#anyway something something colonialism is an ongoing practice

[professionalowl]

african archaeology is one of the academic subdisciplines of all time because its "senior circle" is niche and homogeneous (i.e. mostly white, although as far as i can tell the demographics are shifting) enough that they all know each other and so are intimately keyed in to each others' drama but they're also all researching one of the most fraught continents on the planet, in terms of its relationship to archaeology, so it's a real coin-toss as to whether your scandal-per-topic is going to be "mcintosh divorce arc" or "the oxford radiocarbon lab used to date things for the illegal antiques trade for money"

#(false divide proposed btw these are both djenne-jeno related afaik) #i don't have a source for the second one but i've been desperately trying to find one (this was in the 80s/90s btw they've stopped now) #so for now it's hearsay from the guy who taught us african arch #he LOVED anecdotes and also giving his unsolicited opinions on everything. #i do not like him for what i feel are justified reasons but he was often very funny and we got along okay #though i think i learned as much about specific africanists as i did the actual continent #anyway something something colonialism is an ongoing practice #archposting #unrebloggable for unsubstantiated information (nonetheless held to be true by trusted informant) that i don't really want spreading

[inqorporeal]

Hi! Sending this as an Ask instead of reblogging the post that prompted it because I’m worried that a) I may come off as antisemitic or just trying to Start Shit, or b) even if I don’t my question might prompt it from someone else. I want to start by making it clear: I am not Jewish, and also I am trying to be respectful while learning, so if I mess up I would greatly appreciate it if you have the capacity to tell me what I need to change.

Anyway.

You posted about Zionism and its definition in Christian vs Jewish contexts. I knew about the end-of-days antisemitism but the Jewish take was new to me. I was hoping you might be able to clarify it a bit? You mentioned that it’s about the “simple right to exist, with their own culture intact”.

I am 100% in favor of this!

But, you also said something about the concept of a nation, as distinct from a state. Their “own claim to the land of their faith’s origin” bit doesn’t make sense to me AS PART OF the right for ongoing existence and culture. Would you be able to elaborate at all?

I might be totally misinterpreting the post. I read the idea of them having a “claim” to the land as inherently meaning that other people don’t and shouldn’t be there, but I think that might be my background (Aussie, so colonial history, and people continue to get real butthurt at the suggestion that Indigenous Australians have any kind of claim to the land we’re on, because I think it’s understood as an “us or them” thing)

Again, I’m not trying to start anything or take your words out of context or anything. Please feel free to ignore this ask and/or block, or to respond either publicly or privately, whatever you feel is most appropriate and will protect your wellbeing! Thanks for your time, sorry this Ask is a bit long!

(Link to the original post in question)

Thanks for asking! I actually had a paragraph on this in my initial post before deciding to keep that one simple and on-topic. I'm not Jewish myself, so my own understanding is very broad and general. I welcome anyone who wishes to fill in the gaps or correct anything I get wrong.

Simply put, Jews have as much claim to land in the historic Levant as Native American and First Nations tribes have to land in the Americas, as Māori have in Aotearoa. It's the land of their cultural origin just as much as it is the Palestinians'.

The concept of Land Back is a difficult one to address in even the most optimal of situations. Human history is a long list of migrations, conflicts, invasions, and resettlements; one people's foundation is often built literally upon the bones of another. State boundaries have shifted over and over again throughout history, often without the consent of the people who actually live there.

Who has the right to the land? Who has the right to govern it? There are no easy answers to these questions without sliding into hypocrisy.

This is why there are many proponents of a single-state solution: in theory, if both Jews and Palestinians have their origins in the same place, they should seek a way to coexist in parity. In practice, this is rather more contentious. As with the differences between Zionism and Evangelical Zionism, the matter of a cultural connection to the land is easily misunderstood because Christian culture and Jewish culture view land rights in entirely different ways.

The difference between, for example, me going to Germany now with 200-year old property records to claim the right to build a house there, and diaspora Jews returning to the land of Israel, is that I have no cultural connection to my ancestors' land, while a key aspect of Jewish culture is an eventual return to Jerusalem. The cultural root of European-colonized nations is one of total assimilation to a culture determined by historical Christian ideals, where land is viewed solely as a financial transaction and source of wealth, and my family's only connection to Germany lingers in a paternal surname that's been mangled beyond recognition. The theoretical property records I mentioned do not exist and if they ever did, I have no legally recognized right to claim them (and if I asked people living there now to leave, I'd get laughed at). The idea of a cultural connection to the land my ancestors once lived on is an alien one, which is why it's difficult for many people from European-heritage cultures to understand its importance.

Jewish culture has a very different relationship with its history than Christian culture does. Judaism views Israel in three parts: the state (government), the nation (people and culture), and the home (the land of cultural origin). Just as indigenous groups have cultural connections to parts of the land, just as Muslims revere Mecca and have a culture of pilgrimage, so Israel is to Jewish culture. If we're going to recognize the importance of one culture's local connections, we need to recognize them all.

The transactional nature of property in Christian culture -- which forms the foundation of capitalism, which is now dominating the global economy -- is why we often view Land Back as an Us Or Them issue. It doesn't have to be that way, but it's very difficult to conceptualize a third way that treats all parties with respect.

Like I said before, there are no easy answers. Human geography is a messy field full of metaphorical land mines; just when you think you've come up with a good general solution, you get hit by variables you didn't account for. We can't even say that it's a matter that should be addressed solely by the parties who have direct concerns and everyone else needs to butt out, because some parties that hold power have no interest in compromise (I'm thinking specifically of the US government's handling of indigenous concerns, but that's far from the only imbalanced conflict ongoing), and because our global economy is so deeply intertwined that a conflict in one part of the world affects other parts.

(This is why the United Nations was founded -- to try to resolve such conflicts before they erupt. A noble ideal, although the UN often fails to live up to it because of international power politics.)

I'm trying to remain as neutral as possible in these posts, but I do think that the US's proprietary attitude towards Israel -- which is in very large part due to the Evangelical concept of Zionism (which, as I explained in the previous post, is creepy and antisemitic) -- is not helping the situation at all.

I am not qualified to opine a solution -- and as an individual with zero personal stakes in the matter, my opinion counts for nothing except with regards to the US's involvement. But I hope this helps you understand what I meant!

#man i used 'culture' a lot in here but it really is a cultural issue #long post

[picklesquash]

Hey dude! I have a question about the Mutter Museum controversy.

I certainly understand reviewing the exhibits to see what can be done to minimize the ongoing damage of colonialism. (Indigenous remains could be repatriated for example.) But what would happen if they decided to take down an exhibit of suspicious/unpleasant origins that doesn't have a clear origin?

For example, I saw a lot of skulls in the wall of skulls that have plaques that say something like: "Italy. Unknown Adult Male. Highwayman. Hanged 1832." Would they somehow try to track down that person's last living relative? Would they respectfully bury the remains somewhere? Would they just take them off public view and put them in labeled boxes in a storeroom?

Is it considered bad in the museum world to display anything that was probably obtained by grave robbing or buying up the bodies of dead criminals/destitute people who died of illness in a hospital? Is it because it's seen as condoning those practices, or because it's just disrespectful to the people who didn't get to consent that their bodies be experimented on and gawked at for 100 years?

Anyway, sorry this is a super long ask. I live in Philly now and there's a lot of public buzz around this so I'm interested in your take as a museum professional. Feel free to answer/not answer as convenient!!

Hey bud, it's good to hear from you!!! I want to disclaim that I'm not the foremost expert in any of this and it's actually a relatively new front of discussion in the museum world, but you pretty much got it!

The example you gave, an unnamed person who was hanged for a crime they may or may not have committed (who's to say with no further evidence)- that would be an instant alert for me that this person almost certainly didn't consent to having their body displayed forever in a museum thousands of miles away and hundreds of years later. I think all three things you listed: tracking down descendants, reburying the remains, or "burying" them in storage- are all real possibilities.

Unfortunately, the most likely is "burying" the remains in a collections storage room somewhere (basically hiding- my personal opinion again, but I also usually don't see the purpose in keeping something accessioned in a museum's collection if the public can't interact with it in some way). As you can probably tell, I don't think it's the the best solution, but arguably slightly better than being out on exhibit. Next would be reburying- though that gets complicated because where, when, and who's involved? Hunting down descendants or relatives is the best in my opinion, but also the toughest- especially because it seems like there'd be an awful lot of research or DNA work involved in the case you listed. Still, this usually ends up crossing over with reburying, especially in the cases I've seen with Native remains.

As for your second question about grave robbing or handling the remains of people who were criminals, poor, etc- yes, I think it's safe to say the growing attitude in the museum world is that it's not a cool thing to do. This definitely wasn't always the attitude, and I think that's part of the problem ongoing with the Mütter right now. I would say the arguments around it tend to fall into the second camp of not having consent- in my time as a museum curator, I used to be unable to display like...paintings and other things just because someone back in the day didn't get the right paperwork (written consent) filled out by the donor. The same principals apply for human remains, although I'd argue to an even higher standard considering they're....you know, people.

To wrap up my ramble, I think it's okay when people deliberately donate their bodies for the purpose of display and exhibition. That's their decision to make, and if the museum agrees at the time they make an agreement, there you go! But I think the heart of this whole issue really lies with the fact that for most of history, the bodies that were being displayed or dissected or used for medical education were stolen in one way or another. So many of them belonged to people who suffered injustices and had their voices silenced or suppressed in life, so who are we to do that in death as well? I think there's much better ways to tell their stories than to deprive them of proper rest or burial.

#grace i'm so sorry i can't figure out how to answer this privately #i think tumblr is being weird and changing stuff (again) #let me know if you don't want this up here #i think you asked some really fantastic and valuable questions though #this is literally all i wanted from wading into the trenches on this issue......reasonable conversation lol #museums #museum ethics #mutter museum

[blessedarethebinarybreakers]

I have a theodicy-adjacent question if that's alright. How can I offer prayers of thanksgiving without implying that God "likes me better" than They like other people? For example, I often want to thank God for keeping my loved ones safe through this pandemic, but it feels weird when so many have lost dear ones. I've learned a lot about how to wrestle with God through your ministry, but how to bring your positive feelings to God without toeing the line of a prosperity gospel-esque mindset?

Anon, I feel you! Some point a few years ago I had a similar unsettling realization. I knew that gratitude is important not only for our relationship with God, but for our psychological wellbeing — yet I felt so guilty for thanking God for things i knew others didn’t have. Did attributing the good things in my life to God imply that God wasn’t with those who lacked those good things? 

I brought that guilt and discomfort to God (and still do, whenever it arises anew). asked Them to help me sit with it, accept it, and then transform it into something more fruitful.

guilt transformed to motivation. discomfort transformed to commitment. what i was left with was an understanding that i did not need to stop my prayers of thanksgiving, but to expand them.

i take time to really feel and express my gratitude for the abundance i experience. and then i ask God to help my gratitude move me to a desire for others to experience that abundance too. I ask for guidance in how i can help make that abundance happen in the the lives of those around me and far from me. 

___

i also make time for lament. many of us are taught how to ask God for things and how to thank God for things, but grief and lament are not taught. however, thanksgiving and lament are not opposites, but work together. they enrich one another. we need to take time for both.

a book that helped me embrace lament was Barbara Brown Taylor’s Learning to Walk in the Dark. You can read quotes and whole passages from it in my tag over here.

one of my favorite songs/psalms to sing/pray in lament is this one. The psalmist empowers us to question God, to ask why and how and when? and then the psalmist leads us to praise God anyway — to praise in spite of and with our doubts and our questions. 

when we look at all the pain in the world — in our own lives, the lives of loved ones, the lives of those we don’t even know, and in the struggling pulse of all Creation — we feel all sorts of things. Distress, despair, anger, grief. But some of us are afraid to bring those feelings to God. We’d rather avoid the feelings in general, repress them, not sit inside them for a while. (And certainly, we should not wallow in the bad all the time.) Bt when we dare to assign intentional time to sit in those feelings, God sits in them with us. 

And there is a strange thanksgiving in there, too — that we aren’t alone in the lament. We come to see that it is true that God does not will suffering upon any one of us — that the fact that sometimes i experience blessing while you struggle, or you find success while i go without, is not because God is choosing which happy few to bless that day. God really does will abundant life for all, and grieves when sin (individual, systemic, the rot that eats at this world) blocks that abundance for anyone. 

___

in continuing to make time to feel and express gratitude, and then to make time to lament and to both desire and participate in abundance for others, thanksgiving does not elevate me above others as “better” or “more blessed” than they are. instead, gratitude reminds me of how interconnected we are with one another. In the Body we all share, “If one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it” (1 Cor 12:26).

___

When abundance wins out in spite of sin, we rejoice! When it is we who enjoy that abundance, our gratitude should not lead to smugness or self-congratulations, but to humility. it should shape us, move us to bring similar abundance to others.

A book that has really helped me understand that concept is Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass (which you can read online for free).

Christian texts have told me that the appropriate response to all God’s gifts is gratitude, but it’s Kimmerer’s book that helped me digest and embody just what that means. We acknowledge abundance, and we use that gratitude to connect us to the giver, and to others to whom that giver would also share Their gift.

Here’s one passage from her chapter “The Gift of Strawberries,” starting on page 33 of the webpage linked above:

Even  now,  after  more  than  fifty  Strawberry  Moons,  finding  a patch  of  wild strawberries  still  touches  me  with  a  sensation  of surprise, a feeling of unworthiness and gratitude for the generosity and kindness that comes with an unexpected gift all wrapped in red and green. “Really? For me? Oh, you shouldn’t have.” After fifty years  they  still  raise  the  question  of  how  to respond  to  their generosity.  Sometimes  it  feels  like  a  silly  question  with  a very simple answer: eat them. 

But I know that someone else has wondered these same things. In  our Creation stories  the  origin  of  strawberries  is  important. Skywoman’s  beautiful daughter,  whom  she  carried  in  her  womb from Skyworld, grew on the good green earth, loving and loved by all the other beings. But tragedy befell her when she died giving birth to her twins, Flint and Sapling. Heartbroken, Skywoman buried her beloved daughter in the earth. Her final gifts, our most revered plants, grew from her body. The strawberry arose from her heart.

In  Potawatomi,  the  strawberry  is ode  min, the  heart  berry.  We recognize them as the leaders of the berries, the first to bear fruit.

Strawberries first shaped my view of a world full of gifts simply scattered at your feet. A gift comes to you through no action of your own, free, having moved toward you without your beckoning. It is not a reward; you cannot earn it, or call it to you, or even deserve it.  And  yet  it  appears.  Your  only  role  is  to  be open-eyed  and present.  Gifts  exist  in  a  realm  of  humility  and  mystery—as with random acts of kindness, we do not know their source.

...Gifts  from  the  earth  or  from  each  other  establish  a  particular relationship,  an  obligation  of  sorts  to  give,  to  receive,  and  to reciprocate. The field gave to us, we gave to my dad, and we tried to give back to the strawberries. When the berry season was done, the plants would send out slender red runners to make new plants.

Because I was fascinated by the way they would travel over the ground looking for good places to take root, I would weed out little patches  of  bare  ground  where  the  runners  touched  down.  Sure enough, tiny little roots would emerge from the runner and by the end of the season there were even more plants, ready to bloom under  the  next  Strawberry  Moon.  No  person  taught us  this—the strawberries  showed  us.  Because  they  had  given  us  a  gift, an ongoing relationship opened between us.

...It’s funny how the nature of an object—let’s say a strawberry or a pair  of  socks—is  so  changed  by  the  way  it  has  come  into  your hands, as a gift or as a commodity. The pair of wool socks that I buy at the store, red and gray striped, are warm and cozy. I might feel grateful for the sheep that made the wool and the worker who ran  the  knitting  machine.  I  hope  so.  But  I  have no inherentobligation  to  those  socks  as  a  commodity,  as  private  property. There is no bond beyond the politely exchanged “thank yous” with the clerk. I have paid for them and our reciprocity ended the minute I handed her the money. The exchange ends once parity has been established, an equal exchange. They become my property. I don’t write a thank-you note to JCPenney.

But what if those very same socks, red and gray striped, were knitted  by  my grandmother  and  given  to  me  as  a  gift?  That changes everything. A gift creates ongoing relationship. I will write a thank-you note. I will take good care of them and if I am a very gracious grandchild I’ll wear them when she visits even if I don’t like them. When it’s her birthday, I will surely make her a gift in return. As  the  scholar  and  writer  Lewis  Hyde  notes,  “It  is  the  cardinal difference  between  gift  and  commodity  exchange  that  a  gift establishes a feeling-bond between two people.”

That  is  the  fundamental  nature  of  gifts:  they  move,  and  their value increases with their passage. The fields made a gift of berries to  us  and  we  made  a  gift  of  them  to  our  father.  The  more something is shared, the greater its value becomes. This is hard to grasp  for  societies  steeped  in notions  of  private  property,  where others are, by definition, excluded from sharing. Practices such as posting  land  against  trespass,  for  example,  are expected  and accepted  in  a  property  economy  but  are  unacceptable  in  an economy where land is seen as a gift to all.

Lewis  Hyde  wonderfully  illustrates  this  dissonance  in  his exploration of the “Indian giver.” This expression, used negatively today as a pejorative for someone who gives something and then wants to have it back,  actually  derives from  a  fascinating  cross- cultural misinterpretation between an indigenous culture operating in a gift economy and a colonial culture predicated on the concept of private property. When gifts were given to the settlers by the Native  inhabitants,  the  recipients  understood  that  they  were valuable and were intended to be retained. Giving them away would have been an affront. But the indigenous people understood the value of the gift to be based in reciprocity and would be affronted if the  gifts  did  not  circulate  back  to  them.  

Many  of  our  ancient teachings counsel that whatever we have been given is supposed to be given away again. From the viewpoint of a private property economy, the “gift” is deemed  to  be  “free”  because  we  obtain  it  free  of  charge,  at  no cost. But in the gift economy, gifts are not free. The essence of the gift is that it creates a set of relationships. The currency of a gift economy is, at its root, reciprocity. In Western thinking, private land is understood to be a “bundle of rights,” whereas in a gift economy property has a “bundle of responsibilities” attached.

...

In  material  fact,  Strawberries  belong  only  to  themselves.  The exchange relationships  we  choose  determine  whether  we  share them  as  a  common gift  or  sell  them  as  a  private  commodity. A great  deal  rests  on  that choice.

For  the  greater  part  of  human history, and in places in the world today, common resources were the rule. But some invented a different story, a social construct in which everything is a commodity to be bought and sold. The market economy  story  has  spread  like  wildfire,  with  uneven  results  for human well-being and devastation for the natural world. But it is just a story we have told ourselves and we are free to tell another, to reclaim the old one.

One  of  these  stories  sustains  the  living  systems  on  which  we depend. One of these stories opens the way to living in gratitude and amazement at the richness and generosity of the world. One of these stories asks us to bestow our own gifts in kind, to celebrate our  kinship  with  the  world.  We  can  choose.  If all  the  world  is  a commodity,  how  poor  we  grow.  When  all  the  world  is  a gift  in motion, how wealthy we become.

#gratitude #prayer tag #prayers of thanksgiving #prayers of lament #thanksgiving #lament #pandemic mention #braiding sweetgrass

[reveliohq]

( * 💀 / incoming owl ) —  you're not wrong, though. i am a person of color who is very disconnected from my heritage and culture because of colonization. i have no connection to my history and therefore have a "white-passing name" (which is a stupid narrative anyway, jsyk, the idea of being white-passing is colonial in itself, it gives in to the "not racialized enough" narrative)... im not here to argue, i just want to say i think that this is a very big issue which goes above and beyond the rpc, and it shouldnt lay with you guys to be responsible for it.

      hi, anon, and thank you for contributing your perspective to this very complex issue -- we received sentiments similar to yours on our anonymous google form, and we’re doing our absolute best to accommodate all of the perspectives, suggestions, and other concerns that have been brought to light and promptly fix our mistakes. we understand that this is an important, nuanced topic with serious real-world implications, and as both admins are white americans, the guidance we’ve anonymously received has been invaluable in making sure that this rp is adjusted accordingly to be a genuinely diverse space for everyone rather than a superficial one. we hope that our proposed changes and continued efforts to offer transparent lines of communication with both members and non-members alike will make a difference in allowing writers of color to feel safe and valued in a universe that was so brutally lacking adequate representation in canon. due to our lived experiences, we will never be the perfect authority on how to best enact this, but please be assured that the issue is one we do not take lightly whatsoever. that being said, we agree that this is an issue that goes far larger than the rpc or something we can fix in a single day, but rather an ongoing, mindful practice and educational effort on the admins’ end to commit to accurate representation and inclusivity. additionally, the last thing we want in these ongoing discussions is to potentially fatigue or trigger our members of color with what could evolve into anonymous arguments about heavy experiences they are forced to live through everyday, or to feel as if their existence is being put under a microscope and/or up for debate, so we encourage any further comments to be directed to our anonymous google form. it is a permanent fixture of revelio that will be posted within our discord server and on our guidelines page for easy access and will be checked frequently.

       once again, we apologize for any of the mistakes, ignorance, and implicit biases we’ve displayed -- we are always learning, listening, and wanting to educate ourselves accordingly. thank you to everybody who has taken time out of their day to contact us, we can’t stress enough how helpful it has been in improving revelio. we greatly appreciate the fact that our members are feeling comfortable enough with us to want to hold us accountable when we mess up! we know that it is not an obligation, especially for our members of color, to do that. so for that, we are enormously thankful and indebted.

much love <3

#revelio.admin

[dgcatanisiri]

Welcome to DG’s Listing of Wish These DLC Existed, where I theorize, speculate, and just kinda generally throw ideas at the wall about DLCs for games I love that never happened and never will happen, but damn, I’d like to see them anyway.

Because I have ideas, I can’t get them made as mods, I don’t have time to make them into fic, and they’re never going to happen anyway, so why not put them up in a public place? After all, they’re tie ins to games I have no control over anyway, so it’s not like I’ll ever make money off of them anyway. And, as I’m not bound by any hardware limitations in terms of crafting ideas, or production cycles dictating when the game’s endpoint is, these can and do go on a great deal longer than the standard lifespan of a game.

A review of the format: There will be a name for the DLC, a brief synopsis, a reference to when this hypothetical DLC would become available/if and when it becomes unavailable, and then an expansion/write up of the ideas going in to them. Some ideas will have more expansion than others, because I’ve just plainly put more thought into them - in a lot of cases, I wrote them down just on the basis of ‘this idea seems pretty cool,’ and then gave them more context later on.

Feedback is welcome! Like an idea? Don’t like an idea? I welcome conversation and interaction on these ideas. Keep it civil, remember that these are just one person’s ideas, we can discuss them. Perhaps you’ll even help inspire a part two for these write ups! Because I do reserve the right to come up with more ideas in the future - these are the ideas that I’ve had to this point, but the whole reason this series exists is because I come up with new ideas for old stories.

So I HAVE actually been working on my ongoing series of hypothetical DLC to games that I love over the last year (it was the end of January 2020 when my last one of these got posted, this is going up at the beginning of May 2021). Which, yes, some is pandemic related because *screams* but... I was looking over what I’ve been working on, and realized that I was at about the combined length of my first two of these in my present examination, and I was only about a third of the way through the ideas that I had. I could either keep going and do these all at once in a massive post in like another year or two, or I could break it up into chunks.

So instead of waiting, this is going to be Part 1 of (I hope) 3 in an examination at ideas and possibilities of what additional content could have been made for Mass Effect 2, which for some is considered the best of the series. Me, I’m a little more critical of it. To me, this game is a textbook example of bridge syndrome, of the plot spinning its wheels to hold off on the payoff until the third part of the trilogy - the Collectors are, in practice, an entirely separate threat from the Reapers, even acknowledging the connection in the plot. We see this in the impact that the ME2 characters have in the next game - most are in side missions, all perform roles in the plot that literally can have them swapped out, even if it’s to the ultimate detriment of your War Asset count.

So in my mind, there’s a lot of room to make these DLCs, these glimpses into further areas of the world of Mass Effect at large. Because for me, what ME2 SHOULD have been was about making the alliances with the galaxy at large, rather than the big set piece of the Suicide Mission. We got some of this in ME2 proper, but that’s where the core of my focus and attention is with these DLCs.

Admittedly, I am aware of the difficulties of working around ME2 having both optional companions (Thane, Samara, and Tali don’t have to be recruited at all, Zaeed and Kasumi are DLC, many missions are available before you necessarily pick up certain companions...) and the ability to hold off on doing the DLC until after the Suicide Mission, where any or all of your companions may end up dying. However, for simplicity’s sake (because these things are long enough as it is without having a dozen variations apiece), we will assume that all companions are recruited and alive for the sake of plot advancement. Minds greater than mine can figure out how these would work without a given character – me, I tend to clear out the quest log before the Suicide Mission (aside from Lair of the Shadow Broker and Arrival, both of which are minimal on the squadmates from the rest of the game) and rarely let myself lose someone on the Suicide Mission, and since these are my ideas, we’re working in my framework.

Also, timeline note: Like ME2′s actual DLC, the fact that these would unlock at certain points in the game’s timeline does not necessarily reflect when they would best be played in the in-game timeline. Like Lair of the Shadow Broker and Arrival are (as I mentioned above), at least in my personal timeline, post-Suicide Mision content. BUT, they both become available to play after Horizon. Just because they unlock at certain points in the plot, that doesn’t mean that they best fit the timeline in that point. It was just a convenient way to organize things in my notes. So there will be ones that unlock at plot point A, but probably play best after plot point B. Players would be able to decide where they fit as it works for them.

Ghost of the Machine

A phenomenon is spreading across colonies in Citadel space. Machine cultists are cropping up on planets. Shortly thereafter, these colonies go dead quiet – often overrun by husks. To Admiral Anderson, this sounds like Reaper tech, and there’s only one person who he trusts to investigate the truth of the machine cults...

(Post-Freedom’s Progress)

So back to the machine cultists. In our last installment, there was Evolution, which featured them. Here, though, we’re looking at something that kinda resolves this little storyline. Y’know, since ME3 isn’t really going to have the time for this sort of thing. Which, sure, I’m saying this becomes unlocked before you can unlock this game’s machine cultist sidequest, but shush – just because it unlocks at this point doesn’t mean it has to be played at this point. This time, it’s not just about learning about the problem, but we’re also going to see what we can do to understand it, especially since we’re now acknowledging that this is a recurring problem within the universe and maybe we want to find a proper solution to it before stumbling blindly into it gets more and more people killed.

So this takes Shepard to a planet that’s making its first steps at colonization, yet again (because I am trying to be cognizant of what practical realities exist in the game development, even acknowledging that this is a hypothetical thing anyway – early colonization means limited extras wandering around out in the open and a self-contained area to play around in). Those seem to be the places where these devices mainly get uncovered, so that’s why this is here.

Of course, we have a situation where the devices are known about, so there’s an immediate lockdown, and the reason that Shepard and crew are getting sent out is because Reaper experience is needed – in the event that this colony can have anyone saved, who is it and how do we get them out safely?

I kinda look at this as revealing the process – the previous encounters were the parts that told us the existence of the metaphorical monster of this story, here we’re getting to see the “monster” properly in action. And I feel like this should be about also introducing some of what will become ME3’s foot soldiers among the Reaper armies – we know about the husks from ME1, now we’re going to encounter another for the first time. Probably the marauders. Given that they and the cannibals (who are so numerous in part because of the batarian worlds being first in the invasion path) are the most numerous in ME3 aside from husks, we should at least get to see them be pre-established because of their involvement ahead of time – they don’t get any proper introduction as is in ME3, just accepted as being there.

The honest general idea in this one is tying off this thread that was seemingly built, by way of being a repeated thread in both ME1 and ME2, but goes entirely unmentioned in ME3. Obvious reasons are obvious, but that’s why these hypothetical DLCs “exist,” to address things that the games didn’t have time for. (And that’s a big part of a lot of these, so... buckle up.)

Obviously, we have some of the supplementary material to work off of here – I’m specifically thinking of the Illusive Man’s comic series, Evolution. (Side note, TIM’s involvement there should probably also be part of the reason he’s quick to send Shepard in here – he knows what these artifacts can do.) You can read the wiki page as easily as this, but to quickly detail the important part, we know what these are through them, artifacts meant to ease the way for the eventual arrival of the Reapers by doing the huskifying work ahead of time, without the need for things like the Dragon’s Teeth (which... I want to bring these into this in some fashion, considering they seemed to have importance in ME1, but as the numbers of husks increased in the later games, they fell by the wayside – ME3 claimed that they were basically just to increase a subject’s adrenaline and spread the Reaper tech through the victim’s body quicker from the fear of impalement, and that seems like a lot of effort for little reward, since nothing indicates a way to come back after infection anyway).

So why are these on far-flung colonies, especially when the husks definitely don’t have the mental capacity to control ships and spread out that way?

Since, again, there’s no way to come back after infection anyway, that’s going to be one of the core questions. This seems like a highly inefficient way to set about conquering the galaxy. Why spread this if there’s no reliable method of getting it to go beyond any singular world? (Obviously, the original idea seems to be a) BioWare shock value and b) something to horrify the audience with no reason attached – so it’s time to add that reason). What is the purpose?

So that’s going to be a running thread, probably the major subplot of the story. Obviously, though, the first priority is Shepard trying to escape getting caught up in this colony that is descending into Reaper control. Also, since I said we’re introducing the marauders here, I think we need a turian contact on the ground – I almost said make them a female turian, introduce them to the world of Mass Effect well ahead of the DLC for ME3 (a-HEM!), but I also think that we’ve got another situation of seeing them get infected and die as a result – it IS a consistent point in this series that coming back from Reaper infections Is Not Done. And repeating that here makes it a consistent theme, considering Nyreen.

