(no subject)

[be_themoon]

i just finished mass effect 3

nothing will ever be okay again oh my god this gaaaame this trilogy i can't

my heart hurts so much and it was all so beautiful, seriously. 

hello my spring break has been going pretty well! apart from finishing mass effect today kind of sucked because i had a really bad migraine all day but all in all my upped dose has been going well and i've had a lot of time to myself and to hang out with a couple friends and to play me3 and rp and sleep, and hopefully this next quarter will be a lot easier!

how are you guys? 

who wants to talk mass effect!

Comments

[freudiancascade]

Yes please, let's talk Mass Effect! :D Pfft, like Twitter squee-fests haven't been enough - heh, where do you want to start?

[be_themoon]

lmao that was fast! but yessss all the Mass Effect things the overarching themes in this trilogy hnnng and seriously Shepard's story is the thing in it that gives me the most feelings and like - I've imposed some of my own headcanon on her, but it's small things. My Shepard cuts her hair short between me2 & 3 and there's a couple other things but mostly they give you this beautiful story about someone who turns themselves into their galaxy's savior in all the traditional savior ways - a warrior queen who makes peace, underestimated and then suddenly a legend and an icon, a shepard, and in the end it was inevitable, wasn't it? she had died already and come back - three days underground to her two years, what did jesus have on her? it was a blasphemous thought but there were machines calling themselves her gods these days. she was made for this fight and only this. she had no place left in a world with no reapers.

she does not look back when she leaps.

(ps this is why i have so many feelings on why thane is the most thematically appropriate romance in the entire game for either shepard)

[freudiancascade]

Okay, so, now that I'm done incoherently keysmashing about how BEAUTIFUL that was, can I agree a thousand times yes?

I don't think I could ever play Mass Effect with a Shepard that is not a woman.

Her body is a weapon and she uses it without mercy when to do otherwise would mean death, and she pushes herself past all human bounds of endurance (the walk to the beam, her armour flaking off in chunks along with the surface of her skin, all ash), and the physicality of her is, on the most basic of levels, what keeps her alive. She fights because she is breathing; she is breathing because she fights. Shepard is not a chaste saviour - she bleeds, she fights, she loves, she lives. She is real and her miracles are all grounded in the dust on her armour, in the scars on her face, in the grooves her fingertips have worn against the trigger of her favorite gun.

But her most important actions, the ones that will echo through generations, come not from the pull of her fingers against the trigger but from the slipping of words, syllables, sounds from her lips, and sound is just energy, words are just disturbances in the air. Choices are invisible.

She is not a weapon to be used in the traditional ways but a living, breathing woman. She was born not to start wars, but end them; she has learned not to light fires without reason, but to understand how rapidly they will burn, how much oxygen they will consume. And if adding fuel to it now will save a section of the forest later, then it must be done; if walking away from her falling homeworld will give it a chance, she will do it. Garrus spoke of the arithmetic of war, but that's not quite right. For Shepard, it is never so cold.

PS. I literally stared at this for AGES, went "rawrg" at Winged a little bit, and then finally got to typing. I am uncovering Shepard feels I never knew I had AND I HOPE YOU ARE HAPPY.

[be_themoon]

JAY JAY beccatoria put my shepard feelings into a vid or rather the machine ones AHHHHHh ahhh

and oh god my reaction to your Shepard things is basically the same as yours to mine SO I HOPE YOU'RE HAPPY TOO because i know i am!! and seriously right I don't actually know how a male Shepard even works I've never tried it and the idea leaves me totally cold. but that's part of the point of course etc.

and oh man Shepard and her choices and the way literally every move she makes is another stamp into the fabric of history, another pull on the fabric. she is trying to make it unravel, because there is a pattern in it that is unacceptable. if she just puts enough force into it, lets her weight become heavy enough to tear this thread free, perhaps the next will follow and then the next. she is working on luck and instinct and hope that they cannot fail.

and she is not blind to the impact she makes on the space around her. there is a shape carved into the universe that matches the breadth of her armor, the curve of her hand around a trigger, the lean of her head into the sight of her rifle or into a conversation, another moment when someone around is dying by slow inches and she reaches forth her hand because what else can she do? she is needed. and her hand becomes her voice becomes her body and her soul put forth into the gaps, because you stem the tide little by little. thane's son saved and his story given someone to help carry it here. cortez's grief swallowed and held within her soul there. tali given the trust of her people back and miranda shown that humanity is the greatest gift she has and jack learning how to trust again. drop by drop, because what is an ocean but a multitude of drops? she may not like that she has become a symbol but it is necessary.

she makes her moves on a chessboard in four dimensions and for stakes they all can barely comprehend, and she makes her plays with the lives of the people she loves. peace here for war there. her options are limited but she transcends them. they said it was impossible to get quarians and geth on one side. well, they said the same for the krogans and turians and look at palaven now. if she works just a little harder, sleeps a little less and lets one more friend die, she has what she needs.

and okay even if you don't romance thane shepard tells him "you won't be alone long" Shepard and her prescience that she's going to die is kind of heartbreaking and beautiful in every sense and just.

savior figuuuuures burning themselves up to save everyone else is one of the most beautiful things i know and her teaaam and how much they love her - those conversations before you go on into the final phase of priority: earth kill me utterly, I can't even begin to deal with them.

[freudiancascade]

Oh no, I try not to think about Thane because that line about the ocean kills me.

He's dying because he's adapted to the desert, and so water in the air is tearing apart his lungs. Yet his prayers are for the sea.

