I just spent like 20 minutes trying to find proof that there is, in fact, a scene in parks and rec where someone gives April a friendship bracelet and she pretended to hate it until they threatened to take it back and could not find it ANYWHERE and felt so gaslit until I realized that that scene was not about April at all but Louise Belcher so. GOOD JOB ME. anyway. it was like that. kesh pretending her comm was broken when Tann tried to talk to her is the oldest joke in the book but I laughed anyway. 

and then I TOOK SPENDER DOWN FOR GOOD. I’m a little miffed that neither Kesh nor Tann got to be in on that discussion; like, I recognize he was Addison’s underling but given all the bullshit he pulled with the krogan I especially felt Kesh deserved to be there? at one point there was a dialogue tree where I could either say it was Addison’s fault or Spender’s fault, and I picked the latter because I think they both such but Spender sucks worse, but in hindsight I wish I’d stuck it to Addison more because my dialogue was way too nice. when faced with the choice of jailing or exiling Spender, I picked jail despite my desire to defund Nexus Militia because I was scared if I exiled him he’d just come back as a worse enemy because of all his off-station contacts. when reviewing the choice in the codex, though, it narrativized my choice by saying I imprisoned him knowing he “would never survive life on the run from his former associates.” that wasn’t my assumption at all! quite the opposite! I jailed him thinking he’d start a coup from without if I didn’t, and it’s really interesting to me that the game isn’t framing that as a concern Ryder would have reasonably had. anyway, now Brecka has his job, which is good because Brecka is the best.

before leaving I unlocked my last memory, and SURPRISE MY MOM IS ALIVE. WELL. FOR A GIVEN DEFINITION OF ALIVE. i don’t know why I’m surprised; of course my dad sucked that much. but also, the fact that all of that got nestled in with the reaper ‘reveal’ (if you can call it that) felt... very strange? like. this is such a personal, emotional thing for Ryder. obviously for the player harkening back to the trilogy is supposed to be a gut wrench, and objectively, yes, I can see how the knowledge that they might have narrowly escaped certain death is a big deal, but like. the reapers aren’t HERE. they aren’t relevant. my MOM, on the other hand, is and is, apparently! it’s occurring to me I didn’t even try to find her mis-labeled pod, I was so turned around by all the benefactor stuff after the fact. anyway.

swung by Kadara to get drinks with Drack and had an epic bar fight, and then Lexi p much lectured us both abt it because Drack is like 90% spit and duct tape at this point. him talking about raising Kesh giving him a new lease on life was VERY sweet, tho, and his line about how parents aren’t the finish line, they’re the starting line was very good.

went back to Elaaden, which Jaal called “a big planet” while discussing hunting someone down and AU CONTRAIRE, JAAL, IT IS A MOON. wish I’d had Drack with me when I found Annea’s water because I bet he would have had better dialogue than Cora, but alas. felt very weird giving control of the reservoir to the Nexus, but like. Annea being like “you can’t, this is my emotional support monopoly on a vital natural resource” just wasn’t gonna fly with how I’m playing Ryder. I was gratified to hear the Nexus guy at Paradise say we were giving the water to everyone, including krogan and scavengers, because I 100% did not trust Tann not to overrule him with some shitty call.

then I went to the Remnant ship to stop Morda from making a bomb out of the drive core, and it was all going swimmingly until I traced the signal to that cave inside the flophouse and suddenly my triangle button stopped working, making me unable to activate the console. YIKES. a quick google of the issue tells me that this mission is buggy for a lot of people and reloading from an earlier save tends to help, but I tried that and the issue persisted so I gave up for the evening. hopefully a fresh start tomorrow and time for the ps4 to cool off is all that is required. 

