#// just in case you had a specific place you wanted shepard

[controversialcoven]

Outsiders gang headcanons

(That really aren’t headcanons because im a ponyboy fictive and just sharing random memories)

Johnny didn’t talk much, but if you got him talking about cats it would never stop, real lot of fun facts saved in his brain

Especially calico cats? He really liked calico cats, like the pattern or something

Ponyboy hated the blonde cut hair, but always left it alone since he felt like that was the last thing he’d ever have of Johnny

The Shepard gang did not like chocolate (I don’t know how)

Dally had this secret rivalry with everyone that only he knew about, where he made everything into a competition he would win

Darry is the only person to say “I wouldn’t get addicted to (insert thing), id just stop” and be right about it

Ponyboy didn’t like alcohol because it was beer, hand him a fruity drink like a strawberry daiquiri and he’ll be all over it

He still wouldn’t drink it regularly though, insert “that’s a girls drink” and he has enough addictions under his belt already

All of the Curtis siblings have chronic migraines but deny it

Soda once made himself cry in a movie by going “I will cry if this happens in the movie”

He wasn’t even sad he was borderline laughing

Pony and curly both have various scars on each other from doing extremely dumb things

Pony would say it’s stupid, but curly would call him chicken so then he’d do it anyways

Johnnys favorite place to sleep if it was late and he needed to get out was under a huge oak tree not to far from the house (if he didn’t crash at the Curtis house of course)

Speaking of the Curtis house, it was a one floor ranch house with very little rooms. It was a 4 bed 1 bath, but one of the rooms got turned into Darry’s work room

If any of the boys got asked the “bring only one thing to a deserted island” question, they’d all say hair oil with no hesitation

Half of the dirty things dally said he didn’t know what he was talking about and picked it up from a movie

If Johnny were alive today he’d have one of those raccoon tail hair styles (probably blue)

Darry would listen to Taylor swift

Pony started a running joke of saying “don’t tell darry” over everything (ex. He pours himself a soda in front of Darry and says “don’t tell Darry” as loudly has he possibly can) ((he gets jokingly shoved for this every time))

Pony is not the type to remind the teacher of homework, more like confusedly bring his homework to the teacher after class is done and walk away

Almost everyone had a specialized nickname for eachother, some that only a specific person could call them and if someone else tried they’d get the tar beaten out of them

In pony and sodas room the closet was full to the brim of snacks in emergencies

It also had an ash tray only pony knew about in case he wanted a smoke

This post is gonna be a mile long if I continue but I might do a part 2 some day

Edited a few things because I wrote it at 1am and it had issues

#the outsiders #johnny cade #ponyboy curtis #sodapop curtis #darry curtis #dally winston #dallas winston #curly shepard #the outsiders dally #the outsiders ponyboy #the outsiders johnny #the outsiders sodapop #the outsiders darry #did I get everything #s.e. hinton #the outsiders se hinton #for good measure #ponyboy posting

[lilmissnatcat24]

are you ready for the trope i've been foaming at the mouth to finally write

“Vakarian?” Pallin’s voice called out from his glass office. He gestured him forward with a flick of his fingers. “Can we talk? Now?” 

It was never a good sign when Pallin called someone aside. He, like most other turians, was professional, bordering on emotionless. Which made it all the most devastating when he would pull someone from the case, or fire them with a neat little severance package, or tell them that they needed to go pick out chunks of a vorcha out of a car grill on Tayseri (and, speaking from personal experience, was probably one of Garrus’s least favorite days working for C-Sec). 

Garrus ignored the immature chittering that came from Chellick, Ridgefield, and Lamont as he joined Pallin down the hallway into an empty office, normally kept clean and tidy for telling families that their children and their parents were found somewhere on the Citadel murdered. Pallin gestured at one of the seats for Garrus, pacing back and forth with a datapad tucked underneath his arm. 

Pallin looked incredibly uncomfortable. He was fidgeting with his armor, fidgeting with his gloves, fidgeting with his mandibles, fidgeting with just about everything in a five foot radius that could be fidgeted with. Garrus realized he’d never seen Pallin look so nervous before. 

He placed the datapad down on the table, looking up at Garrus expectantly. “Is this true, son?” 

Garrus was terrified to pick it up. It could be just about anything. Saren’s orders to fire Garrus from C-Sec, transcripts from a listening device that implicate Garrus in his investigation, a paper trail linking him to a sex club… He picked it up and read: 

Consensual Relationship Agreement

Citadel Security is committed to creating a work environment free from harassment, discrimination, conflicts of interest, exploitation, and favoritism. 

It is against Citadel Security policy to use a position of authority to induce another person to enter into a nonconsensual relationship. Indeed, even consensual relationships in the workplace can cause disruption and other problems in violation to company policy. 

The purpose of this agreement is to affirm that Delia Shepard (Officer- Drugs and Trafficking) and Garrus Vakarian (Officer- Homicide), both employees of Citadel Security, have agreed to engage in a welcome, consensual social relationship--

Garrus’s tongue felt like a foreign object in his mouth, his stomach dropping down several levels. What the everliving fuck was Shepard thinking? His entire face was so stupidly warm, so warm that he was sure that Pallin could feel it from across the room. 

“I--” 

“Listen, Vakarian,” Pallin said in a fake sort of soft professional voice. This was why he was so uncomfortable; dealing with HR matters like this always made him unsure of what to say, or how to say it, or where to put his hands when he talked. “I’m not going to be the one to tell you who you can and can't see when you’re not at work or how to spend your free time. But are you absolutely positive that this is how you want to play this?” 

“Um… I mean… we-- I guess, the two of us… um…” Garrus had no idea what to say. Luckily for him, neither did Pallin, evidently. 

“I don’t need to know the specifics, please,” he put his hand up, a pained expression on his face. “Just… just make sure this doesn’t get in the way of your work, yeah? No… no quickies in storage closets.” 

“No, sir,” Garrus said so quickly it sounded like one garbled, stuttering mess. 

“I better not be able to smell her all over you.” 

“No, sir.” 

“And I sincerely hope you don’t spend all of your time on the seventh floor at her desk. You need to be at yours, working. Is that clear?” 

“Yes, sir.” Pallin opened his mouth once more, then thought better, closing it. He waved Garrus away, a clear end to the conversation. Garrus stood, his head feeling as though someone replaced his brain with feathers and flies. And, doing exactly what Pallin told him not to do, went straight for the elevator and punched in the seventh floor.

#mass effect fanfiction #mass effect #mass effect fanfic #shakarian #ao3 fanfic #shepard x garrus #femshep #garrus vakarian #turn left

[striderincosmos]

WIP Whenever

As tagged by @swaps55, and inviting any who wish to participate! (I'm not exactly linked to many writers on here just yet)

Here's a sneak peak (a nice, long one) between Nathaniel 'Nate' Shepard and Garrus on their way to Feros in Spectre Echoes: Memories and Portents!

- - -

The crew area was a rather bustling place at the moment, what with the new additions to the crew. It made Garrus stand out even more at the table, dressed in a shirt and pants that accommodated the slight crest of his upper back.

Nate took a seat next to him, a human beer in one hand and a turian brew from a case he’d had assigned to the Normandy’s cold storage in the other. “Evening, Garrus,” he said casually, offering the brew. “How are you holding up?”

“Rather well, honestly,” Garrus said as he took his drink, opening it and taking a sip. “This sort of environment is easy for me, no matter the species. I might have decided to go to C-Sec over joining the reserves in a decade or so, but you can’t beat out nearly a decade of military training.”

“What made you go into C-Sec in the first place?” Nate asked.

“It was the family business,” Garrus shrugged. “My father had been C-Sec before getting pulled out from the Reserves for Relay-314, and his father before him had done the same thing. Still don’t know why the old man went into politics, though. Even C-Sec is simpler than that.”

Nate shrugged. “I try to avoid politics. When you have a camera pointed at you more often than not…”

“I can see how that’d be the case,” Garrus said, pausing for long moments. “So, I’ve got a question for you about Saren.”

“Funny enough, I’ve actually got one for you, too,” Nate said. “You first.”

“Are you really planning on trying to arrest Saren and drag him in front of the Council after what he’s done?”

Nate ruminated on the query with a pull of beer. “It’d be what the Council wants done, most likely. Saren’s dangerous, but if we can subdue him, he needs to face due process.”

Garrus’s mandibles drooped slightly, the action looking almost like a grimace. Or a sneer. “There’s a lot of risk to that too, though. He isn’t the best Spectre the Council has for nothing. He could probably find half a dozen different ways to escape during transit to the Citadel, let alone what he could do if he was on it.”

“We know he’s the most dangerous person in the galaxy,” Nate said assuringly. “If there’s anyone who can guard him, it’s going to be all of us and the krogan along for the ride.”

“That wouldn’t stop the Council from offering clemency, or just finding some way to sweep this under the rug,” Garrus retorted. “But taking him in is the way it’s done by the book, isn’t it? ‘Do it right, or don’t do it at all’.”

Nate frowned slightly at the rather bitter invective. “And who said that?”

“Lucrius Vakarian,” Garrus said, washing the name back down with a pull of his brew. “Among the most renowned detectives on the Citadel. Spirits know he said to me more times than I can count.”

“Not a regulations guy, then?” 

Garrus sighed quietly. “I get why they’re there. I get that they’re useful. My father and C-Sec drilled that into me well enough. But sometimes, in order to resolve a situation permanently, completely, the regs, and the people who enforce them, can make it so that a solution becomes a stopgap. People get away. Innocents get taken advantage of or hurt when they don’t need to.”

Garrus was silent for a moment. “Take Doctor Saleon.”

“Who’s that?”

“He was — probably is still — one of the leading figures of the Citadel’s black markets. Specifically in grown organs. Real mean bastard. In a place where a krogan who’s well-connected enough could drop 40,000 credits for a full quad transplant to try and counteract the genophage, Saleon was a unique brand of fucked up.” 

“See, there was an increase in organ trade, well beyond what we expected. We managed to confiscate some, and do some genetic tests. It was a bit of a mess, but it led us to a very lively turian who was very insistent that he was not, in fact, missing his liver. We ran a background check, and saw he worked for the aforementioned doctor.”

“What did you do next?” Nate asked.

“We brought him and some of Saleon’s other former employees in for questioning. While I was interviewing one of them, I noticed something suspicious. One of the detainees, a human, started bleeding from his abdomen during questioning. Pretty badly, too. We offered to patch him up, and he got panicky.”

Garrus paused, was silent for long moments. “We found dozens of incision scars on him. Some of them fresh, like the one that gave him away. Others much older. That’s when we realized this sick bastard Saleon wasn’t just employing people. He was testing on them. Growing the organs right inside of them, then cutting them open, harvesting them, and selling them off. Most of the test subjects were poor, desperate. They only got a small cut of the profits from any sale, and only if the organs were viable. If they weren’t, he just… left them inside them.”

The beer wasn’t very appealing to Nate anymore, and he set it on the table at arm’s length. “What happened then?” he ventured. 

“We went out to go and put the cuffs on this guy. But he rigged his lab to blow, ran as soon as his mules started getting pulled in by C-Sec. Took some of his ‘employees’ with him to the nearest spacedock. By the time we found where he was, the ship he stole was already leaving. He threatened to kill who were now his hostages if anyone tried to stop him.”

“And he got away?” Nate said incredulously.

Garrus nodded. “I ordered Citadel defenses to intercept and fire on him, but C-Sec HQ countermanded my order. They were worried about the hostages. Worried about civilian casualties for how close he still was to the city arms. I told them the hostages were already the next best thing to dead, that this was just the cold, hard calculus of stopping a criminal like this now and for good. But they wouldn’t listen.”

Nate sighed. “Sounds like a recipe for hating where you work.”

“To put it mildly.” Garrus chuckled darkly. “I went to Executor Pallin, the man in charge of C-Sec, and told him what I thought about the situation and the policies that made it happen. He told me if I didn’t like it, then I could quit. To be honest, I almost did, just to spite them.”

“As tough a choice as it is, the lives of the hostages were as important as catching Doctor Saleon,” Nate said pointedly. “If we didn’t care about the lives of those threatened by the people we want to bring to justice, how different are we from them?”

It was silent between them for a moment before Garrus sighed quietly. “You know, I can see where you’re coming from. I just wish we could have stopped Saleon as well.”

Again it was silent. “So,” Garrus said after a moment, “what was your question?”

“You’ve got a personal stake in this,” Nate began. “I won’t begrudge that, and I won’t discount that we might need to kill Saren to stop him. But if we do manage to capture him… can I count on you to let justice play out?”

Garrus was silent for long, contemplative moments. “As much as it might grate at me…” he finally said. “I’ll trust your judgment. You’ve got a good head on your shoulders, Shepard. However the stellar wind blows, I’ll follow your lead.”

Nate nodded. “I’m glad you have my back, Garrus.”

“I mean hey,” Garrus said, his mandibles implying a slight grin, “I get to learn what a Spectre looks like from you. Thus far, I’d say I’ve got a pretty good mentor.”

#WIP Whenever #mass effect #fanfic scene

[kittlesandbugs]

Fanfic Writer Questions

Tagged by @sidestepping & @askweisswolf, ty for thinking of me!!!

1. How many works do you have on AO3? 62, but if you unstack the one shot compilations... 138ish? if I can math right.

2. What's your total AO3 word count? 119,010, and the bulk is FHR lol

3. What fandoms do you write for? Currently Baldur's Gate 3 and Fallen Hero, previously TWC, Dragon Age, Mass Effect/Andromeda, Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 2

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos? Gonna cheat a little and do one per fandom because this is heavily slated towards Mass Effect Andromeda just from age lol

Sleep it off - Mass Effect, Shepard/Aria T'Loak, Shep gets drunk at Purgatory and Aria babysits her

Little steps to the side - FHR, Chargestep/Argentstep/Chargentstep, currently 55? little one-shot fics, usually prompts, sometimes tiny ideas I get in my own head

Space snippets - Mass Effect Andromeda, Jaal/Ryder, a few prompt one-shots that picked up big steam when it finally went Explicit lol.

Bottles of Thedas - Dragon Age Inquisition, Solavellan, 20 short one-shots inspired by the collection of booze you can pick up off the ground throughout the game (minus the Warden mixes)

Business and Pleasure - Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 2, Exile/Luxa, a re-write/better ending for Luxa gift fic for an exchange

5. Do you respond to comments? I am absolutely terrible at responding to comments because I see them in my inbox and I'm like oh yeah I'll reply to that later when I have time and then.... six months go by... the shame happens... I love every comment I get and I am so sorry alkdsfjoajsdfl

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? Ehhhhhhhhhh most of my fics are in-between things, not really stand-alones on their own. Probably the one I milked the hardest for the ending of it specifically is Words not spoken (FHR, Chargestep, Ortega visits Riley's apartment post-Heartbreak)

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? Again.... in-between things... the Mass Effect Andromeda and TWC fics are largely feel good fluff, so most of them?

8. Do you get hate on fics? Not that I'm aware of, lol

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? Typically fluffy and/or hurt/comfort character exploration, although sometimes I feel a need to go for a whump

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written? I haven't written a crossover since I was 13. I'm 37 now. I don't remember. It was pre-AO3 time for sure. XD

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen? Not that I'm aware of.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? Not that I'm aware of.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? No, but I've written fanfics to fanfics by @ellstersmash and @sidestepping because they're both so talented and I Felt The Compulsion

14. What's your all time favorite ship? Whatever I'm currently writing for, in this case... any combo of Chargentstep aaaaaaaaaaand Durgetash lol

15. What's a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? Me, staring at my endless folder of WIPs, some of which having not been touched in five years

16. What are your writing strengths? Character explorations, snappy dialogue, short and sweet and punchy

17. What are your writing weaknesses? Writing long-haul, we're here for a good time, not a long time

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic? Love it when other people do it! Very rarely do it myself!

19. First fandom you wrote for? Megaman X back in.................. 2000-ish? Very bad self-insert script fic lol

20. Favorite fic you've written? I think Time doesn't heal (FHR, Chargestep, all the Rangers and Riley experiencing the 3rd Heartbreak anniversary) is one of my biggest brain moments for writing fic, but Bottles of Thedas (mentioned above) has a special place in my heart for being the first and perhaps only large project I've finished.

