#summary of my mass effect playthrough

[lift-heavy-be-gay]

me omw to romance any fem npc

[jazzmckay]

today, i finished playing dragon age: origins for the very first time :> it turns out, ive played this series completely in reverse! i did try dao years ago before i picked up dai, but it kept crashing my computer and i gave up. and now, finally... all this time later... i got to play it!

my warden: yenna tabris

she's a rogue, and i did archery more than 2-handed, but dabbled plenty in both. had a good time with the combat style. i romanced zevran. i already loved him based on other game appearances, fanfic etc. but i fell even more in love with him. my main party was alistair, zevran, and wynne, or shale, zevran, and wynne. i really enjoyed getting to know all the companions properly, though, and wish i could have switched it up more. i simply cannot survive without wynne's heals and have a hard time keeping my warriors on their feet, other than shale. ah well

i'm officially on team loghain as a problematic fave. a BUNCH of characters really surprised me with how much i got into them. anora i did expect to enjoy, but not get feral over. i understand morrigan a lot better now. i liked wynne more than i expected to. and oghren stole the damn show. oghren defense squad. this series has so many fascinating, complex characters.

summary of my choices

killed that prick vaughan. city elf origin is brutal and set a whole tone for yenna being perfectly prepared to solve problems with violence when she thinks the situation calls for it

went to redcliffe first, post-lothering. i let jowan use isolde's blood to save connor. if i'd known there wasn't an invisible time limit, i would have gone to the circle so no one had to die, but it seemed like a situation better resolved fast. in my defense, i've played the first two fallout games, which have time-based game overs and i got my whole crew killed in my first mass effect 2 playthrough because i didn't go into the endgame fast enough. i have video game trauma around hidden time limits, okay? that said, i don't regret my choice. i got to play as morrigan confronting the demon in the fade, and it created interesting tension with alistair

circle tower next. sided with the mages, if it can really be called that. it didn't feel like much of a big, dichotomous decision to me, just doing the best that can be done for everyone. zevran's nightmare made me want to hug him. i am one of those weird fade-enjoyers, for the record. i liked it the first time around, as this was the only post-lothering main quest i got to, and i liked it even more on round two

the dalish! very interesting area and storyline. i got lost and confused a lot during this part but i still had a good time, even when it felt like i was running back and forth and in circles sometimes. i got the "best" ending of curse lifted, everyone else alive. it was a really lovely, bittersweet story. the lady of the forest is hot. would

orzammar was also a very cool area. it felt so big. i sided with bhelen while feeling like i didnt know nearly enough about either king candidates to be making such a huge decision. he's a character i expected to not like based on what i've heard though and ended up liking him just fine. we'll see if that changes when i try the dwarf noble origin. i destroyed the anvil of the void. branka is a really fascinating character; i might end up writing meta about her if i can gather the spoons

everything in denerim once you gather for the landsmeet is SO FUN. sometimes fucked up, but that's all good with me. rescue mission for anora while not knowing if she can be trusted yet... getting tossed in a cell with alistair, both of us in only our underwear, smh. zevran and wynne to the rescue! i plan to reload a save and go over more of the combos for who can rescue you, theyre so good. and then everything in the alienage... as if the origin isn't bad enough. when will the denerim alienage catch a damn break? this was one of the points of the game when yenna was at her angriest. her temper has a short fuse normally, and on that day, it had no fuse at all

and the landsmeet. i admit i had to make the choice to reload after my first try. i was trying to make choices my character would make, even if they have consequences, and enjoy whichever story i got, but the first time around, my impulse decision-making led to the worst ending for alistair which i find way too tragic and upsetting. couldn't let that stand. original choices were: yenna 1v1'd loghain -> yenna accepted loghain's surrender and agreed to making him a warden -> alistair, who wasn't hardened, refused to stay with the wardens or marry anora -> yenna chose solo queen anora over solo king alistair -> alistair had to leave. ouch! second time around, i did execute loghain, so alistair and anora married, even if he was Not happy about it

i have soooo many feelings about all the possible outcomes and how it impacts the relationship between the warden, alistair, anora, and loghain. i couldn't go with alistair's life being ruined but so many of the other options are incredibly full of angsty tension and interesting dynamics

i had morrigan and alistair make a god baby. at this point, yenna is feeling pretty fucking bad about asking SO much of alistair

the ending of the game is actually incredible. getting to have pre-battle moments with all the companions, getting at least one section of the WHOLE party fighting side by side, amazing. this is something i find lacking in dai. both dao and da2 reward you for recruiting everyone, keeping everyone, and making additional allies for the final fight, and i adore that. i wish i could have had a full-party moment in dai too. the whole battle was intense and fun, and satisfying. great build up and payoff. its hard to stick a good landing in video games like this, and dao has one of the best, i think! on par with mass effect 2, which i think had the best final fight of that trilogy. oghren's pre-battle "goodbye" made me tear up

alistair made yenna chancellor which i was not expecting! it's fun to imagine her, alistair, and anora trying to get along in discussions :3 ultimately, though, yenna said she would focus on driving the darkspawn back entirely. she didn't choose this life, and didn't appreciate it for a good while, but she managed to do what it takes, and she did not go through all that just for pockets of darkspawn to keep being trouble. but zevran will be with her the whole way :D

i had a rly good time with it! faced some crashes and instability at first, but it seemed to stop entirely after a certain point, possibly when i turned the settings down, so it wasn't too bad. im so happy i got to play this, and im looking forward to the awakening dlc! <3

bonus, from liveblogging to friends on discord, re: oghren:

[cowthropologist]

I do this thing when I'm playing RPGs where I myself respond to NPCs in conversation (I talk to my computer a lot I guess) and it's the most satisfying thing ever when somebody says something dumb and I say something rude and then my character responds with word for word exactly what I just said.

[supervoldejaygent]

Hold My Girl

Fandom: Mass Effect

Pairing: Kaidan Alenko x fem!shep, Thane Krios x fem!shep

Word Count: 1K

Summary: After destroying the Reapers, Shepard engages in one last fight: finding her last love.

A/N: Hello my lovelies! So, yesterday I finished my first official playthrough of Mass Effect (Legendary) and it was cathartic and upsetting but I got through it with this fic that was supposed to be a quick summary of how I feel my Shepard’s story would’ve ended. I did romance Thane and then Kaidan as I’m sure y’all could guess, but in case you didn’t (which is okay), that’s what I did. I’m excited for my next playthrough, but I will first be completing a new playthrough of Andromeda (don’t come at me, I love Andromeda). Alrighty that’s all. Now please enjoy! (:

~ ~ ~

Darkness surrounded her. Cold, sweet darkness with little specs of light appearing slowly in the sky. She was floating, body suspended above all things around her. Peace enveloped her like little pricks all over her body. When the pricks reached the tips of her fingers and toes the lights grew exceptionally, filling the whole area. Shutting her eyes tightly, Shepard clasped her hands shut, squeezing them and praying that she was going to find home, wherever it was. 

Slowly, she opened her eyes to find water surrounding her from the waist down. It was warm, unlike the darkness she had previously been in. The air was fresh, with birds chirping and calling to each other throughout their flight. Clouds roamed the skies, attaching themselves to each other as their lives depended on it. And just on the other side of the shore sat a green figure. He looked warm in the sand, content with the peace he had reached as he laid in it.

Quickening her pace to reach the man, Shepard pushed against the waves that insisted on pulling her back. She was getting closer to the shore when she shouted his name, calling him out of his relaxed state. He looked up at her, locking eyes before rushing to meet her in the water. Once they finally made it to each other, they embraced, holding each other like there was no tomorrow.

However, too quickly Thane pulled away. Slowly, he looked at Shepard, his hand on her face. He smiled, "It is not your time, Siha."

Shepard shook her head. "What are you talking about?"

"You have more life to live."

"No, I'm here. I'm with you."

Thane shook his head. "There are people waiting for you, Siha. They need you."

"But I need you. I want to stay."

Smiling again, Thane brought Shepard’s head to his lips, before kissing the top of it. "I know, but they need you more than I do. I love you, Siha. I always will."

She nodded. "I'll come back. I promise."

"I know." Taking her hands, Thane brought them to his lips. "Now wake up. Wake up, Shepard!" 

Caught in a haze of lights and noise, Shepard's eyes began to open. There was no clear way for her to pinpoint one thing, only the chaos that raged among her. But it's not the chaos that the Catalyst had talked about. No. The synthetics were no more, and the organics could live peacefully for the remainder of this cycle. 

