masseffectholidaycheer

[masseffectholidaycheer]

Thank you so so much, @tarysande! I don't think I wrote about this on tumblr but I've gotten into fountain pens recently and have been wanting to try out dip pens, so the fact that you got me a GORGEOUS glass dip pen and ink is so so appreciated! And the tool wrap is beautiful and the sketchbook is fantastic, it's all so amazing!

Thank you @masseffectholidaycheer for setting all this up!

[masseffectholidaycheer]

This is my offering to @animatedhawk-blog for @holidayharbinger’s gift exchange. They mentioned that Jack is their favorite character and I haven’t really spent a lot of time painting her so I thought this would be nice!

I really love Jack a lot too and I feel like people don’t capture or appreciate a softer side of her often. Like she’s a badass but she’s also still just that girl trapped in a Cerberus lab too. She needs a hug…

This is a color study on another image that I had originally found on Pinterest and despite my best efforts to reverse search it everywhere I couldn’t find the original photographer, but I hope you love this as much as I loved working on it! Total render time elapsed to about 5 hours, and here’s the original reference for color comparisons :)

Honestly there was a point around hour 2 of staring at this that I started noticing all the details that could point to this being AI so like yknow what yay free color pallet or whatever.

[masseffectholidaycheer]

"she hasn't figured out yet that the commander is cheating"

[image description: miranda, thane, tali, joker, and charley shepard site around a table apparently playing cards, though only charley and miranda are actually holding any cards. miranda is turned away from the table, looked stressed and staring down at her cards. charley, however, looks very smug, because she's holding five aces. joker, who sits to her right, leans over towards tali, who sits to his right, and thane, who sits to talis right at the head of the table. he is saying something with a smile. tali giggles with her hand to her face and thane intertwines his hands and stares across the table at charley smiling serenely.]

this is my Holiday Harbinger gift exchange piece for @commander-krios 's shepard charley! hope you like it!

[masseffectholidaycheer]

I was lucky enough to receive a gift from @painterofhorizons for @masseffectholidaycheer this year!! I am so so in love with everything, the hand painted plate is going pride of place on my wall (the stars are so perfect 😍) and I'm so excited to try some of your favourite snacks and teas!! I've also never tried toffifee even though it looks like it's gonna be an instant favourite!!

(bonus shot of George inspecting and giving his meow of approval)

Thank you so much, I've been dealing with some Stuff™ recently and this has brightened my week so much, what a lovely start to the year 🥰🥰

[masseffectholidaycheer]

@cassiefisherdrake

Your embroidery is beautiful 😍 You really did such an amazing job on it.

I loved all the snacks, it was very thoughtful for you to send all the gluten and dairy free options. The bites aren't available in the stores I frequent so it was something new (and delicious). Everything was so good.

Also your handwriting is so pretty. Thanks so much for everything, I loved it.

[masseffectholidaycheer]

Greetings Vermin

Minion Keeper here, emerging from the smoldering wreckage that has been the last two weeks of Events Unrelated to MEHC I am going through and following up on pinch hitters and missing posts and want to remind folks to PLEASE SUBMIT YOUR GIFTS VIA THE GOOGLE FORM - me going through direct tags and individual blogs to find posts is slow and painful. Filing this out makes everything much, much, much easier.

Some stats for the state of the reaping:

Out of 63 total gifts, 49 have been completed - that means we're 78% done with 14 gifts remaining.

Of the 14 remaining gifts:

7 are physical gifts that haven't been posted yet.

At least one physical gift has been delivered but I haven't seen a post for

At least one physical gift is still in transit (tracking says it's in a Seattle warehouse as of Feb 5)

Several of the shipping proofs are order confirmations, so I need to do some more hunting on where they are.

Remember that if you have received a physical gift, you are responsible for posting and submitting that gift.

6 of the remaining gifts are digital gifts - please remember that if you made a digital gift you are responsible for submitting that gift

One is a pinch hit that I still need to confirm (that one's on me and Harby - you haven't been forgotten! Time is just slippery right now. Per usual, I'm blaming Shepard.)

I have had two generous offers for pinch hitters that I still need to follow up with - I appreciate you!

I'm giving our 6 missing digital gifts until Friday to post or contact us, then we'll be putting together pinch hits.

As a reminder, everyone will get a gift, even though sometimes there are stragglers, we don't like dragging this out much more than a month after the deadline. So we will presume a pinch hit is needed rather than nag someone for weeks.

Also please don't go radio silent, if you can't finish, please just tell us.

As a personal note, the gifts this year have been beautiful, thoughtful, and bright spot in the middle of a whole bunch of chaos. January Jubilation, indeed! Thank you all 💖

[masseffectholidaycheer]

Thank you so much @continuous-spec! I do not have the Mass Effect art book and can’t wait to look over it! Your choice of munchies is also top notch and did not survive unopened long after this picture was taken. The adorable junco has joined my space board of friend art, where it may be admired by all visitors. :). Thank you!

[masseffectholidaycheer]

Hey there. Since I haven’t received my gift yet I just wanted to ask if I should be looking for something arriving by mail or whether it’s going to be something digital. Thank you so much for all your hard work organizing this exchange. Had a lot of fun and am blown away by everyone’s creativity. :)

This is an excellent question!

Full disclosure: this January, Ol' Holiday Harby almost fell to a virus (which Shepard deployed, I'm sure). Without the valiant, above-and-beyond efforts of Minion Keeper, there's no telling how muddled the system would be.

