this is a side-blog for video-game stuff, mainly RPGs (Dragon Age, Mass Effect, TES, Fallout, Fire Emblem, VTMB, etc.)
currently playing: Mass Effect LE
my screenshots / my gifs / my fanfic / my fanart
please don't follow if you're an adamant "pro-shipper"/"anti-anti," y'all annoy me & you won't like me (shipping "discourse" annoys me in general)
main: @daevite / art blog: @sardonicdoll / ao3 link
if you like what i make consider commissioning me or making a donation to my ko-fi as i'm consistently financially struggling due to my health problems (congenital neuromuscular disorder ruining my body et. al.) and the resulting medical bills and difficulties with work, so any kindness is very much appreciated!
the kids thus far:
DA: Taven Surana + Marel Lavellan + Neris Ingellvar
enough of asking "would you still love me if i was a worm?" would you still love me if i was a pit in your stomach eating away at you from the inside? would you still love me if i was a distant memory you could do nothing but grieve? would you still love me if i haunted you for the rest of your life?
A moniker like the Butcher of Torfan makes Kaidan think of some tall, sharp, foreboding figure, broad in stature and with a dangerous enough look in their eye that everyone around would know not to mess with them.
He doesn't picture Shepard, a woman nearly a foot shorter than he is and at least a few years his junior, with freckled, alabaster skin, and wide eyes that might be more suited to a rabbit than a naval officer.
Still, even as he stands stiffly and watches her scroll through a datapad in-between her greetings of the rest of the Normandy crew, he can see traces of it in her. Her boots move one in front of the other across the floor of the bridge in a stilted, calculated gait, like her limbs don't quite fit. Her face is kept free of any expression, and her eyes are distant. The dark shade of her hair matches almost perfectly with the black material of her belt-covered armor, giving her more of a presence than she would have in lighter colors. More of a sense of edge about her.
A mixture of strangeness, intimidation, and...admittedly, a pretty face that would turn heads, if someone can look past the blood attached to her history.
He's not sure if he can.
"Lieutenant Alenko?"
Kaidan looks up. She's standing in front of him with the datapad in her hands and her eyes looking him up and down. Her gaze is as detached as it has been while she assessed everyone else.
Her eyes are the color of the sea back home. There's a scar that sits on the top of her left cheek, just beneath the eye on that side, and only partially hidden by her hair.
"That's me, ma'am." He clears his throat, then offers her a quick salute, before dropping his hand firmly back down to his side. "It's not every day that you get to work with an N7. I'm honored to be here."
Shepard's eyes linger on his face, but again, if there's any emotion in them, he couldn't begin to identify it.
"Marieke Shepard," she responds—even the way she speaks is flattened. "I read your file."
His lips briefly form a nervous half-grin. "Was there anything that caught your eye?"
"No. I expect good things. That's all."
The slightest bit of pressure, but not something he hasn't heard before. Not nearly enough to make him sweat.
"I'll be sure not to let you down, Commander."
She gives him a quick nod, and then moves on, stopping to initiate the same rote introduction with the next crew member. Checking off a list.
He can't decipher whether what she's said to him stands out from the others, and he knows that he shouldn't bother straining his ears to find out. It's not his business.
Shepard might not be the type of XO he wants the approval of anyway, if 'butcher' is still an apt title for her handling of things.
It speaks to someone who cares more about results than methodology, and he knows where that's landed other people before.
A few feet away, the crew member she spoke to before him—Jenkins, he thinks the name is—is clasping his palms together, over and over again. His eyes dart from Shepard, to elsewhere on the ship, then back to Shepard, before meeting Kaidan's.
"Do you think she wants me here? I couldn't tell at all."
Kaidan offers a shrug. That implies she didn't give the same 'I expect good things' assessment to everyone. "She does seem a little inscrutable, but I think if she didn't want you here, then she would've said something. I wouldn't worry about it, Corporal."
"I hope so," Jenkins replies, clearing his throat. "Between Captain Anderson and the commander being here, I don't want to make myself look like an idiot."