So while I still say there should be female turians making their appearance among the turians of the colony, our turian buddy is going to be a guy, just for the sake of not stuffing another named female turian in the fridge. I’ll get to a more proper introduction of a female turian later, promise. (And, I like to imagine, with the number of DLCs I’m writing up here, there’s some kind of ability to retroactively introduce female turians into the crowds in the base game as a “patch” through at least one of them, as well as into ME3 proper... Hey, this is all fantasy as it is, let me have that one.)

Anyway, the turian contact is going to be frosty with Shepard – he (I don’t have a name for him at this point) not only doesn’t trust Cerberus, he was also friends with Saren, making him distrust Shepard. While Saren was a traitor, it’s got an element of ‘guilt by association’ to have had close ties to him, so Shepard’s kind of a living embodiment of the hit to his good name. Even if he didn’t do what he did because of Shepard specifically, they’re still associated. But he is still on a mission and Shepard is here and willing to assist him, so...

That said, he’s a Cerberus contact – Cerberus may be human first, but, given the ME2 crew, they can cultivate non-human contacts and aid, and under the circumstances of this colony, being a joint endeavor of humans and turians (probably throw in some callbacks to the last edition of these hypothetical DLCs and mention Ambassador Goyle and the Planet of Peace story). He’s been influenced by Cerberus operatives because hey, it’s good for humanity and turians to make peace if there’s a greater threat, right? Shepard meets with him on the outskirts of the colony proper – in order not to be influenced, they’re acting as much outside of the colony as possible. (Come to think about it, it might be a good idea to make recruiting Mordin a pre-req for this, at least handwave him having come up with a measure meant to protect from Indoctrination and the effects of these artifacts.)

The artifact is already influencing colonists, of course, and our turian friend is ready to write them off immediately – they’ve read the reports, and indoctrination can’t be reversed. I picture a brief discussion about how horrible indoctrination is as a weapon, making the Reapers enemies into their servants, and so warping their minds and perceptions that they’d never be able to trust that any thought they have afterwards is their own, even if they could be saved. Because seriously, that’s one of the most unsettling things for me in this franchise.

The idea is, of course, to get in to where this artifact is and destroy it unseen. That probably means a stealth segment through this colony – honestly, do it like the batarian base in Arrival, I don’t think that it would be so bad. That offered some nice variation, if a little spare on interactable things. Here are going to be some interactable things, things you can get to if you’re good, pay enough attention to the line of sights and such, but will still risk discovery.

Those interactable things are going to be some of the background of the artifact and what’s the whole deal – y’know, codex stuff, things that aren’t essential to the story but good background. Lay some groundwork for the idea of what the Reapers want out of these things being left behind.

Stealth section comes before the inevitable action section, of course. Here, the artifact is in underground caverns (like normal) and our turian buddy sets out to make some quick scans, get the information they need. And, of course, it activates at his approach, zapping him with energy. He tries to shake off any effects but... Well, I already said that he was gonna get infected and die.

So here’s where we start seeing the husks show up. It’d be really nifty if we could get them in varying states of their evolution (or devolution, depending how you look at it), some people just having glowing eyes, others being full on huskified.

And, of course, our turian contact is now in the process of becoming a marauder. I’m thinking we’re having something of the same thing as with Saren here – now that the Reapers made contact with him, they’re framing him as their “herald,” the one who’s going to act as their instrument. Shepard rightly gets to point out the comparison, which does at least get some hesitation – he’s being indoctrinated, is in the process of becoming a pure Reaper tool, but isn’t all the way there yet, the process isn’t 100% immediate.

Also I figure this is a good time to really establish (in terms of ME2’s plot) that the Reapers are so interested in Shepard and why. Like, yeah, sure, we do get Harbinger’s whole thing, but that’s not really a dialogue where we get to ask questions. It’s not even an interrogation where Harbinger demands information. Harbinger just spouts out dialogue of “this hurts you” and such. That’s not really telling us anything. So, yeah, there’s the basic “Shepard defeated a Reaper,” but hey, let’s just get a little more out of it.

I mean, we can intuit what Shepard means for the Reapers, sure, but if it’s important enough to be a major motivation, it’s important enough to say outright, you know? So Shepard is a pinnacle for this cycle – they killed a Reaper, delayed the advancement of the cycle for a few years, that’s a bit of a big deal when it comes before the harvest proper starts up – and the Reapers (like Leviathan will later) want to better understand what makes them tick. If this is unique to Shepard or the human condition, and, if it’s the later, how to break this down to its basic chemical composition and make it their own.

Turian buddy is also here to mouthpiece the explanation for what the Reapers even expect to gain from this. Slaves who can’t operate the mechanisms that they’ll be using are poor servants. I figure it’s as much an intimidation matter as anything – prompt the effective burning of a colony without deeper investigation, sow some fear about the unknown and keep people staying to the comfortable and familiar areas of the space that they live in, corral them in the familiar patterns. It’s a plan with the intent of intimidation – it isn’t until the harvest that they need the servants, so until then, they just want the borders firmly established.

Seems simple enough, sure, but this is still a mystery as far as the game proper is concerned, and I am trying to work within the established structure of the trilogy, rather than come up with some massive reveal that changes our understanding of everything – if I WERE just going to rewrite the franchise, I could do that, instead of writing up synopses of add-ons to the main game, y’know?

Of course Shepard’s gonna get free – I’m thinking that it’s a rescue effort by some of the other crew on the Normandy (because it really bugs me that, when the game is focused around Shepard gathering up the “Dirty Dozen” for their “Suicide Squad” (look, I had to get that out of my system), they only take two members out on missions at a time, so hey, look, they get up to something while Shepard’s busy doing the dirty work. This being ME2, we have to shoot our way out even further to get back to the artifact, which is where our turian ‘friend’ waits.

Paragon/Renegade choice here – do we try and reach out to him, get him to help us blow the artifact to hell, or just jump straight to the boss fight? By this point he has some additional help, by way of our introduction to a harvester – these were dropped into ME3, on Menae, with no exploration, and non-Reaper ones were meant to be enemies during the development of this game, so call this the natural evolution of matters. We’re introducing the marauders and the harvesters ahead of time, explaining the lack of fanfare that these enter the “proper” storyline with. The difference is if our turian friend is aiding us or the harvester, the harvester being our big end boss for this DLC.

The harvester gets killed, the artifact is blown up with the turian (he chooses to remain if Paragoned, a reminder of the permanent effects of the indoctrination process and how this is something that can’t be fixed – hammer home some of the fear and anguish that will be impacting those left behind from the inevitable fighting). Shepard returns to the Normandy for a debrief (I do kinda picture Miranda being involved in that, because, again, squadmates get additional dialogue here, and she IS the ranking Cerberus officer). Also some set up about discussing about Cerberus efforts to better understand indoctrination (foreshadowing for Henry Lawson’s experiments on Horizon next game).

Post Game Followups:

ME3: Indoctrination has seen further study, providing a war asset. Dialogue changes to reference Shepard having encountered marauders and harvesters before.

 Commander Shepard

The Suicide Mission is coming, and the Illusive Man has asked for all of Shepard’s companions to have their heads cleared. Now it’s Shepard’s turn. Their burdens have remained – the loss of the Normandy, the death on Virmire, and their death at the hands of the Collectors. The rest of the team has to clear their heads, and now so must Commander Shepard.

(Post-Horizon)

Yeah, why is it that, while we’re dealing with having to clear the heads of our crew, our PC, who has canonically been killed and resurrected, does NOT have to do this? So, yeah, Shepard needs a good head clearing. (For the record, I have written a fic of this: Lazarus Risen, and that’s effectively where I’m going with this, so if you’re so inclined, check it out instead of reading this, since while the recap is shorter, the fic itself is not too long.)

So, if you don’t want to read that, my idea when I made the fic was to explore both the idea of “Commander Shepard’s loyalty mission,” or the one where Shepard clears their head, AND the thought of just what the heck required Shepard to take all their companions on a mission and leave the Normandy vulnerable to the Collector attack after obtaining the IFF. Now, I’m saying that this mission unlocks after Horizon, but in my mind, that’s when and where this mission takes place. I just don’t know how to implement it within the game design that presently exists, so we’re gonna leave that open to player interpretation.

So the starting point of the fic (and thus, this DLC – like I said, that’s effectively where I’m going with this) is that Kelly Chambers, in her role as the Normandy’s official unofficial counselor/therapist, has recognized that Shepard has a lot of trauma associated with their death and resurrection they have not worked through, and so that’s gone into her reports to the Illusive Man. Mister Illusive contacts the Normandy, declaring that Shepard’s going in to a Cerberus facility, along with their crew, for a full psychiatric workup – the mission is too important to not have all these issues dealt with before going into things.

A bit of fun with this, on the basis of it being why Shepard is taking their whole squad off the ship, is that there’s the opportunity for some banter and genuine crew interaction, something that is sadly missing from the base game itself. Since I’m me, and this is about what I want from these, this is also an opportunity for some character stuff with Shepard, both playing referee (maybe getting a chance to recover some of the loyalty divisions from the confrontations if need be?) and getting to be able to better build and display the growth these characters are going through from seeing their loyalty missions resolved (cuz you DO resolve all the loyalty missions before activating the Reaper IFF, right?). The whole point of doing them was to clear their heads, encourage growth, and the thing is, we don’t get much of that forward arc in ME2, with ME3 just catching us up later. At least half the point of these is some retroactive continuity to smooth out the trilogy’s edges, after all.

Moving on. The arrival at the Cerberus Station (I am assuming this is the same one from the early part of the game, the one Miranda and Jacob take Shepard after they escape the Lazarus facility, though it doesn’t have to be, just a convenient use of model reuse) is uh... complicated. After all, Shepard’s motley crew is not exactly Cerberus approved (even if TIM authorized it – remember how Brooks in Citadel will mention that “Cerberus was a human organization bringing in aliens”?). There is a stir. A handful of situations have to be defused before everything properly gets under way.

This isn’t in my fic because that was focused on the one thing, while, as DLC, this would have to fill out some additional content to justify the time spent and the resultant price tag players spend to buy it, but I kinda figure this is where we can start seeing where the dissent is for Miranda in particular (probably Jacob too), given her Cerberus loyalties. This is a Shepard-focused mission, but I do see Miranda having a relatively decent role in any sidequests, character bits, and dialogue, given that we presently have in her a Cerberus loyalist right up to the point that she sees the human Reaper in the endgame. Especially if she isn’t part of the endgame squad, I feel we should have some material that connects those dots somewhat. I mean, I expect all the characters SHOULD get some, but Miranda in specific is the one with the almost explicit arc of taking her from Cerberus loyalist to her “consider this my resignation” remark to the Illusive Man at the endgame.

The Cerberus station director (my fic said her name is Doctor Nuwali, so we’ll be going with that) tries to organize the chaos that is Shepard’s squad (Shepard being as helpful or obstructionistic as the player chooses to allow, because Cerberus and authorities figures are always fun to poke at, and we’re getting both of those rolled up in one). Building off the above point with Miranda, there’s also clearly tension between her and Nuwali – Nuwali is, in many ways, a reflection of who she was at the start of the game, the pure, uncompromising believer to the cause and the results-driven focus without acknowledging the human cost, while Miranda has been in the position of growing and developing and questioning (Like I said, connective tissue for her character arc).

Nuwali directs Shepard into a private room for their psych evaluation, insisting on the separation of Shepard from the squad. (Just go with it, it’s for plot purposes.) Within is a prothean artifact, and it begins to react at Shepard’s arrival. It flashes-

-and Shepard finds they’re now in the Virmire facility. This is the requisite combat segment stuff that I can brush past during the recapping. The point is that they’re making their way through the geth to the area where the bomb was deployed, to find Ashley or Kaidan, whoever was left behind on Virmire (even if they were left with the distraction team and Shepard didn’t go back for the bomb, Shepard is guaranteed to have been at the bomb site, not the other area, so...).

They assist Shepard in clearing out the geth and then go into confrontation mode – “you’re working with Cerberus now, what the hell?” You know all the fan debates about why is Shepard working with Cerberus, given the horrors they uncover in ME1, especially if you roll a Sole Survivor (and, considering that is the default Shepard background, that’s clearly BioWare’s preference, so it’s not even like this shouldn’t come up – DLC is better than nothing, you know?).

Yes, we’re doing a “defending your life” style thing here. Hey, the game could use that, considering how Cerberus is the bad guy and we’re working with them. We deserve a more critical examination of this concept.

It’s a bit of a verbal joust – Ashley/Kaidan question what Shepard’s doing, their purpose in working with Cerberus, why they aren’t just leaving, how they could have tried to turn them in to the Alliance and the Council after they were given the Normandy and use the information in the ship’s databases as evidence of the Collector threat? There were ways for the story to progress that weren’t this deal with the devil. Shepard gets to acknowledge their points, struggle to justify what they’re doing. Emphasizing that this IS a deal with the devil, and if Shepard doesn’t find a loophole out of it, they’ll be condemned alongside Cerberus as well – not blowing them to hell in the here and now can make them culpable for their future activities, especially if Cerberus tries to bank on the idea of “Commander Shepard worked with us” (like they do with Conrad Verner in ME3).

Call it “preempting the ‘we should have been able to side with Cerberus’ discussion” that cropped up after ME3 – people, we ARE talking about a xenophobic terrorist group, how were they EVER gonna come out of this series looking like the good guys in the final analysis?

The ultimate point is that this is not a good situation – whatever good might come of Cerberus in general, Cerberus cannot be trusted. Ashley/Kaidan point blank ask can Shepard truly justify staying with them, doing the Illusive Man’s bidding, regardless of their good intentions. And I don’t really think there’s a good answer here – again, in my head, this plays as the mission Shepard’s on when the Collectors attack the Normandy, and, because I make sure to do all the loyalty missions before going to the Collector Base, Shepard is about to cut ties with Cerberus by way of a massive explosion (because I’d never trust the Illusive Man with the Collector Base), this is basically laying groundwork for that moment.

If you don’t do things that way... Well, sorry, but this is my hypothetical DLC, so we’re playing things my way.

Anyway, this sends Shepard on their way to the next installment of “defending your life.” Because we’re absolutely following the Rule of Three here, so there’s more than just the one segment. More requisite combat stuff happens, this time fighting through the Citadel tower again. At the end is Saren. Because why wouldn’t we have an encounter with him when Shepard is doing questionable things in the name of defending the galaxy?

He, of course, is rather smug about the fact that Shepard is allying with the devil in the name of fighting the Reapers – to him, it comes across as something of a victory, because here Shepard is, the person who came after him for his alliance with Sovereign, having made his own deal with the devil. If Ashley/Kaidan were the angel on Shepard’s shoulder, the voice of their conscience, telling them that they are making a mistake working with Cerberus, Saren is here to be the devil on the other shoulder, pointing out all the value there is in working with them, in doing whatever the mission calls for to put an end to the Collectors and the Reapers.

One would hope that this kind of rhetoric from the villain of the first game would make it very clear that Cerberus are the bad guys. As if to drive the point home, Saren also brings up that Shepard was rebuilt by them – with what is certainly Reaper tech. Shepard has begun the process of ascending to the Reapers level, what’s some more, melding more with their tech, bringing that melding, that joining, that unification of organic and machine, to the people of the galaxy, of doing the Reapers a favor and acting as their instrument in raising up galactic civilization?

Things of course descend into a firefight (because we’ve got to have our action quota). This time, Shepard gets to pull the trigger and personally kill Saren – sure, I get satisfaction out of persuading him to shoot himself, and I can always take the other options if I’m really pressed to face off against him, but I want the visceral satisfaction of having Shepard standing over Saren themselves and pulling the trigger.

It’s the little things, you know?

Anyway, because Rule of Three, this proceeds Shepard to the third point. They are back on Lazarus Station. No combat this time, just proceeding through the halls until they find themselves in the spot where they met Jacob in the prologue. Here, they see Miranda and Liara, discussing the act of giving Shepard to Cerberus to rebuild. While at first they’re talking to each other (whether or not you want to interpret this as Shepard somehow having heard the conversation or this just being Shepard’s interpretation, that’s up to you – we’re already in the center of Shepard’s mind here, does that really need explaining?), eventually, Shepard gets to speak, raise concerns, raise their voice.

Shepard gets options – do they understand and appreciate what was done to them, the resurrection and effective drafting into Cerberus? Or are they angry and pissed off – they were dead, and then someone else comes along and decides not to let them rest. For me, this has always been an issue of bodily autonomy, where, with Liara using the reasoning, and I quote, that she “couldn’t let [Shepard] go,” SHE is the one deciding what to do with Shepard’s body. Whatever you might say about what that did to make the galaxy a better place... Was it what Shepard would have wanted done with their corpse, to be handed off to a terrorist group culpable in acts of horrific deeds so that they could play Frankenstein with it? This is, in the games proper, just completely ignored – the one option to be angry is about Liara hiding this from them, not about her DOING it, and in ME3, Shepard – without player input – frames Miranda and the Lazarus Project as “giving them back their life.”

Yeah, no. I can forgive Miranda’s actions, given her characterization is actively about her going from looking at Shepard as a resource to be tapped to a friend (or possibly lover). It’s not perfect, but it’s still part of her arc, and she does at least make an apology (even if the writing doesn’t focus on the part I want it to, that ME3 conversation being focused on her wanting to implant Shepard with a control chip).

But I NEED to be able to express anger at Liara in some way just to like her, considering her canonical reason for doing this is all about HER – not that she considered Shepard the only one in the galaxy who could stand against the Reapers, but that SHE couldn’t let Shepard go. When in my games, she has no right to that. She’s not the one my Shepard’s are in a relationship with. So what those who romance her probably see as an act of love and devotion, I, not romancing her, can’t see it as anything but an act of obsession. And, even if I have to limit myself to a mental simulacrum of her, because there’s not a better place to include such a thing in these DLCs, it will help me, because it’s at least acknowledgement that hey, maybe Shepard is kinda pissed about people making decisions about them for them.

*ahem*

Right, so, where were we? Right, the reaction to Miranda and Liara discussing what to do with Shepard’s body. So as Shepard reacts, this prompts appearances from Ashley, Kaidan, and Saren, all of them playing Greek chorus about the decisions made about Shepard and how Shepard is reacting to them all. And yes, now we have both Ashley and Kaidan, regardless of who was left on Virmire, because why not – if we have one of them showing up for this DLC, why NOT include both of them? You’d have both actors in the studio anyway, so... Basically this is the big character confrontation where they all make the points that fans can debate and nitpick over when they bring up this topic, until finally the question gets put as, effectively, “well, however you feel about it, it has been done, so what are you going to do now?”

And to answer that, Shepard has to reenter the room they woke up in. Because we’re not quite done here yet.

Yeah, that whole conversation piece? THAT was the third “fight” or “combat” scene of this sequence, done in dialogue. Think the Atris confrontation in KOTOR 2, a verbal standoff. The actual interaction that Shepard has to face in the operating room... is themselves.

And their mirror image is offering similar questions, now wanting Shepard to respond, rather than having other characters voice opinions for them. How do you play Shepard’s reaction to their death and resurrection? To the fact that they are spending this game working with Cerberus, who is responsible for a traumatic event in roughly one third of all Shepard histories? Who Shepard uncovered multiple instances of their mad science in ME1 that crossed every ethical line? Who have it repeated rather consistently, is a humanity-first organization who will put human interests (and Cerberus interests, claiming they’re the same) ahead of galactic ones? If the Collector Base has (or is) a Reaper weapon, do they legitimately trust the Illusive Man with this power? Does Cerberus or the Illusive Man REALLY deserve any loyalty from Shepard?

Think of this as “stage two” of the verbal boss battle.

So, the confrontation with themselves concludes with, effectively, Shepard making their decision for going forward – the idea is that it has all been a mental debate, Shepard talking to themselves and coming to a conclusion that they needed to make. The general idea probably is one that, if you’re an obsessive fan with a penchant for filling in the gaps of canon (hey how are you?), you may have imagined these kinds of thoughts and discussions and conversations happening, but isn’t it more satisfying to actually have them take place on screen? And two, Shepard confronting themselves is, in and of itself, always a big deal. As I said at the beginning, this is Shepard’s loyalty mission, done to clear their head. How could it not result in Shepard facing themselves and asking themselves these big questions directly?

When Shepard officially makes their decision for the forward march, you know, figuring out how to handle Cerberus from here on in, which basically come to, effectively, use them for their resources and cut them loose at the end of the crisis or cut ties now and let the chips fall – since, after all, aside from Miranda and Jacob, whose loyalties to Cerberus are already wavering, Shepard has a squad full of the most dangerous people in the galaxy, so they could handle a mutiny of any kind (and, on the player end, there’s the knowledge that, while all this is taking place, EDI is getting unshackled and effectively is capable of running the ship) – they’re kicked back to reality.

And yes, those are the only two results of this, because, just to hammer it home, Cerberus is NOT. THE GOOD GUYS. The Illusive Man is not secretly good, he’s just using the “humanity needs protection” line to justify his actions and attitudes that are about seizing power. And anyone who thought that we would, should, or could side with Cerberus come ME3 was kidding themselves.

Granted, with this line of thinking, I’m not sure what the motivation would be to give Cerberus the Collector Base at the endgame (I mean, I never have, so...). Maybe the idea of “indoctrinate yourself, get taken in by the Reapers, you bastard,” but... That doesn’t seem right for Shepard’s characterization. Eh, like I said, much of this is based in how I play in the first place, so if you want to try and figure that out, feel free, but my list, we go by my way of approaching things. Because that’s just how I roll.

So I haven’t explained what, exactly, this prothean artifact is. Well, it’s effectively nothing more than a plot device, but let’s say there’s a note that becomes interactable, that basically talks up the artifact as being what I’ve called it so far, something that is meant to allow the user a chance to directly interact with themselves, face the truths they deny. Again, this really is a plot device meant to allow the circumstances of the plot, and while I could go into the details of how I assume it works, it really just needs to exist, but that’s my handwave excuse to justify how it worked. It works very well, thank you for asking. The reality is the how is less important than what it brings up.

So, Shepard is back in the physical world, and sets about putting the ideas into motion – the Illusive Man wanted them here? Yeah, no. Not doing that anymore. Shepard gets their crew out of there, upsetting doc Nuwali (giving the impression that there were some sketchy ideas in mind for Shepard’s companions when they were alone themselves, invasive procedures that they’d knock them out and see if they could take them apart and put them back together, now loyal to the Cerberus banner that sort of thing) and has a brief chat with Miranda as they fly back to the Normandy.

...You know, which, based on my time table, is currently under Collector attack. Fun times!

Post Game Followups:

ME3: The artifact as a war asset, reports about Nuwali being captured by Alliance officers while in the process of having attempted some of those ‘sketchy ideas’ she’d meant to enact on Shepard’s companions.

The Lights of Klencory

The planet Klencory is rumored to hold secrets regarding ‘the machine devils.’ Admiral Hackett of the Alliance has suspicions these are references to the Reapers, and has been secretly investigating these. Now, a team of Alliance soldiers have vanished out there, and he’s calling in Commander Shepard as a specialist, along with an old friend...

Bonus Companion: Ashley Williams/Kaidan Alenko

(Post-Horizon)

So back on the old days of the BSN, before Arrival came out, the speculation was, after Lair of the Shadow Broker, that the successive DLC would feature Ashley or Kaidan, give them the same treatment Liara got by featuring them in a DLC. One of my favorite ideas featured the concept of the “machine devils” of Klencory. You know, the planet blurb from ME1 where a volus is digging into a planet in search of evidence of “lost crypts of beings of light,” the indication being that he’d had his mind scrambled by a prothean beacon. So, hey, guess where we’re going?

I mean, obviously Illium, duh.

Actually, that’s not a bad starting point. Illium in general seems to be fairly neutral territory – sure, technically a planet in Citadel space, given its an asari world, but with many Citadel laws relaxed, it makes for a place where “an Alliance operative” will meet with Shepard (We’re starting by way of a letter from Hackett, for the record) without it being considered suspicious behavior by those looking in who are not in the know about the tacit support that both Hackett and Anderson are offering Shepard. There’s a lot of questions coming into this on Shepard’s part, given that, at this point in time, they’re not really an Alliance officer, and yet this is apparently something that is getting them called on? Probably means Reapers.

It gets complicated once Shepard arrives for the meeting and finds Ashley/Kaidan is their contact.

So, before we go further, I want to acknowledge, by the nature of having any real contact between Shepard and Ashley/Kaidan between the encounter on Horizon and the opening of ME3, I am effectively breaking one of my cardinal rules for these, namely the idea of not screwing with the pre-existing structure of the games’ plots in allowing Shepard and Ashley/Kaidan SOME form of genuine contact and communication, to the point of a chance for a legitimate conversation about things and where they stand with one another (Yes, the previous entry was bending that rule, but this is an outright breaking of it).

Thing is, this is one thing that really SHOULD have existed in the games proper, I shouldn’t have to have built something up to include here, and I will 100% die mad about it. Ashley and Kaidan got shafted by BioWare’s handling of things, and I’m not willing to forgive it (if you follow my liveblogs of replaying the games, you’ll know I frequently complain that Arrival really was gift-wrapped to serve this function, and yet it doesn’t so much as mentioned Ashley/Kaidan). So yeah, we’re having an opportunity to address this stuff right off, it’s taking place in the game “proper” (for a given value, considering all of this is made up, but...). I’ll get into how this will impact their interactions come ME3 in the “Post Game Followups” section, for now, we’re just going with this.

Also on the “to note” element, I am mostly going to refer to Ashley/Kaidan in the sense of swapping them into place for one another, since, obviously, they are mutually exclusive at this point in the trilogy. But I do want it understood that I am not viewing them as interchangeable characters but as individuals. Just... If I stop to explain all the little differences of how they interact with Shepard in this, the variations of what they say and do on the character level, I’d basically be writing this out twice, which this is going to be long enough as it is, you don’t need to read the plot summary twice, and I certainly don’t need to write it twice. Assume that, even if not explicitly indicated, there ARE differences in behavior and dialogue that are reflective of them as separate characters and people, even if the overall plot must go forward regardless of how differently they’d react as individuals.

And you might want to pay close attention, since there will be a lot of use of “they” pronouns ahead, since Ashley/Kaidan is more awkward to write and I make it a point to not address the player character (in this case, Shepard) by one gender or the other in these write-ups, given that that’s variable, so things might get a little confusing if you’re not paying close enough attention to the context.

So... The meeting with Ashley/Kaidan begins... awkwardly. They’re uncertain how to really react to Shepard – sure, the encounter on Horizon means they know that Shepard is back, but now they’re really having to deal with this particular reality. So they’re going to aim to jump to business. Alliance intel has intercepted some messages from mercs hired out near Klencory, which got Admiral Hackett paying attention to things happening out there – like Shepard will acknowledge, between the circumstances of this meeting and the quick summary of the reason for the mercs all being out there, this sounds like it’s connected to the Reapers. Hackett wants to have Shepard as a “special consultant” as the Alliance has someone (re: Ashley/Kaidan) investigate (“consultant” since Shepard may not have had their Spectre status restored, so it gives them legitimacy either way). It could, potentially, just all be a massive coincidence. But since when are things ever “just” a coincidence?

Ashley/Kaidan are willing to use the Normandy as transport – Hackett figured that, between the stealth systems, and the lack of official Alliance authority in the area, the Normandy is the better option for getting there without being told to get lost. The bigger question is how they’ll be received – it’s not like merc gangs take well to outside interference, and the Alliance having any jurisdiction out there is questionable at best. But they should at least TRY to go in with civility. If this volus billionaire spending all this money on this (his name, for the record, is canonically given as Kumun Shol, so hey, less work for me, having to come up with a name!), then if he hears from someone who seems to be taking him seriously, it might get them invited in explicitly.

Obviously, though, if they’re hitching a ride on the Normandy, if things remain unspoken, the trip out there will be very awkward and seem longer than it is. So they have to address Horizon. They’re not going to apologize for not joining Shepard – Shepard is still operating on a ship flying Cerberus colors, even with good intentions, that is a betrayal of their oaths to the Alliance, Cerberus are terrorists and xenophobes, who want to secure human dominance. But they will acknowledge that they reacted to Shepard’s return in a way that wasn’t their best. I am not going all the way to “they admit that they were wrong,” because based solely on the information that they had, they handled things as best as they realistically could. But they will regret that things ended on the terms that they did.

Shepard gets to respond to that – are they accepting that it was a bad reaction to unexpected information, do they still hold a grudge, whatever. The conversation continues to a point of conclusion – Ashley/Kaidan don’t trust Cerberus, they want to trust Shepard, but the connection between the two at the moment makes that difficult, and they don’t know how to bridge that gap as things stand, but they’re going to try this.

We will be coming back to this, never you fear. But, of course, that’s more for the ending than it is the beginning, and this one conversation is far from the end.

Klencory is a world with a toxic atmosphere, so they first have to gain access to a semi-decent landing zone near where Shol has established himself. Because, naturally, he’s not interested in visitors – the brief communication we get with him is him effectively talking himself into the idea that Shepard is “the agent of the machine devils,” which... I mean, considering the prothean beacons and communications with the Reapers, it’s not crazy that he goes there, even if (by the rest of his actions), Shol’s gone a little nuts.

Shooty shooty bang bang, fight through the exterior guards and into the facility proper. Ashley/Kaidan are a little uncomfortable about what’s gone on – this really isn’t how they pictured things going, given the legitimate credentials they were supposed to be coming in with, and they can recognize the fighting is because of Shol not giving them an alternative, but it does still make them feel like they’re acting as little more than the thugs they’re dispatching.

Call this a reaction to the fact that Shepard doesn’t exactly get much of a differentiation in the game themselves. Particularly when they can call out looters on Omega while swiping whatever’s not nailed down.

