#i had....so many pdfs.....that i did not get a chance to back up.....bc i was saving up for a new external hard drive....AUGH

[katabay]

hello,,,,,everyone,,,,,it has been a minute! since I have logged in here! mostly because my laptop died in an irreparable kind of way without warning and I've been. Stressed. but time marches on! I hope all of you have been doing well!

[maythedreadwolftakeyou]

I finished!!! game time was like something like 138 hours but I spent a good dozen or so hours pausing the game to check my phone or wandering off to make dinner. 

I this said last night in a sleepy 4am haze, but I really enjoyed the ending. It was fun to play. The only time I died was when I accidentally fell into a chasm bc I didn’t realize a goddamn fiend was gonna come barreling out of the hall and ruin my “melee everything” scheme and I scooted myself right off a dang platform and respawned directly in its mouth. Whoops. When the Archon called up the Architect I was very Oh god not another one but then I didn’t have to actually try to kill it ever just avoid it, so that was fine. I LOVED how everyone came out to help at the end. It always seems unbelievable to me that your pals are content to hang back for the boss fight (ME2 I thought did well with having everyone else away on different tasks, and the ME3 citadel mission where everyone goes together is one of my favorite parts of the trilogy). And getting to run around with Kandros (who i love but duty calls and we can never be together) and Reyes (im still Very Sad i had to break up with him) and the Salarians!! and then your team coming in at the end :333 ah. It was a very feel-good, exciting culmination, and I think it fit the tone of the rest of the story well. Part of me was half-expecting disaster like you have to sacrifice Scott or a bunch of citizens or something, and while I eat that sort of tragedy up, I’m glad there wasn’t any for this game. 

Incidentally, all of my screenshots of Scott somehow turned out like this, and so I’ve decided this is a chronic problem his whole life and he has 0 good photos ever even when the rest of the fam comes out lookin great:

ah, Scott. someday i’ll play as him with this Ryder as his sister and it’s gonna have to be a wild ride.

Romance: I romanced Vetra!! I love her a lot as a character but I just kept wishing for more content. And I know I always crave more romancey content but I did feel like her romance arc had a lot less than what I knew people were getting from Jaal’s, especially because it takes you over halfway into the game before you get anything from it. Four flirt opportunities where she doesn’t really flirt back, my Ryder was dying and convinced her crush would never be reciprocated (hence the brief fling with Reyes). But I did LOVE the scenes you do finally get with her, the climbing date was soooo sweet, and I could not stop laughing when she tries to make you dinner. I’m never telling my beautiful girlfriend she doesn’t know how to cook steak. NEVER. she did it perfectly, i love cow. But I just wish there was a scene where YOU could do something for HER. Lexi even tells you that you should show her she’s appreciated and doesn’t have to take care of everyone all the time to be worthy of being liked but then you... never get a chance in game to really do that. Sigh. I definitely have a lot of inner-headcanoning going on for thier relationship. Though Vetra wants to eventually settle down and have a home and i’m... not so sure that’s in the cards for this Ryder. I may tweak the characterization of my Vetra-romance-ryder in some ways and redo this Ryder with Reyes for real next time. I think next up is gonna be a Jaal playthough though.

But, OVERWHELMINGLY, the relationship I was absolutely most fascinated by the whole game and spent way more time thinking about than romance, was the relationship between Ryder and SAM. I went into endgame thinking that the game really hadn’t gotten into that aspect nearly as much as I wanted, AND THEN!!! SAM GETS DISCONNECTED! And it’s revealed they took over WAY more control of the Pathfinder’s physiology than anyone had even guessed!! it’s not just “SAM can take access of enough systems to stop and then restart your heart” it was “SAM is so intertwined with you that they are integrated into these systems already and their absence makes it almost impossible for the Pathfinder to cope without.” I LOVED IT. I was so ready to address that, like, did Ryder know? Did SAM do it by choice or was it just an effect of Alec’s modifications? 

