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Shakarian is the definition of I'd love you if you were a worm, you're already a weird mutant pyjak.

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beltquid: #I use they/them bc Legion self identifies as 'we'#like this isn't singular they#they are literally a plurality#and then the rannoch arc in ME3 happens and the game is explicit that a gestalt intellect is inferior to Western Atomized Individuality#and Legion is gendered despite that literally never being a concern for the Geth#and I am kicking and biting and spitting#I hate the conclusion to Rannoch so bad man *that* is where ME3 starts tripping on itself#not Kai Leng#it's BioWare taking one of their truly alien aliens#and doing their damndest to make them human but with programming language as a quirk#The Rachni they couldn't turn into atomized individuals so they're just shuffled offscreen as quickly as possible#honestly one way to characterize ME3's flaws in general was that BioWare was like#'I don't wanna write science fiction anymore :c'

The writers getting tired of writing scifi really just explains so much. Not just Legions but the Crucible, Leviathan and the Reapers, female turians, all of Eve's lines...

Shepard (and by proxy the devs) choosing he/him for Legion isn't bad in a definitive concrete way but it does rub me the wrong way as it brings to mind patriarchy mindset of male as default (particularly notable in the 20th century but before as well). Where a lot of otherwise neutral gender design characters were referred to with masculine terms because male was and is seen as the normal default and female had to something extra on top. Which is where you get cartoon fish with boobs and they're pink with bows and giant mascara eyelashes because how else will you know it's a girl.

In mass effect the gender of the voice actor is often used as short hand for what gender the audience should perceive an alien as. This is the only reason players in ME1 can tell most of the salarians, krogan, and turians are male. If you listen in ME1 most npcs have male voice actors the main exceptions are asari and some humans. Now this could have been interesting if they used male voice actors for alien female characters or visa versa or gave the asari male voice actors or have aliens with completely alien sex systems and voices or clarified that the human sounding voices are produced by the translator. But instead what is happening is that Bioware falls into the male as default trap that many media do filling in the background with male voices because women are something extra that has to be pointed out (the Star Wars movies are another good example of this as are most movies actually).

So Legion is given a male voice actor and EDI is given a female voice actor and EDI in particular is immediately shoved into the category woman and into compulsive heterosexuality by the developers. She's also massively sexualized, like sure they got rid of the Miranda's ass shots but here comes a massively oversexualized character design. And let it be very clear, giving EDI this body was a deliberate choice the devs could have given them a different body for a different reason. I liked the Joker and EDI dynamic and they got less interesting in ME3 partly because instead of being a warship, EDI is now mostly a woman with some machine flavor. There's just so much wasted potential like Joker dating a spaceship or EDI wanting to experience humanity and playing around with difference voices and forms. he devs could have even kept the Dr. Core story with EDI deciding later on that they don't identify with the feminine body either for gender reasons or because they decide they don't like being in humanoid bodies. Maybe EDI decides they're a man, unlikely since it would be double the graphics work (designing, modeling, animating) but it'd be more interesting than what we got.

For Legion the gender pigeonhole is less noticeable but still there, and the writers merging everyone to be the same is still there. The Geth being hiveminds was what made them unique and different in Mass Effect and like EDI this is passed over in favor of making them more palatably human. I still liked Rannoch it just has unrealized potential. So he/him is fine I guess but there's more interesting options for Legion. it/its would also be ok if Legion liked it to highlight that they aren't human. They/them is also the one I like best because it's gender neutral and because Legion is a collection of Geth running on the same platform.

because i'm curious about what other people think (i'd love to hear any reasoning y'all have to give in the replies also)

personally i use they/them or it/its because i like that legion is multiple programs but in-game it's pretty wishy-washy all the way through

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every species being the same is boring lazy worldbuilding

Mass Effect and any speculative universe is more interesting when cultures are different. Even worse is a lot of time current western society is treated as the universal default ignoring how vastly different human cultures have varied across time and space, and that's real life. Fictional aliens should be even more different. Give me incomprehensible alien genders, family structures, sex romance and pair bonding. Like maybe turians are more mutually monogamous than most humans, more like sea birds 1 partner for life only (also gay like sea birds). Or maybe pair bonding isnt romantic/sexual pair bonding is just that strong. Since everyone's military they have a genetic matching system for gamete donations to be raised by career child care workers. Krogan are homonormative and romantic relationships are expected to be female to female and male to male given their gender segregated society. Make the krogan gay. maybe quarians have complex webs of romantic entanglements. salarians dont do romance or sex. something, anything different. if any society is heteronormative I'll burn your computer. There's no way human gender applies to aliens across the galaxy it doesn't sven apply to other species on the same planet.