The chaos, however, came from the nurses and doctors surrounding her. She couldn’t make out what they were saying, only that they were trying to push her back into bed. But she couldn’t stay in bed. Not with her mind homed in on the man she last loved. The man she had to find: Major Kaidan Alenko.

"Kaidan," she said, but it hardly came out with her hoarse voice.

"Ma'am we need you to stay calm and please try to settle back down."

"No, Kaidan."

"Ma'am, please!"

"I need to find him!" With the last bit of any energy she had left in her, Shepard released a wave of dark matter, launching everyone into the walls. Slowly getting up, Shepard limped her way to the door. However, before she could make it, she felt her eyes droop and her body go limp as the last thing she saw was an asari doctor with a needle. 

Kaidan couldn't be sure how much truth was in the call he got. There was no way that there was another N7 soldier who survived. Admiral Hackett sent them the list of soldiers that made it out of London and much to Kaidan's dismay, Shepard wasn't one of them.

So how come he got a message reporting that she might still be alive?

Walking into the hospital he was called to, Kaidan looked around, trying to find someone to lead him to his girl. If it was truly his girl. Lost, yet somewhat hopeful, he walked to the reception table where a young salarian sat, ruffling through stacks of paper.

"Excuse me," he started, his nerves catching themselves in his voice. "I'm looking for an N7 soldier that was found in the Citadel rubble."

The salarian looked up at him, seemingly now noticing him. "Major Alenko?"

"That's me."

"Right this way." Standing up, the salarian walked in strides, Kaidan running slightly to catch up. "We're not sure what happened or how it's possible, but we found her a couple of weeks ago, body almost burnt to a crisp. We weren’t sure it was actually her until she woke up."

Kaidan swallowed. "When was that?" 

"Yesterday.” The salarian shook her head and sighed before she continued. “She was scared, understandably."

“What do you mean?"

"When one of the nurses tried to calm her down, she launched them all into the walls with her biotics."

N7 soldier, check. Biotic, check. She, check. Please, oh please be Shepard, Kaidan thought.

"This is her," the salarian said, stopping outside a lonely door at the end of the hall.

She was about to walk back when Kaidan stopped her. "Why'd you call me?"

"Isn't it obvious? She wouldn't stop asking for you. Said she needed to find you."

That gave Kaidan chills. This mysterious N7 soldier wouldn't stop asking for him? It had to be her, who else would it be? With his heart now in his throat, Kaidan approached the door, praying to anyone that would listen that it was his Shepard.

Turning the nob, Kaidan walked in, expecting the worse, but praying for the best. It almost seemed like too much to ask to hold her again, but here he was, hoping. Looking up at the soldier in bed, he couldn't help but let the tears that pooled in his eyes, roll down his cheeks.

"Kaidan?" The voice asked. She was charred, yet still beautiful. And that voice, no matter how raspy it was, he’d recognize it anywhere.

It was her. It was..."Shepard."

[anneapocalypse]

Dragon Age II: Mark of the Assassin

Crosspost. Originally posted on Dreamwidth on 08/27/20.

Mark of the Assassin is the final story DLC for Dragon Age II, released in October 2011. It's set at a new location called Chateau Haine in the Free Marches and stars a new temporary companion named Tallis, voiced by Felicia Day.

I didn't talk about this DLC in my DAII write-up because I didn't play it with Alessandra; Mark of the Assassin is reported to have a pretty severe bug on console which has the potential to corrupt saves both before and after beginning the DLC, and I was too invested in that playthrough to want to take the risk at the time. I have some very vague memories of the DLC from years ago, but I remember so little that I'm not even certain whether I finished it or not.

However, I just finished another playthrough of DAII on PC, and this time was able to play Mark of the Assassin without fear! And since the Inquisition entry is still a ways out from being done, I thought this would be a good time to talk about it.

A while back you may remember I watched the live-action miniseries Redemption which precedes Mark of the Assassin and gives us a bit of backstory for Tallis, and I wrote about that here! In summary, my overall impression of the miniseries was that it has a certain charm if you look at it as a fan project but it really doesn't work as canon tonally or visually. I liked Tallis's character concept at a high level but in execution she just came across a little too self-inserty, with a bad case of Quippiness.

Mark of the Assassin definitely inherits some of the problems with Redemption. Tallis's introduction includes a whole cutscene of her singlehandedly fighting off a group of Antivan Crows before the gameplay actually kicks in and lets Hawke join the fight, to make sure we know how cool she is. (It also strongly implies that she "saved" Hawke from the Crows, which is pretty funny when you're playing this in Act III and Hawke is regularly taking down large groups of bandits and blood mages.) Tallis's in-game design is taken directly from the miniseries, and does not at all fit the aesthetic of Dragon Age II, which is even more glaringly apparent in the game itself. Pictured below is some early concept art of Tallis that I found on the wiki, and why oh why didn't they go with something like this? Without the Qunari emblems, obviously, since she's undercover, but this look fits the aesthetic of DAII perfectly.

Tallis's face is modeled after Felicia Day's actual face. I get it, they wanted her to look like the miniseries and Felicia Day is cute. This was the era where Bioware really loved sticking celebrity face scans into their games—think Mass Effect's Miranda Lawson and Diana Allers and default male Shepard, dubbed "Sheploo" by fans because he was based on Mark Vanderloo. While I think in hindsight they actually look pretty good considering the graphics that were available at the time, they sometimes ended up looking just a little... off, and they definitely stood out from the faces created in the game's engine. I remember some of them getting regularly dunked on at the time, especially poor Diana Allers, and our girl Tallis.

I'm not an animator and my knowledge of such things is very limited, but I think one of the reason the face scans often seem to translate weirdly is that real human faces, no matter how young and cute, have more odd and irregular lines and dips and contours than the smooth, symmetrical faces created in a game engine, and video game lighting plays off those irregularities in unpredictable ways. I don't really have any problem with Tallis's face in and of itself, but I did notice scenes where the bright lighting of the outdoor environment seemed to cast a lot of odd shadows on her face. I also think it's kind of weird that they went to such lengths to make elves look less human in DAII, with the longer pointier ears and the prominent nose bridges and blue-tinted skin tones, and then tried their damnedest to make this one elf look like a real live human, complete with a warmer skin tone in contrast to the cool undertones of every other elf NPC.

When the lighting hits her right, though, she looks fine.

But enough on aesthetics! Let's talk about the story and gameplay.

I did not take any of the flirt options with Tallis, because my Hawke already had a quirky elf girlfriend who also happened to be standing right there. (This is Sabine, my Merrillmancing Blue Mage Hawke, who I haven't talked about yet but perhaps will another time.) But uh, there sure are a lot of flirt options. Romance with Tallis can't go past a kiss before she vanishes at the end, but you sure can flirt with her if you want to.

The story is effectively a heist, and... it's really fun. Honestly, I came into this DLC fully prepared to dunk on it, but despite some quibbles, I enjoyed the hell out of it. The wyvern hunt was a fun little jaunt with some amusing sidequests, including saving a dog and finding out that Tallis is very much a dog person which is certainly no strike against her.

I went into this DLC knowing Tallis was a mandatory party member for the duration and had planned for that, so that didn't bother me, and in fact I enjoyed the part where it's just Hawke and Tallis skulking around trying to find a way into the Chateau. Tallis's repeated failures were definitely a little silly, but they also bring her down to earth a bit and give Hawke things to do.

I especially enjoyed sneaking around Chateau Haine. In a game that frequently forces you to kill NPCs you might never have wanted to fight in the first place, the option to utilize stealth is god damn refreshing. I didn't even mind how many times I had to re-do some of the sneaking sequences to get them right! It was just fun to utilize a different game mechanic than straightforward battle.

The vault portion of the DLC involved a lot of puzzle-solving, which made me groan initially because I often find Bioware's puzzle minigames tedious, but they turned out not to be too difficult or exasperating. You can get some loot in the process of breaking out of the dungeon, but alas, like much of the armor with cool-sounding names in the base game, the Robes of Enchanter Illana do not have a unique appearance and just look like Chantry robes. (There's a reason I tend to put my characters in armor from the DLC item packs.)

This DLC gives us some of our first close-up looks at the culture of the Orlesian nobility, and it's pretty neat. Orlesian culture was something I found really interesting in Inquisition (particularly in "Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts") and Mark of the Assassin turns out to be a nice little precursor to that. There are things here that carry through into The Masked Empire and Inquisition, notably the portrait of Lady Mantillon you can find in the estate that unlocks the Codex entry "Portrait of the Dowager." (Though this Codex entry seems to imply that Lady Mantillon is still alive, we learn in The Masked Empire that she was killed by Briala around the time Empress Celene took the throne. The Dowager we meet at the Winter Palace in Inquisition is a different Lady Mantillon.)