This is another conversation that’s going to be part of that “coming back to” thing – assume there’s some kind of tracking metric for all of this in the same vein as how ME3 tracked how Ashley/Kaidan responded to Shepard as a lead in to the confrontation during the coup. Just, I’ll get to how that all plays out at the end.

Because a band of mercs aren’t enough to hold off Shepard, Ashley/Kaidan, and the third companion (yay party balance), they reach Shol’s central command. He’s a little batty, but it finally gets through to him that Shepard is not the agent of the machine devils. He is skeptical of Shepard being the savior from them, though. Instead, he wants Shepard and company to do something for him.

There is a vault. A vault none of his men have come back from. Shol declares that, if Shepard can enter, learn its secrets, and survive, then they will have proven themselves to be salvation from the machine devils. Since this is the advancement of the plot, Shepard will have to go ahead with this, even with the natural objections of Ashley/Kaidan (and, probably, Shepard themselves).

Another pause for a dialogue – Ashley/Kaidan are skeptical of Shol’s motives, and believe it may be too dangerous to just do what he says. Especially considering that he’s clearly not entirely stable. This is a situation that really calls for calling for backup. But there’s really not the option of waiting, because if they don’t do as Shol says, he’ll throw all his mercs at Shepard – even if we’re assuming that Shepard versus countless mercs ends well for Shepard (because, after all, it’s Shepard), it’s just a senseless loss of life.

Going in is a set piece of suspense. Think the Peragus mine, with a dash of Korriban for good measure, from KOTOR 2 – lot of littered corpses, this creeping and foreboding unease and feeling of being watched, this overbearing expectation of SOMETHING appearing down every dead end... Build the tension. This is a place that, the littered dead aside, no one has entered in thousands of years, it should absolutely be a place that could chill you to the bone. The examination of anything should feel like it’s disturbing the dead.

You know there’s some ancient security device active, right? I mean, something’s killing the people who trespass here. Obviously, it has to be something that will put up a fight as our end boss, and it needs to be something that is able to last a long time. I’m thinking an ancient robot (my mind is going in the direction of something similar in design to the ancient droids of KOTOR’s Star Forge), a last defense, left behind by a precursor to the protheans.

Yeah, it feels like an underwhelming result to me too, but it makes logical sense all the same – we have some evidence of things from prior cycles, not just the prothean cycle, making it through to the next ones, not the least of which is the plans for the Crucible. Seeing as how that bit of intel is just dropped into our laps come ME3, this is at least making it functionally foreshadowed, if indirectly, by actually showing us ancient technology that is still functional and viable even after more than fifty, a hundred thousand years. Plus the foreshadowing of things surviving to this cycle in the vein of Javik. Things lasting this long in forms beyond just ruins at least makes all of that happening in ME3 at least have some groundwork laid in these prior games – otherwise, we only have a few codex references to ancient civilizations, as opposed to it being an actual component of gameplay, things that the player MUST interact with.

But yeah, the threat may be underwhelming, but the payoff is what it guarded – the last remnants of this ancient culture. The corpses have been preserved, given that it’s a bunker into the planet’s mantle – the toxic nature of the atmosphere now came about because of the Reapers, though, of course, this is only spoken of in the material available as “the machine devils.” There could be a great wealth of information among this stuff.

Thing is, now that the threat’s dealt with, Shol wants his prize. He spent years of his life and a great deal of his money on this, and now he wants to use it – and, because he still is a paranoid bastard, he’s not particularly inclined to uphold his end of the bargain, having expected to have Shepard and the “guardian” of the tomb (for lack of a better term) kill each other. He just wants all of this to increase his own fortune – he’ll sell everything within to the highest bidder and damn what the Alliance, the Citadel, anyone might be able to get from the archives. Giving it to private collectors – like, say, the Illusive Man, or even any interested faction of capital-c Collectors (as in “the enemies we fight throughout ME2”) – will enrich him and it doesn’t matter what that information might do to help make the galaxy ready for war against the Reapers.

Now, normally you would think this would lead to a Paragon/Renegade choice. BUT, instead, we’re going to have a variation moment for Ashley and Kaidan. They’ll deal with Shol, but in unique ways. Ashley, having marine hand to hand combat skills (as she mentions in character discussion during the first game), manages to get close and disable the volus’s suit enough to render him unconscious, while Kaidan uses his biotics to get the same result. So they get to have a moment of protecting Shepard (not necessarily “saving” them, because a volus getting the drop on Shepard would certainly be an embarrassing way to go, but definitely helping them sidestep a situation).

NOW’S the time for the Paragon/Renegade choice, dealing with Shol himself. He is an obstacle, considering that dealing with the legal claim to this cache of information leaves the door open to some sticky situations as a result – the last thing they need is to have anything that might be useful be wrapped up in the legal battle. But he DOES have a valid claim. Just unilaterally taking this place from him is questionable at best – even if Shepard’s still a Spectre, are they REALLY able to just come in and declare the location to no longer be the property of the individual with the legal claim on it? Likewise, there’s a lot of sticky issues with the idea of killing him – after all, as mentioned above, he does have a bunch of trained mercenaries on hand, and it’s reasonable to try and walk out without adding to the bloodshed. But if it’s made clear that his madness has overtaken him (which, I mean... it kinda HAS), then there’s room for the Citadel to be able to legally seize his assets, including his claim on Klencory and its vault. But this still means institutionalizing a person because they’re inconvenient.

That’s the choice – institutionalize Shol and seize his assets, despite the subsequent legal battle that he and his kin can draw everyone in to, or cut through the red tape preemptively, kill him, and claim what amounts to squatter’s rights, since with him dead, no one else is there to take charge of the archive, whatever it contains. Ashley/Kaidan are going to say they have no intention of letting Shepard kill Shol (because that would certainly always be a line for them), but there will be a Renegade interrupt to take that choice out of their hands anyway, and Shepard can make an argument that, if they don’t do SOMETHING, Shol’s men will come in and try to kill them, while if he’s dead, that denies them their paycheck (because for one time ever, can we just have the mercs give up and run off once the source of their paycheck is dead?!). Shol certainly isn’t going to tell them to back down, and “survival instincts” have never been at the top of their hiring priorities.

Ashley/Kaidan will have some words about the decision Shepard is making, but they can be swayed to understand Shepard’s motivations, at least, in the moment, though any disagreements they have are more in the “waiting for a more opportune moment” than “what you say goes, Commander.” More on that shortly. With that matter resolved, Shepard calls for a pickup.

Back on the Normandy, Shepard and Ashley/Kaidan are having an informal debriefing in Shepard’s cabin (save the jokes for the end of the scene everyone, we’ll get to that). They do a brief discussion of what the likely followup will be – the fact is, the Reapers are probably already uncomfortably close at the moment already, so there’s not likely to be much opportunity to examine this place too much before they show. Still, every little bit is going to help.

The big thing is going to be how Shepard’s handled things through to this point. This was an accumulation metric (in the same style as Aria showing mercy on Petrovsky or not during Omega), so the various Paragon/Renegade decisions through to this point will lead to their reaction. Paragon Shepards get Ashley/Kaidan acknowledging that Shepard is still someone they respect, and that perhaps this whole Cerberus alliance was one of necessity. Renegade Shepards are leaving them questioning what Cerberus is doing to them, and are they really the person that they once were.

That leads to the question of where they stand if they’re a romance – like with Liara in Lair of the Shadow Broker, this leads to a romance rekindling, but only for Paragon Shepard, because that’s the version that has shown that Shepard is still the person they followed to hell and back, still the person they loved.

Yes, while I try and offer reasonably similar options for both Paragon and Renegade versions of Shepard, this is dependent on that. Because it’s about setting their concerns at ease, about listening to them and allowing them to be angry and upset and come around. Renegade Shepard will have shown they don’t care about that, so why WOULD Ashley/Kaidan take them back?

Anyway, insert “debriefing” joke here.

And, y’know, a reminder that, in these DLCs I’m writing, we’re going with the assumption that Ashley and Kaidan both were bisexual romance options back in the first game, and it’s an option to rekindle for both gendered Shepards.

After the interlude (however it plays out), there’s the discussion of what’s coming next for Ashley/Kaidan. They’re returning to the Alliance, of course – with Shepard’s official ties still in limbo, taking them out of the official chain, Hackett has made them a floating troubleshooter at points where he suspects Reaper involvement in some fashion, be it machine cultists and husks, Collectors, or what have you. However they feel about Shepard, Hackett is still seeming inclined to trust them on this, so they expect that the intel will still reach Shepard as they do their work. They make it clear they expect this to be the calm before the storm, and when the fight starts, they know Shepard will be on the front line. Paragons get them promising to back Shepard up when the time comes, Renegades get them hoping that they’ll still be on the same side when that happens.

Post Game Followups:

So here’s the part where, typically, I’d talk about how this impacts War Assets for ME3. But this is giving the ability to resolve the major Ashley/Kaidan element of ME3 before we even get there (like we should have in the first place...) and that means we have to deal with that. To that end, I obviously have left the door open for the lack of trust by way of Renegade Shepard, and that’ll go through things as they are, the same as if this DLC didn’t exist (I mean, it doesn’t exist anyway, but... You know what I mean!). The alternative for a Paragon completion is that there will be a distinct lessening of the tension between Shepard and Ashley/Kaidan in ME3, leading to some serious dialogue changes on Mars – more of an acceptance, instead of distrust.

I’m also thinking that, with the air cleared, there’s no moment of hesitation among them during the Citadel Coup, that it basically defaults them to trusting Shepard, regardless of how much they interact with them in Huerta and “clear the air” of Horizon. After all, Shepard already allayed their concerns with their practical involvement, gave them the chance to see them as the person they were, rather than the possibility that they were no longer the person they trusted. This changes the dynamics of their earlier interactions, and if you have rekindled the romance during the debriefing (no I’m not going to stop using that gag), then the dialogue will have more romantic undertones, the conversations more focused on matters of both them and the future together, trying to figure out if they even have a future, what with the invasion commencing, let alone where they stand with one another in that future.

I feel like I should have more done here, really, but I am really, genuinely TRYING to remain within the basic structures of the games as they are with this, because I totally could trash them and rebuild them from the start, but that’s defeating the purpose of this as additional material to the games, so that’s the most I’m offering on that. I want to do more, Ashley/Kaidan deserve a bigger and better role in ME3’s plot (which I’ll be trying to address further when we get to the ME3 hypothetical DLC, but that’s not here), but I’m trying not to totally rewrite ME3 as it is, that would probably be its own long involved project, and this is already ongoing. The original version of events can still be involved in the game proper, as the Renegade version, but that won’t be the only version any more.

Oh, and, we’re getting some war assets out of the place we discovered. That feels like an afterthought here, though. This has been about Ashley/Kaidan and their relationship with Shepard, more than anything, and we really did deserve this as much as Lair of the Shadow Broker.

 The Omega Heist

An old contact of Miranda and Jacob’s draws them – and Commander Shepard – back to Omega, where, with the merc bands decimated, an old threat they thought they’d dealt with long ago has reemerged. With Commander Shepard’s help, they must try their utmost to put this genie back in its bottle before it’s unleashed on the whole of Omega – and, potentially, the rest of the galaxy!

(Post-Horizon)

Considering Omega’s status as the dark reflection of the Citadel, the answer to it in the Terminus Systems, I just really want to explore it some more. Tie in to that, Miranda and Jacob have great prominence when they’re literally your only crewmates, but the second you start picking up the rest of the crew, they start falling off the map. Given that they’re our viewpoints into Cerberus as an organization, this feels like a mistake. Cerberus spends both the preceding and following game as enemies, and I think we need to spend some time at exploring why either of them would even fall under Cerberus and the Illusive Man’s sway.

It begins with Miranda asking to speak to Shepard. I’m gonna assume that, considering the unlock pattern of loyalty missions, this is most likely going to be played post-loyalty mission for both of them, since they’re both the first to unlock. Just to firmly establish where the characterization is going in to this. So both of them are at a point where they’re starting to question their loyalty to Cerberus (hence why I’m considering it a default that, in particular, Miranda’s loyalty has been obtained).

She’s heard from a contact on Omega about something that she wants to get Shepard involved in. The meeting moves to her office, where Jacob joins them. This concerns a mission they’d both undertaken shortly after their first mission together (see Mass Effect Galaxy, the mission Jacob talks to Shepard about having lost his faith in the Alliance over). They had an assignment to dispose of a biological sample – their assignment had been not to ‘get curious’ and investigate what it was, just get rid of it. The orders had come directly from the Illusive Man, so they were actually obeyed.

Jacob had been suspicious of the whole thing – when you’re moving something that you’re not supposed to investigate, it’s usually something that could blow up in your face. He opted for a little extra security monitoring, with Miranda agreeing and having kept track of it. That’s why this is now coming to her attention. They still don’t know what this was, but they can’t imagine that it getting let loose where any idiot could stumble across it would be a good thing.

So we’re returning to Omega. Personally, I’m disappointed that there’s no real change in Omega as ME2 carries on, even though you have to both clear out merc gangs and an active plague in the course of the game – recruiting Garrus and Mordin are mandatory quests, after all, so their joining the crew, their recruitment missions, these have to happen regardless of anything else Shepard may decide to do. So we’re getting another hub area on Omega besides Afterlife and the Gozu District market place. If Omega is the Citadel of the lawless Terminus Systems, then it can certainly fit in more of this (plus give more life to this place that, we know, will have people threatened come ME3 and the Omega DLC there).

Our central hub sector will be a safehouse established near the Kenzo District (picked because beyond existing as where Garrus had his run-in with Garm, we know nothing specific about it, so it can be used however the plot needs it to be). Under the circumstances – meaning “since we stored dangerous material on Omega without even speaking with Aria on the subject” – the idea here is stealth. Shepard, Miranda, and Jacob arrived via a transient shuttle rather than via the Normandy, and did so hopefully with some element of stealth. It’s not that Aria is going to be a threat here, just that she wouldn’t be happy learning about this going on under her nose and Cerberus is trying to cultivate some of her resources (sort of tie-in to the Cerberus takeover of Omega come ME3).

Their contact is my chance to get that female turian I mentioned a ways back into things – a turian trader who I’ll name Naevia (what, I’m a Spartacus fan and the reference makes me smile). The biological sample has fallen into the hands of a gang that’s trying to take up the space left by the biggest gangs of Omega losing their leadership (I’m thinking one of the gangs from our last edition of hypothetical DLCs, from “The Clean-Up,” because continuity!).

It’s around here that Shepard does ask the most important question on the subject that I think we’re all thinking – why the hell was this dangerous and hazardous sample kept rather than destroyed? Naevia admits she thought the same thing, but she was paid enough not to care, just to watch it. Miranda states that there was a possibility of using it for something in the future – this is a sign of her beginning to waver, because she can’t really justify the use of this sample, the fact that, though they’d been told to get rid of it, the “disposal team” had kept it, and were keeping it in a place with a population.

Granted this is a long standing tradition with dangerous science, but still, it needs to be called out.

The important thing is that it’s there, on Omega, and in particular when the station is already in the recovery process of a plague that targeted every race except humanity – there is still a lot of anti-human resentment on Omega, and the last thing that Cerberus should want is a human-spawned crisis breaking out (because no matter where the sample came from, a human organization, known to have a humans-first bent to it, was the group that stashed it here on Omega). Hence our presence.

We’re gonna have plenty of time to talk with Miranda and Jacob, so assume character conversations sprinkled here throughout (much as I cite it as reason that I don’t particularly care for their loyalty missions in comparison to others, that their loyalty missions also only have one ending, that once you start the mission, the only resolution is obtaining their loyalty, makes for a useful method of characterization trajectory here). This is here for the sake of exploring and deepening their character arcs, their division with Cerberus from the endgame, given that they’re both set against Cerberus come ME3, so we’re going with that.

We also get to spend some time with Naevia and getting a new perspective with the turians – she is a free agent, sort of like Vetra ended up being in Andromeda, in the sense that she’s a rebel to the status quo of turian military discipline. She’s looser and less rule-bound. She lives on the fringe of society and that shapes her reactions. She has no need for the turian rules of combat and prefers to take preemptive action – the rules of combat are a great idea in theory, when you have enemies who will respect them. But the Terminus is full of people who won’t. And, while she hasn’t been read into the Reaper matters, she is clearly picking up on the undercurrent between Shepard, Miranda, and Jacob.

Now if you’re assuming that this is leading to Naevia turning out to be involved in matters with this sample... Well, that’s definitely going to be a thing to follow, but let’s just keep going for now.

And yes, I have been cagey about what this sample even is. Remember, that’s because it’s a mystery even to Miranda and Jacob – they were still in a point where they were willing to listen to the Illusive Man’s orders without questioning them. The assumption was that the team they were giving it off to was a proper disposal team, and the failure of either of them to investigate it beyond his word. Y’know, the idea being they’re both starting to push themselves to look beyond the word they’re officially given by their boss and question him.

So… investigative work. We’ve already been over how in these summaries, that’s not where I focus on, not having a layout or anything to work with and such. So I’ve given the core ideas of character work and plot that plays out over the course of things, let’s cut to the climax.

The sample is being held by one of the gangs and a member of the Cerberus disposal squad. Because hey, look at that, a Cerberus agent went rogue and started killing all their guys, Commander Shepard, can you take care of that? He explains just what this sample is – a contaminant that can devastate a planetary atmosphere, hence why it was being kept on Omega, a space station. Of course, the problem with it is that it won’t discriminate and a rapid atmospheric dissolution will kill human lives as well. This is one of those things that it’s actually entirely justifiable that the Illusive Man didn’t want to use... y’know, if it weren’t for the fact that he still kept it, but...

Anyway, here’s where we come to Naevia’s sudden but inevitable betrayal, citing the profit to be earned – it’s easy enough to live on ships instead of a planet, so she’ll come out of this fine. Shepard gets the chance to shoot her with a Renegade interrupt, and look at that! She WASN’T betraying the team, just pretending to in order to slide a knife in the bad guy’s gut. It doesn’t kill him, and it still leads to a fight, but it’s easier if you don’t take the interrupt (because as much as I like the interrupt system, I think there should occasionally be consequences for taking a quick and reflexive response rather than the more considerate and thoughtful and examinative approach to a situation).

A multi-stage boss fight ensues – basic ground troops, interspersed with standard LOKI mechs, a YMIR mech joining the fight with reinforcements, and then a gunship. Maybe the gunship peels off midway and lets in another YMIR mech, just to really hammer the ‘boss fight’ element, or at the least let that be a higher level difficulty challenge. I mean you can only do so much with the mechanics of the game to create boss fights, right?

Anyway, Naevia is either dying, laughing at how her turncoat act was too effective, or she’s made it through with a few scratches and is patching them up as Miranda and Jacob are recovering the sample. Here’s the expected Paragon/Renegade choice of destroying the sample or storing it somewhere else – I can even see a reasoning for keeping in the idea of ‘once knowledge exists, it can’t just be destroyed, we need to study this to be able to devise a countermeasure.’ It’s a sucky one, for the record, but it’s a way to justify the Renegade stance.

This is where you see the culmination of Miranda and Jacob’s development. Jacob is open about wanting to correct their prior mistake of leaving this sample around to be used by anyone who might try to actually use it. No matter what, he sees no possible good coming from it and wants it destroyed. Miranda is conflicted. Her trust in the Illusive Man tells her that it would be right to hold on to this, it’s a weapon that could protect humanity if the aliens were to attack them – which is something that can’t be discounted as a possibility, considering the batarian hostility and the general aggravation of other races like the turians (see the previous Hypothetical DLC entry for more expansion on why I consider that a thing gets brought up). But she also knows that if this exists, then there’s a chance humanity can’t control it. She is looking to Shepard for guidance on this – she’s not turning to the Illusive Man’s standing orders here.

When the group returns to their safehouse, they find Aria there. Because this has been happening on Omega, and it’s her business to be fully aware of what’s happening on Omega. She thanks Shepard for disposing of that little business – if the sample was spared, she does imply that she knows about it, but, so long as it’s leaving Omega, she’s not going to be concerned about it. After all, she only cares about Omega’s interests. But, as a reward for what Shepard’s done for Omega, from the plague to Archangel to this (plus, potentially, dealing with Morinth, given that was the presence of an Ardat-Yakshi on Omega), she is offering a reward for Shepard – a penthouse suite.

Yes, I’m letting Shepard get an Omega apartment. I mean, okay, having one right before the Cerberus takeover of Omega come ME3 is not exactly the most prime real estate, but hey, Shepard deserves a place to relax, right? Plus it also comes with access to a special Omega market, a place where Shepard will be able to purchase any weapons or upgrades they might have been missed in the course of their missions (and any that get added through the DLC, including these). Because really, we should be able to have access to those things somehow, as in the game as is, if you miss it, it’s gone forever.

Anyway, Miranda and Jacob will also have follow up conversations when they return to the Normandy, discuss the way that things have played out and how they’ve evolved as people in the course of the game. Because as I said at the start, the two of them, in terms of their character development, kinda falls off the map in the course of the second half of the game. So they get a little additional content that helps fit them into the big picture of their character arcs.

Post Game Followups:

ME3: If Naevia survived, she’s an available war asset in regards to her underworld connections and such to send help Shepard’s way. If it’s kept intact, the sample also has some benefit for Alliance scientists in the study of reversing its effects and how to restore ravaged worlds. Also some additional content in the Omega DLC, though I’m not sure about the details of that right now.

And, y’know, since Naevia’s existence means that we have a female turian model built and developed circa ME2, this SHOULD mean that there are female turians scattered throughout both further DLC (as in ‘assume their existence in further installments, even if it goes unsaid’) and (because now they’d “exist” prior to the release of ME3) there would be numerous turian females in ME3 as assorted extras and such. Should go without saying, but I’m saying it. There will still be a few important female turian NPCs I introduce in further installments, but these are now part the standard background NPC collection.

 Battle Scars

Alliance officers on shore leave have been disappearing from the Citadel with no trace. Ambassador Anderson suspects there’s more to this than the standard dangers of a space station that’s practically its own world. Though Shepard is in a questionable position among the Council, they’re the one person Anderson can trust to solve this.

(Post-Horizon)

The Citadel being so limited a space in ME2 always bothered me. Y’know, I get the thematic idea, that ME2 was about exploring the darker underside of the galaxy at large. But I liked the Citadel. There was a lot about it to explore, all things considered – we’re talking about the galactic hub of politics and commerce. This really should be a major location, no matter the game. And as I’ve said elsewhere, there could be a whole game set on the Citadel with room for more. So yeah, we’re doing this here, exploring an area of the Citadel that we never got to see before.

There are Alliance officers going missing and Anderson gets Shepard involved. Obviously, the synopsis covered that bit. The idea here is that we’re going into areas of the Citadel that normally, Shepard has no business in, and in areas that are more like vacation areas. You know what this means? It means we’re going to have non-combat segments, in the same vein as Kasumi’s mission. There’s gonna be an extended sequence of Shepard out of combat armor in this one, because Shepard is not being called on to be a soldier but to infiltrate and be seen as a civilian more than a combat fighter. (I’m thinking this is going to involve a new casual outfit as well.)

And we’re gonna say that this is happening at an exclusive resort, meant to be a location that’s relaxing – a resort on the Citadel, effectively. It’s primarily a place for Citadel-aligned soldiers (Alliance and other races) to recover after combat, a therapeutic place for soldiers to get treatment for their PTSD (think a place where they’d probably have sent the PTSD asari in ME3 to if there wasn’t an existential war on). It’s why it’s a popular place for these Alliance soldiers to be, and we’re also going to rate it as having the highest success rate as a psychological and therapeutic facility in the known galaxy (because, being on the Citadel, why wouldn’t a place like this have a reputation of being the best, given how the Citadel is effectively the metaphorical center of the galaxy) and it’s a bit of a mixing bowl of Citadel culture, which allows for the rest of the party to come along.

I’m going to stick with mandatory companions here for a handful of reasons – one, Shepard’s got an eclectic band, and I feel like if they walk around a Citadel resort with Grunt and Legion, for example, that’s probably going to blow their cover. For two, I like the idea of mandating some pairings and developing the relationships more. Last entry was about Miranda and Jacob. Here, I’m thinking... For a resort, I honestly lean towards Samara and Kasumi, characters who, respectively, can blend in with “high society” and can pass through unseen by others. Kasumi, of course, does her cloaking to accompany Shepard – she does prefer going unseen. Samara, though, is playing at being a Matriarch – given the setting, let’s say that she’s pretending to be looking for a facility for her rambunctious daughter who is ‘disgracing’ the family name – sort of playing on her own history with Morinth (because Samara’s method that way), while still being a role she plays.

Yes, I’m aware that Kasumi is a DLC character, not everyone necessarily has her, but hey. If you’re playing DLC in the first place, you’ve probably collected other DLC, particularly a new companion, we’re just gonna roll with it, because I’m not going to develop an alternative without her, so consider them connected – I don’t know, say they got packaged in a sale together or something. This is all hypothetical in the first place, remember, does it REALLY matter that she’s not in the base game?

Shepard, of course, is going in as what they’re looking for, an Alliance officer looking for leave. This way there can be a solo segment, and the tension of “will Shepard run into trouble they can’t handle on their own before their companions come to their rescue?” Obviously, there does have to be some addressing of Shepard’s fame and notoriety, but it’s not like Shepard’s not doing other things that are putting their famous mug in places they shouldn’t be, particularly when it comes to involving Kasumi (The Hock heist, anyone? How, exactly, was the most famous human in the galaxy supposed to keep a low profile there?). So we’re just gonna handwave that, like you do.

As always when these are investigative sequences, I’m just gonna gloss over that part for the sake of convenience – the basic facts are that we have a lot of suspects with no clear motive at the outset of things. You know, get your basic archetypes wandering around – look at any show that features a recovery center, you’ll find them, I’m not gonna go into detail on the incidental characters.

The trick is that Shepard is going to be doing their initial investigating solo – they have to get entrenched before their companions show up (given that Samara’s cover is going to have her supposedly only there to look the place over, rather than sign herself in as needing “treatment” and Kasumi is going to be cloaked, searching for the things that Shepard can’t get access to – yes, for the record, I’m setting up for a Big Damn Heroes moment, I would think that would be obvious). They’ll meet with the above mentioned archetypes, learning details.

The details are more for the flavor – how well does Shepard figure out the scheme (which I’m getting to) before the villain shows up to explain in a monologue? Because, y’know, what villain doesn’t love explaining their nefarious deeds with a monologue? Shepard figuring out more and more of the plot before they confront the bad guy will impact the way the end fight goes down – figure it all out, you can sidestep the big final confrontation, figure most of it out, the fight’s significantly easier, stick to the bare minimum, it’s the hardest it can be.

This of course gets Shepard caught by our villain of the piece. So, what’s going on? Well, it’s an attempt by one of the doctors at this facility at cooking up the same shady shit Cerberus has, in the form of cyborg soldiers – the soldiers who have been kidnapped have been converted into these cybernetically enhanced soldiers. Problem is, they’re mindless automatons – higher brain functions didn’t survive the implantation process. So while these six million credit men are superior soldiers for combat, able to shrug off the kind of injuries that would cripple any other organic soldier, probably even have like nano-tech that speeds up any kind of healing and recovery process, they’re ONLY for combat, there is no human mind, no individual still alive in these shells – they’ll do as ordered because of the computer control chips in their heads, but only because those chips fire off the impulses needed.

“No glands, replaced by tech. No digestive system, replaced by tech. No soul. Replaced by tech. Whatever they were, gone forever.”

This is a point that I wanted to bring up in Miranda’s chat about “disposable soldiers” – the concept of soldiers being disposable is the kind of thought that cleans up war, something that the very idea is MEANT to be “dirty.” When you have these disposable soldiers, something that replaces the flesh and blood troops, you’re now in a position where going to war is not a difficult choice – you’re not sacrificing anything in the fight, because your best and brightest are safely out of the line of fire. When you don’t fear war, you’re going to turn to it as the first option, not the last. And, as pointed out by the use of Mordin’s quote above, at some point, your “disposable soldiers” become exactly what the Collectors are, mindless automatons who perform the duties of their masters, and, because of that distance, their masters’ own humanity erodes, because they never have to get their own hands dirty, while their servants are incapable of arguing with the orders.

This is when we get the aforementioned Big Damn Heroes moment, where Samara and Kasumi rejoin the party – since I’m assuming Shepard is being restrained at the moment, we have Kasumi Overload the controls and get them loose while Samara covers her by biotically handling the guards (because there are always guards).

So we get to that ending of how the boss fight can go down – Shepard gets to argue about the whole “disposable soldier” thing, bringing up and expanding on the above argument. If they uncovered all the details of the plot prior to the point they’re found out and taken captive, they can talk the doctor out of the inevitable fight (they still can choose to fight, of course, but the option is there to avoid a fight altogether) and have them shut down the project, effectively take their “prototypes” of these cyborg soldiers off life support and let them all die out (because, again, it’s the cybernetics that are even keeping them alive at this point), they can try and fail because of a lack of information, or they can actually agree with the idea, just that this doctor isn’t the one to be controlling them – it’s a valid choice, after all, to have a viable standing army to face the Reapers with.

I did debate making that last an option, just because I am morally opposed to the idea, but I am trying to respect that the Paragon/Renegade division was meant to be more than “goody-two-shoes versus puppy-kicking-monster,” and approach it from a level of “win with morals versus ends justify the means” – if you’re looking for something that can face the Reapers, like Shepard is aiming for throughout the trilogy, then a pragmatic approach says “we can use this resource, and I’ll deal with the moral weight of it later.”

