#these are pretty opinion based

[fishtails-nat1]

grading double life ships, shipnames, if any, added in brackets.

CANON PAIRINGS:

Ma'el/Pall'or (cultduo, sometimes maellor) the classic, they had chemistry day one. honestly not much more to say other than the fact that the players are on their hands and knees to stop the slowburn and let them fuck. bonus points for the intersting backstory weaving. 10/10

Eiwn/Miym very well done friendship to tragic love. the chemistry these two have is off the walls, like why are pep and cerin so good at doing these friends to lovers ships. the tragic family aspect and cool gods backstory stuff provides a really interesting dynamic. 10/10 i like the poem

RD/Alastrelle (no common tagname, but adding in one ive seen; "winnerduo" cause its funny as fuck) I didn't used to see it cause they had a slight roughness to their alliance but when alastrelle started getting darker vibes? ok yeah this is some cool corruption shit. RD has nothing to hold them back anymore either. i hope they win and kiss about it. 10/10

Luck/Lilly (tigerlilly, luckian) I think this one is actually just canon aside from pairing stuff? or its luck pining a lot, whatever. it's... it's hard to actually judge this one because pep can't actually play out them talking to one another, but y'know what yeah i like the vibes. me and my girlwife who hates people. me and my malewife who trips over roots. 8/10

NON-CANON PAIRINGS:

RD/Pall'or why is their friends with benefits energy off the CHARTS holy shit. RD has plans to kill him but the enemies to lovers energy could be fucking insane??? they have multiple plans to fuck?? the fact that pall'or knows every inch of their body?? 10/10 keeps that inappropriate workplace relationship going

RD/Eiwn they work really well as the weirdgirl/jockboy so I think it's pretty funny. yeah we gay keep scrolling! not a lot of substance anymore and tbh i've seen a lot of angst breakup fics following the latest events so.... yeah.... 6/10

Alastrelle/Luck from what I've seen, all the fics are entirely about the single conversation they've had. There's some further chemistry to be explored, but for now, I don't really see it. 4/10

Pall'or/Alastrelle the starboys... the lovers under the moon... I think they can be so wonderful or horrible for each other. i dont know why im saying this but hannigrm kind of. 7/10

Pall'or/Lilly HOOOOO boy theres a lot to be said when most of the fics under this are hurt no comfort and one-sided relationship. cool job speculating what the fuck happened between these guys. 9/10 because pallor would actually do that yeah

RD/Luck ok yeah again with the pathetic malewife who trips over roots and the cool strong one. I think the fact that RD does actually like luck feeds into this, it's pretty strong actually. 9/10

Pall'or/Luck ok half these noncanon ships involve them so its abt time! i don't have anything to add i just agree. 9/10 because they have yet to flirt in an insane way

Luciano/Cle'av i've seen some age discourse around this so no hate please im just doing rankings. we all love a consentual workplace relationship, especially on the dating death game show. 7/10

Ma'el/Luck once again dont mention the discourse pleaseeee luck said "oh i guess we're not then" in the same sentance after bringing up being related. yeah i think a dog and a cat can be lovers, if they try hard enough. more than anything i like the fact that theyre streetsmart vs booksmart vibe that pall and mael have too. 9/10

RD/Eiwn/Alastrelle polycule is always a win. i have small hope they'll meetup again to do more stuff like the bear bit, buttttt things arent going good. i miss these three 10/10

Ma'el/Pall'or/Luck ive said all that ive needed to say. 10/10

[edenprime]

One of the strongest points of Mass Effect, if not the strongest, is just how well written the characters are. From Shepard, to the squad, to the side characters like Anderson and Bakara, to barely-there NPCs like Ereba and Charr the lovers, Etarn Tiro the enthusiastic turian merchant, Kargesh the krogan who wanted a fish, Lia'Vael, the quarian who gets falsely accused of theft, and the Salarian who wants to buy a memento to his asari lover to remember him by once he's dead.

I feel like so many of them are memorable, and they all serve a purpose to the overall world building. The krogan show that they are not the violent thugs the galaxy has made them out to be. The salarian shows the struggle born out of building relationships with people of a species with a life expectancy so beyond your own. Lia'Vael illustrates what Tali says about the quarians being treated like second class citizens. Those small little side quests have a meaning and a purpose, it doesnt feel like they are Just There, and they add more to the lore of them game to those who care about that stuff.

[fromtheseventhhell]

I love how people are only ever interested in defending Arya's right to be weird-looking. It's never defending her intelligence from people who claim she's incapable of thinking for herself, highlighting her importance to the plot and refusing to see her as just a prop, acknowledging how much of her story gets stolen and given to other characters, talking about her trauma or how often it gets erased and overlooked, seeing her as more than just an attack dog/bodyguard, etc. Nope. It's just a "why can't people let Arya be ugly/unconventional looking? :(" post every other week because people are, for whatever reason, obsessed with how Arya is visually perceived. One of the most misinterpreted characters yet the issue is only ever with her being portrayed as "too pretty" or the wrong "type" of pretty. This fandom will entirely rewrite a character's motivations, values, and role in the story to the point that they consider references to canon "hate" but! The true injustice to canon is we acknowledge that she is described as pretty several times. Arya simply existing as her pretty, important, and non-conforming self is too complex and confusing for people to comprehend 😔.