Kaidan steps close enough to put a hand on Jenkins' shoulder. Some of the tension leaves him at the contact, but not all of it.
"I've been there. You'll do fine. You'll do even better if you worry less about impressing anyone and just focus on doing your thing. If you get too distracted or excited, that's how you end up making mistakes."
Jenkins nods at that, but doesn't say anything else. Not at first.
"I heard that a spectre is going to be joining us," he says, quiet. "Do you really think this is just a shakedown cruise?"
Kaidan glances back at the commander. She's not paying any attention to him, speaking to the ship's head engineer, it looks like. Her eyes are on the data pad, and her brows are scrunched together.
The sharpness is subtle, layered beneath superficial disinterest, but he can still sense it. Not someone he expects the Alliance to select to simply test out a ship, no matter the ship's importance, and that's without getting into Captain Anderson's elaborate record.
"Probably not, Jenkins. But we'll see."
***
Ash and embers rain down on Eden Prime.
Kaidan's walking pace is lockstep with his heart as he approaches Jenkins' collapsed body. He keeps his gun ready in his hands, in case more of the drones peel around the corner with the intention of putting him on the ground too.
"Alenko," the commander says in a warning tone, but restrained. Quiet.
It's not an order.
Jenkins is still. His shoulders don't shake with pain. His body doesn't shift with breath. Holes from the drone lasers punched clean through his chest. Crimson pools out onto the ground, staining the scorched earth beneath him. Past the clear pane of his visor, his eyes are glazed over.
Kaidan kneels next to Jenkins and flicks open his omni-tool. No vital signs. Nothing.
Gone.
He releases a shaky breath. Reaching under the pane of Jenkins' visor, he gently pries the man's eyelids closed.
Shepard comes up behind him. Her breather leaves most of her face visible. Her eyes are as distant as they've always been as they come to land on Jenkins' body, and her own gun also remains held at the ready.
"Whatever those things were," Kaidan says, "his shields were gone in less than a second."
Almost as quickly as you took the drones out afterwards.
Shepard continues to stare at Jenkins' body. Her fingers readjust their grip on her rifle and her shoulders take on a harder line than they did before.
Then, in stilted movements, she holsters her weapon, raises her hand to summon her own omni-tool and—calmly and deliberately—taps something out on the holographic display. He assumes it's notifying the Normandy, and perhaps also Nihlus, without crowding verbal comms like the captain asked.
"We'll have to leave him. The mission takes precedent," Shepard tells him, as her omni-tool closes. "Don't lose focus."
Kaidan nods tightly. "I...I won't, ma'am."
"Good."
He watches her retrieve her rifle once more. Her wide-eyed stare trains on the horizon, alert for any signs of more of the mystery drones, and she stalks past him, taking point. Despite their unknown enemy, there isn't a trace of hesitation in her. No fear. Only hard lines in her shoulders and in the rest of the way she carries herself.
Which gives off the air of a predator more than anything. The embers falling from the sky outline her and her slim black armor in a red glow.
Regardless, he falls into step behind her.
"Any idea what we're up against, Commander?"
"No," she answers, coldly. "It doesn't matter."
His eyebrows raise. "It doesn't?"
Shepard's chin lifts to the sky. The distant horizon sports pillars of smoke, buildings, trailers, and farms where people once lived and worked burning away, producing the ash rain coming down on them now.
"They'll be dead soon."
After Shepard finishes that statement, her focus returns to the field, and the pair of them continue moving forward.
Kaidan doesn't let his focus waver, just as he was instructed, but in the back of his mine, he notes that the Butcher is a part of Shepard that is very much alive.
He can see the necessity of it, though. In this situation, it might be what will get them out of here alive.
'Might' being the operative word, because just as he knows what she did to her adversaries on Torfan, he also knows what happened to the people who were working under her.
***
No.
"Alenko, stop!"
To Williams' credit, her grip on him is absurdly tight, even through his armor. She keeps him firmly held back as Shepard is suspended in the air by the unseen force of the beacon, arms extended outward like a recreation of the crucifixion.
No. No. No.