I did have to laugh at Duke Prosper de Montfort, who is presented as kind of a ridiculous buffoon as well as an antagonist so you don't feel guilty about robbing him and then pushing him off a cliff to his death. Prosper is certainly not very good at the Game if he thinks a list of names is useless!

By the end of the DLC, hell, I even kind of like Tallis. She's still got a case of Quirky Elf but she's toned down just enough that when her Troubled Viddathari side comes out, well, it works for me. The conversations in the jail cell and after give Hawke the opportunity to ask her a lot of questions about the Qun and her devotion to it and it's really interesting and exactly what I wanted from this character. The only think I could really ask for is an additional dialogue option asking her about the treatment of mages under the Qun, certainly something that could come up with a mage Hawke.

Nevertheless, I really enjoyed it. It drew out everything I had liked about Tallis in concept in Redemption and put it front and center.

Story-wise, there are some weaknesses. If your Hawke isn't the roguish, thieving kind, it can be kind of a challenge to come up with a solid role-play reason why they would gallivant off to this Chateau to steal a jewel on the word of a total stranger. That you have no choice but to let her walk away at the end, that you can't fight her or force her to hand over the list of Qunari agents operating in the south, is frustrating, especially if you're playing this in Act III after the Qunari invasion of Kirkwall. For many Hawkes it will feel not only out of character but downright irresponsible to let her walk away. I get that they didn't want to let the player kill Felicia Day's OC; unfortunately it's precisely that level of railroading that I think probably led to a lot of people disliking Tallis as a character.

And that's a shame, because Tallis is interesting. But I don't think pushing your audience to feel a way about a character, and basing gameplay decision around the assumption that everyone will feel this way, ever goes well. In my view, the best way to get fans on board with a character is just to write an interesting character—and also to accept that some of your audience inevitably won't like the character and that's okay. If they really didn't want to let her die, just give Hawke the option to take the list from her, either through special dialogue or a fight in which Tallis can be defeated but can't die. And rather than have her just stroll away while Hawke stands there watching, have her, I don't know, kickflip into a puff of smoke and vanish. She's a rogue, we'll buy it.

So that's Mark of the Assassin! Flawed to be sure, but a fun romp that I wouldn't want to have missed.

Mods I used:

Serendipity Tweak from sapphim's Dialogue Mini Mods, which corrects the bad line link in Tallis's dialogue with Serendipity (explanation here).

SG Finery Shop by LapisLazzuli, if your Hawke wouldn't be caught dead in the canon party outfit. It is to this creator that I owe Sabine's gorgeous look here, a bit modern with the pants but then so's Tallis's outfit.

[dgcatanisiri]

Tried to make a brief summary of the issues of Mass Effect Andromeda’s handling of queer men and how it relates to why we’re (broad use here) upset with the Legendary Edition failing to provide better representation than the originals, and it kinda turned in to what amounts to an open letter for BioWare.

So, what the heck, here it is.

A little personal background. I spent my high school life completely in the closet. After graduating, I had a new computer and the opportunity to play a new game. The game chosen was BioWare’s Jade Empire. Still a fairly recent release, and I was a big fan of Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic, also by BioWare. So, being a young gay man, still uncomfortable and uncertain of who I was, I was very excited when I got to play this game that would allow me to play a gay romance, a romance that featured two men. I burned through two playthroughs of the game within less than a week, enjoying that rush of acknowledgement that yes, gay guys could be the hero. It was a massive affirmation for me at the time, something that said that my sexuality was not going to prevent me from being the hero, which legitimately was a message that I felt like most media was giving me to that point, because gay men barely appeared in anything other than guest roles for an episode or two on a TV show, but certainly not in video games. That game, that experience... I’ve said for years that it had cemented me as a BioWare fan for life.

If I say that now, it is a statement with a few caveats.

The history of the failure of Mass Effect 1 and Mass Effect 2 to provide any male/male romances is well documented. I was excited, very eager to romance Kaidan Alenko in Mass Effect 3. But even then, I noticed that there were things that were lacking in the romance. It was noticeable, for instance, that the basic dialogue between male Shepard and female Shepard was unchanged, if either was starting a new romance with Kaidan. The thing that always felt... WRONG about that was that if I’d had the option to begin a romance with him in the first game, I would have. Yet there’s not even a bit of dialogue that even references that inability, no comment of “I didn’t think you were available,” or anything of the sort, nothing to say that, say, Shepard was interested in Kaidan at the time, but didn’t believe he’d be receptive, didn’t want to damage their friendship, something of the sort. There was even a cut in the romance scene, where female Shepard will sit in Kaidan’s lap before being lifted up and carried to the bed, but with male Shepard and Kaidan, just fades to black. And then in the Citadel DLC, while all the other pairings walked in to the casino arm in arm, male Shepard and Kaidan are leaving plenty of room between them. There’s also the absence of any cuddling as they return to the Normandy.

To say nothing of the lack of Steve Cortez during the story segments of Citadel – he is not part of the big team entrance to the apartment, just spontaneously appears in the lounge room. He doesn’t participate in the briefings, and he is not a casino date, despite being part of the assembled team. Cortez also suffers from the fact that his romance spends so much time on how he needs to move on from the death of his husband, Shepard can come across as predatory towards him, trying to push him out of his grief and his pants. Due to the lateness of his arrival in the story, in game three, as opposed to game one or two, there is significantly less time to establish him as a person – beyond his past as a pilot and the death of his husband, we gain almost no concept of his personality or personal history.

I bring all of this up to help set the stage of what was expected when Mass Effect Andromeda was nearing release. Mass Effect had been full of problems of representation of queer men specifically (not that they were perfect on the count of female/female relationships either, because there’s plenty to talk about there, but as I’m not a lesbian or bisexual woman, I don’t feel comfortable talking about their experiences for them). While there were flaws, Dragon Age, what is often considered Mass Effect’s sister franchise, HAD managed to provide male/male romances in every iteration of that franchise.

In fact, considering that Dragon Age’s most recent installment, Dragon Age Inquisition, had been put out with a lot of fanfare about the first gay male companion, who was considered rather popular in the fandom, and the game itself receiving the Game of the Year award that year, indicating that, if there was any risk in the business sense of providing representation of queer men, it was negligible at most in the bottom line of that game, the attitude of a lot of gay men in the lead up to Andromeda’s release was some variation of “okay, Mass Effect has been flawed, but BioWare’s learned from their past mistakes, and they’re coming off the heels of a hugely successful game that had a gay character whose gayness was front and center in his storyline... We can expect that things will be fine, and we don’t have to worry.” That was the dominant attitude I found in a lot of my queer-oriented spaces.

But we started getting uncomfortable as the developers remained cagey about romance options in Andromeda – there were Twitter responses to “we’re concerned about Mass Effect’s history of gay representation, we would like to know about the options” that came out as “we checked and yep! They’re there!” These responses came across as flippant and even tone-deaf – the reason that the question was being asked was because of prior failures to be included, and not simply a desire to get all the details before launch.

As the trailers started coming out, the questions continued from the fans, and the response from the developers... continued to be uncomfortable. When asked directly for a listing of romances prior to release, the response was that the developers wanted players to learn as they played, that “the fun is in experiencing it!” This was a specific response when it was learned that the romance options could be flirted with regardless of orientation, but they would shut it down. Despite the fact that the trailers DID include content from certain romances – specifically, the male Ryder/Cora and male Ryder/Peebee romances.

This was uncomfortable for a lot of queer players like myself because it spoke to a lack of consideration of what it is like to be queer. In many places, it is a serious question of safety to even put yourself out there to find a partner, to flirt with someone openly unless you are already certain that there is a chance for a positive response. There are places where a queer person flirting with the wrong person can get them harassed, assaulted, even killed for doing so. Even in the safety of a virtual construct of video games, these are honed instincts that queer people have developed. And no matter how many times we would say this to the developers, no one seemed to understand. Likewise, the fact that the trailers felt free to show off heterosexual romances, but not queer ones felt... questionable.

Then, finally, firm details started coming out, and... There were problems. Early data-mining said that there was an even split of romances between orientations. But there was a bit of discomfort around the reveal that the gay characters, Suvi and Gil, were limited to the ship, rather than being companions who would accompany Ryder on missions. There is a history of companions being given more involved storylines and involvement than secondary characters. It also didn’t help the disappointment from queer people who’d been eager for Cora or Liam as romances, who were firmly established as straight (Cora herself had a popular lesbian following).