give me alien incomprehensible cultural traditions. You ever live in another country and go "that's weird but ok" that exactly. But here is also the chance for both utopia and dystopia because ultimately all fiction comes from people. A chance to reflect the real world. What if being a parent was a full time job for turians and treated as such. what parts of turian communist military dictatorship are good and which are bad. Are the asari wise or foolish always seeking balance but not action. what would it take for asari local anarchy to actually work. how do societies end up like the batarians (got the short end by bioware but we can do better).

Mass effect is fashion deprived everyone just wears skin tight bodysuits. Well the real reason was because Bioware wanted to show off alien (but not too alien) body shapes. But if you think about it it's so weird. Turian casual clothes involve such structured garments, the patterns to sew together have to be just the right size to wrap around the cowl and neck. The closest we get to non bodysuits are the asari bodycon dresses. I need weird ridiculous alien fashion. Teenagers wearing the ugliest clothes possible. Turians having standard 3 piece clothing instead of 2 piece, something to emphasize the waist. We were robbed of concept art saren's little nun outfit. Salarians wearing those greek pillowcases. Jean infecting the citadel but instead of human pants they're like spikey oddly shaped bodysuits and corsets.

Mass Effect fashion didn't need to only be armor that all looks the same and skin tight bodysuits. In the concept art Saren wears actual clothes. Never forget Saren's little nun outfit (he only kept the headscarf/hood thing). Never forget what they took from us.

It's fine if some species have bigger males but all of them is unlikely and just projecting human norms again. Lifecycle timing should also be different. In salarians, turians, and krogans the females are plausibly larger i don't care about bioware's human gender norms. In all of life it's pretty much only mammals and some birds where the male is larger. In many egg laying species the females are bigger to make more eggs (BOFFFFs strike again) so like all fish, a lot of insects, a lot of reptiles, some birds. So it'd make sense for krogans and salarians to have larger females. Raptors and theropod dinosaurs (the ones birds come from) as well as a lot of insects also have larger females than males. But just for diversity's sake the turians can be the same size. Would explain what would otherwise be a weird lack of women in me1-2 for what's suppose to be a pretty gender equal society. So half the turians in me1-2 were women shepard just can't tell them apart. Salarian women in game actually look about the same size as men so I'd be fine with that. As long as they aren't smaller than the men (wow i hate the me3 female turian design.)

what if krogan grow their entire lives it just really taper off after the first few centuries like 1mm a decade. Females tend to bigger than males but because of the natural variation and continuous growth it's impossible to tell by appearance. humans are sexual maturity before physical maturity (like hippos and some other mammals). meanwhile birds are physical maturity first and like many insects can be larger as chicks than as adults. so what if turians and proteans reach full size first and thus have delayed sexual maturity. i like the idea that if breeding season happens salarian males get spotty and stripy like a lot of salamander/newt species. proteans are hermaphroditic and i do mean hermaphrodite not intersex. 2 functioning reproductive systems is not possible in humans for intersex people you get 1 type of gonad or sometimes no functioning gonads. Hermaphrodites in animals produces both types of gametes. need i remind people that most animals do not have mammalian reproductive biology.

What if proteans are like a lot of insects like cicadas and mayflies where their juvenile stage is the dominant life stage. Sexual maturity happens at the end of life, they grow wings, mate, and then die. But that juvenile stage lasts like 600 years. Or maybe with that telemetry they're like octopi and only live 1-2 years.

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mass effect romance thoughts

I never did understand why in universe the aliens mostly prefer 1 gender of human. Male and female humans are more similar to each other than either is to any turian or other alien. How much do male quarians, turians, krogan, salarians, drell, etc. have in common with each other vs. similarities within a species. Out of universe it is because the devs didn't think hard enough and defaulted to heterosexuality and male female gender binary so Mass Effect only got something different when they deliberately made it different.