Shepard will kill herself for the sake of this war - she's torn up every part of herself that is not geared towards the fight, stripping the redundant parts away like tuning a machine. What she allows to survive is not a woman who knows how to sit still, not a woman who knows how to be calm, how to be anywhere but inside the hurricane. She is always dancing around the eye of the storm, close to the center but never quite still. Her body, her thoughts, her actions and her choices: all of her is beautiful kinetic MOTION. She IS momentum, the pebble that triggered a rockslide, the drop that introduced salt to the ocean. She doesn't know how to not be what she has become, and that's killing her, and she knows it, but she also knows there's no other way for it to end.

Yet if she prays, it is for peace. If she looks to the sky it is not to see war, but to fall in love with the stars all over again. Because they may revolve too quickly for the eye to catch, for anything but a machine to measure, but if you're far enough to see them sparkle studded in the fabric of the sky, well -

- they're completely and utterly still.



(UGH YOU DID IT AGAIN WITH THE FEELS WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME)

[be_themoon]

the sea means change, means adaptation. if he were like the sea he would weather this storm and come out the other side unchanged, but he is not. it always rains on kahje, the sunset shining through, but he cannot change himself. he was made for a purpose, too. he can see Shepard's purpose in her like a beacon - here is the sea, here is the ocean he has wanted to drown himself in and the person who can stand against a storm and remain as she was and he must protect that - not that she cannot protect herself, but he can fit himself into the space at her back and guard it, he can give her a place to rest for a short time.

he has never prayed for peace before as ardently as he does for her. (i picked up thane as a character for rp I HAVE A LOT OF FEELINGS ABOUT HIM TOO)

oh god her skylight looking out into the void she died in but I don't think she's actually afraid of it. she does not seek death but she has always known it will come, and then it came and she surpassed it. and yesss a force that can never come to rest never truly pause and these people love her, she knows they do, she knows (too well) how they would lay down their lives for her but a body in motion tends to remain in motion and she has never been still.


because i have a lot of feelings i just. help. i can't.

[freudiancascade]

oh no just feelings

Uncovering a whole wealth of Shepard feelings I never knew I had! I love the image of her and Garrus sitting on a beach in Rio, both drinking something strong and overly sweet (because the war is over so they went with the bartender's recommendation of some fruity little mixer that neither of them would have ever ordered alone). It will never come to pass - Shepard wasn't made for times of peace.

It's that simple, and that final.

She always knew how it would end, but until then, she pretended she didn't. Her people needed their Shepard, they needed to have faith and hope and a thousand other things she came against her will to symbolize. Only when it didn't matter - when Thane needed reassurance he would not die alone - did she let that facade slip. She always knew.

I would suggest changing the topic to Legion and EDI and the beauty of becoming a person, a living thinking feeling (oh god discovering how to feel in a time of war, in a time of pain, on the edge of losing everything they've just learned how to love, and oh god, the realization that it's worth it all the same), but I think that would almost be worse!

[be_themoon]

I just have so many Thane and Shepard feelings :( it's the worst I can't bring myself to import my Thane romance into ME3 yet I don't know if I'll ever be able to because as much as it's absolutely perfect it would just hurt so muuuch.

and oh my god ugh yes her and Garrus happy and at peace but never to be, and oh god I also have a lot of Garrus feelings, romanced or unromanced, because either way he loved her, with everything he had, stood at her back and tried to do what he thought she would do and wanted to help her. if her purpose was to defeat the reapers his was to help her, and then in the end of all things she goes without him, she leaves him behind and he is left with a universe that is free and healing and empty in ways he had tried to forget were possible.

and ugh just the entire Normandy crew, who all centered themselves around her like planets in orbit around a sun, her outstretched hand life bearing light. she saved all of them in one way or another, and then she left them and they were strong, they had become their own people and they knew how to move forward and on but they had never wanted to.

ALSO YES YES YES i want you to tell me all of your feelings on Legion and EDI and motherfucking keelah se'lai I think that was the first moment in the game that I truly started crying because oh god Legion apologized for having to die and you could hear in it's voice that it was resigned but still sad because all those Geth in one body learning to become one person, an individual unit and it had had its beliefs and its feelings and it loved its people to the point of death.

ALSO how much everyone sacrificing themselves to buy Shepard a little more time - to get to the temple, to get out of a bad situation, to make an alliance - it just keeps happening over and over again in the game and it's heartbreaking how many people die for her.

[goodbyebird]

Gods yes MASS EFFECT. If you want some deep thinkies, try beccatoria's posts, very good meta! I also think the Hulk Filmcritic wrote a piece on it a while back, which I liked muchly.

[be_themoon]

oh my god beccatoria put all my shepard feelings into a vid HOW DOES SHE ALWAYS DO THIS

and yessss I will have to read her meta tomorrow fantastic 8D ugh mass effect I just have a truly ridiculous amount of feelings about it

[goodbyebird]

She's one of my favorite vidders for a reason :)

I plan on replaying Mass Effect this Summer. Just gotta figure out how to restart with the same character design. I tried with a new character and it was just weird and threw me out of the game. I want my Shepard.

[beccatoria]

You can just reimport your character into the same game. Like, start up Mass Effect 1, and choose "import character" and you can pick your Mass Effect 1 save from the last time you played with her. You get to keep all your levels, etc. too. (I think the idea being you up the difficulty, but, AHAHAHAHAHA, Game, I only just about managed to play you on normal and that was the third time I did you.)

