#lhs replies

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commandercod said: I would love to hear more dispatches from WeRatePlanetsdotCom!            

11/10 so much mass, very orbit! Absolute ball, only slightly prolate! It even spins! Just look at all the fluffy clouds.

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servantofclio said:  Yeah, that line about “machine cultists” as if they’re not unusual seems like a whole plot thread unaddressed.     

Thinking about it, in the first game, there’s perhaps less fuss about the Husks then you’d think. The authorities do seem oddly uninterested in the whole “oh goodness they’re putting people on spikes and now they’re nanite-infested monsters!” thing, which could possibly imply that it’s old news on some level.

But ... yes, this is one of the dangling plot threads from ME1, isn’t it?

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@painterofhorizons here are some interiors from the houses - as you can see, they all have slightly different styles and decors

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painterofhorizons said: Ooooh. Can I move in?

Of course :) You’ll be pleased to know that there’s also now a dedicated laundry block:

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lovethatcoat said:  the view from the mako in me:1 is the best! especially the one on the moon, or the one with lot’s of space debris crashing in. i would have loved one of the galilean moons as well with massive jupiter in the background…

Yes, one thing they did very well in ME1 was that sense of magnificent desolation. Another bonus was that they were willing to use all sorts of different planetary environments, which isn’t something that always happens.

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lovethatcoat said: I saw an article on Friday from The Guardian (!!!) where it was very balanced: government says this, *some* experts disagree. Like !!! Do some research, run the numbers! Bloody hell do your job! - Thank god they’re changing it after all now…             

There’s a huge problem with the British newspapers, in which they all tend to just passively accept the Tory Party’s line. Even the Guardian does it surprisingly-often, and they’re probably the most “critical” paper left. (Though TBH, the Guardian’s opinion columnists seem to fervently-wish that anyone to the left of David Milliband would just STFU and go away.)

The core of the arrangement seems to be that all of them knew each other at Oxford (because that’s where the vast majority of senior Tories, senior journalists and also very senior civil servants did their undergraduate courses), and they’re all mates, so no-one wants to really “rock the boat”. (Plus anyone who does try to get off the boat, will suddenly find that their Tory sources go quiet on them, and they stop getting their exclusive stories.)

It’s a sort of incestuous, post-modern sort of media control; not technically censorship, but is it really still a free press when the press enthusiastically and excitably promotes the government’s view?

We saw it throughout the 2010s, when the press fell over themselves to make excuses for Tory ministers, and this is partly how the current rotten government managed to survive. (That and the greed of the pensioners and the weird gullibility of a certain section of Middle England.)

Only now the whole system is going septic, because they’re pursuing policies that look actively-liquidationist, there are no critical voices (off of Twitter, anyway) and there certainly aren’t any adults in the room.

It’s all quite impressively horrible, TBH :(

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So I used the unintended deletion of the ziggurat as an opportunity.

I’m happy to say that I went and built a new house ... though, sadly, it’s a lot more boring and conventional than the now-disappeared ziggurat. It has got a topiary Deathclaw on the roof, though, so it’s got that much going for it, at least.  And the view is better than from the old house.

I might try re-building the ziggurat at some point, but it’ll do for now.             

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sinvraal said:  Every stray cough must be frightening. Though, if you’re born to it, maybe it’s attenuated a bit. But it would explain a lot wouldn’t it?                     

And we’re not helped by the way canon wobbles back and forth about just how bad the quarians’ situation is. In ME1 it sounded like a widespread immunodeficiency problem, in ME2 Kal’Reegar thinks getting shot by geth in a dirty outdoor area is manageable, and in ME3 you get the impression that one sneeze is The End - until Tali does what she does on Rannoch.

Which, actually, always bothered me. You’d think Rannoch would be *worse* for the quarians, because it’s presumably home to parasites and pathogens that co-evolved with them and are good at living inside them. And during their absence from the planet, who-knows-what kinds of horrors might have developed in animal and plant disease-reservoirs on the planet.

lovethatcoat said:  That’s why I never got why Tali apparently takes off her suit to sleep with mShep. If it’s that dangerous, surely they’d have a culture of suit-on fun activities and maybe artificial insemination for procreation?

Yes, that makes sense. Contrary to what a lot of people believe, sexuality doesn’t exist on a plane wholey-separate from cultural and economic forces - it does stand to reason that the quarians’ material circumstances would have an effect on what happens in the bedroom. (A related point - clothing fetishes are Absolutely A Real Thing here on modern Earth!) But, then, a lot of the romance plots in ME3 have issues of various sorts so I suppose I can’t blame the writing team for blanking on the more “experimental” possibilities.