Thinking about it, this does kinda make a flaw of the Kasumi-Samara team, because I do struggle with seeing how they’d just casually go along with Shepard saying “zombie cyborg army? Sign me up!” But maybe the Justicar code says that, regardless of origin, their existence has purpose and use, while Kasumi is horrified at the idea of using – and defiling – the dead like this. Basically, I want there to be a shoulder angel-devil scenario here, but I may not have selected the right companion pairing for this. Still, I’m not going back and rewriting this to make that work, so we’re just going to acknowledge that and move on – they’re both on the team, and there are other Renegade choices Shepard has available that they both just accept, so we’ll accept that.

And, y’know, I have a personal preference for Paragon at these decision points, and would probably stick to choosing to wipe out the zombie cyborg soldiers myself, and these are my ideas so I roll with what works for my decision making process, so nyah.

This still leads to the question of what, exactly, should be done with this facility – this is the head of the place we’re talking about as being responsible, with them out of commission (either being killed by Shepard or taken into C-Sec custody, depending on your choice), it’s entirely possible the place will be shuttered, or at least in chaos for a time, and that means all of its current residents are going to be kicked out – this is one of those “well intentions doesn’t change negative results” scenarios. Of course, Anderson will try to step in and do something, but... He can only do so much. Especially with having to clear out the devices and secret lab material and such, there’s a lot in this that just... is not going to have this place in a condition to be what it’s meant to be. Especially if things turned into a fight with the doctor and trashed the place.

Shepard themselves can only do so much – they can make a recommendation, but ultimately, there will be a board decision. They can offer a suggestion, a way for the staff to try and focus going forward, but it’s going to mean downsizing their care in some fashion – either they focus only on the immediately at-risk patients, going in the way of ‘if you’re not an active threat to yourself or others, you have to find somewhere else to seek treatment,’ or they limit themselves to just the care of a single species, because the psychological experts for multiple species is a resource drain.

And this one is NOT a Paragon/Renegade choice. It’s player’s best take on the subject, because there is no “right” choice in this scenario. Either way, someone is getting screwed over. You can hope sending the not at-risk patients won’t exacerbate their conditions, but you can’t be sure of that – especially when it comes to people who have been there for some time, PTSD and other conditions won’t just go away, they need to be managed and treated, and if you go from one facility and one medical professional to another, that can throw off your recovery. And you can specialize in the treatment and wellness of a single species, but what about the members of the other species? What about the “melting pot” nature of the Citadel and how, realistically, reinforcing those barriers between species only makes it harder for these species to get along with one another?

It’s a “no good choice” scenario, and I think it’s worth a discussion with Anderson at the end (rather than back on the Normandy with all the companions, just because I don’t think the game can really account for everyone there having an opinion). Though let’s also give a follow-up conversation with Kelly – y’know, the therapist – and let her have more to do in this game.

Post Game Followups:

ME3: If the doctor was taken in to custody, they’re among the Cerberus scientists during the mission on Gellix – Mister Illusive stepped in to get their work under his banner, and, like Gavin Archer, Shepard’s involvement eventually made them hesitate to do his bidding. If the cyborgs were kept on, they’re a decent strength war asset.

 The Batarian Connection

A Cerberus vessel goes missing out near the batarian border. While the Collectors are still the first priority for Commander Shepard and company, the Illusive Man is concerned this may be the first stage of a batarian incursion of Alliance space. He tasks Shepard and company with recovering the missing ship. The batarians, however, have other ideas...

(Post-Horizon)

We hear a lot of talk about the batarians making slave grabs throughout the first two games, and the Colonist background has this as a part of the things Shepard has been through. But we don’t actually see it. And we probably can’t manage to see the absolute worst horrors of the batarian slavers, but that’s not the full point of this.

No, the point is to start showing another face to the batarians. See, we’re going in with the idea of the batarians slavers we’re after handing off the captives they take – of various races, though krogan and turian are not likely, given their own, more aggressive nature (maybe useful in gladiatorial rings... We might be coming back to that before these DLC are done), and the quarians aren’t going to be as numerous, that still leaves humans, asari, salarians, and other batarians. And we know from Mass Effect 3, having the Cannibals being introduced in the first segment of the game, the Reapers have access to a lot of batarian genetic material, so they’ve already spent a lot of time developing how they intend to repurpose the batarians into the servants they need to wage war in this cycle.

Codex material speaks of how the Collectors want certain specific types of people to collect, and that is going to be what’s happening here – while the Collectors main focus in the game is to gather up humans to turn into Reaper slurry, we’re also looking at the other races, because there’s a history of the other races being taken by the Collectors for various unknown reasons. It wasn’t clear if there would have been an intent to build additional Reapers out of the other races – an asari Reaper, a turian Reaper, etc. - or if they’d just be left to rot, possibly slurried alongside the humans and just put in the same shell. To build off the idea of “organic preservation” of the species who consist of a cycle, I’m going to assume that they would be fused into a Reaper of their own, though there’s room to argue they were going to just be pulped into the same Reaper or left as the Collectors of the next cycle. But my ideas, my interpretation of things. And if BioWare wants to fight my interpretation, hey, should have included it in the game.

So yeah, the batarian slavers we’re coming across were going to offer the Collectors more of those captives of various races and such. The idea here is to not just have a look at the horrors of batarian slavery, but also an upfront acknowledgment that the batarians do this to their own people as well. The crappy situation for your average batarian is reduced to codex and one-liners, so we don’t actually have this knowledge available for the common players, and this is a thing that needs correcting.

We’re also going to have an encounter with a different Collector ship (just to avoid too much of the whole “small universe syndrome” of the same ship dogging Shepard for two years – it wasn’t until ME3 and James’s backstory that I got the impression that the Collectors had more than the one ship, since they made this one ship out to be this major force). Because, really, if the Collectors taking colonies was something of a plan B when the Citadel didn’t open, then they should be readying themselves for more than just humanity to be taken.

Among the batarians is a sense of distrust – batarian propaganda says the galaxy hates them, and, because we get the slavers and mercs running around in the games, the audience is probably not inclined to disprove that theory (particularly if there’s a Colonist Shepard doing the run – because I say so, there can be plenty of statements from them on the subject that fit the background specifically, because it’s nice that these are all theoretical and I can throw in whatever I like). Still, the general idea is that Shepard does feel a moral responsibility to save them, even if, as in the case of Renegade Shepard, it’s just in the name of preventing the Collectors get their claws on them.

But, thing is, ME2 offers no ship piloting mechanic, and I’m not bringing that in. And, y’know, I still get war flashbacks of getting ambushed by Sith fighters in KOTOR. So that means that the Normandy heads off, Shepard ordering them to find help (we’re gonna say that this is taking place somewhere near the batarian-turian border, so the Normandy can go find a few turian ships – going back to my idea of “shaking up companions” concept, I don’t have any particular choices to go with Shepard this time, but this makes it almost mandatory for a companion other than Garrus to come along, since Garrus can sway the turians to come to the rescue of alien nationals – and this ship ends up crashing, with Shepard and companions still on board – as are the freed slaves.

And we’re not crashing on a habitable planet. Because while there’s the helmets and all, I feel sometimes like the franchise as a whole underplays how much the atmosphere of planets being conducive to life as we know it is kind of rare. So while the cargo hold, settled in the heart of the ship and surrounded by the various additional decks of the ship, makes it through, there are portions of the ship that have been vented into space.

And the Collectors are coming.

Shepard gets to make a Paragon/Renegade “inspiration” speech to the captives, recommending that they get to trying to save themselves. Paragon will get a majority on their side, Renegade only a particularly brave soul. This one would be the Paragon’s contact/coordinator, just so that I can have a clearly identifiable person to turn to. And, yeah, we’re punishing Renegades here, but here’s the thing about this – we have stolen people, taken prisoner, made into slaves, about to be handed off to aliens who are only known to the galaxy as kidnapping and experimenting on people who never return, and then crashed on a deadly planet, with their only shelter pocked with holes letting out the valuable atmosphere that keeps them alive. I’m sorry, but being an asshole to these traumatized people? Even in the name of saving their asses from said kidnapping and experimenting aliens, they are NOT going to be ready to take up arms and fight. Read the room.

So, it becomes a game of causing enough losses to the Collectors for them to retreat for the Normandy to arrive with rescue vessels. Cat and mouse combat, with interspersed dialogue with our batarian coordinator (Making a name up on the spot... Kahvahr). That’s giving the expansion on both him as a character, talking about himself – a political exile, he spoke out against the Hegemony’s attitudes and practices, that they are so isolationistic that the necessary trade with the Citadel races, trade that could reduce their reliance on slavery, is killing them, which led to him attempting to leave, an attempt that ended up putting him into the hands of the slavers he argued against, and he’s certain that the Hegemony’s leaders basically gave him up. Talk about the beauty of Khar’shan, as a planet and place, something more tangible for us the audience of this place that we never get to go – he speaks longingly of these natural wonders he doesn’t expect he’ll ever see again.

The aid of the batarians Kahvahr leads can offer some combat segments getting avoided, but I do want to include some elements of the Collector faction from ME3 in combat segments all the same, the Collector Captain in specific. Because these things never appeared in ME2, so let’s remedy that.

And our end boss is going to be some variant of the Collector drones we see in Paragon Lost, which are these giant sized Collectors. So they get some additional tricks and are a clear case that Shepard is now facing the worst forces the Collectors can throw at them. Because I figure you can give them some interesting additional boss tricks.

The turians arrive and the Collectors withdraw, so Shepard gets to pass on what to do with these batarians – treat them as refugees who are seeking asylum in Citadel space or ship them back to batarian space. Because the thing is... batarians in Citadel space are probably not going to have things pretty well. Like there’s a reason we see batarians on Omega but not the Citadel. And a lot of these batarians still have families in the Hegemony. So there’s a very real argument to the idea that they’d be better off going back. It’s probably bull, considering the Hegemony’s leadership (and definitely bull on the basis of the Reapers being about to steamroll the batarians in between games), but... It can be made.

And it also speaks to how well Shepard is responding to Kahvahr – Kahvahr makes it clear, batarian slaves tend to be those who speak out. How much good can they really do going back to the Hegemony? Sure, you can argue that it’s in the name of encouraging rebellion against the Hegemony’s leadership, but realistically? It’s signing a death warrant – if this attempt at silencing him didn’t work, the Hegemony will likely just go straight to killing him.

And maybe Shepard’s okay with that – the whole reason we’re doing this is because the portrayal of batarians through the rest of the series is almost exclusively them as an always chaotic evil antagonistic force. What do they contribute to the galaxy, right? But this whole thing has been to help paint the batarians in a new light – now, shipping these batarians back to their people isn’t a mercy but a death sentence. What can I say, I like that script-flipping. But, as always, it is a choice for Shepard, for the players. Because apparently, people who play these games like the chance to play the asshole. Fine, you can, but you’re definitely getting judged for it.

Post Game Followups:

ME3: If given asylum, a batarian militia will have formed, both the survivors of the crash and of batarian refugees, wanting to aid the Citadel forces, Kahvahr himself as an asset.

 Shadow Dance

Shepard’s connections to Cerberus have not gone unnoticed. A Spectre – Vexx Liranus – has decided that they are a key component to Cerberus plans (not untrue) and that their capture or death would be useful in combatting Cerberus (definitely untrue). With a fellow Spectre nipping at their heels, Shepard has to face what should be a comrade in arms in a deadly game of cat and mouse!

(Post-Horizon)

We meet three other Spectres in the trilogy, and only one of them, Jondum Bau, in ME3, is actually an ally. This is turning that on its head – all things considered, Vexx Liranus should be an ally. After all, we’re talking about a fellow Spectre, working for the Council, and Cerberus IS using Shepard for their plans, so taking Shepard out would make sense.

It’s just Shepard is a good guy, working with Cerberus as more an alliance of necessity, rather than any ideological alignment. And while I’m sure if you had a chance to sit down and talk to another Spectre, they’d probably eventually come around to the idea, well... Where’s the fun in that.

So Vexx. We had Naevia above in “The Omega Heist” as our “first” female turian for the trilogy, though she does potentially get killed. So we’re gonna have another female turian here, just to really sell the “no fridging female turians” concept. She is a badass turian soldier, like I want a planet with an “r” name to say she had a major incident on so that she can be “the Raptor of [wherever].” Because I love alliteration. I picture her being voiced by Claudia Christian (who was a favorite of mine to voice a female turian back before we knew anything about Mass Effect Andromeda, and while I’m absolutely a fan of Danielle Rayne’s performance as Vetra, I still regret that lack, so I’m making this happen here).

As for the actual plot, we’re gonna start on a small waystation location. It’s a standard resupply place, in the vein of like those Fuel Depots or something, a place like the Citadel but smaller. Because I think that space stations are an underdeveloped aspect of the Mass Effect universe. Like in Star Trek, there are Starbases and Deep Space Stations (such as DS9). Surely the various militaries of the Citadel races are doing the same, building their own stations that act as refuel and resupply, as well as standard rest and relaxation – Spacer Shepard will talk about living on ships, but I don’t see a child actually being raised on military vessels. But a space station that acts as a rallying point and home base for a vessel? That I’ll buy.

So this begins with the Normandy pulling in to one of these types of stations. You know, a little bit of a supply run, something simple. Things do not go according to plan, though, because, y’know, why would they, we wouldn’t have a plot if they did.

It begins simply. They settle in for a resupply, Miranda suggesting that the operational crew get a chance for some break time, Kelly adding that crew like Rolston and Hadley should have an opportunity to contact their families. That’s how we get here. As Shepard proceeds to look through the market, we get other angles of Vexx monitoring and observing Shepard. Shepard will begin to get that feeling of being watched, and that’s when she makes her first strike.

Now, yeah, I say right off in the synopsis that Vexx is a Spectre, but in the story proper? This is going to be kept quiet for a while. Sorta like how Vasir gets this intro that kinda clearly marks her as someone who we’re going to have to fight later, Vexx is getting the appearance of being a straight up antagonist. Because in her mind, she IS an antagonist to Shepard. She just believes that she’s the protagonist of the story, specifically because of Shepard’s ties to Cerberus, coming to this place in a vessel flying Cerberus colors, operating with a Cerberus crew. In her mind, she has discovered a threat to the Citadel and the Council.

While I’m still on the “give the companions more of a role” train, in this case, we’re going to see Shepard cut off from the crew – they come under fire from Vexx, they give the command to evacuate the station, return to the Normandy, and get out until they give the signal. Paragon Shepard wants to minimize casualties, Renegade Shepard wants to handle this themselves – Vexx interrupts their leave? It’s on now.

This leads to a chase through the station, and finding that she’s gotten things pretty well set up for this chase – I figure at some point, Shepard comes across like a secured bunker she’d been using as a command base, finds logs that have been tracking them since they landed on Omega at the start of the game. (Timeline being what it is, meaning as variable as it is, I’m gonna say that this is taking place functionally around, say, the Collector ship mission.)

That discovery is also when her Spectre status is made clear. Now, while there’s a good chance that Shepard’s had their Spectre status reinstated (thank you Dad!miral Anderson), well, we still need a plot here. Vexx doesn’t believe Shepard’s claim to have Council approval – after all, she certainly can’t just casually check this out while on a mission, Spectres are supposed to function independently of the Council. And she’s pretty good with the “better beg forgiveness than to ask permission” approach – Shepard helping Cerberus, even as a double agent, is a threat (for a less competent example of why, see how Shepard helping Cerberus in ME2 leads to Conrad Verner preaching Cerberus values in ME3).

The hunt continues. I’m basically picturing this functionally working a lot like a lower-levelled version of Arrival’s Project Base level, just with like security drones and such, and Vexx popping in and out of combat range. This is a hunting mission, on both sides, and the idea is that Shepard (and, by extension, the player) should feel like Vexx or her drones might show up around any corner. If nothing else, call it useful practice and experience.

Now, I said before I wanted to avoid stuffing our first female turian in the fridge. While Naevia could survive, she also could die. So I want to guarantee that at least one female turian of prominence is introduced without killing her off. That means that we’re going to have to find a peaceful resolution, as well as an alternative that allows the bloodthirsty playerbase to be satisfied.

That means an outside agent, a third party, getting in on this. I’m thinking a krogan merc with a grudge and a krantt and a blood oath against Vexx he’s more than willing to extend to Shepard, the Spectres, and the Council – with Vexx, it’s personal, having tangled with her before, with Shepard, they’re in the way, and with the Spectres, they work for the Council, and the Council gave the go-ahead on the genophage, so hey, it’s a good day to be him.

This eventually leads to, after some three-way combat, Shepard suggesting a truce for the time being – the krogan (Vargan, for want of a name) is a bigger threat to them both at the moment, since he’s distracting them and endangering the station as a whole. Vexx sees the wisdom in this and is willing to work with Shepard.

This gives a little more time to explore her, now that Shepard can talk to her. Vargan’s grudge stems from her disbanding his merc pack a while pack – they had ideas similar to the Blood Pack and Clan Weyrloc (re: Mordin’s loyalty mission), just without the aid of any salarian scientists. Maybe they’d sought out Okeer (possibly part of the reason that Okeer became a “very hated name,” as Wrex puts it? I don’t know, I’m spitballing here). Whatever the goal, however, she managed to put a stop to it, enough that Vargan was stripped of his clan name – given the structure of krogan society, I figure that in doing that, a krogan loses all right to even attempt to mate with the females, a big blow to a proud krogan leader, basically leading him to a voluntary exile from Tuchanka. That he still has a krantt after that still speaks to his skill and prowess, but also makes it clear that these are his only allies in the galaxy.

Shoot-y shoot-y stuff happens, yadda yadda... We’ve been over how writing about combat in these write-ups is boring. End result, we learn more about Vexx, develop and establish her further, give her this likeable air now that we’re on the same side, and get to Vargan, taking out his krantt in the process. Now that he’s alone, he is ready to die. He got everyone loyal to him killed, that means he’ll never regain a clan name now. He wants to die.

Typically, Paragon/Renegade decisions are a clear binary of “good means letting people live, bad means letting people die!” But here, Paragon is understanding the krogan mindset – he wants to die because he will never have a place in krogan society if he lives. He got his krantt killed, so he will never be able to gather a krantt again. He will never have that trust again, and so his death is the only way he can have an honorable ending. Meanwhile, Renegade is saying “no, I’m not going to grant you the mercy of death, live with your failure.” And doing that will likely mean he will strike out and go on some kind of suicide run (indeed, I picture that result being a news announcement overheard on the galactic news points).

Because I like the idea of twisting the Paragon/Renegade assumptions around – the idea behind it is supposed to be more nuanced than “good = blue, bad = red,” but in context, a lot of the use of the system through most of the series is a lot more binary. So this is showing the flip side of both ideas’ general attitudes – you are saving more lives and respecting his attitudes and beliefs by killing him, while knowingly leaving a threat to others that you KNOW he’ll act on by keeping him alive.

Vargan defeated, it comes back to Shepard and Vexx. She’s more impressed by Shepard at this point. Paragon Shepard showed an understanding of non-human mindsets, and that more than anything makes her hesitate to paint them with the same brush as Cerberus. Renegade Shepard showed enough martial skill that she’s concerned that things will only reach the point of a stalemate, and likely do too much damage to the station for it to continue operation.

So she offers Shepard what she’s going to call a deal – keep to the Terminus Systems, like they have been, and she’ll let things stand as they are, with the added note that, if their Council reinstatement is genuine, she’ll also send a letter with a fuller apology after the DLC concludes. Yeah, it’s basically going back to the status quo, but one, I’ve been clear that my goal is to make these slot in comfortably with the existing game, and two, back to the in-universe justifications, it also means that she can prevent other Spectres from coming after Shepard – after all, we learned with Saren, the only real way to respond to a Spectre going rogue is to send another Spectre after them. If Vexx is in Shepard’s corner, it prevents other Spectres from coming after them later.

Probably should lead to a line or two in reference to Vexx from Tela Vasir, depending on when Lair of the Shadow Broker is played – alternatively, I suppose Vexx should have some comments about Vasir’s death as well, but I did say above that I see this functionally being roughly around the point of the Collector Ship in the timeline, and I always view Lair of the Shadow Broker as taking place after the Suicide Mission, and my write-ups, my timeline. Moving on.

Shepard has to agree to this, because see above: not fridging female turians when the trilogy is so bereft of them in the first place. We don’t kill Vexx. Because, really, that would mean that Shepard would have killed three of the four fellow Spectres they encounter in the course of the trilogy, and their numbers are said to only go to about a hundred or so. That’s a three percent fatality rate for the Spectres, and a seventy-five percent fatality rate of meeting Shepard. Someone has to think those numbers look bad. So, in accepting the deal, Vexx walks away and Shepard calls the Normandy for a pick up.

Post Game Followups:

ME3: Vexx has a sidequest on the post-Coup Citadel, regarding her work with the unifying of turian and krogan forces. Given Shepard having contributed, she’s asking them to join in her efforts. Complete that and she gets to be an asset and there’s a boost for both of those groups as well.

 Underworld

Illium is home to many elite in the galaxy. It’s called the gateway to the Terminus Systems. But it’s equally a warning that there is as much danger in Illium’s shadows as on Omega. And now a high-profile Alliance official goes missing there. Ambassador Anderson asks Shepard to investigate as he keeps the disappearance quiet, and Shepard gets drawn into a web of conspiracy...

(Post-Horizon)

Illium seems like it should be a bigger deal, don’t you think? I mean, in ME2 we get three hub worlds in Omega, the Citadel, and Illium, but Illium is introduced after Horizon, being locked to (on console) disc two, and, while Lair of the Shadow Broker gave us more of Illium in general... Hey. Let’s explore more. Cuz now we can open up some new areas that can stick around and still be explorable after the DLC ends.

We open with a message from Anderson – “one of our people went missing out on Illium, I’d like you to look into this as a favor to me,” that sort of thing. This official is an ambassadorial figure from the Alliance to the asari (so, for the sake of a name, I’m in a Power Rangers mood right now, I’m gonna call her Kimberly Hart). She’s been attempting to shore up some diplomatic ties – I’d figure this would include matters like getting stronger ties between the asari in the name of gaining access to teachers for Grissom Academy, better relations in the name of biotic rights, that sort of thing.

Illium, being a free trade world, is a place where these kinds of negotiations take place without government oversight – I figure, based on things like the asari on Noveria in ME1 who wants to protect asari patents by getting Shepard to help her engage in corporate espionage, the asari government is extremely strict about their “secrets” while humans, who are still struggling to get a handle on what to do with first and second gen biotics, are willing to take on free agents more than like the commandos and such. Also, don’t want a repeat of Vyrnnus, so the turians are definitely out. It’s “asari free agents” who they’re looking at bringing on for this.

But with her having gone missing, that’s concerning – again, we have the asari being fiercely protective of what they view as their copyrights (which I do want to have a running theme here surrounding the idea “how do you copyright something that has this melding with the life it is bonded to?” – amps working as they do, mapped to biological systems as they are, this seems like it borders on trying to patent people in the process, since they’ll gain full maps of the people those amps are implanted in). Anderson wants Shepard to go in, since they’re off the official books.

Now we return to that earlier concept of mandatory companions. Because of the matter of biotics, this feels like a mission that Jack pushes her way in to – both because she’s been the subject of biotic experimentation, and she wants to ensure that this doesn’t turn in to the Teltin facility all over again, and to help give some foreshadowing for her becoming one of Grissom Academy’s teachers next game. Additionally, I’ll go with Thane as the other companion for this – he’s done work in Illium’s criminal underworld.

Now then, to our central hub of Illium. We’re on a different city than Nos Astra, but it’s going to have a similar flavor to it, in the same way that Azure still felt like it wasn’t all that out of place alongside the trading center. Nos Vidia, I’ll call it (sounds suitably asari, anyway). It’s not as major a hub of intergalactic trade and commerce, meaning that Shepard and company are going to stand out in the crowd.

This is also one of the more “crime” areas, where the black market has moved in. We have Eclipse symbols on the wall and, while they’re not wearing the uniform, many of the people around here are obviously in the gang. Which also makes Shepard stand out. Thane, however, manages to bring up a former contact, someone who has been able to stay alive this long, meaning they’re skilled enough that they’ve survived.

The contact is an asari I’m gonna call Kassria. Kassria has picked up some Eclipse chatter that references our missing ambassador. That means Eclipse has her, but it’s not clear so much if her being taken is because of her getting in the way of Eclipse as a gang or if the Eclipse are working for some asari company.

We pause for some talk about the various asari copyrights, explore that conversation, with Jack having quite a few words on the subject of trying to make people property. That kind of thinking creates situations that create the same kind of science as Teltin. Thane offers something of the drell perspective – he’s the one who argues that he was raised and trained as a weapon for the hanar, and that he was not responsible for the lives he took. Who owns the abilities, the user or the one calling for their use? (I mean, there’s an obvious answer, but Thane’s bringing up the alternative to this – the people who are broken down and made into weapons at the hands of others.)

Like actually, let’s make that aside a point of having Jack and Thane – in Jack’s eyes, Thane’s attitude towards the people he’s killed is much how Cerberus would have wanted her to have ended up, as a weapon for them to point, pull the trigger, and give no concern for the ways that it impacts the person who acts because of that order.

It’s the same argument that we have with Miranda – the idea of “disposable troops” does not make it a matter of saving lives, just a matter of how war becomes easier, having these weapons to unleash upon others with no risk to the people who are supposedly being protected by them. It’s a way of absolving yourself for creating slaves by giving them some higher purpose.

This really is going to be a turning point with Jack’s arc proper, with how it leads to her being a teacher, because she wants to protect the young biotics. It’s not just about her protecting the kids at the Ascension Project from ending up tortured like the kidnapped victims at the Teltin facility. It’s also about reclaiming and maintaining personhood.

And while it’s hard for me to really give the separation theory Thane speaks of (we ARE going to come back to issues of the drell in general a few DLCs from here, so consider this to be foreshadowing and set up for that bit), I’m going to try and offer his point of view – that of “if you hone someone to only be a weapon, to only look at the world from that perspective, is it really on them as an individual that they proceed to see the world from that viewpoint?”

Of course, yes, I’m aware that the inherent flaw of ALL of this is that we’re not talking about drell youths giving themselves up to the hanar in the fulfillment of the Compact or with “different brain structures” to humans. It’s the tangent that they end up on because they’re along for the ride, and Shepard eventually has to get them back on track – finding Ambassador Hart. Whether or not the asari corporations are intending to use people as weapons, the Eclipse sisters presently have her held captive, and this means staging a rescue operation.

I want to take this chance to get a better idea of Eclipse’s organization (which, by extension, showcases the ideas that are moving the other merc gangs in the series). Like, what goals do they really have – Blood Pack are basically chaotic berserkers who want the world to burn (which, fitting, considering the general krogan mindset following the genophage and the vorcha having a complete lack of survival instincts because they never needed to evolve them), while Blue Suns have the veneer of respectability, acting as private security. But when we meet Jona Sedaris in ME3, she’s a raving psychopath, ready to kill anyone in her way. So what does the Eclipse gang want? I mean, besides the obvious of money.

Kassria is a former Eclipse sister, so she offers this insight – Eclipse doesn’t even really know itself. The non-asari members are almost leaning towards biotic extremism, given how the other races tend to mistreat and look down on the biotics among them, which makes them angry and want to lash out at those who’ve hurt them. Meanwhile, the asari who join in are often driven by other motivations, given that all asari have biotics – some are outcasts (purebloods, in pureblood relationships, or people with the Ardat-Yakshi mutation – let’s just assume Samara will have shared about her loyalty mission by the time this mission is unlocked so we don’t have to have the characters explain this to Shepard), others are maidens looking for glory (think Elnora the mercenary from Samara’s recruitment mission), some are obsessed with killing (like Sedaris), and some are just looking for a purpose.

She suggests that, if given something better, Eclipse might be a valuable asset for Shepard – not just in biotics, but also in their mechs. It’d be something to use when the Reapers come calling, not that she knows about the Reapers, just that she can figure that whatever Shepard’s up to, they’ll want an army at their back (because we’re still ME2 here, so this means we don’t know that Aria will be assembling the merc gangs under her banner).

This leads to an assault on the Eclipse base and trying to reach Hart before anyone proceeds to try and kill her or worse. As we continue, we find out that there is a high-ranking Eclipse member among this group – Jona Sedaris.

Yes, that’s right, we’re going to be responsible for her getting locked up come ME3. Obviously, this does mean she’ll survive the inevitable conflict and boss battle, but hey, we’re gonna have other things to deal with in the final analysis, so hold all questions to the end.

The Eclipse sisters and the techs with their mechs are heavy throughout the place, but eventually, we reach the place they’re holding Hart. She’s been roughed up a bit, but she’s alive. She’d made contact with an asari firm who’d claimed to be willing to trade some “asari patents” in the name of cross-cultural cooperation, but Hart got suspicious of what was happening. Turns out, she was being used – the company (a minor company, not one of our major equipment suppliers from the actual games, that she had gone to them in the name of avoiding those big names) was going to give her access, only to revoke it and claim that she had stolen these patents. That would give them an opening to start consolidating biotic patents in a human market, because humans would now be running amps and implants with copyrighted asari material, and, by extension, that would mean the company would own those human biotics.

That, of course, gets Jack’s ire up, and she’s ready to tear the place apart – people aren’t things to be owned. Even Thane’s ready to join in – even accepting his claims of lacking a responsibility for the lives that his employers hired him to take (again, we’ll be digging deeper into this in the future), this is trying to force people to be under the control of this company – based on his reaction when Shepard suggests that the Compact between the hanar and the drell constitutes slavery, Thane’s definitely not on board with that idea. And even on Illium, a planet with legalized “indentured servitude,” this contract is definitely sketchy – but it would be just legal enough that the company leadership would be able to get their foot in the door, and make it harder for human biotics to be able to exist without “company oversight,” giving them access to the human biotics before they have a chance to stabilize their position in human society.