[goodbyebird]

Ooh shiny! I kind of wish I could import and reset the skills tho. But since I want to play at the highest difficulty setting, it might be a good thing if I can't hehe. I really do want to improve at first shooter games, so I can start playing the war games online with my brother/friends, and ME is hella more appealing as a learning tool than some straight-forward war game where you gun everybody down with no emotional stakes in the game. Also I didn't do all the side-quests in the first game so I'll have new stuff waiting for me yay :D new content should make up for the emotional trauma of fighting swarms of husks on hard, y/y?

Have there been any new DLCs btw? (not the extended ending one, steering clear there)

[beccatoria]

Playing it on HARD?! My hero. Maybe one day I'll get there, but, um, at the moment I'm just dealing with normal after having previously put it on casual like a wimp. I'll be honest I find online gaming kinda intimidating, though less so, I guess, if it's with friends? I did used to have a great time playing multiplayer PSP with my husband and our best friend over a local wireless network.

As to the rest, I think in ME2 and ME3 you can visit something in the medbay and reset your skills/reskill for a small financial or experience fee? I only vaguely remember cus I didn't do it. But I think it just resets everything to zero and gives you an equivalent amount of points to spend, so you could then choose not to spend them until you wanted to. But also, if you're just concerned about getting the same face, again, certainly in ME2 and ME3, and possibly also in ME1, you can get your character's "face code" (it's something you can look up in the "make your face" screen. So you could reimport your character "just" to look up her face code), and then I think you can enter that instead of going through the character creation screen? Um, sorry for half-information here, I'm not totally sure about what I'm saying...

But yes! DLCs! There have been! First off, you aren't going with the extended cut? I...that's just *clings to you* I get why people like it, I do, and there are even a few gorgeous moments, but in general, I just...it's an apology, it's a retraction, it's a beautiful lie and its existence breaks my heart (as well as a few of their weirder, more specific, retractions/apologies). So I just...thank you.

Other DLCs though! There are three - Leviathan. This is a plotty investigation where you go looking for "Leviathan" - rumoured to kill a Reaper. It's got lots of secrets on the origins of the Reapers, and a little more information on the Catalyst/AI. It's partially awesome, partially a little "too much behind the curtain," but it has a good sense of atmosphere and variety of action, and you can get a screaming skull for your cabin, so I'm in favour of it on balance, though I think it plays best later in the game. It's 800 Microsoft Points.

Omega is basically where you team up with Aria and take back Omega! You can't take your squad with you, though, probably cus of the cost of getting Carrie-Anne Moss to do all the Aria voicework. The criticism of it is that it's basically one giant fight (albeit in a variety of locations within Omega with varying goals) and even if it's long, it's overpriced at 1200 Microsoft Points. Which basically I agree with, it is overpriced, but I'm kind of accepting of it because this game owns my soul and it's the only game I buy all the DLC for, so, whatever. I basically had fun because it was hours of getting to have Aria on my team snarking at everyone, and occasionally watching her interplay with her snarky, Turian ex-girlfriend who you also get for your team. But it's not groundbreaking in terms of plot or anything.

Finally, there's Citadel. It's the last DLC and is also 1200 Microsoft Points. But this time it's totally worth it and if you can only get one DLC, I'd get this one. It's a campy, crazy conspiracy adventure on the Citadel, with a whole new set of locations based around a sort of "Casino Strip" area of the Citadel. There's on-the-run with no armour stuff, undercover Casino stuff, giant everyone-on-deck fights through the Council Archives stuff, and even fighting on the Normandy! It's...fanservice in the best tradition - loving and indulgent but not icky. And it somehow manages to use the chief villain to hang just enough of a lantern on the "we're the big damn heroes!" cliches that the adventure throws out and mocks, that it all hangs together. It's over the top and ridiculous and fun, but also manages to make sense. Plus...okay I don't want to spoil it for you, but let's just say Traynor steals the best moment of the entire thing. And WREX is back as a squadmate!

But the reason it's worth so much money is that afterwards, you get to keep a giant apartment that you can decorate (to a minimal degree), you get to throw a party for all your friends (with HILARIOUS interactions and including your whole ME2 party), you get a ton of additional cutscenes with all your comrades, including the ME2 guys, like...probably 20 extra hanging out custcenes trigger in all. There are also a TON of minigames and stuff down in the Casino Strip area, including a whole combat simulator where you can become the Arena Champion (and a mini quest investigating glitches), and get all your squadmates (from ALL the games I think, or at least most of them) back as teammates for the simulated fights.

So yeah, Citadel is great, Omega is great if you love Aria, Leviathan is creepy and cool, and...like 90% solid, interesting information about the Reapers and the overarching plot and 10%, "Eh...did you need to say that/ruin that reveal/did you actually mean that?"

[be_themoon]

also seconding all of this! Citadel is a goldmine, and I also suggest saving just before you invite people for the party and have it because in different combinations of people you get totally different conversations and some of the ones in smaller groups are hilarious but you'll miss if you simply invite everyone.

Also while yes I adored Omega because incomprehensible shrieking noises Nyreen I'm in love oh my god, I do think it was overpriced for the amount of content. ALTHOUGH unlocking the additional flare power is really really freaking useful in the last battle and really anything else where you're going up against large swarms / groups.

and yes if you are romancing people in your squad definitely wait until you have locked in that romance to do Leviathan and take them with you 8D great things happen.

[goodbyebird]

Your hero might need therapy after its all said and done. But I certainly will try! I've actually played the first DLC package, it came out when I was nearing the end of ME3. The reviews said it had a bit of an info/spoiler-dump, so I finished first and then went back and played it from an earlier save :D

OMG that third one sounds priceless though! I want it so bad. I now have the most excellent of carrots for playing through the games again, so I can have party fun times :D but also, TALIA I WILL SAVE YOU I WILL SAVE YOUR PEOPLE AND THERE WILL BE SUNSHINE AND PUPPIES.