[canaryatlaw]

So today was fine. I should probably start by explaining that last night I messed up taking my medication because I was allocating them into their correct boxes and then flipped the pill box over to get the rest of the Saturday ones out without closing the Sunday and Monday ones because I'm a fucking idiot, and it caused all the pills to fall into the sink, and in my frantic race to prevent them from all going down the sink I just swallowed the ones in my hand from the Saturday box and then only later did I realize there were still like, 4 Xanax in there. Whoops. So that causes walking up to be a little harder. I did wake up for my 9 am alarm but reset it to just go to the later service for 10:30, then idk what happened from there (I mean, I'm assuming I fell asleep but idk what else happened) but the next thing I know I'm looking at my phone and it's 11:35. Crap. Service that I'm in the nursery for starts in 55 minutes. Good for me, I'm a boss at this kind of thing and was out the door in 20 minutes, make up and all. I ubered to church and made it right around time, which was still late for me because I'm supposed to be there before the service time, but there was only one baby so far so it was fine. It was a slightly chaotic day, not bad but there was a fair amount of crying. We had 5 babies I think, and there was me and the high school girl who helps me a lot, and then the mom of one of the little boys stayed because her son won't stop crying if she leaves (and we've tried many times) and we've discussed just trying to get her to join the team if she's gonna be here anyway haha and she's mentioned a few times she likes playing with the little girls because she has 3 boys, so I think she could be helpful. The first baby, the little guy I've been taking care of for a while now, was in a bit of a mood today and was kind of on and off crying, so I had him for a while, then he got passed around and he would be good for some amount of time then get set off again, but oh well. Then there was the little chunker who's just the cutest, and is just on the brink of walking, so he's pulling himself up on everything possible (like EVERYTHING) then mostly just stands there, but we got him to take a step or two haha and he can't go much farther than that without losing his balance but he can walk with a little assistance and he's getting there. Then there was the sweet little girl who's been around a lot lately and the high schooler mostly took care of her so I didn't get much interaction with her. Then there was the daughter of one of the ladies on the team who I've talked about before because she's just so darn cute, and she's developed a bit of a pattern where she won't cry upon getting dropped off and will be totally fine for a while, then start crying out of nowhere in the middle of the service and be completely inconsolable. Well, it happened again, but there was more like 20 minutes left in the service so I didn't want to call her parents if it was almost over anyway. So I held her and walked with her and bounced her and we were getting a little success at the end there, she was going in and out of it but I was still grateful when her parents showed up. She's a sweetie pie though, and she's just so cute. If you're keeping track, the 5th baby was the mom's little boy who I didn't interact with much but he's sweet. So pretty much right after the service we had to pack everything up because we were permanently moving out of the space today, since next week is gonna be our service weekend and we won't be having any services, then in June we can be back in our building (huzzah!). I am kind of upset with myself for missing the service though because now it means I'm gonna go 4 weeks without one, since next week we won't get one and then I'll be in NY for the next 3 Sundays. But I mean, there's only so much I can do, especially when there are very real factors like medications at play here. The little chunker baby's parents didn't show up for a while because they were helping elsewhere, so he was just kind of sitting in the corner watching everyone pack away all the toys and the mats and everything haha he was very calm, it was cute. It didn't take too long though, and then everything was loaded in the truck. I'll be glad to be back in our regular space. It wasn't terrible, but being separated from the actual service was just one more hurdle to deal with when it came to contacting parents and we did have several incidents where that became an issue, so it'll be nice to just not have to deal with that anymore. But yeah, we finished up and I headed home, train to bus. I changed and had something to eat, then chilled out for a while trying to figure out if I wanted to make a meal of some sort that I can use as leftovers throughout the week. I know I've said this before but I've been having trouble getting myself to eat meat for some inexplicable reason (like I really have no idea why) and I don't want to force myself of course and I'm not a big veggie person so that kind of limits my options. I don't want to fall into just eating frozen or semi-packaged stuff either though. Idk, I just decided to play it by ear for now. It's not even like, all meat though, it's just when presented with it in certain contexts. For dinner I had a frozen meal made by one of the "healthy" companies and it was like pork in a cherry port sauce with like real cherries and holy crap, it was actually really good. So idk what's going on there, at all. But anyway. I decided I still wanted to bake something and I had wanted to do vanilla pudding again, but I couldn't find the recipe I used