It’s some further asari haughtiness, the idea of asari like Erinya, the lawyer who holds the contract to the Feros colonists, that the asari are “better” than the other races. The asari in charge of this company are of the belief that only the asari “deserve” biotics, and want to keep all biotics in the galaxy under their control. These asari in particular don’t see any race other than asari as even deserving of evolving out of the primordial muck. Not a mainstream view, but one that we do have foundation for existing in the universe proper, and, let’s be honest, it’s not hard to imagine this being a thing anyway based on our world (We’ll touch on these themes in more detail later). And this idea, especially combined with the asari willingness to indulge in “indentured servitude” on Illium, if no where else, gets taken to its natural endpoint – they see human biotics as little more than pack mules, livestock.

Short step from there to going along with batarian or Collector ideas, but really, it’s not like we don’t know exactly where that endpoint is from our history.

Obviously, Shepard is a walking contradiction to those ideas, so combat is the only way through. Sedaris might be an unrepentant murderer, but we do still have to take her into custody – this is where Kassria comes in, taking her down and intending to hand her over to the authorities in the name of getting a slice of the Eclipse pie with her out of the picture. It won’t be a clean takeover, which will justify why Sayn is running things for Sedaris outside of prison instead of Kassria (who would DEFINITELY just leave Sedaris to rot and probably arrange an ‘accident’ for her), but it’s getting her more power.

As for the company, they’re JUST on the side of legality – the efforts of Eclipse on their behalf were by way of verbal contracts, and no lawyer on Illium is going to take the word of a mercenary over those of these high-ranking business officials. Hart swears that she can make things hell for them, lose them some very lucrative contracts with the Alliance. Thing is, that also makes her job all the more difficult, now that she’s been found out having attempted to make these grey legality ties for the sake of “getting an edge” in the biotics market – they have the resources to make this a fight that, meanwhile, would set the cause of human biotics back. (Which, as we’ve been over in other write-ups, actually is a bit of a thing that has some deeper ties in to the overall universe that the people of this setting are still working on figuring out.)

The Paragon/Renegade choice here becomes the rather obvious “do we take the option that handles this cleanly but lets the bad guys escape responsibility, or the messy alternative that may not even get the result we want?” choice. Because the thing about asari litigation is that they can afford to tie things up for decades without concern for the “short term” consequences. So if this DOES go to courts, they can wrap things up and keep them there for a long time – which will impact how things go for the human biotics, the whole idea of ‘owning’ people because they have these abilities. Because then their legality, their agency, their right to choose for themselves would be being litigated, and being done so in the court of aliens.

It doesn’t feel GOOD to me to have it left like this, honestly, but I don’t really see this as something that is supposed to have a conclusion that feels good – we’re talking about issues of corporate ownership of individuals, and the truth is... that exploitation just goes on, it doesn’t resolve itself with a few showy displays of violence. It gets caught up in red tape and paperwork, and people lose, even as they win. And the point of this has basically been, at its heart, to show that the “underworld” isn’t the black and grey markets that scrounge a semblance of society. It’s the businesses who will crush people underfoot then complain about the mess they stepped in. The design of a lot of the locations introduced in ME2 had this cyberpunk dystopia look to them, but only really focused on the criminal gangs – the core of this is approaching the white collar criminal element that was not shown off as much, how it encourages both further street crime and the depersonalization that comes from treating humans as a commodity.

Jack is pissed either way because this is all kinds of bullshit – it’s Shepard who points out that as angry as Jack defaults to, this is, for once, her being pissed at something beyond herself, where it’s not just that she wants to cause mayhem, but that she wants to make things different for others. To do something to protect future human biotics, kids who are in need. It’s her actively wanting to find a way to make a different, not just chaos.

As for Thane, he is still drell, still a proponent of the Compact (again, we’ll be coming back to this issue), but he does understand how easy it is to see something ostensibly done to the benefit of people turns around and is used by malicious actors to take advantage of them. It’s one of those things that he certainly understood in the abstract, but it’s another thing to see in practice. He leaves it on the note that “this has given me much to consider.”

As for Ambassador Hart, she knows that either way, she’s tanked her chances for getting the instructors that she’d been hoping for. Basically, the diplomatic ties she’d wanted from the asari government are off the table, given the combination of asari tied to the company and just general political embarrassment at the fact that all of this even happened – they want to ignore it, paint things over in pastels, and she is a living embodiment of the event to the asari, able to bring up the reality at a time of her choosing. The asari would rather that this go away, rather than have this constant reminder. Still, she’s grateful for Shepard’s rescue – the Eclipse might not have actively been planning on her death, but it wasn’t a good position. And, at this point, she can at least salvage a career going forward. Maybe not with the asari, but there’s a chance that relations with the turians have thawed out some.

Post Game Followups:

ME3: The fate of the company plays a part in War Assets – being tied up in legal red tape, they’re not able to contribute to the war effort, or, in a magnanimous show of “inter-species cooperation,” they’re sharing some patents with the other races. Additionally, Ambassador Hart shows up for a sidequest after the Cerberus Coup, making another go at the effort, now that Grissom is gone and the human biotics are here – might as well make the effort to get these asari instructors anyway, and she wants Shepard to help her out with smoothing the ruffled feathers (since this would still be in that period of time where the asari are still trying to avoid joining the active war effort).

Also, while this wouldn’t really impact anything via saved game import, I also figure this would at least tie in to Andromeda, that several human biotics joined the Initiative in the name of getting away from the corporations who want to hold them as “patented property” and such. Probably would be a way to help at least make Cora’s arc tighten up a little – it’s not just that she thought she’d only be a “useful freak” as a human biotic, as opposed to an asari commando or an Initiative Pathfinder, but that in getting away from Citadel space, she’d be allowed to just be, to find out who it is that she is beyond her biotics, rather than have to have her biotics “registered” with a corporation who’d exploit them and her. Not sure how to incorporate that into Andromeda proper, but it’s something that would be acknowledged.

End of Part 1, link to Part 2 forthcoming.

#dg's hypothetical dlc #mass effect #mass effect meta #mass effect 2

[the-colony-roleplay]

THREAD TRACKING, DMS/ASKS & CONSIDERATE ROLEPLAYING

Hey kiddlies! 

So, I wanted to take this time to address a couple of small things that have been brought to my attention lately. As all of you know, here at the Colony we pride ourselves on our exceptional inclusivity, friendliness and sense of community support. When new members who join the family stay and feel a part of the team, it is thanks to how much we, as an entire unit, prioritize making sure new members know just how enthused we are to have them here, as well as reaching out to help engage them into our ongoing plots and into the verse. 

As an extensive worldbuilding RP with many long-term members, we know that it can be intimidating to get started when you’re new to the verse, so this is a huge factor in why we are still successful today and how we continue to grow and evolve as a unified, loving community. You are also all aware of the kinds of attitudes we don’t condone here, and can sometimes be rampant in the RPC. We believe that the key to forming a unified, safe and long-lasting roleplay is by prioritizing what I sometimes call the ‘rule of the three Cs’: collaboration, communication, and consideration.

Consideration is a big one. Because I can not tell you the amount of RPs I have joined and been disappointed by by the sheer self-involved mentality of individual members—or the amount of times I’ve heard horror stories from all of you. Yes, roleplay is meant to be fun, it is a pastime—but because group RPs are, by nature, an activity of collaboration, they literally only work when you can consider the perspectives, feelings and positions of everyone in it with you. Like a true team. I know... most of you are probably not sports players (lol) but if you can imagine being on a basketball team where no one considered every teammate equally, and put their own egos aside to play as a team, well—they would never win anything. Ever. Also, (and possibly more importantly, because nothing in RP is a competition or about ‘wining’): they would never have any fun.

Now, I’m bringing all this up, not because anyone has done anything wrong or against these practices, but because I want you all to understand why I believe this RP stands out the way it does, why we continue to foster and grow, and why I take the team-player aspect and consideration of others so seriously. Because it is literally the foundation on which this unique community is built on. We are very aware of how problematically inconsiderate so many RPs can be, and how disheartening it is to feel like you are being ignored or excluded, or like people are not interested in writing with you.

SOME CONCERNS & PLATFORM ISSUES

So, with all that said, I’m sure you will all understand why I take any complaints about lack of communication or feeling left out very seriously. Fortunately, we hear almost exclusively positive feedback in terms of communication and members feeling not just included, but all around adored and supported. We could not be prouder of each and every one of you for making this RP the safe place that it is. However, with recent issues and glitches with the tumblr platform certainly not helping matters, there have been a couple of patterns flagged recently and brought to Mod attention, involving the dropping of threads and lack of replying to DMs or asks. 

Now, I do know that this is probably mostly due to the activity notification thing shitting the bed (thanks tumblr), as well as the unreliability (is that a word?) of notifications for DMs and Asks. However, I’m going to address it anyway, mention a few tips that may help us work around the platform’s glitches, and also just be more personally mindful and responsible. 

So, being mindful to check your replies, your messages, your threads—it’s all part of being a considerate and responsible RPer, and someone who is able to function in a team environment. And it’s so, so important to remember that being considerate of others is not a single-lane highway. It doesn’t only apply to not dropping threads and replying to messages—it also applies to being allowed to drop threads if you need to, to being met with understanding if you are feeling overwhelmed, or have fallen behind or lost muse, etc. This is important because we do not want anyone to be afraid to say anything to help themselves because they are too concerned about hurting someone’s feelings. In fact, the most mature and polite thing to do, and the kind of conduct we expect from each and every one of you, is that you treat people with the same respect and understanding you would want to be treated with. And that includes patience, as much as it does communication and consideration. 

Again, I really want to stress how unbelievably proud I am of this community and of everything that you all do to take care of each other. There isn’t a single person here who I think would ever intentionally ignore someone or drop threads or be inconsiderate and I literally have never been in another RP that has felt as kind and warm as you people make this place. So seriously, thank you so much. 

But I’m sure that it also makes sense to you why I absolutely will not tolerate behaviour that is exclusive or inconsiderate of others under any circumstances. If I’m hearing that people’s messages are getting ignored consistently, or that people are skipping or dropping threads consistently without contacting the people they are RPing with about it, then I have cause for concern. 

Fortunately, I know the lot of you well enough that I trust that these few circumstances that have arisen are likely thanks to inconsistent tumblr notifications, at best, and at worst, simple absent mindedness we are all guilty of from time to time! 

So without further adieu... 

THREAD TRACKING TIPS AND TRICKS! WEE!!

So, in terms of threads—if you know you are losing track of things, just be mindful to keep an open dialogue with your fellow RPers, and do not just rely on the notification panel in tumblr. (Dear God, please don’t, it’s the actual worst). A good trick I find useful is to check out your own character blog (or character-exclusive posts but on the dash, if you know what i’m referring to, I never know how to explain that, haha)—take the ten extra seconds to remind yourself who you’ve been RPing with the past couple of weeks, because that’s often how I find accidentally missed threads. This kind of thinking and mindfulness just makes it easier to keep up with things. And remember! Everyone misses stuff sometimes! It happens to the best of us (including your ol’ Papa!Mod) so when it does happen, just be proactive and reach out to whoever you’re RPing with. Or, if it happens to you, don’t be afraid to connect with your fellow RPer and touch base about a thread’s status. 

I have also heard really good things about Rp Thread Tracker, which I know some of you use already. Now, some of you may be worried that it will be too complicated or too much of a hassle to set up, and so you avoid it, (which has been the case/reasoning with myself) but I’ve been assured by several people that although they had the same concerns, the set up is super easy, only takes a few minutes, and is kind of a life safer. It also is actually possible to track multiple threads based off one open starter—once you get the replies it’s just a matter of setting it up to be tracked. 

So, you can find that tool here, if you are interested in using it. But you can also check out this tutorial if you want to get an idea of how it works, or help setting it up for yourself! Of course, this is not by any means mandatory, but it is a really good option for people who might be interested, and something I think a lot of you might want to consider if you have a hard time tracking! 

I think one of the great things about this community is there has never had to be a.... hard rule about replying to threads in order or anything like that. Partly because a) that’s kind of impossible to manage and guarantee and b) we do want to be flexible for muse and time and all kinds of things like that! After all, writing and creativity is not a hard science! But one thing members here have always done really really well, is just being naturally considerate of your RP partners, giving them a head’s up if you’re needing more time to figure out how to reply to their thread, and doing your best to not skip threads consistently. (Skipping threads on a consistent basis in favour of only replying to a select few characters would constitute as bubble RPing, but fortunately, that has never been a problem here.) 

However, we always want to avoid making anyone feel ignored or hurt, by skipping their replies—so please, if you are struggling with muse for certain threads, do not be afraid to be honest with your RP partner about it. They will understand and will feel much better knowing it’s not something personal, or something they did, or like you simply aren’t interested in writing with them. As a member of Colony 22, we will hold you to your ability to be mature and considerate of others. It is by far one of our most important requirements. And since I know you are all the nicest, sweetest people I’ve ever had the pleasure of writing with, I want all of you to pay close attention to occasions or habits that have the potential of being misconstrued as hurtful or negligent. 

DMS AND ASKS: OOC COMMUNICATION

So this is all pretty self explanatory, and verging on repetitive as much of what’s been covered above applies here as well. And just to be even more repetitive (because it’s a thing I do super well apparently), I am so unbelievably impressed with everyone’s attitudes and contribution here, so my bringing this up is more in the interest of calling attention to habits that may have formed that could be interpreted as hurtful by other members, even if that is not the intention!

So, if tumblr notifications with DMs are letting you down, or you know you’re likely liable to forget to reply to things if you see them on your phone, try to be mindful of checking things like that next time you log in. Take responsibility to check messages you might have missed, or forgotten to reply to when you were out and about and busy with life as we know it.

Now, this is coming from a person who can’t stand phone notifications. If you message me while I’m busy or on my phone, I probably will not reply to you because ~anxiety~. And hey, so many of us have it, so we all get it, you know? So not to worry. But that just means that the considerate thing to do in return of being treated with compassion and understanding by others, is to make sure to double check those things when we do have time. Make sure we aren’t leaving anyone hanging. Because another thing I absolutely will not tolerate in this RP is people ignoring messages about threads or plotting requests etc. Just do not do it. This community is your team, your family. This community is my family too, and as a moderator (and Papa!) I am very protective of each and every one of you and your comfort and happiness is of the utmost importance to both Lottie and I. 

So if you know you are likely a bit flakey when it comes to responding to messages (it’s okay! it happens!), please take care to amend that. To do what you can to make up for it when you log in at a more convenient time. Get back to people. Do not ignore people. And if you do feel like you are overwhelmed and you need to drop some older threads or anything like that, this is a safe place to do that! You will have moderator support and community support. We have all been there, so there is no need to be worried or afraid of being judged or letting anyone down. It is not that kind of community! So if that happens, and someone is asking about an older thread, please try to feel comfortable being honest with them, and asking for what you need, be it extra time, or to drop it in the interest of focusing on new future things :) 

And, if you don’t feel comfortable, for any reason, please know that Lottie and I are here to support you! We have had some of our lovely children come to us before feeling nervous or worried about threads getting backed up or falling behind or lack of muse due to extreme anxiety when looking at their drafts.... and we have always helped them through it! There is a solution, we promise you, and we know that sometimes it just takes a little reminder that yes, it is okay to let things go and that you have literally every person’s support here. No matter what you’re going through, we are here for you; as a mods, and as a community, we will do whatever we can to assist in easing some of your stresses and and getting back to the basics of why you enjoy RP in the first place! 

Basically, there is never any excuse to ignore anyone. Be honest, and be mindful, and if you have any trouble, whatever the cause or kind, come to the mods—either individually or to the main, whatever makes you most comfortable. But if I hear of anyone consistently ignoring anyone’s messages it is something I will take seriously as that is not at all being a team player, and I will be forced to have to ask for names and address the issue with that person directly. And no one here wants to call anyone out or throw anyone under the bus or make anyone feel bad, because at the end of day, we all love each other very much—so I’m sure it’s in everyone’s best interest if I don’t have to do that.

IN CLOSING... 

Alright, thank you VERY MUCH for taking the time to tread this really long post. Thank you for your understanding, your team work, your love and commitment, your talent and joy. Thank you to those of you who felt comfortable bringing their concerns to my attention, and thank you to everyone for being the supportive and considerate little nerds ya’ll are. The concerns that were brought to me were pretty aware of it likely being a tumblr notif problem, but the people who did mention it to me were more concerned about other people being upset, than themselves. So I think that’s a really stinkin’ good sign of how sweet ya’ll are, and I want you all to know how deeply Lottie and I appreciate you. You are hands down the best, most considerate and fun group of writers I’ve ever had the pleasure of writing with, and I’m so grateful for you all everyday!

Keep up the fantastic work everybody!! And as always, if anyone has any questions or concerns regarding this post, please do not hesitate to bring them to us. Finally, please be sure to like this post so I know that you’ve read it. Thank you!!

Much love and sparkles!

xxMod!Ro

#col22admin #the three cs #thread tracking

[correspondencearchive]

5. Naomi Kawanishi Reis & Alex Paik

Naomi Reis and Alex Paik discuss childhood survival mechanisms manifesting in their work, in-between-ness, their labor-intensive practices, and Naomi’s recent body of work which was shown at Transmitter (Brooklyn, NY).

Alex Paik (AP): You’ve been thinking about camouflage in an ongoing series of your work, and it strikes me that this idea of hiding and/or being invisible is central to your work. Now that I think of it, even your work in grad school, which was about these sort of hybrid utopic (or dystopic) architectures had this silence in them. There were no figures and no real record of anyone having lived or living in those imagined spaces, like they were erased or hidden. When you started talking about camouflage in recent years it really was an a-ha moment for me in understanding your work. I’d love to hear your thoughts more on the invisibility of Asians in general in the art world and the ways in which that feeling might be a part of your work.

Naomi Kawanishi Reis (NR): Camouflage was something I started using about eight years ago, in a series called Borrowed Landscape. The series was based on photographs I took in the tropical biomes of conservatory gardens, a take on landscape painting where the “nature” being depicted was a highly curated by-product of Western colonialism. Plants that were highly useful/exploitable/profitable/exotic and beautiful, collected in a place that existed outside of time, secreted away from the effects of weather and death. I translated those photographs onto printed wallpaper, upon which was placed a framed mixed-media painting that replicated a portion of the wallpaper behind it.

Naomi Reis, Borrowed Landscape II (Tropics of Africa, Asia and the Amazon via Brooklyn), 2013. Digital print on vinyl and handcut washi and mylar cutouts in maple frame, 13.5 x 14 feet. Installation view at Susan Inglett Gallery, New York, NY in “American Beauty,” curated by William Villalongo. Photograph by Jason Mandella.

NR: I was thinking about how landscape has been used in image-making throughout history to depict idealized places—like Pure Land paradise in Buddhist mandalas, the Taoist spiritualism of Chinese or Japanese landscape paintings, and the glorification of nature found in Romantic landscape paintings.

The title “Borrowed Landscape” comes from a 7th-century Chinese garden design concept (shakkei=借景,  a technique of “borrowing” the view of a distant scenic element, like a mountain or lake, into the design of the garden), which felt like a fitting title for where we find ourselves today in relation to landscape. Living on borrowed time, on stolen land: ignoring the reality of our responsibilities to the land, the indigenous people it was stolen from, and the debt owed to stolen Black bodies and labor in service of white supremacy. The handmade framed painting, I suppose, is a stand-in for us as immigrant settlers on this land here in America; we’ve camouflaged ourselves into our surroundings to fit in, to survive. The land we are attempting to fit into, is itself “borrowed” (aka stolen).  

These choices weren’t made consciously when I started the series; it’s only now eight years in that I’m beginning to understand the why, and finding the words to explain it. As a diasporic, racialized person both in America as well as in Japan, I’ve needed to navigate complex social and racial situations. My father’s side of the family is white and doesn’t speak Japanese, so as a kid I knew that in order to survive and be “liked” by that side, or maybe even just to be understood, I needed to downplay my otherness and be as “normal,” aka white English-speaking, to them as possible. Conversely, my mom’s side of the family is Japanese and doesn’t speak English, so to them I needed to be as Japanese as possible. Of course as a kid you get a pass to a degree and are loved anyways, but I do remember this feeling of anxiousness, that my survival and ability to be loved and cared for depended on this ability to code-switch.

Being the oldest in a family of three siblings, and because my experience was so different from my parents’ monocultural upbringing (Japanese in rural Japan for my mom, white American in suburban NJ for my dad), code-switching was an essential survival tool. Kids instinctively figure out how to protect themselves at a very young age, even before they learn how to express themselves verbally. Immigrants adapt similar survival tactics, the art of blending in. Though “blending in” is a way to survive, it also is an act of self erasure. How to survive, while not annihilating yourself in the process? You camouflage.

The reason for the absence of figures in my work probably comes from feeling absent from my own narrative, feeling a bit unmoored from belonging to any one culture. I didn't see myself being reflected in the context of mainstream Japan or in America or anywhere except for maybe sci-fi or fantasy. Growing up I often felt like a ghost, like I didn’t exist in the real world. While I had learned how to integrate enough to survive, as I was getting up to speed with my fluency and literacy in English and Japanese while going back and forth between the U.S. and Japan, I often felt I was on the sidelines watching other people live their lives and not feeling comfortable enough to fully participate. When my family moved from Ithaca, NY to Kyoto in the ’80s when I was 9 for my dad’s teaching job at a Japanese university, I was often called 外人=outside person by strangers on the street. As a sensitive kid, I internalized that othering a lot.

The architectural work I was making in grad school was a kind of perverse take on modernist architecture, multiplying and ornamenting the hell out of the piloti and flat roofs of the International Style, a style that aimed to strip all ornamentation and color to become a “pure” architecture. The absence of figures became like the blank-slate of a dollhouse, a place I could imagine roaming around in.

Naomi Reis, Vertical Garden (weeds), 2007. Hand-cut ink and acrylic drawings on mylar, 53 x 45 inches. Photograph by Etienne Frossard.

AP: I can relate so much to this, being the first-born child of immigrants. It is interesting to think about these survival mechanisms in relationship to our work. I have been reflecting recently on my site-responsive installations, how they adapt and change depending on the size, time, and location of the piece, and how this is a metaphor for how one can rearrange the parts of the self depending on the social context. Code-switching would be one aspect of this. One of the feelings I remember most from childhood, perhaps because of moving a lot as a kid, perhaps because of being Korean-American and not quite feeling Korean or American, is that of constantly feeling like I need to assess the room and adapt to it. So while you are drawn to the idea of hiding/camouflage in your work, I am drawn to the idea of constantly adapting and rearranging the different components of the self. Two sides of the same coin I guess.

NR: Ah that’s interesting. Your strategy is to go on defense, which maybe is connected to your training in martial arts, and your attraction to building communities like TSA, whereas mine is an introvert’s tendency to self-isolate, to find a way to take up space while remaining hidden—yang vs yin.

To return to your question about why work made by Asian artists seems hidden behind some kind of invisibility cloak: that’s a reflection of where we’re at culturally in America generally. Asian stories remain largely unknown; they are insufficiently featured in mainstream media and curricula, so Asians have largely remained the consummate “other” whose experience is hidden and therefore not relatable to many Americans on a heart, gut level. White America tends to project an expectation of whiteness onto others, so when your actions or motives aren't matched in a way that’s relatable to a white audience, you confuse expectations and can be seen as an unknowable other that’s doing things wrong or badly. When you are seen as an other, it makes you vulnerable to either being too too visible—a target that needs to be taken down for taking up space that we don’t deserve, as we’ve seen play out recently in the attacks against Asians in America—or not relatable/relevant and therefore invisible, an easy target for cultural appropriation or the butt of a joke.

American culture likes extremes. Black or white, good or bad, democrat or republican, man or woman. Personally I feel most comfortable in the in-between, where everything is still in the process of forming, and reforming. Queer spaces. Because they encompass, in theory, all shades of ambiguity. Going back to the idea of binary space, people tend to be attracted to things that either remind them of themselves, or on the opposite extreme, that provide a projected escape into the exotic “other.” In movies you often see Asian-ness as an alienating backdrop to heighten tension for the central white characters you are meant to identify with: Asian bodies as embodiment of a dystopian future (both Bladerunner movies, Artificial Intelligence, Minority Report); as nonsensical foreigners in their own country (Lost in Translation); as hapless natives who need saving (Last Samurai).

AP: What aspects of your work do you see as talking about the in-between?

NR: My work is maybe less aiming to talk “about” the in-between, and more just wanting to “be” in the in-between. The process of making “it,” whatever “it” ends up being—is itself what creates the space and time to occupy an in-between—a wordless space that exists for the interval while engaged in the act of making.  The 間 space: a Japanese word that refers to the in-between, both spatially and temporally. This is the space in which all artists work, falling into that pocket of space-time where things are in flux.

It’s a way to give yourself permission to inhabit space—”to be” without having to translate that state of being into a binary (English/not-English; American/not American; male/female; young/old). Even now, writing this out, and to you, Alex, I am inhabiting my English-speaking self who is translating the self into a form that is legible to an English-speaker. Talking to my mom, I am inhabiting my Japanese-speaking self and all the historical cultural gendered background that goes into being that particular self. Talking to my siblings or bilingual friends, fluidly switching between English and Japanese, is a way to occupy the in-between for that interval of time, then returning to the binary world of everyday life. Didactically speaking, I suppose my work is “in-between'' in that it is kind of painting, kind of drawing, kind of collage, kind of abstract, kind of representational, kind of naive, kind of sophisticated. Kind of American? Kind of Japanese? Kind of good? Kind of bad? A physical thing that takes up space, and that space can encompass all the ambiguous in-between mushy-ness.

I didn’t feel able to pursue being an artist until I was in my mid-20s. I had a lot of shame about not being good enough, of not deserving to do it. Still do. I hadn’t gone to art school, and wasn’t encouraged to be a creative person by society or parentally. It was something I wasn’t open about, I drew and painted alone in the privacy of my room. So by the time I was in my mid-20s and realized working a normal job was killing me (I was a human resources representative at the NY office of a Japanese printing company), and that I really had to give artmaking a go, I didn’t know what I was doing.

At the time, I was fascinated by architecture. The idea that you could take a philosophy, a belief system, and turn it into a permanent structure that’s inhabitable, that can last for centuries. Maybe that fascination came from growing up in Kyoto around buildings that had been around for 1,200+ years. So when I started in the MFA program at Penn Design and was making architectural sketches in 3D-modeling programs, it came from a feeling of: if I can imagine an inhabitable place within which I can exist, I can open up a non-binary space to work within. Anytime I can overcome my inner demons or lack of talent or confidence or imposter syndrome, etc. long enough to crack open some space and just make the work, that’s a victory. Generally, in the year ahead I want to make work that comes from a place of joy. Worrying less about how my work fits in, and just focussing on creating the conditions within which I can feel more exuberant, and free. When you allow those conditions for yourself, I think you can do the same for others.  

AP: Another exciting thing about your work is how it is busting out of the rectangle more! Obviously I am all about that :) Can you talk more about how that happened and how you are thinking about it?

NR: Ha! I think it comes from a desire to to be more joyful, bust out of the seams, take up more space. Allow for messiness, draw outside the lines. I want to make more space for weirdness. It must come from a desire to push against the narrowly-defined rules for acceptable female behavior that I grew up with in Japan, and the kind of bubbling rage I felt for the myriad of ways women and their bodies are policed, undermined, silenced, and funneled into serving a capitalist nationalist patriarchal system, where the myth of ethnic/racial purity is perpetuated through the education system. Harm and denial begets harm and denial, and I wanted to get out and find a different way.

AP: I love the idea of the work taking up more space than it is given. It goes back to the idea you talked about earlier of becoming an artist to create a space that didn’t exist for you previously, and of pushing against/beyond essentialist and reductive readings of art based on identity.

NR: How about you, Alex? I’ve always sensed there’s a reticence in you to talk more directly about what your work is about, to not allow yourself that level of vulnerability. For example, sometimes you refer to your time in the studio as being boring repetitive labor, and I was wondering if there might be a connection there between the type of labor involved with the work your parent’s did as owners of a dry-cleaning business. Can aspects of your work be seen as a kind of penance, or perhaps tribute, to the kind of labor that was available to Asian immigrants when you were growing up? You are the artist, so you get to dictate the terms. Why limit yourself to a mode of making that you say is repetitive and boring? Maybe there’s something important there in that repetition and boredom that you are committed to, and I want to know what it is, and why. What do you want and dream about for your work?

AP: I am becoming more comfortable with it recently. While I hesitate to draw a direct connection between the type of menial labor that my parents did and the type of work I am making, I do think that my upbringing shaped my personality and interests for sure. Seeing them work so hard and feeling the pressures of being the first-born (pressures stemming from my parents, from Korean culture, my own guilt in wanting to honor their work, my own internalized capitalism) definitely has instilled an appreciation for labor. I have always been drawn to things that require discipline and repetition—classical music, martial arts, cutting strips of paper over and over again.

I was thinking about my work through a very narrow lens for a long time, trying to keep it in the lane and lineage of the art history I was taught. Once I opened up my thinking about my work as an extension of the totality of my life experience and interests including but not limited to my Korean-American identity, it allowed me to see things in my work and myself that I hadn’t been willing to explore. That being said, I am hesitant to make my work only or primarily about my racial identity. I feel a lot of external and internal pressure that I am supposed to be making work about my racial identity.

Your work is also very labor intensive. Can you talk about how you think about that in your studio practice?

