A Mass Effect blog for a little while. Finished the trilogy for the first time in July 2022 and it broke my brain. This is my attempt to put the pieces back together. He/him.
Hi, I’m Ryan! I took to writing fanfic as therapy, and it’s the most fun I’ve had in years. Mostly I write fluff and fun with the occasional introspective character study. Say hi! Fandom community can be awesome if you let it.
Mass Effect fics
Two Lovesick Idiots (tumblr) (Ao3) - mshenko; my first fic since college twenty years ago about a silly scrapbook, inspired by this artwork by @sinclairsolutions
Chamomile with Honey (tumblr) (Ao3) - Cortez & Vega; fluff about getting through a cold
Pretty Sweet Hoverboard (tumblr) (Ao3) - mshenko; in which Shepard annoys Kaidan with a hoverboard, inspired by this post from @zet-sway
Here at the End of Everything (tumblr 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) (Ao3) - a character study about Joker making the choice to leave Shepard on the Crucible, aka the fic that’s helping me fix whatever it was about the ME3 ending that broke my brain
Six Words for Shepard (tumblr) (Ao3) - Jack/fShep; gift fic for @all-truths-wait-in-all-things for Holiday Harbinger 2022! Jack writes a sestina for Shepard
Peace of Mind (tumblr) (Ao3) - mshenko; gift fic for @Cardhwion on AO3 for ShenkoSummer 2023. Kaidan navigates painful memories to figure out he’s in love
Small Comforts (tumblr) (Ao3) - fshenko; gift fic @palimpsetus on AO3 for ShenkoSummer 2023: Kaidan gets his ass kicked in beach volleyball and then breaks into a lighthouse.
Ticking Like A (tumblr) (Ao3) - Joker & Vega; gift fic for @vesperfloyd for the Hatboy Exchange 2023; James isn’t alright after Sanctuary, and Joker pushes him to figure out why
The Longest Night (tumblr) (Ao3) - mshenko; Kaidan deals with the guilt of surviving Virmire by holding vigil on the longest night; because sometimes you have to wait for the light
As the Revel Meets the Day (tumblr) (Ao3) - mshenko; Four times someone sees Shepard in pain, and one time Shepard finally, finally has peace; because sometimes you get to see the light return
And I Know It (tumblr) (Ao3) - Kaidan & Ashley; gift fic for Viggorah for Big Place Exchange 2024; sometimes buying a terrible shirt can lead to life-changing revelations
Wired Again (Ao3) - Joker/Cortez; gift fic for KeriWeird for Hatboy Exchange 2024; Joker, Steve, and that time Joker figured everything out because of their haptic implants
Split and Uneven (Ao3) - Joker & Chakwas; gift fic for Unfairwaterplain for Hatboy Exchange 2024; two weeks after traveling through the Omega-4 relay—and, impossibly, returning—Karin Chakwas learns how to let go
Doing My Best (tumblr) (Ao3) - Kaidan & Jack; gift fic for jackwillwrite for Big Place Exchange 2025; Jack asks Kaidan for help teaching her students before the final push to Earth
Drydock (tumblr) (Ao3) - Joker/EDI; gift fic for Destroyer_of_insects for Hatboy Exchange 2025; one hundred and eighty-one days in drydock on Earth. Joker and EDI figure out how to communicate
Dragon Age fics
What Bards Sing About (tumblr) (Ao3) - Lacklon/Roland; four times during the show Lacklon notices Roland and blames it on his legs
Of Butterflies and Flying Dwarves (tumblr) (Ao3) - Lacklon/Roland; because there’s nothing funnier than putting a dwarf on a hoverboard
It’s Just a Rock, Man (tumblr) (Ao3) - Lacklon/Roland; how to court your Orlesian boyfriend in the most ridiculous way possible.
If It’s True (tumblr) (Ao3) - Fenris/Male Hawke; gift fic for ginbiscuit for A Romance for the Ages 2025; after the events of Inquisition, Fenris is given a book-that-isn’t-a-book, and the chance to tell a better ending to his story
Endless Sunsets and Roses (tumblr) (Ao3) - Aveline & Varric; Aveline receives a letter during the events of Veilguard, and wishes she hadn’t
Horizon fic
Three Month Delve (tumblr) (Ao3) - Erend/Gildun; post-Burning Shores, Aloy drops Gildun at Hidden Ember so that Erend can take him on to GAIA. Erend is, predictably, Not Okay With This.
Essays
When Genocide Is The Best Option (tumblr) - my attempt to piece together my thoughts about the ending of Mass Effect 3, complete with references to Stranger Than Fiction and Samuel Beckett
Yeah, so Heated Rivalry stuck with me enough that I read all the books and decided to adopt Troy Barrett. And then this week, I saw what this jackass did at the SF Giants Pride Night and thought, "Well, the gayest team in hockey wouldn't stand for that.”
Trigger warning for Christian-influenced homophobia.
Read the whole thing on Ao3.
***
What does gen nine twelve sixteen mean?”
“What?”
Troy looks up from where he’s stretching on the ice. From this angle, Haasy looks like a giant—a confused, rainbow-streaked giant. Troy loves more than a little what the front office did for the Centaurs’ pride jerseys this year. “Gayest team in the league,” Harris had laughed when he’d revealed them last week, “might as well lean into it!” And lean into it they did. Explosive rainbow swirls curl up and around the white-backed jerseys, creating a heart-shaped puff of color around each player’s number. Garishly beautiful, Troy thinks, though it makes Haasy’s confused figure look even more ridiculous.
“Over there,” Haasy says, pointing across the ice to where the Metros are also warming up. “On Comeau’s helmet.”
Troy looks up awkwardly from his hands and knees—his hips are always a little tight these days—and cranes his neck. And narrows his eyes. “That’s…that’s a Bible verse.”
“What?”
He pushes himself to his feet, toeing his blade into the ice. “Book of Genesis, chapter nine, verses twelve through sixteen. It’s a Bible verse,” he says again flatly.
Haasy blanches. “Tonight?”
“Par for the fucking course,” Troy grimaces.
They’ve faced Montreal any number of times over the last few years since Hollander joined them—well, since Hollander was outed, ostracized, and exiled from the Metros—and the Centaurs come up on top more often than not. But it’s always a slog, and it’s only gotten worse since Ottawa won the Stanley Cup the same year Montreal finished dead last. You’d think the Metros’ hatred for Hollander’s new team would cool at some point. You’d be wrong. When the front office announced that the Centaurs’ Pride Night would be during a Metros game, well…maybe that’s why Harris pushed so hard for such showy jerseys this year.
“But what’s it mean?” Haas asks.
Troy shakes his head. “No idea. We never really went to church. Probably something homophobic, though.”
“It’s about the fucking rainbow.” Rozy’s face is a mask of cold fury as he skates up to them. “That fucking asshole.”
Haas blinks.
“Noah!” Rozy says angrily, gesturing in a loop over his head. “When the rain came down and flooded everything and then there was a rainbow? Do you not know the story about the two-by-two animals?”