Also they got Carrie Ann-Moss? Cool cool cool. Thinking I'll wind up getting both of these. They sound awesome. Thanks so much for the write-up <3

[be_themoon]

yes what becca said! that should work 8D and oh man ME3 multiplayer is really so much fun and also oh my god on insanity sounds awful, I really enjoy veteran in me2 but I haven't contemplated trying insanity yet.

[goodbyebird]

I figure if I throw myself into the deep end I gotta learn how to swim. It's probably going to take me ages, but I'm playing Shepard; Shepard's life isn't supposed to be easy ;)

[be_themoon]

alskdf lmao that's a good philosophy and man good luck! let me know how it goes you are far braver than I.

[beccatoria]

OH GOD I LOVE EVERYONE IN THIS BAR. NEVER STOP TALKING ABOUT SHEPARD.

And aaaah, every time I find someone who finishes this game and sees the beauty and the completeness and the wonder of it I feel so overwhlemed with gratitude and kinship because so many people just didn't. And I literally don't understand how that could have happened because it was wonderful, to me, on a level that made me want to run up to strangers on the street and scream at them, Degrasse-Tyson style, HAVE YOU HEARD THIS?!

It's also odd because I have...there's Shepard in my mind, my Shepard, who did this, and didn't do that. But then there are other ways the story plays out too, and there's this element...there's always this core of who Shepard is even in those variations, and the existence of those variables, powerful, subliminal, they make the story more important and more true. I'm not sure how I feel, in general, about branching narratives. There's a power to a definitive tale.

But I have a Shepard who was true and heroic, a war hero, the daughter of a soldier, loved by her mother. She was sure of herself and her love and her choices and never begrudged trying to live up to her own legend because it made her strive to be better, to do more, to save more people, to spare more pain. She loved Liara fearlessly and honestly and singularly; she was the one person who made her want to be that swaggering hero to impress a girl, not just to talk down a terrorist. She loved Tali with the fierce protectiveness of an older sister, and, later, after learning about Tali's father's failures, as a parent herself. She understood that idealism was sometimes misguided, but acted on it anyway, because cynicism was worse. By the time the death of her civilisation became inevitable (because even after you save it, it is changed, it is forever, forever changed), she was filled more with sorrow than exhaustion, her sober choices forged from a quiet determination to be as kind as possible in the time she had left, because either she'd find a way to die to save the world or she wouldn't, and it was likely nothing else mattered. When she finally threw herself into that beam of light, she realised how beautiful and terrifying new world would be. She felt sad, for a moment, that she'd never get to see it. And then the light was taking her, and she was creating the future, and she was free.

But I have another Shepard, who was abandoned as an infant and grew up in gangs, who fought her way to a better life in the military, only to lose her entire unit and then be given a medal for surviving. Just for surviving. She's quieter, more introspective, more prone to neutral answers and pragmatic (though never cruel) choices, because she's keenly aware that she might screw up, that she hasn't actually earned the trust people have put in her. But it's not her way to complain, so she does the best she can, because...she wants to be worth that.

She loved Liara like a sister from the moment she heard she was abandoned by her Dad, too. Tali was the best friend she got into and then pulled out of so much trouble. It hurt her more than she was expecting, when Kaidan turned away from her on Horizon, and she found herself drawn to Thane - his solemnity, his silence, even the inevitable brevity of their place in each others' lives - because it resonated with that orphaned, survivor's lesson; everyone will leave somehow. At least this way she understood when and how and why. As the war pulled her universe apart, her overwhelming feeling was frustration, pain she couldn't fix it; she should be good enough to fix it. She tried not to think too often about whether she only returned to Kaidan's arms because he was there. But when she curled her fists around the machinery in the heart of the Crucible, and felt the electric currents burn away her body and claim her mind, it was Thane she thought of, and how sad it was that she would never, now, meet him beyond the sea. Surviving when anyone else would die, even when she didn't want to, was always her trick, after all. Finally, finally, she had done something good enough. She saved them. She saved every single one.

And I just...they're so different, and I have this one unified ideal of Commander Shepard, but it relies on these diverse things, these aspects of all my experience, that are sometimes contradictory. Like, I don't understand how a Shepard can ever not be in love with Thane. But I also don't understand how a Shepard can have anything other than an epic space romance with Liara. Shepard is optimistic and powerful and claims her heroic legacy and it was also thrust upon her and she struggles to be worth it. Shepard overcomes the odds in impossible situations, and Shepard fails, sometimes in those same situations and has to live with the fallout. I just...aaaaah, it's the first time I've really fell this much in love with a character in a branching narrative, and it's fascinating.

And that's without even getting into the fact that, despite all the things that are variable, there are these wonderful, thematic questions that run all through the series, and like, the places where there's clear authorial intent versus the places where you're supposed to be using your ability to interact with the environment and characters to form opinions and positions is fascinating. THIS, THIS is what video games can do, like, as a medium.

*flails*

I need to stop talking though, or I never will. ♥

BUT OH GOD SOMEONE ELSE LOVES MASS EFFECT AS MUCH AS ME.

[be_themoon]

oh my god I am so so glad you dropped by because otherwise I was going to comment on your like year old post about the ending hehehe.

