#meappreciation

[killaaaakham]

Soooo... I cut my hair. I’m fine as hell😍😍

[mxre-less]

I've been taking some good ass pictures lately

[spacetango]

This was supposed to be a quick sketch for day 2 of Mass Effect Appreciation Week, aka Shep’s bday. So that didn’t happen...

Anyway, here’s Liv Shepard. In the time it took me to finish this, I could have gotten another chapter of her boyfriend’s fic done, but no.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[humblydefiant]

I think #meappreciation should be appreciation month not week. A week does not do it justice.

[omegastation]

Mass Effect Appreciation Week is over and I want to thank @biotictrash for coming up with the idea! Thanks to @nix-shiva for the Miranda post!!!! That was so good I didn't have to do my own ;)

It's been a great week honestly, for me because every week is Mass Effect Appreciation Week but I particularly liked the themes we had. Having a structure like this helped when making edits or gifs. And it let us celebrate Shepard, the squad, the relationships, the missions, the quotes that all mattered to us, etc.

Thank you to anyone who participated. It filled my queue for days ;) And thanks to everyone who liked and reblogged stuff from that week. Activity in this fandom is always good, but for me it can be hard to tell how much I'm improving with making gifs or edits, so knowing that people are willing to put something I did in their own blog, that's really reassuring :)

[polymolly]

Mass Effect Appreciation Week

Day 7 - April 16th: Endings:  What significance does the end of the Mass Effect trilogy have to you? How does your Shepard’s story end and why is it important that it ends that way? Talk about head canons, theories, stories etc.

(I was supposed to do it much earlier, so I wouldn’t be forced to make it in the last moment possible, but I didn’t and now I’m late. I gues it tells alot about me.)

(Still...)

I think I won’t bring anything new to the discussion. Like most of players I think that it would be WAAAAAAAY better for the Starchild to never show up, BUT... Since I’ve had a bit of time to get used to the possible endings before I could actually play it I kinda like it? Maybe not actually like, but I had the chance to adapt. I don’t think there’s better or worse option here. I like the the synthesis option, I can see the potential in here, but imo that’s not the decission Shepard should make on her own. To be honest, neither is wiping out Geths, cause by the end they’re not just a machines anymore... but my canonical ending lies here. I chose the way of destroying the reapers and other synthetic life. I needed for my Shepard to survive the ending.

I wanted to give her a peaceful life after the war, I thought about small house somewhere in Vancouver (or somewhere else)... I imagined a child. Only one, cause Joker didn’t wanted to risk more, and it’s pretty amazing for Amy to be fertile after all she’s been through. So... only one. But healthy.  A girl. Possibly completely freed from Vrolik syndrome with a small help of Miranda’s knowledge. Who knows? The only thing that really matters is that she don’t need to go through the same shit her father had to. And he was so happy the day she was born... Her name is Faith.

And that’s why I wanted to do it earlier cause now I don’t know what more there is to be said. I shared some hc before, I did it now. I guess it’s done then. The week is over.

[alyssalenko]

April 16th: Endings:  What significance does the end of the Mass Effect trilogy have to you? How does your Shepard’s story end and why is it important that it ends that way? Talk about head canons, theories, stories etc.

Control, Synthesis, Refuse, or Destroy

I think the reason the ending of Mass Effect hit us all so hard, was because we’d been on this incredible journey with Shepard for five years and we had to kill them in one of four different ways. It’s not like Dragon Age where we had a different protagonist every game (even though we’re all super attached to them too). That’s why we all live in denial and choose the ending we want and then constantly throw in how Shepard was okay and lived happily ever after with their love interest.

“Ow!”

“Hold still, Shepard.” Karin ordered as she and Kaidan wrapped a large gauze bandage around Alyss’ middle.

“My arms are tired.” She sighed, as she held her arms level with her collarbone.

“We’re almost done, love.” Kaidan told her, kissing the back of her neck softly.

Alyss closed her eyes and leaned her head back to rest on his chest. After the Hell she’d been through in the past few hours, let alone the past three years, Alyss needed this. Kaidan’s arms wrapped around her and he kissed the back of neck once more.

She sighed contentedly.

“All right, you’re done.” Dr. Chakwas said. “You’ll need to change the gauze under the bandage every four hours…I’m sure the Major would be happy to help you with that. You’ll also need to keep your biotics offline for forty-eight hours, and I’ll need you to come back for a checkup every couple of days.”

“Understood, Doctor. Thank you for everything Karin—I owe you another bottle of Serrice Ice Brandy.” Alyss smiled.