“Ohh,” Haasy says, “yeah, okay.”
Troy raises an eyebrow. “You knew that off the top of your—“
“Yes, yes.” Rozy exasperatedly shakes the chain around his neck. “Is not just pretty decoration, you know.”
“But that’s a nice story—“
“Genocide of humanity aside,” Rozy grumbles under his breath.
“—with cute animals and a happy ending,” Haasy continues, while Troy goggles at Rozanov knowing how to translate genocide, “and a rainbow. Is Comeau really being an asshole?”
No I’m completely normal since being exposed to Heated Rivalry for the first time ten days ago, of course I haven’t sloughed off work to read a mountain of Hollanov fic since then. Why. Why do you ask
Okay no but this is making me feral in an English-major-close-reading-of-the-text way that I haven’t been in a very long time. Because here’s the thing:
There is a world of meaning in the word “anything.” It can mean “one of several things,” or “no matter what,” or just “at all.” It can connote “like whatever” or “just pick something” or “the set of all things.” The possibilities are literally endless because “anything” can also function as a synecdoche—a whole standing for the part—so it really can mean, well, anything. “Anything” is as much a fill-in-the-blank test as it is an actual word. So the lyric “I’ll believe in anything” could mean “I’ll believe in one specific thing” or “I’ll believe in everything” depending on the context.
But! Repeating the clause and putting the conditional “if” between them opens the lyric up to larger interpretation. It can certainly mean “I’ll believe in one specific thing among many/if you believe in one specific thing among many.” But it can also mean “I’ll believe in everything/if you believe in just one thing.” Your “anything” and my “anything” don’t have to be the same “anything” because you and I are not the same. Which is brilliant.
But! The “if”! Is such a huge subordinating conditional conjunction! “If” can mean “on the condition that” or “in the event that,” but it can also mean “in the unreal situation that” as in “if I were you,” or “even though” as in “he was strong, if not open-minded,” or even “I wish this thing were true” as in “if only.” And then you get into the logical “if”! If A, then B—B can only happen in the presence of A; A only becomes true if B is first true. So then you can make the lyric mean “I’ll believe in everything/on the condition that you believe in just one thing.” Which! If you contrapositive it (yeah that’s a verb now) means “if you don’t believe in this one thing, then I will not believe in anything.” The lyric is putting the singer’s faith in “anything” in the hands of the person they’re singing to! Which is itself an enormous act of faith!
Which matters because! The lyric also uses the word “believe”! And there are so many different types of belief! (Side note: yes I also have an MDiv, yes I mostly regret it, yes my professors wouldn’t approve of me using it like this, so hell yes we’re doing this.) There’s “belief” like “I think that thing I can’t see is real,” like belief in fairies or God. There’s “belief” like “I want this esoteric concept to be executable,” like belief in democracy or the goodness of other people. There’s existentialist belief, where you stumble through life blind and can only work out what’s happening by yourself with fear and trembling. There’s evangelical belief, where you want everyone to believe what you believe and it’s worth demonstrating that by telling them so. There’s eschatological belief, that at the end of the story, everything works out for the best. There’s belief because, and belief despite, and belief if only. Belief can be as weak as an unverified opinion (“I believe he went that way?”) or as strong as eternity itself (“I believe in you”).
And then! I figured out that I maybe misheard the lyric and it’s “and” instead of “if,” which potentially changes the meaning of the repeated lyric. Because “and” can mean sequential, like “Ilya says jump, and (then) Shane says ‘fuck you.’” It can also mean simultaneous, like “Ilya says jump, and (also) means ‘fuck you.’” So then the lyric could be “I’ll believe in endless possibilities/and (also) you’ll believe in this one specific thing,” putting the action in the hands of the singer. But “and” can also be conditional just like “if,” except in the opposite direction! First A happens, and B happens—but only if A happens first. Except! Also! It’s contextual! And this lyric happens in the context of everything preceding it, including the “but” ending the previous lyric, and the imperative tense of the first lyric, so the “and” is entirely subjective and can function as an “if” anyway!
And I’ve only begun to be feral about this!
So the words “anything” and “if” and “believe” are entirely contextual, right? Then let’s apply context to them! Specifically, the scene over which the song is playing: Scott calling Kip down to the ice, knowing what it means, and Ilya calling Shane, also knowing what it means. And also! Ilya watching Scott act, and Shane watching Kip be brave, and Kip seeing Scott seeing him and and and.
To wit: Scott is a (relatively) old queer man, with a reputation, a legacy, a career that he is very, very good at protecting—so good that he’s functionally publicly alone. And because of his job, his life has to be public—so no matter how kind and generous and loving he is to Kip in private, because Scott Is A Public Person, he can’t have “anything” in the definition of “whatever I want.” This thing that he wants is just a fairy tale (in his mind), but in that moment on the ice, he thinks Kip can help him see it. So if Scott’s filling in the blanks in the lyric, it’s “I’ll believe, despite knowing how the world actually functions, that I can have the thing I really want/on the condition that you demonstrate in real life to me that I am capable of this one thing.” For him, it’s a leap into faith: lyric part A is true even though he doesn’t know yet about the truth of lyric part B.
But also! Ilya is watching this! And the song frames them both! Because Ilya is also a queer public figure, but crucially, he’s young: his “anything” is much bigger than Scott’s “anything” because age closes doors, but it’s also much smaller because experience opens them. And queerness is a death sentence where he comes from, so he’s never had an “anything,” not really, because “the set of all things” is literally forbidden to him, so his “anything” has been “only that which I can actually grasp.” But his whole relationship with Shane is marked by moments of pure revelation brought about by this absolute dork with freckles. So for Ilya, the lyric might read, “I’ll believe that it might be true that what I’m seeing is possible/but only in the event that you believe that this one thing about me is possible.” But his conditional isn’t about Scott—because duh—which is why he immediately stands up and calls Shane, because for Ilya, it’s not a leap of faith; it’s a cry into the darkness. I want so badly for part A to be true; please, please tell me part B is true.
Shane’s more complicated because if he’s filling in the lyric, it’s mediated through both Scott and Ilya—Scott because of what he’s doing publicly on TV, Ilya because it’s Ilya. Shane is terrified of so many things: that his sexuality makes him unworthy, that it will ruin his life, that Ilya will decide he’s not enough. Shane believes in so little, barely even what he sees and experiences, so if he’s filling in the lyric, it’s “I am scared of and trembling about the fact that it might be true that this thing I am seeing might exist/but only in the extraordinary circumstance that you tell me that it is so.” I’m blind; be my eyes, so that I can know for sure that my A is true because of your B.
And Kip, sweet Kip. The most grounded in who he is and what he wants. Willing to be invisible for Scott’s sake even though he wants to stand in the sun. The one who just believes, because he can do no other. If Kip’s filling in the lyric, it’s “I trust that the thing I want will be/once you are able to see that the end of one thing is the beginning of another.” I know that part A will one day be true, because I know that your B can one day be true.
But then! Also! This song is playing during this scene and this lyric happens at a specific part over three specific shots and so that context also matters.