Gonna taaaaaaaaaaaag... @astarien, @the-rebel-archivist, @gingerbreton, @rab-bitly, @catastrofriend

#meme #thank friend!!! #writers meme

[astorythatwritesitself]

2) Anything that you'd like to write but feel like you're unable to? 10) Top three favourite fic tropes. 19) Share a snippet from a wip without giving any context for it.

2: Honestly? ... everything. The imposter syndrome is real and intense and permeates like. Everything, especially writing |D A good third of why I take forever to do much is it takes so long to get over the 'ah fuck I'm a fraud' hurdle to even try putting the words down. It's also why I'm so intense on wanting feedback like. Genuinely. Grade me tell me what I'm doing wrong or right so I know what actually works cause lord knows I can't judge this myself lol

But for a more specific answer: That vaporwave post-apocalyptic furry thing I've been kicking around in my head for a few weeks now.

10: Mutual pining, hurt/comfort or whump, straight on angst.

19:

[Adrian's] immediate instinct was to shrug off the question and leave, but something stopped her halfway out the door. What [Thane] had said about his health, what she'd been thinking about this whole mission- 

Neither of them would be alive, this time next year.

Adrian stood up a little straighter, hoping she didn't also look like she'd been sucker-punched upside the head; had she been that tense since- god, even that first time she'd awoken to Wilson and Miranda talking over her? She'd been clenching her teeth then and ever since waking up for real.

 Thane had no connection to her past. No specialized knowledge that might be withheld if he lost faith in her; no gulf of experience one way or the other that left her feeling she owed him more than basic competence. Their conversations so far made it apparent he wasn't the most social, not many - if any?- friends, and (unless she was wildly off, always possible), he didn't seem… spiteful, like he'd spread anything around for shits and giggles. 

And... in his own words. He'd abandoned people, before. A dying man who didn't care about anyone, and had no one to care about him when he was gone; what did he have to gain, knowing Commander Shepard was a wreck?

What did she have to lose, in talking openly to someone like that?

The door had barely closed- she wasn't even consciously aware of deciding to stay- when the words spilled forth: "Have you heard about Akuze?"

Shit shit shit no-

“A human colony lost to thresher maws,” Thane said. “An Alliance platoon was lost, with-” He paused. Adrian could only glance at him as she sat down across the small table, enough to see the rapid double-blink as the pieces fell into place. “Only one known survivor. ‘The Shepard Memorial-' " The last three words were clipped, an eerie echo of the soundbite that had been floating around news stations for the last couple of weeks.

“Yeah.” The word was half a sigh. Adrian clasped her hands together on the tabletop, focusing on them as she spoke. “Not- not the only survivor as it turns out though, found there was another one a couple months-” Her voice caught, and she gave herself a slight shake. “-years ago. But yes, I’m- I was involved.”

She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, squeezing her hands together, nails just biting into her skin. Good, kept her focused. “A colony had gone dark. It was- at the time it was the closest Alliance-funded colony to Terminus space, so they ordered a full platoon. Just in case. "Akuze was quiet, though, that was what bugged us. Ten years and there hadn’t been any reports of… violence. No slavers, no mercs or pirates - the most exciting news out of the place was that it was perfect for apple trees, for god's sake." She raked a hand through her hair, shaking her head. ". We figured it was a comms issue. Fifty men just in case it was dangerous, but it most likely wasn’t, so… good field test for a fresh officer.”

“You.” 

Adrian nodded. Thane’s voice sounded far away, nearly lost under the thunder of fifty marines drumming their fists on the table or tapping out on the floor, dozens of voices raised in some song whose lyrics she couldn’t remember - just the voices. The elation of responsibility, Shelly and Dreyfus' arms around her shoulders rocking her back and forth in time with the beat, heavy and warm and so real, even nearly ten years gone.

Her eyes snapped open, and she thought she saw something move. Thought she caught a glimpse of green - but Thane hadn’t moved much, only to lean forward, hands folded under his chin, looking something alarmingly close to concerned- 

“Me. Right.” She forced her eyes to meet his, or at least focus on some point close enough to fake it; forced her breath to remain even. “We had been on the ground for about… fifteen hours? Not too long, but enough to find the settlement was… gone. I mean, gone, gone- no houses. No sign of fields, no people or animals, not even bodies. Just-” For a second, the cramped room vanished, she was looking out over that flat, barren plain ringed by hills, trying to figure out what to do next.  “We were prepared for a lot of things, but not… not nothing. Not like that.”

#ask #mxanigel #shep tag #thank you!

[floraltypes]

Old Beginning Pt. 2

pairings - aaron hotchner x reader, jethro gibbs x reader

chapters - one 

summary - the news of a dinner party arrises, but there are some little challenges before the actually night

wc - 3k

an - sorry this took awhile, my summer is over and my writing schedule will be a little wonky now. i’m taking a break from answering requests, so I apologize if I haven’t answered yours, but i eventually will

Penelope and you both looked back at Aaron, taken back by his repeating of the word ‘boyfriend’. You didn’t plan on telling people so soon, considering he was your boss from your old line of work.

“I want to know everything about him, you have to invite him!” Penelope quickly went back into her loud chatting, attracting other faces at her comment. “I also may have mentioned to some of the team that you do have a boyfriend, it just slipped! You know I can’t keep secrets!”

“It’s okay, Pene,” You smiled softly. “I can’t invite him though, you know, since I’m not the one holding the dinner event.”

“You can invite your partner, everyone else can as well, considering it is a catch up,” Dave walked over, a cup of coffee in his own hand as he used the other to scratch at his stubble. “I’ll even invite the woman I’ve been seeing. Feel free to all bring a plus one, I have enough room and everyone deserves a taste of my Italian dishes, will change their lives.”

“Thank you, Rossi, but I simply can’t. It’s so soon, and he’s such a busy man,” You laughed, waving your hand. “It was a kind gesture though.”

“L/n, don’t tell us you’re embarrassed to show your new boyfriend to us?” Derek walked back over, poking your shoulder. “Penelope told all of us down here, just wanted to wait and see when you would tell us.”

“I’m not embarrassed, that’s absurd. He’s truly busy.”

“Invite him, I’ll make sure Will comes and hire a babysitter for Henry, so that we can truly have a adult night,” JJ chuckled. “Everyone is bringing a date, so it would be odd if you didn’t.”

“Actually, I don’t have a partner at the moment due to how invested I am in my studies and the factors of that many young woman my age only focus on the factor of conventional attractiveness rather then the complexity of brains and deep-”

“Don’t worry, Spencer, if you don’t have a date, then I’ll just bring two,” Emily joked. “You don’t need a date, I’m not bringing one either, but Y/n is for sure.”

“I’ll be like the tw-”

“You are dating someone, we aren’t, so you’ll bring that someone. Come on, L/n,” Emily continued on, grabbing your hand and pulling you away. “I’ll walk you out,” She turned back to wink at her coworkers, leading you to the elevator and soon the parking lot.

“Aaron,” Rossi looked towards his friend, a man who had his glare fixated on your exiting figure. “Will you bring Beth, the more the merrier.”

“Yeah, I suppose I will,” He answered, retrieving his cellphone from his pocket, pulling up her contact picture, thumb hovering over the call button. “Let’s finish up this work, so we call all get home.” He shoved it back in his pocket, commanding everyone else while moving back up the stairs to his office.

Meanwhile, you were outside of your car, looking at Emily still was right by your side.

“Bring your boyfriend,” She commented, watching as you fished for your keys and unlocked your car. “I want to meet him, I haven’t really talked to you in a long time.”

“We’re both so busy. Him as well.”

“Seriously, Y/n, I’m not gonna ease up on you. I’ve noticed the new tint in your eye, new considering the last time it was severely dulled. It’s amazing to see your real smile again, you closer to your old self despite the past losses. He really has helped you, so I want to meet the man who helped my dear friend so much.”

You contemplated her kind words, getting down to the point that everyone probably was happy to see you again, yourself physically and mentally.

“I’ll call him, see if he can come. Can’t promise anything, his work is very important to him, so if it needs him he’s there.”

Emily smiled widely, leaning over to kiss your cheek before you moved to open the front door and start your car.

“Great, I’m actually bringing someone. Poor Spencer might be the only one.”

“Aaron is as well?”

“Hotch, yeah,” She laughed. “Meet her at some track meet he had, Jack really likes her.”

“That’s good, I’ll see you soon then,” You smiled, shutting the door as Emily watched you back out, waving a small goodbye.

Leaving the facility, while at a stop light, you found your flip phone, finding the contact of Jethro and quickly dialing the number.

“Gibbs,” He answered.

“Hey, are you on a case?”

“No, are you driving?”

“Yes, safely. What are you doing? Building a boat,” You chuckled, imagining him in the basement with the tool and sweaty shirt.

“Yeah. Did you meet up with your old team today?”

“Mhm, all surprised to see me today. It was humorous in a sense. But, Rossi invited me and everyone to a dinner, telling us to bring a partner.”

“Who are you planning on bringing?”

“You.”

“So, we’re being more public with our relationship?”

“Just with the old team, my old team, they don’t have contact with anyone apart of NCIS, or at least not personal only professional.”

“I thought you were going to come and see me, instead of making me drive,” You could almost sense his smile on the other line, a mocking one.

Gibbs would obviously accept the offer, the man truly holding a strong affection for you, a soft spot personally for you, so he would agree to drive the hour or two.

But just because he would, it doesn’t mean he didn’t have to mess around a bit, act like he wouldn’t.

“I know, but then you can see my new apartment. And after this weekend, who knows when we’ll be able to see each other again. Both of our jobs involved sporadic cases that start and end at no specific time, hard to plan around. And, everyone is pressuring me to meet you.”

“I’m already popular, huh?”

“I suppose,” You huffed, rubbing your temple, exhaustion starting to take over you, wanting to get some rest, a calming bath to combat earlier feelings that seemed as if they were creeping up once again.

“I’ll come, don’t worry. Get home safe, call me when you have the address and date.”

“Okay, bye.” You hung up, tossing the phone onto the empty seat as you continued to drive, playing the music from the CD already inserted in your car.

Time leading up to the dinner seemed to fly by, especially considering that it wasn’t much time and you weren’t having to work. You decided to take the free time to get fully settled in, figure out your nerves, make a phone call to your therapist, and even read. Trying to get prepared for all the days that are to come.

Your hair was now being changed from its normal du to a new one, fancier in a sense. Applying a nice coat of makeup, new lip color, trying a new pallet and the old eyelash curler that hasn’t been used in a while, you finished ‘upgrading’ your face. A outfit was simple, considering you didn’t have many fancy ones, so with not much to choose, it was a quick decision.

Sliding that on and fixing the straps to be a bit tighter, messing with the bra to fit correctly, and pulling it down a bit, you grabbed your go to purse, shoving needed materials a into it as you moved to the kitchen.

Within the kitchen, there was a certain door within the wall of the pantry with a password. Quickly typing in the combination the door swung open, choosing between a small but handy knife, you put in the pocket of your bag.

You weren’t too worried about dangers at the dinner, but with years of catching/fighting murders, specific people after you, and even very powerful assassins, you carried certain weapons for safety.

Hearing the sturdy knock of someone’s knuckles on your front door, you rushed to shut the the secret door in the pantry, heading to your front door where someone was waiting.

A quick peak through the hole, your eyes widened in surprise and opened the door, allowing the man to walk in.

“I wasn’t expecting to see you, till uh, later tonight,” You mentioned, looking him up and down to see him more dressed up. “Are you not able to attend anymore?”

“No, I’m still going,” Hotch denied, sliding off his shoes and following you to the couch. “I just wanted to chat before than, a chance for just the two of us.”

“Is something wrong?” You walked over to your teapot, filling it with water, and placing it on your stove, heating up the water. “This is very unexpected.”

“Nothing is wrong. I just want to talk to you, see the apartment, hear what’s new with you.”

“Things,” You shrugged. “Obviously I’ve had a new job experience, similar in ways and also not. Grew closer with a new group of teammates, people, lost a few. Yeah, lost a few,” You repeated, remembering Jenny Shepard, even Kate, both amazing women, who did amazing things.

“That’s always hard, I guess my most recent loss was Haley,” Aaron hummed, soon the kettle making a high pitched noise, you rushing to take it off and grab some tea bags.

“She was also a amazing woman. Wonderful mother, cared so much for that little boy.”

“She really was.”

“Did you come to chat about her, it’s been a while since we had. Last time we really talked was five months after she passed, after the funeral.”

“It really has been that long?” Aaron questioned, taking the tea that you time handed him. “But it’s not the reason I came. I should have made more of a effort to keep in touch, after your transfer, after your loss.”

“You stayed with me for three months, allowing to lose some time with your son so you could change my dirty sheets and pick up all my snotty tissues,” You laughed, sitting down across from him with your own cup. “You had to get back to your family, make up for loss time.”

“You still helped me with my divorce during that time, and I still saw Jack,” He reminded you.

“I could’ve moved in with my father, but you allowed me not to do that.”

“Your father is a good man, but might not be the best to live with,” He laughed, a deep chuckle, something you didn’t see much. “You look nice.”

“Now you just notice,” You chuckle, taking another sip. “Thank you, you look nice as well. I was actually just going to call Jethro and tell him to meet me there, a bit of a drive and he isn’t happy about having to find a new team,” You spoke freely, feeling comfortable with the old friend, one you used to spill everything to years ago, him ranting to you too.

“Jethro? He has his own team? Sounds like a boss of some type.”

“Uh, technically. It’s complicated. I need to get going, to make it to the dinner on time and, finish, um, cleaning up my room before leaving.”

“I could take you there.”

“No thanks, I’ll see you there, bye.” You helped guide him to the door, a curt wave before he exited and shut it, locking it in a rush and moving back to the dining room table to clean the mugs.

You didn’t want to tell him all that, always insecure due to Gibbs being the prior boss of you and how people looked at that. Rumors were always spread about your and Aaron’s relationship, mostly about it being romantic.

Joining the team, you two easily hit it off due to your personalities. Always being filled with determination and stubbornness, refusing to give up till everything was done and right, even with files. Eventually you joined together, talked, spent most days with each other due to cases, and truly gained a very close friendship.

When rumors were getting around, glares were thrown your way, comments, left out by members who weren’t your immediate teams. People thought you were the cause of Haley and Aaron’s divorce, somehow word got around quickly, drama always does.

It was frustrating, already dealing with many different things at home, and even being in a relationship, it put so much unneeded stress and anxiety onto you.

So, getting into a relationship with Gibbs was a very reluctant thing on your part, he expressed his feelings first, but it was hard to accept them, despite the nerves he faced to do it.

Locking up the apartment, having all of your items with you, you made your way out the door and too your car, starting the drive to David’s house.

Upon arriving, you could hear light chatter in the home, lights on, and soothing music playing in the background. It sounded like everyone was having their fun, you couldn’t make out all the shadows of everyone indoors, just waiting outside for Jethro to arrive.

“Y/n?” You turned around at the sound of his voice, keys jingling in his hands as he walked up to you with a sly smile, shoving them in his pockets to place his arms around your waist. “What’s wrong, love?” Be snaked them around, a kiss to your somewhat clothed shoulder.

“Nothing, just a bit nervous to introduce you to everyone,” You smiled back at him, he squeezed a little tighter, catching your lips in a quick kiss. “Looking at your team, yet?”

“Nevermind that,” He grumbled, removing his hands to now interlace your left one with his right. “We should go in, right?”

“Maybe we could head back, to my place, say you are sick or something?” You looked back at him with a pleading look, to which he just chuckled at, starting to move to the front door, pressing the doorbell as you groaned a little.

“You’ll be fine,” He looked back at you as Rossi answered the door, cheerful smile on his lips, glass of scotch in hand as he moved out of the way to let you in.

“Ah! Y/n!” He cheered, leaning over to kiss your cheek and then pulled back. “Glad you made it! This must be…”

“Y/n! Oh where is the man?” Penelope rushed in, coming right by you with her own fruity drink, then leaning to whisper in your ear. “Is this him, oo!”

“Uh, Jethro that’s David,” You pointed to the man who first greeted you, him and Jethro shaking hands. “This is Penelope, the one kind of like Abby,” You smiled, as she gave you a little look, turning back and enveloping him in a little hug. She quickly turned back to you.

