#mass effect fandom critical

[mass-effect-anonymous]

CONFESSION:

After years of being naive and listening to the fandom, I finally did a complete romance with Kaidan when playing the legendary edition and ended up enjoying it. I really appreciated how Kaidan was the only companion that felt like Shepard's equal instead of a mentor relationship. Kaidan never took any moral guidance from Shepard. He never used Shepard as a therapist. And Kaidan was not a yes man and was not afraid to question Shepard. I also enjoyed Kaidan's dry sense of humor and how he offered his own advice and even provided a shoulder for Shepard.

I just appreciate having a character that is subtly layered and quiet. Not every character has to be loud, extroverted, and always in your face. I just related to him more and I think Kaidan balanced Shepard in a good way. If its one thing this play through has taught me is to never listen to everything this fandom says and to think for myself.

[sinsbymanka]

To add onto my last post about the dragon age and mass effect fandom in particular, both fandoms feature a canonically disabled protagonist (the Inquisitor loses their arm, Shepard dies and is rebuilt with cybernetic implants that are holding their flesh suit together) and disabled love interests (Garrus takes a rocket to the face resulting in permanent damage, Thane is chronically and terminally ill, Iron Bull has one eye and uses a knee brace, Tali is immunocompromised)

And yet, fandom as a whole by and large ignores the protagonist's disability entirely. Art of Inquisitors post-DAI feature them with banging fade arms or magic prosthetics. Nobody addresses maintenance of Shepard's prosthetics or any lingering pain from unhealed surgeries or the dysphoria of being in a rebuilt body.

Even the "popular" love interests disabilities are ignored and minimized. Garrus' scarring is sexy, but any pain that lingers is never mentioned. Tali's immunocompromised state can be handwaved to get her out of the suit keeping her alive for smut.

I have had people literally tell me they can't picture their Lavellan post-trespasser with one arm because "how would she hold her children" like amputees haven't ever had children. People say Shepard can't feel pain because she's a N7 and was trained to ignore it. Elves can't be fat because they are hunters and thus MUST be lean and skinny.

And anyway my point is those things above are such ridiculous statements that I have no choice to believe the people saying them know they're untrue, but said them anyway, because they didn't want to admit the truth.

Disabled bodies make you uncomfortable. Fat bodies make you uncomfortable. Disabled heroes make you uncomfortable. Fat heroes make you uncomfortable.

And I'm here to say that being uncomfortable is a sign of growth. It's not a bad thing. It just means you're recognizing your weaknesses and ready to grow.

So it's time to fucking grow already.

[hyperfixationstation128]

The first few pages of my new Mass Effect fancomic I've been working on forever! I hope you guys enjoy my art and want to see more of this story I've been working really hard on.

Disclaimer, this comic doesn't center around Commander Shepard, instead, it's about the journey of an original character of mine.

[sealeneee]

saw a person with a very dumb mass effect take get roasted in the notes. nature is healing y'all

[illusivesoul]

People when game characters have their own goals and motivations, aren't yes men to whatever the player says and don't change their views and opinions just cause the player wants them to

[chaosroid]

I think it's really interesting to see patterns of double standards crop up in fandom again when it comes to racist behaviour exhibited by certain characters. People love to point out Shadowheart's racist attitude towards Githyanki but give Lae'zel a pass for some reason, when she is arguably far more racist. Nobody talks about it, they just call her blunt and brutally honest, but that's really understating things. Girlie is straight up a Gith supremacist who, for all of act 1, believes everyone in Faerun are beneath her and inferior. She makes derogatory remarks about your physical appearance, is frequently condescending about your people, tries to force a Tiefling to bow before her, and says some pretty vile things like believing children deserve death if they are weak. All the result of indoctrination of course, but despite sharing so many similarities with Shadowheart, the latter is treated far more harshly.

Nevermind that it's later revealed that Shadowheart is wary of Gith bc they recently just slaughtered her entire team, making her the sole survivor. Can't say they didn't have it coming since they stole their artifact, but her hostility doesn't just come from nowhere. If you play as a Githyanki, she'll be nervous at first but very quickly warms up to you and admits she's misjudged you. Also considering that Githyanki are literal fascist raiders with the only thing preventing them from pillaging all of Faerun being their war with the Illithids, her wariness is hardly unfounded. We hear instances of Githyanki patrols slaughtering Tieflings as early as act 1. It doesn't make her comments any less wrong, but considering the context, it makes sense.