He has no clue what's happening, but he's about to watch his XO die. He's sure of it, and it will be his fault. His failure. A consequence of what should've been an obviously stupid decision on his part.
The air pulses and hums with an energy that grinds into his brain and forces him to clench his teeth. He wants to squeeze his eyes shut against it, too, but he doesn't let that happen. He can't turn away from this like a coward. He needs to see it.
He can't see her face from this angle, but it looks like Shepard's body jerks against the force holding her in place, still trying to break out of it.
Helpless.
Then, the beacon explodes. The blast sends her flying backwards, and the back of her head slams into the metal platform beneath them. Her body goes limp in an instant.
Kaidan finds the strength then to break out of Williams' grip. The force that had been holding Shepard, that had initially pulled him in, is gone. The energy dissipates from the air as quickly as it came, and he's free to approach Shepard as his pulse thrums in his ears.
"Normandy?" Williams says behind him. "This is Ashley Williams of the 212. Commander Shepard is down—"
Kaidan's mind blocks out the rest of it as he kneels next to Shepard. Her eyes are shut, but a wave of relief hits him as he sees her chest rising and falling with breath. Just as he did for Jenkins, he pulls up his omni-tool and skims over her vitals.
Alive, and not dying either. Not as far as he can tell.
He digs an armor-clad hand into her hair to check where her head hit the platform, and it comes away bloody, but even he knows how much head wounds can bleed. Instead of letting his mind run any more wild than he already has, he returns his hand to the spot and holds it there to try to staunch some of it as he looks over the rest of her.
All the hard lines and edges are gone now. In a matter of seconds, she's gone from being a dangerous legend he was witnessing in action, proving her reputation every step of the way in how she systemically eliminated every geth they came across, to being just a person. As susceptible to mortality and injury as everyone else.
Williams' bootsteps come up behind him, frantic.
"Is she..?"
"She's okay, as far as I can tell, just unconscious. The Normandy better be on its way," he says. If he could reach his forehead, he'd be wiping the sweat off his brow. "I feel like an idiot."
"You kind of are," Williams admits. The frankness with which she speaks isn't something he's used to, but it's strangely grounding. "But at the same time, I can't say I blame you. Most people go crazy over Prothean stuff, so somebody else might've done the same."
He barely registers the reassurance that Williams is attempting to give him in her own weird way. His attention stays on his omni-tool, keeping an eye on the vitals. They're in the clear now, but that could change at any moment.
The earlier moments in the mission come back to him: not only Shepard killing the geth, but the way she behaved when it came to the surviving civilians they came across. The reassurances she gave them. The calm, measured way she speaks to everyone, even if that calmness is on the colder side, and even if some of her more compassionate statements came off as rehearsed.
You're safe now, he remembers her saying to the scientists, pointedly attending to the rounds on her pistol. We've made sure of that.
Small hints of personality peeking through, more than she's shown anywhere else, for a short a time as he's known her.
Maybe he got it wrong. Less a predator, more of a...protector.
A protector that grabbed him, threw him out of the way, and took his place when the beacon started to pull him in. Who put her own life on the line for the sake of someone under her command. For his sake, even though it would've been his own fault if the force from the beacon hurt or killed him.
Which doesn't sound like the Butcher he's heard about at all.
When the Normandy lands nearby, Chakwas feeds them instructions on getting Shepard back to the ship without hurting her further. He and Williams work together, with him hoisting Shepard into his arms, and Williams lightly holding Shepard's head in as steady a position as the two of them can manage throughout it. Anderson is the first face that they see on the ship, and Kaidan robotically fills him in on everything that's occurred since the mission began.
Including the mistake he just made.
The captain is inscrutable, but in the same way as Shepard, there are subtle signs in his posture that the man's mind is alight with concerns. With how much has gone wrong with this mission, Kaidan can't possibly imagine the full breadth of what's going through his head right now.
Once they get Shepard to the infirmary, Kaidan gently lays her down on one of the tables. He steps back as Chakwas sets to work in assessing her condition more thoroughly and getting Shepard's gear off her body, with Williams' help. Anderson dismisses himself to inform the rest of the crew about what's happened—the parts that aren't classified, anyway—but Kaidan doesn't want to leave just yet. Not when he's partially responsible, here.