That discomfort increased when it came out further that, ACTUALLY, Jaal would not be available for Male Ryder. This caused a lot of upset. Now it was a case where there was NO M/M squadmate romance option. This on top of the group of fans who were uncomfortable with the idea that, in a sci-fi series, gay men couldn’t romance an alien, while this had become a staple of the series, considering Liara, the character from a species described as equivalent to Star Trek green-skinned Orion girls, had been available for straight men and lesbian/bi women from ME1, and straight women got in on the act with Garrus and Thane in ME2, on top of straight men also getting Tali.

This got worse when the achievement listing for the game was released and there was an achievement for “romancing three different characters.” Meaning that it was absolutely impossible for a gay man to play the game and get this achievement without playing a sexuality other than his own.

This is why I led with my experience with Jade Empire, why it was so affirming to me. Because to hear all this, ten years later, to see what had been so affirming to me a decade prior be functionally dismissed, be shown to take a secondary position at best... It hurt.

And the game proper did not help that feeling at all.

So first we meet Gil Brodie. Engineer of the Tempest. One of the first things we learn about him is that he has a close friendship with a woman named Jill. And then he immediately tells us that one) she is a fertility specialist, and two) she “says [he’s] part of the problem” because he won’t have kids the natural way. This is immediately setting off red flags to me – I can think of plenty of my friendships where we give one another grief for various things, but I would never think of introducing any of them to someone else with that fact. So my reflexive thought in this situation is “what kind of a friend is this really?”

And then, as the game goes on... This is the only thing that Gil’s conversations involve, the prospect of having kids. We do not learn much more about him, just have him talking about considering the idea. The lock-in for his romance requires Ryder to meet Jill, who Gil again says that she will talk his ear off about his “civic duty” to reproduce, a fact that makes those earlier red flags wave higher and more furiously, because who DOES that to a total stranger? And this is passed off as being “charming.” This leads to the culmination of the romance, where Gil says that Jill has decided she wants to get pregnant and she wants Gil to be the dad.

There’s... A LOT going on here, so let me work through this. First, one of the few things Gil says as a bit of establishing his character is that he is impulsive, that he joined the Andromeda Initiative, the journey from the Milky Way galaxy to the Andromeda galaxy without really thinking through what it would mean, that it was a one-way journey with no way to back out once he’d gotten there. So this is already saying to me that this is not a person who really SHOULD be a parent, at least at this point in his life.

We also get a couple of emails from him in-game that paint him as putting in thirty-six hour workdays into the engines on the Tempest, that he cares about and puts a lot of time into those engines. So when I think about him as a father, I see him having to give up something he’s deeply passionate about to do it, because the Tempest is certainly no place to raise a child – they can’t exactly put a playpen in the cargo hold, for example.

This would be one of the first things that I would think of as a discussion element, but... it’s not there. All that we get is a couple of casual comments about how Gil should know that bringing a child into the world is a big thing, something that shouldn’t be done lightly. But this is framed as Ryder questioning Gil’s fitness to be a parent at all, rather than questioning if he’s thinking this through and having considered this enough to be ready to take on this responsibility, or if it’s even something that he even wants.

Because that’s the other big thing here – this is not Gil’s idea. This is not something that he makes clear is his desire. No, it’s Jill who has decided that she wants to get pregnant and use Gil’s sperm. For all that he matters in this whole thing, he might as well be a turkey baster. He’s basically an accessory in his own story, because he goes in to this with all the passion of a math equation: “The Andromeda Initiative is a colonization effort. Therefore, the idea is to have babies. Therefore, I should find some way to reproduce.” This isn’t him having a passion or desire to have kids, just it being “something you do.”

This is, genuinely, a failure to understand the character who was being written. Gil’s writing reeks of having been written by someone who does not know what they are talking about. There is an element to the gay experience that is not innate but learned. When we realize that having children is not a thing that will just happen, that if we want this to happen, it will require a lot of additional steps, there are many who will simply say “this isn’t for me, this is more work than I’m willing to put in to for this.”

Now, Gil could have been someone who had decided it was worth it, but that butts up against the idea of him being impulsive, that he doesn’t think things through. There is no time given to focusing on the reason he decides this is the right choice for him, to the point that many players felt that this was not Gil’s decision but something that Jill was pushing, that she expected him to jump on her command. Because we have so little of Gil, as a character and an individual, but plenty of him talking up her, this “friendship” feels toxic to many.

Just about everyone I have ever spoken with about Gil is deeply uncomfortable that literally, the only way that he will not have a child at this point is if a romanced Ryder stops him – if I am playing a game where I don’t romance him, I actively just stop interacting with him at a certain point so that this never comes up, because this does not come across as happy. It comes across as forcing a gay man into a heteronormative experience to satisfy some traditional idea of “man and woman, raising kids.”

And, as the cherry on top, if you do tell Gil that you’re not comfortable having kids – a very real thing, whether gay or straight – then, unlike other romances, Gil and Ryder do not share a kiss at the finale of the game. And, during the last conversations on Meridian, the only thing Gil even brings up is Jill being pregnant, whether or not it’s his child.

This is what “representation of gay men” amounted to in Mass Effect Andromeda. A homophobic story that was about a gay experience written by someone who is not a part of this community and does not know or understand the experience personally, going through the motions of development when really, all that is cared about is the end result. To say that most of the gay men I know who have played this game find this homophobic is to undersell the point.

It doesn’t help that, of all the Tempest romances, Gil also clocks in with the least amount of romance exclusive material – a few flirts, the romance lock in and scene, and being able to stop Gil from having kids. Other than that, his friendship and his romance are virtually identical.

Speaking of, the romance scene consists of a make out session that fades to black, before coming back in with Ryder and Gil, shot from about shoulders up, briefly wrapping up their conversation that preceded the fade to black. This is noteworthy when the heterosexual romances between Ryder and their human love interests, as well as Peebee and Jaal, the former having a similar body model to naked human women, just blue, and Jaal, who is naked at other points in the game, have much more involved romance scenes – Cora’s in specific received special attention.

All of this, individually, may have just been reflective of time crunch and other external pressures – we all understand the realities of game development, that for all the ambitions that go in, when the deadlines are nearing, something has to give. But taken collectively... The kindest question is to ask why all of the “give” happened in regards to the gay man?

The end result with Gil honestly feels like he was written in response to the bad faith arguments that had come up in the period after the name for the game was revealed and it was made clear that the game would follow a colonization effort. There were a contingent of people who said that “there shouldn’t be gay people coming along, a colonization effort needs to reproduce.” This is a bad faith argument from homophobes, trying to justify why they don’t want gay people in “their” games. In answering their question, the question they only “ask” in order to explain why they don’t want to have gay people in the game without saying that, it comes across as catering the gay content for a heterosexual audience. It should go without saying that this is a bad position to take.

So, that’s Gil. What about Reyes? Well, Reyes himself is bound to a single planet, which, again, points to a minimizing of how much content he will even get, since his content can only be accessed on this single planet. Likewise, Reyes, as a character, is someone who falls in to several old, tired tropes with regards to bisexual men – he is a shady, untrustworthy character, in this instance literally a criminal, meant to be evocative of the “dashing rogue” archetype. This is a characterization that has often been BioWare’s go-to with regards to bisexual men, because we see this archetype drawn on in Jade Empire’s Sky, Dragon Age Origins’ Zevran, Dragon Age 2’s Anders, and even elements exist in Dragon Age Inquisition’s Dorian (even if he is a gay man). It’s a well that BioWare has frequently tapped when it comes to a romance option for queer men, to the point that it starts to feel like BioWare in general believes that this IS what queer men are.

There’s also the questionable portrayal of Reyes that leads to a description of the trope “the depraved bisexual,” an explicitly bisexual character who uses sex and sexuality as a manipulative tool, that they treat others as simply there to be their toys. Over in Dragon Age Inquisition, one of the romance options was specifically NOT made bisexual in order to avoid this trope, but Reyes himself seems to be a candidate for that trope all the same.

All this, and, again, the romance options for gay men were unequal to those for everyone else. This prompted the campaign #MakeJaalBi – Jaal was, notably, the character initially assumed to be the bisexual male companion, and on release, his romance was heterosexual exclusive. But datamining revealed that there was code for him to be romanced by male Ryder. Indeed, on release, it was noteworthy that Jaal could not even be flirted with by male Ryder. Liam had a distinct turndown for male Ryder, a couple of them, depending on when Ryder flirts with him. Jaal had no such turndown.

And this worked. BioWare released the patch for Andromeda that gave Jaal a bisexual romance. However, this was the only change that Mass Effect Andromeda received in regards to the issues of the romances before support for the game ended. While it was seen as an improvement, it was also questioned why this was the only change, when... Well, I spent the better part of two pages outlining the problems of Gil’s portrayal.

