Me After Clicking On Halsin: WHAT THE-oh Right. Patch 6. Hoo, That Was Unexpected.

When you're used to being critiqued and undermined constantly on your feelings and reactions, it often leaves one feeling like you've been picked over like a Thanksgiving carcass.

Don't criticize. Don't be rude. Never show your anger or annoyance. Don't be that killjoy when someone makes a sexist/racist/ableist joke that everyone else is laughing at. Always be accommodating even if you know that they're going to manipulate that good will to make you do work that's not yours to begin with. You still can't be cold and shut them off.

So when you're tip toeing and side stepping the thorns of social expectations, only to witness someone committing to an action that would have gotten you scoured and punished for, you'd think they'd be facing the same kind of consequences, right?

Nope.

Watching those moments where others are laughing their way through a sassy remark, a defiant gesture or a cheeky comment while you've had to filter and bleach your personality until it's dull, flat and tasteless to the world (and giving the world that classic "autism" impression) because you can't afford to weather the long cold ostracism that could cost you your job.

Is it any wonder why our emotions are fucking bombs by the time something finally sparks that long stored volatility under pressure?

Autistic and ‘Over-reacting’ to the Little Things

Neurodivergent_lou

Smaugust 2024 by Katy Lipscomb

Same here. It wasn't enough that she intentionally got pregnant, abandoned the Nexus and the people who needed her expertise, stole dwindling resources from a group who were facing hostile forces, she had also doomed her kid to a future that had no pleasant end in sight until Ryder started making major steps in turning the odds around.

And she had the. Gall. To be patronizingly smug with no remorse for what she did.

The game even acknowledged she's prone towards selfish actions but instead of giving the player and Ryder a chance to be furious with her for it, we're forced into a position and dialogue where we're supposed to admire her for it when she gives birth.

And the game does not let you refuse this quest. You will see it every time you go to the map or your journal.

This mission makes me so mad I've never finished it. I cannot stand talking to Zoe or Addison about it and there are no consequences to make me want to save this selfish woman from her actions despite me having a completionist streak for even the most innocuous side missions.

On a side note, has anyone else noticed that every single pregnant character in Mass Effect is written to be as obnoxious as possible?! Rebekah being willing to take a larger risk with her baby, Brynn rubbing the fact that she went after Jacob in Shepard's face if Shepard romanced him and that he's better off with her WHILE SHEPARD IS RESCUING THEM, what is up with Bioware doing that?! It's as weird as their tendency to write every one of Femshep's male LIs needing to talk about their exes before she can romance them.

CONFESSION:

For the most part, I enjoyed Andromeda despite the problems/flaws but there was a couple of quests that infuriated me, with one being "The Little Things that Matter". I thought Dr Kennedy was freaking selfish. I wanted to call her out and Addision out for kissing her friend's ass. If I ever do another playthrough, that will be quest I won't do.

Honestly the Halsin romance frustrates me so much, because he makes it so clear that he wants something more and you just… have no option to give it to him?

“You’re all that I want” he says but then you’re literally not allowed to tell him that he’s all YOU want!!! He’s so moved when you say you want to go with him to take care of the kids and help out with rehabilitating the (formerly) shadow cursed lands, but you don’t get to stay with him!!!

Like sure maybe he doesn’t want an exclusive relationship, but I think if you put together all the context clues of his unexplored trauma and loneliness, he probably doesn’t understand what he wants! And he deserves to have the opportunity to have his partner help him work through that and stand by him and offer him actual love and support, rather than just having him be the tacked on third to a relationship that functions entirely without him.

Be polyamorous with him. But by god, they could have had a scene of the THREE people in the relationship interacting, or at least allowed Halsin to feel like he was as important of a partner as your other one!!! Having him just say “I know you’re in love with someone else but I’m in love with you so I’ll accept the dregs” is pretty horrible, FROM A POLYAMOROUS PERSPECTIVE.

If they didn’t want to program in triad endings (very stupid if they were going to allow you to be polyamorous) they should at LEAST have allowed you to choose a paired ending with Halsin over a paired ending with your other partner. I want to help him take care of the goddamn kids and put down roots with him!!! Why can’t I? There’s nothing antithetical to polyamory in that. Polyamorous people can settle down with a partner they like, and Halsin expresses over and over through word and deed that he likes the player!!!

It just frustrates me that I feel like even when I say yes to him I’m still hurting him. He deserves so much more love and attention than the game allows him to have.

There are a couple more Garrus-Vakarian-related hills I'm willing to die on.

Maybe this particular bit of fanon has faded over the years, but there used to be a lot of insistence that Garrus is young and somehow inexperienced when he meets Shepard. Canon doesn't really support this. Turians start their mandatory service at 15. Garrus has at least a decade of experience. Even if he's 2-4 of years younger than Shepard (according to Patrick Weekes), he's got at least as much field experience as she does by dint of the difference in turian and human "enlistment" ages.

Garrus is really damn good at his job at C-Sec. You don't give the Case of Investigating the Rogue Spectre to a greenhorn. You give it to your best, most tenacious agent. Pallin may not always approve of Garrus's actions, but that doesn't actually stop him from putting Garrus on the tough case. Also, we don't know much about how C-Sec works but we do know a bit about how the turian hierarchy works, and we know C-Sec was essentially a turian initiative. That means it's a meritocracy where failure reflects on the superior, not the one who failed. So, in roughly a decade (Shepard's 29 in ME1; I always think of Garrus as about 27), Garrus has not only done shipboard military service, but he's also risen to be one of C-Sec's top investigators; Pallin wouldn't risk having Garrus's "failure" reflect poorly on HIM otherwise. I'd say that actually makes Garrus as remarkable in civilian law enforcement terms as Shepard is considered to be within the ranks of the Alliance military.

