Rambling - Non-Orbital Entertainment Dragons

Easily one of my favorite cinematic moments.
Powerful, memorable, and few words to muck it up.

Emotion, from the perspective of a writer, is an interesting thing; at once inescapably critical to most kinds of fiction and simultaneously impossible to actually describe.

The kind of fiction I’m talking about, of course, is narrative fiction involving specific characters and intended to make the reader feel certain ways and possibly think about certain things.  More vague, broad, or meta-based fiction might not involve emotion, or might only hint at small amounts of emotion; it might simply describe a fictional world, or the ever-famous mid-millennium book which describes fictional flora and fauna.  Yet nearly any book which tells a story about characters must inevitably involve emotion at some level, most often at its core.  We can’t be fully invested in a story if we don’t care about the characters in its telling, and we can’t really care about them if we don’t understand what they’re going through.  Without emotion, more specifically without the reader’s emotions in empathy for the book’s characters, a fictional narrative is stripped of any power it might have had.

Yet at the same time, emotion is impossible to actually describe.  I can describe what a character looks like to the last exacting detail.  I can describe their environment far and near.  I can detail every political, economic, and cultural movement of their world.  I can even describe every last second of a character’s background if necessary.  None of that, however, has any way of ever describing the emotions that a character, or any other character in their world, goes through.

An emotion is not actually a thing which can be described.  When I feel anguish I know exactly what it is and I can identify it, but I can never describe it to someone else.  I can, of course, say “the anguish was crushing, I barely ate for days,” but that doesn’t describe my anguish.  It only describes my reaction to my anguish.  There is no set of stimuli that I can point to and say “that is anguish,” there is no physical representation of anguish with which other people can identify, and therefore nothing for me to describe.  It’s the same principle as color, really; I have no way of knowing whether or not the color purple I see is the same color that you see.  Just like I can never describe purple without saying “it had a dark purple hue that shimmered bright violet in the right light,” or just “it was purple,” I can never describe an emotion.

So what is a writer to do?  For starters, a character’s reactions are literally everything.  If emotion is the core of a good piece of fictional narrative, yet we can’t describe the emotions themselves, then each character’s reactions to their own emotions are the most important tool in any writer’s skillset.  To overdo it makes the emotion unbelievable or perhaps gives the impression of the wrong emotion.  To underdo it leaves only bland emptiness, and lack of emotion is what kills a story.  Yet if I do things correctly, if my characters react just right, then I don’t have to be able to describe an emotion itself.  If everything is right then a reader will understand the anguish being felt by a character or, in a perfect world, feel an echo of that anguish in response.  When my words work correctly, I don’t have to describe joy, hate, love, fear, anguish, curiosity, depression, or any other emotion that a character goes through; their reactions should tell my reader everything.

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Copyright 2012 by J.L. V'Tar
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Excerpt - Short Fire (Working Draft)

What follows is an excerpt from the book I'm currently writing.  This represents a work very very much in progress, and may not represent anything about the final product.

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Captain Inga Mironovna

"Pull in close, find cover," Inga broadcast to her remaining frigates.  Each quickly maneuvered to match her trajectory and fired their primary propulsion.  As they continued forward, each drifted close to the Drückend, taking position between firing arcs of the dreadnaught’s powerful weaponry.  The Protectorate frigates had no defenses that could withstand the sheer energy output of a dreadnaught, and had no chance but to retreat for the moment.

"Captain, with a slight adjustment we’ll have a shot at the Chronos," spoke up an Ensign at tactical.  He opened up a display that Inga could see, and tossed it over to her for inspection.  She saw their current trajectory, saw the Ensign’s recommended course adjustment, and recognized it as a clear shot to hit the Chronos directly on his port starboard quarter, just along the ventral line as he drifted upward for a clear shot at the only dreadnaught already on station at the giant station behind them.

She couldn’t tell if the Chronos had a shot just yet, that wouldn’t become clear for another few seconds, but she didn’t have time to find out.  What she did know was that hitting the Chronos would force the Protectorate dreadnaughts to turn and face her, when what she wanted was to push them closer to the target that none of them wanted to hurt.