“He looks a little intimidating,” She whispered as you just laughed.

“For sure,” You nodded.

“Can I offer you a drink?” David turned to you two, gesturing to the one in his hand. “Something like Garcia for you Y/n, and what about you Jethro?”

“Just call me Gibbs, and yeah that’s fine,” He corrected Rossi, taking your hand as the two of you walked more inside of the magnificent house.

It truly was so well designed, very expensive, and the appetizers adorning the oak wood table looked very delicious. You wanted to go and grab a bite, before you were actually led to the living room where everyone was currently sitting.

“L/n, finally made it,” Derek laughed, beer in his hand as he pointed at you with a little chuckle. “You always know how to be a bit late.”

“Fashionably late, I believe that’s what it’s called,” JJ corrected them with her own wine glass in hand, Will sat right besides her on one of the couch as most of them in that room joined in laughter.

“What can I say?” You laughed, walking over, feeling less nervous with the factor of introducing your boyfriend, taking a seat on another couch in the large room, Jethro automatically sitting right besides you.

“So, introduce us,” Emily motioned over to Jethro, sly smile playing on her lips.

“This is Jethro, but he goes by Gibbs, and, uh, this is the team,” You started to name everyone off while pointing to them, leaving off a few names due to your members introducing their own partners to you.

Emily, Derek, and JJ had all brought partners. Spencer and Penelope decided to ‘go together’ as if they were partners, and Hotch hadn’t arrived yet. Rossi also had his girlfriend helping him cook in the kitchen, making drinks for you and Gibbs now.

“So, you work at NCIS, right?” Spencer questioned. “The Naval Criminal Investigative Service, very interesting considering the type of crimes you investigate. I would love to hear more about some of your cases and how you went about it,” Spencer smiled, a small notebook being pulled out of his pocket with a pen.

“Yeah,” Gibbs just nodded, looking at you a little questioning, which you just chuckled at.

“Why should we talk so much about work, it’s something we all do too much of,” You joked, everyone laughing, as Dave came back out, handing some drinks.

“Fine, fine, what do you do for fun Mr. Gibbs?” Derek asked, putting a arm over the couch and pulling his girl closer to his side, the woman just on her phone.

“I like to build boats, a type of hobbie I’ve been doing for years.”

“Building boats? Where?” Will wondered, intertwining his fingers with JJ.

“My basement, a private workspace.”

“How do you get it out then?” Penelope inquired, now back by Spencer and her face in her hand, leaning closer to show her interest in Gibbs statement.

“I’d be no fun if you knew that,” He shrugged, taking a drink with a small smile as Penelope gasped, Emily mouthing how ‘I like him’. It was sweet how everything was going well.

They all continued to converse with Gibbs, easily accepting him apart of the conversation, it was sweet and you were now on your second drink, practically all nerves gone.

“Sorry we’re late,” A voice mentioned in the hallway, dressed in a fine suit with a beautiful woman standing besides him. He shrugged off the last of his coat as he hung it up, taking her hand and walking into the hallway a little.

“This is such a nice place, Aaron. Oh! Your friend, wow, so grand,” The woman admired, now truly getting in your line of sight.

“Yeah,” He mumbled, eyes interlocking with yours before falling onto Gibbs. “I’m Aaron, call me Hotch.”

“I’m Gibbs,” Your boyfriend stood up, moving over to the other man with his hand stuck out. “Call me that.”

You had a feeling this evening wouldn’t be as smooth as you hoped.

——————

taglist - @wolviesbabes @hotch-meeeeeuppppp

(comment to be added, or a tag list for all my gibbs post)

#criminal minds #cm x reader #criminal minds fanfiction #criminal minds x reader #ncis #ncis reader insert #ncis x reader #gibbs x y/n #jethro gibbs x reader #leroy jethro gibbs #gibbs x you #leroy jethro gibbs x you #gibbs x reader #hotch x y/n #hotch x you #hotch x reader #aaron x y/n #aaron x you #aaron x reader #aaron hotchner

[who-is-page]

I’m Commander Shepard and This Is My Complex Relationship With (Alter)Humanity and the Fictionkin Community

Author: Page Type: Personal Essay Words: 1,504 Summary: About my complex relationship with fictionkin and fictionkinity in connection to being Commander Shepard.

[Part of the Sol System's Alterhuman Writing Project for NaNoWriMo 2021. If you don't want to see these posts, block the tag #inkedpaws]

Fictionkin groups and spaces have been suffering in the alterhuman communities these past few years and it hasn’t gone unnoticed by anyone with the eyes to see it: the “Kin for fun” or KFF fandom that cropped up back in 2016 and became a rolling tsunami of misinformation and misdirected aggression towards actual otherkin, therians, and fictionkin has done damage beyond what I can succinctly summarize. It’s rare that I see new fictionkin pop up and stay around the community—and it’s rarer still that I see projects or creations, either individually-created or collaborative efforts, come up with fictionkin or specific fictionkin identities as the focus. A part of me likes to hope that I’m being cynical and that I’m just absent from important fictionkin spaces, but a part of me knows that’s likely not the case.

As someone with a fictionkin identity myself, I’ve felt this loss hard and tried to ignore it harder, because it never felt like my “place” to poke or prod within the community discussions and discourses surrounding it. Even though I’m Commander Shepard, and even though I likely fall into some sort of Pokemon-adjacent form of identity, I’ve never felt fictionkin—which is something that I partially attribute both to my origins in the alterhuman community, where I still carry internalized baggage around the word “fictionkin” in application to myself as someone who started in the therian community as a (then miscategorized) dhole, as well as to the fact that I’m animal-first as an individual with, as my systemmate Dash might put it, an entirely nonhuman foundation or baseline in my self-view.

It’s a sentence that’s harder than it should be to get out, saying point-blank that I’m fictionkin. In my earliest years within the alterhuman community, though anti-fictionkin attitudes had begun to dissipate, they were still astoundingly present and clear. Especially from old guard gatekeepers of therian varieties, and even some older members of the otherkin community. While those people are all long gone now (or, alternatively, have slunk away to rotting parts of the community well outside public eye), it’s hard to forget the ways that even people who were then-respected would react towards fictionkin with belittlement and scorn.

And more than that, I’m an animal first and foremost; an “extranthrope,” if one wanted to use the term, though I don’t apply it to myself. Having a human fictotype in this scenario feels like it functionally has a set of contradictions that I just don’t know where to even begin with, similar to being something of a reverse-otherkin. My shifts, rare as they are and suppressed as I keep them on the uncommon occasions they do pop up, come completely out of left field and unsettle me in a particularly unique way. “Human” but not, “human” but wrong. I’m like a watermelon carved into a pumpkin on my best days at front, but this is like you’ve taken the peeled skin of a different-but-still-orange winter squash and gently layered it over the watermelon. It’s like the feeling of species dysphoria combined with uncanny valley, but aimed inward, at the human identity.

If the origin of this fictionkin identity is of a spiritual nature, then there’s also the issue that it doesn’t fit into my current construct of beliefs; meanwhile if it’s psychological—which I don’t think it is, but will include for the sake of the perspective—then I not only have to wonder both how and why, but I also have the added benefit of being a small minority in a primarily spiritual-oriented minority group. The punchline is stress and confusion in either situation, with me as the joke.

But the standup act doesn’t just end there. Within the Mass Effect fandom, it seems that 90% of those of us who are fictionkin are various iterations of Shepard. For individuals familiar with the story, I’ll give you one guess as to why. For those unfamiliar, it’s sufficient to say that over the course of the three Mass Effect games, you’re liable to get everyone you care about killed in the most gruesome ways, and then at the end you’re almost guaranteed to die yourself, anyways. Depending on your point of view, there is no happy ending for the Mass Effect series, just a galaxy devastated and a war hero either dead or unrecognizable. Most Shepards fall into the former category. to no one’s surprise.

Writing out, it’s practically laughable: I almost went into the Marines in this life, spending a year as a pre-bootcamp poolee, only to have the realization years later that I might’ve in the past been a space-flavored Marine special ops. I was romantically engaged with a scholar who specialized in understanding species outside their own, xenoarcheology especially, and now I’m dating a bunch of animals and humans who all define themselves by their studies of others. Both then and now, I was just some guy who kept walking into frankly apocalyptic scenarios and only getting out unscathed through sheer dumb luck and because of the people walking next to me, though that’s significantly more literal then than it is now. Either way, the irony’s bloody on the tongue, because obviously nothing’s changed between that life and this one.

If I’m an animal trying staunchly to ignore invasive humanity, does that really count as an “alterhuman” experience? As a fictionkin identity? These are questions important on personal and community levels. Personal because I’m still figuring out to handle this part of myself: not only is it a strange, new experience on so many functional levels, but also because it’s not exactly a happy or soft identity. Being Commander Shepard for me personally is almost something to mourn, in this context: it’s the equivalent to doing a 13-card past life reading and somehow pulling out 13 Towers from a single tarot deck. It would be a past life that likely culminated in total, utter, failure and destruction. Not exactly the most fun thing to bring up at parties, here.

Important on community levels because I don’t know whether I feel comfortable contributing to the fictionkin community and fictionkin spaces, given I feel so far removed from them, and I’m still internally petrified from how I’ve seen others treat fictionkin due to misconceptions around the identity. I’ve grown comfortable in the way I’m perceived in community spaces—outside of the whole “people mistaking me for a fox therian because I’ve been around so long that people don’t realize my avatar is a dhole in reference to my original theriotype” thing—and that makes me hesitant to change the way I talk about myself. I’m also just generally paranoid when it comes to taking on larger terms that can morph in unexpected directions, or labels which can cause people to read into things that don’t exist: this was a primary reason for me dropping the theriomythic and otherkin labels, after all.

I’ve talked in my essays before about how much I enjoy seeing others talk about their experiences and I’ve been very vocal in my encouragements of others to create the type of content that they want to see, or that they resonate with. I don’t want to be hypocritical in not exploring and putting out aspects of my own identity. And there’s a sense of responsibility, too: the fictionkin spaces I’ve seen on Tumblr, Twitter, and elsewhere often look like they’re treading water and just staying afloat amidst an enormous amount of both long-standing shit-stirring anti-fictionkin attitudes (even from other alterhumans), as well as the surge of KFF that often end up inappropriately and uninformedly equating their fandom shenanigans to the fictionkin community. If I can do my individual part to contribute my content and help with those issues, then shouldn’t I? Isn’t that the right thing to do, or is that just me personally overstating the community-importance of individual content? Or, like I said before, would that potentially be overstepping myself given the fact that I’m generally not a part of fictionkin communities? It’s a hard line to walk, and one I’m still pacing back and forth on.

As of right now, I’m aware that the way I’ve been ignoring this aspect of myself is likely unhealthy, just on a baseline level. The best course of option, at least for myself, is probably to turn and face the music on self-identity, even if I’d rather avert my eyes. Writing and talking about my experiences and memories, accepting what’s happened and happening, letting the noemata or memories or anything else come as they will. It’s difficult for me to even consider, admittedly. The idea of it all is terrifying, and leaves me feeling flayed open already. But this is an identity and part of myself I’ve been running from, ignoring, and downplaying since 2017 or 2018—I think it’s about time I finally confront it and take it in by the horns (or in this case, by the omnitool).

#inkedpaws #fictionkin #alterhuman #queue-is-page #all of these are first drafts and so is thissssssss #otherkin #fictionkind

[felassan]

Mass Effect development insights and highlights from Bioware: Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development

This is the Mass Effect version of this post.

[In case you can’t read it the subtitle in the bottom left logo above is “Guardians of the Citadel”]

Note: Drug use is mentioned.

Cut for length.

Mass Effect 1

ME began its life in a vision document in fall 2003

Codenamed “SFX”

Conceived of by Casey Hudson and a core team from KotOR. Its genesis was the intention to create an epic sci-fi RPG in an original setting that BioWare owned (so they could have full creative control), and in a setting that was conceived of first and foremost as a video game

Initially players could control any squadmate, but they wanted it to be about Shep and for players to be focused on Shep being a battlefield commander, rather than on switching bodies

By the start of 2004 its story was shaping up. Initially humans landed on Mars in 2250 and discovered evidence of an ancient alien race and a powerful substance, Black Sand, which rapidly advanced tech to the point that FTL travel was possible. (My note: obviously now the Prothean artifacts on Mars & associated mass effect force tech enabled this in the final canon, but I wonder if aspects of the ‘Black Sand’ naming-type & powerful substance stuff was rolled into red sand from final canon) Humans were suddenly capable of travel to multiple star systems and made contact with a multitude of other species. At the start of the first game, these species together with humans had a fragile peace, with focus placed on the political center of the galaxy, a hub known as Star City, later renamed the Citadel

Multiplayer was a vision for the series as far back as 2003. The plan was for ME1, an Xbox exclusive at launch, to take advantage of the platform’s online components. Early designs saw players meeting in one of the central hubs to interact and trade items in their otherwise SP adventures

By 2006 it had the name ME and the story was more specific, with the theme of conflict between organic and synthetic lifeforms. The story’s scope now stretched across 3 games and included scope for full co-op MP

They tried to do MP in every game, discussing it from the get-go, but it always just fell by the wayside. “When you’re trying to build something that is a new IP, on a new platform, with a new engine, you’ve got to really focus on the core elements of the game.” 

The conversation system prototype was made in Jade Empire, and some of ME’s earliest writing was done in an old JE build. At first there was no conversation wheel. Paragon was “Friendly” and Renegade “Hostile”. In the prototype Shep was a silent unnamed Spectre. Many conversations in the prototype about the player’s choice in smuggling a weapon through Noveria made it into the game

In said prototype a merchant referred to themselves as “this one”, though the word hanar never appeared. The PC in it also had the option to end a conversation with “I should go”. In the prototype also, Harkin was voiced by Mark Meer

An early version of the Mako got used as the krogan truck in ME2

Early concepts of the Citadel were drawn in pencil by CH. A piece of concept art of its final design was painted based on a photo of a sculpture near Aswan, Egypt

As with any new IP naming it was a struggle. They put out a call to all staff for ideas, did polls, made a name generator that combined words that they liked in random ways and made pretend logos of ones they liked in Photoshop to see if they could make themselves love the name or find visual potential in it. (Some of these names are in the pic at the top of this post.) CH liked “Unearthed” as it was a reference to Prothean ruins dug up on Mars and humanity’s ascendance going away from Earth. They knew the game would have a central space station featuring prominently so some of the ideas were based on that - “The Citadel”, “The Optigon”, “The Oculon”. “Element” was another one they had in mind due to the rare substance in the game 

CH: “I was a big fan of John Harris’ book Mass, which had epic-scaled sci-fi ideas, so that was a word that came up often. Many of the names came from the idea that the IP featured a fifth fundamental physical force (in addition to the known four of gravitational, electromagnetic, strong nuclear and weak nuclear) so the word ‘effect’ came up pretty often.” Ultimately none of the ideas really felt right. One Monday morning they were going over the names and Greg Zeschuk said he had an idea on the weekend: “Mass Effect!” CH: “I said, ‘I don’t hate it’, which in the naming process is a high compliment. And it stuck!”

CH on Shep’s Prothean vision from the beacon: “It was hard to imagine how we would do this. CG was - and is - really expensive. Instead I wanted to try doing it through photography and video editing. So I went to a local grocery store and bought a few packages of the weirdest looking meat that I could find. Then I set up a little photoshoot in my basement, complete with some electronics parts and some red wine for juicyness.” He used these props to create a video sequence where the photos were rapidly cycled and blurred, along with production paintings, to create the scary vision an organic/machine experiment on the Protheans. These mashups were also used as inspiration for concept artists and level designers who were working on these themes

Tali used to be called Talsi

On the licensing side they often joke that they’re licensing N7 not “Mass Effect” due to N7′s popularity

There was a confidential internal guide to the IP in 2007 to help devs along and summarize/synthesize the vision etc. Some excerpts from it are shown in the book and this is the first time the public have ever seen them

Early versions of Asari had hair

Asari were designed as a nod to classic TV sci-fi (with human actors wearing obvious makeup and prosthetics to play aliens)

The turian design guideline was “we want them to be birds of prey”. They also wanted a range of alien types, some close to human like Asari, while others were to be a lot further away, like turians

BioWare patented the conversation wheel, which was a first for them. CH had been frustrated with reviews of Jade Empire that said that the actioncentric game was too wordy [with its list dialogue]. “I’m like, story is words. [...] What is it about our games that is making people feel like they’re wordy?” Then he thought “In a game you kind of need to feel like you’re continuing to play it. Maybe you should continue feeling like you’re playing it actively into the dialogue.” “[The wheel] kind of gave a new experience with dialogue when you did start to react based on emotion, and that’s ultimately what we’re trying to bring out in our games”

The original krogan concept was based on a bat “with a really wide squidgy face. We just used its face on top of this weird body and it kinda worked”

Geth musculature was based on fiber-optic cables, with flexible plates of armor attached

The vision for the IP was 80s sci-fi inspired space opera

The concept art of Saren lifting Shep by the throat inspired a similar scene in-game. The staging wasn’t planned til designers saw that art

A squadmate with Shepard on the way to meet Ash in an old storyboard was called Carter. Early name of Kaidan or Jenkins?