(I feel I would be remiss to not mention there was also a character, Hainley Abrams, who would, upon interacting with her, proceed to deadname herself to Ryder, as if that is the only way to establish that a transgender person is trans. This was also changed in a patch after the trans community complained, and, in conjunction with the above, led more than a few people to wonder if the Andromeda script had been looked over by any queer sensitivity readers, given the earlier issues with Gil. This does go out of the scope of everything else in this discussion, but it is worth mentioning.)

When Mac Walters says players will talk about how Shepard is each of theirs, that every individual player approaches Shepard as being “their” Shepard, he isn’t wrong. He says the characters, and the relationships we have with the characters is the heart and soul of the series, he isn’t wrong. And yet... When I play the trilogy, my heart and soul are being torn apart, because I do not get to see myself in the trilogy. I am not there in this story, at least for two thirds of the way. And in that third that I am there, I feel like I am cared about less than my counterparts who are heterosexual.

The idea that “making” characters available for same sex romance changes them is like saying that there is some inherent difference in a person because of their sexualities. While it’s true that the experiences of queer people does offer different perspectives on matters, it does not fundamentally alter the person, the individual that we are. It does not change our heart and soul. Restoring the bisexuality of characters like Jack, Jacob, Ashley, Thane, or Tali is not changing who they are. Making Kaidan bisexual in ME3 did not change who he was, and restoring a romance between him and male Shepard in ME1 would not change him either.

Every game has some cut content surrounding queer content specifically, and a great deal of that content is specifically for gay players like myself. I said at the beginning that I once thought of myself as a BioWare fan for life, but that now comes with caveats. The caveats are pretty simple – while the games produced by BioWare once felt affirming, now they feel like they’re only grudgingly allowing me to be there. That if I must be there, I should just take the scraps I’m given and be content with that, rather than being treated as an equal.

I like to think that this is not the message that the people at BioWare wish to impart to their players. I like to believe BioWare’s statements of wanting to be an inclusive and welcoming environment for their players, regardless of gender, race, sexuality, orientation, whatever identity and label one chooses. But based on the experience of the last four games, of the Legendary Edition perpetuating the homophobia of over a decade ago... I have a hard time believing that.

BioWare games once made me feel like I was equal to the straight heroes across my media. Unfortunately, I don’t feel that way about their games anymore. Not when, after having the opportunity to restore the bisexuality of Kaidan – of multiple characters, really – in the Legendary Edition, I am still being told that offering representation for people like me is something that only comes grudgingly.

And if that’s what I see now... What does it say about what the future of the franchise will offer? If every game in this series involves fighting for content that, in particular, heterosexual players will see offered as the rule, what motivates me to want to continue to be invested and involved in this franchise?

[sugarbubbleslove]

Hope After Midnight - FShenko Fanfic

Title: Hope after Midnight

Characters: Kaidan Alenko, Jasmine Shepard

Pairing: Past Kaidan/Jasmine but not really cause they didn't really break up but they're not really together. Idiots who are in love but are dumb about it. Brief – very brief – Kaidan/Miranda.

Rating: Mature

Disclaimer: I do not own anyone/anything from the forum Mass Effect. Bioware and EA own Mass Effect and its characters. There is no copyright infringement intended. I do not make any profit/money or take any credit.

Summary: A nightmare sends Jasmine on a midnight ice cream hunt when a familiar face shows up.

Funny how he always seems to know when she had a nightmare.

Timeline: Post ME2/Arrival DLC, pre ME3

Warning: AU in the fact that it doesn't follow canon regarding when Kaidan and Jasmine met up in ME3 (Cause that was shitty. Past Relationship but feelings are still there. Trying hard not to fall back into old habits, but it's hard. Graphic nightmare. Jasmine is dealing with the fact that two years have passed. No one is letting her.

Author's Notes: This is a Shenko Therapy Fic. 6 months under arrest and she doesn't see him before then? Nope.

And my brain went a little sadistic regarding Horizon, what TIM alluded to and what Shepard saw on the Collector ship.

It also follows MY playthrough.

So, enjoy.

Series: It's A Long Way Home

Jasmine Shepard – Spacer/War Hero, Engineer/Adept

FF.Net: Hope After Midnight

AO3: Hope After Midnight

[kunstpause-archive]

meta asks! 3, 15, and 23?

From this nice ask list - thank you 💕

3 What is that one scene that you’ve always wanted to write but can’t be arsed to write all of the set-up and context it would need? (consider this permission to write it and/or share it anyway)

I honestly think I don’t have one of those. I write pretty much everything that I want at some point, be it as a one-shot or a long story.

15 Which is harder: titles or summaries (or tags)?

Summaries. I can do them reasonably well, but they are a pain. Titles are no big deal, I love titling things.

23 What’s the story idea you’ve had in your head for the longest?

Mass Effect ot3 things. Well, actually ot4 things by now. I've been carrying that around since my first playthrough but I am pretty sure I am going to write it during my MELE playthrough

[killscreencinema]

The Outer Worlds (PS4)

Even in space you can’t escape the claws of corporate greed and rampant capitalism gone amuck! 

Such is the case in The Outer Worlds, developed by Obsidian Entertainment and published by Take-Two Interactive in 2019, where you play as a mysterious “stranger”, thawed out of cryogenic stasis on a lost colony ship by a mad scientist named Phineas Wells, who barely introduces himself before dispatching you to an exotic world named Terra 2.  Here you begin your quest either to help Dr. Welles shake off the chains of corporate tyranny that has run down the colony of the Halcyon star system or you can choose to assist “The Board” in catching the fugitive scientist and reestablishing its authority. 

The Outer Worlds is kind of a mash-up of several sci-fi fantasy properties, most notably Joss Whedon’s Firefly, with a cup of Star Wars, a tablespoon of Mass Effect, with a big ol’ heaping of BioShock folded in for good measure.  That’s not to say it’s a ripoff of those things so much as a loving homage that manages to use those influences to create its own universe. 

Okay, well, your socially awkward engineer, Parvarti, who speaks in politely educated, old west vernacular is straight up Kaylee from Firefly but still not a ripoff!

Okay, well, there’s the preacher on your ship, Vicar Max, who may or may not have been an expertly trained assassin and secret agent in a former life, just like Shepard Book in Firefly, but still not a ripoff!

Anyway, I do enjoy the art direction and aesthetics of The Outer Worlds, which has the “steam punky” yet futuristic vibe of BioShock, mixed with the obnoxious inundation of advertising by all the corporate factions vying for your attention and you hard earned “bits”.  Say what you will about advertising, but that’s when you know humanity has reached the final frontier - when the well-lit billboards and signs start going up all over space.  That kind of stuff does make these sci-fi universes feel “lived in”.  It’s one of many reasons I love the show Cowboy Bebop - the future it depicts seems realistic and believable because it’s not really that far removed from our present, to point of including commercials, tacky eye sore ads everywhere, etc. 

I digress - The Outer Worlds is a first-person shooter, with RPG elements similar to the Fallout games.  The game also has that really annoying RPG element of having to constantly clean out your inventory from the constant crap that you loot from vanquished foes, shipping containers, and random safes that you can crack if your lockpicking skills are high enough.  This shit in particular really reminds me of the first Mass Effect, which often felt like I spent more time in the menu equipping new weapons and armor than actually playing the game.  Thankfully, becoming over-encumbered is rarely an issue as the game gives you a pretty generous weight threshold, but you will still have to eventually halt everything to offload all the useless crap that has accumulated in your inventory.

The combat is twitchy, FPS style fighting but your character has the ability to slow down time in order to fire precise shots at vulnerable enemy spots.  I found this “Tactical Time Dilation”, or TTD, to be a useless waste of a mechanic as your character slows down along with the enemy, making it rather pointless and annoying.  There are “perks” your character can earn to make you slightly move faster while using TTD, but not enough to make it worth using a lot in my opinion. 

The majority of the story plays out via dialogue trees, and this is where I derived a lot of fun from The Outer Worlds, as you can opt to give your character low intelligence, which opens up “Dumb” dialogue options.  I can’t recommend this option enough, as the way characters react to your dumb responses is hilarious, and ultimately leads to an optional secret ending for the game.  Using the dumb dialogue options made me feel like I was playing the game as an “Ash Williams” type hero - tough, effective, and cunning in his own way, but ultimately kind of an idiot who bumbles into victory.  It really made the game all the more compelling for me, because I happen to love characters like that.