"Negative, Ensign," Inga said, and dismissed the new holo-display with a wave of her hand.  She spoke to the Drückend then.  "Drift port, eight degrees, turn starboard three, up two, tell me when you have a firing solution this cruiser," she pointed at the main holo-display.  Her finger touched the image of a fleet cruiser hovering just above and behind the three Protectorate dreadnaughts that was supporting them with a blistering wave of missiles against the CSN defensive group.  "Tactical, fire cannons one and four the instant Drückend reports we have a firing solution."

"Aye Captain," the lead tactical officer replied, and even as she spoke she sat up straight in her seat.  "Incoming heavy!"

"Brace!"  Commander Graves shouted, but the order was unnecessary as everyone saw the holo-display of swarms of missiles coming in.  The frigate group had mustered their efforts and fired a single barrage of missiles all at once.  Watching the Drückend maneuver to fire on its sister ship, one of the Protectorate missile cruisers had also added its firepower to the mix; launching more missiles alone than the frigates managed all together.  Everyone on the bridge grabbed onto something, Inga held onto a bit of railing with a firm grip.  She and Graves exchanged a look, and within a heartbeat the ship began to rock with heavy missile fire.

The Drückend bristled with many point-defense cannons, but there were simply too many missiles to pick off all at once.  Deflector arrays served well, sending some missiles careening off into space, but still some got through even that.  Nuclear fire erupted across the ship’s armor, billowing out in massive spheres of white-hot energy.  CSN frigates were already peeling away to escape the blasts, but some caught enough of the blasts to suffer considerable damage, and the Drückend rocked heavily.  The ship’s armor held, but all throughout the ship crew that hadn’t braced were thrown about like trash, some bulkheads and decks buckled, and alarms began to scream through the corridors.

"Firing solution," the Drückend announced calmly above the din in its hybrid voice.

"Fire!"  Inga shouted above the din of explosions, even as the tactical officer was already slamming her hand on the firing ring.

Just as the ship had rocked under the missile explosions, now it surged with the energy of firing two of its main guns.  Every person on board felt the power of just two of the Drückend’s six cannons as it hurtled from the aft engines through the length of the ship and out the nose; bright white light erupted from the ship’s front as two of the charged-particle rails launched their payload.  So incredible was the force of the launch, that the dreadnaught’s forward momentum was severely reduced.  Inga’s eyes never left the points of light that launched from her ship, watching as they streaked across the battlespace, incinerated a small cluster of Protectorate fighters, and ripped into the enemy cruiser.

The cruiser’s defensive shields failed, its deflector arrays were ignored, and its armor plating buckled under the sheer energy and impact of those two shots.  The ship practically imploded, knocked to the side by the impact and folded nearly in half as the shots caught it amidships.  Less than a second later the ship’s reactors erupted, and all that remained of the ship burst into a bright blue ball of energy that sent chunks of the giant starship careening through the stars.  Other nearby craft were blown away from the ship by the force of the explosion, or turned away in fear, as all were bombarded by pieces of armor plating, interior structure, and shredded chunks of crew.

"Adjust heading, fire at will!"  Inga cried above the din, pointing her finger at the missile cruiser that had launched its salvo at her ship.

The Drückend’s port and ventral particle cannons opened fire, sending a withering barrage of energy at the offending missile frigate, while the starboard and dorsal cannons followed suit and ripped into the Protectorate frigate formation.  Still holding strong against the barrage of missiles, the dreadnaught began to turn toward its new target.

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Copyright 2012 J.L. V'Tar

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Rambling - Cut Tong Relaxing

It happened, finally.  After more than three decades of thought, the vast majority of which was spent dreaming and wishing and scheming and flailing and failing, I got paid money for my words.  The Amazon deposit hit my account.  Thirteen United States dollars, and fifteen cents.

No, it isn't much.  It's practically nothing, and yet it's everything.  Thirteen dollars is everything I've ever wanted.  Some people tell me I shouldn't care about whether or not anyone likes my work, buys it, or even reads it.  They tell me I should write for myself and everyone else be damned.  I say that, with all due disrespect, everyone who has told me that can go sit on a spike.  Sit on it and like it.

Because I don't write for the money.  I write so I can write.  So I don't have to do anything else, because everything else drives me to death.  When I write I feel everything, I'm happy and excited and sad, I'm overjoyed, I'm terrified, I'm everything necessary for my books, because I feel my characters.  It's a strange place when I write, in my head, where I can be terrified or enraged and enjoy every second of it, because it's the moment of framing a story that I can see so clearly, the joy of trying to put it to words in a way other people can follow and participate in their own telling.