Bono from U2 was kinda instrumental in bringing us ME lol

Finding the right cover art for ME1 was notably tricky

Matt Rhodes got his start drawing helmets for ME1, including one which would become Shep’s “second face”. He estimates he drew between 250-270 different ones

Some of the sounds in-game were people smashing watermelons with sledgehammers and sticking fists into various goos

The audio team had fun trying to slip the iconic main theme into unexpected places throughout the MET. “We were very aware of how powerful that track was for the fans and it was tempting to overuse it for any moment we wanted to make really emotional”.

The theme was creatively repurposed in ME3: slowed down and reworked as the ambient sound for the SR-2. “If you listen to it for a really long time, just stand in the Normandy and listen, you’ll actually hear the notes change slowly. It doesn’t sound like music, it sounds like a background ambiance, but it’s there.” (My note: Well no wonder the Normandy feels so much like home?? 😭 sneaky..)

Bug report: “Mako Tornado”. There wasn’t enough friction between the tires and the ground, causing testers to lose control of the vehicle and send it spinning into the air like a tornado. “As it turns, the front end comes up, and then it starts spinning and spinning and spinning and spinning faster and faster and faster until it just flies up in the sky” (My note: Sounds like a regular day in the Mako to me)

Cerberus originally had a bigger role in this game. It was cut but they had a whole explorable outpost. “I called it Misery,” says Mac Walters, “It was this planet with a little outpost that said ‘Welcome to Misery’”. Everything on the outpost was shit - dirty worn stuff, no windows, no kitchen, the vehicle bay was open to the elements etc

The Reaper sound is literal garbage. Some audio designers went on a recording trip to a national park. One of them got fixated on a garbage can, “a metal bear-proof receptacle with a heavy lid that creaked horribly when opened”. “It was like, ominous, spooky, tonal and almost musical. I decided to throw a mic into the garbage and record it moving. I didn’t know what it was going to be until later”

They were making lots of noises to record like throwing logs and rocks around. An old couple peered at them through the window of their camper van in the woods and must have called the cops because then the cops showed up, pulled them over and told them to stop. The cops towed their car (the driver’s plates were Cali plates and expired), drove them to Edmonton outskirts and then the audio producer Shauna got a call and had to go pick them up “like three little boys”. “We got a stern talking to”. Once back they were playing around with the garbage sound, editing it etc. Casey heard it and proclaimed “That’s the sound of the Reapers”

Preston Watamaniuk: “There are things I could have done to Mass 1 to make it an infinitely better game with better UIs” and some simple cuts and changes. “But when you’re living with it, it’s very hard to see those things”

BioWare Labs

As social media and smartphone games exploded, BioWare dedicated a small team dedicated to exploring opportunities here - BioWare Labs

Mass Effect: Galaxy used a unique graphic art style and static visual presentation common in visual novels. It has the distinction of being the only iOS game BW have made during their first 25 years

Scrapped ideas were a 3rd person space shooter called Mass Effect: Corsair and 2 DA titles - a strategy game and a top-down dungeon crawler starring young Wynne. (My note: Maybe the corsairs stuff was rolled into Jacob’s backstory in 2, the Alliance Corsairs)

Corsair was a very short-lived project that never got its feet under it. It was a spin-off on Nintendo DS featuring a behind-the-ship perspective and branching dialogue. At one point it had MP. The idea behind it was basically “ME: Freelancer” - fly your ship around, do missions, get credits. It had a limited branching story but was a gameplay-centered experience intended to fill the gap between ME1 and 2. That gap ended up being filled by Galaxy

Galaxy and Corsair’s smaller screen allowed concept artists to use bold colors and a simplistic character design style to help those games stand out from Shep’s story

Nick Thornborrow did some art for Corsair but was worried his art style didn’t fit ME. He moved to DA where he feels his art style fits better

Lots of BioWare VAs and even a lead writer and the VO director are drawn from Edmonton’s local community theater scene, which is vibrant. Think this is how Mark Meer got involved

Mass Effect 2

Player choices carrying over was a first for BW

Dirty Dozen-inspired plot

Its plot is a web of conditionals (see Suicide Mission)

Was more of a shooter than anything BW had made since Shattered Steel

There was 2 camps on the team, those who wanted to push combat and systems forward and redefine the ME experience and those who wanted to make a true sequel, with the same gameplay and systems but a new story. Karin Weekes: “I think it ended up being a good push-pull. It felt like a pretty healthy creative conflict”

“ME2 was a game you could hold up to someone who argues that games aren’t a serious medium and go ‘Oh yeah, then why is Martin Sheen in this?’” Sheen was their first pick for TIM

The idea for TIM came from a mash-up of concepts CH had collected over the years. The name “Illusive” originally came from his pitch for naming DAO’s Eclipse engine, a word inspired by Obi-Wan’s line “It’s not about the mission, Master. It’s something... elsewhere. Elusive”. “I thought, what if we called our next engine 'Elusive', but used an ‘I’, and then it’s like ‘Illusion’. [...] I still really like the word with an ‘I’ and what it conjures”

When ME1 DLC was in production, CH had been watching a lot of CNN, specifically Anderson Cooper. “How is one guy travelling to all these places and never looking tired and always being able to speak with clarity?” CH says it seemed almost superhuman. “What if there was someone who is the absolute maximum of the things you would aspire to be, but also the worst of humanity?” Cooper, though not evil, became an inspiration for TIM down to the gray hair and piercing blue eyes

Inspiration for TIM’s behind-the-scenes role pulling political strings came from Jack Bauer’s brother Graem in 24. Graem “can call up the president and tell him what to do and hang up, because he’s so connected and so influential”. Sheen had played a president and his performance brought gravitas and wisdom to the role. He had quit smoking, but the character smokes. He didn’t want to fake it, but he also didn’t want to smoke, “so he actually asked for a cigarette” to hold so he could stop his words to take drags with natural cadence

Writing was still pushing to write and revise lines hours before VO started. A series of problems like injury and some writers leaving for other opportunities left it so that Karin, Lukas Kristjanson and editor Cookie Everman hand to land the story safely, with PW helping where they could. Lukas: “We took over the writing bug and task list, and I can’t stress enough how much [Karin and Cookie] did to get ME2 out the door. There’s no part of that thing we didn’t touch”. Karin: “That was the most dramatic 2 weeks of my life”

Initial fan reaction when they started promo-ing ME2 was very negative because people didn’t want to know about new chars like Jack and Mordin. “[fans were like] ‘Get them out of here. We want our characters from the first game’. But then when they played them, those became some of the most popular chars [of the series]”

Concept art of Thane has an idea annotation saying “Face can shapeshift?”

At one point when designing Thane concept artists sent multiple variations of him to the team asking them to vote on which was the most attractive

Most of the Normandy crew was written by lead level designer Dusty Everman. Lukas gave him advice in the evenings between bugs

BioWare Montreal made ME2 and 3 cinematics

CC for Shep was based on tools used by char designers to create in-game chars. Under the hood similar tools existed to create aliens

Aliens were much easier to animate than humans. When something is human it’s very difficult to make it look realistic and you can see all the mistakes and everything

Over the holiday period in 2007 CH worked out a diagram on a single piece of paper that would define the entire scope and structure of the game. The diagram is included in the book

Bug report: “I shot a krogan so hard that his textures fell off”. At one point shotgun blast damage was applied to each of the pellets fired, and shot enemies ended up with just the default checkerboard Unreal texture on them after their textures got blown off

Blasto was meant to be 1 step above an Easter egg but his fan popularity prompted them to bring him back in ME3

They rewrote chunks of Jack 2 days before she went to VO. She was the only one they could change because all the other NPCs were recorded. They redesigned her mission by juggling locked NPC lines and changing Shep’s reactions by rewriting text paraphrases to change the context of the already-recorded VO

Lukas snuck obscure nods ito ME2′s distress calls. In the general distress call for the Hugo Gernsback, there’s BW’s initial’s and Edmonton’s phone number backwards. In a fault in a beacon protocol there’s the initials and backward phone number from Tommy Tutone’s “Jenny”. In 2 other general distress calls there’s initials and numbers from Glenn Miller Orchestra’s “Pennsylvania 6-5000″ and initials and numbers from Geddy Lee and Rush’s “2112″ respectively 

Mass Effect 3

“The end of an era marks the beginning of another”

ME3 “marked the end of Shep’s story”

Saying bye to Shep was as difficult for devs as it was for players

JHale’s final VO session included Anderson’s death and romanced Garrus’ goodbye. “We were in the session and we both just started crying”, Caroline says. “I couldn’t come on the line to give her notes because I was crying, and she was crying. And so there was just this minute-long pause of like, nothing, nothing, nothing - just silence through the airwaves. And then I came on and just told her that I was crying and she said ‘I’m crying!’” They talked about these anecdotes also here on the N7 Day reunion panel

The Microsoft Kinect voice support required devs to teach Kinect hundreds of commands in a variety of accents across multiple languages. The result was useful but made for some awkward moments. Numerous players accidentally said “geth” or “quarian” while making a particular decision and accidentally killed Tali

MP chars were voiced by cops and military people

The helmet on one of the MP chars was originally designed for cancelled project Revolver

The payload device at the end needed to attach to the Citadel while essentially serving as a giant trigger. “It ended up becoming quite the engineering feet just to visualize how this thing would move and connect to the Citadel”

Concept artists explored creating an anti-team, where Kai Leng was almost an anti-Shepard essentially, with an elite squad to counteract your team. This idea never went beyond concept phase

ME3 Special Edition was released on Nintendo Wii U exclusively. This exclusive version of the game includes Genesis 2 (a sequel to the original Genesis comic) and unique gameplay features that took advantage of the touchscreen GamePad. For years Sonic Chronicles: Dark Brotherhood had had the honor of being BW’s only game made for a Nintendo console

FemShep regrettably didn’t feature in major ME marketing til ME3. Later releases like DAI, MEA and Anthem have taken increasing care not to gender their protagonists in cover art

To capture combat sounds they took a trip to CFB Wainwright, a military base southeast of Edmonton. They got a big tour of it and were allowed to record anything they could find. The tour ended with them getting to drive and shoot tanks (real shells). The force of doing that sent waves through Joel Green, he felt his whole chest compress when it went off; the perfect sound for the Black Widow! After the trip the soldiers let him keep the shell he fired and it’s been passed on like a torch to various devs since

Kakliosaurs began life as a joke in the writers’ room after John Dombrow placed a Grunt figure on a t-rex toy he had on his desk. Lore was brainstormed to justify the mash-up before someone asked, “Why don’t we put this in the game?” They loved it so much Karin had custom coffee mugs made

Bug report: For a while Tali’s final romance scene would fire when she was supposed to be dead

“Balancing combat: how designers in ME3 entered an ‘arms race’” - the solution to players feeling OP vs players feeling frustrated by really strong enemies is to find a good middle ground, but for designers Corey Gaspur and Brenon Holmes, it was war. Brenon designed enemies, Corey designed guns. Corey “was obsessed with bigger, heavier guns. We had this sort of informal competition where he’d make this crazy overturned gun that would just murder all the enemies, and then I tuned some stuff up to compensate”

Brenon had to invent new ways to “stop Corey” and this led to the Phantoms. Corey had in turn designed consumable rockets that could wipe out entire waves of enemies. He must’ve figured this would make short work of Brenon’s space ninjas, but Brenon had other plans: “I had just added the ability for her to cut rockets [when Corey was playing MP and he was watching]. She cut the rocket in half... Corey just turns and looks at me and is like: ‘Really dude? I just shot a rocket at this Phantom and she’s fine? Not even damaged? Zero damage?’” 

This friendly rivalry helped elevate ME3′s gameplay. Corey had a knack for making a gun feel so good to fire it had his fellow designers scrambling to keep up. It was his version of balancing. Before Corey sadly passed away he mentored Boldwin Li in all things weapon design and the arms race continued

Corey designed the Arc Pistol. It was causing problems for enemies because it was too powerful. It seemed hell bent on staying that way, Boldwin would tune down all its stats and it was still doing 3x the damage it should have been doing. “I was like ‘What the hell?’, and then I looked closer. It secretly fired 3 bullets for every pull of the trigger! Corey, you sneaky jerk”

The day it launched there were midnight launch parties across North America including one near the BW building. Numerous devs sat at long tables greeting fans and signing autographs as the fans picked up preorders. When midnight struck the line was long enough that it took several hours for some fans to get their game. One particular fan is remembered: “It was 3am. Some guy drove up from Calgary with his friends. He was like one of the last people in line. I think he was sort of tired-drunk. He threw himself across the tables, pulled up his shirt and shouted ‘Guys, sign my abs!’ And like I did, because he waited so long. It felt impolite not to. So I hope he enjoyed his copy of ME3″

For designing Protheans concept artists had free reign to design something that read as ancient

Before the concept art team had the story of the game to work toward, they explored wild ideas of their own including an image of the crew stealing back the Normandy to go after the Reapers

Jen Cheverie was testing scenes and was initially excited to be testing Mordin scenes, til she saw she was testing the Renegade version of his death. “This is even before like all of the audio and everything was in, so you didn’t even have the sad music. I remember sitting at my desk and my hands just went to my face when I saw that the gun Shep pulls on Mordin is the gun he gives Shep in ME2. I burst into tears and was crying for the rest of the day. People are waving to me as they walk by and I’m like, ‘It’s ok, I’m just killing my best friend’” 

There’s a segment called “Shepard’s story ends”. Casey on the ending: “There’s a whole bunch of things that come together to make it incredibly tense and emotional for players. I think the biggest one was the sense of finality, that whatever it was that happened in that very last moment... was it.” 