FOR STARTERS yes yessss I am pretty much totally happy with the ending, and at some point I'm going to try to figure out how to uninstall just the Extended Cut DLC temporarily so I can have just the original one - my copy came with the Extended Cut automatically. I haven't even really been involving myself with the fandom much and I'm still already preemptively irritated at anyone who would try to tell me the ending's terrible because it's nooooot oh god Shepard's hero journey and like how else did you guys think it was going to end, was there going to be a happy ending, we are talking about someone who died and resurrected for one purpose and that is a very specific storyline, it's one that always ends with a sacrifice! the Reapers were never going to be beaten without it. and I'm not really sure I understand the other complaints and I don't feel like searching them out SO THERE.

oh god never meeting Thane beyond the sea my heart hurts all over again ;; and yesss like this is my favorite thing, that Shepard can be all these people but her upbringing and what specifically she has survived is not really the point. the specifics of how she was formed do not matter. she was always going to be this person, and the journey to the starting point is only a small part of that.

ALSO YES the themes in this trilogy and the overarching issues and the way you build the world around you, it molds itself in the shape of Shepard. a slaver no longer a slaver here, a man made administrator here, and the way sometimes the small choices become such big ones later because it makes sense. a rock can start an avalanche! saving Rana Thanoptis means part of asari high command dies, but can you still kill her? and I love how many decisions you have to make without all the information and just

guhhhhhhh I really really loved every inch of this game and I'm excited to replay it and I am just so happy with it as one gigantic beautiful overarching story about a woman who gives everything of herself to save the galaxy, who inspires everyone around her, who makes of herself a legend because she has to be big enough to fight these would-be gods and being just a person isn't enough.

You can keep talking forever seriously I would be so absolutely okay with that I have a lot of Shepard feelings and a lot of Mass Effect feelings as I guess has become... very clear heh. Yes indeed I LOVE IT A LOT I LOVE IT A LOOOOT

[beccatoria]

Aaah, dude, I wouldn't have minded - late comments about stuff that's awesome are the best. :D

As to the Extended Cut, if you're just looking to see the differences, you're probably better off watching a YouTube playthrough with the original ending. Reason is, uninstalling it should be easy (at least on XBox, you just look at your hard drive, find it, and delete it), but the problem is that any saves you make are like...entangled with any DLCs installed, so you need to have those same DLCs installed to reload it (it doesn't work the other way; you can ADD DLC with no problem, just once you have it, you can't "go back"). So if you uninstalled the EC, you couldn't use any of your saves until you reinstalled it - you'd have to play through the WHOLE GAME to see the ending again.

As you might have gathered from other comments/posts I'm not a fan, but don't let my rabid purism influence you! ;) About 50% of my dislike is based on the parts of the EC I can't see without thinking of the fan reaction that spawned them anyway which, mercifully, won't be an issue for you!

To give you the cliff's notes version, or perhaps just to prepare you for the insane barrage that will hit you if you ever dare utter, "but it was always going to end in sacrifice!" in most mainstream locations, you'll get a lot of people arguing that it wasn't the sacrifice so much as the fact they believe the whole ending betrayed the "themes" of the series. I'm...not really sure either - I think a lot of people missed the technological themes in favour of believing it was a space shooter. I know I was genuinely surprised to see a lot of people opine that "beating the odds!" was the overriding message of the series, so I think a lot of people really did see it more as a Hollywood style space opera shooter than a scifi epic, which makes me kinda sad.

I think probably a lot of people would have been kind of all right with a Shepard death that fit more into that Hollywood oeuvre, you know, like, Gladiator or something. But ultimately, that'd still be about resentment towards the ending for not fitting into that moral framework in the first place. :/

I'm still just...awed and depressed simultaneously by the sheer force and volume of the portion of the fanbase that set about on a crusade to prove that if you chose anything other than the Destroy option at the end, you were personally morally suspect. It was all just...very sad. So um, my point is, yeah, caution with regards to the wider fandom is very, very wise.

and I love how many decisions you have to make without all the information and just

UGH I KNOW. And can I just say that's like, one of my favourite things about the ending? Is how you have this choice, this impossible, enormous choice, and you have to make it without enough information and without enough time and without being able to know, exactly, what will happen because of it? But the ships are dying above you - you can see them - another one every second. And there's no one else there to ask, no one to check with. There's just you. And every single choice you can make - including nothing - will affect every living being in the galaxy.

AAAAAAAAH, RELUCTANT, DEDICATED, BROKEN, IMPERFECT MESSIAHS WHO ARE WOMEN.

And now I've filled too much of this comment up on technical information, and sadness about the ending instead of the beautiful, shifting creature that is Shepard. So to make up for it, have an article -

http://kotaku.com/5892074/why-mass-effect-3s-ending-doesnt-need-changing-spoilers

- all about her mythic, many-faced existence; how she exists in the way characters existed in the songs of bards.

[be_themoon]

I have noticed their refusal to let me play any game unless the DLC i had when I started it are not only installed but verified that opening up of the game ORIGIN what if i wanted to play offline that's a dick move :|

I may have to go youtube playthrough but I also do intend to play it through probably more... than a few times based on how often I've played ME1 & 2 so one of the times I may go for it! I would really like to see it as it originally was for sure.

fandom I don't understand at all what. YEAH thank goodness I pretty much never venture into the depths of fandom because I feel like I would not enjoy that journey at all, this was a hero myth not a story about beating the odds it was about gaining freedom at a huge cost! WE ESTABLISHED THAT ON VIRMIRE fandom fandom please. (oh no virmire i haven't played me1 in a couple months now and suddenly i'm sad about virmire again now it's even worse in retrospect owwww.)