The first shot: Scott, alone on the ice, intentionally looks at Kip in the stands. Really looks. Not a skate-by hi, not a quick glance up and then back down (as happens ten seconds earlier). Scott is clearly, publicly, joyfully acknowledging Kip. The lyrics play: “I’ll believe in any—“, splitting the first “anything” with Kip. This isn’t “I believe in that which I can’t see,” not anymore. This is “I believe because I can see.”
The second shot: Kip smiling down through tears as the man he loves in secret celebrates, and then his face falls into an “oh holy shit” moment for the books (which is just incredible face work by Robbie GK, a gut punch on the level of John Spencer), and I use “holy” intentionally, because that is the face of the believer who finally, finally gets to see the thing that he’s always always known was there. The lyrics continue: “—thing, and you’ll believe in—“, because Kip doesn’t need that last “anything,” because he doesn’t need to hide behind metaphor or synecdoche or “somewhere in this set of things is the thing I actually want” because he never has. And, because of Scott’s belief, he won’t ever have to.
The final shot: Svetlana stands up and leaves the frame, and Ilya doesn’t watch her go because he’s locked onto Scott on the ice on his TV. Because you can’t look away from revelation. Because even nonbelievers, when confronted with that confusing, weird, untranslatable-but-perfectly-intelligible moment of clarity can’t look away, because it strikes that chord deep inside of them that has always longed to be plucked. Ilya is the sudden convert, the man of new faith. The last word of the lyric plays: “—anything.” Anything is possible. The set of all things is open to him. Despite everything he knows to be true, he just as certainly knows this thing is possible.
And the perfect expression of that faith is to call Shane.
And that’s not even talking about the rest of the song! Or how the rest of the lyrics fit over the scene! Or how queer joy is transformative and this lyric is queer joy in all its many messy iterations—not because your queer identity is constructed or validated by someone else’s belief, but because joy is always made more real through belief. Belief in yourself. Belief in your goodness. Belief that you are wonderfully made, just as you are.
And for this one lyric, those characters believe all that and more.
This scene is perfectly crafted, perfectly executed, perfectly acted, perfectly scored, perfectly shot, perfectly perfect. It deserves all the awards. Rachel Reid and Jacob Tierney and Wolf Parade and Jackson Parell and Véronique Barbe and every one of the actors are all geniuses and I’m so very glad to live in the same world as them. Absolutely changed my brain.
Part five of my "fix my brain by writing about Joker" is the mshenko chapter. I have a tendency to imprint pretty hard on specific ships (Isabela, my one true love, come to me), and when Mass Effect broke my brain, some of the pieces reassembled themselves in Kaidan's shape. I love what the story says about his stumbling, fumbling relationship with Shepard and how it changes who Shepard is. But this is a story about Joker, so why do we care about Kaidan at all?
Because when Shepard calls for an evac meters away from Harbinger, Joker doesn't hesitate to risk everything to rescue Kaidan.
First part's below, rest is up on Ao3.
Chapter 5: Who We Really Are
With simple songs I wanted more
Perfection is so quick to bore
You are more beautiful by far
Our flaws are who we really are
- Cody Fry, “I Hear a Symphony”
----
Sol System, Earth, SSV Normandy SR-2
Twenty-one minutes before Hackett’s order
He hates atmo.
He knows intellectually that it’s weird—some would say incorrect as a matter of science and psychology, whatever, fuck you—but he’s never felt trapped inside of a ship. The cold steel bulkheads and fabricated deckplates feel comfortable. Inviting. Safe. He knew a cadet who washed out first year because he had a panic attack the first time he flew solo in a cockpit, and Joker was never able to understand that; being alone, surrounded by the metal of his very own bridge? That’s the goal, man.
It’s atmo that feels like the trap. Part of it is that the presence of an atmosphere requires a gravity well to accrete it. Gravity wells are fine on their own, inasmuch as he can use them to slingshot through the emptiness of space. But getting close enough to one so that you’re in its atmo means you’re fighting the gravity well, not working with it. Flying through the vacuum of space only requires fuel for acceleration and deceleration; the constant drag of gravity burns fuel continuously. And atmo only makes that worse.
“Silaris ablative down to 45%!”
“GARDIANs 1, 7, 9, and 14 unresponsive, sir!”
“Jeff, the lithium tanks on the port fore are beginning to sublimate.”
Because atmo creates friction.
Joker dives back through Earth’s atmosphere for the second time in an hour, for much the same reason, with one crucial difference: last time, he wasn’t flying directly toward Harbinger. Flames lick the edges of the viewport, the combination of the Normandy’s speed and the oxygen in the atmo creating a fireball around the ship that would be beautiful if it didn’t also paint them as Target One for the Reaper currently guarding the conduit.
“GARDIAN 2 now offline!” Sparks explode in the CIC corridor behind him. “Shit, and 5 too!”
Joker hates atmo because it creates heat, the enemy of most starship systems. Heat melts the ablative armor keeping the ship together. Heat turns their weapons turrets into inoperative hull decorations. Heat is what their stealth system is supposed to counteract to keep them hidden from enemy radars, but you can’t hide a fucking fireball in the sky.
“Joker! Harbinger’s firing—“
“Shit, I see it!”
He barrel-rolls to the left, just in time to avoid the searing heat of the Reaper’s beam weapon, the sound of the blast vibrating through the atmosphere and into the Normandy’s deckplates, rattling Joker’s porcelain bones like the toll of a bell.
One more thing to hate about atmo. You can’t hear a Reaper’s beam weapon in space.
“Jeff, I do not see how we can get close enough to the conduit to assist Major Alenko without risking major damage to the Normandy.” EDI’s voice through the speakers is tense, the haptic feedback in his chair minimal. She clearly thinks this is a bad idea.
“Sir, the fighters can’t cover us under this kind of fire. I know what the commander said, but there’s nothing we can do right now!” Cortez’s voice is just as tense, layered with the thick grief of memory. He also thinks this is a bad idea.
Because it is. Way worse than rescuing Beta Team.
(At any and all cost. A pause. Consider it my final order.)
But Joker doesn’t have a choice.
“Then give me options, people!” he shouts back over the din in the cockpit. “Your commander called for an evac!”
“But Joker—“
Joker looks over at Tali, eyes tight, and snaps, “Shepard’s not gonna focus on anything else until we get Alenko out of there.” You know this as well as I do, he doesn’t add.
She nods slowly, turning back to the bridge’s engineering console, fingers flying furiously over her haptic panels.
“Joker- Sir,” Cortez says again, silencing the chatter from the remnants of the squadron he’s supposed to be coordinating, “with all due respect, Shepard’s not in command right now. You are. Regulation 0803.1: an officer who accedes to command shall not—“
“Well, I’m not very good with regs, Cortez,” Joker bites back, rolling to the left to dodge Harbinger’s next strike, “so let me get a second opinion. Tali, who do we know who’s good with regs around here?”
“Kaidan,” she says, a little trill of mirth weaving through the tightness in her vocoder.
