~☆~ Boot3154 ~☆~ @boot3154 - Tumblr Blog

i'd make a joke about "let the HUSBAND giggle under the covers and tell HIS WIFE to put that camera away before dying before HIS WIFE'S story starts" but lets be real he'd still get more fanart

strawberry-crocodile

sir do you understand that you are being criticized right now

tinkerbitch69

The best thing about tumblr is you can just make a criticism of a very specific person completely unprompted and then that person will appear as if summoned in your notes to prove your point for you.

ghostly-harmless

strawberry-crocodile

@yogsothoththekeyandthegate LITERALLYYY

oh-kays-stuff

shep's large krogan son showing off his ikea plushies he got to cheer you up :)

taken out from this post

revvethasmythh

happy birthday to THE bitch of all time

sunsetoverdose

Had to be me. Someone else might've gotten it wrong.

undergroundwubwubmaster

Commander Shepard and Pathfinder Ryder

I love them both, but the difference between the two is utterly hilarious - feel free to use the blank one as base!

perfectcleavage

Mass Effect is one of my favorite franchises of all time, but it can be so difficult at times to reckon with the fact that as a female gamer, they were simply not made with me in mind. And, ultimately, it suffers for it.

Ironically, the gender gap in the ME trilogy especially apparent when I recommend the games to a male friend. I finally talk them into playing it, and they will, more often than not, have absolutely nothing at all to say about the female characters (or lack thereof). Wandering through the games, you're bombarded with a diverse universe full of unique-looking aliens- but male aliens. Asari are the only female aliens you meet beyond Tali and a couple other female Quarians, until ME3, where we get Eve and Nyreen in the Omega DLC. Which means for two (and a half, let's be honest) games in the franchise, every Turian, Salarian, Krogan, Batrarian, Drell, Hanar, Vorcha, Elcor, and Volus is a male. But what is even more striking than this atrocious worldbuilding oversight is that, handing the games to your average male fan, they barely notice. It escapes them entirely as something worth mentioning. They don't perceive the empty echoes of the female voices we aren't hearing, of the other halves of alien populations completely unrepresented. It's as if the default setting of the world, fictional and not, is male.

Asari- the primary female voices in the game- are poorly written. We know this. An entire race of biotic-wielding, technologically-advanced aliens with lifespans in the centuries and incredibly rich culture and technology, and the most we see of them in the entire trilogy is as strippers and occasional mercenaries. Liara, Samara, Aria and Benezia break this mold, but not without their own flavors of sexualization. After all, Benezia still dies in what is akin to Turian fetishwear under the control of Saren. Her favorite color was yellow, remember?

But beyond Asari strippers, skin-tight Cerberus uniforms, and comically sexualized robots- all valid topics, but talked to death at this point- I truly believe the most astounding, hollow, and disheartening result of this casual misogyny is the Krogan.

The storyline of the Krogan cannot be emancipated from the concept of birth. An entire species near-sterilized, a war crime excused away for the greater good. The Krogan story IS the Genophage, and the horrifying explanations used by those in power to excuse atrocity. And for two entire games, not once are we ever shown what the Genophage has done to Krogan women. Not societally, physiologically, or psychologically. They are conveniently segregated away in briefly-mentioned "female camps," while the men discuss the horrors of a war crime that affects birthing rates. It takes until the final installment of the series to show you one female Krogan (who didn't even get her own model, they just covered her so you wouldn't notice) and to mention the absolutely devastating toll that a cultural pandemic of stillbirths, abuse, and chronic infertility-caused sickness can have on a population. Eve is a fantastic character. Truly. But after two whole games of the Genophage being such a critical cultural touchstone for so much of the galaxy, and so many player choices depending on it, it's incredibly difficult for this omission of perspective to be remedied by a few nuanced lines in the med bay.

On the other hand, I think about the Rachni a lot. The so-called ancient enemy of the Krogan people, the foe that led to them being uplifted by the Salarians (and then, ultimately, discarded by them) in the first place. A massive amount of pre-game lore is devoted to a culture that, interestingly enough, speaks to the player through a queen. In fact, the Rachni queen is one of the first female alien NPCs you encounter in the entire trilogy. And as you encounter her, she speaks of songs of mourning. Not for her, but for her children.

You are offered the chance to spare her twice, once in ME1 and again in ME3. Both times, she has been used for her control of her hive, her children, and the potential army that can be bred out of her. Given the choice to free or kill her, many argue she's too dangerous to be kept alive, her species too volatile to be left to reproduce unchecked. An eerily familiar narrative, echoed by the Krogan, creating very poignant foil to me. A species struggling to give birth, and another, their supposed enemy, constantly being taken advantage of for it. It is a struggle of mothers, being commodified by men, and everyone is losing.

I wonder what narrative depths this series could have discovered in the tragedies of the Krogan and the rich cultures of other alien civilizations if they had considered, even for a second, that female voices could support a story where male voices simply cannot. What would we have learned about Salarian women, and their opinions on fertilization regulations favoring male offspring? About Turian women in the line of duty and their place in the hierarchy? Does the Batarian caste system have a bias on the basis of sex?

Obviously, there is nothing that can be done about the erasure and treatment of women in a game series over a decade old. But, I do believe it can be used as an example going forward to show how cultural and environmental storytelling is genuinely made worse by the oversight of female voices. All that to say, I love this universe and these games. Sometimes, it's just difficult to remember that we were only given half a galaxy to truly appreciate.

a-driftamongopenstars

mass effect 2 is INSANE. you are a decorated soldier, special ops of the galaxy. you possess knowledge of the deadly future to come, no one believes you. you die. you die gruesomely. you are brought back to life by a terrorist organization you've been fighting against. you owe them your life. you use them. they use you. the future you knew would come is here. no one is safe.

is that still you, by the way? in that body? that died? is that still you? how do you know?

dr-paint

Happy N7 day!

Every song is about my mother if I try hard enough

seymouridae

lay your weary head to rest

deceasedcardinal

going2hell4everythingbutbeingbi

things to say after fucking up egregiously

pack it up boys we've made a social blunder

let's run that again

one more time normal style

I'm going to become a statistic

further proof god is out to get me

it's because I tore my acl senior year

I couldn't do it for religious reasons

my ex took my talent in the divorce

good thing nobody saw that (said directly to someone who definitely saw it)

personsonable-deactivated201908

me holding a gun to a mushroom: tell me the name of god you fungal piece of shit

mushroom: can you feel your heart burning? can you feel the struggle within? the fear within me is beyond anything your soul can make. you cannot kill me in a way that matters

me cocking the gun, tears streaming down my face: I’M NOT FUCKING SCARED OF YOU