Writing code, and designing games, give me the same sense of satisfaction and glory (sure, that was a bit hyperbolic, but I'm allowed to indulge right now).

They're different from how I feel when I do anything else.  Any so-called "productive" activity that I am expected to perform for one reason or another.  Because I need to earn money, because I'm worth less if I don't, because I've been given responsibility.  It's all part of a silly little mass-mind machine we've created for ourselves and I want no part in it.  I can feel it around me when I work a day job, any day job.  I can see the wheels turning, the gears grinding, the oil slicking it all to work with such imperfect motion.  If a machine could be a zombie, it would be our current society.  I want no part of it.

Well today I was paid money for my creativity.  It isn't much.  It's pathetic, unhelpful, and it won't go very far at all, but I got it for my words.  I didn't get it by smiling at people I hate, doing things for people when I'd rather spit in their faces and tell them what I think of their ridiculous little expectations.  I got it by telling one of the so very many stories in my head.

Looking at my bank statement, it's painful to see that little deposit sitting there, sandwiched so inconveniently as it is between a deposit from my day job (2,122% of my writing money) and one of several bills that I have to pay every month (725% of my writing money).

It's not a start.  It's not even the starting line.  That happened about fifteen years ago, and I've been in the thick of it ever since.  I just didn't know it until now.  Didn't know that this is what I do.  Everything else is just a maddening, insulting thing that must be endured.  My writing money will equal the money from shit day jobs, eventually.  Then it will exceed.

I don't write for validation, or because I want people to like me.  I write because I can't tolerate what the rest of you seem perfectly content to tolerate.  I'm not built like you.  Sometimes it burns, and I hope you enjoy that enough to buy it.

Content - The Charge

I'm published again!  More importantly, this time it's a full-fledged novel.

Last November, I participated in National Novel Writing Month.  I'd never heard of it before, until Tracy Hickman mentioned it in a facebook post.  The idea fascinated me, and I immediately decided to participate.  I started late, so I forced myself to write more than the minimum.  Every time I missed a day, I increased the minimum words per day from then forward.  By the time I reached my 50k words, I was at least a couple days ahead of schedule.

So here we are, and that book is finally published.  Given the way in which it was written, it fits my personal style quite well.  What the characters do is more important than what the plot dictates.  Logic and consistency with the characters and the world is something I worked hard to maintain.  I also tried to make a few points, using my characters, about things I find kind of stupid within the wider world of fiction (be that movies, games, or books). We'll see if anyone actually cares about my hack attempts at making a statement.

Enough Rambling!  Where's the book?

Want to buy my book?  Click here!  Only costs you $3, and I get a percentage of each copy sold.  It's a fantasy book set in an original world.  A seasonal mercenary named Mirron, wielding a glaive and known for being strangely reptilian, finds herself thrust into an adventure that is not her own.  She ends up being the sole guardian of a helpless infant, pursued by an assassin queen and her husband known only as Butcher.  Guided by fairies and desperation, Mirron has to try to find some where safe to take a helpless infant so she can safely return to her own family.

Want to do something really awesome for me though?  Tell other people about my book!  Tell your friends, your coworkers, your neighbor lady down the street, even tell that crazy guy at the laundromat you see every few weeks with the weird ear lint.

Tell everyone.  Do it.

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Feeding Crystal Proven Circles

Several seconds before beginning writing this post, I uploaded my second book, my first full-length novel, to amazon.  The book is now in review, and we'll see if anything actually comes of it.  I'm assuming that someone reads the book, which means I get to find out whether or not they will allow some of the content within the book itself.  Which is, of course, one of the two primary issues about which I am currently fretting.

The first and most immediate worry, I have no idea whether amazon will actually allow my book through whatever screening process they have in place.

My book was written with several goals in mind, and among those is the goal of addressing what I see as a problem in the portrayal of female sexuality in fiction.  Now whether or not my own portrayal of the main character's sexuality is in any way offensive to some people's idea of what female sexuality, is not, or should be, I am more concerned with attempting to make my book say something about the problem as I see it.  The sexuality of women in fiction generally follows a particular pattern.  Good women are as close to virginal as possible and are generally not interested in anything that the mainstream might consider "weird."  Only evil, crazy, traitorous, or otherwise "not the good girl" are promiscuous and/or interested in sexual activity outside the primary "norm."  I find this incredibly stupid.

