#me meta

[notcatherinemorland]

im gonna get wheels

[zaeedsflipflops]

I have just so many things to say about Liam and I wanted to make an eloquent, cohesive post about him but I’d rather just rattle things off.

First off, there’s the way he communicates. He’s never said to be neurodivergent in-game, just as Sera isn’t either, but as someone with ADHD I relate so strongly to how he expresses himself.

“I miss being able to give directions from what used to be there. Turn where the chip shop used to be.”

“Back in the Milky Way, we were knocking on the doors of stable clones, but that’s different. The bits are already there; it’s snap-together.”

Like Sera, other characters sometimes react like he’s not making sense, but for me he’s the character whose motives and trains of thought are easiest to follow. He’s actually a lot like Sera; they even have a similar scene where they express frustration over things not being back to normal and needing the familiar.

There’s the way he uses movies as a way to connect, not just with the movie night but attaching lists of movies to his emails that relate to its contents (and in the romance, includes a list of all of them called the Truth -- in his words “no secrets”). As the person who's always giving out movie recs and definitely uses movies and tv to connect and understand others, I love that.

There’s the way he’s constantly trying to connect and bridge gaps between people; he wants to build bridges and to do what’s best for everyone. His scene with Jaal where they’re needling each other to find out what’s okay and not okay to say so they know better when the situation is an unknown. He cares so, so much and it’s so apparent in everything he does. It also totally explains why he stopped being a cop. There’s an early banter with Cora that’s really telling:

Liam: Ever disobey an order?

Cora: In my soldier days? No that’s kind of the point.

Liam: It’s that mechanical, you never thought about it?

Cora: Military discipline isn’t there to give you something cool to rebel against. In combat, people depend on you being in the place they expect doing what you’re meant to do.

Liam: That doesn’t mean you’re doing the right thing.

He tells Jaal he left law enforcement specifically because he wanted to do good and he couldn’t as a cop. Jaal makes a crack about Liam just not being good at the job, but he’s right. Liam’s value system is at total odds with the law enforcement system and he would and apparently did make a terrible cop.

“After two years and a dozen suspensions, I took a “lateral promotion” out of the force.”

I can see him wanting to use the power and resources to do all the good he wants to do and then realizing that not only is he literally unable to (”too many obstacles” he tells Jaal), he’s unwelcome to. So then he goes into crisis response, which is totally in line with what he's concerned about.

Some fans get on him for his personal mission and for getting Ryder into that situation but the way he handles the mission is so quintessentially him. He wants to help; he wants to help Ryder and the Initiative and his contact. He messes up, sure, but it's borne out of this inherent desire to do good, include others and see the best in people. If Ryder detains his contact, he's unhappy (and it will end a romance with him).

Liam is one of the most layered companions in the Mass Effect series in my opinion because of all these things. He could just be the archetypal "means well but fucks up sometimes" character, but it's more than that. He has a solid moral core and belief system and he struggles with manifesting that into the real world, but he also is far from naive. His impulsiveness means he dives headfirst in things he thinks will allow him to do what he believes is right. Sometimes those things (like being a cop) are the wrong choice, but in that case he changes course and continues on. He up and joins the Andromeda initiative because he believes in it. He's so utterly sincere and genuine in a way that is lovely to see.

[gaybellethorn]

mh having its central theme be 'embrace your freaky flaws!' immediately followed by eah's central theme of 'repression. repression. secrets. guilt. etc' is so funny

like cerise never gets to take her hood down. cedar never gets the truth curse lifted. the ohairs have to keep hiding the truth of their heritage because it's just easier.

eah is in this weird doll franchise storytelling limbo where the plot itself is allowed to grow and develop and change but the characters have to remain totally stagnant because otherwise it might hurt brand recognition. briar can decide to turn rebel if she wants but ultimately her story still needs to hinge on her destiny of the 100 years of sleep because she's 'the sleeping beauty one'.

and then i, gaybellethorn, eah understander, argue that it's actually very clever and big brained and thematically resonant because it encapsulates how these characters are like self aware stock characters, they know they're one dimensional with just enough characterisation to experience grief at their lot in life but no agency to actually change it because they have to tell us a story, the same story, over and over, prometheus and the eagle. the premise of the show is predicated on the fact that these are the sons and daughters of fairy tale characters, they're not fairy tale characters themselves YET, there's still time before the fall, they could save themselves if they wanted, but youre a doll in a toy franchise called ever after high. obviously you can't.