Honestly, it feels like a case of Shadowheart looking too similar to a human earning her more scrutiny, whereas the more alien characters tend to get away with racist behavior despite acting in the same manner, if not worse, excused by "cultural differences". The Mass Effect fandom treated Ashley Williams similarly, where being human earned her more scorn while the racist remarks said by the alien crewmates were brushed aside and barely acknowledged. Garrus tries to make Tali feel contrite about her race, Wrex and Grunt straight up call Salarians a slur multiple times and is fine with making the Rachni extinct, Mordin contributed to the culling of the Krogans, Javik thinks everyone who isn't Prothean are primitive, and fans cheer when Shepard calls a Hanar a "big stupid jellyfish", but Ashley's the most bigoted squadmate of that franchise apparently.

It's a fascinating phenomenon that I notice in many fantasy and sci-fi fandoms, and it's amusing seeing it happen to BG3's as well now.

[coruscantrhapsody]

Just going to drop by and say that this trend? Lately? of fan works involving Quinlan being The Dumb One in increasingly demeaning situations is uh.

Weird and racist

[rawliverandgoronspice]

oh nooooo not me forgetting to not go on zelda youtube and being forced to reckon with the sheer magnitude of its fanbase's unchecked racism

[major-alenko]

how many times do we need to go over this lol

his name is “KaidAn”. it’s been Kaidan for the whole and entire 16 years since ME1 first came out.

its only misspelled like twice throughout the entire ME trilogy if you are still out here talking about “kaiden alenko” in the year of our lord 2024 you’re either illiterate or being deliberately obtuse. shut tf up.

[kaltacore]

ngl the shitty treatment kaidan gets in the fandom baffles me. it's like everyone besides his hardcore fans just purposefully refuses to understand him as a character. which is okay i guess? I don't care about every single mf here either. but it's the first time I see people intentionally romancing a character, then dumping him for another dude and shitting on him for being mad and upset about this. I've even seen people getting into mass effect for the first time with this already formed attitude — kaidan sucks, I'm not interested in him but I'll still romance him for drama and absolutely will not try to understand why he acts and thinks the way he does. I'm not here to judge people for how they play silly little sci-fi dating simulator or whatever but that prejudice about kaidan seems to be a thing in fandom and it's just? so weird? because it's air-built and comes from the disgust formed beforehand and even though it's widely accepted? this really sucks man

[mass-effect-anonymous]

CONFESSION:

I won't be getting the next game if they canonize the Shepard X Liara romance and/or one of the characters is their "child".  People hated any sort of ending for the trilogy being canonized. The fact so many people are clamoring for this reeks of hypocrisy.  

THEY SHOULD NOT BE CANONIZING ANY OF THE ROMANCES. 

[alenkorra]

Something non-queer people in the Mass Effect fandom don't seem to understand is how meaningful Traynor, Steve and Kaidan's romances are *because* they're humans. I'm not saying this just to make them seem progressive, but it's true that seeing same sex couples at the forefront of a story doing healthy, normal things that couples do was really important representation for a lot of us. I know a lot of sapphics felt seen by Samantha saying she wanted to move in with Shepard and start a family with her, and personally as a queer man the scenes with Kaidan and male Shep at Apollo's and Shep's apartment were so heartwarming and the first time I ever felt represented in a videogame.

You don't have to love these romances but maybe don't be so quick to dismiss them as the "boring human romances" ?

[coffeeworldsasaki]

Shit blowing up before the game came out is what ruined mass effect Andromeda (WHICH WAS A FUCKING GOOD GAME) and if people do that again with dragon age I'm going to start killing. WE HAD ONE PERSON WHO DIDN'T WORK THERE FOR WHO REMEMBERS HOW MANY YEARS SAID THEY TRIED AI AND THAT IT WAS SO BAD HE DOESN'T THINK IT CAN EVER WORK AND PEOPLE START SAYING BIOWARE IS WRITING DA4 WITH AI. SHUT UP

[troythecatfish]

[gameguy20100]

Mass effect fandom logic.

Tali: The geth are evil, and we need to wipe them out. Yes, my people created slaves and tried to kill them when they developed free will. But that's their fault for not dying when we tried to kill them all.

Mordin: The genophage was the right call. The Krogan can't be trusted to have an unchecked birth rate. 1000s of children being born dead is preferable to extinction.

Ashley: I don't know if the other races have humans' best interests at heart. I mean, they'd sacrifice us to save themselves if they had to right?

Fandom: Ashley is a racist. I'm glad we get to kill her on Virmire.

[moisthalforcboy]

I have so many tiny pet peeves and they’re all 100% my problem EXCEPT people who tag character/ship hate without learning how to spell a character’s name. Like it’s just poor tag etiquette to not double check so that people who don’t want to read about characters they enjoy getting bashed. Even if it’s not like HATE hate, it’s annoying.