Mass Effect: Discovery (ME1 novelization, complete)
Mass Effect: Labyrinth (ME2 novelization, in progress)
The Wanderers (ME/DA Crossover, in progress)
Shenko Ficlets & One-Shots:
Nathaly Shepard: Dancing | Drunk | Kiss | Whale | Poker | Crazy | No One Is Ever Ready | Crossroads | Work Night | The Woman He Remembered | Routine | Lemongrass | Provocation | Listen | Breaking Ranks | Digital | crutch attract chase
Ben Shepard: Loss | Meeting | Mako | First Kiss | Bunkmates | Waiting Room | Just One More Before We Go
Other F!Shenko: Home | Hot Chocolate | After Mars | A Measure of Devotion | Flotsam | exit criteria
Other M!Shenko: Once More, With Feeling
Shaynor Series:
Jane Shepard: Never Marry a Soldier | Domesticity | Jane’s Fall | Swimming | Back Home
Other Shaynor: Worth It
Mass Effect Gen Ficlets & One-Shots:
Kaidan Alenko: Fireflies | A Shade of Yellow (Liara friendship) | A Cold Day in October
Nathaly Shepard: One Way Out | Sunday Morning (set in Citadelsushi's Western AU)
Other: Flirting (M!Shepley) | Eternal (A Thorian Origin Story) | A Long-Forgotten Complication (Chakwas/Hannah Shepard) | Science | Regret (Jonathan Shepard) | Sometimes We Get What We Deserve (Jack Nought) | Storm Warning (David Anderson)
2020 N7 Prompt Challenge Collected Fics
Dragon Age Ficlets:
Daeroavain Tabris: Serendipity | The Birthday | Older and Wiser
Freeze (Crossover ficlet)
In Dreams (F!Hawke/Sebastian Vael)
Headcanon & Misc Posts:
Solar System Holdouts | Mass Effect Languages | Writing Advice | Writing Military Culture | Turian Sex & Reproduction | Rethinking Virmire | Soulmate AU Culture | Ash Positivity | Writing Resources | Pacing Advice | Directed Energy Weapons | Comparing Kaidan and Anders | Who signed the Systems Alliance charter?
Trick or Treat 2022
BG3: A Happy Feast
Bad Poetry: Burning Iron | grief is not sanitary
Random Stuff Side Blog: @randomactsofpigeon
Dragon Age Side Blog: @pigeonage
Why Kaidan? [Not meant to come off rude or mean he's a cutie patootie]
It's funny, I first played ME1 well over a decade ago while waiting for a new DA game. I romanced Kaidan at the time, and never played any of the later games so sort of remained on the outskirts of the fandom. Over the years, I became convinced that romancing Kaidan was the shallow choice, the safe 'Oh, you don't want to romance aliens' choice.
I came back to ME in December, and really only set out with the intention of romancing someone different. I didn't make it halfway through ME1 before going back to Kaidan and knowing I had been right all along.
The thing that struck me was how much depth his character had in such vast array of facets. His story is of disability, of chronic illness, of trauma that leaves quiet tendrils behind, of compassion born of regret, of rigorous self-reflection that still bears uncertainty and doubt, of independence and capability that learns to co-exist with new community. Every aspect of his character was immensely captivating because he was written as a person, not just a squadmate. He is full to the brim of little quirks that feel so lived in: using the metaphor of radio signals when discussing the signs he picks up from Shepard, the debriefs that fall into philosophical pondering of their place in the universe, the small observations of the things you have to slow down to really notice, the ceaseless wonder of not just the galaxy but of those who inhabit it alongside him, the sudden lines he comes out with that read like poetry--but he's only ever written limericks, sometimes.
There's an endless plethora of reasons of personality--the natural instinct to provide guidance, the kindness and compassion, the whimsy and humour--but really what draws me to him is simply that he is inescapably compelling and possesses deep enough characterisation that it is fruitful to be compelled into knowing him.
Theory that brooks specifically picked the worst team in Me2 so Shepard would fail. Like she was like “oh, lets put a disgusting remorseless mercenary with the embodiment of Justice who kills on sight, then a sad assassin who’s literally dying and has never worked on a team before, also since Miranda is heading this up lets sprinkle in a little bit of pure rage at Cerberus (for fun) and how about a krogan warlord and the salarian who helped distribute the genophage! That’ll be HILARIOUS what a dud nothing’s gonna get done”
(ignore my Shepard lmao, a lot of my screencaps contain a 'frozen in place and listening to conversations in the least discreet way possible' Shepard)
I really like those two and their conversation as it is in the beginning of ME3. He's a departing soldier, she's his beloved wife who's a citizen, and it's all about keeping in touch despite no communication behind enemy lines, parenting when one is away, money being tight and her having to take more shifts. You can get Partners Benefits Increase from them in the Spectre terminal. I don't remember exactly how it all ends but I'm in denial about their last conversation being about Sanctuary. Tututututu.