While overall I enjoyed The Outer Worlds, I was also disappointed by how the universe of the game didn’t feel very expansive.  You only travel to a handful of worlds, and even then, you’re relegated to a small patch of the planet.  A game like this should feel more epic, kind of like No Man’s Sky, but still a functional game (yeah, I know, the update makes it supposedly better but you get my point).  There are worlds on your map you NEVER get to visit, except via DLC, but even then you travel to a space station in orbit above that world that looks like every OTHER space station.  So in summary, for a game called The Outer Worlds, I found the lack of variety in said worlds to be deflating.  This isn’t helped by how often the same character models, with the same exact haircuts, and odd smirks, is recycled throughout the game.  Do all of these characters go to the same barber or what?

Ultimately, these are all minor gripes compared to my biggest complaint of all - the loading times.  Jesus and Mary, the loading times are the worst.  When I signed up to be a console gamer in the great “Console vs PC Wars”, I knew I was going to have to deal with loading screens, but The Outer Worlds is ridiculous.  I actually dreaded going into my ship, or transitioning to another map, because I knew I’d have to sit through a nearly 1-minute long loading screen every goddamn time.  It’s unacceptable even by console standards and I understand it’s not much better on PC. 

If you can get over obnoxious loading times, though, The Outer Worlds is worth a playthrough, especially if you’re a fan of the sci-fi genre.

[ziskandra]

as a bi girl, mass effect: andromeda is realistic and immersive. the girl who seems obviously Not Straight™ shoots me down and with my wounded pride i fall for the sweet boy-next-door instead

[eluvianarts]

Oh, my heart.

As I’ve mentioned before, Dragon Age Inquisition was my introductory game to the world of Thedas. I can honestly say that if I had started with Dragon Age Origins I would’ve been much less likely to play the other games, but it’s not for the reason you think. 

It’s my own fault.

((For the quick version just read the last two paragraphs)).

My first playthrough of Origins I was a female elven mage, (aka - my usual). I romance males, & being that Alistair is the only male romance option for what felt like most of the game at the time, I naturally chose him as my LI. Then Zevran finally entered the picture & I flirted with him because it seemed harmless enough until I read online that you gain high disapproval if you flirt for a lengthy period of time before confirming who your one LI is.

So I told Zev that maybe he’s getting the wrong idea. Got that disapproval knockdown, which I managed to bring back up later, but then all our conversations were the “friendly”/”non-flirty” options. Ok.

Then came the time to make Alistair king. I knew from Inquisition the repercussions of letting him stay with the Wardens, so to save his own skin, (because I knew I wasn’t sacrificing my Hawke although I was yet to play DA2 at the time), I had to make him king. I’m also strongly against “hardening” characters, so I didn’t choose that one specific dialogue choice after meeting Goldanna. I pronounce him king and then....

Wait, you can’t marry an elf? We literally had this conversation when we first started dating! I asked if it would be a problem & you said no! Sooooo... where does that leave me? Oh, now you’re only using the “friendly” dialogue options. Great. Guess that’s that. Fine. Well.... if one of us has to die to kill this Archdemon it might as well be me since you gotta rule Thedas. Saving your skin again.

Then Morrigan. I wanted to like her, I really really did! But when push comes to shove & you announce that Flemeth only saved the two of us so you could make an old-god baby, I’m confused. Why would your mother save a female? I can’t produce an old-god baby, (or maybe I can, but you didn’t give me the option). Meaning, the only reason Flemeth saved me was so I could romance Alistair & have an emotional connection to him so you could use that as leverage to get me to agree to you not only sleeping with my man, (excuse me, “ex”-man), but to product an heir with him, which according to Grey Warden facts, I cannot?! That’s really awful, Morrigan! So no! I’m going to die to save Thedas from this Blight & you can go away empty-handed you deceiver! I wanted to be frieeendss!

“You know how I feel about you. I won’t let you die. Not while I can do something about it...”

Wait, Alistair wont let me kill the archdemon?! He dies anyway?! 

Zevrannnn! I’m so mad at everything! Are you at all interested in me? ... Oh, we’re now stuck as “just friends” even though I would’ve dated you from the start had I known you were gonna show up! ... I have made some poor decisions.

In summary, because I romanced Alistair as an elf in DAO, the end of my Warden’s story was completely maddening & unfruitful to me, so if that’s what I had come to expect from the Dragon Age games, I probably wouldn’t have continued playing them. (For the record, I replayed as a female elven rogue, romanced Zevran, & suddenly Alistair seemed like such an ungrateful crybaby, so he made that old-god baby, became king, & I got to continue being epic with Zevran!)

All of that to say - With Dragon Age 4 officially announced, & many many MANY hints at the Solavellan romance ending in utter & complete heartbreak... I’m fearful. I know real life isn’t always “happily ever after”, but that’s why we watch movies, play games, & read books; to experience the happy endings! Having romanced Mass Effect’s Thane as well, gosh am I suffering at the thought of my Lavellan fighting so hard, staying so strong, only to have something entirely awful happen - like a red-lyrium-corrupted Solas going mad, Lavellan never actually being a part of the next game so she simply never sees Solas again, or the unavoidable slaying of her love either by herself or by another (because the game wont progress until you do). Please let there be some way, any way at all, that a Solavellan romance can end without tragedy! Just please! 

[dismalzelenka]

20 Questions

@buttsonthebeach tagged me in the getting to know you meme, but since I did that one recently I took the liberty of breaking the rules and finding another tag meme to answer instead. >:Dc

1. One thing you would change in your personality?

The constant undercurrent of social anxiety that renders me completely unable to speak coherently at the worst possible moments. I would love to have steady employment, social anxiety. Please stop cockblocking my job status. :^)

2. What is your DA rare pair?

MARIAN HAWKE AND RALEIGH SAMSON

GO RAID MY AO3, MY KIRKWALL TRASH HEAPS ARE WAITING

Sweetest Downfall

Arms Around the Past

3. A song that made you cry?

Passage by Vienna Teng. I've never had a song get me completely unglued on the last six words before this.

4. The best movie ever?

Love, Actually.

Fight me.

5. Food you will never eat?

C I L A N T R O >:(

6. Your celebrity crush?

Felicia Day. Mark of the Assassin DESTROYED me. 😅

7. Your favorite DA location and why?

Vigil's Keep. Because like. You're the head dumpster fire, in charge of recruiting more dumpster fires, and also you're apparently running an Arling that you never asked for and you have to deal with all these shitty nobles all the time but YOUR DUMPSTER FIRES are all right there beside you and you have the best papa dumpster fire ever who kicks nobles out of your dumpster fire house when you're tired of partying and basically it's this tiny fucked up little family and you all stumble down to breakfast in the morning in various states of hung over except for that one dwarf guy who's probably still drunk, you eat your eggs and toast in cranky silence, and then you go be big goddamn heroes.

....I really loved Awakening ok. Fite me.

8. You’re a night or a morning person?

I'm like a "night but the part of night where it's technically morning right up til morning" kind of person.

9. You have any tattoos?

Yus.

Nobody sigil from Kingdom Hearts wrapped in a treble clef between my shoulder blades.

A design of Helios on my left upper arm with "Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken" underneath it because House Martell prideeee.

The Arabic word for "cat" on my left forearm, drawn to look like a cat.

I'm saving up for a griffon tattoo and maybe a stylized one of "can I get you a ladder so you can get off my back?" :3

10. How many languages you speak?

Fluent in English. Can understand Korean fairly well, but can't speak it quite as easily. Basic fluency in Italian. I can read it much better that I can speak it.

11. Where would you most like to visit?

The mountains in South Korea. I was born there and I've only ever been back to Seoul and a village on the outskirts where my grandparents lived. I want to spend like a week or so out there under the stars. ❤️

12. What’s the best book you’ve read?

The Poisonwood Bible.

So I was forced to read this in high school. And I went to a Baptist high school, so of course when I saw this summary of it I immediately went "oh fuck no."

"The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver, is a bestselling novel about a missionary family, the Prices, who in 1959 move from the U.S. state of Georgia to the village of Kilanga in the Belgian Congo, close to the Kwilu River."

Like. I was FULLY prepared to grit my teeth and spark notes another goddamn glorified colonialism story.

And then I read the damn thing.

And y'all this book is FUCKED UP. That missionary family? It's told from the POV of all of the daughters as they watch their father get more and more fanatical and abusive, as they struggle with culture shock, NONE of them wanted to be here, the majority of them slowly start to lose their faith and abandon their religion.

One of the girls is very clearly neurodivergent, but she's not really written as a character you're supposed to feel sorry for, and she's a total badass.