last time that didn't use half and half or heavy cream, just milk, and I didn't want to waste too much milk, so I ended up using this random recipe that used ramekins in a shallow pot of boiling water with the lid on to "steam" it which took a little finagling to work correctly but it did end up working, and then after they were chilled I made the "caramel sauce" (the quotes are because it wasn't actual caramel, just sugar water caramelized) and it was really good! The ingredients were very similar to creme brulee, except this just used milk instead of heavy cream, so it wasn't as rich and there was a stronger eggy flavor but it was still really good, so I enjoyed that. Somewhere down the line I turned on the tv and watched the last 3 released episodes of the Handmaid's tale while on my laptop. I didn't realize at first that Hulu was gonna have them coming out on a weekly basis and not just dropping a season at a time like Netflix does, so I'm caught up for now and have to wait for the rest of it. There were a number of interesting things in the latter 3 episodes. I was somewhat taken with how they hold the Handmaids up to be this precious resource, blessed by God for their fertility, but they are very quick to abuse and torture them if they don't fall in line at the first command. I've given a good amount of thought to the passage in the bible they seem to base the whole concept on which I was already familiar with, but it's interesting because they only ever quote a short section of the passage, just that Rachel couldn't have children so she told Jacob to have sex with her maidservant so she could have children through her. And that happened. But they're leaving out that Jacob had another wife whom did have children, and he also had sex with her maidservant to bear more children. Furthermore, later in scripture I believe the wording is God "opened [Rachel's] womb" and she had two children, Benjamin and Joseph. Joseph is of course of technicolor dreamboat fame (and you know, the whole huge bible story attached to that), a large part of which was how he was his father's favorite, because he was Rachel's son, whom Jacob actually loved (Leah and the maidservant, not so much). It's interesting then that the legacy of the Jewish people only survives through Judah, who was Leah's son- the other 11 tribes, 11/12ths of the Jewish people were assimilated into other nationalities. Every modern day Jewish person has heritage through Judah. Idk if there's any real relevance there, I just find it interesting that they have this whole idea and society supposedly based around scripture but it's SO taken out of context it gets to the point where it's absurd. So that's just my feelings on the matter. I was hardcore cheering when Alexis Bledel's character (I don't like using their stupid names) jumped into the car and made a run for it, just because it was so amazing of her and I fully supported it. I was also cheering on our main character when she was honest with the Mexican ambassador at the end of the episode, even knowing that at any moment someone could walk in and hear her saying those things. That took courage. I thought the stuff between her and Nick was interesting, especially the "arranged" tryst, which made me wonder if that's how it was with Jacob and his wives' maidservants. Finally, I was super intrigued by the flashbacks involving the commander and his wife, and just what their lives were like before this. I was kind of shocked to learn the wife was somewhat of a feminist writer who'd actually been arrested for inciting a riot, but they had both bought into this rebellion plot for reasons they don't really go into, and at first it looks like women will be fine under it, but then they're slowly (or not so slowly) edged out, and she has no choice but to play the complacent and steadfast wife to her husband who is now a very important person. It also makes me wonder about the demographic breakdown of their society, lol, like how many people exactly do we have in each caste of society here? How many commanders are there? Do any of them have wives that were actually fertile? Was it any fertile woman who wasn't married to a commander that was taken to be a handmaid? I JUST HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS, lol. But yeah, despite its tendency to be downright harrowing and rather concerning at times, I suppose I am enjoying it on some level, though that's probably not the proper word for it because it isn't really something enjoyable. It's entertaining, I suppose, would be a better statement. But yeah. After I finished that I ended up watching an hour of Seinfeld, just because it was on and that show is hilarious. And that was pretty much it. I'm gonna try to get to work early so I have a little more time to prep for the permanency hearing I have at 10. I feel bad because I was gonna go through the rest of the file on Friday but then I didn't go to work, so I don't want to screw this up but I gotta catch up on what the actual latest happenings in the case are, because I know the history from when the girl was like 13, but she's pushing 21 now so that's different. And I need to talk to the lawyer about my question template as far as how much I need to ask that I already know the answer to just for the sake of getting it on the record. It should be fine though, I'm not that concerned. Hopefully that will go well. It'll be my first appearance in front of this judge, but I mean it's a permanency hearing for a kid who's almost out of the system, so it's not really a big deal. Okay, it's late and I need to get to sleep. Goodnight my loves. Sleep well.