[lucaswarmhotchocolate]

Also I know I’ve read quite a few fics where House teases Wilson about having been a twink when they first met, but like… House was the twink. Wilson was just pretty.

[ninjagirlstar5]

i think you forgot the tech wizard's birthday (mikado)

TO BE HONEST WITH YOU, ANON, THIS IS LESS, "Oh shit, I forgot one of my favorite character's birthday-!" AND MORE, "I've been swamped with work, school, and been more focus on a silly little stick figure show over SDRA2 and now I'm pass the deadline welp-"

Anyways, here's his birthday art that I tried to plan in advance but never finished it in time until today cause I didn't spend my time wisely.

Happy birthday to my worst boy(s)! I totally wasn't, like, four weeks late for this, hahaha!!;;;

(Featuring me still figuring out my IRLkado Lives AU coat design for him. Still not sure if I like it or not-)

[dramatic-dolphin]

Oh man, I am waaay on the other side of the "pronounce names correctly" debate. Not because I don't think you should, in general, attempt to pronounce names correctly, I do. But I'm trying to get people to stop trying to pronounce my name correctly.

I happen to have a name that's (for foreigners) Hungarian on Hard Mode. I'm talking umlauts, digraphs with y, just all the good phonemes that don't exist in most other languages. I've spent a lot of time abroad with people from various parts of the world, and I can tell you from hard empirical data: nobody can say it. And I'm cool with it! I just tell them the English equivalent and it's fine.

Mostly. Some people, especially those who are trying to be culturally sensitive, have a Really Hard Time™️ accepting that a) they are not getting it right b) continue to not get it right despite asking me to demonstrate over and over. And I appreciated it at first! How thoughtful, this attempt to engage with my culture. Cue several months of unsuccessful attempts, at the end of which they were (mostly jokingly) accusing me of faking it. Almost verbatim: "if we recorded you saying your own name and played it back to you, you would say it's incorrect".

(I get it though, the pop sci explanation that I've never bothered to fact check is that as you grow up, you're more attuned to characteristic frequencies of your mother tongue, so when another language comes along with different frequencies, you are quite literally incapable of distinguishing them. So their attempts may sound the same to them, but it sure doesn't to me. I tell them I have this with "bet" and "bat", and that sometimes puts an end to it.)

So yeah, attempt to pronounce everyone's name correctly. Unless they have asked you multiple times not to.

YES YES YES. sometimes you don't want to hear your name butchered over and over and again. like it can be funny when the entertainment is the hungarian gyöngyi and the czech přemysl trying to pronounce each other's name (actual thing that happened at an event my mom was at, everyone thought it was hilarious), but like. at some point it gets TIRING.

god do i hate those people who are like "well at the introduction i wouldn't stop trying until i could pronounce their name correctly!!" newsflash you were not pronouncing it correctly unless you also did a deepdive into the phonology of the language right there. what actually happened was that scene went on for so long and got so awkward they said "haha yeah that's correct!" to stop you from trying again. PLEASE stop. it is very awkward.

the pop sci explanation is sorrrrt of right, you're not really ever incapable of distinguishing phonemes, or phonologists would be out of a job! but your brain does become attuned to the subtleties that are important in your language and discards other phoneme differences that aren't used in your language because who even needs that. it's possible to learn to speak a language like a native and understand all the subtle differences so deeply that they come as instinct. it just takes a LOT of work.

(but- learning your native language took even more work. you're at an 8yr old's level of umderstanding in the language you're learning? well, how long do you think it took the 8yr old?)

also, relatedly, if someone - usually someone who's chinese in my experience - tells you their name, and then adds "but you can call me [english name/name in another language]!" it tends to be because they LIKE being called that name and possibly even prefer it to you butchering their name. they understand that you will butcher their name, because the language - which may or may not be chinese - is notoriously hard for outsiders.

[randomfoggytiger]

Philes, quick-- save me from doing my own research!

[papita474]

Its so funny to me that @dfwbwfbbwfbwf is making long post about "why I like and dislike this characters" and the I go "he /she is hot,I like him/her" jaksjsksk