As such, two of the characters in my book are each of a particular bent.  The villainous female is as monogomous and rather straight-laced (at least sexually) as she could possibly get.  By contrast, our heroine is very sexually active with multiple individuals throughout the book, and she's also sexually deviant in several ways.  This manifests itself in the presence of two sex scenes.  My book does not "cut to the curtains," "fade to black," or anything of the sort.

The presence of these sex scenes is where I see the real problem coming into play.  One of the other problems that I wanted to directly address with my book was the ridiculous way in which my country views and treats sexuality in contrast to violence.  Gunfire, swordplay, torture, brutal beatings, explosions, fiery deaths, drowning, and all manner of other violent activities are regularly portrayed and even glorified.  Yet what happens when we get to the sex scene?  We cut to the curtains, fade to black, and many other methods of glossing over the intimacy of human beings.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking the violence.  I love me some explosions, and I am as big a fan of violence in movies and video games as the next person, for many reasons.  Yet I'm equally a fan of the opposite side of that equation.  Violence as depicted in fiction is pain, suffering, and misery.  Why is it perfectly acceptable to show that, but not acceptable to show the opposite?  People enjoying their sexuality, enjoying another person, whether it's romantic or not.  So, I deliberately included both in my book.  Violence because it's a fantasy action adventure.  Sex because I think to show one end of the scale and not the other is quite literally the definition of imbalance.

To be clear, it's not porn.  I didn't write anything overly graphic.  The action scenes in my book are detailed, and occasionally the scenes are pretty brutal, yet the sex scenes are treated with delicacy and not nearly the same level of detail.  Whereas fight scenes stretch for a whole chapter more or less, the sex scenes are each several paragraphs.  Still, even with this, because of the way in which I know my society treats sexuality, I find myself wondering if that will be too much.

I've been told, by people who publish on amazon regularly, that I have nothing to worry about.  Specifically, I've even spoken to a writer of erotica who assures me that her books are published without incident.  So I likely am worrying about nothing.

Yet the second (but most important) worry, assuming amazon does allow my work through their filters it's not them I'm actually submitting my work to.  I'm submitting it to the public.  I am presenting my work to the world to be judged.  I poured my heart into written form, and now I will soon hold it out to the world and ask them to judge it.

If people love it, that will be horrifying in and of itself.  I will be amazed and overjoyed, of course.  Yet at that point will come the abject terror of repeating the process.  Writing another book that people enjoy.  It is possible to accidentally make something good.  Doing it on purpose is something else.

If people hate it, of course that is a major terror.  I'm the kind of writer who can't write something that isn't me.  My stories are very personal, and so when some Anonymous declares my work a bunch of amateurish crap or otherwise rips it apart, I'm not sure how I will react.

Of course, the worst possible terror is that there will be no reaction at all.  No one will read it.  Nothing at all will happen.  Just as nothing has ever happened, and my work has never been noticed.  Everywhere.  Every time.  It becomes rather crushing.

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Feeling That Punch in the Gut

It's been about three months now, just a day over I think, since I finished Mass Effect 3.

The end of the Mass Effect trilogy has completely thrown me for a loop.  Enough even to affect my writing schedule and the progress I make on creative works in general.  Yes, this is completely pathetic.  I understand that, and I admit it.  Doesn't make it any less of a reality for my overly-attached psyche.  I grew to love the Mass Effect franchise right to its very core.  I was excited and eager to see the end of Samantha's story (I'm calling her Samantha, not Shepard, it's my blog, eat it).  I was equally excited and eager to see further adventures of other characters within the wider narrative.

That, when everything is said and done, is what it all comes down to.  At least, for me.

I love Sam's story.  Her interactions with the crew of the Normandy, and all those wonderful characters who circulated in and out of the broad story spanning the trilogy, are what made those three games so powerful.  I won't bother going into the specifics, since I'm hoping anyone who might read this would understand completely.  Even now, if you're who I hope you are, you can easily think of at least a dozen touching, funny, badass, horrifying, or sad moments involving any of the characters.  So we don't need to go there; we've already arrived.  The story of Commander Shepard and her friends is what it is.