Of course Garrus was scouted by the Spectre program. And honestly, if his dad hadn't stepped in, I think Garrus would have become a Spectre, no problem. Especially for a turian, he's cut from precisely the cloth the Spectres would be looking for: extremely skilled, extremely capable, and--most importantly--he's a turian not just able but willing to work outside the chains of command that turians are taught from birth to revere and be loyal to above all else. This is the reason Pallin is leery about Spectres: he's a good turian. Good turians follow straight lines; they don't carve out their own paths.

Garrus's dad's not dumb, and he's not cruel, and he, too, rose to the top of the C-Sec hierarchy. He took one look at his kid, I think, and said, "I love my child, but I'd say it's a 50-50 chance he ends up a shooting-first-asking-questions-later Spectre like Saren Arterius, and I don't want to see that happen." Yeah, he uses his parental influence to try and jam square-peg-Garrus into round-hole-C-Sec and Garrus resents him for it, but there's no way he did it just to stop his son from getting his way or because he doesn't like Spectres. I expect Vakarian Sr. had to clean up more post-Spectre-interference messes than we can possibly imagine. But we also know he and Alec Ryder were pals later.

So the importance of what Garrus learns from a Paragon Spectre Shepard is this: You can't just do what you want and claim the ends always justify the means. That's what Saren does. Over and over again. Garrus's code and his idealism and his sense of justice and his ability to work alone should make him a great Spectre, actually, but he needs Paragon Spectre Shepard's actions to show him the lesson he tells her he's learned during ME1: "If the people I'm sworn to protect can't trust me... well, then I don't deserve to be the one protecting them." (And the seed of Archangel was planted.) I think for the first time he realizes that even though he believes his sense of justice to be correct, it doesn't matter for shit if he can't show others why that's so. And that's where the trust comes in. (Also, ow, the extra level of importance this gives their exchange where she tells him she trusts him and he tells her she's about the only friend he has left is... a lot. Cool, cool. I'm totally fine. Nothing to see here.)

When Shepard asks him what happened on Omega, he replies, "My feelings got in the way of my better judgement." Something tells me that this never happens to "good" turians, which just makes the line so much more devastating. And although the lesson some might take away from this is "feelings bad; no feelings ever," the "grey" that Garrus has to learn to deal with is precisely the grey of recognizing feelings, validating them even, but not acting on them until they've been examined. (Which is why my Shepard stands between him and Sidonis; she doesn't give a shit about Sidonis. But Garrus has refused to process his own feelings of failure and self-loathing, so they have to take the therapy session to the Citadel and deal with it there.)

Ahh yes. The mountain range of character analysis.

To add to the rest of the list:

-Gale is surprisingly self aware for the most part on the stereotypes of wizard ambition causing their own ruin. He actively tried to tamp it down by looking for some small, but useful bit of the Weave to restore to Mystra. Sure it didn't go like he had hoped, but he was at least thinking about the impact of his actions and doing it in service of his goddess rather than personal power (at least until Act 3).

-Halsin isn't the slender, distant, spiritual, chaste stereotype of an elf. He's big, he's brawny, hairy and sexual without losing any of the kindness and serious devotion to his personal goals.

-Lae'zel is more academic than she's given credit for and more considerate than people would expect. She's harsh in her words, but her actions repeatedly show a patience and willingness to cooperate that we wouldn't expect from a race that has a reputation for stab first, question the corpse later.

-Minthara loathes Lolth, but doesn't worship Vhaeraun. She's a Paladin, a class that isn't something you hear of in Drow cities and she doesn't hate surface races the way Lolth Sworn Drow are expected to.

I love how Larian decided most of the companions in Baldur's Gate 3 will defy the stereotypes of their class and/or race.

● Shadowheart is a cleric, but not your typical peace, light, and love cleric. She worships the Goddess of Darkness, and is not looking to treat every stranger with kindess.

● Wyll is a Warlock, who are typically manipulative, deceptive and very edgy. Yet, he is the nicest man you will ever meet, helps everyone in need, and will begin to walk the thinnest line between his morals and doing his patron's bidding.

● Astarion, while he certainly does harbor typical rogue traits (stealing and sneaky) and vampire traits (haughty and bloodthirsty), he throws out enough quips, roasts, flirts, and one liners that could put every bard in a 100 mile radius to shame, and with a body count to supercede them. Even if most of it is an act, it's even more bard-like that he puts a performance on.

● Karlach is the big buff tiefling barbarian. She could have been 100% rage and stupidity, but decided to be 50% wholesomeness and love, and possibly the most caring companion on your journey.

And then there's Gale and Lae'zel...We love them for being the most stereotypical wizard and githyanki that ever did <3

In light of the latest Discourse, I wanted to point out this as-yet unimplemented dialogue I datamined.

"Friendship is no consolation trophy."

That is the one thing you will never hear an incel, nice guy, etc say. It is the attitude of someone with a healthy sense of boundaries and respect for others.

Hey there! It’s been a while 🤝🏻

Huge thanks to @ladysakurascout for commissioning and supporting me through this long period of time while I was just off and couldn’t draw at all:’)

Now I happily rewatched fallout tv series (I believe it must be around 10th or 15th time :’D) and can share this with you ♥️

Apparently people thing Halsin is....problemati?????

seeing straight men be disgusted by booktok smut recommenders has actually radicalized me to the side of booktok smut recommenders. girls your taste may be atrocious but i will never disparage you for exposing mainstream discourse to the concept of soaking through your underwear. spent my whole life listening to men talk about penises it’s about time they get jumpscared by women talking about pussy in crude detail on social media. go forth and goon my warriors