ANYWAY. They talk about the girls and he mentions "biotic gymnastics" as a class they can take. I find normal gymnastic with kids would be a lot already but biotic gymnastics????
We had a lot of cool fandom discussions about biotic sports/classes/art thingies (I would PAY A LOT to see biotic ballet!!!!!) but I always like when the games give us a little something and from there we can extrapolate and even come up with an original character. Because someone is teaching kids biotic gymnastics in the Citadel during the Reaper War. I'm curious about them. And I'm sure the person I have in mind is different from yours, which is what is so amazing!!!!!
I write out of order a lot, and have developed a weird little code to remind me what I intended when I wrote something, using scene breaks.
* * * -> everything above this is complete and in order
---------- -> these are separate scenes, that are occurring in the same fic or same chapter, but are otherwise not directly related. May be out of order.
//// -> these are separate scenes that are directly related/temporally separated continuations of every other scene in this //// chain. Generally in order with respect to each other, but out of order with respect to other scenes. Will usually have other scenes inserted between them in the final version.
= -> I left off here and have not finished this scene, but wanted to be able to find the stopping place quickly, and = is not used as punctuation or for any other purpose in English prose, so it is an excellent search term in a long document.
italics -> notes to my own self about what I intended to do, at the top of the scene. Not to be confused with italics used in the scene for stylistic reasons.
[So quick reminder for people who didn’t see or remember the first post: the Virtues are bad people brought back to life by unknown forces, and forced to remain alive until they meet a specific, unknown atonement condition related to their original crimes. Faith is a bad person. She’s meant to be.]
It starts with two powerful crime families who have long been at war.
In life, Faith was the scion of one of these families. At the age of 22, her college girlfriend was critically injured in a hit meant for her. This incident started Faith down a path of misplaced hope and a quest for vengeance that would last fifty years, beginning when she murdered her own father, who refused to support her crusade. After assuming control of his criminal organization, she dedicated all of their resources to two related causes: medical research to keep her only occasionally conscious girlfriend alive, in agony and the constant subject of new experiments, in the vain hope of a fully curative procedure to come, and transforming into a full-fledged private army dedicated to wiping the rival family off the face of the galaxy.
It takes most of Faith’s adult life, but she ultimately succeeds, personally directing an attack that obliterates an entire colony, the last bastion of said family. When she tells her still girlfriend she has finally found her justice, said girlfriend roundly denounces her, in scathing takedown that expresses the vast disgust and contempt in which she holds Faith, witnessing the callous person she has become, and the way she has been denied any personal agency for five decades. Faith does not react well to hearing this. The nurse on duty later reported there had been screaming, as Faith leveled all kinds of insults, and that eventually a shot went off. Not much is clear after that because the oxygen apparently ignited, killing them both and damaging the room (indeed, most of the floor) beyond recognition or forensics.
Like most of the Virtues, Faith awoke without any sense that she was in the wrong. Her story as above is revealed/explored over a number of issues, in which she is serving various missions for the Director.
Faith’s Revenge is her final arc, and the culmination of her story. The Director assigns her to retrieve a fourteen-year-old girl (Hanako) who she presumes to be a runaway, but it turns out she is the opposite—she is searching for her lost family. Though the girl proves to be a real pain in the ass (not unlike Faith herself), they form a rapport. In exploring her uncertainty, anticipatory grief and sense of loss, Faith begins to understand why what she did to her own family, and girlfriend, was grotesque.
They get a major lead and it is believed that Hanako will finally be reunited with her family. Instead, it’s a trap—they find themselves surrounded by the current incarnation of Faith’s family, the monster she built, who are now using the medical technology she developed to help her girlfriend to enhance their own soldiers. Hanako sees their corporate logo and completely freaks out, even as Faith is trying to fight them off. It has triggered a memory from when she was very young, and her house was surrounded and under attack; her father managed to smuggle her out just before the net closed. Her family is definitely dead, and Hanako is the last surviving member of the family Faith dedicated her life to eradicating.
Upon realizing this, Hanako bolts, suddenly and understandably terrified of Faith, and Faith, who has her hands full fighting, cannot go after her.
The final segment of the story involves Faith racing against her own organization to locate and save Hanako. She succeeds, but only at the cost of her own life. The final showdown famously takes place across a series of barges on a water planet; Faith is mortally wounded and sinks into the water, presumably to die.
A small but vocal segment of the fanbase insists she is still alive and will return, since she is never shown dead, though the writer himself has stated otherwise.
everyone has a ship thats just: theyre perfect. they hate each other. theyre married. they havent spoken in 15 years. they have date nights three times a week. theyre divorced. theyre pining, its unrequited. its requited. theyre starcrossed. theyre meant to be. theyre doomed by the narrative. they love each other. theyve never held hands. they wont stop making out at parties. they cant look each other in the eye