And then... nothing. You’re linked back up with SAM. No one questions it. You don’t get to talk to Scott about how SAM is different for you than him now. Or at least, not that I’ve found??? to be fair I can’t seem to find Scott post-endgame yet (where is he hiding???? i’ve been all over Meridian after leaving/going back), and I still need to go check out the colonies and see what people there have to say. But it really seems like everyone sort of was like “whew, glad that’s sorted out, SAM’s back and htis could never possibly be an issue again so we will all forget about it and never bring it up again.” There was one colonist before (Fawkes) who was one of the only non-main characters to ask a really detailed question about SAM/what the future of AI is gonna look like in Heleus and I was so psyched for that convo. There’s a couple dialogue responses you can take, I went with:

becuase I really like the idea that Ryder starts to think of themselves as not just Ryder, but a Ryder-And-SAM partnership. There’s a lot of sacrifice in that. You’re admitting that your body is not just You anymore, but a team where both sides are valued.

I’ve spent a lot of the game thinking about Ryder’s internal dialogues with SAM, and the dynamic it would add to their relationship. You don’t have a voice that lives inside your head (and gives you its 100% undivided attention while you’re in the field) and not end up talking to it all the time. SAM asks you questions back on the Tempest when you talk to them and I bet they would when out and about as well, just privately. There’s a line in one of the Vaults where Ryder starts talking to herself and then catches it--

--because she gets more and more accustomed to not being the only one in her head. SAM is always there. More than that, they always have your back, and are ready to feed you whatever you need to get the mission done. They’re not just a voice, they’re a tool; and they’re not just a tool, they’re a support system. Maybe Ryder knows just how intertwined SAM is becoming with theer body, and isn’t just aware, but welcomes it. The Ryders are a fucked up family who aren’t good at talking to each other, but SAM means you never have to be alone again. Someone is always there for you, protecting and watching out for you. 

So in the final mission, when SAM is ripped away from Ryder--it’s not just a physical effect. It’s like losing a part of your soul and a best friend and a, in some ways, a parent--because SAM learned through Alec Ryder before anyone else--and in other ways, a child--because Ryder is responsible for teaching SAM what it means to be a person and how to navigate the world. And I wish you could convey that emotional distress (even if less complex) in the game, and that Ryder was as worried for SAM’s well being as they are for Scott’s when they race to stop the Archon. Becuase in a lot of ways, I think my Ryder would have grown closer to same than she ever did with her brother.

Anyway, I wish the game hadaddressed these things more, but I also accept that like--this is a trope that I just am REALLY into and have been for ages. It’s not gonna be what everyone wants as the main focus, and it just wasn’t the big story they were trying to tell. At the beginning of the game the descriptions of SAM hyped me up so hard because they reminded me very strongly of my favorite short story, Silently And Very Fast by Catherynne Valente (which, if you haven’t read it, it’s really amazing and you can read the first part here (the other 3 parts are linked at the bottom of each chapter), or I can send a pdf of it if you want, it’s really good people read it please and then tell me about your Emotions). The story veered off not long into the plot of the game (I, along with many others, suspected for a while that SAM would turn out to be like the mother’s consciousness integrated into the AI or something) but I stayed pretty invested in it as a major part of my Ryder’s experience in Heleus. 

And like, I guess this would be something I’ll probably end up doing fic about now since the game didn’t give me as much as I wanted (and I only meant to write a short paragraph about it here and now i have like 9 whoops), so I’ll probably keep thinking about it with the rest of my Ryders. There’s so much potential there. Jade Ryder really grew attached to SAM, but there’s also potential for resentment there--SAM is always watching, Ryder essentially gives up any aspect of privacy in their life, even if SAM is polite enough not to comment on it.

wow this got away from me. anyway. that’s the game!!!!! i’m running around making sure i’ve talked to everyone still. I need to go check up on the colonies and stuff, but I did pretty much everything else before the last mission, so there’s not much to play. Just some assignments that don’t have navpoints. and then start thinking about my next Ryder!!! I played Jade Ryder as pretty logical and professional, with a tendency to open up more with people as she grew to know them better, though she struggled to be open/heartfelt when talking to Angara when her natural conversation style with them flopped hard at first. I think my next Ryder who I still need to name is gonna be way more casual/joke-y (tho i think Ryder is HILARIOUS no matter what, it’s so fun to have such a lighthearted protag) and probably more reckless and prone to following their whims. Gonna have to re-battle the CC though which I’m not so much looking forward to. 