Yet, as I said, I love the setting as a whole.  The technology, cultures, even the politics of the setting fascinated me from the very first few hours of Mass Effect.  I was excited to see the stories of other people throughout the galaxy.  It's one reason the multiplayer of ME3 is so exciting to me; other heroes doing their part to fight the Reapers.  I was eager to see the exploits of soldiers throughout the galaxy go on their own adventures trying to bring things back under control after the Reaper invasion.  I wanted to see bounty hunters with their own rough-and-tumble ships chasing batarians through Alliance space.  I wanted an intricate murder mystery set entirely on the Citadel.  I wanted legends of the great Commander Shepard to inspire young heroes throughout the galaxy, sending them on their own adventures across uncharted regions of space on unexplored planets.  I wanted more!

But now, we won't get more.  Sure, according to Bioware, there will be more Mass Effect games.  They've said from the beginning that the trilogy would be the entirety of Shepard's story, but that they would make other games in the same setting.  What they didn't say was that the end of Shepard's trilogy would bring an end to the entire setting as we know it.

Soldiers now can't bring things under control, because they have no Mass Relays to go anywhere.  Bounty hunters and young would-be heroes suffer the same problem.  Mass Effect, as we know the setting, no longer exists in any form.  That, of course, assumes the destruction of each Relay didn't obliterate all life in its respective star system (as they are demonstrated to do upon death).

What I'm trying to get at, and using far too many words to do so, is that the ending of Mass Effect 3 didn't bother me for any story, choice, character, or plot reasons.  Those all exist, and are bothersome.  Yet I could have overlooked them.  They'd have angered me as much as they do, but I could have gotten past them.  The real kick in the gut as I watched the credits roll, I've come to realize, was the understanding that there is no more Mass Effect.  We can't have more.  If there are any more games set in the franchise, they'll have to either be set during the existing trilogy or, if post-Reaper Invasion, be completely unrecognizable to the Mass Effect we know.  Neither of these are satisfying.

The former option doesn't satisfy because we now know exactly how hopeless any struggle for hope really is.  It's one thing I keep hearing from other Mass Effect fans.  Some are perfectly able to replay the trilogy without a hitch but many others, myself included, are unable to do so.  My enjoyment of the moments within the games aren't diluted in any way, but I can't find any hope in them at all because I know that, in the end, Mass Effect will die completely.  It will end.  There is literally no hope.

Not to mention, of course, the problem of piling story after story onto the same frame of time.  The Star Wars franchise has seen its share of this problem.

The latter option doesn't satisfy because if we play a Mass Effect game, we want to play a fucking Mass Effect game.  I know I do, at least.  A setting where synthetic and organic life are one type of super-being sounds really interesting, but it isn't Mass Effect.  A setting in which all synthetic life has been obliterated sounds boring, and isn't Mass Effect.  A setting wherein synthetics have been mind-controlled to do....something....is ambiguous, and it isn't Mass Effect.  A galaxy without Mass Relays is not Mass Effect.  Fuck, the Relays have been one of the primary identifying images of the franchise since inception.

So there.  That's what my problem really is with the ending to Mass Effect 3, as I've come to identify it.  I suppose I owe Bioware some kind of gratitude, in a strange way.  I've been developing my own settings, of course, with the intent of ending the setting itself in a final and unalterable way.  This, I feel, is no longer something I can do.  When I first thought of it, I thought it sounded like a really fascinating idea.  I imagined it would stimulate dialogue about possibilities, shock and delight people who thought it wouldn't really happen, and shake my readers out of complacency in an interesting way because normally the heroes always save the day.  I can't do that now.  I've felt what they would feel.

I want to think that the Bioware team thought, as the built ME3, much as I did about my setting.  I really hope they've seen what I now see.  Ending a beloved franchise doesn't spark debate, shockingly delight, or shake from complacency.  It just damages any enjoyment of the franchise because...well, fuck, it's all already over, isn't it?

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Rambling - Ignorance, Love, Pain

Well, it's over.

I generally like to stay informed on the gaming hobby as a whole; the movements of various developers, corporate actions of publishers, innovations and concepts, plus a whole general slew of things that generally won't appeal to anyone who isn't interested in the design of games in its own right as an activity.  As a result, I tend to be fairly well-informed about upcoming titles.