It has its problematic elements, but I think the fact that it's now seared indelibly into my brain is because I was 100% expecting a fucked up pro missionary story and ended up finding a story of the shit that happens to everyone else in the periphery of said pro missionary stories.

Was incredibly surprised to have read this in my AP Lit class at a Baptist high school, but goddamn, it shook me.

13. Who is your favourite BioWare character?

A N D E R S

Anders is my boy. I will ride or die for Anders. Anders was right. Fuck the Chantry. F I T E M E.

Bonus: fine Dwarven crafts, direct from Orzammar

14. Who’s your least preferred BioWare character?

Going to stick to Dragon Age because I'm too tired to rummage through my brain for other fandoms. And there's so many people I hate in Mass Effect. Hah.

Anyway. Livius Erimond kind of grinded my gears a lot, so much so that in my first mage playthrough I pissed off a ton of people and made him Tranquil. Like. My entire inner circle disapproved, it was fucking amazing. I'll never be able to make myself do it again because I felt so dirty after that I literally had to pause the game and take a shower, but man. Erimond is really good at pressing buttons.

15. What’s your favourite game?

Dragon Age Inquisition and Mass Effect 3. And Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark. Valen Shadowbreath was my first bioware love.

16. What’s your spirit animal patronus?

According to Pottermore it's a dragonfly but I'm pretty sure it's actually a cat.

Going with patronus instead of spirit animal because I've been asked to avoid appropriating that term as someone who is not of Native ancestry, and so I shall. Respect indigenous cultures. ✌️❤️

17. Cake or ice cream?

Fine Dwarven cakes, direct from Orzammar. Preferably almond or Chantilly. :D

18. Dogs or cats?

🐈 Kitties 🐈

19. What was your favourite DA romance?

3 Way Tie (although this could change since I haven't done all of them myself.)

Anders - because his whole arc is just so FUCK THE CHANTRY and he's such a Good Person who is Struggling and at the end of the day he's a soft feathery boy who loves you and cares about making people not hurt anymore and also is into some wild shit in bed and also loves cats. Let's be mentally ill cuddly softs together, Anders, I will give you my everything always, my soft feathery mage boy. ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

Leliana - soft but stabby song princess becomes the pope and her devoted girlfriend wife swoons quietly through all of it.

Cullen - weirdly enough, I did not expect to enjoy this romance as much as I did. I kind of hated him in the first two games, like when I ran into him in 2 I still hadn't forgiven him for the "KILL ALL THE MAGES" outburst and was just like. "Ugh it's this motherfucker." And then I saw him again in Inquisition and was like WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHITHEAD DOING HERE? HE'S FIRED. FIRE HIM, CASSANDRA.

But then Cassandra never reciprocated my affections, Blackwall yelled at me on the battlements about propriety and we're at war so I dumped him, and then Vivienne turned me down and I was like FINE FUCK ALL Y'ALL I'M GONNA SMOOCH CULLEN OUT OF SPITE.

And then he's all like. "I went through some shit. I said some really fucked up stuff. Also I'm trying to get clean and it's literally killing me but I don't want anything to do with that old life anymore." And the chess scene, and then me getting really personally enraged at all the Orlesians copping nonconsensual feels at Halamshiral and then I woke up one day and was like wow OK this dude's alright, he's even kind of cute, I guess I can-

"marry me?" "OKAY YES."

*shrug* I'm weak.

20. Do you prefer sunshine or are you a winter person?

Sunshine in winter, ideally, but if I have to choose between one or the other, winter.

Anyway. I broke rules, oops. Gonna tag @sasshole-for-rent @suzumicchi @joufancyhuh @laraslandlockedblues @becauseanders @inner-muse @ladymdc @agentkatie @kawakaeguri @a-shakespearean-in-paris @ekoorb03 @lyrium-lovesong @5ftgarden

[himluv]

Oh, Blogland! Where has this month gone? How is it April already? It most definitely still feels like winter here in the Pacific Northwest, and it’s getting old. You’d think with all this time indoors, I’d get some quality work done. You’d think…

What were My March Goals?

Edit 5 chapters of The Steel Armada

Finish Sanctified

Submit The Seasons

Prep Lifelike for submission

Keep reading

Drumroll, please…

Edit 5 chapters of The Steel Armada

Sigh. I didn’t make this goal. Barely. I did edit 4.5 chapters, but lacked the discipline to get it done this week in the face of other, more “interesting” projects. Literally everything is more interesting than editing to me at the moment. It’s disappointing, but it’s not the worst outcome. I still edited more than I really thought I would. Huzzah!

Finish Sanctfied

YES! I spent the better part of nine months, NINE MONTHS, writing that fic and to finally write the end of it and move on mentally was completely overwhelming. I got some really wonderful feedback from readers and I am looking forward to what comes next.

Submit The Seasons

Yep. Still waiting to hear back about it. I forgot how long the submission process can be. If it gets rejected, I’ll most likely find out in the next few days, if The Submission Grinder can be trusted. I’ll be sure to share the results here, regardless.

Prep Lifelike for submission

Sure did! This is the strongest this story has ever been, and I’m feeling good about it. I want to say it’s ‘done’, but I’m not 100% sure yet. I’m going to let it stew a bit more and revisit it. But, it’s really close.

Keep reading

Yarp. I read seven titles in March and posted four book reviews. I’ve read 19 titles this year so far, and am three books ahead of schedule on my Goodreads reading challenge. Feels good, man.

Total March Word Count: 15,985

Honorable Mentions?

Unrelated to official March goals, I read/edited the proofs for The Audient Void #5 this month, so keep an eye out for release announcements sometime in April. I also started writing the final installment of my giant Mass Effect Andromeda fanfiction series, Santa Sarita: The Patron Saint of a Third-Rate Smuggler. This last story, titled Sanctuary, will wrap up larger plot points I left dangling in Sanctified and hopefully give us all that happy ending we’re all craving for ME:A.

My word count for the month is pretty high, mostly because of about 7k words on Sanctuary in the last two weeks and finishing Sanctified earlier this month, but also because the rewrites on The Steel Armada are so extensive. I’ve been adding about 500 words per chapter, and that’s accounting for what’s been cut.

In other news, I still have awesome, wonderful, exciting news to share! However, I’m uncertain if I’m allowed to just yet. If I don’t get word by Wednesday, I’ll contact the powers that be and see what the deal is. I am bursting at the seems about this you guys! The silence is killing me!

The submission process is a lot less stressful than I remember. I mean, I’m anxious as all hell if I let myself think about it too much, but ultimately, once the story is sent, it’s out of my hands. No point wearing myself ragged over it. Hopefully April can just be full of all kinds of good news!

So, What’s Next?

Edit 4 chapters of The Steel Armada

Continue submitting short stories

Build a backlog of 5 chapters of Sanctuary

Keep reading

I don’t want to set any stricter goals than that this month. I want to get back into my reading stride, because it’s a little rocky at the moment. I started another playthrough of Andromeda, as research for my next fic. It’s a dumb excuse to play again, but I’m enjoying it, so I don’t want to guilt trip myself too much.

The writing on Sanctuary is… tumultuous. Some days it’s easy and it practically writes itself. Other days every single character seems bound and determined to fight me about every damn thing. Until I get deeper in and really get a grasp on the moving pieces, I think it’s going to be that way. So, I need to just buckle in and write when I feel like it, and see where this story takes me. Plus, I won’t start posting it until I have a healthy stack of chapters to share.

It is very likely that The Seasons will get rejected in the next few days. I need to start planning where I’m submitting it to next. I also need to appraise Lifelike later in the month, and start planning its submission journey. Exciting times, slow, but exciting!

I will edit four chapters this month. Four. One each week. That is not hard and I WILL do it.

See you all soon with a Weekly Goals Summary!

  BZ

The Recap – March 2018 Oh, Blogland! Where has this month gone? How is it April already? It most definitely still feels like winter here in the Pacific Northwest, and it's getting old.