Someone reddit asked which interspecies romances are most likely and while individual factors are the most important there are some factors for each species. Like salarian culture in general is acearo normative. The only ones they seem interested in are asari who they've had the longest history of cooperation with. Quarians, turians, and humans have similar lifespans. Quarians and turians are both dextro and collectivist. Quarians and humans have similar face and torso shapes. Humans and turians are both military focused and have a lot of contact in Council space but just fought a war. Asari are seen as the only real guarantee for krogan to have kids that they made (kinda), but I can also see some krogan turning away from other species.

ironically even with all the asari strippers working the club floors, a salarians would be #the only one who could do those back breaking impossible pinup poses due to salarian S shaped spines#and flexibility also Tim must have great hip flexibility since he's always sitting like that.

it's a shame that Bioware capitulated to the fox news homophobes but it is funny that Jack still canonically likes women she just doesn't like femshep.

garrus is a funny man he canonically has the most women chasing him (shepard, tali, dr. michel), but he also doesn't know how to flirt, shepard has to coach him through asking out a turian woman at a bar, and Shepard has to flat out ask him to have sex with her for him to understand she's interested.

watched the samara romance and it feels pretty icky. It only happens when shepard won't take "no" for an answer repeatedly and pushes samara even when she flat out says "do not pursue this".

would love to see Thane and Samara interact. Does not need to be romantic or canon, I just think the conversations would be great. Both have complicated relationships with their children and have already lived their lives. Justicar code would probably normally obligate her to kill him so it's only on Shepard's mission that they get this moment. Both are concerned with morality and doing good but in very different ways.

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more mass effect thoughts

ME3 shrinks the milk way by having everyone know each other. Instead of feeling like a galaxy with trillions of people Mass Effect ends up feeling like a small town of 50 people where everyone has a past with everyone.

Mass Effect should have started with the Relay 314 Incident to introduce us to the galaxy. It would have a great way to introduce alien cultures and human bias. Instead Bioware tried to do this with Shepard in ME1 and it just makes them look like an ignorant rube who got the Sprectre position not because they deserved it but because they didn't bother explaining the player power fantasy trope of you legally get to do whatever you want. After ME3 I don't exactly trust the devs with a war story (but they all got fired by EA anyways so we are deep in hypothetical territory), but ooohh there's such potential. And I agree that done well this would be a perfect demonstration of Mass Effect's core themes of making the galaxy a better place through cooperation and diversity. Ideally I can see this Relay 314 (great title) war drawing from other excellent conflict stories like Nier (mostly Replicant but Automata too) about finding humanity in the Other, Lord of the Rings for it's exploration of war ethics and costs, and Valient Hearts: The Great War for it's deeply personal and moving human scale narratives.

Shepard's death is just so out of left field in me2. It feels like the devs wanted a fresh start and were too lazy to build off the end of me1 (you can also tell by how liara is basically a different character with the same name)

Cerberus chose the most palatable members for the SR2 but they're still Cerberus. Some probably kept working for Cerberus, might even have killed some in ME3. A lot probably got dropped off before the SR2 returned to the Alliance and found another job. Some might have stuck with and got arrested, sentences, or probably killed during the earth invasion. Kaidan/Ashley was right about every point, cerberus shady af and was probably using shepard's desire to help people to manipulate them.

A weirdly high number of Shepard companions are biotic. It's rare for every species except asari and yet we have wrex, kaiden, jack, miranda, thane, mordin, javik, jacob, and the asari: liara, samara, and morith. Even the temporary members aria and nyreem are biotic. Saren is biotic. Shepard is a biotic magnet (game devs just wanted more gameplay options and spells).

during the citadel party i always just assumed garrus was copying shepard's shuffle to mock them.

How did Wrex manage to unite Tuchanka I thought they were in post nuclear anarchy do they even all have coms lines why the hell would they listen to him.

Even more than quarians volus can't take off their suits or they'll depressurize like a deep sea fish and none of the other species can live in volus environments. Of you think about it Citadel volus are actually daredevil risk takers.