"What can I do?" He asks, feeling somewhat useless.
Chakwas doesn't even glance up at him as she purses her lips. There might not be much he can do in this moment.
"It's cold in here, Lieutenant," she finally says, "I think the Commander has a jacket among her things. She might appreciate having it once she wakes up. Her locker code is 1823."
It's not completely made up to placate him, as the air in the infirmary would be chilly to someone who doesn't run as hot as he normally does, and since coming on the Normandy, he's always seen Shepard with the jacket in question whenever she's in her fatigues. He nods quickly, and hastily leaves the room to make for the lower deck.
As it turns out, there isn't much in Shepard's locker other than the jacket, but he doesn't dwell there long since he doesn't want to be invasive.
The fabric is emblazoned with the N7 logo. He stares down at it as he returns to the infirmary, and it brings him an odd sort of comfort.
If Shepard can survive N7 training, then she can survive this.
She has to.
***
Unexpectedly, after Anderson leaves the infirmary, Shepard is the one who finds him.
Kaidan goes stock still once he notices the commander headed his way. A spike of anxiety runs through him, but so does relief; despite how long she was out for, she's up now, walking, and slipping her arms into her jacket like it's any other day. Not in critical condition or comatose. At most, she looks a bit tired.
"Commander," he greets, throwing up a salute. "You're looking better."
"You were waiting out here for me."
"Yeah. I know you said it wasn't my fault, but it's hard not to feel like it was, ma'am." Kaidan's mouth suddenly feels dry. "I don't think I could've lived with myself if we lost you too."
Maybe not the best way to phrase that.
Shepard looks off to the side at nothing in particular. Her hands still fumble with the jacket. She looks...less steady than she did before, and he's not sure how much of that can be chalked up to a head injury.
Must be the dreams she had. Or whatever it was. She didn't seem all to sure herself when she explained it.
"Loss is something you get used to after a while," she finally says. "...but I appreciate the thought, Lieutenant. Do we have any updates on Jenkins?"
"I, uh, I think they're shipping his body back to the Alliance, ma'am. Something about research into the weapons the geth were using."
Shepard stiffens.
"...he mentioned that he grew up there," she says, quiet. "I was hoping there would be someone to bury him."
"I didn't figure you knew him that well."
"I didn't."
Kaidan presses his lips shut. He doesn't have the faintest idea of how to navigate conversations with this woman outside of what's strictly states in protocol, and she keeps veering off-script—both the script he usually runs with, and the script he thought he was developing for someone with the reputation she has.
Although...
"I don't think you could've done anything differently, Commander. It's the same thing as what you said to me: you didn't know."
Shepard works her jaw, still not looking him in the eye.
"...thank you, Alenko."
"Don't mention it."
She pulls the jacket tightly around herself, and then leaves, going to speak to Dr. Chakwas by the lockers. Kaidan can't think of much more to do other than watch her, partially out of the condition she might be in after being knocked cold for more than 12 hours and apparently being 'fine.'
The other part is his slow digestion of the fact he might well be in over his head with this mission—in more ways than one, and Marieke Shepard is one of those ways.
since AMM lets me set my casual outfit to the N7 jacket and the first time i see it is when Shepard wakes up in the medbay my headcanon is that Kaidan (in a slight panic over being partially responsible for his XO getting injured) is looking for something to Help More and decides to grab her jacket and help Dr. Chakwas put it on to keep her from getting cold or something
the autistic alien representation i'll accept is a character like Liara T'soni where she's considered to be behaviorally abnormal even for other members of her species and culture, not just someone who behaves autistically in comparison to "normal" human beings
i don't know if they wrote her as autistic obviously but when it comes to the occasional discussion about aliens and autism representation and what's right VS. what's wrong i think people need to understand the context in which things take place; like, having an alien that stands out from the majority of her peers in terms of her social behavior and interpreting that as autism is one thing, but all the autistic characters in a particular story/world being aliens or nonhuman is another
although obviously the human autism representation in Mass Effect is...really not good by comparison, to put it mildly
although i don't have osteogenesis imperfecta, Jeff Moreau remains one of my personal favorite examples of crip representation in fictional media
obviously there are many parts of it that could be improved (like how he never moves from a chair in the 1st game, which is maybe partially due to its age but idk) but he's like, the around the bare minimum of what should be aspired to imo
Oh for fuck’s sake, people calling out racist writing in fanfic isn’t “censorship”. I say this as a fic writer but some of you need to get off your high fucking horse.