I have heard about the indoctrination theory and my face is just like :|!!! this is why we can't ever have nice things fandom!!! THIS IS WHY you act like dicks about it! i mean nice totally utterly heartbreaking things but it's the sort of heartbreak that comes because you're just so proud and oh man in your video the smile on her face when she's running towards the synthesis ending leave me here to die.

YOU CAN ALWAYS TELL ME MORE ABOUT SHEPARD i will legit always be happy to hear it and hnnng this article YES yes yes yes and I kind of love the little end thing as a afterwards framework that this is what Shepard is, this is why Shepard can be so many things, because they're a myth and myths are endless and reworked and remade by the people who tell them, myths tell as much about the people who tell them as the people they're about. Shepard is painfully, beautifully human and also perpetually one foot into something else entirely, something so much bigger than any one person, and oh god this is such a good story I can't even handle what a beautiful job they did on it.

[prosodi]

I don't have nearly as much time to sit down and type out what I've been meaning to type out in response tot his before work, but I wanted to get the ball rolling anyway because I've been drowning in Mass Effect feelings and wanting to touch this post since the weekend and can NO LONGER STOP MYSELF SO WHATEVER. DOIN' IT.

Which is to say oh my god I love everyone here and can we please talk about Shepard forever and the sheer beauty in how ME3 essentially acts as one massive love letter to the choices you make. And by love letter I mean terrible, perfect, infinitely tragic but ultimately complete and rewarding experience that is an of itself an act of stripping away. Of paring down. Of reigning in focus so that eveything that matters, all that ever mattered, was Shepard. Was how she shaped the universe. Was how the small choices she made elevated her to something beyond humanity (part figurehead, part real savior) while at once whittling her down to the basest elements of what it means to be one. And how while ME2 may be about exploring the greater reach of the universe and all the frightening and wonderful things in it, ME3 is a series of goodbyes. To Mordin. To Thane. To the galaxy Shepard knew and fought for and the beginning of something better that she won't live to see but the beginnings of. And how at the end, you say goodbye to the Normandy and to your crew and to your squad and to Anderson until nothing is left but Shepard and she's the only thing that matters.

(Reason #432535 why I don't care for the EC is how that narrative kind of gets interrupted at points, but whatever that's mostly a different topic alltogether.)

AND OH MY GOD THANE BEING THAT FLAWLESS REFLECTION OF THOSE IDEALS AND SO THEMATICALLY APT AS AN LI CHOICE? BECAUSE THEN YOU HAVE THOSE CONTINUED IDEAS OF CHOICE AND CONSEQUENCE AND TRUST AND THE BRIEFNESS OF LIFE AND HOW YOU MAKE DECISIONS AND HOPE FOR THE BEST EVEN THOUGH YOU WON'T BE AROUND TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS AFTER??

[be_themoon]

IT'S OKAY you can give it to me all in bits and pieces I will just chinhands at you in total delight ahhhh AHHHH YOUR SHEPARD you have such excellent Shepard feelings I can't even deal.

man I wish I could articulate just how much I loved the ending and the slow farewell, the constant ongoing sorrow inherent in all of it and the weight of saying goodbye to everyone piece by piece, each conversation another ending and Shepard slowly peeling away every tie she has because she can't take them with her - she was never going to be able to take them with her. they got her this far and she is so proud of them all but these last few steps have to be fought out the hardest way there is.

yes paring down is the perfect description because you started out with just Shepard walking through a ship, long stride and armor and a soldier by herself, solitary and alone and it gave her strength and three years later you end with just her alone walking through the Citadel over the bodies of people she knew and helped, back to where she started, hobbled by her wounds as she walks among the stars to the last choice, the last great loss. she is the very epitomy of bloody but unbowed and i love her so much excuse me now i just need to lie down and make incoherent shrieking noises for a bit and also ALSO did Kolyat make it off the Citadel? Shaira? Khalisah al-Jilani? WE NEVER FIND OUT BECAUSE SHEPARD NEVER DID because whether they did or not she died to save them and everyone else who had even a chance at life, everyone who could make it out and start a brand new world, a brighter one, one that she will never have a chance to see.

YES yes yes yes that I legit can't handle just how perfectly he mirrors the themes and MEET YOU ACROSS THE SEA and UGH CAN WE TALK ABOUT HIM IN ME3 REALLY QUICKLY TOO because apparently people got super pissed at that and I am not pleased at the very shortness of his appearances but I feel like the complaints i have seen get integral things about what he does say and his character WRONG and it bothers me like how they say "oh he was too accepting of his death!" GUYS guys shepard is in the middle of a massive galactic war that he can't help her with would he actually tell her even remotely the truth if he was scared of dying of course not and of course he's not going to accept any offer to come aboard the Normandy he's not going to make Shepard watch more death he can maintain the fiction of peace and his safety better from a distance YELLS AT THE FANDOM FOREVER TBH

help i just have so many feelings

[prosodi]

I LOVE THAT THERE'S A SENSE OF COMPLETE DISCONNECT BY THE TIME YOU'RE TALKING TO THE STARCHILD OR WHATEVER THE FUCK PEOPLE ARE CALLING THAT AI ON THE CITADEL. Because yes, it doesn't matter. Because Shepard can't know and neither can we but you have to draw the lines yourself and hope that a difference was made. That something changed. That jumping into that beam doesn't corrupt everything. That destroying all synthetic life doesn't radically cripple every society in the galaxy. That controlling the reapers isn't all a ruse.

And on that note how much of Shepard's journey is about faith in a universe where gods are almost non-existent, either torn down (Liara had so much love for the Protheans but in the end they're ash and dust or one lonely solitary creature who is too filled with the need for revenge to be anything but painfully mortal) or abstract to all by a few (and again, how Thane is just such a concise, gorgeous mirror/foil/whatever to Shepard's hero's journey).