Joker just shrugs at Cortez.
Cortez, in turn, rolls his eyes. “Major Alenko knows just as well as I do that you can’t evac in the middle of a dogfight. He’d be on my side.”
“Probably.” Joker’s eyes flick to the panel tracking Alpha Team. “But from the look of his blood pressure, he’s not really in a position to overrule me, so give me some fucking options.”
Cortez blows out a frustrated breath. “They can see us! We can’t exactly hide!”
Joker’s just swiping an additional sensor panel into existence when EDI beats him to the punch. “The Normandy is not taking fire from Reaper ground troops. I suspect they are occupied with our own ground forces.”
Cortez waves his hands fruitlessly around the bridge. “We’re the biggest fucking heat source in the sky! Harbinger can track us. We can’t hide.”
He’s right, of course, and Joker knows it. The lithium heat-storage tanks were nearing capacity even before Vega’s evac call, and they’re all but useless at this point. Not to mention the dozen inoperative GARDIAN turrets that might as well be giant neon signs, and the fireball of friction surrounding them.
But it gives him an idea.
“Cortez,” he says, hands spinning up a suggested flight path over the top of the Normandy, “can you get your guys to do this for me?”
“Joker—“
“That’s an order, lieutenant.” Joker stares Cortez down. He can count the number of times he’s ever pulled rank on one hand.
(At any and all cost.)
But he knows the fucking regulations as well as anyone.
Cortez relents, turning back to his console to scramble the squadron, while Tali murmurs, “That’s not gonna make the ship any less hot.”
“No, but it gives him something else to focus on,” Joker mutters back, leaving the him open to interpretation as he swipes yet another panel into existence.
“I heard that,” Cortez calls over. Okay, so not that open.
“Joker,” Tali says with a little more urgency in her voice, “the closer we get, the easier—“
“Can you rig this?” He swipes the panel over to her.
There’s a beat of silence that somehow cuts through the chaos of the cockpit as she processes what he’s asking. Then, with a sharp intake of breath, she whispers, “Keelah.”
“It’ll work.”
“Once.” EDI’s single word reverberates ominously, not unlike Harbinger’s weapon, before she adds, “The stealth drive will then be rendered permanently inoperable.”
“As will a half-dozen tertiary systems,” Tali breathes.
“If Shepard doesn’t get to that beam, it won’t matter.” Joker looks over at Tali again. “And he won’t go if we don’t get Alenko.”
Another beat of silence. Then, wordlessly, she turns back to the engineering console, raising Donnelly on comms as she makes her preparations.
He turns his chair back, too. As he begins programming the next maneuver, he subvocalizes, “I’m sorry.”
“I am not my parts, Jeff,” EDI responds in his ear, a soft thread of haptic movement traveling up his back.
He gives a soft smile.
In seconds, he’s made the necessary adjustments. He hates atmo, but this one time, it might be their saving grace.
“Ready Tali?”
“Ready.” Her voice is tense. But this is gonna work.
“Cortez?”
“Squadron in position.”
“On my mark.”
The fireball that is the Normandy descends through the atmosphere toward London, toward the beam, like a moth to flame. Even without sensors, Joker can see Harbinger below them. As big as a skyscraper. Its red light pulsing like a boil.
“Now.”
His haptic panels suddenly bloom with a hundred warning lights as the lithium tanks explode out the port side of the hull, propelled by the explosions of the hundred different power conduits that Tali rigged to overload.
“We’ve lost primary and secondary access to the hologrid!”
“Rerouting power to the port fields through the comms bypass lines.”
As the Normandy decreases its speed, the fireball of friction surrounding the ship dissipates—right at the moment the inoperative GARDIANs also jettison away from the ship, colliding with the tanks and ripping them open. The overheated lithium inside shatters into dust, igniting on contact with the water vapor in the atmosphere in a flash of white light that lingers.
Harbinger’s next shot flies right past the Normandy, shooting into and through the cloud of superheated particles. And when Cortez’s fighters fly through it, their wake spreads the particles in contrails over all of southern London.
Harbinger’s following shot is almost a kilometer off.
It worked. For the moment, the Normandy is free and clear.
“Silaris ablative down to 32%!”
“All aft GARDIANs unresponsive, Jeff.”
“Red 5 and 17 downed, sir!”
For the moment.
He races down towards the place where he can picture Shepard holding Kaidan’s crushed hardsuit together with his bare hands, the chaos around him be damned. Meters from Harbinger. Meters from the conduit. Meters from the end of everything. Focused on one man and one man only.
New headcanon: Kaidan Alenko is just the great-grandson of Shane Hollander from Heated Rivalry. An adorable, kind, dark-haired Canadian with a fat ass? Like, yes.
New headcanon: Kaidan Alenko is just the great-grandson of Shane Hollander from Heated Rivalry. An adorable, kind, dark-haired Canadian with a fat ass? Like, yes.
Uh oh, looks like I’m back on my Mass Effect nonsense for a little while. Spent the last three days watch YouTube videos of every romance arc. Tear up pretty much every time they get to “it’s been a good ride”/“the best”. Shrug emoji. It’s been too long; love this heartbreakingly wonderful story.
Part four of my “fix my brain by writing about Joker” fic took me eighteen months to finish because of writer's block on three paragraphs. Just how it goes sometimes. This part explores how it is that Joker's able to build community. He reads as such an isolated, selfish jackass for so much of the story, but it's also clear he wants to be around people. Where does that come from? How does that figure in to his decision to leave Shepard behind at the end of ME3? Figuring this one out was so much fun; the "Dead Parents Club" in particular hit me quite hard. This chapter also fills in the plothole of "how does the rest of the Normandy ground team get back on the ship before the ship leaves the system" lol. First part's below, rest is up on Ao3.
Chapter 4: With Open Arms
This life is amazing when you greet it with open arms
I see on your face there is so much guilt inside your heart
So why not replace it and light up the world
Here’s how to start
Greet the world with open arms
Greet the world with open arms
- “Open Arms,” Jorge Rivera-Herrans
—
Sol System, Earth, SSV Normandy SR-2
Thirty-five minutes before Hackett’s order
A harvester explodes in the air in front of the Normandy, bits of viscera and mutated machinery glancing off the ship’s kinetic shielding. Joker can hear one of the gunnery corporals in the CIC hallway crow, “Direct hit, sir!” His eyes flick over to see the heat sink saturation creep over 85%. No time to worry about that one.
“Joker to Beta Team, does anyone copy?” he says again. He’s doing his best to keep the frustration—and the fear—out of his voice, but he can feel it building with each passing second.
No response.
“Dammit. EDI, can you—“
“—to compensate! — them off me!”
The feed is static-y, garbled, but clear enough that Tali’s voice is recognizable. Joker lets out a strangled breath. “Tali!” Thank the stars. “We’re sixty seconds out. Get to—“
“Negative, Joker!” Vega interrupts, the static fading in and out. “There’s too many of— — —got no place to land now.” The marine’s out of breath, voice hoarse from yelling. “Stay on Shepard, it’s too l—“
“Get to this navpoint,” Joker snaps, transmitting coordinates for the middle of the plaza they’re trapped in, pointedly ignoring the end of Vega’s frantic sentence, “and standby.”