“We still have to crack open one this year, you can buy next year’s.” Karin laughed.

“It’s a deal.” Alyss nodded as she grabbed the purple off the shoulder t-shirt Kaidan had brought down from the loft for her—the very same one she’d worn on their first dinner date at the citadel—and he helped her to pull it over her head. “Kaidan, help me off this bed; there’s one person I’m dying to see. No pun intended.”

She held out her arms to Kaidan, who smiled lovingly at her and carefully lifted her off the bio bed. She hooked her left arm through Kaidan’s right and leaned her weight on him. Together the two of them made their way out of the med bay, down the corridor, but Alyss stopped before they entered the elevator at the remembrance plaque.

In the center, two names blared at her…Commander Alyss Shepard and Admiral David Anderson’s. She hadn’t had time to mourn for him on the Citadel, but now she felt the tears come. Everything was her fault. If she’d never touched the beacons and then taken down a Reaper attracting their attention, she and every other human would be working together as one in dark space…maybe it was for the best.

Kaidan held Alyss close while she sobbed into his chest. There was only so much one person could take…this was a side of Shepard most people never saw; they saw a born leader, a Spectre, an amazing Vanguard—half biotic, half combat specialist, cool in the face of any situation; and someone larger than life. But Kaidan was lucky—he got to see the real Shepard, the one who cared about her friends and the ones under her command; the one who put the weight of the world on her shoulders, so no one else would have to carry that burden.

If she wanted to cry, Kaidan was the only one she’d let see her do it—her walls came down around him, and for that he was grateful; grateful that those three years ago, she got him to loosen up, and to open up about his past. And happy he could return the favor.

Alyss dried her eyes. There would always be time to mourn later thanks to her and her copy, and so she took Kaidan’s hand leading him into the elevator with her and pressing the number 2 for the CIC. How many times had the two of them ridden this elevator together heading down to the shuttle bay for a mission after she’d flirted with him shamelessly? She turned to him.

“I love you.” Alyss told him as she reached her hand up to her collarbone. “And there’s something I want you to do for me.”

There were better ways she could’ve started the conversation. Kaidan worried she was going to tell him something he didn’t want to hear—like she actually had cheated on him when she was with Cerberus, with that assassin she’d cried so hard over losing. But he trusted her completely—he may have felt betrayed, but she’d told him that he was the only one for her, as well as coming clean about flirting with every male on the Normandy SR2. Besides…he’d made the mistake of not trusting her once, and was never going to do it again.

“Anything.” Kaidan responded.

Her fingers closed around a thin chain and she tugged it out of the collar of her purple t-shirt. At the end of the chain hung her dog tags—the very same recovered by Liara from Admiral Hackett while she was using Cerberus to fund her mission to stop the collectors, and the same ones Anderson threw to her as the Normandy left Earth and reinstated her. With shaking fingers, she unclasped her chain, and pulled off one of her tags, before reaching up and pulling his chain over his head and doing the same thing, only to replace his tag with the one of hers she’d removed. An impromptu and informal half proposal, as it were.

“Wear these?” She asked. “Let me know that you’re mine, and that no matter what, you’ll be by my side…even if I make a stupid decision.”

“Shepard, you’re scaring me. Of course I’ll wear them, and until the end of time I’ll be behind you one hundred percent, but what is this really about?”

“Kaidan, I—” Alyss began.

[bipolyjack]

she's still breathing when they find her. no one is sure how. they rush her to the nearest functioning med clinic on earth, hook her up to machines that keep her lungs working and her heart pumping. her eyelids shift in her unquiet sleep. the relays are gone so it takes almost ten years for garrus to make it back to the local cluster. she's still alive, technically. kind of a legend on that ward, a legend or maybe a ghost story. no one wants to be the one to shut off commander shepard's life support, of course, even though she's never shown even the slightest sign of regaining consciousness other than the occasional twitch of her lids. "give me a minute with her," he says to the bored aide outside her door. it's late; the clinic is mostly deserted. the only sound in her room is the soft hum and beep of the equipment. he locks the door from the inside. sits down in the chair beside her bed. he gets the sense no one has sat in this chair in years. he studies her face. the burns and abrasions are long healed, but the dark bruise-like circles under her eyes are still there. he sits there for several minutes without moving or speaking. then he gets up, goes over to the array of sockets on the wall, and unplugs the machines one by one until the room is finally silent. he leans over her, his mandibles brushing her forehead, and whispers, "you've earned a rest."