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When game companies release half the game and then other half of the story as dlc. I'm looking at you kh3 +remind. Kh4 Final final mix mickey edition 4.258 -493/7

358/2 was cheated in the mix versions. That game is amazing and it got boiled down to a few cutscenes. The coworkers who hate each other workplace drama of the original was peak. We were cheated out of one of the best kh games. It's just a well made game (well the combat could be improved but whatever). The pacing is good. I did like how the story progresses like you start with roxas learning to be a person and despite how out there ogxiii is the game build this sense of routine and normacy. Despite the building tension and hints of more things feel chill and fun and normal comforting even. So it's very emotionally impactful when things unravel to the point of no return and the normacy shatters because just like roxas and the other you get to experience missing it too

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Izumi-san has such range. A burly middle man can be a highschool girl, a robot, a cat, and also the imaginary best friend of his brainwashed younger clone. No one does it like him.

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I always wondered. In hot sunny places why bother using a stove and heating up your house when you can cook with the sun.

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on the topic of the meimei pedo flame war. Mei-mei is at her core a selfish and greedy person. She probably does feel some degree of actual affection and protectiveness over Ui-ui but that will always be second to her self interest, Ui-ui is an investment first and brother second. Ui-ui is extremely useful to her so she'll keep him attached to her even if that means playing into his admiration/attraction to her.

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Some Indigenous communities in the state of Michoacán, the world’s largest producer of the crop, are finding ways to ward off the crime syndicates and grow avocados profitably while protecting their biodiverse forests of oak and pine, including vital hibernation habitat for the monarch butterfly overwintering from the United States.     Mexican researchers say the key to their success lies in traditional systems for community management of their forests. The lesson may be applicable far beyond the borders of Mexico, they say. Collectively owned lands can be the best basis for creating “bioeconomies” that combine economic exploitation of the land with the conservation of natural resources.

2 May 2025

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Learning about fake pearls. A lot of them get the color wrong. Pearls are pearlescent sure but a lot of them have a slight iridescence that the imitations are missing. Chipping and peeling is a known problem for fake pearls. I can see why they wouldn't bother for the cheap stuff but for a more expensive imitation why not put like a sealant or clear top coat. Does Majorica pearls actually hand sculp glass rods into balls? That seems like something really easy to mechanize to buy glass balls. Or maybe they do and the demonstration is just traditional techniques. Either way this is a massive missed opportunity, instead of white opaque glass they could do semitransparent layering. Like have the pearl coating be thin or semi opaque to show the glass underneath and use iridescent or opalescent glass or maybe even show the semi transparency of the bead and let some light in. Maybe not Majorica since they seem committed to natural materials and this would need a protective coating with the thinner pearl coating and lacquer is yellowish at lightest but massive opportunity for someone else. Glass is so underrated in jewelry too you can get so many cool visual effects like color shift iridencence, metallics, opalescence.

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This is what modern american men's fashion has taken from us

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Wish there was a merfolk option for a human face stuck on a fish, sphynx style no human torso.

take my mermaid quiz boy

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octopath traveler 2 p2

Tenemos 3-1:tenemos is gay. The moon village really left the ambush up to one woman? They totally could have had 10 people in hiding to murk him. Let me see if im getting this. Moonshade massacred the kal people the flamekeepers or something. Vador is the last of the Kal and serial killing in order of a scripture so the flamechrch is after him ad moonshade hates the church. Why was the holy fire temple built right next to the fire hating village and why's it called fellsun

Ochette 1: I love ochette! Girl is like "teehee I'm going to cut you into pieces and eat you" rip king iguana. Hey the americans did that too "we have a territory agreement" "too bad we want more". That meat is poisoned isnt it. Not even we'll stop taking land but "we can reconsider the question". Wakuwaku! Goshiniku? What's that. The sprites and character art don't look like jerky they look more like sljapanese stylized streotypical beef roast with the bone in

Partitio 2: i was wondering if the devs were going on an anti-tax soapbox and then i realized that this tax is by a private corporation. This is if like microsoft was taxing the city of redmond. That's not a tax private entities shouldn't be able to tax. Partitio and ochette went down to the dog and before i could revive them the dog went down to poison so rip exp

Maybe i've gotten better but this game does feel easier than ot i keep killing things before i can shake them down for loot

Tenemos throne 1: this is really weird. This women has been confined in a secret room in the cathedral her whole life that only the pontiff knows about (and whoever gives her supplies). Alpates is a name passed down in the family which implies there's more people. Where are they?