NR: I think it goes back to the in-between space, to the relief I get when I release into the labor of work; there I am temporarily free from the anxiety of not-belonging. So the more labor intensive it is, the more I get to be free. In the past several years I also have been spending more time trying to heal: learning how to meditate, and in various forms of therapy like EMDR and somatic experiencing. A healer I’ve worked with who specializes in somatic experiencing mentioned that a lot of people who’ve experienced trauma engage in repetitive labor, that there is release and relief, a self-soothing, in that labor. It makes me nervous to think that the labor-intensive nature of my work can be explained away as a form of self-medication, but on some level the creative impulse always comes from some kind of unnameable necessity.

AP: It’s such a gift to been friends with you for over 15 years and also to have  seen your work grow for that long. It’s exciting to see a lot of these ideas coming together in your most recent body of work that you showed at Transmitter. Can you tell me more about this recent series?

Naomi Reis, 71229 (9:17), 2021. Acrylic on washi paper and mylar cutouts, 93H x 55W inches. Photograph by Carl Gunhouse

NR: In my most recent work, I worked off of photographs my mom has been sharing of her flower arrangements on our family group chat, which is the primary way we all keep in touch (my mom, brother, and his family are in Japan, and me and my sister and her family are in NY). My siblings post photos of their young kids, I post photos of my work, and my mom posts photos of her cooking and flower arrangements. Photos of the domestic realm. This new series is an attempt to bridge the ruptures that distance can bring: geographical, generational, and cultural/philosophical. There’s definitely a lot of tension in our different ways of thinking about gender roles, so the thought was to translate those gaps of expectation into a form that heals and transforms, through the labor and care that goes into the process of making. Maybe this work is my version of a quilt or weaving piece—a labor-intensive process that is meditative, with all the analogies and histories of weaving, knitting together, mending—embedded within.

Naomi Reis, 111119 (90˚W), 2021. Acrylic on washi paper and mylar cutouts, 48H x 37W inches. Photograph by Paul Takeuchi

Born in Shiga, Japan, Naomi Kawanishi Reis makes mixed-media paintings and wall pieces that focus on idealized spaces such as utopian architecture, conservatory gardens, and still life. She has had solo exhibitions at Youkobo Art Space, (Tokyo) and Mixed Greens, NY; she has also exhibited at Brooklyn Academy of Music and Wave Hill. In 2018 she received a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant, and in 2015 was a NYFA Finalist in Painting. Residencies that have supported her work include Yaddo and Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop. Reis also is a Japanese to English translator; recent publications include the chef's monograph “monk: Light and Shadow along the Philosopher’s Path” (Phaidon Press, 2021). She received an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania, and a BA in Transcultural Identity from Hamilton College.

www.naomireis.com @naomikawanishireis

Alex Paik is an artist living and working in Los Angeles. His modular, paper-based wall installations explore perception, interdependence, and improvisation within structure while engaging with the complexities of social dynamics. He has exhibited in the U.S. and internationally, with notable solo projects at Praxis New York, Art on Paper 2016, and Gallery Joe. His work has also been featured in group exhibitions at BravinLee Projects, Lesley Heller Workspace, and MONO Practice, among others.

Paik is Founder and Director of Tiger Strikes Asteroid, a non-profit network of artist-run spaces and serves on the Advisory Board at Trestle Gallery, where he formerly worked as Gallery Director.

www.alexpaik.com @alexpaik

#naomireisalexpaik #naomireis #naomikawanishireis #alexpaik

[dislocatedskeleton]

Portrait of Deana Lawson, Sabine Mirlesse, 2011

Sabine Mirlesse: How did you begin taking pictures?  

Deana Lawson: I’m from Rochester, New York—the home of Eastman Kodak, which is interesting– but actually I did not have any art background in high school. I went into my undergrad with the intention of being an International Business major. It wasn’t until the end of my sophomore year that I realized I wanted to be on the creative end of the spectrum. At the time I thought it would be fashion design. I applied to Parsons, but luckily I didn’t get in because if I had I might not be sitting and interviewing with you right now.  I knew that I wanted to go into the creative arts and I started taking art classes and fumbled miserably, did terrible on 3D assignments and painting, and then finally took my first photo class. Right away, I was just kind of blown away by some of the photographers that I was looking at, but I didn’t realize that I really could be a photographer until I was referred to African-American photographers like Carrie Mae Weems and Renée Cox. We had an assignment to write about an artist and I hadn’t seen any artists of color and I was like “Are there any black photographers at all??” And the teacher was like “yeah, there is this woman, I forget her name… but I think it’s like Lorna Simpson or something?” Well, I just spent that next whole evening so entranced by Lorna’s work. Just to have that model– to realize that not only did I like to make pictures but that I could actually do this, you know, was absolutely important to reaffirm myself as an artist.  

SM: So not having any role models that were black and female at first and until you were exposed to them you didn’t feel like you could be a photographer— Is there something about your work you make that consciously relates directly to your being female and black?  

DL: Definitely this belief that knowledge is gained through the body, through experiences, through giving birth for example. Whereas to me, a Western concept of intelligence is built off of what school you go to or what institution you’re connected to. I definitely reaffirm knowledge through community, through family, through being a mother, through being a wife, and through my friendships. I think that comes through in the people that I choose to photograph. I think my representation of sexuality is very different than some male photographers’. I try to contextualize sexuality with ideas of the psychic. I connect sexuality with… love and not divested from that which at times becomes pornographic.  

SM: And as for being African-American?  

DL: One thing I will say is that I remember while I was in grad school there were other artists dealing with similar issues such as family, the body, psychology. One of them was a white male photographer—and we were actually making quite similar work. Somehow it seemed in critiques that the blackness of the subject was brought up, while whiteness was invisible. You know if I were dealing with issues of family, it was always taken as being about issues of ‘black family’ as if it were it’s own category. Actually, I think that there is a part of me that feels like “what is Deana” versus “how am I representing Deana as coming from a collective African-American community?” “What part is me and what part is an attempt to represent this shared aesthetic and shared experience?” Coming from a working class background in Rochester, New York and being black—I think class and my blackness definitely visually affect what I’m doing.

SM: I wanted to ask you about this term used to describe your work for the PS1 Greater New York show you did—hoping you could elaborate on it—phrase “sacred sexuality”?  

DL: I remember watching “The Divine Horseman”, which is a film made by Maya Deren where she went to Haiti and filmed certain rituals and practices. The narrator mentioned a phrase “the eternal erotic” which I just found fascinating—the phrase has stuck with me throughout the years…The idea of the “eternal erotic” is something that I believe surpasses modern notions of attractiveness and sexiness.  What I imagine to be eternally erotic involves a spiritual aura that resides in the physical body, and informs how one moves, thinks, and loves in the world.  I use this idea as psychic material when thinking about photographs, and working with subjects.

SM: You’re quoted in an article in TimeOut magazine as having commented that “[your] own being is found in union with those [you] take pictures of”—which I found to be a very poetic statement, unusually mystical sounding given our time, and very beautiful as an idea. It’s not exactly trendy to talk like that nowadays—

DL: That is the damn truth!

SM: –Right. So could you maybe elaborate on it?  

DL: Whoever I photograph I start from the premise that they are a magnificent human being and that my experience as a human being interacting with theirs makes all that that much more complex. We live in a culture right now where we are really isolated… isolated in our apartments, or in our suburban homes, etc. When I’m photographing a subject I guess I really am trying to figure out who I am as a human being too. You know, in a sense, I’m actually trying to learn something through them sharing their time and image with me. Oftentimes I might end up being friends with someone I’ve photographed for a while. There is one woman who lives in the neighborhood, I actually just stopped by yesterday… it’s this ongoing friendship/relationship to the point where I call her my fairy godmother. She is about seventy-five years old. She has definitely influenced me in many ways beyond someone with just an amazing photograph. Visually my work definitely comes across as working class like I said– not only are there black people in it, but it is about working class black people. It’s definitely worthy to affirm that body. That body is worthy to be considered a piece of art. The same thing is true when it comes to even just talking about my work, even within ‘black art speak’, you don’t know what’s being said. Not only do we have a responsibility to be true to this visually as artists but also in the language through which we speak. I think it’s important to affirm my vernacular from Rochester. That is part of the work as well.  

SM: How do the photographs you take relate to the family snapshot? What distinguishes between the two for you?  

DL: Oftentimes I tell people that the family album was my first inspiration, and that I even still love to look at family albums, even others peoples’. I love that gap or space between that moment and what is the reality, what is left out and what is kept. Looking at old photos of my aunts and my mom, celebrations, ceremonies, cookouts, effected my intention or my purpose in terms of wanting the image to feel really familial even if the subjects aren’t related. I might also stage certain photographs when the subjects aren’t related when they are meant to come off as boyfriend and girlfriend or mother and daughter. I want that feeling. In terms of lighting, I love warm tungsten lighting. However, with my photographs I’m using a 6x7 and a 4x5 camera so they become kind of like the heightened version of the family snapshot.  

SM: What do people in your photographs think of the work?  

DL: I think sometimes they’re shocked in the sense of not necessarily recognizing themselves! Barbara for example is really excited about the show. I think they feel excited, and honored, I guess, to be validated in that way by any sort of gallery situation.  

SM: Let’s talk about access. Do you find that you are permitted into your subjects’ homes and intimate spaces more easily because you have the same color skin or because you’re female? Do you feel like the people you photograph trust you more to represent them? I ask because you talk about the desire to represent a certain community and it’s an ambitious task to set out on, full of layers—do you think that you are granted access because you are part of that community whereas a white male might have more difficulty?  

DL: I think it’s a yes and no answer. Subjects have told me straight out that they wouldn’t have decided to pose for me if I wasn’t a woman. And they’ve said like “there’s something about you where I feel comfortable to do certain things” –maybe because they are picking up on my energy, and they feel secure with me photographing them. However, I do think there is a history of certain people having a legacy of access whether it be the access to go to art school, to buy a camera, to travel around and make their pictures—I think that isn’t unusual. What I think is more unusual is people who haven’t had that sort of access to the art world, or to the academic world of photography, to be able to self-represent.  

SM: Versus the history of a colonial bird’s eye view, that your work instead may be absent of ‘othering’?

DL: I think people assume that because I’m black.

SM: But you know, at least in my own personal experience in seeing your images for the first time, I didn’t know who took them. I couldn’t necessarily guess either. And when I did find out more about you it didn’t mean I was suddenly relieved. In my opinion it comes from the feeling of the images themselves…

DL: That’s an amazing compliment. There is a certain energy going into the work I’m making that I can’t talk about from a logical or rational viewpoint. There is a love for the people that I’m photographing, even when I’m making a profane picture, that love is the underlying gaze.  

SM: Can you talk about the ‘Assemblage’ piece you did and about how you change the context of those pictures?  

DL: I work with a lot of appropriated images anyway. I often gather images from the subject—I have a photo from Barbara for example that came straight off her mantel that is really freakin’ amazing and I printed it the same size as every other picture and it blended in right away. In some ways you couldn’t distinguish between which images I took and which were appropriated. ‘Assemblage’ wasn’t initially meant to be a piece, it was just an image-board. When I was at LMCC (Lower Manhattan Community Council) and we had to switch our studios. I got this weird space and I was trying to figure out how to put this work on the wall in this different environment and that’s when it became a corner piece, which I think activated it in a certain way. I definitely think there is a certain energy to that piece that also is imbedded with the other straightforward work, represent colonialism, popular culture, celebrity, but also being curated through my personal experience and my eye, you know I listen to Biggie Smalls and then you’ll see a picture of my husband’s friend from the American University, or you’ll see, like, you know, images of war in Uganda. It’s all intermixed. I’m still a part of this continuum right now– this cultural currency, or the way images are circulated. I’m a part of it in the art world, I’m a part of it by looking. I guess the ‘Assemblage’ became a reflection of that.  But I also wanted it to be like this organism too that could grow. With each new installation it has to be improvised. Freestyle. I need to be responding in the moment to what is juxtaposed against what and what energy happens when you take this picture versus another—in that way it’s kind of mimicking the tradition of improvisation in black music. I like working in that space. I think I always have that improvisational mode. I know I’m going to be showing up at someone’s house, I might not know what that house is going to look like, I might never have been in that house before, but I’ll have all my equipment. Or I’ll know I’ll be photographing that subject but I’m not quite sure what she’s gonna wear– so all that stuff is decided on in the moment.  

SM: Instead of stating that you yourself work in an improvisational way, point-blank, you choose to connect it to something cultural – like a legacy of improvisation in black music…

DL: Oh, definitely. For sure.  

SM: Okay, so this might sound too direct or as though I’m being entirely ‘politically incorrect’ or naïve, but I can’t help but be interested and find it relevant and just want to know how you feel – are you improvisational because you simply are? Or are you improvisational in your work practice because you feel it’s part of your identity as an African-American artist? Drawing attention to that point is important I think because it get’s tricky if you were to say for example “oh she’s improvisational because she’s part of a particular community or ethnic background”—it can be problematic…  

DL:  I hear what you’re saying. I think it’s problematic if you say it, but, for me, I find being improvisational to be this amazing characteristic of black culture, so when I associate myself with that, I’m actually feeling like wow, I’m connected in a way, being a part of that, but doing it in my own way, through my photography, whereas someone else might be doing it through freestyle hip-hop, or through dancing. Someone might have a problem with me saying this. Someone black might have a problem with me saying that.

SM: You’ve done a few artist-in-residence programs, most recently at Light Work in Syracuse, could you tell me what your take on these kinds of programs is?  

DL: I think these residencies are needed. Artists can get caught up in life, whether it be work or anything that takes them away from making their own art. I really need sustained time. I do a lot of things, you know. I’m a mother. I have to get my son ready for school in the morning. I gotta cook. I do need that time to just dedicate to my work and that’s important. I also think– you know you were asking before about if I felt the presence of my female-ness in my work and so forth– I never really had the luxury of being in a studio environment and when I think of traditional philosophers, you know, sitting with a pipe thinking for a long time about these theories and sh*t… I mean, girl, I don’t have that kind of quietude! I don’t think a lot of women do. Even that mess though can be used for material for your work. Which is what I do. For example the image ‘Baby sleep’ –that is directly drawn from real sh*t! You know what I’m saying? When I’m printing, I definitely like to be in my own zone. But when I’m shooting, like right now I’m actually at a residency in Woodstock, I’ve been going back and forth because of the show, but when my family dropped me off up there they were like “What are you going to do up here?” and I was like “I don’t know!” Like, “this is the weirdest time-warp place” but as soon as I got off the bus back to NY I thanked God. I’m constantly stimulated in NY, but I do think for me at this point I definitely need to leave to shoot. Even though there are so many people here and there is definitely access, there’s also definitely something of New York that makes me feel scatterbrained and not focused at all. When I went down South to visit a friend of mine about two years ago to do this shoot I road-tripped for three weeks and I was just shooting, shooting, shooting! That was the last big amount of work that I’ve made and I was on this vibe, conjuring images. Here in the city it’s very distracting. I think you do have to be part of the game here though, in terms of the commercial aspect of it.  

[olivecianciolo]

Project #3 Reading Response/Research Journals

Reading response:

I really appreciated the section on the fluidity of identity. I’ve seen these conversations a lot outside of this reading, but they’ve generally been concerning black folks (black women specifically) and the use of AAVE. These conversations are obviously important to have, but this idea of fluctuating identity very clearly applies to women and queer people as well and I hadn’t really seen or thought much of that before. While this affects everyone I wish the reading discussed how this affects marginalized populations differently. I think there’s a big difference between privileged populations acting differently in professional/casual settings and queer or black people hiding key aspects of their identities not only for different social climates, but for other groups who may be uncomfortable with them. I’m glad I was prompted to think about these issues but I wish I was given more to think about.

I also thought the idea of hybridity was interesting, specifically how it relates to American identity. Most obviously, hybridity is very central to the experience of immigrants, and while America is a country of immigrants, it is also founded on European colonialism. I understood the legacy of colonialism and how its effects are inseparable from our current experiences. I never made the connection between ‘colonizer’ and ‘immigrant’ since the contemporary systems are very opposed to letting vulnerable populations into the country. I never really thought about how immigration could be violent, and that America is founded on this ongoing ‘culture clash.’

Research Journals:

Ellen Eagle, Evelyn With Arms Folded, 2003

Most of Eagle’s work would have been appropriate to include here, but I think this piece best summarizes her practice/theory. Eagle usually paints her friends and family, so while she is literally depicting another person on the page she sees her more as a reflection of herself. She describes herself as a private, quiet person, so she has her models pose in reserved positions with solemn facial expressions. She also paints with a reserved pallet and tends to reject flamboyancy in all aspects of her work (she even works in almost total silence). So while there is an individual on the page, the viewer knows very little about them while becoming more familiar with Eagle’s process/personality. She therefore blurs the line between artist and subject by showing herself in someone else.

Jenny Saville, Reproduction Drawing II, 2010

Saville is known primarily for her fleshy, exaggerated figure paintings that challenge how women are traditionally viewed in art. In this smaller drawing however, she specifically depicts pregnancy and child rearing as they are in reality. The drawing is messy and cluttered, not necessarily pretty (conventionally, anyway), and through this she reclaims this aspect of cis female identity (something not usually depicted by art in men) and frames it as it would be seen by another woman.

Catherine Opie, Dyke, 1993

(cw: slurs)

This is one of Opie’s photographs from when she primarily documented the LA leather dyke scene. In this photograph Opie not only challenges what it means to be a woman, but what it means to be a dyke. The tattoo reads as a declaration or reclamation of a slur. This embrace leads to the conclusion that womanhood doesn’t necessarily involve femininity, and that there are versions of womanhood that openly reject it and embrace their nonconformity.

Mickalene Thomas, Trois Divas, 2009

This is a series of three screen prints with hand applied rhinestones. Each image features a hyper-glamorized image of a famous black woman. Through this hyper-stylization she claims beauty and glamor for black women and calls the viewer to question their relationship to each celebrity. She positions these depictions as normal, but seeing it this way may prove to be a challenge for the average white viewer.

LaToya Ruby Frazier, On The Making Of Steel Genesis, 2017

This is a series of 23 photographs about the life of Sandra Gould Ford, a steel worker. Through these photographs Frazier frames the body as a medium for industry, and documents the effects of work on bodies. She  highlights the very common intersection of black women and blue-collar labor, and brings light to stories of wear, fatigue, and resilience.

[theamberfang]

It seems that I’ve successfully hooked myself into regularly thinking about ARCA, so I’m getting these impulses to just write about it. I need to be careful about not turning into something I feel obligated to write about, because then it stops being fun.

Anyway, now I want to get into stuff I haven’t really touched on in a long time; maybe not even anywhere on this blog. It has to do with why I’m still quite attached to the magical roots of my setting: the history and culture stuff I have in mind. Mind, this is probably going to be extra rambly and vague, because I don’t feel like I know enough about history or different cultures myself. But I can at least point to where my head is at for some things.

I’m thinking about these things because I’ve recently had the idea of associating magic with different cultures in this world, with peoples’ relationships to magic and the ways they practice being integral to their cultures. More poignantly, I could touch on the ways that different forms of magical practice and tradition have been eradicated by colonialism, except for maybe a few vestiges held onto by surviving descendants.

As someone from the United States, my own perspective on the topic is centered on European colonization of the Americas and the [ongoing] struggles of indigenous peoples. And somehow, until this very moment, I hadn’t really considered drawing inspiration from the history of black slavery but I will definitely think about it going forward. The thing is, I’m neither indigenous nor black, so I’m wary of...well, just fucking things up. So these are definitely things I want to learn more about. Actually, though I’m not those other things, I am still a person of color. I’m Filipino, so I can try to bring some of that into my writing. But I had a very “American” upbringing, so my knowledge of my own culture is lacking—another thing to look into, but something I had wanted to learn more about regardless. (But this disconnection/alienation from my own culture can also be informative.)

As for more specific details, the only thing I’m particularly confident in is that in the “European inspired place”, magic is strongly tied to political power and the aristocracy. Not everyone in the aristocracy is talented in—or even capable of—magic, but the ruling class has the most access to magical education and training. There are people with magical potential in the general population, but it is very rare for them to learn how to use it, or even access it within themselves. (But maybe there could be folk tales of those that did; Robin Hood style tales and such.)

Otherwise, I have a general idea of other cultures, some of them at least, having more communal and egalitarian ways of practicing magic. It’s for these things that I’d like to learn about different cultures to get inspiration from. Ideally, I’d also like to talk to knowledgeable people as I go so that I don’t accidentally misappropriate things.

I don’t know, maybe I’m being a little too wary about it. Something to remember is who I’m writing this for: just myself really. I have to allow myself to fuck these things up, otherwise I’ll never actually do any writing, because I’d feel like I need to do a whole bunch of research first (that I’m really not likely to want to do without really getting into my writing first; I need the motivation of wanting to write my story to do something like research, which I can only build up by actually working on the thing).

#ARCA #writing journal

[tenroseforeverandever]

Dear Father Christmas... Chapter 19: December 24, 2034

MASTERPOST

Characters:  Tentoo; Rose Tyler; Jackie Tyler; Pete Tyler; Tony Tyler; OC Hope Tyler-Noble; OC Charlotte Tyler-Noble; OC Wilfred Tyler-Noble; OC Therin Thomson; Javic Thane

Rated: Teen

Tags: Family!Fic; Kid!Fic; Pete’s World; Letters to Santa; Christmas Fic; Family; Fluff; Hurt/Comfort; Angst; Romance; Love; gun violence; violence resulting in death; life-threatening injury; life threatening situations

Summary: When Rose Tyler was little, she always wrote a Christmas wish list to Father Christmas. As she grew older, the wish list became more of a letter to someone she could confide in once a year, but she fell out of the habit somewhere along the way. Now, as a new mum, celebrating her daughter’s first Christmas, Rose takes up writing her Christmas letter to Father Christmas once again.

Rose’s Christmas letters are excerpts from her life with her beloved Tentoo and their children in Pete’s World, written once a year, for each of 31 years.

Chapter Summary: Jackie creates a new charitable event to support the needs of some young women in the London area secondary schools.

Notes: Oh, gosh… I think this is it. I have a funny feeling I won’t be able to post tomorrow, as Chapter 20 is long and has just been submitted to my brilliant betas. Still, not a bad run! I will get the remaining stories out as quickly as I can, and hopefully still get them all posted by New Year’s Eve!

The idea for the event Jackie creates is based on a real event that my kids’ high school holds every year.

All the thanks to the incredible aforementioned betas, @rose–nebula and mrsbertucci  Thank-you, my darlings.

Thanks to @doctorroseprompts for their 31 Days of Ficmas prompts. The prompt I used today was Joy.

Also read at: AO3; FF.net; Teaspoon

December 24th, 2034

Dear Father Christmas,

I never had a prom. We didn’t have them back home. We just had these naff dances in the school gymnasium. The most memorable thing about them was sneaking out back with Keisha and Shareen to get sloshed, smoke a few cheeky fags, and to snog the fit blokes from the rugby team. I didn’t go very often, to be honest, and then I fell in with Jimmy Stone and that was the end of that for school dances… for school, period.

But proms are big business here: they have them twice a year to celebrate the end of each term. My kids have never gone because they were never enrolled in the secondary school system. They all went directly from Primary to University. Charlie just completed a couple of degrees in atomic and molecular physics, and engineering physics. Now she’s off studying at a university on some distant Earth colony, thousands of light years away and about three hundred and twenty centuries in the future.

Needless to say, I still get moments when I just can’t wrap my head around it all, even after all I’ve seen and done in my barmy life. Even Charlie’s Hand in Hand charity (left in very good hands while she is away studying,) is so huge and over-the-top in so many ways, it’s just mind-boggling. It was kind of nice when, this Christmas season, I was able to help in a much smaller way, closer to home.

Mum has taken to counselling like a fish to water. I’ll never regret pushing her to take those classes with me all those years ago. The Big Yellow Truck and the women it supports have only benefited from her knowledge, and her certification has given herself and the charity better credibility.

A few months back, I was over at hers for a cuppa. The Doctor and Wilfred were off in the TARDIS, who knows where, for a few days. I hadn’t been able to go with them. There’d been some trouble in the north of Scotland with a UFO sighting: legitimate, for once. An alien spacecraft had crash landed, much of it burning up in the atmosphere upon descent. Unfortunately, no one had survived, but there had been several human witnesses who were extremely distressed and frightened. I needed to stay for a few days to coordinate the clean-up of the site, and the ongoing counselling for the witnesses.

Anyway, by the time I got back, it was just me rattling around in the little blue house, and feeling lonely, so I went to see Mum. That’s when she got started talking about proms. One of the women she counsels has a daughter that goes to one of the local secondary schools. Like me and Mum when I was growing up, they sometimes had a tough time making ends meet, never mind being able to afford to buy a gown for a prom. She’d been awful sad. Her daughter’s prom was the Friday before Christmas, the day term was over and the kids were out for the winter break.

Even with the aid from Hand in Hand, there were still loads of people who had to watch their pennies. But at least they now had decent homes and medical care, and access to good food and training for employment. But that didn’t always mean they could afford a dress for the prom.

“Maybe I should just buy her one. Make it a Christmas gift yeah. What’dya think?”

I told her she couldn’t just go around buying prom dresses for every young girl who couldn’t afford them.

“Oh, I know, sweetheart. I wasn’t really going to do it. I just wish there was something I could do to help.”

Therin strolled into the kitchen, where we were sitting. “Prom is a really big deal. When I was in Sixth form, some of the posh girls would get a bit uppish, make the girls who couldn’t afford to go feel like shite. Blimey, I’m glad I don’t have to listen to that rubbish anymore.”

“Enjoying Uni, then, are you?”

He just grinned at me and proceeded to tell me how great it was. He was studying economics and business management, so he could continue to help Charlie run Hand in Hand. Dad was also sizing him up to take over Vitex once he retired. It turned out his extensive hands-on experience with the charity had been more valuable than he could have possibly imagined, and he was sailing through his courses. He’d come a long way from the little homeless orphan Charlie had taken under her wing seven years ago.

He pulled up a chair and a mug and poured himself some tea. “Aunt Jackie,” (he’d started calling her this from early on, and Mum’d been right chuffed) “you don’t need to buy the girl a dress, yeah.” He turned back to our earlier conversation.  “You could just give her one of your old ones. Or Rose’s. You both have so many you wear to all those functions and galas and whatnot.”

Mum just stared at him like he’d grown an extra head.

Therin seemed a little put out and got up to leave us to our tea. “Well, sorry I brought it up. I didn’t think you would be so attached. You only ever wear them the once”

Mum screeched, practically leaped out of her chair, and rushed over to him, giving him a huge hug and planting big wet kisses on his cheeks. (Poor Therin. At least he knew he was loved.) Then she started shouting something about “…the answer to everything!”

--ooOoo--

All fall, mum was relentless, absolutely driven, unstoppable. She was on a mission and nothing was going to stand in her way. She approached all the secondary schools around London, asking them to discreetly identify any students they felt would be unable to afford to go to prom because of financial concerns. She wrote a letter, as Founder of the Big Yellow Truck, to be given to each identified student.

Then she approached the schools’ parent committee members, the employees at both Vitex and Torchwood, her friends, and of course, the staff at both the Big Yellow Truck and Hand in Hand. She asked them to consider donating their gently used formal dresses and shoes.

Her idea was simple: most women (at least the ones she knew) bought a gown for an occasion and rarely wore it again; Mum asked that they donate them so that young women without the means to buy a dress would be able to choose one of the donated ones and attend prom in style. Further to that, she offered to provide free hair styling to the girls. She had tried very hard to get suits donated for the boys, but men tended to reuse their formal-wear, so not many suits were available. She did convince the tuxedo rental stores around town to donate a couple of rentals each, so the few boys that needed support were able to get it.

Most of the winter proms around the city landed on the Friday before Christmas. A few were on the Saturday. The weekend prior, buses collected the students and brought them to The Big Yellow Truck’s head office and warehouse, where the dresses were stored. Me, Mum, and a whole load of volunteers were on hand to help the girls find the right dress for them. Mum even found a couple of seamstresses willing to donate their time to do minor alterations on the gowns. The gowns were all labelled with the girls’ names. They would all come back the day of the prom to pick up their dresses and get their hair, nails, and make-up done.

Prom day eventually arrived. All the girls were bouncing off the walls with excitement, squealing and giggling and generally having the time of their lives. Me, Mum, and Hope (who was able to make it home for Christmas this year) and loads of other volunteers set to work preparing the girls for their big night. It was hard work, but so rewarding to see the joy on their faces as one by one they left us looking utterly glamorous, and confident enough to take on the world. The young lady, whose mum had originally planted the seed in Jackie Tyler’s brain to create this event, gave her a huge hug, eyes shining. She said she could never thank her enough. Mum practically glowed with pride.

As we waved good-bye to the last girl, Mum dropped into a chair. “Blimey, I’m knackered, I am. And you lot! You were marvelous today, bleedin’ marvelous! I could murder a cuppa, though. Whatd’ya say?”

I was so proud of Jackie Tyler that day. I am every day, to be honest. She’s my Mum. She made a difference in the lives of every single one of those girls (and boys.) She makes a difference in the lives of vulnerable women every day. And she made a difference in my life too, teaching me to stand up for what I believed in; supporting me through the very hardest times of my life; and loving me even when I made some very questionable and regrettable life choices. She’s a very special woman, and I told her so.

“Don’t take the mick, Rose. There’s nothing special about me. I may live in a big mansion and wear all them pretty frocks now, but I’m still Jackie Tyler from Bucknall House, yeah, and I always will be. Nothing remotely special.”

Santa, I just looked her in the eye and I told her: “Yeah, Mum, you are though. You understand what all these poor women you help are going through every day, how it feels to be the girl at the prom who couldn’t afford the dress. And you always tried to make a difference. And now, even though you’ve been given a life of luxury, you’re still you: you don’t flaunt your money. Instead you use it to help others, the way you wished you always could.”