“Negative! The plaza’s overrun and—“
“Tali,” Joker says calmly, interrupting Vega again, “you guys need to clear a radius of fifteen meters around that navpoint and stay there no matter what.”
There’s a beat. “Joker, that’s — on the edge of the hole we—“
“I know. I’m flipping the Tantalus.”
Another beat. “Keelah. You’re crazy.”
“Yep!” Joker responds. “Trust me.”
“Always do,” Tali chirps.
“Got it,” Vega says resignedly. “Watch out, though, looks like — something above us, coming in fast — probably a harvester.”
Joker grins. “Not a harvester. Twenty-five seconds, big guy.”
A beat of silence. Then, “Holy shit, man, you’re coming in too fast!”
“Go!” Joker breaks the comm.
This trick wouldn’t work with any other ship. Sure, you might be able to arrest your descent by flipping a 180 and using your thrusters, but you’d fry everything on the ground below you. Antiproton thrusters, like the ones the Normandy uses for standard propulsion, give off incredible amounts of heat—the kind of heat you might use to surgically remove the engines from an enemy batarian ship, for example. Conventional FTL drive cores work in much the same way, utilizing mass effect fields to lighten the mass of the ship and then employing standard thrusters to provide the propulsion.
But the Normandy’s different. Better. Her Tantalus drive core doesn’t use thrusters at FTL speeds. Instead, it continuously deploys tiny mass effect fields that the ship falls into—pulling the ship, rather than pushing it. And pulling is exactly how Joker’s going to pull this off.
Well, that or pull the ship into pieces, but EDI’s gotten that risk down to—he checks the panel—15%. No sweat.
“Ready, EDI?”
“Spinning up the drive core now,” she answers. “Reversing the fields on your mark.”
“Eighteen seconds…”
London expands in front of them as they dive toward the city, nose pointed directly at Beta Team’s location. Joker relaxes a little. He’s found them, they’re alive, and in another…fifteen seconds, they’ll be safe. He’s got this.
He’s got them.
“Should we inform Chief Engineer Adams?” The playful flit of haptic touches across his shoulders makes him chuckle.
“Fuck no,” he says cheerfully, “because he’d tell us not to do it. Ten seconds.”
The ground rushes up to meet them. He can see the hole in the center of the plaza now, courtesy of Tali and Cortez’s earlier last-ditch effort to collapse the horde into the London Underground. He can see movement on the ground around it, not individual combatants but movement, like the collective churning of whitecaps on water. He can see the flashes of gunfire, of grenades and biotic-powered explosions.
He can’t see his friends yet. But he will.
He will.
Joker’s hands fly over his haptic panels for another moment, rigging some final calculations, then rest above one single button. All he has to do is push it; if it doesn’t work, no amount of maneuvering will save them. He hears a squawk of surprise in the CIC hallway from the gunnery corporal. “Holy— holy shit! We’re gonna—“
“Now.”
Joker presses the button.
In a single instant, three things happen. First, the aft antiproton thrusters stop firing. Their descent is now in the hands of momentum, gravity, and that son of a bitch Isaac Newton. Second, the Tantalus core flares to life, a field of blue energy surrounding the Normandy, reducing her mass as if preparing to jump to FTL. And last, but most importantly, a series of mass effect fields begin to cycle, faster than the eye can see, right behind the ship—precisely counteracting first the ship’s momentum and then Earth’s gravity itself.
The Normandy is now hovering, nose-down-tail-up, between the buildings in the centre of London.
Except it’s even better than that. Because to get his friends—the team—inside, the cockpit airlock has to be reachable. So the nose of the ship is actually several meters below street level, poking straight through the hole into the Underground.
Joker takes a moment to process everything: the darkness of the Underground outside the viewport, the haptic panel displaying the word NORMAL underneath schematics of the Tantalus core, the yelling in the CIC hallway, the thudding of his heart inside of his chest.
Holy shit, it actually worked.
“EDI?”
“All systems normal, Jeff,” EDI says, measured relief in her mechanical voice. “Transverse hull stress currently within acceptable parameters. Hull integrity holding. It worked.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I figured it would,” Joker says as nonchalantly as possible. The haptic flutter on his back tells him EDI knows he’s full of shit, but she stays silent.
“EDI—“
“Joker, what the hell?” Adams shouts through the comm. “Did you just spin up the Tantalus inside atmo? Are you trying to get us—“
“Sorry, Chief, can’t talk right now, someone’s at the door!” Joker blithely interrupts. “EDI, could you get that, please?”
“Dammit Joker—“
“Opening airlock.”
Joker busies himself programming the next stage of the plan—escape—as the sounds of shouting and shooting suddenly become audible. He glances over his shoulder just in time to see Tali dive into the hallway, the ship’s mass effect fields pulling her perpendicular to Earth’s gravity. He calls back, “Hey, could you keep it down back there? Some of us are trying to work.”
In a flash, Tali is on her feet. She leaps over Javik as he dives in next carrying an injured Liara, and sprints into the cockpit to throw her arms around Joker’s chair. “You came for us!”
Joker grins as the quarian squeezes him. “For you. The others, eh.”
She looks him straight in the eye, opaque faceplate streaked in blood and goo and grime, her head tilted in a recognizable sign of gratitude. “Thank you.”
“Of course I was gonna come for you guys,” he responds, thunking his head against her helmet. “You’re my team, right?”
Cortez dives in next, followed last by Vega, who’s got EDI’s chassis slung over one shoulder. Cortez shoots from his prone position out the door as Vega shouts, “Close it! Close it now!”
“Closing airlock.”
The cacophony outside is abruptly silenced with a loud kachunk. For a moment, the CIC is still.
And then Vega starts chuckling. As does Cortez. Which sets off a cascade of laughter, the hooting and hollering and cheering echoing up and down the CIC right on into the cockpit.
“You crazy bastard,” Vega yells, still tangled up with Steve and EDI’s chassis on the floor. “Fucking idiot-ass comodín!”
“You are absolutely gonna have to show me how you did that sometime,” Cortez says, pushing himself up. “Landing on the nose like that? Never seen anything like it.”
“Reckless,” Javik grumbles. “Foolish to risk an asset like the Normandy on a rescue such as this.”
“Only foolish if it doesn’t work,” Cortez responds.
“EDI, are you alright?” Liara says as Javik helps her to her feet. Of the whole ground team, she looks the worst, blood pouring down her paler-than-usual face, arm bent at an odd angle.
“While my mobile platform is currently non-functional, I myself am fine, Dr. T’Soni,” EDI says through the speakers in the cabin.
“Good to hear your voice, EDI,” Vega calls out, hoisting her chassis back over his shoulder. “Where do you want, uh, you?”
“My mobile platform can be stored in the AI Core until it can be repaired,” she responds.
