#sharkybaeshaw

[elfyourmother]

Oh, cool! I've fallen back into Mass Effect and I always remember Imani as one of the most developed Sheps I've ever seen. So you follow the Hellenistic Pantheon, right? What made you link Imani and the Egyptian gods? Was there something about her story that made them click in your mind, or was that part of her something you had in mind from the very beginning?

I wanted a Pagan Shep because I’m Pagan and bc I’ve literally never seen a Pagan hero in anything that wasn’t historical fiction or a fantasy story w a fictional pantheon. Too often Paganism is seen as something fantastical or some musty relic from the far distant past that humanity has “evolved” away from and I wanted to show Paganism thriving in the distant future and how it would evolve and adapt in a sci fi setting with aliens and advanced technology.

I had her following Kemeticism bc I knew I wanted her to follow an ancestral tradition, and it was p obvious which one when I decided to follow the canon idea that humanity was majority multiracial by the 22nd century and gave her Egyptian heritage. Also ngl I didn’t want to make her too similar to me so I deliberately chose a path for her that I’m only adjacent to at best. Her particular patrons being Isis and Osiris is bc Mindoir was an agricultural colony and Osiris is an agricultural deity.

I went in totally blind even though I was relatively late to the franchise (I only started playing ME a few months before 3 came out) so I had no idea Shep died and was resurrected and it just made it that much more perfect tbh.

[insideedensgate]

Jacob and John

submitted by @sharkybaeshaw,

actually supposed to be published at @yanderedad but things happen, eh?

as far as I’ve got it right, this is no JohnxJacob, just some family bond headcanons

“Here’s a small headcanon to get you started off right: Jacob is soft with John in a way he is with no else, even Joseph. That’s not to say he doesn’t love Joseph, obviously they’re incredibly close. But John was and will always be his baby brother. He was ten when John was born and from the very first moment, John was his responsibility.

Jacob’s not really a “feelings” type of man. He show’s his love through actions not words. He’s made it his mission in life to shield his brothers from anything the world tries to throw at them. Anything more than that is showing vulnerability, weakness. Even with Joseph, there’s always a gruffness overlaying the affection, an edge of temper ready to trigger at any moment. But with John there’s a gentleness to their interactions, a weakness he denies himself with anyone else. He regularly ruffles John’s hair and is the only person alive allowed to call him “Johnny”. He goes out of his way to praise John’s tattooing skills the same way he did when John was three and crayon stick figure drawings plastered the Seed brothers’ bedroom. He bites his tongue at his brother’s closet full of silk shirts, and resolutely does not insult him when John shows up wearing a fucking trench coat covered in tiny planes. And when John was detoxing from drug addiction he’d tried to hide, shaking, shivering, clawing at his own skin and crying that he wasn’t strong enough to do this, Jacob just crawled into bed next to him. Held him and promised that he was, John was so Strong, and even when he wasn’t Jacob was there and he’d keep him safe.”

Ok, first of all - yes please???

I really feel like John and Jacob have a really strong bond, since Jacob couldn’t really get behind Joseph’s quiet shell. And if so, his younger brother pushed him out nearly immediately.

Jacob gave up some decades ago, didn’t want to stress himself and annoy his brother with trying to get close to him, hence they developed a really fragile and unstable relationship causing frustration and a lot of screaming from time to time.

But with John it’s different. They can talk about everything, John wanting Jacob’s advise and Jacob admiring to help whenever he can.

So yeah, I can only agree - thank you for that wonderful headcanon!

[boneforts]

So, I’m trying to sit here and verbalize how fucking fantastic the past two chapters have been, and I’m just failing. I have no words. I’ll try and actually leave a gushing comment later, but dude that was... that was amazing.

i, uh……luv u 😚

[elfyourmother]

Are you at all into The Elder Scrolls? I’ve just fallen assdeep into Skyrim and I was thinking about what a Breton Gisele would be like.

Nah I actually hate Elder Scrolls and have since the very first one. I hate open world games without any kind of narrative structure and can’t play first person games because they make me motion sick. Combat is awful and the lore puts me to sleep... Skyrim legitimately bored the shit out of me

But the worst strike against it is their elves are ugly as sin...I can put up w a lot from a game but not ugly ass elves. thats human propaganda

[elfyourmother]

Does Imani ever struggle with her faith (in the gods/in herself)? Also on a more fun note: If she were to play two truths and a lie during poker night, what would her answers be?

She had a crisis of faith at her lowest point, after the Arrival incident when she was under house arrest. She didn’t understand why the gods put her in that position and struggled to see how ma’at was served by the deaths of 300,000 people, even if it forestalled the Reaper invasion. It was a price too high even if intellectually she understood Hackett’s argument (and Garrus’ for that matter. She didn’t talk about it much afterward but he supported her. He’s a turian after all. “Deadly calculus” is cultural for them, even a “bad” turian like him).