oh also re: the second picture: i FUCKING LOVE that you beat the architect on Elaaden so hard it shoots itself into orbit and slowly decays and you can just sit there and watch it slowly fizzle in the cold vacuum of space

[wlkngonbrknglass-blog]

I get that I’m bothering him. I get that he’s mad that I brought other people involved. It’s because I had so many unanswered questions that he obviously didn't want to answer. He just never gave me the right chance. He gave me a chance; yes. right after the relationship when I was no where near ready for friendship. I was so deeply in love with him I didn’t know how to stop. Its like a train with no breaks making its way down a hill and wants to continue to roll after crashing and burning. 

I wish that once day, he recognizes what he did was childish and immature. I wish he could have communicated to me what he wanted. I was the complete opposite of him. I wanted him to know everything I was doing and why I was doing it so he could understand me. I tried to be as transparent as possible. I told him that I wish I hated him so it would be easier to stop loving him. He made it so hard. Seeing him everywhere on social media, on snap chat, on other people’s snap chat. I was jealous I wasn’t with them; when they were all hanging out together I wish  was there. So yes, I did unfriend him, I did delete him off of snap. I did it because it didn’t help me get over loving him. I don’t think he understands that. I think he thinks I did it to get back at him for hurting me. He says its irrational! 

And yes, he let me use his car to go home to SJ, and I did write him a PDF file about the things I would miss about him. and I did write him a letter back and front to him. I did it because I felt like he needed to know that he was loved. The worst feeling is to feel empty, to feel worthless and not thought about. I never want him to feel that way. So i made sure that he knew that he was loved and cared and thought about and that doing this wasn’t easy for me to stop loving him. I guess I did it because that’s how I would have wanted it. I would have wanted someone to tell me that they cared about me, that leaving me was hard to do, that I was important. 

I am just baffled by the extreme measures that he took. To block me on FB, to ignore my texts, to not answer calls, to block my number. Isn’t that extensive when you could have avoided it all by telling me you needed more space. My telling me that you needed more time. by telling me “ I will contact YOU when I am ready to do so.” 

It’s never a clean break. It never is. I just hoped that it would be. I guess we both needed time off from each other. And I think that now is that time. 

I want another chance to be his friend. I do. 

I want to do it correctly. Maybe later, when we have had some time to really reflect on this. Maybe when we’ve cleared all the emotions for one another. But definitely not anytime soon. Friendship after a break up is always hard. Just air it out like a fart you know XP HAHAHA! I just need to be patient, work on me. I was thinking when I get the shoes I got for him, because only HE would ever wear these shoes I got and he's the only I know with friggin 12 sized men shoes. When I get these shoes, when I have finally moved out of here. I will go to his place and I will wait patiently to run into him. Ill probably ask him to come sit down somewhere and try on the shoes. I hope he loves the shoes. I want it to be a peace offering that we could start fresh. Start off as friends this time. And then I will say, oh hey by the way, there are these 2 tables an ex left at my house and I don’t know where he went so did you want them? And it will be funny, and thats how our new friendship will start. 

I still need to talk to him about canceling my wifi bc its under his name. I need to talk to him about getting off my 24 hr fitness account bc ill probably get it at costco. Yeah. I want a fresh start, which is a lot to ask for. I know I am fully aware. But I just have this gut feeling that if i give it enough time, it will work. So I guess I should stay positive. Do me. Focus on me. 

I think we could have been awesome friends. I think I know him pretty well, even his dark sides to be good friends with him. IDK. thats just what I think. One day he will meet the perfect girl for him and I want to be there and say YES! She is great and you guys will be so fucking happy together because I know that I was never right for him.