For some reason, in the summer and fall of 2007, there was a hole in my knowledge of upcoming events.  I honestly wouldn't be able to say why.  Maybe I was distracted by other things (I was living without a roommate at that point and pulling extra hours to cover rent), maybe I simply rolled a bunch of 1's and missed every relevant article, but somehow I ended up being completely unaware of an upcoming title called Mass Effect.  By all rights, I certainly should have been.  Baldur's Gate was and is one off my favorite games, and KotOR stands high as one of the best games ever made.  Given my distaste for the standard ideal for Japanese-made RPGs, as well as games that focused on gameplay in place of story, here was Bioware as the champions of story dictating gameplay, and choice being given a prominent place.

My first indication of this thing called Mass Effect didn't even really ping my radar.  A friend of mine mentioned the game being made, and I even saw a teaser trailer leading in to a special showing of a BSG special on the big screen (I think it was Razor, but my memory could be off).  For some reason, none of it stuck.  The game just didn't settle into the "GET EXCITED, GEEK!" part of my brain.  As a result, I was not ready.  I genuinely wasn't excited for Mass Effect when it was released, and can't even remember the impetus for which I bought it, other than "it is a game, therefore I must play it."

So I made my first character.  Being that the vast majority of RPGs tend to favor hack-n-slash combat over tactical, and thinking that this strange "biotics" the character creator talked about sounded an awful lot like magic, I went with the assumption that the gameplay would be easier for a soldier than an adept (being that, in most RPGs, a wizard gets killed right and left while a fighter can barrel through most of it).  I figured a soldier would be an easy-mode way to get the story on an initial playthrough, and went that route.  Messing around with things, I ended up with a female soldier, earthborn because it sounded gritty, sole survivor because it sounded harsh.  Figuring she was a career-minded girl dedicated to her job as her only escape from a harsh earlier life, I gave her a shaved head and pale skin (doesn't see planet-side much).  I named her Samantha, and went off to adventure in the galaxy.

The artifact that gave her a vision, the adorable little quarian in the citadel, the silly asari scientist I met in a dig site, giving that dramatic speech to my crew, leaving a friend to die on Virmire, that conversation with Sovereign, falling in love with a geeky blue girl, that final end-run with Sovereign ever imposing and ever closer.

When the credits rolled, I sat in shock.  Nothing had prepared me for Mass Effect.  I hadn't pored over pre-release interviews and dev diaries.  There was no foreknowledge of anything at all; not gameplay, not story, not characters, not thematic elements.  Nothing.  After the credits finished, for three days I was at a loss.  Some people might give me shit for this, but for three days I couldn't play other games; they weren't good enough.  I couldn't watch movies; they weren't good enough.  Couldn't read books, either.  I couldn't even start a replay of Mass Effect, because I didn't want to lose the tremendous high on which the game had left me.  Later, when I did try subsequent plays, I found I had a very unexpected problem.  So attached had I become to my character, that I couldn't playthrough as anyone else, nor could I make different decisions.

Samantha Lynn Shepard.  Grew up on the streets of west-coast North America.  Did what she had to survive, even ran with a gang for a while, and got out at the first opportunity.  Joined the Navy with a fake ID (she's three years younger than her service file would suggest), discovered she liked soldiering and had a talent for gunplay, and promptly saw her unit on Akuze get wiped out.  Sam survived, thrived, and found herself in the right place at the right time to be the savior of the galaxy.  She's a good person, to her core, but she's also harder than anyone she's met; she'd put a bullet in your head to save the rest of your family.  Do the horrible things that must be done, because that's what a hero is.

I waited for Mass Effect 2.  I practically frothed.  Realizing that my lack of foreknowledge about ME1 had been part of why the game hit me so hard, I deliberately avoided anything and everything I could.  Yet still, I frothed.  I chomped my bit like a raging animal, and I couldn't get my hands on that game soon enough.  The day before it was released, my friend Kris and I stayed up all night watching our package track from Amazon, chattering at each other via Google Wave.  We pulled hair out when our package seemed to not be moving, or went in a direction that indicated it might take longer to get here.  We wondered what might happen, how the story might progress, and how characters might react.  Then the package finally showed up at my door, and I asked my roommates to provide food for me the next few days.

That horrifically glorious opening scene, Joker's return and the SR2's reveal, realizing Garrus is Sam's best friend, hugging Tali when she finds her father, Jack holding her own against the swarms and then hurling a wave of rage and hate at them to clear the room, that reaper baby, defeating the Shadow Broker, wiping out an entire star system.