“Are the others…?” Tali says in a low voice to Joker.
He swipes the haptic panel with Alpha Team’s information on it over so she can see. The three transponders representing Shepard, Alenko, and Vakarian are traveling at the head of a column of Alliance blue, about half a click from the Conduit. More blue dots seem to be converging on a point some hundred meters from the beam. He points and says with more confidence than he feels, “They’re okay.” She just squeezes his shoulder.
“Worried about your boyfriend, Sparks?” Vega catcalls as he turns to take EDI’s chassis below deck, shit-eating grin on his face.
“Don’t make me regret saving you from that brute just now, bosh’tet,” she yells after him, amusement in her voice as she sits lightly on the arm of Joker’s chair.
Joker finds himself looking around the cockpit for a moment, silently watching the controlled chaos, the bantering and cajoling, the concern and the care of the people around him. The team. His friends. In no universe did he ever think he’d have this. What normal people have. What everyone except him seemed to have for so long. He smiles to himself.
“Jeff, transverse stress on the hull is beginning to increase,” EDI says in his ear as he takes in the scene. “We have to move.”
He turns back to the panels and begins prepping for departure, staying silent so he can bask in the cheerful noise around him.
Recently replayed Dragon Age 2 with my young sons (their first time), and Varric's offhand line to Aveline while walking around in Act 3 got to me: "For you, madam? Endless sunsets and roses."
So this fic is for me grieving the end of Dragon Age, for Bioware's legacy and the poison of greed and capitalism, and—above all—remembering that the best way to honor a storyteller is to keep telling the story.
----
you'll come back
when it's over
no need to say
goodbye
- "The Call," Regina Spektor
----
The messenger came before midday.
It was, truth be told, a minor miracle that the message had made it at all. With the Antaam spread throughout Antiva and Rivain, rumours of an explosion and then a dragon in Minrathous, refugees beginning to cross the Waking Sea with tales of a new Blight—a passage she remembers making all too well—the safe arrival in Kirkwall of something as fragile as a letter feels like nothing short of divine grace.
Acting Viscount Aveline Vallen wishes it had never come.
The afternoon sun streams through the picture window at the rear of the viscount’s office, the wet streaks on her face catching the light. She closes her eyes and listens to the faint hustle and bustle of the western quarter of the city, the sounds of merchants and nobles and guardsmen and life. He’d always been fond of this window. How many times had she walked in here to raise some concern or other about security in the city, and he’d been standing right here, half-smile on his face? She can almost see him pointing out at Sundermount standing tall in the distance, saying something like, Hey, remember that time Hawke popped a witch out of an amulet? We should go see if that altar’s still there. You know, for old times’ sake.
Oh, for the chance.
He’d hated being stuck in this office, she knew he did. Loved the city, and even—though he’d rarely admit it—loved the work. But the keep itself felt like a prison to him. Especially with the guard barracked just over there, he’d told her once with a glare. No wonder Orsino went crazy, having someone with a big sword watching his every movement.
Somebody has to, she’d replied with a smile, adjusting the pommel of her greatsword against her pauldron.
She knew he would’ve rather been out adventuring. He missed it more than she ever did. His stories from his time with the Inquisition never failed to remind her of those years with Hawke, traipsing around, solving people’s problems, trading barbs with Isabela. But where the memories filled her with a pleasant nostalgia she’d take home to Donnic and the little ones, they’d fill him with a restlessness. An ache, to be out there again. There was always some new problem in the city cropping up, though, a rebuilding project gone awry or a funding issue or bandits in Darktown again, and the time slipped away.
Perhaps that was why he jumped at the chance to travel again when that scout from the Inquisition stopped by all those months ago, Harding. Easy to remember her name, because Varric had burst into laughter the moment she walked into his office, repeating over and over You did it! You’re Harding in Hightown!
The long-suffering look that passed between the two women said all she needed to know about the scout.
The message Harding had brought from the remnants of the Inquisition quelled his laughter fast. He’d filled Aveline in on everything that had happened in the original Inquisition and then in Halamshiral when he’d returned from the Winter Palace. In the intervening years, while managing the chaos of Kirkwall, he’d kept her updated on the search for this Solas and the various theories on what he was trying to do. So when Harding showed up with instructions from the now-former Inquisitor to recruit a new, unknown group of people to stop the would-be god, Varric was gone the next day.
Back soon, Aveline, he’d said, Bianca strapped to his pack, bemused smile scrawled across his weathered face. Tell little Belle to keep a pot of tea warm for storytime.
She glances back at the message on the desk. Short, tidy scrawl, the neat and practiced hand of a veteran scout trained to deliver news efficiently. Varric died defending us. Veil in danger. I’m so, so sorry.
She wishes he’d stayed to climb Sundermount instead.
A sharp knock at the door interrupts her reverie. She takes a moment to compose herself before saying, “Enter.”
Last of the summer writing, for the Hatboy exchange, destroyer_of_insects wanted some Joker/EDI interactions between ME2 and ME3, and it turns out, I’d been wanting the excuse to write about their time impounded on Earth.
Read the whole fic on Ao3.
——
And every night my mind is running around her
Thunder's getting louder and louder and louder
- “Electric Love,” BØRNS
Local Cluster, Sol System, Earth
181 days before the fall of Earth
Day 1
“Last chance.”
“You know I’m not going to take it.”
“I’m just saying, we’ve still got a minute if you want to, I don’t know, buzz the Alliance tower, give ‘em the finger, skeeve off back to Omega.”
“Joker.”
Joker spreads his hands wide. “I’m just saying, commander. We beat the Collectors fine without the Alliance.”
“Suggestion noted.” There’s a trace of humor in Shepard’s tone, even if the set of his shoulders belies the tension of the moment. “But you and I know both know what was past the Omega 4 was nothing compared to what’s coming. Our only chance is if we get everyone off their asses, and soon.” He looks past Joker. “Right, EDI?”
“Affirmative, Commander Shepard.” EDI’s holographic orb pulses her assent. “The data you collected from the Alpha Relay indicates the arrival of Reaper forces from dark space is imminent. We have been over this, Jeff.”
Joker gives her orb a side-eye. “You always take his side.”
EDI responds, “He is usually right,” at the same time as Shepard says, “That’s because I’m usually right.”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Joker grumbles goodnaturedly over the sound of Shepard’s laughter, EDI’s orb spinning with mirth. “You know—“
“Normandy, this is Alliance Tower Vancouver-1. We are tracking your position.”
The crackle of the outside comm shuts all that up real fast.
Joker looks over at Shepard one final time. “You’re sure?”
Shepard gives him a single nod. Good enough.
Joker toggles the outside comm. “Vancouver-1, this is Normandy. Good to be home. We—“
“You will be escorted on the provided vector. Deviation from this vector will constitute an act of aggression.”
“Touchy, touchy,” Joker mutters off-comm, entering the provided course into the navigational haptic panel. The two interceptor pings on the sensor panel become visible outside the viewport.