The guilt was unbearable and she often wondered if her intellectual acceptance of that hard necessity, even as dubious as it was, was because of latent anti-Batarian feelings deep down in the ugly parts of her trauma wounded soul. Would she have done more to warn the settlement, found a way around it, etc, if it had been a turian or hanar colony and not one populated by the species who produced the slaving terrorists who murdered her family? That’s the sort of question that kept Imani up at night.

I might know it’s nonsense, that she was placed in an utterly untenable position with no time or no choices, but Imani is as Lawful Good as they come, and she’s harder on herself for her perceived flaws than anyone. She’s Commander Shepard—she always finds A Way. She’s supposed to be perfect. (And this more than anything btw is why she and Miri come to such a strong understanding and become so close. They came by it differently, but only they can understand the crushing weight of those kinds of expectations, and internalizing them.)

I honestly can’t answer the other part. Imani talks openly about her life despite being a relatively private person—she wouldn’t feel comfortable playing a game like that tbh.

[elfyourmother]

Imani FTW

wholesome farm girl turned war hero, I would date her too

[elfyourmother]

Oh, shit. Sorry. I'm just into hearing all the Gisele AUs.

I’m at the point w Elder Scrolls that I am w That HBO Program With the Pointy Chair, which is frustration like I gotta defend why I’m not interested in Thing all the time bc everyone assumes I do/should like it bc I like fantasy nerd shit don’t I? why wouldn’t I like Thing? (don’t get me started on the racial worldbuilding bc I’ll have an aneurysm). It’s not your fault but it’s a bit of a sore spot and I’m sorry if I came across more aggro than I intended because of that. I know you didn’t mean anything by it. I appreciate the interest in my dumb oc.

I’m...not normally an au person, is the weirdest thing? I have very strong impressions of what’s “right” for an OC so it’s hard for me to wrap my head around characters being in totally different contexts. Gisele in Eorzea literally came about because I deliberately didn’t want to make a new OC because I was trying to keep things super casual and not get too invested or obsessive with FFXIV. I just threw her in there as a literal placeholder to enjoy the story from a certain distance. But then I caught feelings and Hello Hyperfixation My Old Friend and then next thing I knew I was coming up with crack justifications for her legitimately becoming a canon immigrant and the actual Warrior of Light. I’m mildly embarrassed by it on some deep level if I’m honest. I don’t even know why other than her relative power level being even more ridiculous than in DA and shipping her w even more ppl. I still feel like I have no business doing it.

[elfyourmother]

So what do you think of Asassin’s Creed’s new romance addition? I’m down for all the sapphic Ancient Greek ladies, but I’ve never played Ass Creed before and am not sure how gameplay compares to DA and ME.

I was/am a huge Ass Creed fan literally starting when the very first game came out a dog’s age ago so I’m thrilled tbh

they’re totally different genres, as a start. AC is not remotely an RPG franchise and never has been. in theory they are stealth action games though in the last few installments outright combat has been more and more emphasized over avoiding it, which is one of the many (many) reasons I checked out of the franchise somewhere around Black Flag. these are fundamentally action games though, that (traditionally at least) had a very strong and insanely convoluted story. gameplay wise they’ve added other elements over the years (most notably naval combat) but at its heart the core mechanic that everything is built around is parkour/freerunning. they were “open world” before “open world” was really a thing but unlike most examples of this, the story is still really good and progression is fairly linear and makes sense. again I haven’t played them since Black Flag and Liberation which is like 3 or 4 games ago (if not more) but that’s the gist of it. you sneak around on various types of missions gathering intel and assassinating people. there’s a lot of exploring involved

I won’t even attempt to explain the story but the main conflict revolves around the Templars (who are basically fascistic authoritarians who believe in Order At All Costs) and the Assassins (who are all about freedom and humanity choosing its own way). this is a ‘verse where just about every kind of crazy real life conspiracy theory is actually true, and can be traced back to this conflict. your enjoyment of these games will go up exponentially if you know anything at all about them. there’s ancient aliens and all kinds of weird SF elements.

this is the kind of ask that has me concerned though, because i’m worried that a lot of people fleeing Bioware are going to go into AC solely because of this E3 presentation expecting something totally different than what it really is and be disappointed or upset about it

granted they could also be fundamentally changing everything from the ground up and i could be talking out of my ass

but as it stands, for all the intricate, complicated framing story and crazy ass worldbuilding and mountains and mountains of lore ACs games aren’t RPGs and people shouldn’t go into them thinking they are, even if they’re introducing some RPG-lite elements. it’s apples and oranges really