[caixxa]

Not trying total social media and phone screen break but I'll be around less.

New special interests are sleep, outdoors, family time and work.

[faejilly]

so there’s this excellent Kaidan post @jadesabre301 subjected me to [here] about the fact that there’s no Shadowbroker dossier for Kaidan.

And the excellent headcanon by @normandya is it’s because he’s like, a hardware tech nerd, who reads old books and goes hiking and breaks your toaster (and then fixes it better) not someone who yk, does anything online or understands memes or whatever. (HE WRITES PHYSICAL LETTERS, yes, I am verklempt.)

and it just reminded me of my time spent working in retail home networking/wifi sections and just... wanting to go into a store and say: give me the dumbest possible appliance. It connects to nothing except electricity. No extra buttons or screens or speakers or microphones or alerts. It just. Does one thing and sits like a rock in my house doing it’s one thing all by itself.

I feel proud to realize that Kaidan would probably agree with me.

[persephinae]

so I was thinking about Mass Effect, as one does, and about the asari.

(and this is strictly just from in game lore and meta)

i know bioware created them to be the “sexy blue alien women”(TM), but sometimes the unintended lore and meta they create are interesting

asari live to be over a thousand years old, right?  practically immortal compared to humans, turians, quarians, drells, and especially salarians

and i’m thinking about how that is a long ass time, you practically have all the time in the world to pursue your passions, get burned out and say fuck it become a dancer in some club, then realize(TM)  i’m tired actually, and go do whatever the fuck you do as a Matriarch

but in that time you have a THOUSAND plus years to accrue monetary compensation because the galaxy still operates under capitalism mostly, so actually, if you have a thousand plus years you’d be STUPID to not have money by the time you’re like 50-100 years old. and by the time you hit grandma age and had your kids (or not, whatever)  you’d be fuckin rich compared to the rest of the galaxy because you had the time to do so

and you’d pass down that wealth to your kids, and down through the ages, because you STILL will always have a head start compared to the other races of the galaxy

so really, i would think money becomes meaningless to those who have generational wealth, like Jeff “I Can Build My Own Martian Colony If I Really Wanted To And STILL Be Fuckin Rich” Bezos

or those I guess who were orphans I guess, but I would think that asari would have government UBI and free university and shit for all citizens regardless of wealth because it literally does not mean anything at this point

PLUS in game canon from Illium that they exploit other races in the outer rim of the galaxy where no one looks too closely

ALSO their technology will forever be cutting edge, just within legal limits, due to having unreported prothean technology for thousands and thousands of years.

so tl;dr:  all asari are all fuckin loaded

which leads to my thought, which is this - The asari could have built the Crucible, by themselves, ten times over

2nd thought - they really shot themselves in the foot by not cooperating with the rest of the galaxy during the Reaper War (see Thessia)

3rd thought - post Reaper War, with their home world mostly in ruins, along with the rest of the galaxy, their generational wealth is gone.  fuckin gone.  They will have to start from square one with the rest of the galaxy post Reaper War to rebuild everything

and to be fair, sometimes you make a decision for what you think are the right reasons and it still bites you in the ass because that’s life

but I think that their longevity and own cultural biases set them up for failure in the end

[mother-sauces]

You're telling me that a normie coded you?

This is funny, but there's no way a normie built a 5 foot robot vampire and imbued it with both consciousness and an insatiable sex drive

I mean... I am a real boy

[perfectmisslawson]

headcanon on asari anatomy

- because asari reproduce through mind melding, they did not evolve a vagina with the sensibility of a human. they merely possess a birth canal which is equipped with very few nerve endings, allowing them a painless birth.

- they do not have outer and inner labia like humans do. all they have is their vaginal opening.

- however, their crests and the lower back area, the azure, are both eregenous zones for the asari

- they do have an areola, but their nipples only extract during pregnancy when they need to breastfeed

and yes i‘m aware there is a banshee with human genitalia and there are asari nipples but i call that poor designing

the fact that asari have human genitalia in porn is just fanservice. it does not make sense for a species that reproduces asexually to evolve a vagina with many nerve endings as that would make birth painful and it would be completely unnecessary since asari do not have penises (which would also be unnecessary since penises are meant to put sperm into vaginas but that is not needed in a species that reproduces like the asari do). labia would also have no function.