Throné ?: she could have told father ahe wanted to be the ultimate asassin and that involved killing him instead of saying ahe wanted out

Castti 2: an 11 year old running the town is an abysmal idea. It seems castti's story isnt going this way but it would have been fun if she actually was poisoning everyone. Like she remembers she needs to give these drugs to everyone but doesn't remember that it'll poison them in the long run. She remembers the recipe but not the pharmatological effects just that this is the thing she should be giving people. This fight is really forced plukk picked a fight for no reason. Would have made more sense if they decided to ransom both greg (idiot) and melia instead of trying to mug castti.

Ochette 2 tera: so the cult town also has a primordial beast? OT1 had thos problem way worse where they shoved 2 stories into 1 town with no thought to the worldbuilding. Like 1 half of a town would be a sex slavery traffickng hub and the other half would be a gardeners association trying to grow the tasiest vegetables. So crackridge is wildly xenophobic in one story and the next day they're friendly and welcoming to the even more foreign looking catgirl. I empathize with tera a long nap sounds good so long that a new world comes. Or montridge is both the big scholar book city but also the gladiator city. Or stormveil gets both a ku clan and the sanctis church.

I'm about mid game (20-30) Oof ok i got to the par level content and was bleeding olives and grape baskets for tera. The pacing of this game is kinda off like i havent done some of the level 14 content and will be massively over leveled. I'm probably behind on equipment since i havent bought abything since the start of the game. I also havent done any build planning like i haven't even looked at skill synergy. Hmmm oswald highest eatk followed by temenos and agnea. hikari/ochette highest patk. Partitio and castro are my big support members. I still dont know how to use agnea.

Throne 3 fther: ok this last minute relationship drama is the worst part of the game so far. A baby can be totally stolen. So two poor orphans get picked up by the blacksnakes marietta and sebastian fall in love get pregnent and married. Marietta falls in love with the founder of the blacksnakes and kill the original baby, then they have a second baby who is throne. Seb (father) kills marietta but what about the founder i assume he's dead too. Wasn't theone a street orphan?

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If gambling is gambling. Gacha, lootboxes, and labubus are softcore gambling. Then is traditional plant breeding also soft gambling? Every time you roll the dice on what phenotypes you're going to get.

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#mordin is a person with a very strong ethical code who often expresses disgust at injustice#who thinks that everything he's done is for the greater good#notably he does NOT think he is dooming the krogan to extinction but that the genophage is the only way to save them#(he's wrong and he already knows he's wrong at this point that's why he says he opened his clinic on omega to atone)#he just hasn't admitted it yet

For all Garrus talks about being a bad turian he's still entrenched in the mindset and "just because Garrus wants different things ... doesn’t mean the machine that he rages against doesn’t still live inside him". (temperqnce)

#he just strikes me as wanting to be Chaotic Good but still ends up in Lawful Neutral due to his black and white perspective of the world



It's interesting seeing the dichotomy between Mordin and Garrus while trying to recover Jack. Garrus immediately clocks that this is an extortion rig and that the warden's motives aren't as pure-of-heart, good-for-the-galaxy oriented as he claims, but still believes that these people deserve what they get for being scum of the earth. Even with no proof that everyone here has done something worth their imprisonment. Even after the warden's heel-turn attempt to imprison Shepard.

Mordin meanwhile is just absolutely horrified at the level of cruelty surrounding him and believes in the possibility that anything disturbed these prisoners may express while we're here could've been a direct result of their treatment at this facility.

I just find it interesting since Mordin has been so-far described as cold, calculating, and ruthless. He (seemingly, at this point, it's very clear later that this is not really the case no matter how much he wants it to be) has no regrets in his part of continuing a horrible genetic disease that is slowly but surely dooming a species to extinction. But he clearly does have a lot of empathy, wants actual good done rather than theoretical good.

Meanwhile Garrus has always been a hot-headed renegade that has been very loud about how he wants good done in the world, even if it isn't done the right way. But at the same time, he very quietly follows the structure and abides by the rules. He follows the idea that the ones in charge are doing the right thing. It takes his own background knowledge of a situation and being physically or metaphorically blocked by the authority from doing what he believes is right in order for him to not just instinctively believe in it. Idk I'm just rambling again.

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Hard to build a ladder when othesr keep pulling the rungs out from under you