Truly some of the most irritating culture has sprung up around fanwork and fanfic in specific like… no, making something for free does not in fact make it sacrosanct or immune to criticism! Your right to “do whatever you want forever” or say “fandom is for fun” stops the second you’re being bigoted and making fan spaces unsafe for marginalized people!
"fandom is for fun" except for poc who have to deal with rampant racism and white people unable to acknowledge let alone take accountability for their racism
the catch-22 of black characters in fandom: if a black character is morally upstanding, heroic and kind, if they embody good and noble traits with minimal or understandable flaws, the majority of fandom will decide they're too boring and vanilla to stan and ignore or bash them in favor of nonblack characters, claiming there's something untrustworthy or unbelievable about how good this character seems to be. but if a black character is messy, morally complex or fucked up on par with nonblack characters in the same story or straight-up evil like a lot of popular nonblack villains in fandom are, the majority of fandom will hyperfocus on the black character's negative traits and use them as the reason why they "can't" be interested in the black character or as a flimsy excuse for repeating antiblack stereotypes. like when it comes to black villains or even just like. 3-dimensionally flawed black characters, most folks in fandom often frame them as beyond empathy bc they're exceptionally aggressive/dishonest/unemotional etc and that makes them fundamentally unsympathetic and repulsive, even if they have favorite nonblack characters with the exact same traits. the common denominator of these arguments is blackness, and how way too many people see blackness itself as inherently beyond sympathy and inherently lacking interiority- but a lot of folks in liberal fandom spaces are unable to face that bias about themselves, so they grasp onto arbitrary character traits as the "reason" for why they think so many black characters are just unsympathetic and unlikable and uninteresting regardless of how they're depicted. it's completely valid to have archetype preferences- some folks just prefer straightforward heroic types, some folks just prefer villains or monsters, etc- but if someone who loves a whole roster of bland morally righteous nb heroes is turning up their nose at black heroes for being too boring or too perfect, or if someone who makes a whole meal outta being a monsterfucker villain stan somehow draws the line at black characters doing all the fucked up things their nb faves have done, we know the basis of that double standard is antiblackness.
black hero?? ugh they're a mary sue/they're too perfect/they're too boring/the story's tryna fool and manipulate us into thinking this character's a good person but i know they aren't!! black villain?? ugh they're so evil/irredeemable/disgusting how can anyone stan them?? they've literally killed and exploited so many people. anyway back to posting about my nonblack fave who just deserves a big hug, hatecrime mcgenocideman-
imagine hating a non-profit site created by fans, for fans, with excellent tagging system, no censorship, no ads, no algorithm, no capitalism bullshit — just fans creating and sharing their art with other fans for free, out of pure love and passion — couldn't be me
If you’re like me and don’t have twitter, the tdlr is that this person was asked to step down from AO3 for having a pro-Palestine slogan as her slack status. AO3 leadership claimed it constituted harassment.
going to completely brush the whole “billionaires get to commit sex crimes so we should also be able to!” thing under the rug for a second. this illustrates one of the most infuriating things about this website. people just think about everything in terms of fanfiction. i remember hearing people on here talk about project 2025, and the point they kept bringing up was “THEY’RE GOING TO MAKE FANFICTION ILLEGAL!” i always think… do you people have any fucking problems outside of fanfiction? you’d think that they would at least say something like “i’d like to marry someone i love someday” or “i’d like to be openly gay at work” because these people don’t have jobs or lovers. all they’ve got is good omens fanfiction.