[nowonderyouhavedemons]

alright so ANIME NORTH SUMMARY (and a few photos afterward in another post

bringing my luggage to my friend’s place to get picked up via bus instead of taking my other friend’s offer to pick me up from my place instead was a Big Ms. Steak

rode in the car listening to trap and K-Pop and that’s all I needed in my life

cancelled our hotel booking last minute and booked another hotel while on the highway because it turns out the hotel our other friend booked (and that friend subsequently bailed on Anime North) was attached to our city’s main fucking airport and was much further away from the con than we thought

and that was a bundle of stress with two people on the phone (one being me) pretending to be the same person (our other friend), with one cancelling a booking and another one making a different booking at a different hotel

and the other hotel ended up being significantly more expensive than the first but it was way closer to the con and also we got a top floor suite so that was bomb.com

all-you-can-eat sushi!!!!

cosplayed as Shinya Oda from P5 on Friday and only one guy said something about it (but i’m assuming every P5 cosplayer recognized me)

we discussed how great P5 was and how shit Mass Effect Andromeda is because we were both looking at Funko Pops

picked up a P4 wallscroll (the last one they had available), a P5 shirt (only available in X-Large), THE P4 ART BOOK (WHICH IS PHENOMENAL AND I LOVE IT AND READ ALL OF IT ALREADY), and also a Kakegurui print because I gotta rep for the ultimate snacc, Yumeko

ordered shit tons of food from Pizza Pizza that night at the hotel and got to show two of my friends John Wick for the first time (they liked it)

also ordered Starbucks every day of the con because it was attached to the hotel too and another friend kept wanting to go (it was really good though)

cosplayed Oz from Monster Prom on Saturday and that was a BLAST

i got stopped for photos and recognized more in my Oz cosplay than in my Shinya P5 one (which was not at all)

a guy came out of a bathroom that I was waiting for a friend outside of and he just stopped, pointed at me, and went “... Monster Prom?!”

then 5 minutes later on our way out of the North Building, a girl stopped me and excitedly asked for a photo

then a couple minutes later in the parking lot on the way to the main building, I got stopped AGAIN by another fan

she sounded so excited that I was cosplaying Monster Prom and went “How did you even PUT this together so fast?! The game came out a month ago!”

she also said Oz was her phone background and I basically started crying internally I was s h o o k t

and then later that day towards the end, while waiting near a Smash photoshoot because a friend wanted to get photos of cosplayers, someone fucking SPRINTED into view of me and almost tripped while shouting “OZ!”

and her and her friend also sounded excited that someone was actually doing Monster Prom and we all lamented the fact that no one else was doing it yet (I WANNA DO COUPLE COSPLAY PICTURES)

then we had a 10 - 15 minute conversation about Monster Prom and wanting to fuck the Slayer and how Blobert is a pure being and Liam being... Liam. Also Damien beating the shit out of us.

don’t think i actually bought anything on Saturday

Saturday was................. eventful because a good friend of mine wanted to visit us at the hotel for the night and the next day (she’s only friends with one of my other friends, and the other 2 basically don’t know her)

and that in itself wasn’t the issue except for one of my friends getting really quiet because they’re not comfortable with strangers

but some stuff happened that i don’t really wanna go into detail about but it was bad and Not Cool and i need permission from that outside friend to have a talk on her behalf

didn’t really affect Sunday until the end of the day though

cosplayed Shinya again for the Persona panel!!!

which was nice and fun, especially as my first experiencing going to a panel at a con

i just wish it was longer than an hour because i feel like it was mainly the hosts talking about the games and we as the audience didn’t get as many chances to talk and discuss stuff and share our opinions

the panel DID make me want to watch a playthrough of P1 and 2 and give one of the Shin Megami Tensei games a shot! One of the hosts recommended Strange Journey Redux as a great game for SMT newbies

bought another Kakegurui print and a Makoto thief mask keychain before we left!

grabbed dinner with all the pals and then finally went home to relax and sleep

all in all, a SUPER fun weekend! Had a few hiccups, with one really bad one that will hopefully be resolved in the near future, but overall, possibly my favourite Anime North yet! (it takes a lot to beat last year since P5 had JUST come out a little under two months then and the hype was palpable)

[felassan]

Hi! Why do you suppose Bioware bothered to make a mass effect keep when they arent planning to use any of the data collected in future ME games? I'm a bit confused hahaa

Hi! They’ve stated that the choices we select in the Mass Effect Trilogy tapestry do not carry over to the events of Mass Effect: Andromeda, and that although the MET tapestry and the Andromeda tapestry are displayed as one in the world states section, this does not indicate that MET decisions will be carried over into any future installments. It’s interesting wording, if I’m understanding it correctly - they don’t say that Andromeda decisions (Andromeda tapestry data) won’t be carried over into any future installments, they specifically talk about MET only there. That fact combined with various dev sentiments/messages that came out on N7 Day (tweets, the 10 years of ME video, the N7 Day site update, etc) where they reference ME’s “bright future” (and variants thereof) causes me to feel a little bit of hope regarding the future of the franchise.. that there’ll possibly be another game, eventually. In the archives, MET choice input is manual, but MEA choices are read. Another game set in Andromeda, maybe? I feel like at least they were trying to keep their options open, in case.

But say for the purposes of your question, we discount that. Then why?

symmetry & cohesion. A very minor thing, but there’s tapestries for DA, why not for ME too?

this is personal granted, but I’ve enjoyed using it to play out an interactive short summary of my Shepard’s journey. To revisit that, like a little tribute. “relive your favorite moments”

to keep track of our multiple worldstates in a neat, aesthetically-pleasing and convenient recording format (particularly goes for MEA playthroughs.. I can now ditch my spreadsheet of Ryders/playthroughs and what choices they entailed).

to “discover, share, and shape your Mass Effect experience” - they stated that it’s for players to mark how they want their ME world history to be, and to explore a bit and maybe find some things (choices, outcomes) that they didn’t know were possible. To add, the Keep has Shared State, which shows world states that our friends in the Keep have shared with us. Not sure if that’s a feature in the Archives yet, but yeah. sharing functionality

the site has additional tertiary functions, like the Keep - tracking achievements, what comics etc you’ve read, the soundtrack download, yknow.

and the biggest reason I think: to celebrate and commemorate N7 Day/teN7, and the tenth anniversary of Mass Effect. It’s a nice little piece of fanservice as it were, particularly with all the new official artwork that it comes with. A small gesture. “Hey, thankyou, and we’re still thinking about you, and the franchise.” 

[lananiscorner]

I'm not sure if you've ever seen or played Mass effect, but I was wondering if you would be able to see some similarities between Jack and Jason Todd. I feel like they're almost genderbends of each other.

Thanks for your ask, Anon.

Oh, I DO know Mass Effect... played the first one for months with multiple playthroughs that I carried over to the second game. Unfortunately, my laptop can’t really stomach part 3, so I have yet to carry them over into that game. I did watch a full paragon playthrough of it, though.

For those of my readers who haven’t played the games, a quick summary of Jack: She is a powerful biotic (can manipulate energy fields to lift, push and warp things), who was stolen from her mom when she was barely an hour old by an extremist organization called Cerberus (subtle they are not), who want to achieve dominance of humankind throughout the galaxy at all costs. They performed horrible experiments on her to heighten her abilities. She escaped when she was... 12, I think... and then ended up meeting all the wrong people, making all the wrong choices, and is essentially one of the universe’s most dangerous and most wanted criminals by the time the player meets her.

Now, I don’t quite agree that she has that much in common with Jason. Granted, both of them have had childhoods that absolutely sucked, went through severe torture at the hands of crazy psychopaths, are incredibly dangerous people if they want to, have trust issues up the wazoo + hair trigger tempers, and both can be truly loyal anti-heroes who fight for good, if you rack up the patience and finesse to help them work through their issues.

That said, the defining difference between the two of them - and to me this is an incredibly important part of Jason’s character - is that Jack was perfectly comfortable being a criminal bitch, who didn’t really care about anyone but herself, before she met Shepard (the player character). She didn’t really care how many people got hurt along the way. She didn’t really care about innocent bystanders and, if directed along the Renegade path by the player, she can become one of the most blood-thirsty, ruthless, sadistic members on your squad.

Jason, on the other hand, has always, always been protective of innocent bystanders. In the comics, even when ruling over the criminal underworld and being borderline insane, he avoided hurting innocent bystanders. In Arkham Knight, he makes sure the islands are all 100% evacuated before he dukes it out with Bruce. Neglecting the Cloud Burst for a moment, which was really Arkham!Jason at his most psychotic, Jason always focused his brutality on very specific targets whom he had picked very carefully because he was convinced that they deserved it.

Now, Jack CAN get to that level of thinking, if you steer her in the right direction, but Jason? Jason has always been there. Even before meeting Batman, he was an extremely caring and empathic individual, who looked after his drug-addicted mom for no payoff for quite some time, who refused to join any gangs and instead lived off the scraps he got from pawning off car parts. His sense of justice, even though occassionally ruthless, is what drives him. Jack couldn’t have cared one bit about justice without Shepard’s influence. At least as far as I remember. It’s been a while since I played the ME games, but if you hadn’t brought up the comparison, I would never have made it myself.