Wrapping up the story was a massive feat. In a way all of ME3 is an ending. Its final moments were the players’ last with a char they’d been with all the way from Eden Prime

“And while the critical reception of the game was extremely positive, many fans were unsatisfied with the ending, which became one of the most controversial in the history of games.” CH: “We were, on one hand, at the end of a marathon trying to finish the game and the series. But as devs we also knew that there would be more. We knew that we would continue to tell the story. In retrospect, we didn’t fully appreciate the tremendous sense of finality that it would have for people”. He envisioned an ending that posed new questions, something in the tradition of high sci-fi that left players dreaming about what that particular galaxy’s future could hold. “Frankly, there’s a lot more that we could have and should have done to honor the work players put in, to give them a stronger sense of reward and closure”

AAA games are massive undertakings with a million moving parts. Somehow they come together but even the best-planned projects don’t turn out quite like devs hope. From start to end video game production is a series of compromises. It’s rare if not impossible for devs to ship a game they’re entirely happy with. “I think that people imagine that when you finish a game, it’s exactly the way you wanted it to be. But whether people end up loving or hating the final result, we work hard to finish it the best we can, knowing that there’s a lot we would have wanted to do better. I think that’s true of any creative work”

As the dust settled after the initial reaction to the ending and later its epilogue, meant to show the wide-reaching ripple effects of Shep’s final choice, “players emerged mostly asking for one thing”. CH: “Now, most of what we hear, after both ME3 and MEA, is ‘Hey, just go make more Mass Effect’. And that to me is the most important thing. Knowing that players want to return to the ME universe is what inspires us to press on and imagine what comes next”

Mass Effect: Andromeda

By creating a new ME in a new galaxy the team was challenged to put their own visual stamp on the game while keeping it true to the franchise

Being the first ME game on a new gen of consoles meant for more detail

“Massive transport ships called arks populated with salarians, turians, humans, asari and quarians” made the risky jump to the Cluster

MEA was the first time BW had truly codeveloped across 3 studios: Edmonton, Montreal and Austin. The bulk of the work especially early on was done in Montreal, which was composed of a handful of Edmonton expats and heaps of experienced devs who joined from elsewhere specifically to bring a new ME experience to life. Series vets in Edmonton then came on to contribute writing, cinematics, design and QA, along with leadership from creative director Mac Walters and the core Production team. Austin writers and level designers also joined the fray

“It took a new team to take ME beyond the Milky Way”

Mac: “A lot of people in Montreal joined BW as fans of the franchise, so they just had this passion, and it felt like it was more like the days of Jade Empire, where a smaller younger team gets to do something for the first time. Even though it wasn’t necessarily a new IP for me, it felt fresh and new because of that. The team was just super excited to be working on it”

Early plans had the player exploring hundreds of worlds, procedurally generated, allowing for a nearly infinite variety of experiences. But as development wore on, it became clear that the game narrative required more specific, hand-touched level design on each world to keep the story focused and the experience engaging. “The plan was to give players numerous uncharted worlds to explore. Designers worked hard to come up with procedural elements that would make such planets special. Eventually the team made the difficult decision to abandon procedural planets in favor of more memorable hand-touched alien worlds, each with a specific story to tell”

One challenge was defining what ME meant without Shep. Care was given to include many of the MET’s key species. “Ryder recruited turian, asari, krogan and salarian followers”. Like Shep Ryder represents humanity’s hope for a peaceful coexistence among aliens who had long operated without human contact

Beginning with MEA the team decided that with few exceptions vehicles in ME have 6 wheels. Early Nomad concepts were bulkier. Later ones focused on its ability to move over its ability to protect itself from hostile fire, underlining the themes of exploration

German concept designer and auto-motive futurist Daniel Simon was contracted to create the Nomad and Tempest. The Tempest’s final design took inspo from the Concorde 

Concepts for angaran fighter ships have the following notes: “Two doors swing open, wings rotate down to function as landing struts, the landing struts split open. It has a spinning turbine engine 

Despite being set a galaxy away and some 600 years after Mordin’s death, there was a time when he had a cameo. It wasn’t cut due to running out of time however, it was cut due to drug references. John Dombrow explains: “One day I had to write a small quest for Kadara. I thought it’d be amusing if these 2 guys living way out on the fringes in a shack were growing plants for uh, medicinal purposes, and needed Ryder’s help with it. It occurred to me, wouldn’t it be amusing if Ryder had the option of actually trying ‘the medicine’ to see what would happen? And I thought, what if it turned into some hallucination that somehow involved SAM - like maybe SAM would sing? But why? How could I motivate that? Then it hit me. Who else in the ME game sings unexpectedly? MORDIN. As a nod to him I wrote SAM singing Modern Major-General. It got even better when our cine designer John Ebenger wanted to take it even further. Bless him, he came in on a Saturday to do a special hallucination showing Mordin himself. It was great. Til the fateful day we were told MEA had already been submitted to the ratings board. That’s when you declare things like drug references in your game. Mordin fell under that category which meant it was a no-go. We were too late”

Ryder’s white AI armor contrasts Shep’s iconic dark armor (intentional design)

Concept art for Ryder involved experiments with cloth (cloaks, ponchos, capes - “Pull here to release cloak”) and asymmetrical design elements

For alien design, there’s a few exceptions but humanoid figures are the ME standard and this persisted into MEA

Kett and angara concepts explored striking lines and textures 

– From Bioware: Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development

#mass effect #mass effect: andromeda #bioware #video games #jade empire #Bioware: Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development #Bioware: Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development spoilers #Bioware: Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development spoiler #spoilers #spoiler #lul #dragon age #garrus vakarian #best boy #feels #anthem #long post #longpost #drugs for ts #drugs mention #drugs cw

[painterofhorizons]

Floating Day WIP

We decided to bring it back, so be tagged @sheeplessthings. Also @chyrstis in case you have/had time to write a little something? What you been up to @swaps55? @theoriginalladya any new Shepards maybe? ;) @amistrio been drawing anything recently? Any cool new edits in making? @foofygoldfish what about Alice? And your new girl?? She looks so cool!

So, having written 4+k on the same thing few days ago, how about a snippet from the english version of “Why don’t you love me?”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

New year’s had never been particularily exciting for alex. Holidays in general weren’t, but new year’s in specific. It was one date changing into another - something that happened 365 times a year, sometimes even 366. Just because it was the last day of something people once had said would be one year to the first day of the just as artificial next year didn’t change anything. Several people had tried to convince her that there was some kind of special meaning in this, that it was more than just a ## - and even if it was just something symbolic, what was wrong with that? What was wrong with having a moment in the year where things would feel fresh, like a new start was actually possible? But she failed to be willing to acknowledge that. Sure, there were nice side effects on this night, but nothing that actually held meaning to alex.

There was fireworks. Food. Plenty of good food and drinks and friends and plenty of everything that could make a person happy even if one didn’t believe in the meaning of new year’s - and yet Alex only stared at the sky, no ah and oh on the pretty yet useless explosions of sparkling red and pink and yellow. No I hadn’t seen that one before nor have you seen that one? nor fuck that’s so pretty! She had been there before in past years, letting herself be drawn into the senseless prettiness of fireworks and just be childlikely amazed by explosives been shot into the sky for no other reason than people being childlikely amazed by it. This year it barely reached her mind, all the ah and oh and how pretty, and her mind was anything but a place of childish joy and mesmerization.

Tonks bumped her shoulder.

A penny for your thoughts.

No thoughts, alex said absentminded, making tonks laugh.

Yeah, sure. Happy new year, sweetheart.

You already said that, alex mumbled, still staring at the ongoing fireworks with no ah and oh on her lips.

I know. But you haven’t said it back.

Happy new year back, alex said, not exactly a fountain of joy and excitement.

You are such a party person, tonks teased her.

Never said I am.

Alex took another sip of the drink in her right hand.

And you’re not a new year’s person either.

Tonks didn’t take that personally - but he also knew it wasn’t just that she didn’t really like holidays of that kind in general. This was painfully specific, this, or better yet he. There was a very particular# reason for alex… not very festive state of mind.

So, any new year’s resolutions? Tonks asked. Anything you want to do or accomplish this year?

Like? Alex gave him a short look from the side.

Tonks shrugged. I don’t know. Like sitting here on this rooftop rather with dave than with me, having confessed your love and living a happy life or something.

Alex frowned.

I’m not drunk enough for that.

Neither for this conversation nor to just do what tonks had suggested. She was definitely not drunk enough for that yet.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

At four in the morning, she was drunk enough to execute the plan. Once they went down again from the solitude of the rooftop (that wasn’t so solitary on new year’s because it was the perfect spot to watch the fireworks) there had been all kinds of new year’s congratulations# and more food and more drinks and silly little games and slowly but surely the crowd of friends being over at the club to celebrate got more and more little with people going home. But tonks and alex didn’t, and more drinks were consumed, and eventually alex felt like what tonks had said didn’t actually sound too bad. Her just sitting on the rooftop with dave and they stopped being such cowards and right now was a perfect time to go tell him.

[...]

I’m ready to go, she wanted to say when tonks came back from the bathroom, but all her heavy tongue got out was go.

Tonks raised his brows. Me?

Me.

Where?

Dave.

He stared at her for a moment then tilted his head.

You really think that’s a good idea?

Your idea, alex said, crossing her arms. You got shit ideas or what?

Tonks laughed. All the time!

Go. Now.

Tonks shrugged. Whatever you want.

If it only was what she wanted. If life was that easy, just her saying I want this and then things magically worked out just like that. If only life was like that!

Tonks was too sober to argue with alex when she was drunk like that. He always volunteered to not drink and be the always ready to go carpool for everyone else at parties - he liked to have a cold beer every now and then but didn’t feel like he missed out the fun when he wasn’t drinking at parties - and he enjoyed knowing everyone had a safe option to have fun AND get home safely.

And if being asked, he would drive sunny to dave’s and drop her off there like she was dave’s problem because she was. And the fact that she wasn’t very easy to handle when she was drunk AND in this state of minde most definitely solely was dave’s fault, so he could deal with it.

#painterofhorizons writes #fic talk: Spiegelbilder #alcohol mention

[octerminal]

Hi there! I'm a first time Mass Effect OT player thanks to the Legendary Edition. In relation to your post about avoiding the romances in Mass Effect 1 (which I bookmarked for reference,) I was wondering if you also made posts for avoiding romances in the other two games as well, and if you had, where I could find them? And if not, do you have any general advice for not triggering the romances? Thanks!

Hey! Thanks for the ask.

I’m sorry, but I haven’t made a guide for the other games. This is mainly because ME1 is the only game where it’s easy to accidentally trigger the actual romance, by which I mean the game now acts as if the two of you are in a dedicated romance and it will automatically proceed to all the major romance points, like the locker and en route to Ilos scenes. ME2 and ME3 still have issues where Shepard can accidentally trip flirtation (or be forced into it, depending on the LI), but it’s much harder to trigger the actual romances because in both games they're scenes where Shepard or the LI will point blank say, “Hey, wanna go out?” or some iteration, lol.

That being said, I still have plenty of tips I can give you to avoid those issues, sure! I can probably guess which LIs might’ve brought this question on since there are a few “main offenders” - if we want to use that term lol - but I’ll try to address what I know about each LI. Please be aware that this won’t be as specific as my ME1 guide because I don’t have any handy transcripts available so I’ll be working purely off memory.

If anyone has anymore specific knowledge on any of these LIs, or thinks I have made a mistake on any of them, please let me know. Thanks.

ME1 LOVE INTERESTS

General note: If you are not romancing Liara, whoever your VS is will always seek you out in the ME2 prologue. This is not romance specific. It is only romance specific with Liara.

Kaidan: I addressed how to avoid his flirtation issues in ME3 in my ME1 post because he is one of the aforementioned “main offenders” people complain about the most frequently, and all of his issues are easily fixed once you know how to do it.

Ashley: I don’t really have any data on her for ME3. I’ve only ever done Ashley-as-VS-with-mShep saves when I also romanced her in ME1. I don’t believe she’s similar to Kaidan in that she will always proposition you if you’re not locked into a romance (because I believe Kaidan does that for a variety of reasons that are purely mechanical/dev signalling in nature, which are irrelevant for Ashley). I would imagine that if you don’t want her to be romantic with you in the hospital, the same rule of thumb of “tell her the romance is over on Mars” would work, but I haven’t personally tested it.

Liara: There is not really any way around a lot of her scenes. A lot of her romanced content is shared with unromanced Shepards. Even in places where it’s not, Shepard is usually more intimate with Liara than they are with other squadmates. (Example of this: I’m pretty sure when you meet on Illium in ME2, every Shepard will hug her, but only romanced Shepards will kiss her.) This means wishing your Shepard didn’t hug her on Illium, or that she didn’t have your Shepard’s armor in LotSB, or certain banters of hers that trigger in ME3, etc., are impossible to avoid because it is not the game having her flirts easy to trip. It is the game just straight up making very little effort to make a distinction between romanced and unromanced Liara.

That being said, if it really bothers you, being renegade toward her when the option is available helps balance it out. For example: at the end of LotSB, Shepard is not forced into comforting Liara or hugging her; they can just let her cry and move on. Things like that.

ME2 LOVE INTERESTS

General note: When speaking to Kelly about any of these characters, it doesn’t hurt to go neutral or renegade. I think being forced into a discussion about how attractive you find these LIs is really only an issue for mShep and it’s fairly easy to avoid for femShep.

None of the romances can be properly triggered until after the LI’s loyalty has been successfully completed. No amount of flirtation negates this. So at the bare minimum, you really only need to be vigilant after completing a character’s loyalty.

All of these characters also do not really have any wonky mechanics going into ME3, because to have a romance with any of the ME2 LIs in ME3, you have trigger it in ME2 first.

Jacob: Jacob is also a frequently complained about “main offender” because it’s easy for femShep to flirt with him. He is also one of the few LIs in ME2 where you can kind of kickstart his romance in ME2 by expressing interest and having a few conversations about that before Horizon, but this does not actually trigger the romance. You are not locked into it if you do trip into this scenario with him, because it’s completing the loyalties that allow for you to actually trigger a character’s romance. You cannot romance a character properly if you either don’t do their loyalty, or you do it but you failed to secure their loyalty during it.

If you tripped into this scenario with Jacob, you can just simply not continue it going forth, or you can do an organic “breakup” after his loyalty where you continually try to press him to unpack his feelings about what just happened with his father. He will end things with a Shepard who does this to him.

As for avoiding the flirtations at all: it is possible and I do it all the time, but I have no transcripts available so I can’t exactly show which dialogue options to pick. I want to say neutral and renegade dialogue options are your friend here, though some of those can still be flirtatious, if I recall correctly.

When he talks about leaving the Alliance, don’t pick the options that sound like it could be about his body/fitness. When he mentions that Cerberus rebuilt Shepard, don’t have her pick the options that seem like she’s asking if he likes what he sees, etc. Unfortunately, I remember the actual lines better than I remember what the dialogue wheel option was. I recommend saving before talking to him and going through all the dialogue options and reloading until you find the ones where femShep doesn’t sound flirty. (That’s how I found them.)

Or, if you play on PC: you could simply just wait for someone to re-release the mod that gets rid of the flirtatiousness between Jacob and femShep. There was one like that for original ME2, though I never used it so I’m not sure how it actually worked.

Garrus: It is really hard to both accidentally flirt with Garrus and to accidentally trip into his romance. He has little content before his loyalty, and after his loyalty, you have to take a very specific dialogue option to trigger Shepard’s proposition. Even after that, the game still gives you a way to back out if that was, in fact, not what you expected to happen.

Thane: Considering that Thane isn’t even available to recruit until after Horizon, his mechanics are also fairly “safe” compared to, say, Jacob’s. That being said, there is the infamous “I want you, Thane” option on the dialogue wheel, but that one is fairly...obvious. I recall most of Thane’s dialogue options seeming fairly obvious and thus easy to avoid if you’re not wanting to flirt with him. If you’re having trouble, neutral or renegade is probably the way to go. He also always calls femShep “siha” once loyal (I believe that conversation happens after his loyalty, anyway); there is no way around that outside simply not talking to him. Him calling femShep “siha” is not indicative of a romance being triggered.

Jack: Jack, like Jacob, is one of the characters who you can start a flirtation with before Horizon. Again, this doesn’t actually trigger the proper romance. To my knowledge, Jack will also always proposition mShepards. This also does not trigger her romance - in fact, if you accept, it locks you out of her actual romance because she no longer trusts you. Unfortunately, if you want to avoid the proposition entirely - I don’t know or remember if there’s a way to do that.

Tali: I recall Tali’s main issues being the conversation with Kelly after recruiting her (but this is hazy, sorry) where I think Kelly always implies Tali has a crush on you. If this is the case, I have no idea how to avoid it. The other main issue is after you successfully complete Tali’s loyalty and you get to the conversation where she talks about linking suits. It is very easy for mShep to accidentally trip into a romantic conversation with Tali here, and thus be forced into turning her down afterwards. I am pretty certain it’s possible to avoid this, and it likely involves not taking the paragon option. If it isn't possible to avoid though, then all you really have available is to turn her down when she brings it up.

Miranda: I don’t actually recall anything egregious with her mechanics. I am fairly certain that she is not like Jack and Jacob where you can soft start her romance before Horizon, because I remember noticing that when I did her romance recently. After Horizon, I want to say that her romance dialogue options are fairly obvious, but I could be wrong. Either way, the same as all the other LIs would apply: you’d have to complete her loyalty to begin with to even get access to those conversations, so you really only need to be vigilant after her loyalty has been completed.

Samara and Kelly: They are not “real” LIs, which means you don’t get a romance achievement for them and they have next to no content. Kelly’s romantic dialogue options are similar to Thane in how exaggerated they tend to be, and thus are easy to avoid. Samara is only receptive toward paragon Shepards to begin with, but also puts a hard stop to any flirtation attempts regardless, so tripping her “romance” is not really an issue.