AND YES. YES. OH MY GOD THROWS THINGS BECAUSE FANDOM GET OUT. YOU SEE IT IN THANE'S DEATH SCENE - THE WAY HE PRIORITIZES SHEPARD'S NEEDS OVER HIS OWN EVERY TIME. HE'S DYING AND WOULD RATHER PRAY THAT HER HAND BE GUIDED AND HER PATH HOME A SAFE ONE, WHEREVER THAT HOME MIGHT BE. Because faith. Because he has to think she'll do better, but also is aware of how... Shepard isn't impenetrable. She may be armored, but he better than anyone knows how to find the gaps in that. Knows that she is vulnerable and doesn't want to be the one to put yet another knife between her ribs.

JUST. UGH. PUKES EMOTIONS!!!!1!11??

[be_themoon]

YESS yessss by that point there is just so much distance between the choices you're making and everything else, it's all such a long ways away and JUST just apotheosis whatever the AI is, it created these would-be-gods and now you are casting them down, either to submit to humanity or to be destroyed or to reach the same level. out there is humanity, fighting for their lives and baring their teeth against the dark reaches of space. in here are the myths, old and unknowable and making the decisions that will save them all. it is a different plane of things.

right? I really like that, because faith and hope in something bigger is such a beautiful concept and REMEMBER LEGION in me3 when he goes where is it let me look this up RIGHT "Hope sustains organics through periods of difficulty. We... admire the concept." machines learning how to be human humans learning how to be machines and the ways in which they intersect is one of my favorite things about this entire mess. And yesss Thane's faith in something that has no basis in knowledge or visible things and I love that ugh people and their way of finding methods of giving purpose to the world around them and finding something that they can believe in no matter what, something they can order their lives around. The Reapers want it to be them and Thane makes it something smaller and more beautiful instead, a possibility of brighter things to come.

FANDOM CAN GO TAKE A LONG WALK AND THINK ABOUT THINGS because holy shit it's actually really fucking tragic and beautiful and hnnnng there are so many things he wants to be able to give her but in the end the only thing he can is his own absence when he wants nothing more than to be there with her and kill me now help it's such gorgeous storytelling and horrifically sad and I can't. YES EVERYTHING YOU SAID he's dying and he prays for her and I don't think he was actually any more at peace with his own death but he cared more about her and any small peace of mind he could give her than his own worries because it doesn't matter what he feels, he will die regardless, what matters is what he can do for her before that moment.

[prosodi]

It's such a gorgeous, wonderful, scarily beautiful idea: gods and monsters and men, how mortals arm themselves to fight things that are bigger than they are and how they always have but ultimately the only way to fight ideas bigger than yourself is to become so equally removed. Because men don't kill gods, but heroes do and as deeply flawed as Shepard is (she is blunt and often impatient, she loves fiercely when it would be better to let go) that's what she has to become: give herself up to a purpose greater than herself. And just the element of using things proto-gods left behind to achieve flight is so strange and wonderful: the Asari uncovering Prothean technology and how mortal creatures using the tools not meant for them as the door which leads toward their own decay. And how then do you harness that without it destroying you and-- incoherent sounds.

And god I literally was driving to work yesterday and listening to the soundtrack (BECAUSE I HATE MYSELF APPARENTLY WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME) and suddenly overcome by a wave of EDI and Joker feelings because yes, god. The transhumanism aspects of the series seriously get to me. Between EDI and Joker and Legion and the utter goddamn tragedy of Legion (every possible outcome to Rannoch literally ruins me for a multitude of reasons, but achieving peace between the Geth and Quarians - Legion disseminating for the sake of earning a sense of individuality? And how that parallels Shepard, everything of her crumbling away into a multitude of unrecognizable pieces as she submits herself to whatever choice you make up there on the surreal, impossible deck of the catalyst? KILL. ME.), I honestly don't even really know what to do with myself.

and I don't think he was actually any more at peace with his own death but he cared more about her and any small peace of mind he could give her than his own worries because it doesn't matter what he feels, he will die regardless, what matters is what he can do for her before that moment.

I NEED TO GO TAKE A LONG WALK AND THINK ABOUT THINGS. AND BY THAT I MEAN LAY DOWN IN A PUDDLE OF MY OWN TEARS.

One day someone is going to write a very polished, beautiful paper about Mass Effect that somehow addresses All Of My Feelings, but I will never be that person because pretty much all I can do is /INCOHERENT KEYSMASHING

[be_themoon]

you don't such power was never meant to be wielded by men. it was not made for them and i feel totally ridiculous for this but i always play sniper in me2 and every time you pick up the widow in the collector ship i have to stop for a moment because the description says a normal human can't use this gun and Shepard can because Shepard has already moved past humanity, has already had her body wired and armored and set on the first step to becoming something more than SO YEAH i pick up a gun and then have to sit there staring at the screen sadly for a bit and then i have to sit for a bit going BUT HOW DID YOU DO THIS TO ME MASS EFFECT HOW. but yesss I love how the conflict goes on on all these different levels and you resolve things bit by bit, the small things leading into the larger things until you are at once humanity's savior and not even human anymore.