[ganondoodle]

a sort of mini-rant .. or more a personal opinion of totk; most my issues with it are probably clear by now, given how much i have talked about it, its probably also rather clear that i dont like the sonau (engl zonai) very much the way they were done in the game and its got lots of reason that all play into each other-

tho to mention something that is much more personal taste; i dont think sonau tech is actually that much 'tech', its mostly just magic animating some green rocky looking material or creating flames and rockets kinda out of nowhere

im someone that loves mechanical stuff, like old mechanisms, the first cars and first versions of technology, steam trains and such, i think its in part bc i like knowing the context of things, how stuff WORKS, and why it is or how it makes sense, huge metal beams attached to countless cogs, hearing the steam shoot out of the kettle(?) that powers a huge maschinery ... steampunk if you will

and shiekah tech, while obviously not exactly like that, still has some mechanical parts to it, sure its also magical, powered by some unkown material, but its got bits and pieces that move, it looks like something that seems pretty believable, if you look into a guardians ... hole at the flipside of it (you know what i mean) theres stuff that moves, glowy cogwheels and more, pipes and cores, you can see it between their 'head' and body too, you find springs and screws on broken ones, even the cores have some mechanism around it, and while being automatic and doing stuff on their own .. they are not sentient, not in the way sonau constructs are at least (listen i, in realy life, think of pretty much anythign inanimate as a sentient thing in a way, but maybe you know what i mean, i also like when things cannot just talk directly to you -also a reason i like silent characters- and instead you have to work a little or just ... pay attention to understand it?) (this also kidna goes for the shrine puzzles? like you often had to work with some sort of mechanical thing to get to the end of the shrine in botw, in totk you mostly just kinda glue stuff together and it .. just works?? not a fan of that tbh tho the shrine puzzles where one of the most fun parts nonetheless)

the sonau 'tech' isnt that, really, the most mechanical thing is a wheel or fan spinning? but all other stuff either just works (like rockets and stuff) or its a bunch of floating rings vaguely held together by some magical swirly string, and the constructs literally talk to you, like characters, while still being treated as nothing but 'maschines', i got nothing against magical maschinery (heck i love the shiekah stuff) but thats like .. too far removed from actual mechanisms to hit the right spot for me, that combined with the strange super modern look of some things (like the wheels, and kinda nonsensical steering thing, the rockets that just .. look like literal rockets with a vaguely rock looking texture over it .. etc) it made it all the more bleh to me

and while its far from a deal breaker it just adds another grain of salt on my opinion of the sonau things in general and the game as a whole (especially considering that lame ass excuse to just act like shiekah tech never existed ... ill never forgive them for that)

[misc-obeyme]

I never understood Asmo's hair color. In the game, he has light brown hair, but in the anime, he has light pink hair (maybe strawberry blonde hair). The wiki states that he has champagne-colored hair, but upon further research, it seems that people tend to refer to this color as strawberry blonde hair.

This is very confusing, since champagne-colored hair is actually a pale yellowish-orange shade, while strawberry blonde hair is a light shade of red with blonde highlights. What's you're opinion on this?? Cause like I'm desperate for an answer....

My opinion is that Solmare was too chicken to give Asmo the pink hair he deserves. (And also the LONG hair he deserves... I have opinions about it lol.)

BUT since they have deprived us of pink haired Asmo, I always kinda thought of it as light brown? I mean, I'm sure it varies slightly based on screens and devices and color settings and such. But to me, his in game sprite always looked like it had light brown hair.

It's like that shade that's right in between brown and blonde, you know? It's too brown to be blonde but too blonde to be brown... I don't know how else to describe it.

I guess you could say it's strawberry blonde, but I kinda think it doesn't have enough red for that? It certainly varies in the anime and the card art. His eyes do that, too. The best card art gives him pink and yellow eyes each with a slightly orange tinge to them. It makes him look so beautiful and bright! Hang on~

Okay Asmo card for reference. I LOOOOVE his eyes in this card.

Anyway, I think this could be classified as strawberry blonde. It definitely has a pinkish reddish tinge to it. But it also has a lot of brown in it still, so I'm not entirely sure, to be honest with you.

When I look at this card, I think I would still call it light brown lol.

The lighter parts of his hair still don't have any yellow in them and that's the color needed for any type of blonde (and I would assume champagne as well though I'm not too familiar with that as a hair color). Even the brighter parts of his hair in this card are just the brown brightened by a white light source.

In the end, I suppose you can call it whatever you want, but to me personally, this will always be light brown. It's not yellow enough to be any kind of blonde and it's not red enough to be strawberry blonde either imo.

[steamanband]

Spg fanbot fans does your fanbot believe in ghosts 🤔

[ronanlynchbf]

see too many ppl still defending jdepp or running with the "mutual abuse" angle so here's a video presenting basically all the (publicly available btw! for anyone to be able to look up!) information on this case. Let it be known if you still support jdepp i am assuming you have never done a grain of research into this in your life and just ran with public opinion and misinformation

[raining-its-pouring]

Rereading Moon’s pearl dialogue and it’s all so good. I genuinely don’t get how people think she’s boring she’s so expressive in them.

[ir-abelas-vhenan]

Oh cool you're a gamer? Normally I'd claim such a chill and nebulous label for myself, but thanks to a helpful anon I now know instead that the proper term is "piece of shit"

[dragontag420]

ill be honest, sometimes i kinda feel like some of you guys think every new breed needs to be your new favorite breed or else its garbage and a disappointment and i really feel like you miss a lot of wonder that way

[lazycranberrydoodles]

the people in the tags understand me. starembers art is super pretty but also weird at times.