ME3 LOVE INTERESTS

General note: Just lock into your preferred LI’s romance first. I am serious. That will solve nearly every issue. Locking into your LI’s romance is not Shepard still expressing interest when they first meet again unless your LI is Tali, whose lock-in is her cabin date right after she comes aboard for the first time. Otherwise, the lock-in moment for most of the LIs are their Citadel dates that happen after the Coup.

James: Technically, he’s not a love interest. I’m including him because he always flirts with femShep. There is no way around this, sorry. The best you can do is to not allow him to call femShep “Lola”, which happens after the sparring match you two can have in the cargo bay. He still flirts with femShep outside that however, and there are a few times where femShep unavoidably flirts back. If you don’t like this, you just kind of have to plug your ears and pretend it’s not happening. Or just not speak to him at all, lol.

Hopefully with MELE’s new modding capabilities, someone will release a mod that fixes this since James’ conversations with mShep are more normal.

Allers: She is similar to Kelly and Samara in that she is not a “real” LI. I believe you can’t even trip her “romance” until after you finish Rannoch anyway, since it’s tied to the interview you do with her. There can be an awkward moment after Tuchanka or the Coup (I don’t recall which, or if it’s both) where she might sound flirtatious and you’re forced into flirting back or turning her down, but nothing comes from this. If it does happen after the Coup’s interview, you could try pushing it off until you lock into your preferred romance, but it’d have to be before you complete Rannoch since I imagine the Coup one would expire and be replaced with Rannoch’s.

Traynor: Traynor’s romance is actually easy to miss if you play renegade. I know this because I finished her romance a few months before MELE came out and I had to redo twenty hours of gameplay before that because I got locked out of it for being too much of an asshole to her. (Absolutely hilarious in hindsight, incredibly annoying in the moment.) After some digging, I found some old forums detailing that you apparently cannot be renegade toward her about her toothbrush in your first conversation and when she tells you about Grissom academy or else she evidently decides you are too mean and/or not interested in her. (Whether or not this is true, I have no idea. I didn’t bother risking it and went straight paragon with her in all of our conversations until I was able to lock it in.)

What this means is that if you want to avoid her shower scene entirely, just be renegade toward her until you get her cabin date, because you straight up do not even get the option to offer your shower to her if you were renegade enough.

If you're roleplaying and your Shepard wouldn’t take those renegade dialogue options, follow the advice in the general note: lock into your preferred romance before doing Traynor’s cabin date. Like Kaidan, this does mean that if you romanced Jacob or Thane and don’t wish to move on to anyone else, you’re a bit out of luck if you want to avoid the option triggering entirely.

That being said, even if you are doing a paragon Jacob, Thane, or no romance run, and thus still get the shower option, just...simply don’t let her in your shower. Problem solved.

Cortez: Cortez’ romance does not have any egregious romance mechanics that I’m aware of. To my knowledge, he never flirts with Shepard first before his romance is locked in. In fact, if you do flirt with him but you had a pre-existing romance from ME1 or ME2 (or I think if you are already locked into your romance with Kaidan as mShep) he will make a mention of that romance when you do try to flirt with him. This is all to say: to my knowledge, there is really nothing to avoid with Cortez. You have to go out of your way to flirt with him and lock in the romance. That being said, if there is something I’m missing, the same “lock into your preferred LI’s romance” rule of thumb should apply.

Hopefully some of this helped! If you have any other general questions about this issue or about a specific LI, let me know. Please note that I am also basing all of this off my knowledge of the original games, but I’m assuming nothing has changed in MELE.

#replies #mass effect #tumblr auto put in a wrex tag when i first pressed post #and i am losing it #there is no wrex romance content sorry everyone tumblr just wants to be a shipper i guess

[catherdrashepard]

Darrow is Not Going to Die at the End of the Series Part 2

There are probably going to be at least one or two more parts depending on how much I can stop myself from blathering on. Anyway, spoilers ahead for the following: Dark Age, Hunger Games, Castlevania, Trollhunters: Rise of the Titans, Avengers Endgame, The Hobbit, Voltron, FMA, HttYD, Death Note, Madoka Magica, Merlin, Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts, HunterxHunter, Dragon Prince, He-Man (the new one), Yu Yu Hakusho, Persona 3. Mass Effect, The Hollow, Camp Cretaceous, and whatever else I can think of.

I last left off on talking about how my thoughts implied that Darrow could die at the end as long all the loose ends are tied. But, I don’t think that that’s really something that can actually happen. A lot of this is speculation on my part and really relies on what happens during the 6th book.

The first thing that came to mind was Mass Effect. The ending of Mass Effect 3 was...not very well received. I’m not going to say that I’m particularly happy with it either but I also think it fits the narrative. However, one thing to note, video games are different than books and the story that Shepard goes through is reliant on the player. Also, stories in games are going to be shorter than stories in books (for the most part, there are definitely exceptions) due to player involvement.

I’m going to start with Shepard’s first death, at the beginning of Mass Effect 2. Of course, being the second game, their death couldn’t be permanent unless BioWare switched protagonists mid trilogy. There are a few reasons, in my opinion, that Shepard was killed during the opening credits of the second game.

First of all, the combat changed between games (a lot between the first and second and only slightly between second and third), and I think Shepard’s two year absence gave a reason for a tutorial on the new combat system. They were dead and had to learn how to use new technology. This is also done between the second and third games, with a 6 month gap, but the combat only changed slightly. Secondly, having the main protagonist die really highlights the threat that the player is dealing with in the second game but, Shepard’s return also shows that they still have unfinished business and that their story isn’t over. Thirdly, I think the absence gives time for the secondary characters time to develop on their own. This is shown more with the characters who appeared in the first game but also it gives an idea of just how much of an impact Shepard had. I feel like this is a parallel to the time Darrow spent in the table between GS and MS.

Now to move on to Shepard’s more permanent death...although if you complete the game entirely (at least in the legendary edition; thank goodness I hated the battle readiness thing) there is a dubious ending where Shepard may or may not have lived. But in any case, Shepard is considered dead and their story is over. Whatever my feelings about this may be, this type of ending didn’t come out of nowhere. The main threat, the Reapers, have been dealt with in a permanent manner, or at least it’s heavily implied that they won’t be coming back. However, just because the Reapers are gone doesn’t mean there aren’t still things to be done. Specifically, recovery. Shepard very well could have been involved in this but it’s not necessary. Their story is over, they have dealt with the threat and it’s not coming back.

Darrow, on the other hand, has not finished his mission. Even if he does by the end of the next book, however, it’s a very different circumstance from Shepard. The threat in Mass Effect was a very large and tangible thing, whereas the problem Darrow faces is an ideology and the people who hold those views. Something like that doesn’t end with a large space weapon pointed directly at the threat; it permeates everything. So even if Darrow defeats Atalantia, Lysander, and whoever else, there’s most likely going to be more people who shared belief that Golds are best. Also, we saw how the Vox Populi felt about the things Darrow was doing. Darrow is essentially reconstructing an entire system of government and, no matter how correct Darrow is, there will always be people who disagree with him.

Assuming Darrow defeats the remnants of the Society, stops the Ascomanni, deals with Quicksilver and whatever he’s doing, takes care of Atlas, handles Apple, what’s left? Much like with the end of Mass Effect, what’s left is recovery. The difference between these two, however, is that while Shepard was not necessarily needed for the rebuilding, Darrow would be.

Now, both Shepard and Darrow spearheaded their respective causes, but (and this relies heavily on how the sixth RR book goes) defeating the Reapers was a group effort, utilising every species and as many resources as they can spare. No doubt the rebuilding of the entire galaxy will require the same. Not that Darrow’s goal hasn’t been similar in that regards, with the help of so many different Colors being necessary. It’s just....Darrow’s circle feels a lot smaller than Shepard’s.

I mean, obviously being the face of a war is going to get you a lot supporters and people to work with, but the most important players are Darrow’s close friends and family. I’m sure part of this is the fact that the books are first person with specific POVs. Mass Effect does focus on Shepard’s story, but it’s in third person and you get a lot of different information through sidequests and talking to other characters. I mean, there’s a whole codex in Mass Effect with a lot of information and there isn’t one for RR (PB should make one tho). Our knowledge of the universe and its history is more limited in RR than Mass Effect, but I think that’s mostly because the lore in Mass Effect has more of a direct impact on how the story goes.

But back to the original point, it’s explicitly shown in Mass Effect that it requires everyone to stop the Reapers. And even though we see Darrow’s army, the main players, the ones who are taking care of the big things, are still Darrow’s inner circle. As an example, Mass Effect would be more like a pyramid (ironic) where Shepard is at the top. Even if it crumbles away (they die), the pyramid will still stand. For RR, it feels more like a chain. If one of the links (Darrow) breaks, then the chain is also broken. You could re-attach the pieces but it wouldn’t be as strong as it once was.

One last thing I wanted to bring up (which I will bring up again in part 4, yes I said part 4), is technology. Both Mass Effect and RR take place in the future and therefore have better technology than we do. There is something very important about this technology though that makes it more likely for Darrow to live. The Reapers are a race of sentient squid machines hellbent on the genocide of every other sentient species in the galaxy. But they are the ONLY things with access to that kind of technology. Even when they share it with Saren or the Collectors, it’s not something others can replicate. And once they’re destroyed (control ending notwithstanding) at the end of the third game, that’s it. They could still have people who are indoctrinated (although I think that stops when the Reapers were destroyed?) or people who are just stupid and think they were right, but...those people aren’t a threat. They can’t bring back the Reapers, I doubt anyone would be able to recreate such a thing (at least not within Shepard’s lifetime even if they did live). So once the Reapers were gone...that’s it.

Now, the technology in RR is, for the most part, accessible to everyone. Assuming Darrow defeats Atalantia, Lysander, etc. their way of thinking would still be around. But with the way the universe works, I think it would entirely possible for supporters of the Society to rise up and start a conflict all over again. This means Darrow is not finished yet, even if the immediate threats are gone. It wouldn’t make sense for him to die when there’s still stuff for him to do.

I do think, though, that it is worth mentioning that the definite ending of Mass Effect is probably related to the fact that it’s a video game and especially for stories like that, a more open ended conclusion with the implication that I COULD do more would only be frustrating. With tv shows, movies, and books, I notice, having a more vague ending works better because you’re just separated enough from the story that you can enjoy the implications of more stuff without feeling unsatisfied. There’s always exceptions of course.

ANYWAY, it part 3 I’m going to be talking about Persona 3 and 5 so....stay tuned.

#darrow of lykos #dark age spoilers #character study #long post

[lilmissnatcat24]

little teaser for saturday's chapter, behold garrus can't help himself

“Well, well, you clean up nicely,” she said, reaching out and playing with the tassels in front of Garrus’s carapace cape. 

“You look absolutely beautiful.” He didn’t mean to sound so direct or so obviously lame, the words more or less tumbled out of his mouth before he could think to censor them slightly. A subtle blush creeped on Shepard’s cheek underneath all of that facepaint she put on. 

“Oh, shush Vakarian,” Shepard said, suddenly shy and fumbling over her words. He’d never seen her blush like that. Garrus came to the sudden realization that he would say just about anything to make her blush like that again. 

“No, really,” Garrus could say before he could stop himself, emboldened by the nerves that the night held for him. “You are so pretty. Really.” 

Shepard looked as though she had absolutely no clue how to respond to a statement like that, so she just nodded once, a smile creeping onto her face that Garrus wished would never be wiped away. 

Luckily for her, she didn’t need to respond. “Keep it safe for the public, you two. Wouldn’t want the night to end too early, yeah?” Elyria said from next to Shepard. Garrus didn’t even notice her. She wore a dress that was more skin than fabric, a vibrant lime green color that Garrus rather thought clashed too much with her skin. Not like Shepard’s, which looked as though it were designed specifically for her with no one else in mind, because no one could wear a gown as beautifully as she could-- 

“What is it about publicly declaring a relationship that gives people the impression that I’m just going to strip in the middle of the room and let him go to town on me?” 

“You know, I wondered that, too,” said Garrus. “If anything, it means that the two of us will be respectful until we can blow off some steam back at my place. We are in public, after all. Would you rather we try to sneak around to some supply closet somewhere?” 

“Oh? Do you have much experience with that, Vakarian?” Shepard said with a smile creeping in on her face. Garrus swallowed once, trying his best to remain as cool and casual as he could-- but it was nearly impossible next to her. 

“A few jaunts here and there.” 

“Can I trust you to keep on task tonight?” 

Garrus leaned in slightly towards Shepard. She was just putting it on for Elyria, he was certain. Right? He was certain? Except certainty had flown out the airlock over two months ago. He loved to pretend that when Shepard flirted with him, it was because she really did see something in him. But there was no way that was the case. She was Shepard after all-- which was to say that she was more of an enigmatic force of nature and less of a living, breathing human woman that could ever be interested in a turian like him.

“I’m not sure. You keep wearing gowns like that, I may have to deviate from the plan just a tiny little bit.” His mouth was close to her neck, he mumbled it just loud enough for her to hear it and no one else. He was thankful he couldn’t see her expression, because if he did he might have to back up his words with some action. 

“Ugh,” Elyria said with a wave of her hand. “You two are positively disgusting together.”

#mass effect fanfiction #mass effect #mass effect fanfic #shakarian #shepard x garrus #ao3 fanfic #femshep #garrus vakarian #turn left

[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?

#bioware critical #dg rants #another angry queer rant #make mass effect inclusive #make mele inclusive #makemeleinclusive

[swaps55]

POV Case Study – Have Some Writing Meta

Point of View (POV) is an integral piece of the storytelling puzzle for Opus, my main body of fic, so I thought I’d do a meta post that walks through how I use it as a narrative tool. The intention is not to tell anyone how they should or shouldn’t use POV, but rather to demonstrate one way I used it very deliberately to create narrative tension, weave in characterization, and develop an overarching theme.    

Your POV character is an enormous tool in your writing toolbox, whether you are using a single POV or multiple. How you use it depends on a lot of things: what person you’re writing in (first, second, third), the type POV you’re going with (omniscient, meaning the POV narrator can see into everyone’s heads, or limited, meaning you only have access into the head of a specific POV character).

My preferred writing style is 3rd person “in-your-face” limited POV, that puts the reader so solidly in the POV character’s head it’s almost like 1st person in a 3rd person trench coat. That coupled with present tense gives me some extra intensity that I love taking advantage of in emotional or climactic scenes. Again, this isn’t to state a right or a wrong way to use tense or POV – there are lots of great ways to use these tools – but for the purpose of this exercise, this is my chosen loadout.

I made the conscious decision early in Sonata that I did not want to use Sam Shepard’s POV, ever. Every story in his series would be told through the eyes of the people around him. Why? Because one of the key character traits of Sam is that he makes himself whatever someone needs him to be. He sees himself as a tool, so to be a useful tool, he has to have the right shape for the job. This raises the question: who is Sam, when he is free to just be himself? I’m not sure even Sam knows the answer to that question, so to reinforce it through storytelling, I never wanted to reader to see what goes on in his head. Everything you learn about Sam comes through the perceptions of others, and to show the reader how differently he is perceived by others, I write with multiple POVs rather than just Kaidan’s.

Below the cut, I’m going to walk you through a specific example where POV was an essential part of crafting the story I wanted to tell. The chapter in question comes from Fugue, a story I’m writing that explores the aftermath of Alchera. You don’t need to have read Fugue to follow the logic, but if you care to read the chapter, it functions well on its own separate from the rest of the story.

Fugue – This Hole You Left.

This was a very complicated chapter that lived and died by POV choices, and it was extremely difficult to put together. The approach I took was a gamble that (thankfully) worked after much fretting, gnashing of teeth, and help from @pigeontheoneandonly.

This Hole You Left takes place after Sam dies over Alchera. I wanted to paint a ‘kaleidoscope’ of grief, and explore how Sam’s death impacted the people around him in very different ways. Therefore, I needed a plethora of POVs to work with, each one giving me something different. The goals were this:

Find differing POVs that would offer demonstrably different perceptions of Sam and/or illustrate different stages of grief and shock.        