He’s not surprised, really. Shepard, after filling Hackett in about the shitshow at Project Rho and the Alpha Relay, had negotiated a fairly generous surrender of the Normandy to the Alliance. They’d been allowed to drop almost the entire ship's complement off on Omega first—leading to one of the wildest going away parties Joker’s ever seen—leaving behind a skeleton crew, all former Alliance. It was only then that Shepard had ordered Joker to take them to Earth to, quoting Hackett, “face the music.”
Joker’s not sure what kind of music plays over the trial of the guy who’s stopped the Reapers from getting a foothold in the galaxy three separate times, but he sure fucking hates it.
The mood in the cockpit is tense for the rest of the ride down to Vancouver. Joker’s responses to ground control’s guidance are terse, perfunctory. EDI’s responses to his commands are nearly silent. And Shepard…
He glances over at Shepard while executing a near-perfect landing on Pad 5 at Vancouver Base. (He absolutely could’ve made it perfect, of course, except that while landing, he knocked one of the landing struts against a perfectly-balanced stack of equipment; in response to the squawk from ground control, he just said, “Oh did I hit that oh nooooo,” and turned the comm channel completely off.) By all rights, Shepard should be pissed. Or scared. Or disillusioned. But if anything, he looks determined—more determined even than when he stepped off the ship at the Collector Base. The set of his jaw, the squareness of his shoulders, his laser-like stare at the building outside the viewport. It’s why he’s allowing the Alliance to impound the Normandy in the first place: to give himself a chance to convince Command to do something about the Reapers.
Joker would be intimidated, if he didn’t respect the man so damn much.
The Normandy finishes landing, EDI powering the engines first down, then off. For a moment, the cockpit is as still as dark space.
“Do you think we’ll make it, Commander?” Joker asks quietly.
Shepard takes a long moment to respond. “It all depends on who we have around us,” he says at last. He puts his hand on the back of Joker’s chair, finally meets Joker’s gaze, and with a small nod, says, “Take care of her, Joker.”
“Fuck ‘em up, Commander,” Joker replies, same steel in his voice, warmth flooding his chest.
The corners of Shepard’s mouth twitch upward, and he walks calmly, but purposefully, to the airlock door, and palms it open.
“What do you think they’re gonna do to him?” Joker mutters to EDI, watching a big jarhead lieutenant salute (which feels weird, given that Shepard isn’t technically Alliance anymore?) and formally read the charges against him.
EDI’s orb pulses slightly, but the audio comes through his aural implant instead of the cockpit speakers. “Alliance standard protocol would be interrogation, followed by incarceration and a court martial.” Joker nods. The same awaits him, he’s sure. EDI continues, “But the demeanor of Shepard’s arresting officer seems unusual.”
She’s right. The jarhead who saluted Shepard has made no move to cuff him, and—despite being several centimeters taller and a couple dozen kilos more muscular—he seems to be much more deferential to Shepard than any MP Joker’s ever known. “Hmm,” is all he says out loud.
Which is when a team of techs swarm inside, brandishing tools and probes and devices, heading straight to consoles and ductwork as they chatter to each other.
“Hey!” Joker snaps. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” He swats a tech away from his station like a particularly annoying gnat. “Get your—”
“Mr. Moreau,” says a sharp voice behind him. Joker swivels his chair angrily around to find a short, balding man holding a pad in front of him like a shield, flanked by two more MPs. “I am Lieutenant Commander Durlin. These gentlemen are here to escort you.”
Joker bristles, standing up. “Pretty sure I don’t work for you, so you can get your vorcha-looking assholes off my ship right—“
“Mr. Moreau,” the man repeats, closing the distance between them with a scowl. “This is not your ship. You are charged with dereliction of duty, desertion, conduct unbecoming, theft, and treason. Do you really want to add assault to that list?”
Joker just glares.
“I thought not,” the small man smirks. He gestures toward the waiting MPs.
Joker grabs his crutches from their holder. “I can fucking walk myself,” he says to the MP who reaches for his arm, stalking past them both.
“Oh, and Mr. Moreau?”
Joker looks over his shoulder. The smirk on Durlin’s face grows wider. “Thanks so much for bringing it back to us.”
Joker barely bites back his response. The last thing he sees as he crutches out of the airlock is EDI’s silent orb fading out.
The second fic for this summer of writing was for the Big Place exchange. The lovely jackwillwrite had a prompt about Kaidan and Jack bonding over teaching. Turns out these two have a really fun rapport in my head. Bonus mshenko because any chance I have to write my otp, I’ll take.
Read the whole thing on Ao3.
——
Told my mom I'm doing my best
It's too late to go and get rest
So I'm gonna live in my head
- Hazlett, “Doing My Best”
Anderson’s apartment, Silversun Strip, Citadel
Eleven days before the end of the Reaper War
The second time they meet, he’s content.
Kaidan leans against the railing overlooking the first floor, sipping the drink in his hand, pleasant smile on his face as he watches Shepard argue with Wrex and Vega. It’s not hard to hear them over the cacophony of the party, Wrex’s shouted epithets and Vega’s raucous laughter carrying well above the din. But his smile isn’t for them. It’s for—
“So you’re the fuckin’ boy scout, huh?”
He chokes on his drink and springs back, the voice in his ear catching him by surprise. For the briefest of moments, the hair on the backs of his arms goes rigid as he reaches instinctively for the biotic energy inside of him, years of tactical training automatically scanning the battlefield for threats.
Not a battlefield. Not a threat. You’re at a party. Keep control.
He takes a deliberate breath, releasing the energy. And then he turns to see who got the jump on him and reviews his threat assessment.
The woman next to him puts a finger in the liquid dribbling from his chin down onto his chest, wipes it off, and smirks. “Looks like you got a little akantha on your uniform there. Not very…boy-scout-y.”
It’s not that he didn’t know she was going to be at the party—Shepard invited literally everyone he’s ever known—but Kaidan had hoped they might just…avoid each other, like satellites rotating around opposite sides of a gravity well. For the whole night. In an apartment. With an open floor plan.
He’s normally better at threat assessments than this.
Still, generations of Canadian conditioning asserts itself, and he gives her a warm smile his mother would be proud of. “You must be Jack. It’s nice to meet you.“
Jack gives him a look, leaning with her back against the railing. “Yeah,” she responds, decidedly not returning the greeting.
They stand there awkwardly for a few moments. Well, he stands there awkwardly; she sips her drink, cool as a cucumber, looking him up and down. His eyes flick back down to Shepard, who’s now gleefully cajoling Wrex and Vega into an arm wrestling contest. What would Shepard do?
Go for the joke.
He follows her eyeline down to his uniform and, smiling self-effacingly, says, “See any more akantha? That stuff’s murder to get out of synth fabric.”
“No,” she says with a long, slow drawl. “I’m trying to figure out what the fuck he sees in you.”
I went on a bit of a writing spree this summer, which felt good. Still trying to unlock a bit of writer’s block, so I’m glad for the chance to be given prompts and deadlines; makes my writing better.
