#i have turned your state into a silly little guy™

[n7cloacadestroyer]

Mass Effect's overall plot is a lot of fun, but any fan will tell you straight up that it isn't the tightest run ship. Major sections of the trilogy's overall plot are moved forward by contrivance, and established lore has a reputation for being tossed out the airlock because the dev team thought of something cool. That said, one (1) of the things that irks me the most is something I don't often see talked about--the Citadel Relay.

So here's the reaper's plan, in paraphrase:

Leave one (1) guy behind and fuck off to dark space to get that good sleep.

Oneguy turns on power saver mode and keeps an eye on the meatbags.

Fleshies find mass relays and citadel; use them.

Open murder hole to let the squad through.

Make meatbag soup

Return to step one

Now if something were to go wrong with step four, you'd have quite the pain in the ass in your future if you're a reaper.

Thought experiment: You're leaving your house for the day. You don't want anyone to just wander in, but you obviously need to get back inside later. Do you… A. Lock the door and take the key with you? B. Have someone house sit? C. Leave one of the back windows unlocked and hope no one notices? D. Train your cat to unlock the door when it hears you whistle?

Admittedly that last option would be cool, albeit contrived and prone to failure. For some reason though, the reapers went with that one. And surprisingly enough, someone eventually broke in and retrained their cats. The reapers don't have a single dialogue exchange in the entire series that doesn't include a small diatribe about their intellectual superiority, yet they have no contingency in place for this.

So it's already pretty silly at this point, but it actually gets a little sillier when you realize what the game takes care to avoid explicitly stating--the reapers obviously have a mass relay with them in dark space. One that links to the hub of the relay network but is for some reason isolated from it. They don't even have a backup that just like… links to the Serpent Nebula relay.

I know what some of you are probably thinking. That the closed circuit with the Citadel relay is meant to ensure that the reapers aren't stumbled upon while they're schleepin™. As Vigil states, "In this state, they are vulnerable." So turn it off. We've already established that relays can be deactivated, and that a capital ship like Sovereign can manually open them as it attempted to do with the Citadel. Link that bad boy to the whole network, turn it on when you get the signal, killallhumans.exe ggnore.

Now we turn our attention to Mass Effect 2, which establishes that there is an active relay beyond from which no one has ever returned. So the galactic community put their heads together and came up with a plan--stick some warning signs near it and let the problem take care of itself. Literally just throw hands up and move on. So if the reapers just killed everyone who came through their super secret clubhouse relay? Maybe put some of those weird Collector Laser Probes to take out the stragglers? They'd probably be fine.

Eventually we learn that the relay leads into the galactic core, and that it checks for a reaper IFF system to engage more accurate protocols to avoid throwing friendly vessels into a supermassive black hole or the hundreds of stars it's throwing around at nearly light speed. So now we've established that at least one relay has an Identify Friend Foe system. Mass Effect 3 further establishes that the IFF system is only usable by the Normandy because of EDI, who explains that the IFF is more of a thinking intelligence than a simple program. So if you aren't an AI, or don't have the help of one, you're kind of screwed.

Shame they couldn't use that technology for anything else. Barring access to certain relays, for example.

Recall the Arrival DLC. Commander Shepard vaporizes ~300,000 colonists because the Viper Nebula/Alpha relay is, and I quote, "their shortcut to the rest of the galaxy." If the reapers had even a single one of these contingencies in place, humanity would've likely arrived to an empty Citadel in a new cycle. They would've had their shortcut already, and there wouldn't be anything to be done about it.

Given that their plan is actually quite flawed, there are only a few explanations that I can think of:

The reapers are actually kind of stupid.

The Catalyst intentionally designed the "reaper solution" to be imperfect. To give the meatbags a chance, I guess?

The biomechanical nature of reaper construction has caused them to inherit more traits from the organics that facilitated their construction than any of them seem to freely admit. Namely arrogance, in this case. You'll notice that Harbinger does talk with the same aloof superiority that the Leviathan use when talking to Shepard in ME3, whereas Sovereign's dialogue reads as something more akin to disgust or hatred.

Development was rushed and somewhat troubled for every Mass Effect game to date, and many of the gaps we see are a result of content being cut to get the game out the door on time.

In all honesty, it's most likely some combination of 3 and 4, but it's kind of frustrating. It's not surprising that so many people write no reaper AUs and/or headcanon a Destroy ending that doesn't kill the geth and EDI simply to fit the framing as the Renegade option. Mass Effect, in the minds of most fans, is a character driven narrative. The reapers aren't really characters. There are only two of them that have names, and only three who actually speak. They're mostly just an excuse to make the plot happen.

If the intention was to imply that the reapers are literal mechanical mass graves haunted by the metaphorical ghosts of the civilizations harvested in their creation? I'm on board. The problem is that we're never told that, and we aren't given enough interaction with different reapers to come to that conclusion definitively ourselves. May as well just call 'em Harby and the Boys, cause it's clear from the outset that Harbinger is the only one that the narrative intends to give even the tiniest amount of weight after Sovereign is destroyed.

The reapers are a constant presence during the trilogy, and yet we only meaningfully interact with four, and that's if you're counting Sovereign's half brother Sluggard.

[big-eater-queen]

5! 14! And 15! ouo

!!! All fun questions again!

5. favourite song in your native language?

Okay I am literally w e a k for songs about father-daughter relationships so I’ve got two that I can remember!! First is Aanandha yaazhai and here’s the translation for it since I couldn’t find a subtitled video and here’s eena meena teeka!

OH this isn’t my mother tongue and is probably gonna be the only hindi song I’ll keep going back to but here’s Yeh Ishq Hai, which is from of one of my all time favourite movies!

14.do you enjoy your country’s cinema and/or TV?

(I’m focusing on Tamil media but from what I’ve seen this little rant can be somewhat generalised) 

The TV? Ahahahaha…. no way! They’re pretty much focusing on how there are troubles prior and/or post marriage and how much people are hell bent on making the bride suffer… Not to mention the producers keep beating the fossils of the horses and keep the shows running. 

 The films can be good these days; though we still have so much of this scenario:

Guy: I love you so I shall stalk you!!!

Girl: Ew no no, get the HELL away from me !!

Guy: *does something cool™ ONCE*

Girl: Adadada~

or

*insert physics defying fight sequence*

*proceeds to rant further*

>.>

but there are good movies. The problem lies in the typical commercial films.

15. a saying, joke, or hermetic meme that only people from your country will get?

Okay,

Santa/Banta jokes are these stupid jokes involving one or two sikhs (depending on the joke) who are dumb and make very very silly misunderstandings… Malayali or mallu jokes focus on people from the Kerala state and make fun of their thick accent. Both of these jokes are really just.. ugh. Over time I feel like the Santa/Banta jokes got turned into Suppandi jokes (who is a comic character but I’ll get into that some other time maybe)

Dialogue quotes are a big deal as well! I’m not sure if this is a universal thing, but if I see a meme circulating among my friends, there’s a 90% chance that it’s using a movie dialouge. I know of people who can recite LONG dialougues just from memory and I’m just… HOW?! 

I feel like that shouldn’t have take as long as it did to write ahaha…