Allow each of those POVs to mold to that character’s specific goals and motivations. i.e., I did not want the grief of other characters to be tied to the romantic relationship that had been lost – because that’s not the lens those characters would look through.

Each POV had to move the chronology along in a way that made sense and felt natural.

Kaidan’s POV was off limits. In the absence of Sam’s physical presence, I wanted to treat Kaidan like Sam – the character people could see, but not explore the headspace of. Everything the reader learns about Kaidan in the immediate aftermath of Alchera comes from other people.

That last piece was important. Arguably, Kaidan’s POV was the most valuable one of all, but I was going to have lots of time to explore it in meaningful ways elsewhere. I thought it might be more powerful to express his grief through the eyes of others, and use him as a central theme to weave in and out of the chapter. More about that later.

This constituted one hell of a puzzle to put together, especially when it came to the chronology. For instance, an early mistake I made was putting the most powerful POV (Anderson) too early in the sequence, which diminished what came after it. Moving that POV around meant re-framing other POVs to keep the chronology moving forward (for example, Garrus’ POV initially came after Anderson’s, by moving it before his, I had to change the context so that Anderson’s POV wasn’t a step backwards in time).

Each POV scene was also intended to essentially be its own self-contained short, creating a microcosm of grief, that when put together, would create a much larger and significant whole.

I could write forever about all the trial and error that went into finding the right formula, but it’s probably more valuable to look at where I wound up, and why:

1st POV: Lora Alenko (Kaidan’s mother)

Why: She gave me a window to set the clock in motion and make the loss of the Normandy feel real, because she had the advantage of having no idea anything was wrong. Plus, her perspective felt like a unique one I hadn’t seen in fic when it came to Alchera. I’d set her character up in Sonata, so readers of that fic would be familiar with her and understand what that phone call meant to her in a more meaningful way.

How I used it: I put her in the middle of a mundane, normal, event – lunch with a friend – and then shattered that normalcy with a phone call telling her the ship her son was on had been destroyed. That shift from normal to a state of dread gave me the tension I wanted to use for the rest of the chapter.

Excerpt:

But before she can answer, her omnitool flashes. She frowns and looks down at her arm. It’s a message from Marc. SOS. Call now.

A chill runs down her spine. SOS isn’t something Marc throws around lightly. She’d gotten an SOS from him when he’d found Apollo, the warmblood she’d ridden for years, with a leg stuck through the paddock fence, and the day they’d learned about Vyrnnus.

Kaidan.

“Melia,” she murmurs. “Excuse me, I have to take this.”

2nd POV: Admiral Hackett  

Why: Hackett gave me the chance to explore Shepard through the eyes of the Alliance. To them, and to Hackett, he’s a weapon rather than a person. He also gave me a chance to weave in a sense of anger, one of the stages of grief.

How I used it: This POV came about late in the revision process, but I’m thrilled it did, because I was missing that cold, calculated look at Shepard’s importance. Shepard dying fucks up Hackett’s plans and political machinations, and his immediate response is not to mourn someone who died, but to move on to plan B. This also gave me a shot to work in Shepard’s mother. By seeing her in Hackett’s POV, I could reinforce the ongoing theme that Captain Shepard sees her son as a legacy, rather than a person.

Excerpt:

There isn’t a list of people who can replace Shepard. Time to make one. Hackett exhales, gaze falling to the datapad on his desk, Shepard, Sam still displayed at the top of the casualty list.

He picks it up and hurls it at the wall. It cracks, screen flickering to black as it clatters to the floor.

What a goddamned waste.

3rd POV: Joker

Why: Joker was an easy one. I’d set up some rather terrible foreshadowing in Sonata with a scene in which he makes the comment “I’d go down with that ship,” and Sam replies, grinning, “Not while I’m around.” I wanted to spike the ball over the net in Fugue, so parking in Joker’s POV in the immediate aftermath was a no-brainer.

How I used it: Through Joker I could explore guilt and shock, so I went back to that memory from Sonata and used repetition to make Joker feel stuck in that moment. It was also my first chance to weave Kaidan in to reinforce the notion of guilt and lay some neat groundwork for narrative tension that would come to a head later.

Excerpt:

I’d go down with that ship.

Not while I’m around.

He should have abandoned ship. The escape pod was right there. He could have given up the Normandy at any time. All he had to do was step over the bodies of Pressly. Chase. All he had to do was leave them all behind.

Instead he’d stayed, and Shepard had made good on his word.

I’d go down with that ship.

Not while I’m around.

4th POV: Dr. Chakwas

Why: Through her, I could look at the adrenaline and denial that comes with managing trauma. To her, Shepard was a patient. Because she is overwhelmed with patients in the form of the Normandy’s wounded, she cannot stop to think about the one she cannot help: she has a job to do, and she has to do it. There will be time to grieve later.

How I used it: Again, I used Kaidan to emphasize her role as a caretaker. Kaidan, who is in command of the survivors, has a moment of weakness that she cannot afford to have, and he can only afford to have in front of her, because she overrides his authority in a medical emergency. Because we are in her POV, we see her outwardly refuse to crack, when internally she’s hanging by a thread. It made for a nice contrast.  

Excerpt:

“There was no transponder signal,” she tells him, saying out loud everything she’s been repeating to herself. “We were in hostile territory, with over twenty injured crew. He was gone, Kaidan.”

His fingers curl, eyes still trained on the window.

She puts a hand to her forehead. Between Virmire, triage on the Citadel and this it’s too much. Before today she’s never felt old. Tears sting the corner of her eyes and she swears under her breath. Not here. Not today. Tears are something for tomorrow. Right now, she has a job to do.

5th POV: Garrus

Why: Garrus was a member of the crew who wasn’t on the ship, which is a completely unique perspective. But the question that took me forever to answer, was, how does he react to Sam’s death? What was Shepard to Garrus? I hadn’t written about them during ME1 yet, he was not part of Sonata, and ME1 Garrus is always a little tricky for me. I knew there was something important to gain from his POV, but I couldn’t figure out what it was to the point of tearing my hair out. Eventually, I settled on Garrus seeing Shepard as a mentor he couldn’t live up to, and made his POV about failure and regret.  

How I used it: Shepard was everything Garrus aspired to be, but could never quite achieve. He left the Normandy because Shepard made him feel like he could make a difference, only he didn’t. And then, his friends needed him, and he wasn’t there, and now Shepard is dead. I wove a lot of doubt, regret and self-deprecation into his POV to drive that home.

Excerpt:

Dammit, why hadn’t he stayed on that ship?

He grabs another report from the top of the pile on his desk, which is getting tall enough to sway in the breeze.

This is why. Because Saren had obliterated the Citadel, and Shepard, damn him, had made him believe he could make a difference. He thought he could make it here. Crazy thing, having to fill out a form every time you find a corpse. He’s got three more to add to the list after today.

6th POV: Anderson

Why: Anderson was both a father figure and commanding officer to Sam. Because he’s known him for most of his life, he has a perspective no other POV character has. To him, Sam was more like a son he’d been tasked to protect, and in the end failed to protect him. He and Kaidan are the only people who know Shepard well enough to mourn Sam, and not just Commander Shepard. Anderson would really let me start to explore grief.

How I used it: This was my heavy hitter. Through Anderson’s POV, I could trace Sam the person as he grew into Commander Shepard, and explore the echoes of the kid that still lived in the adult. I was also able to use Kaidan in a really fascinating way. In Opus, Kaidan and Sam served together for four years before the Normandy. Therefore, Anderson is pretty familiar with him, but doesn’t know him the way he does Sam. He keeps looking at Kaidan expecting Sam. In a sense, trying to plug a puzzle piece into the wrong hole. It was a neat way to show Anderson’s grief.

Additionally, this was a great opportunity to demonstrate Kaidan’s sense of loss without being in his head. Anderson does not know there was a relationship between Sam and Kaidan, but the reader does. Thus, I could have my cake and eat it, too: The POV character wasn’t examining the relationship that had been lost between Sam and Kaidan because he didn’t know it existed, but the reader got to.  

Excerpt:

He exhales through his nostrils. “The Normandy was attacked by an unknown vessel. Whoever they were, Joker says they came out of nowhere. Shepard got him into the escape pod, but the ship lost gravity. He…well.”

Alenko stares straight ahead, silent. Anderson looks for a tell, but he only knows Shepard’s.

Alenko isn’t Shepard.

7th POV: Tali

Why: Tali presented a similar problem to me that Garrus did. What was Shepard specifically to her, and what did his loss mean to her? As my closing POV, not only did she need to hit a home run, but she also needed to close out the chapter in a way that tied all the other POVs together and examined Shepard’s death through a much wider lens, without feeling like I was pulling the camera back from her POV to get there. That’s a lot to ask. Lucky for me, Tali never lets me down.

The answer I came to also called back to Sonata, in which exploring what home meant to each of the characters was an important theme. So I went back to this idea for Tali, as she and Sam had a very important thing in common that set them apart from everyone else: they were both born in space, and did not have the traditional fixed point of home that everyone around them had. Home was different to them than it was to everyone else.

How I used it: Tali was the only one left who understood how truly unique and special the home she’d found on the Normandy was. Therefore, when the crew starts to fragment and fall apart around her, she is forced to mourn the loss not only of Shepard, who gave her that home, but the home itself. I was able to use that grief to circle back to how much Shepard changed the people around him, and how deeply his loss will be felt in ways people haven’t even realized yet.

That conclusion was the magic final puzzle piece that made the whole thing work, and it was literally the last idea to take shape.

Excerpt:

Aliens don’t carry their ship names with them the way quarians do. Perhaps when you’re born with dirt under your feet you don’t need to. For them, home isn’t a vessel among the stars – it’s a fixed place in the universe, a way back no matter how far from it you venture.

But Shepard had been different. Like the quarians, he had no fixed point. Home was what – or who – he carried with him. He’d understood the power of a ship name, even if he hadn’t used one out loud. People who served with Shepard felt like they belonged, in ways they couldn’t anywhere else, because he said to hell with that fixed point in the galaxy and brought home to anyone who needed it. For Shepard, there wasn’t a way back. Just a way forward.

Shepard changed people.

They’ve lost so much more than a ship.

The primary objective of Opus is to examine the relationship between Sam and Kaidan, but to really understand the magnitude of Sam’s death, it was critical to explore it outside the confines of that relationship. Part of the struggle Sam and Kaidan have is that Sam doesn’t truly belong to himself or to Kaidan – he belongs to everyone else. That means his death doesn’t belong to either him or Kaidan. It’s shared with all the people he touched and shaped.

That’s what made this carousel of POVs a challenge I really wanted to make work. It required an absurd amount of juggling, but the diversity and uniqueness of each made Shepard’s loss feel real and devastating. But not only did each of those POVs tell us something about Sam, they provided some meaningful character development for the POV character. How they react to Sam’s death and what it means to them tells us a lot about that character, which in turn lends the entire story more depth.  

If you read this far, I’m pretty sure you deserve a cookie. 

I don’t know if any of that is helpful or meaningful other than to show an example of how POVs can be a really awesome tool to tell a story. There can be a lot of depths and layers to why you use a particular character to tell a story through, and those choices can greatly impact the story you end up telling.

#how writing is written #writing meta #POV meta #peak self-indulgence

[arcturusreads]

New Beginnings - Merhayes

Another one that was written pre S17, before Scout was born and how I think Cormac would have asked Meredith out.

Meredith ran down the hospital corridors before finally getting to the maternity ward and stopped in front of the door that she had been looking for. Gently knocking, she popped her head around.

"Hey..." she whispered tentatively.

She was greeted by two grinning and tired faces. "Mere, come in." Amelia sounded exhausted but there was pure joy in her face.

"I hope you don't mind but I came as soon as you text." Meredith didn't want to impose, she knew what those first few hours... days... were like after birth.

"The whole point in me texting you was for you to get your butt down here! I want you to meet your niece!" If it wouldn't have caused her pain, Amelia would've been bouncing up and down on the bed.

"It's a girl!?" Mere yelled in a whisper, eyes immediately going to the small bundle that Link was lovingly cradling.

"Yeah, a gorgeous little girl, coming in at seven pounds!" The pride in Link's voice was obvious and it made Meredith smile even more. He was taking to being a father like a duck to water and that little girl already had him wrapped around her little finger. There was no doubt about that.

"Do you want to hold her?" Amelia asked.

"Please!" Meredith placed herself down in the chair as Link carefully placed the baby into her arms.

The little girl looked so cosy in her swaddled state, eyes closed and mouth opening and closing to form a small "o". Meredith entire world, at that moment, was consumed with the new life that she held. She couldn't tear her eyes away from her niece, she didn't want to. It had been a while since she had held a baby, that wasn't a patient, in her arms.

"Meet Alina Shepard-Lincoln." Link's awestruck voice whispered, his gaze still on his daughter.

Meredith couldn't help but smirk, "That last name is a bit of a mouthful."

Amelia just rolled her eyes and defended their choice, "It saved on the arguments!"

"Well, I happen to think that Alina is a very pretty name for a very smart little lady!" Meredith cooed at the baby.

"I'm glad to hear it, wouldn't want her godmother hating her name." Amelia laughed.

Meredith's head shot up and looked between Link and Amelia. "Wait- what?"

Link had taken a seat next to Amelia bed, holding her hand. "We were going to ask..."

But he was cut off by Amelia, "Look, we're not religious or anything so it's not like there'll be a christening. So, maybe the term godmother is a little redundant here. But the 'keeper of child in case of any mishaps' doesn't flow as well, you know? But if you prefer that title we could go with that-"

"Babbling!" Link and Meredith said at the same time, laughing.

"Right, sorry!" Amelia shook her head before getting back on track. "I'm blaming baby brain. But Link and I were thinking, the world is a scary place. The three of us know that and if anything were to ever happen to me and Link we would want to know that Alina was with someone we could trust to love her and raise her to be a strong, fearless woman. And you were the first person we both thought of." Tears were brimming in Amelia's eyes as she spoke.

Meredith felt something tightening in her chest as Amelia spoke. "I- are you sure? I mean I did run off with my two kids whilst pregnant when Derek died."

Amelia shrugged, "Okay, that definitely wasn't your finest moment..."

This time it was Link who cut in, "But you've had a million brilliant moments. Not just as a surgeon but as a mother."

"This is what we both want," Amelia gave Link's hand a squeeze. "As long as you're okay with that."

A grin was on Meredith's face, "I would love that."

Amelia let out a sigh of relief. "Oh, good because I don't think anyone would cope with being second best if you said no."

Meredith let out a hearty laugh which caused Alina to stir so Meredith rocked her gently on her shoulder whilst walking her around the room. Her goddaughter. Carefully she handed Alina back to her father who resumed the walking whilst Meredith sat next to Amelia.

"Derek would be so proud of you right now." Meredith had taken Amelia's hand, holding it tight.

"You think so?"

"Oh, I know so. He would have spoilt that little girl so much." They both laughed as they remembered how Derek was around his own daughter and other nieces.

"You know, he would have been proud of you too, Mere." Meredith opened her mouth to protest but Amelia carried on. "You've been raising three amazing kids as a single mom, you're making strides in your field and you're carrying on in your life. He wants to see you happy, Mere. Even if that was with a certain gorgeous, Irish Chief of Paediatrics."

Meredith couldn't help but roll her eyes at that last part. "That sounds awfully specific."

"Hmm, does it? Good thing I know where to find one, don't you think?" The smug look on Amelia's face was beginning to irk Meredith a little.

"Amelia, you just gave birth. Do you not think it's a bit early to be playing matchmaker." Meredith didn't know how Amelia even had the capacity to think about anything else right now. After both of her births, all Meredith had wanted to do was to sleep and not have to think about anything other than keeping her child alive.

"She's got a point, Grey," Link butted in as she placed Alina down in her plastic cot and sat on the end of the bed by Amelia's legs.

"Really? You're in on this, too?" Meredith raised an eyebrow.

"Hey, I'm just saying, I've seen the way he looks at you."

Meredith was getting a little flustered now. "He doesn't look at me like anything!"

"Suuuure he doesn't!" Amelia sarcastic tone was not appreciated by her sister. "Anytime you're around and he's in the same room his eyes won't leave you. He's always watching you!"