She hugged me so tight, tears in her eyes. I could tell she still didn’t believe me; she probably never would. But I’ll keep reminding her every day and maybe eventually it’ll stick.

Happy Christmas, Santa. I hope you and Mrs. Claus, and the elves and reindeer always realize how special you are, too, for everything you do each year.

love, Rose

#doctorroseprompts #kid fic #tentoo x rose #jackie tyler #christmas #hurt/comfort #fluff #angst #romance #love #ficandchips #tenroseforeverandever's fic

[booksaresacredspew]

Let me tell you about the mice

I have mentioned in previous personal posts that we have a mice problem. And that I have a procrastination problem which affects me being able to put out traps. And this is an ongoing thing, that has gotten progressively worse for months.

But like, do you really understand? Do you? You hear about having mice in your house, which get into everything and have access to your dresser drawers, and shiver. You have an instinctual horror with the concept. You think that if you had that problem, you would definitely put out mouse traps and get rid of them. Either that or move out.

But can you imagine actually living with that reality? There are mice in your house. They’ve been there for ages, there’s practically a whole colony, now. You have put out traps, a few times. Not as often as you should have, though, because. It’s gross. You have to put them places the dog can’t reach, which mostly means the ceiling downstairs. Which is dusty and gross, and, of course, full of mouse shit and stuff. And you have to stand on furniture to reach. But then there’s the mouse traps themselves, which. They’re spring traps, is what you usually buy. They’re sensitive, and you have to be careful to not let them get tripped while you’re setting it up, which sometimes happens a few times. As long as you keep your fingers out of the way, you’re good though.

But the worst is checking them after, because you are then conflicted between being happy and disappointed if you don’t catch anything. Because if you do catch something, then you have to go and flush the mouse down the toilet, and wash the trap. I mean, you could go buy more traps, but that would take a shopping trip, and theoretically it’s easier to reuse them. Besides, if you didn’t, you’d be throwing the trap mouse and all into the garbage, and what if you don’t take the garbage out right away because it’s not actually full? Then the stink will get into the garbage and spread into the room every time you lift the lid.

And you always bait them with peanut butter. At this point, you are a lot less fond of peanut butter than you used to be in your childhood.

But anyway. So checking and cleaning the traps is not fun, right? So you put it off. And you keep putting it off. You keep telling yourself, tomorrow, yes, tomorrow I will set the traps. And every day you get home from work and decide to do it later. You’re tired now, do you have to? You can do it later.

This goes on, and you hate yourself for it a bit, but vow to do better. But, at night, you hear them. At first it was just in the walls. You’d hear them chewing, probably on the insulation or something. Which, not good. But then after you go on vacation for a week they get more brave and you start seeing them walking across the floor, fearlessly, like they own the place. Ugh.

They can get onto the kitchen counter. You don’t trust it to be clean. They’ve been on top of your dresser, and left little offerings of mouse poop. They’ve been in your dresser, and left shit there, too. Sometimes you’ll be staying up, and you see one scurry across from your closet (where there is a hole in the floor for cables or something) to behind your dresser, and then you hear a little buzzing noise, which is either the mouse getting into the dresser, or maybe chewing on something in it, or, and you come to suspect this option more and more, maybe the noise is the mouse farting or shitting or something. You keep seeing them going back and forth between the closet and the dresser. You wonder if they’re building a nest in there. You’re afraid to look, but that drawer is where you keep your pads - fuckit, just go buy new pads.

You’re not about to go set traps in the middle of the night, you’re not dressed. But you also don’t want to sleep. The noises coming from the dresser freak you out a little, and they also make something die inside, a little, because that is your stuff getting shitted and pissed on and chewed on. The shitty clothes you wear to work because you don’t mind them getting dirty, so it’s not that bad, but it’s still - your pjs. You don’t want to wear pjs as much right now.

You try to avoid thinking about it, but your methods of avoiding involve sitting with your laptop in your bed, and then you hear those noises, and something curdles in your stomach and you just hate yourself a little more, and hate your life, and your motivation to do something about it is still zero because this curdled milk feeling is not. helpful. Not really.

This is your life now.

#wordspew #mice colony #procrastination #why meee #because i'm a shit #no I'm not stop being negative at yourself becca

[fardell24b]

Doctor Who - Complete compilation of Series 10 reviews

Spoilers

Doctor Who 10.01 'The Pilot' Review

The first episode of Series 10. It is an interesting beginning to the new series. It certainly makes me wonder what is going to happen. There are many aspects to the episode that give rise to questions. Questions about what the Doctor has been doing since he had saved New York from Harmony Shoal. Also questions about what makes Bill special, compared to others he had met at the university while he was there. More than 50 years seems to be a long time for him to be in one place, but more on that later.

Nardole isn't much expanded upon, but it is obvious that his body (at least) is mechanical (mechanical enough for parts to fall out of his arm). He is assisting the Doctor with whatever that vault is containing. (Gallifreyian writing is visible on the outside, so something to do with the Time Lords? Is the Doctor's promise to a Time Lord?) In a related note (maybe) the Doctor is seen talking to pictures of River and Susan (Was she lost in the Time War? Would she appear at a later point in the series)

The Doctor seems to be restless in his position, seeming to stay in the one place out of obligation. He is quite eager to leap into the adventure when the liquid spaceship Heather is chasing Bill. (I'm not sure what to make of the Bill/Heather relationship, or the progress it had made before Heather is possessed.) The handling of the situation when the Doctor wanted to wipe Bill's memory is better than when it was Clara on the end of it. (and definitely when it was Donna!) The Doctor's change of mind was quite quick.

Unless it is a future Doctor, which would be interesting in of itself. (Would present!Doctor investigate Bill's vanishing?) The Dalek cameo was handled quite well.The fate of Heather is interesting, and Bill's reaction to it is well handled. I recommend seeing this episode. 9/10.

Doctor Who 10.02 'Smile Review:

The second episode of Series 10, following straight from the end of the previous episode (much like, The End of the World from Rose...) The start is interesting, proving that it isn't a future Doctor, but the mystery of what is in the Vault deepens. What is it that Nardole has to remind him that he is no longer allowed to go off planet? (He also only appears in this scene, clearly not a traditional 'companion'.) Bill's questions regarding how the Doctor drives (or negotiates with) the TARDIS normally are quite well done.

The introduction to the colony planet and the Vardy robots is also quite well done, but there are issues with the excution. I'm not certain how. Is it the writing? (Maybe, but I liked it more than In the Forest of the Night.) Bill is a great character, her interactions with the emoji-bots, and reaction to what happened to the set-up crew, are quite believeable. The way she ignores the Doctor's instruction to stay in the TARDIS after they escape the first time, shows that she is inquisitive, and wants to help the Doctor with what he's doing.

The episode shows that the Doctor is quite fallible (for instance, that he doesn't realise that the ship is a sleeper ship, until Bill alerts him to that fact, although she doesn't fully grasp the significance until he tells her about it.) While finding out about what went wrong with the Vardy's (or Vardies?) is interesting, the resolution seems off. (Surely, it would be better if the Doctor re-programmed the Vardy's so that the deadly error wouldn't crop up again? As soon as someone else dies, or the boy is obviously greiving...) While the concepts are interesting, I have seen them done better in other media.

So, while it is still watchable (and re-watchable), I'm not recommending it that well. The lead-in the to the third episode is more interesting than that resolution. I'm looking forward to see how Bill will react to being in the past, and what that threat under the ice is. To re-interate, not that well recommended. 7/10.

Doctor Who 10.03 'Thin Ice' Review

The third episode of Series 10, following on from the end of the previous episode. (Are all the episodes going to do this this series? With next starting from the scene at the Vault? See below.) The episode is set at the Last Great Frost Fair, held in London in 1814, on the frozen Thame, where there is more to the Fair than what it appears to be.After the Doctor and Bill arrive, the Doctor tries to get back to the university, but the TARDIS isn't letting him. 'Always looking for trouble,' is a perfect description of the TARDIS's behaviour.

Of course, the Doctor and Bill don't stick around long enough to see the 'monster fish' on the scanner, but the story would have proceded quite differently if they had. In any case, the urchins at the Fair are quite well realised, albeit cleaner than they would have been in reality. But the real character development is Bill's. She seems to be horrified that the Doctor doesn't know how many dead bodies he had seen, and wonders what sort of man he is. It is the death of one of the urchins that spurs the Doctor, and Bill, into action. This leads to the discovery of the monster fish

The sound effects of that creature were done quite well, making Bill's comment about it's despair quite impactful emotionally. The following investigation of Lord Sutcliff's operation is also quite well done. The way the Doctor  counsells Bill about being rational, but reacting impulsively anyway to Sutcliff's racism towards her is quite well written. Capaldi and Mackie (and Burns) acted quite well here.The Doctor's following speech about the measure of Civilisation being how fellow man is treated, rather than progress, is very well written.

This episode is better than the previous episode (the society of the time is represented accurately, racism and all). I definitely recommend seeing it. The end scenes, back at the university are good too. Bill learns that extraordinary events in the past, don't necessarily have an impact on the present, and we learn some more (albeit not much) about what is in the vault. Someone capable of knocking. 9/10.

Doctor Who 10.04 'Knock Knock' Review

The fourth episode of series 10, about Bill and several friends moving into a strange house. David Suchet sells it as The Landlord. He helped to make it a better episode than it could have been. However the episode is mostly about how Bill and her friends react to the predicament they find themselves in, and how they respond to the Doctor's help. With a large number of characters it is sometimes difficult to keep track. Some are developed more than others, but most of them do have a role to play.

Bill does panic almost as much as her friend, Shireen. But she takes the initiative to investigate the house. Her annoyance with the Doctor insisting he stay, is well done. Her calling him 'Grandfather' though, is that a link to Susan? Once the house starts doing it's thing, Shireen is incredulous at first, but does follow Bill's lead, thus allowing her to survive until the confrontation with the Landlord. It seems that she's interested in Paul, but that's not developed much. Harry gets trapped with the Doctor, in the loungeroom/kitchen.He too is incredulous about what is happening with the house, but follows the Doctor's lead once they are sealed in.

There isn't much development for Felicity, other than that she may be a clustrophobe. She panics, saying that 'I can't get trapped!' I'm uncertain whether the depiction is accurate. There isn't much more she does. Pavel does even less, simply being trapped by the house/'dryads'/alien woodlice. Paul 'comes on' to Bill (being shot down by her, given her orientation), he also is a practical joker (with Bill and Shireen falling for it). There is also the Landlord, and the secret he has been concealing.

The reveal, about the Landlord and his daughter (who actually turns out to be his mother) is quite well done. However the 'everyone lives' moment seems anticlimatic. But the ongoing storyline is continued quite well with the Doctor's interaction with the person in the vault. (It may be obvious who it is, but I'm prepared to be surprised.) The above caveats aside I would recommend this episode alongside those previous in this series. 8/10.

Doctor Who 10.05 'Oxygen' Review

The fifth episode of series 10, where the Doctor, Bill and Nardole arrive at a space station in response to a distress call. There is more going on at the Station than it appears. The intro to the episode does a really good job of setting up the situation, with the Doctor's riffing of the Star Trek intro ('Space, the final frontier. It's final, because it wants to kill you!') and the fate of various characters at the station. The visual design of the station is impressive also, like a much smaller Deep Space Nine.

Each main character is impressive, and undergoes changes in this story. The Doctor's problems get a lot worse. It leaves me wondering how this development would affect his efficacy in the future episodes. Nevertheless, he leads the investigation into the problem on the station in his usual manner, despite Nardole's objections. Although I'm not sure why he would be hiding the problem he gains from Bill at the end. Talking about Bill, she continues to be an interesting character, seemingly supporting the Doctor against Nardole at the beginning.

The way she reacts to the threats are quite believable, anyone would panic at having to go into space with limited are (more on the air situation below). She is also quite shocked at the fact that people had died. Nardole is much the same as before. It is revealed that he is following the Doctor's orders, to stop going off when that Vault needs defending (and whoever it is would know that the Doctor is injured, and given the nature of the Doctor's injury... Uh oh!). However, when problems amount, he is quite helpful in the situation.

That the Doctor is able to 'negotiate' with the TARDIS despite his injury is interesting. But there is the elephant in the room, or rather the Megacorporation that owns the station. Is the story anti-capitalist? That is a high possibility. However, workers deemed expendible is plausible given many historical precedents. Charging for air seems to be an efficient way of doing this. This is a good story despite any caveats above, albeit not as good as any anti-capitalist tales in the classic era (Capaldi doesn't quite match Baker), but still quite well recommended.

8.5/10.

Doctor Who 10.06 'Extremis' Review

The sixth episode of series 10. It is also the first part of a three part story. The Vatican calls the Doctor to come and investigate a mysterious book in their forbidden library, bringing Bill and Nardole along for the ride. That is just the start of their trouble. The blindness which the Doctor had been inflicted by in the previous episode, plays a major role here. The way he navigates with the sonic specs is well done. (my guess, the Specs induce synesthesia to produce a visual field for the Doctor. May, or may not, work only with a Time Lord brain.)

The device from the TARDIS he uses to temporarily regain vision is interesting too (borrowing from his future self? An interesting notion!). His relationship to a previous Pope is an interesting addition to the show's story also. Bill and Nardole play off well against each other. Her characterisation builds upon that established in the previous episodes. She is annoyed when the Doctor interrupts her date via materialising the TARDIS in her bedroom with the Pope (and Cardinals) in tow.

She is incredulous about what the central mystery of the episode entails even after Nardole vanishes (and the previous weirdness at CERN.) And that leads into the central plot of the episode The mystery of the book has an unexpected solution. That is, that most of the episode takes place in a simulation. Some aliens had been running the simulation as a way to predict how the Earth (and any visitors, including the Doctor) would react. It is also a great demonstation of the fact that computers don't produce truly random numbers.

Then there's the other plot. It is Missy in the Vault! (Not really surprising.) The concept of a planet of executioners is interesting (in the Chinese sense. How would a civilisation get that way?) One wonders how they would enforce the oath that the Doctor took. (Other than via Nardole?) Missy's comment about the Daleks knowing about the Doctor's 24 year sojourn on Darillium with River (although she isn't named) is also intreaging.At the end, the real Doctor finds out (via the Sim-Doctor sending a message somehow).

I certainly recommend watching it. 8.5/10.

Doctor Who 10.07 'The Pyramid at the End of the World' Review

The seventh episode of Series 10 and the second in the 'monk trilogy'. An interesting installment. What the Monk aliens want with the Earth isn't revealed (other than that they want to rule it). It also isn't revealed why they need 'consent' to rule the Earth. However, the real 'meat' of the story is with the character interactions (as it should be). (Was the Doctor going to tell Bill about his blindness?) Especially with Bill telling Penny about what had occurred (sort of) in the previous episode. Is that going to lead anywhere?

But I digress. The Doctor is mostly his usual self, even though he is moping in the TARDIS. (The song he is singing when the TARDIS is on the plane is quite downbeat.) However, he is certainly desperate to stop the plan of the Monk aliens, doing what he does best, trying to think of a solution to the situation, right down to the last moments in the lab with Erica. It's not his failure that leads to the cliffhanger ending... Rather it's down to Bill, and her not willing that the Doctor be caught in an explosion.

She;'s willing to sacrifice the planet to save the Doctor. (a good motive, but certainly the wrong group to make such a sacrifice to!) However, this is consistent with what we have seen in the previous episodes. Nardole is his helpful self, there is not much to say here. However, there is Erica, the (little in stature, but not in personality) microbiologist. The establishing moments for her were a rather good setup for her role in the rest of the story. She's willing to help the Doctor in preventing the bacteria from spreading.

(Of course she would be.) However, introducing the Secretary General the same way as the Pope was in the previous episode seems an interesting choice. Is this going to be a running gag, Penny meeting Bill in her flat, and some unexpected, but important person suddenly appears? I'm not sure how many repetitions could be sustained. (If each time is different enough, sure...) The American, Russian and Chinese generals are used quite well. The aliens cencept of consent... I'm not sure what to make of it (Sec-Gen's fear and the Generals' strategy not accepted.)

Even with the identified caveats, I recommend this episode as a good example of Doctor Who. 9/10.

Doctor Who 10.08 'The Lie of the Land' Review

The eighth episode of series 10 and the conclusion of the 'Monks trilogy'. A little bit of 'hit and miss', quite a lot of 'telling' and not a lot of show. However there are still many parts that were good. The introduction sequence for instance, showing that the Monks have set up a totalitarian regeime by rewriting history, was quite well done, as was Bill's method of holding onto the truth, via talking to her Mum as an imaginary friend. Still, a thought was 'the weirdest episode of Doctor Who ever', but that's not true.

There is certainly more than a passing similarity to another New Who story involving the Master, but more on that later. The meeting (after the six months that have passed since the previous story) between Bill and Nardole was done quite well, as was their finding the Doctor by tracing the broadcasts. It was appropriately tense (as with the scene where there is an identity paper spot check). That was resolved very well. If only the episode overall was resolved as well, but more on that later.

The scenes where the Doctor was pretending to be collaborating with the Monks were genuinely tense, the way he was testing Bill was quite genuine. (Capaldi did this really well.) However, I don't think Bill needed to shoot him in that way. A fake out regeneration wasn't really necessary. The scene was tense enough without it. But what was well done, was what followed, with Missy in the Vault. (This does add to the 'telling' problem, but the information Missy gives helps to save the Earth from the Monks.)

There is a parallel between the Monk's memory alteration field (whatever it's called) and the Archangel Network in The Sound of Drums. (Of course, Missy doesn't show the compassion). That said, the scene where the Doctor and the others enter the Pyramid (which is in London for some reason) is quite tense. However the way Bill saves the Earth with the memories of her mother, seems anticlimatic and a cheat. And that the situation seems to have reset via the Monk's self-erasure.

That too seems to be a cheat. Recommendation? Is it the worst episode ever? No that goes to some stinkers in the Classic series. It's not as bad as some from Series 8 either. 7/10.

Monks Trilogy overall review

The 'Monk's Trilogy is interesting as an exercise in science fiction, and as a Doctor Who story, but does it hold up to the first five entries so far in Series 10? As the first part, does Extremis introduce the threat that the Monks pose in an effective manner? It is a good introduction to Missy's situation. The plot thread introduced here does get a good continuation in The Lie of the Land. The fact that the Monks use simulation as a method of assessing their potential victims, and that they gather enough information for those simulations certainly indicates that they are a significant threat,

But do the elements introduced in Extremis carry through to The Pyramid at the End of the World effectively. The Doctor knows that they are coming, certainly. But does he use the information that was sent from the sim-Doctor effectively? Or as if he was going into the situation without any information on the Monks at all? The answer; the former. In my opinion, the situation in Termezistan would have played out differently if he hadn't received that message. But it's difficult to tell how different,

Bill and Penny. Their reactions in Extremis and The Pyramid at the End of the World, to the Pope and the Secretary General respectively, do have some differences, probably to the Doctor telling Bill about the simulation. However, do the characters of the Secretary General, the three generals and Erica (latter whom is the only survivor out of them) contribute to the overall trilogy? Erica doesn't appear in the next episode (should she have). To answer, their role is minor, but Erica could appear again later in the series.

But does The Lie of the Land make a good conclusion? I'm not sure, given the nature of how the Monks are defeated. The motivation behind their regieme wasn't satisfactorily explained. About why they needed love based 'consent' or to manipulate the historical record. If not for the story elements involving Missy, I'm not sure it works. That story thread, involving Missy is more fulfilling than that involving the Monks. So it does work, but only barely. The Black Guardian Trilogy (Maudryn Undead, Terminus, Enlightenment) works a lot better.

(But then, one could consider Davison 'my Doctor'), there was much better plotting in the Classic series than here. And RTD did better with the trilogy that concluded Series 3. So overall it's underwhelming. 8.166/10.

Doctor Who 10.09 'Empress of Mars' Review

A very good episode. One of Gatiss' best. The NASA scene while it does introduce the situation, seems a little unnecessary, although it is as good as the rest of the story. It just seems to be a little superfluous. The arrival on Mars is well done, although it's not clear why the TARDIS left when Nardole went back aboard. The early explorations by the Doctor and Bill of the Martian tunnels were done quite well also. And the confrontation between the Doctor and Friday was well choreographed.

The explanation of how the British troops got into the situation they are in, is believable. That they found the Ice Warrior they named after the Defoe character in a ship on the veldt in South Africa and then helped him repair it. (And then lured them to Mars with promises of riches in the form of gemstomes, or gold.) That's an excellent set up to the situation, and leads into the discovery of the Empress' tomb/hibernation chamber. Each of the soldiers is given a unique personality, but more on that later.

In any case, the Empress is quite well realised, being in shock at the interlopers, the length of time spent in the hibernation, and the state of the surface. Godsacre's backstory is interesting. That he was caught for desertion, and was unscuccessfully hung for it. (There are questions about how he would be able to rejoin the Army after that, but those would detract from below.) In any case, that leads him to be able to work out a deal with the Empress, despite an attempt by his second to gain control.

The resolution that is worked out is quite believable (they wouldn't get back to Earth in any case). The appearance of Alpha Centauri is just icing on the cake (although I yet hadn't seen the Peladon serials). The conclusion with Missy being in the TARDIS, is interesting. There may be more to Missy's question about the Doctor's well being than his concern about her being out of the Vault. Overall this is a very good episode. 9/10.

Doctor Who 10.10 'The Eaters of Light' Review

The Tenth episode of series 10, written by Rona Monroe. (A note that there won't be Survival comparisons here.) The bookends, with the young 21st (?) century lass at the ruins of the cairn, is an interesting plot device. The beginning effectively sets the scene, that there is something on the Moor that the Doctor had been involved in. (The stone image of the TARDIS along the Pictish monster, is very good in this regard.)  A very good lead in (more about the concluding scene below.) The TARDIS crew's arrival is quite good also.

The dialogue about the crows speaking, and being in a huff is a little 'on the nose' but it does lead to a satisfying plot development towards the end of the episode, so that's easily forgiven. But what is more interesting, is Bill's interest in the IXth Legion. It is an effective way of setting up her role in the story. (The less said about her explaining her orientation to the Romans the better.) The Doctor and Nardole meeting the Picts is a lot better. The Picts come across better than the Romans as characters here.

(Romans are done better in The Fires of Pompeii.) The Picts' resentment at what the Romans have done to them and their land is quite well articulated. (Rebecca Benson did a very good job as Kar here.) The nature of the monsters ('Light eating locusts' as the Doctor puts it), is a very good idea for an antagonist, but I'm not sure that the resulting CGI is 100% effective. But that is a minor quibble, that doesn't detract from the enjoyment of the episode. Back to the characters: Kar. She's quite remorseful for her mistake in using one of the creatures against the IXth Legion.

(And thus the threat to the universe, see below.) When the Romans and Picts come to gether, the Doctor and Bill have to help them 'bury the hatchet' in order to focus on the problem that the 'light eating locusts' pose. Bill talking about the TARDIS's translation of the languages (English, Latin, Pictish...) helps to resolve the tension, but the Doctor's speech on the threat the creatures pose (that they would eat all the light sources in the universe) is what gets them to reconcile. Then the manner of fighting the creatures makes a good resolution.

(Another reference to Regeneration...) Kar and the remaining soldiers of the IXth sacrificing themselves to fight the creatures (rather than the Doctor) is a satisfying resolution to this story. The fact that the crows are remembering Kar, rather than being in a huff, contributes to that satisfaction. The scene with Missy, where it's revealed that she was maintaining the TARDIS, is just icing on the cake. I would recommend it to anyone to watch. 9/10.

Doctor Who 10.11 'World Enough and Time' Review The 11th episode of Series 10, and the first part of the two part finale. A very interesting episode with a lot of suspense. The pre-titles scene, with the Doctor starting to regenerate certainly adds to that suspense. However, the tale is in the journey, and so that journey starts on this 400 mile long colony ship falling into a black hole. With a twist, Missy pretending to be the Doctor. I'm not sure what to make of her saying 'Doctor Who', but otherwise it was well done. The way she introduces Bill and Nardole was interesting also.

But what really sets up the events of the episode is what happens to Bill. After some things start coming up the elevator (turbolift?) the pilot (who turns out to be the janitor) starts getting very anxious. The slow reveal of what they are is quite effective. But the result of this scene, Bill being shot is the impetus that drives the plot. The flashback, after she is shot, intercutting with her falling, was quite effective. Bill trying to get a promise from the Doctor that she wouldn't get killed, but not really getting one, also adds to the suspense.

The Doctor's “Wait for me,” to Bill is a good line, and it also leads to some resolution at the end of the episode (more on that later). Bill then waking up and exploring the Hospital. This scene is quite atmospheric and creepy. Very suspenseful. She seems to know that there is something not right about the patients. She soon meets Mr. Razor, who is more than he appears (see below), and the Matron).And so she discovers the other end of the ship, and that time is passing much faster there than at the top of the ship.

Of course, it takes time for the Doctor to explain the time dilation to Jorj (Missy and Nardole already have an idea of what is going on). The intercutting, showing time passing for Bill (and Mr. Razor) while the Doctor is explaining what is going on, was rather well done. The scenes outside the hospital, where Razor explains what is going on, that the society is dying and want to change to be strong, were good, both as exposition and as forshadowing for what was to come. The Doctor's explanation of the time dilation was good also.

Of course, it comes down to the last few minutes. And what a last few minutes! A lot is revealed in those few minutes. Bill's betrayal by Mr. Razor was really well done. I didn't expect him to be the Saxon incarnation of the Master in disguise! (I thought he would appear in some other way.) The reveals of Missy discovering that the ship was from Mondas and the Doctor recognising a patient as a Cyberman from that planet were very well done. But the wham at the end come from the reveal that the Cyberman is Bill!

That, and that Missy seems to team up with her past self and CyberBill's line “I waited for you!” combine to make a rather shocklingly great cliffhanger. 9.5/10.

Doctor Who 10.12 'The Doctor Falls' Review

The 12th and final episode of Series 10, and the second half of the series finale. It is certainly an interesting (if a little confronting in parts, see below, regarding Bill) episode. Is it a good episode? A good finale? To begin with, the sequence on the roof of the hospital was rather good, with the two incarnations of the Master trying to interrogate the Doctor, only to find that the Doctor had one-upped them, by altering the parameters for the Cybermen. It makes for a very tense scene. The Doctor being atttacked by a Cyberman only makes it more so.

The introduction to the farming society on Floor 507 was good also. It helped to get a feel for the characters as it were. However it also leads to the most confronting part of the episode. Bill and the effect of what was done to her on her mind (or the lack thereof). Her perplexity at seeing the reflection of a Cyberman in the mirror was done quite well, as was the following discussion with the Doctor regarding what she had become. It was very moving, almost enough to move one to tears.

The young girl is certainly moved to tears by her. That interaction helps to set up the interaction with the Doctor as noted above. However, there is more to the episode than Bill's problem. There is also the two incarnations of the Master, and how they interact with each other. (Gomez and Simm certainly work well together.) They both help the Doctor find the lifts, but Saxon Master is more likely to follow the beat of his own drum (even if the literal drumming had been removed). The planning for the Cybermen attack (what there is of it), is done well.

Of course, the Masters don't stick around for the actual attack, but the final scene where the two Masters kill each other (although Missy is surprised) is done very well. That Missy would induce the regeneration of her previous self to punish him for running away is believable, as is Saxon Master killing his future self! The Doctor's line to them that it's not about being a hero, but rather about being kind, is a very good line. It certainly suits the Doctor, not just this Doctor, but also the Doctor overall.

There is the contrast between the Doctor and Nardole in the heat of the moment. That Nardole is stronger than the Doctor, seems a bit much, but it's a good send off for that character (even if his situation and that of the children he leads to floor 502 is unresolved). The battle between the Doctor and the Cybermen is well choreographed. But the main resolution involves an unexpected element. Heather! This isn't as much as a cop out as it might seem, given the set up in the first episode, but more on that in the overall series review. Bill gets a good ending (and she may come back.)

Far more interesting is that the Doctor is refusing to regenerate. That is certainly an interesting development. The First Doctor appearing makes for a rather good hook for the Christmas special. Overall a well written, if flawed episode. 8.5/10.

Series Finale Two Part review

The season finale, both as an example of science fiction, and as a Doctor Who story works, better than the 'Monks Trilogy'. There are many elements common to both stories within this finale. Overall themes, and character development. For instance, desperation, and the efforts that both individuals and societies go to as a result of that emotion. For instance, the descendents of the Mondasian human crewmembers on Floor 1056 eventually upgrading themselves into Cybermen, and Jorj's reaction to Bill's presence on the Bridge.

This also extends to the inhabitants of Floor 507, as they do what they must against the proto-Cybermen that were coming for their children. It also extends to the Doctor, as he tries to come up with a plan that would stop the Cybermen, and is later desperate to stop the inevitable regeneration. And the Saxon Master is also desperate to stop his future self from becoming good. Bill also is desperate to hold onto her identity despite what happens to her. All of this desperation is very well presented.

There certainly isn't an overload of it, and it obviously isn't the only emotion present. There's also fear. Fear of the Cybermen. Fear of regeneration, fear of what one has become. Anger: Bill's presentation of this was well done. And last but not least, hope. A misplaced hope on the part of the society on Floor 1056, but also the hope that Nardole and the kids from 507 would survive on Floor 502. On to the characters, specifically to the two incarnations of the Master. Missy continued redemption was done very well.

But the more interesting characterisation is that of the Saxon Master. It is consistent with how he was portrayed in Series 3. The way he manipulated the Mondasian society and Bill is reminicent of how he manipulated Britain and the Doctor, Captain Jack and Martha in that previous storyline. His role as Mr. Razor was subtely offputting. In fact the name could be seen as a hint. It's very close to Saxon. The Master must like these two syllable pseudonyms... In any case, Simm did a very good job in both episodes.