Harbinger has almost recovered, but hasn't yet had time to dive in and see where the matches are at. Never fear! Gifts will still be gifted, hits will be pinched, and everyone will have something to call their own at the end of it. We're just running behind, so the end, once and for all, might be a little later than usual this year. Even Minion Keeper's Tiny Backpack of Power couldn't save us entirely from this one.

The tl;dr is we're still figuring out exactly where we stand and what we need, but we're getting there.

Also, if everyone could bestow an extra helping of love (or whatever it is Keepers survive on) to Harby's favorite minion, Harby would appreciate it. I legitimately could not have done this without her this year.

[masseffectholidaycheer]

I AM FILLED WITH HOLIDAY DELIGHT

Thank you so much @kaiadixiii for my amazing January Jubilation gift.

I will absolutely be putting my hot chocolate in these bad boys when I fire up my next play through. This was so sweet and thoughtful, and I’m especially delighted to have received another gift from you. In 2022, you sent me this lovely hand-made stained glass piece and it still lives in my home. I look at it almost every day and even recently I quietly hoped you were doing well. What a wonderful coincidence that you were my harbinger this year, too!

Thank you @masseffectholidaycheer for being my favorite part of the holiday season and putting this on every year.

(Pic below for proof of their beautiful work that I still treasure deeply.)

[masseffectholidaycheer]

@cat-in-a-tesseract Hello! I was your Mass Effect Secret Santa! I tried to capture Tali doing cool hacker stuff, since you mentioned you like her for her tech nerdery :D Happy new year!

[masseffectholidaycheer]

Happy Mass Effect Holiday Cheer, @biothreads! Thank you for the opportunity to draw the coolest doctor the Alliance has ever seen. Hope you enjoy!

Thanks as always to @masseffectholidaycheer for another fun year.

[masseffectholidaycheer]

I participated in some @masseffectholidaycheer this year and this is my gift for @hamstercheese7!

I read your fic Have You Seen Me? and it made me cry real good, so I felt inspired to draw some fanart of it. I've also been wanting to try my hand at comics, so this is what I came up with. Hope you like it! Thank you for writing such a beautiful and heartbreaking story. :')

The following mini comic is based on @hamstercheese7's fic Have You Seen Me? I highly recommend reading the fic first if you can!

[masseffectholidaycheer]

Thank you @menacingmetal for the awesome @masseffectholidaycheer gift! The stickers and pins are really cute and I love the Gianna magnet. And the collage? Fantastic! Love the art and all the stickers. Vestra would definitely wear that outfit. ^_^

[masseffectholidaycheer]

OH MY GOODNESS

Can we all scream about the amazing January Jubilation gift I received from the AMAZING @fourthage ?!?!?! Along with a fantastic pin (that I am putting on my work lanyard immediately so all can clock me as a mass effect fan), they bound two of my fics for me!!!! This is such an amazing present!!!! It's so cool to have a physical copy of something I wrote, they're going on my bookshelf immediately! Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU for such a thoughtful gift!!!!!!!!

@masseffectholidaycheer

PS: I was a HUGE scholastic book fair girlie!!!! I always got the new copies of the Series of Unfortunate Events books with a new set of erasers for my pencils.

[masseffectholidaycheer]

wonderful holiday harbinger, do pinch hitters need to have already signed up previously or can they volunteer whenever?

That's a good - and very sweet - question!

I think we've had a few pinch hitters before who hadn't been signed up, and you're more than welcome to.

A few things to keep in mind: We sometimes get more pinch hitters than we need (at least the first time we reach out), so if we don't match you with someone immediately, it's not a slight, it's that we already got someone!

Pinch hitting just means you'll be making a gift, not getting one. Which, as someone who's done that before, there's a lot of joy in making a gift for someone regardless of receiving something in return. Just want to set expectations :)

We really deeply appreciate everyone who offers to pinch hit - it's part of what makes this exchange so special <3

[masseffectholidaycheer]

Hello @mishikaiya! I'm your gifter for this year's @masseffectholidaycheer event! I've never drawn Kasumi before but she's so much fun! I hope you like her! 💛

[masseffectholidaycheer]

Progress Can Not Be Halted

Greetings Vermin,

Time marches on and the deadline for submissions dawns.

TOMORROW (Jan 31st) IS THE DEADLINE TO POST GIFTS.

As of right now the stats for completed gifts are:

63 people signed up this year

27 people said they were planning on mailing physical gifts

We've confirmed shipping on 24 of those gifts

We've been in contact with the 3 remaining gifts that need to be mailed - we have every confidence they'll be in the mail ASAP, and have been in touch with each of them.

For 9 packages we have confirmation they've been sent, but there hasn't been a post yet. Minion Keeper will be checking on the tracking to make sure we know where they are - some of them have quite a ways to travel.

That leaves 12 remaining digital gifts that need to be posted.

Overall this puts us at 62% of gifts completed with 39 posted gifts and 24 posts to go.

We do need one pinch hitter

It can be digital or physical - please reach out to holidayharbinger@gmail.com if you're willing to make an extra gift.

If things have happened (like certain pesky humanoids in a M35 Mako) and you can no longer make a gift, please e-mail us ASAP to make sure we can find a pinch hitter.

JANUARY JUBILATION CANNOT BE STOPPED