MASS EFFECT IS WRONG WITH YOU this fucking game it crushes your soul and then you just keep coming back for more like hey maybe this time it won't hurt as much but N O P E. (also the music is gorgeous holy shit i can't even handle how much i love the soundtrack it makes me want to cry.) and oh god I'm generally really good at emotions and stuff I made it through so much and up to Legion I'd managed to cry only once (... Thane...) and then suddenly I was just bawling everywhere and I knew what was coming I spoil myself for stuff all the time I knew what was coming!! and I still just totally lost it at Keelah sel'ai shit I am actually tearing up right now thinking about it goddamnit mass effect. BUT YES the parallels between Shepard and Legion are also gorgeous and how it still wears her armor because there was a hole. the ruthless calculus of war - one dies so that many can be free, can know themselves as themselves.

i have a shitload of feelings about Thane and pretty much all of them make me want to curl up and cry SO. yes.

WHAT IF I MADE MASS EFFECT MY SENIOR PROJECT i bet i could pull that off.. somehow. i've got three years to figure out how.

[prosodi]

OH MY GOD IF YOU DID I WOULD CRY AND SEND YOU ALL MY LOVE PRETTY MUCH.

(Real talk where are the podcasts and "video game journalism" websites that are all about examining gaming from a literary critique standpoint? I wish to know so I can a) listen and or read them and b) work for them. If they don't exist, who do I talk with to make that happen???? Like the only way to illuminate how important story is in particular media is to start to pick it apart and examine it on a rock solid level that visible to developers and oh my god it's such an exciting medium and I want that to be a thing runs howling into the night

Okay I'm ending this parenthetical now--)

Also I wish to hear ALL OF YOUR THANE FEELINGS because me. Me too. I have so many feelings it's frankly gross.

God and I love how ME2 brings in all these ideas of humanity (and I use that term loosely in a way that I hope incorporates the myriad of alien life in the series as well - I'd say human experience but that's kind of equally flawed when applied here) and the concept of stripping away and acknowledging vulnerability to effect change and achieve a kind of other worldliness. Shepard does it. Thane does it. Samara goddamn does it oh my god my heart for Samara, who is more Justicar than woman while equally and thoroughly a mother who wishes the best for her children even when the best she knows how to give is to denounce them to their face and violently -- there's no sentiment in her hand at Morinth's throat and there's none of it later either.

And Liara, sweet Liara who is such a child in ME1 and who loses her mother if she ever had one to begin with, who creates a new place for herself even if that place is-- information isn't a clean business, and she's so much sharper two years later. Or how-- and I know this is a total fluke and probably something all of .01% of players had happen but OH MY GOD LIARA SHOT AN UNLOYAL KAIDEN FOR ME IN ME3 WHEN SHEPARD COULDN'T AND OH MY GOD LIARAAAA CLAWS AT MY FACE

I'm not even sure what point I was trying to make there beyond 'Mass Effect. It's good. I have emotions. A lot of them. About everyone.'

[be_themoon]

I COULD DO IT I BET i could find a waaay

maybe probably sort of and RIGHT i want more places that critically examine the things that we think of as 'oh just genre stuff' because what even, science fiction is the story of our future, it's a reflection of the lens we think of our history with. UGH I JUST i don't even know how to say it's just that science fiction when done well is so good and has so much to say about us as people that everyone should be thinking extensively about it i feel.

WELL I MEAN first off at what point did he become religious? was it from his very very childhood and the one thing from it he carried on through his training? I feel like that's most likely because it was clearly the way that he kept himself separated from his job, and if his first kill was at 12 and he was married to Irikah by 19 then he spent basically all of his teenage years out killing people and I think that's when he would have needed it most. It is interesting that he carried a drell religion with him even while mostly separated from his people, and then there's that, because when you think of Thane he's actually almost standing outside of his own people. he was apart from them for a long time, he had only a few years to learn customs and how drell society works and then he wouldn't have had time to figure out how normal society worked. he was alienated from his own people, and then he was even alienated from them by the religion of their shared ancestors because most drell don't practice it anymore! old fashioned music, old fashioned religion, and he himself a step removed from everyone surrounding him. JUST. help that's just scratching the surface of my Thane feelings but I caaan't.

YES YES oh god Samara her love is as violent as her life and what happened to her partner? she must have been in love with her to settle but we never hear about her again, just her daughters, and oh god her daughters who were all so much stronger than she thought that line absolutely fucking kills me, and like ACTUALLY I really want Samara and Thane to talk sometime I wish we'd gotten to see that ever because "I will fight and struggle all my life; that is my fate. When I die, it will not be in bed. I am at peace with that." SHRIEKS and just in general I feel like that would be beautiful and Samaraaaaa H E L P

oh my god Liara, Liara's development is at once beautiful and such a tragedy because she really is so young in ME1, she's so young and naive and sweet, and she is still very much the same person later on - bad at jokes and casual conversation, but she has forced herself to become someone who can be confident and sharp in all other areas. and oh my god holy shit that is at once the worst and the best thing LIARA LIARAAAAA

yes basically that's me always i can't even i just I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT I'M SAYING WORDS JUST SPILL OUT generally incoherently and with tears attached

also I just feel a need to say that Tali's verification upon returning to the Fleet in ME2 is one of the most gorgeous things ever wow.

[prosodi]

I HAVE BEEN WAITING TO RESPOND TO THIS WHEN I ACTUALLY HAD REAL COHERENT THOUGHTS TO CONTRIBUTE but let's be real that's obviously not happening any time soon so uh-- ugh just. JUST ALL OF THIS. I want to roll around in your opinions about ME and curl up in them they're all just so good and insightful and aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah



emotions

I have them

[be_themoon]

i don't need coherency your thoughts are all beautiful all the time

UGH I JUST LOVE THIS GAME SO MUCH THAT IT HURTS

help i also have so many emotions and i don't know what to do with any of them