The Doctor's development was also done well, even if the development of him not wanting to regenerate seems to come out of nowhere. Him wanting Missy to be good continues and he wants both Masters to help against the Cybermen. That part was done well, as was his reaction to what happened to Bill. Bill's experience was developed well across the episodes. Her reaction to the hospital and the patients therin, is reflected with her reaction to what she had become. More directly, her waking in the barn is like the previous waking in the hospital.

There is not much to say about Nardole's role in the episode that hadn't been said earlier. However, what happens to Jorj isn't stated. (Other than him possibly waking up and then seeing the TARDIS dematerialise as Heather flies it away...) Overall this is an effective conclusion to the series. 9/10.

Overall Series Review

Overall Series 10 was a very good series of stories about the Doctor and the changing circumstances that his meeting with Bill Potts brings about. It isn't a simple story (or series of stories), but there are many repeating themes. And then there are the bookends. As an example, Heather's becoming the Pilot is one of the main plots of the first episode, and she appears to rescue Bill and the Doctor after the defeat of the Cybermen on Floor 507. Her appearance in the latter episode may seem to come out of thin air, but it is set up in the first.

One of these themes is memories... Bill's memories in particular play an important part in various episodes. The Doctor gives her a photo of her mother, and it is that memory of her mother that allows her to defeat the Monks (even if that plot thread was weak). In addition, the strength of mind that allows her to hold out against the Monk's 'fake news' field is what allows her to resist the cyberconversion. A thread through the later part of the series is Missy remembering those she had killed...

Another is the phrase 'Without hope, without witness, without reward'. It appears in Extremis, and also in The Doctor Falls. In the former it is linked to the Doctor rescuing Missy from the executioners because he considers her a friend. In the latter, it helps to swing Missy back to the Doctor's side. It also appeared in some of the other episodes, but these are the most prominent. The development of the various characters through the series was also good. The Doctor is shown to be 'chafing' under the responsibility of guarding Missy.

He is clearly interested in Bill's development, encouraging her to look outside the box, with examples of such occurring throughout the series (even at the end). His weaknesses are also shown, quite well, especially after he's blinded at the space station, and hides it from Bill, with dramatic consequences! (See below for more.) He seems to be desperate for Missy to turn to the good side, and is flat flooted by the appearance of her predecessor on the colony ship. This aspect was also quite well done.

Bill's development was also interesting. She continues to ask questions in every episode (even of 'Razor'). It doesn't get too much. Her savvyness is also well done (except for in Empress of Mars, where it may be a little thick). Overall she was an important part of the storylines, with her mental fortitude helping to defeat the Monks (even if she caused them to take over the planet), and the Cybermen, The former may have seemed like a cheat, but the latter was a lot better done. Nardole was done well aslo.

There was more to him than first met the eye. But it was the storyline involving Missy that was the best aspect of the series. The earlier portions regarding the Vault may have dragged a bit, but after the 'Monk's trilogy' it lead to a very interesting conclusion. Was the Monk's trilogy a mistake? I'm not sure. The Lie of the Land may have been a let down, but the earlier portions involving the Doctor's weakness were done very well, so probably not. Overall, despite this dip in the middle, it was a great series.

8.5/10.

#doctor who #review #series 10

[sempainope-blog]

I am become Death

Title: “I am become Death” AO3 

Length: Ongoing 

Rating: Mature for language, sexual content, violence, possible torture, possible non con/sexual assault,

Pairings: Jyn/Cassian/Bodhi, Peripheral Baze/Chirrut

Summary: A Knights of Ren/Rogue One AU fic. This is the first mission that the Knights have been separated on, and it is the first one that they have been trusted to do without supervision, but then, no mission has been so important. 

Author’s note: Though Rogue One is probably my favorite of the new Star Wars movies, I was a little let down that the terrible fate that the trailers alluded to (Saw Gerrera's "What will you do when they catch you? What will they become?") didn't come to pass. I freely acknowledge that I'm a terrible person (also, maybe, a bit of a sadist), for wanting them to be captured and turned to the dark side.

I also freely acknowledge that I don't know all the ins and outs and finer details of the Star Wars universe. It's been years since I read any of the Star Wars novels but the love has never gone away. There will be tweaks as I work. The only thing I know for certain at this point, is where the story is going and that it is Rook, Andor, and Erso centric. Haha, please bear with me. I may be needing a betareader...

It had come again; intangible, pure, more real than real, and horrible. Heat; unending and suffocating, rolled over her and crushed the air from her lungs. There was nothing she could see, nothing she could hear, beyond the roar of her blood in her ears. The first time she had told one of their keepers about the dream, he had reassured her that the mind made up all sorts of things. Meditation and focusing on training would help, he had said, but years of both of those things had not diminished the visions. If anything, she wondered if they were becoming more real. Even now, hours and hours from waking, she felt her skin prickle in anticipation of the heat.

“Miss?” The blue-skinned owner of the inn they sat in smiled expectantly at her from behind the counter of the bar. The Rogue blinked her impossible dream away, realizing belatedly that the innkeeper’s serving droid had rolled up to her and parked itself at her side. The tray clipped to the unit’s body held a fogged glass pitcher, the contents turning the glass a milky green. Judging from how the liquid was completely still in the glass, the droid had been sitting there waiting for her decision for at least a little while. The Rogue’s companion chuckled quietly, his deep brown eyes steady on her face as if he’d been watching her for a time, too.

“I think we have both had more than enough,” He said, his amusement threaded through his soft voice. His face turned towards the innkeeper, though his eyes lingered on her face for a moment more.

The Rogue ignored him and favored the blue-skinned woman a small smile, bobbing her head slightly in agreement. As if she would allow herself to become intoxicated on mission. The muscles around her lips felt stiff and she wondered if it was as obviously insincere as it felt. If it was, the innkeeper missed it and the droid...well, it was a serving droid. The creature beeped in comprehension and rolled back towards the pantry room. It swiveled its head back to look at them again, as if giving them a last chance to change their mind before disappearing past the pantry door.

It had taken them twenty-three days, twenty-three days of talking and negotiating and making pleasantries, to narrow down the location. Saying that it had been painful and a stretch of her skills would be an understatement. Now, with the target so close, the Rogue felt her mask of warmth and humanity giving way to her impatience. Those extroverted characteristics that made infiltration easy: charisma, a bubbly sense of humor, friendliness; they just weren’t in her nature, if they ever had been.

Of all of their rank, the Rogue never managed to blend in as well or for as long as the others. They were all of them, perfect, near-exact replicas of some long-forgotten human war heroes but something about her unnerved people. The Sniper claimed it was her eyes that gave it away. How they were flat and hungry as a colo claw fish most of the time. The Heavy had been more prosaic about it and had chalked it up to the alterations and additions that had been made to their genetic sequence. There had been almost nothing left of the sources for their genetic templates and some human traits were inherently undesirable to the Supreme Leader to begin with, so the Kaminoans had filled in the gaps and tweaked what existed to order.

Any reasons why the Supreme Leader had insisted on these particular humans for the project was insight into a wisdom that far surpassed the Rogue’s comprehension. It wasn’t deemed necessary information for them to know, and she had never bothered to ask. It hardly seemed important.

Rising up, the Rogue looked over the inside of the inn and meandered towards one of the four narrow windows set in the rounded inn walls. The road was just visible in the dying sunlight, a thin silver-blue ribbon winding over the lush, hilled land. It was clear and empty, and in the distance, the soft glow of the closest colony flickered like a candle. It was more than two hours from the inn by foot but with all the quiet of the countryside, blaster fire would probably carry.

That was fine; blasters weren’t the Rogue’s favorite short-range weapon anyways. Her thumb slid along the top of the belt strapped around her waist before hooking above the handle of her nightstick.

There were strict laws in this region of space, laws fueled by some sort of ridiculous, rabid cultish fervor and the collective unhealed trauma from the Empire’s occupation that prevented the presence of any non-indigenous military presence or bounty hunters from roaming without close observation. That had ruled out their life-sustaining armor in favor for something that, unfortunately, screamed tourist and traveler. The Rogue had been quick to protest but as the Knights and this mission weren’t supposed to exist, it was unavoidable. It had also been a direct order, so. That had settled that.

The Armory’s dark khaki green tunic was the cheap, common kind that could be found at most trading posts with long sleeves and enough folds and pockets to hide all sorts of useful things. The black, high-necked, and long sleeved shirt that the tunic was wrapped over was made of a more expensive and deceptively tough knife-resistant fabric, but a person would have to be looking for that particular detail to notice it. His pants, leg wraps, and shoes were black and all looked to be of the same trading post origin as the shirt.

Weapons were also highly regulated, which meant the most deadly thing the Armory had on his person was a single law-congruent stun pistol, and a crescent-bladed knife hanging off of the utility belt cinched around his middle. The several vials of poison discreetly tucked out of sight were somewhat less legal but they had no intention of staying on this planet past the midnight hour.

The Armory’s dark hair hung loose about his head in a thick, heavy fall that reached his shoulders. It was hardly regulation nor very practical in a fight, but it suited him. The short facial hair that framed the Armory’s mouth and swept up his jaw bone kept his features from appearing too much younger than his twenty-two years and brought balance to the pronounced bridge of his nose and hollowed cheeks. The warm tone of his brown skin easily hid the fact that he wasn’t often exposed to sunlight, quite unlike the Rogue’s. And with his large, friendly eyes that drew people in and a face that leant itself best to smiling, the pair might as well be night and day. That approachability was something the Rogue used to be jealous of for the attention it brought him, but she had ultimately learned to play to her strengths.

The Rogue had brought no weapons aside from herself and a more tame nightstick than the one that usually accompanied her. It hung openly at her waist over a knee-length gray tunic and a twin of the black, stab-resistant shirt that the Armory wore. Her own cinnamon brown hair had been pulled back into no-nonsense braid that had then been twisted into itself and pinned as a bun at the back of her head.

There wasn’t a trace of rouge on her lips or kohl around her eyes, something that the Sniper had pestered her for not caring about. When he hadn’t let up, she rewarded him with a quick sweep of her leg to knock the Sniper’s out from under him and send him crashing heavily down onto the floor. Though the memory of his stunned expression and how he had rubbed at his bruised tailbone brought amusement to the Rogue, she couldn’t help but wonder if maybe he hadn’t been completely wrong.

A little makeup might have actually made her more approachable...but probably not. If it wasn’t her “colo-claw-fish-eyes” and standoffish demeanor that put strangers off, her sharp tongue inevitably cut away any amicable connections with would-be allies. The knowledge that they had managed at the inn for the past several hours without her offending anyone wasn’t much of a consolation.

The inn wasn’t particularly large to begin with but the Armory and the Rogue were its sole guests. The upper floor housed four rooms to let out to guests while the main floor served as a modest eatery and watering hole for the locals. A place like this probably got more than enough business but it was the off-season now, and the cusp of the second harvest which meant the only people traveling were those who absolutely had to. The inn itself would be closed in another day or two until the cold season was over and planting was complete. It was unlikely anyone would be stumbling in on them.

The Rogue tapped her fingers impatiently along the handle of her nightstick as she started to calculate their odds of being interrupted, then dismissed the thought before it was complete. If the Armory had done his job and the Sniper was currently doing his, it would be impossible.

“I’m sorry, but we must impose even further on you,” The Rogue said suddenly. Her voice was rough and slightly hoarse from disuse, an unpleasant contrast to the calm ease that filled the room. “We were directed here by some mutual friends. We were told you help people find what they’re looking for. Things from the war against the Empire.”

The Armory moved his arms from where he had them leaning against the tabletop to drop one casually across his lap and within easy reach of a quick draw of his stun gun. The other he braced on the bench he sat on as he looked between the Rogue and the innkeeper with nothing more than polite curiosity on his face. He was still planning on getting what they needed without violence. That was not a priority for the Rogue.

The tense moment of silence that followed the Rogue’s words erased any remaining doubt she had as to whether they had the right target. Tension drew the innkeeper’s posture ruler-straight behind the counter of the bar and her lips thinned.

Did the innkeeper know she was prey? If she didn’t, she would find out very quickly. A thrill tickled up the Rogue’s spine and she licked her dry lips in anticipation.

“I don’t. Not anymore.” The Innkeeper said shortly. “Not for years.”

The Armory’s head tilted minutely towards the door to the pantry in an unspoken warning. The droid had returned to the entrance to the main hall, surveying the scene unfolding before it in silence. The Rogue nodded slightly; she’d destroy it soon enough but her focus was on their target.

“I’m just an innkeeper. I don’t want trouble,” She said, raising her voice. One of the Rogue’s eyebrows quirked at the foolishness of the act. Undoubtedly, the innkeeper hoped that someone would hear her but the roads were as empty as the inn nearly was.

“Then indulge us a little. You said years, but our mutual friends said you helped move some Imperial relics six weeks ago. That’s a bit short of the years you say it’s been since you were involved in any smuggling.” The warm smile that had first come to the Armory’s face when the innkeeper had offered them more to drink had never left. Only now, it was twisted into something considerably more focused and less inviting.

The Rogue’s heart skipped when she saw the sweat beading across the woman’s forehead and she slid her fingers around the fabric-bound handle of her weapon.

Prey, the Rogue’s blood sang with excitement, unworthy prey.

Fear tightened the innkeeper’s lips and the Rogue’s eyes measured her, waiting. Would the innkeeper run? There was nowhere to go. No, judging from how the Chiss had drawn closer to the countertop of the bar and had been moving her arms in tiny, stiff motions beneath the counter, she probably had a weapon trained on them at that very moment.

Good. The Rogue preferred an open fight.

Inhale, exhale...Inhale, exhale...

Inhale- A burst of red blaster fire exploded through the thin front board of the counter but the Rogue was ready for it.

In a blur of motion, the Rogue swung aside and closed the distance between them. Her nightstick swung up and the metal-capped end smashed across the woman’s mouth with enough force to send her spinning to the floor. Blood spattered the floor in a spray and the Rogue bared her teeth in a predatory grin.

A sudden, shrill siren-like tone raised loud enough to rattle the teeth in their heads and stole the flush of victory from the Rogue.

The damned droid-!

The windows shuddered in their frames, cracks starting to splinter out along the panes. The Armory had clapped his hands over his ears in an ineffective attempt to dampen the piercing shrill; his stun gun still clutched in one hand. None of his weapons would be effective against the metal creature. In a single motion, the Rogue twisted the handle to electrify the lower end of the shaft and turned to deal with the droid. Her weapon wasn’t ideal for disabling it, but-

Behind the Rogue, glass dust and twisted metal shrapnel exploded out from where a window once was. She grit her teeth against the sudden flash of heat she felt across her cheek as the first blaster bolt passed her and slammed into the droid’s eye lenses. Another bolt blasted into the body of the droid, shearing straight through it’s plating to fry the circuits and cut off its screams. Steam and chemical vapor curled up from the droid, filling the air with the acrid smell of burning plasteel and circuitry but it was silent.

Kriffing hell.

The Rogue cast a glowering look out the shattered window and into the darkness. Subtlety was clearly off the table, but the innkeeper and her droid had seen to that.

Hopping the counter, the Armory landed lightly beside the innkeeper and kicked the blaster out of reach. Placing a booted foot on the innkeeper’s shoulder, he shoved her onto her back.

The nightstick had knocked three of the Chiss’ teeth clean free, cracked several others, and from the blood and saliva that oozed out from her lips, she’d probably bitten into her tongue, too. The Rogue’s nose wrinkled at the sight, not at all trying to hide her amused disgust at her own handy work.

“Well that was foolish of you,” The Armory commented as he glanced back at the smoldering droid. When the innkeeper let out a moan, he looked back down. Dropping weightlessly into a crouch that would have made most knees creak, the Armory placed the flat of his dagger under the innkeeper’s chin.

“Focus.” When the innkeeper’s disoriented gaze wandered, he tapped the flat of the blade against the innkeeper’s lower jaw. It wasn’t hard enough to really hurt but it definitely got the woman’s attention.

“I have connections-! High up friends that will come after you for this!!” She spat, blood from her broken teeth staining her blue lips purple.

“We’re ghosts, my friend,” The Armory replied as the Rogue moved in closer. His voice was gentle but confident. “No one can catch ghosts. Now, you were just telling us about those Imperial relics...”

The innkeeper’s resolve broke fast, certainly faster than her femur did, but the Armory and the Rogue were nothing if not thorough and there would be no stopping until they had agreed they knew everything.

#rogueknights #sniperpilot #rebelcaptain #rogue one fanfiction #rogue one #cassian andor #jyn erso #bodhi rook #star wars

[bluewatsons]

Leigh E. Rich, “Born Like This / Into This”: Tuberculosis, Justice, and Futuristic Dinosaurs, 13 J Bioethical Inquiry 1 (2016)

I was born of disease.

Not in the same circumstances as too many still today and so many others in the past, but my existence—or at least key narratives from life courses entwined with my existence—are rooted in disease. Had it not been for the “Spanish flu,” I would cease to exist. For it was the death of my paternal grandfather’s first wife during the 1918–1919 influenza pandemic that left him a widower, with three young children to raise. Out of this tragedy came marriage to my grandmother and ten more children, my father eighth in that line, eleventh in the blended family overall.1 And had it not been for tuberculosis, my grandparents never would have met. For it was my great-grandfather’s affliction with TB that brought this small immigrant family of three—him, my great-grandmother, and my barely born grandmother—from New York to Denver. They came West, into the dry, thin High Plains air of Colorado, where the sun reputedly shines three-quarters of the year (Colorado Climate Center 2010) and the climate was a prescriptive for what was then called “consumption” and those ill with it “lungers” (Lewis 2015).

Perhaps this health history somehow found its way, Lamarckian-style, into my being. For I am otherwise not sure from where my lifelong interest in medicine and the health sciences springs. I didn’t grow up in a household of healthcare workers. My parents, before I knew them, were both schoolteachers, and all of my life they owned and operated a local furniture manufacturing company.2 There were no aunts or uncles as doctors or nurses, no family friends in the business of sickness and health or the production of well-being. Yet, since I was small, all I wanted to do was read about medicine. True, these early books consisted mostly of those by Michael Crichton and Robin Cook (which also might explain my ongoing interest in the rise and persistence of the detective narrative). And while these novels weren’t the bastions of great philosophical or medical depth (although authored by scientists/modern medicine men), they hooked me into seeking more, and soon I was reading non-fiction about the rise of hospitals, evolutionary theory, the pharmaceutical industry, the history of science and technology. Anything related to medicine. And the politics of health. And morbidity and mortality.

Towards the end of high school, I enrolled in science seminar as well as a medical careers class, where we met after school with a dedicated teacher who led discussions and arranged field trips to hospitals and the University of Colorado’s Health Sciences Center. At the age of sixteen, a classmate and I even observed several surgeries from the floor of an operating room. Practically from over his shoulder, we watched as the orthopaedic surgeon and his team talked us through each procedure, working as one, serious and collegial, clearly enjoying their work while caring for their patients. Nearly thirty years later, I remember this experience vividly, gratefully, aware then as now of the opportunities that being able to attend a well-funded school provides. Through science seminar, I was offered an internship at National Jewish Medical and Research Center (now called National Jewish Health), whose doors opened in 1899 as National Jewish Hospital for Treatment of Consumptives. Under the guidance of world-renowned pulmonologists, I learned about TB, Mycobacterium avium-intracellulare (MAI), and drug resistance and participated in research exploring drug-susceptibility testing.

I gave no thought to it at the time, but, for a brief moment anyway, I was part of an institution that once treated my great-grandfather, connecting me to him in ways beyond just our genes.

But it’s not only our own families who count. It’s all families. As I now write, reflecting on TB and these odd (and rather morbid) webs of social and historical ties, memories are dredged from my primary school days as well, when our forearms would be pricked with the tuberculin tine test, the area circled in pen, and we’d be handed index-sized cards with variations of raised bumps with which to compare our own possible reactions over the next several days. I remember these cards well. I was intrigued by them. Almost mesmerized. And I would spend considerable time running my fingers over the uneven, artificial bulges, not so much out of vigilance for potential parallels between card and arm, but curiosity. Curiosity for something that was rather alien.

For me, there was a disconnect with the card, even though TB had in some ways shaped my life.

That disconnect doesn’t exist, cannot exist, for many, even today. According to the World Health Organization, in 2014 “9.6 million people fell ill with TB and 1.5 million people died from the disease” (WHO 2015b, ¶2 under “Key facts”; see also WHO 2015a, 8). Moreover, “an estimated 480,000 people developed multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB)” (WHO 2015b, ¶6 under “Key facts), nearly a tenth of whom have extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB) (WHO 2015a, 2). By 2015, XDR-TB “had been reported by 105 countries” (WHO 2015a, 2).

Although TB occurs in every region in the world, some shoulder heavier burdens. The World Health Organization reports:

In 2014, about 80% of reported TB cases occurred in 22 countries. The 6 countries that stand out as having the largest number of incident cases in 2014 were India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan, People’s Republic of China and South Africa. Some countries are experiencing a major decline in cases, while in others the numbers are dropping very slowly (WHO 2015b, ¶2 under “Global impact of TB”).

Thus, while great strides have been made in reducing the overall death rate from TB and saving lives, concerns remain. As Mario Raviglione, director of the Global TB Programme, writes in the preface to the 2015 Global Tuberculosis Report, TB is “a classic example of a disease of poverty” (WHO 2015a, x). It was born in poverty and is sustained by poverty (see, e.g., Snewin, Cooper, and Hannan 2002). For example, the WHO reports that “[g]lobally an estimated 3.3% of new TB cases and 20% of previously treated cases have MDR-TB, a level that has changed little in recent years” (WHO 2015a, 2). And a “primary cause of MDR-TB,” the WHO states elsewhere, “is inappropriate treatment. Inappropriate or incorrect use of anti-TB drugs, or use of poor quality medicines, can cause drug resistance” (WHO 2015b, ¶3 under “Multidrug-resistant TB”).

Drug resistance, therefore, is “a human-made phenomenon” (Selgelid and Reichman 2011, S9), a combination of lack of access to medicines for many who need them, adherence issues among patients (e.g., rationing for economic reasons, discontinuation due to side effects), diagnostic and clinical errors, stigmatization, and continuing disincentives for change in health systems, politics, and industry.

But if it is “a human-made phenomenon,” then, too, are the solutions.

The question remains, however, whether such solutions are possible within our current social contracts. In what has become a rather controversial op-ed piece, Peter Buffett, son of American entrepreneur and philanthropist Warren Buffett, wrote frankly in 2013 about what he and his wife have termed “Philanthropic Colonialism”—which not only involves attempts to “save the day” and solve local problems in other cultures with “very little knowledge of a particular place” (and sometimes succeeding only in creating “unintended consequences”) but also “conscience laundering,” or giving back in fractional ways in order to appease any moral distress sparked by a system that “creates vast amounts of wealth for the few” at the expense of all (Buffett 2013, ¶2, ¶3, and ¶7).3

Focusing on charity, then, “just keeps the existing structure of inequality in place,” and Buffett instead calls for “a new operating system,” one steeped in humanism (Buffett 2013, ¶8 and ¶13). The title to his piece, “The Charitable–Industrial Complex,” references U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s warning upon leaving office in 1961 to beware of a growing military–industrial complex, the intertwined and reinforcing relationships “between corporations and the armed forces” that seek to maximize their own interests regardless of any peril to democracy (Bacevich 2011, ¶1). History and international relations professor Andrew J. Bacevich, in examining several of Eisenhower’s speeches related to the “economic, social, political, and moral” implications of “misappropriate[ing] … scarce resources” and diverting “social capital from productive to destructive purposes” (Bacevich 2011, ¶5–¶7), concludes that “the president contemplated a world permanently perched on the brink of war—‘humanity hanging from a cross of iron’—and he appealed to Americans to assess the consequences likely to ensue” (Bacevich 2011, ¶4).

This “cross of iron” smacks of Thomas Hobbes’ state of war, which, while “perfect freedom,” can only be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” (1886, 64).

So too, perhaps, with the charitable–industrial complex, although Buffett’s editorial looks to John Rawls instead of Hobbes, asking us (in so many words) to return to an “original position,” to go behind a “veil of ignorance,” and to build “from the ground up” a “[n]ew code” (Buffett 2013, ¶13)—one that maximizes the minimum and secures not only basic equal liberties for all but also “effective freedom,” where genuine access to resources is a reality that enables individuals and communities to develop and grow and pursue their educational, entrepreneurial, and other dreams (Rawls 2003). We must also, then, take cues not merely from Rawls but Charles W. Mills (1997), whose examination of The Racial Contract requires that we acknowledge—and dismantle—the malign normative system within social contract theory that has been blind to the historical and enduring “whiteness” of liberalism, to the embedded biases rooted in colonialism about who “counts” as equal, free, rational persons (Mills 1997). Instead, we must create genuinely inclusive social contracts.

“What we have is a crisis of imagination,” Buffett urges. “Albert Einstein said that you cannot solve a problem with the same mind-set that created it” (Buffett 2013, ¶14), and thus we cannot address the global issue of TB (and so many other diseases) without addressing the underlying socioeconomic system in which it thrives. Without addressing the poverty that created it and the poverty created from it.

TB is not something alien, not a disease of an “other.” It is my disease. It is our disease. This issue of the Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, with a symposium on tuberculosis edited by Paul H. Mason and Chris Degeling and in honour of World TB Day 2016, underscores this. It examines the intersections of narratives of TB from multiple disciplines and diverse perspectives. It emphasizes the “deeply personal story” that is TB, even as the global disease burden and efforts at eradication continue to seem daunting (Mason and Degeling 2016, under “Abstract”).4

So many years ago, when I unconsciously played with the card that accompanied the tuberculin skin test, I was asking the question of “Why me?” Not in the usual way we pose this query, when we are stricken with illness and want to know from our maker, from society, from those in our lives why we find ourselves diagnosed with a given disease at a particular time. Rather, unbeknownst to me, I was asking “Why me?” in the sense of “Why am I not vulnerable?”

It is a question that must be asked more.

And one that demands response.

We have the duty—just perhaps not yet the Kantian good will—to do more than merely “keep the pot from boiling over” (Buffett 2013, ¶8), to do more than merely perpetuate a system where, as Rawls would put it, the “inequalities … are not to the benefit of all” (Rawls 2003, 54). George Merck reputedly once said that if his pharmaceutical company “discovered a cure for cancer, he’d not patent it. … How can you keep it away from people? How can you charge a lot of money? What’s the excuse? You can’t do that” (recounted by chemist Max Tishler, cited in Werth 1994, 127).

What is our excuse?

In various permutations, we are all born of disease. Even Rawls’ A Theory of Justice was born of disease.5

We are, as poet Charles Bukowski phrased it, “born like this / into this”6:

we are

born like this

into this

into these carefully mad wars

into the sight of broken factory windows of emptiness

into bars where people no longer speak to each other

into fist fights that end as shootings and knifings

born into this

into hospitals which are so expensive that it’s cheaper to die

into lawyers who charge so much it’s cheaper to plead guilty

into a country where the jails are full and the madhouses closed

into a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes

“Dinosauria, we,” Bukowski deems us, and should we wilfully fail to heed this forecast, soon we may just be

the last few survivors … overtaken by new and hideous diseases … and there will be the most beautiful silence never heard born out of that.

Can we prove him wrong?

Will we?

Footnotes

I once recounted this story at a Society for Public Health Education (SOPHE) training on crisis and emergency risk communication, during a session in which we used the possibility of an avian flu pandemic as a case study. To emphasize the far-reaching effects of epidemics, the instructor asked us to consider the influenza pandemic of 1918–1919 and urged us to share how events from ninety years prior had personally affected us. She was, perhaps, at first taken aback that, in this tragic way, I had disease to thank for my father’s life and, thus, my own. It is this randomness of circumstance, being “born into this,” that political philosopher John Rawls attempted to address in his A Theory of Justice, first published in 1971.

That said, my parents always believed, and continue to do so, in education. At university, my father focused on psychology, my mother on learning disabilities. Both went on to earn master’s degrees. And today, when we meet up on Sunday mornings for our weekly walk around a local lake, we speak primarily of health—in the World Health Organization sense of the word (WHO 1946)—and social justice, trying to understand, and find ways to ameliorate, the lack of will we humans can exhibit when it comes to others’ suffering.

I thank Susan Arshack, grants director at Armstrong State University, for sharing her perspectives and Buffett’s article with me during a recent grant-writing workshop.

The issue also includes several responses to a TB-related “In That Case” column. The case study and four of the replies can be located via the JBI website at http://bioethicalinquiry.com/.

In Thomas Pogge’s biography of John “Jack” Rawls, he notes that the “most important events in Jack’s childhood were the loss of two younger brothers, who died of diseases contracted from Jack”—one from diphtheria, one from pneumonia (Pogge 2007, 5). Pogge also emphasizes that Rawls’ “sense of justice” was heavily influenced by “his mother’s work for the rights of women” and “his own reflections on race and class” in his hometown of Baltimore, Maryland (Pogge 2007, 6). Likewise, I, too, must thank my mother, who, through her ceaseless philanthropic work—while working full-time, co-raising children and now grandchildren, and caring for parents and other friends and relatives—has always been and continues to be a role model for me. Still working full-time, she recently co-founded a community garden that has, with collaborative partners, helped to create free, healthy meals for thousands of local schoolchildren. I also am shaped by and often share with my students my father’s mantra: that no one should be hungry, homeless, or without healthcare.

This and the following Bukowski lines are from the poem “Dinosauria, we” (see Bukowski 2002, 319–321).

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