So first up, for the Dragon Age A Romance for the Ages exchange back in June, a prompt from ginbiscuit: Fenris trying to get Hawke back after Hawke gets left behind in the Fade.
Read the whole thing on Ao3.
——
if it’s true what they say
I’ll be on my way
we can all be on our way
if it’s true what they say
- Anais Mitchell, “If It’s True”
It started with a book that wasn’t a book.
“Really? That’s how you want to start it?”
He glares. “It’s how the story starts.”
“The words trip around his mind like a brook, babbling, bending, breaching the surface. I’m not usually the one who does this, but for him, I’ll do anything.”
A soft, focusing touch. “It’s a great opening.” A gentle smile. “Keep going.”
I wasn’t expecting it. I wasn’t expecting anything, really. For two years, four months, and ten days, I’d stopped expecting anything at all.
Hawke was dead. There was nothing left to expect.
Varric hadn’t said “dead” in his letter, of course. “Left behind.” We had to leave Hawke behind to cover the Inquisitor’s escape. Almost like there might still be hope, like they could just go back to get him tomorrow. Except that Varric had addressed the letter to “Fenris” instead of “Broody” or just “Elf.” Dear Fenris.
It took me an entire day to be able to read what followed those first two words.
The grief surprised me with its ferocity. It felt like anger, like my anger at Danarius, at my enslavement and my disfiguring and what he made me do in his name, except somehow worse. It had never occurred to me that anything could be worse. It didn’t just fester, it burned, like acid in my stomach and heart and veins until I couldn’t handle it anymore and ran. Left the hidden house we had called home and ran. Away from the Free Marches. Away from everyone and everything we had known together. Just…away.
“You’re a hard man to find, Elf.”
And still, I somehow wasn’t surprised when, two years, four months, and ten days later, I heard that gravelly voice behind me.
“I really didn’t think I was going to, to be honest,” he continued, the squelching of his muddy footsteps stopping five paces behind me.
I wiped the gore and rain off my face and growled without turning around. “You weren’t meant to, dwarf.” I stepped over the body in front of me, intending to run. Again.
“I really think you ought to hear me out. Might make your day a little better.”
I spun around before I knew I was doing it, successfully goaded, and there he stood. Varric Tethras. Author of half a dozen books. Author of my living nightmare. The greatsword in my hands shook, not with fear or fatigue but rather grief transmuted to rage, as I leveled it at him. “You dare to show your face after what you did?”
Varric, as ever, seemed wholly unconcerned with the knife’s edge on which he was perched. Bianca strapped to his back, no allies in sight, just his perpetually bemused expression as a defense. “I can see that you’re mad, but—“
With a roar, I lunged at him, dropping the greatsword and grabbing his neck in one hand, tattoos flaring blue as I lifted him high in the air. I screamed again, “You fucking dare show your face to me?”
His hands scrabbled at my wrist. “What—“ he gasped, “what did— I—“
“You FUCKING MURDERED HIM!” I bellowed in his face, shaking his small body like a rag. The blue light wreathing my arm intensified as I prepared to phase through his neck and collapse his windpipe.
But he was just barely able to squeak out, “He’s— not— dead—“
My hand went slack in shock.
Varric rolled around in the mud for a full minute hacking and coughing, but I barely registered it. I couldn’t. I stared at the space where his head had been, at the splay of my bone white fingers, not quite understanding why my heart was beating so fast, why my arm didn’t seem to want to move.
“That’s not funny,” I whispered, knowing it wasn’t a joke.
“It’s not a joke,” Varric replied with another cough, standing back up. “Fuck, Broody, remind me never to—“
“It’s not funny!” I yelled, a different sort of yell now, and this time, he didn’t back off.
“It’s not a joke. Look at me.” He grabbed my arm. “Look at me!“
I did.
And I saw a grief like mine. Not as big. Not as sour. But still the same. The whole time I’d been running, it had never once occurred to me that this was a feeling I could share. And it wasn’t all that I saw.
Playing God of War: Ragnarok for the first time and found the Eternal Campfire tonight to start “Favors.” I’d read about it back when the game first came out, but I still wasn’t prepared for the absolute gut punch. Already crying, no idea how I’m gonna finish it.
For reference:
A side quest in God of War Ragnarok honors the real love story of two developers, Sam Handrick and Jake Snipes. In 2020, Snipes passed away
Just…I know everything is terrible. And broken. And getting worse, and it’ll get even worse before it gets better. But a celebration of queer love, written by a queer man in honor of his late partner and celebrated by his studio, in a major video game that’s at its core about what masculinity is and is not, with this kind of emotional depth?
There is still beauty in the world, all I’m saying.
I love being queer. Happy Pride, friends, a few days late.
Just…this game is this beautiful essay on masculinity in all its forms, and what masculinity looks like when it’s toxic and what it looks like when it’s not, and how you move from toxic to healthy, and that the only way you truly can is with love. Love for yourself. Love from others. Love for others.
And then, right in the middle of that essay is this little illustration of healthy masculinity, one that chooses itself and rejects the toxicity put on it by family and instead journeys into the terrifying unknown and finds the unnameable in another man and calls that unnameable ‘home.’ A queer love story as an illustration of healthy masculinity. In a game from a major studio, headed by a title character steeped in decades of machismo lore. Written by the friends of a gay man, in his memory, for a gay man, to comfort his grief.
Hope I always ugly cry at kindness like this.
Anyway. Kindness, mercy, justice. Be brave enough to be kind. Queer love is transformative.
Playing God of War: Ragnarok for the first time and found the Eternal Campfire tonight to start “Favors.” I’d read about it back when the game first came out, but I still wasn’t prepared for the absolute gut punch. Already crying, no idea how I’m gonna finish it.
For reference:
A side quest in God of War Ragnarok honors the real love story of two developers, Sam Handrick and Jake Snipes. In 2020, Snipes passed away
Just…I know everything is terrible. And broken. And getting worse, and it’ll get even worse before it gets better. But a celebration of queer love, written by a queer man in honor of his late partner and celebrated by his studio, in a major video game that’s at its core about what masculinity is and is not, with this kind of emotional depth?
There is still beauty in the world, all I’m saying.
I love being queer. Happy Pride, friends, a few days late.
Kurajo, my male Adaar mage who romanced Dorian. Sassy. Rescued the mages, left Stroud in the Fade, put Celine and Briala on the throne. My favorite by far, I’ve replayed a version of him dozens of times. Huge buff Qunari and Dorian? Yes please.
Yorin, my male Trevelan rogue who romanced Josephine. Polite. Rescued the mages, left Stroud in the Fade, put Celine in the throne solo. My OG, a little boring but oh-so-noble, and Josephine’s just the best.
Derwyn, my male Cadash warrior who romanced Cassandra. Very mean. Rescued Templars, left Hawke (female mage w/Isabela) in the Fade instead of Alistair, put Celine solo on the throne. Told Solas off at the end and got the “pissed off Solas” short ending. Derwin’s not my fave but pissing off Solas was satisfying lol.
Inquisition was the first BioWare game I ever played, so it holds a special place in my heart!