During the final segments of ME2, I was literally on the edge of my chair, face less than two feet away from a 47" television.  I knew that ME2 was touted as a suicide mission, and I was terrified for my beloved companions.  Every time Tali begged me to hurry and open the next vent, I couldn't shoot collectors fast enough; they had to die now now now and I had to hit that next switch and Tali was burning and I had to get them the fuck out of my way this very second.  Sam even progressed and had a bit of an arc in this one.  She grew her hair out (since she's not in the Navy anymore, why bother), and realized she's in it for her crew now.  It became less about "I wanna be a badass because that's how I survive" and more "I wanna be a badass and stand between my crew and the enemy."  She remained the silver-hearted badass; wiping out the batarian system is entirely what she would have chosen to do, and in my mind she watched the wave sweep across that system not because she had to, but because she chose to.  She makes the hard decisions, and then doesn't let herself ignore the consequences.

I waited for Mass Effect 3.  It simply could not come fast enough.  I devoured every tiny morsel of information that Bioware sent our way yet, as before, if anything even felt like it might hint at story elements I flung it away from me like a chunk of living disease set to infect me.  Despite my own misgivings about story spoilers, I even played the demo because I just couldn't wait for another ounce of Mass Effect.  Kris and I again fretted, via text this time, going into near panic when it seemed our games wouldn't be delivered in time.  When they did, we began playing in earnest, texting away like teenage girls as we gushed over the gameplay, the story elements, and wonderful moments as they came one after another, after another, and another, and another.

That opening scene of reapers on Earth, shooting Mordin in the back and betraying all krogan and crying to gain salarian aid, saying goodbye to Garrus in a wonderful way, saving the quarians to hear Tali so joyful, saving the geth and being so proud, shooting Wrex and crying when he learned the truth, that failure at Thessia, making the assault on Earth and knowing I'd die in the process.  That ending.

My gut still twists when I think of the ending.  Everything about Mass Effect has been glorious from the first moment of character creation in the first game; when it thrusts you into the world by turning the character creation screen into an Alliance database error.  Everything about every game was amazing, engaging, and wonderful.  Right up through the desperate, ugly battle in London.  Right through that glorious charge down the hill toward the beam, reapers tearing apart everything and everyone around you.  Right through slogging along with no strength left, just a pistol to force your way to a Pyrrhic victory.  Right through talking The Illusive Man down, or at least shooting his delusional ass right the fuck off.  Right through Shepard dragging herself, bloody and hopeless, to that last console.  But not past that.  Never past that.

I do not understand, and unless some major revelation comes very soon, I will never understand.  Bioware carried my emotions to greater heights than any video game of any genre or platform has ever done.  They made me care about my character more thoroughly than I can care about any protagonist of a movie or book.  They made me care about my character's friends, who are her family.  By the time of ME3, Sam had let loose just a bit more--primarily influenced by her relationship with Liara, but partly because she had stopped caring so much about the military as a way of life--and even gotten a bit more sun.  Her world fascinates me, inspires me, and excites me.  I love the species, the locations, the history, the technology, I even love the politics of Mass Effect.  And then....and then that ending.  The ending that literally undoes all of it.  The species become irrelevant, the locations become unavailable, the history is made pointless, the technology is rendered useless or outright destroyed, and the politics become entirely nonexistent no matter which of the so-called choices I pick.  The decisions I made through three games which, granted, shaped my story in a wonderfully personalized way, have no bearing on that so-called ending.

I had planned, as anyone who scrolls down this blog might notice, to write some Mass Effect fan fiction as an exercise to get myself writing on a more regular basis.  I decided to hold off on it, considering I didn't know how ME3 ended and I didn't want to jump the gun.  Figuring I would wait until after playing the game, I put my writing on hold until I knew how the story unfolded; I wanted to be sure my fiction didn't conflict with the state of the galaxy once the reapers were defeated.

Never, not for even an instant, did I suspect that Bioware would completely undo everything.  The entire setting.  It was said they were setting up a franchise.  Well what kind of franchise did they leave?  There is nothing left of the Mass Effect I might recognize.  Depending on which of the three staggeringly different endings become canon (which in itself is a fucking insult to the idea of my choices being important), the Mass Effect franchise that continues in the future will be nothing like the one with which I have fallen in love.

Everything about Mass Effect was perfect.  Right up until that last tiny little bit.

Now I don't know what to do.

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