"Oh, because that's not creepy at all. Hayes constantly watching me and plotting to kill me." Meredith rolled her eyes, why would him watching her like a hawk be an indication of him liking her.

Amelia slapped Meredith's arm. "Ow!" She rubbed the spot.

"Oh, shut up. I didn't even hit that hard! And you know what I mean!"

"Why are we discussing this? Shouldn't we be discussing baby stuff?" Meredith tried her best to deflect the conversation away from Cormac Hayes.

"Eh, everyone is going to want to take about baby stuff! I'm fed up just thinking about it. I want to talk about you and Hayes!"

"There is no me and Hayes!"

"Not yet but there could be if you give him a chance," Amelia sang.

Meredith sighed, "Amelia..."

"You said that you and DeLuca were history, right?"

"I mean, yeah..."

Amelia probed, "Do you still want to be with him?"

"No, definitely not. After everything that's happened... I don't think either of us wants that." Meredith shook her head. Whatever she and Andrew had was definitely in the past, it wasn't something that she wanted to revisit.

Amelia nodded, "Okay, good. So, what's stopping you?"

"He just thinks of me as a friend." Meredith wasn't sure how many times she was going to have to keep bringing that point up but Amelia didn't seem to understand.

"But you don't?" Link rejoined the conversation which made Meredith shake her head. Why the hell was she being ambushed?

"I never said that."

"But do you think of him as just a friend?" Amelia was not planning on letting go of this until she got a satisfactory answer.

"I mean, I'd be blind if I didn't think he was good looking..."

"See!? Plus, he was a gift," Amelia reminded her with a smirk.

Confusion was written across Links face. "What?"

Amelia waved her hand behind her to shush him. "I'll explain later." Her full attention was back on Meredith. "You guys would make an incredibly hot couple. What's stopping you?"

Before Meredith could even open her mouth Amelia started again. "Absolutely nothing, now go!"

"You're kicking me out?" Meredith lifted a brow.

"Don't make me call security!"

"I own the hospital!"

"Link!"

"Alright, fine I'm going!" Meredith walked over to where Alina lay, blissfully unaware of the antics going on around her. "She's crazy but your mom is a good one." She whispered.

"Hey, I heard that!" Amelia called at Meredith's back as she departed the room.

On her way to the elevator, she passed the nursery, Cormac standing outside the window in a pink apron. Wincing, Meredith hoped she could get past undetected. After the conversation she had with Amelia just now, talking to him would be a little awkward and she couldn't be dealing with that. And if word got back to Amelia that they had both spoken, then Meredith would not hear the end of it. But going past the nursery was the quickest way to the elevators and she could not be bothered to traipse her way around the entire ward just to avoid one man. He did seem quite engrossed in whatever was on the chart he was looking. It should be fine, she would just quietly creep past. No one would know, Hayes wouldn't see her. Life would be great, no awkward conversations, everything is all good...

"Grey, what are you doing up here?"

"Damnit" Meredith whispered under her breathe. Why the hell did he need to look up then!?

Awkwardly she walked closer to Cormac, knowing it would just look weird if she kept three feet of distance between them. To avoid his gaze she looked into the nursery, full of babbling, healthy babies. "Uh, hi, Hayes."

A lopsided smile graced Cormac's face as he watched her looking at the newborns. "You know, I've been working with you for months and I don't think I've ever heard you call me by my first name."

"I could say the same for you," Meredith still hadn't dared to look at his face.

"Touche... well, maybe it's something that we should both try then, Meredith."

Meredith shut her eyes, the way he said her name made butterflies erupt in her stomach. Why was she feeling like a fifteen-year-old again? This was stupid, she was a grown woman, with three kids and a big job. She could not be going crazy just because a hot guy had said her name. She cleared her throat, "Cormac."

"Wasn't so bad now, was it?" He grinned.

Meredith finally looked at him and gave him a sarcastic smile. The awkwardness and tension knotted in her stomach were beginning to ease away. "Still with the jokes I see?"

"What can I say, if it paid better I would be a comedian."

Meredith laughed in spite of herself, which made Cormac's smile even wider. She didn't seem to laugh much around the hospital, he knew that they were around dying people but still. It felt as if she was holding something back but when she laughed, she seemed free. It bought along a warm feeling for Cormac, one that he hadn't felt since his wife had passed away. It was a feeling that he had battled with. He had felt guilty when it had first happened, as though he was betraying his wife. But she had wanted so badly for him to move on after she had left. Cormac hadn't thought that it would be possible to find that kind of love again, not that he loved Meredith but he could see things going somewhere. If he thought she even felt the same way.

"So, what are you doing around these parts then?" He bought the conversation back to his original question. Hayes was pretty on top of his department and he was sure that no one had pages for a consult from General recently.

"Oh, Amelia had the baby and she texted me to come and meet my niece."

Cormac's eyebrows raised in joy, "Shepard had her baby?"

Meredith nodded, "Yeah, a little girl, her name's Alina."

"Well, I'll make sure to do a round of the little on then and make her my patient."

"I'm sure that Amelia would love that."

Cormac took a deep breath and followed Meredith's gaze to the babies. It was now or never. He was only going to have the courage to do this once and if he chickened out now he wasn't sure if he would be able to ask her this again. "Babies..." He started with a long pause.

Meredith just stared at him curiously, waiting for him to continue. Cormac wanted to hit his head against the windows. Babies. Why would he start off like that? And then not say anything else? She was going to end up thinking that he was a right weirdo. And she was going to think that he was even weirder because he was leaving this gap longer and longer. Damnit, he really needed to say something.

"They, uh, make you think of new beginnings, don't they?" Cormac blurted it out as quickly as he could and Meredith wasn't sure whether she was meant to agree or whether he was going to continue talking. Thankfully, Cormac carried on. "It just gives you hope... that things will be okay."

Meredith's eyes were now locked on Cormac's profile. How hadn't she realised how attractive he looked from this side. The stubble... his nose... okay, yeah, maybe he did like him, a tiny bit.

"Look, Meredith," Cormac turned his body so that he was fully facing Meredith. "I've been wanting to ask you if you wanted to go out for a drink sometime..."

Meredith looked around, "Who? Me?" She asked, pointing at herself, a mischievous smile on her.

"Oh haha, Grey, yes, you."

"Hmmm..." Meredith put her hands in her white lab coat, rocking back and forth on her heels. She may as well have some fun with this since she knew what her final answer was going to end up being. "Yeah, what's a drink between friends, right?"

Cormac winced comically, "Oh, Grey, come on. You're killing me here!"

"I have no idea what you're on about." She looked around innocently.

"I'm sure you don't. Fine!" Cormac suddenly got down on one knee just as there were a gaggle of doctors and nurses on their way past the pair. They all came to a halt when they saw Cormac on the floor.

"Cormac, what the hell are you doing." Meredith had crouched a little and was yelling at him as quietly as she could.

"Meredith Grey!" His thick Irish accent projected all the way down the hall. "Will you please allow me to take you on a date?"

At this point, Meredith had gone bright red and could feel herself slowly dying from embarrassment. She began to tug on Cormac's arm trying to get him to stand up whilst straining a smile to their audience in the hopes that they would leave. "Hayes, can you please get the hell up?" She whispered through gritted teeth.

"Nope. Not until you give me an answer."

"Fine!" Meredith finally relented, annoyed that her plan had completely backfired on her. This was going to be around the hospital within the next hour and she knew that her sisters were never going to let her live this down.

"I'm sorry, Meredith, I couldn't hear you." Cormac looked up at her grinning, her tugging not even having the slightest effect in moving him from the floor.

Grumbling under her breath, Meredith knew that there was only one way that she would be able to put an end to her embarrassment right now. "Yes, I'll go on a date with you," she said as loudly as she was able to bring herself to.

Finally, Cormac stood up, turning to the audience and giving them a huge grin as they all clapped and cheered. When he turned back to Meredith, she was rolling her eyes but ultimately glad that the group seemed to be dispersing now that they had gotten what they wanted.

"I hope you're happy." She playfully hit him on his chest.

"Over the moon, I'll have you know." They both wore matching grins on their faces until Meredith's pager went off.

"I'm sorry, I'm needed in the pit."

Cormac just shook his head, "Go, I'll catch up with you later."

Meredith sent him an apologetic smile before running down the corridor, Cormac watching her retreating figure with her lab coat flying behind her. He couldn't help but think how lucky he was that he had managed to get a date with Meredith Grey.

#amelink #greys anatomy #merhayes #merwidow #cormac hayes #meredith grey #mcwidow #amelia shepard #atticus lincoln #excuse me whilst i rearrange the alphabet

[aricazorel]

12 from the fluffy prompts for f!shenko please!

Thank you so much for the ask!

“This reminded me of you.” from this list

Rebecca Shepard x Kaidan Alenko; ME3, Citadel DLC; 1548 words

Spending the first few days of mandatory shore leave chasing your own clone and recovering your stolen ship was not how Rebecca Shepard had envisioned the time off. She hadn’t expected Anderson to give her his apartment either, but she wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Instead she decided to spend the time as ordered: off duty while she caught up with friends, took it easy, and spent quality time with Kaidan. Granted her shore leaves had always been hit or miss on whether other people enjoyed them with her but Kaidan was different. She knew him. Really knew him and thought she might be able to find things they both enjoyed doing.

That’s why she stopped into a random store in one of the lower wards market districts. It screamed Kaidan Alenko. The ward itself was home to a mixture of races and was a prime area for tourists to frequent. And that was what she was at the moment. Not the Commander, not the Savior of the Citadel, not the galaxy’s beacon of hope against the impossible. Just a tourist looking for a gift for her nerdy boyfriend and did that shop fit the bill. Thankful she actually listened to his random facts at all hours of the day and night, she was sure to find something he liked.

The whole concept of the store was based on interesting and unique things from Earth’s past. As one of the newer species on the galactic scene, humanity was still a curiosity to some. The oddities of Earth’s pop culture from past centuries permeated the shelves, racks, and display spaces in the specialty shop.

Shepard roamed the aisles looking for a specific pop culture icon from the late 20th-early 21st centuries. Surely they had something related to his nerdy obsession. After all he had been through and all he did for her, he deserved something familiar, something comforting, something distinctly Kaidan.

Finally at the very back of the store, she found it. All sorts of items: tee shirts, hats, figures, plushies, OSDs with movies and TV series, models, and much more. But one thing in particular caught her attention. A box containing what looked to be a collection of several items. Ones she knew Kaidan would love.

Her target acquired, the Commander- turned- tourist quickly paid for it and made her way back to the apartment. If she were lucky, Kaidan would still be out with Cortez, Vega, and Joker at the arcade. She could wrap it and surprise him.

Hopefully…

~~~~~

“Hey, Becca! I’m back,” Kaidan’s voice called from the living room.

“I’m in here,” she shouted from the bar area. The large box sat on the coffee table in front of her as The Battlespace played on the large vid screen but muted.

The Major rounded the wall partition as he commented, “Joker still wants to have that party. Tried all evening to get Steve, Vega, and me to convince you to agree to it.”

“I told him I’d think about it,” Rebecca groaned from the couch.

“Yeah, well you know Joker. He gets an idea and won’t let go until he gets his way,” Alenko replied as he came to stand by the couch, the artificial fire crackling behind him.

“Yeah. I know but all I want to do right now is spend time with you,” she said tossing her red hair over her shoulder. “Alone.”

“I’m all yours tonight, Becca,” he assured her as his whiskey-colored eyes flickered to the coffee table. “I promise.”

Shepard grinned. “Something catch your eye, Major?”

“You always have my eye, Shep,” he said with a lop-sided grin.

“You’ve gotten better with your flirting,” she noted as he approached the table.

“Who said I was flirting? I thought I was simply stating a fact,” Alenko commented, winking at her.

“Kaidan,” the Commander murmured as she felt herself blush lightly.

“It’s true,” the L2 biotic said as he pointed to the box. “But what it that?”

“It’s a box.”

“Becca.”

“It’s a wrapped box.”

“Shepard.”

“It’s a wrapped box with something allegedly inside it.”

“Rebecca Jane Shepard!”

The Commander laughed as she held up her hands as if in surrender. “Okay! Okay! No reason to sound like my dad.”

Kaidan made a face. “Don’t ever say that again. That’s just…weird.”

Rebecca laughed again as she motioned towards the box. “It’s for you.”

“Me?” the Major asked in surprise. “From who?”

She frowned as she replied indignantly, “Me, Alenko. Unless you have other women gifting you things behind my back.”

“Hell, no,” the second human Specter exclaimed as he reached for the box.

“No guys either?” she teased as he sat down on the couch beside her.

With the box in his lap, he gave her an incredulous look. “Sweetheart, while I do like both men and women, I only love you.”

Shepard was left speechless by his honesty as he quickly kissed her cheek. He gave her a grin and began to unwrap the box. Her once emotionally reserved Lt. was not so any longer, and it suited him. It suited him very well.

“You didn’t have to get me anything.”

“You always say that, and you know I’m gonna do it anyway.”

“Yeah, well I still think you don’t have to…”

The Commander grinned as he went silent. His fingers traced over the edges of the box as his eyes flickered from one image to another on the side facing him. She leaned forward to look at him better. His expression was one of surprise and something she couldn’t place.

“I found it at an Earth novelty shop in one of the wards,” she said softly.

Kaidan nodded as she continued to look over the box.

“This,” Rebecca said motioning to the focus of his attention, “reminded me of you.”

“I had some like these when I was a kid,” Kaidan murmured as he opened the box. “My mom found them somewhere. Used to put them together to distract me from my biotics when I got frustrated with them.”

Shepard smiled as he pulled out several smaller boxes, each of a different model kit. She watched as his smile widened as he told her the name of each ship the model was supposed to build. A look of fondness for a childhood memory on his handsome features the entire time.

“This one’s an X-wing—Red 5. Luke’s ship…This is the Millennium Falcon—a YT-1300…Ummm, this is a TIE Fighter and a…TIE Advanced—Vader’s I think…A Star Destroyer—Venator class used during the Clone Wars and a…Oh wow! It’s the Ebon Hawk!”

Shepard recognized all the ships except the last one from binge watching the Star Wars movies and series with him in the hospital. “Come again?”

He turned to her excitedly. “It’s the ship from a couple of Star Wars video games. I had an emulator for them growing up. I might still have it…”

“So it’s a good thing?”

He nodded with a broad grin. “It was a fun couple of games. I can show them to you some time but…”

“But what?”

“Well, my mom used to say the pilot of the ship sounded a little like me,” he said rubbing the back of his neck, clearly a little embarrassed. “It might be weird.”

She looked at him thoughtfully. “Maybe it’s just one more thing that can remind me of you. You are weird in a special kind of way.”

Kaidan gazed at her happily. “This mean a lot to me, Becca. Just like you do. Thank you.”

“I’m glad,” she said looping an arm though his.

He went back to inspecting the model kits as she laid her head against his shoulder.

“You know,” she began, “when you get those put together I think there might be enough room to display them in the case in the loft.”

He turned to her. “You’d put my model kits from Star Wars with your models of real ships?”

“Yeah, why not?”

“Umm, because they’re not—”

“Not what, Kaidan?” she asked. “They are important to you and you are important to me.”

He looked at her with cynically. “While that does sound sweet and sincere, is that really the only reason?”

“Well, of course it is,” she replied. Shepard paused and winced. “Welllll, that and I think most of them look badass…except for the TIE. It looks like a messed-up eyeball.”

Alenko laughed. “Oddly enough that was a nickname the Rebels and New Republic pilots gave them. The TIE/LN starfighter and the TIE/D Defender specifically. I—”

“Alright, my handsome nerd, I get you are excited and I’m glad you like them, but I thought we were spending the night together. Alone. Do I need to be jealous of the model kits?”

“No, Becca. I’m all yours,” he said setting them aside as he leaned over. Kissing her, he suggested, “We could watch the movies though.”

“Hmmmm,” she said. “We could as long as it isn’t too distracting.”

“If you want my full attention all you ever have to do it ask.”

“I know. And I love you. You and all of your nerdiness too.”

“Oh good. I was worried…”

“Kaidan.”

“I love you too.”

She smiled. Rebecca would always love him. Everything about him. Everything.  

#fluff prompts #Mass Effect #f!shenko #Kaidan Alenko #femshep