#ferus writing meta
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Izzy and Who Does the Work
So I was thinking the other day about work dynamics and how one early interview compared OFMD to a workplace comedy. The comparison was fairly thin, since there was a throwaway line about the crew of The Revenge spending all of the first episode deciding whether or not to murder Stede (their captain/boss).
However, there’s also this much better take: a conversation between the most excellent meta writers @chuplayswithfire and @knowlesian about Izzy the toxic leader that I want to riff on a bit.
And I want to talk a little about what it’s like to be the person who works for a toxic manager (aka: Izzy) and that journey and why it’s harmful/erasing to believe Izzy when he claims he’s doing all the work.
At the root of his claims is an unfounded belief and self-perception (toxic, untrue pretty much in any workplace):
No one else is competent (arrogance)
Confuse direction (delegation) with action (work)
Assume things will fail without their involvement (micromanaging)
We’re going to talk about the impact beliefs like this have on others and their experiences.
Because really important and complicated tasks are by necessity collaborative, there’s a truism in strategic studies that: “Remember, terrain doesn’t wage war. Machines don’t wage war. People do and they use their mind!”
No matter how good a plan or a strategy is, unless it’s executed well (by the people on the ground) it will fail. Izzy reminds me of the guy who just doesn’t quite understand the above because he treats everyone around him like interchangeable action-doing machines. If they would only just do everything exactly like he says, everything would work and be fine!
Izzy does not live in actual reality by any measure.
Izzy justifies his violence toward others as necessary in order to get them to conform (except he calls it ‘doing the work’) and that ends up hurting everyone around him and even himself ... when it’s people like Fang, Ivan, Frenchie, Oluwande, and Roach quite frequently doing their work well IN SPITE OF HIM or primarily out of some loyalty and admiration for Edward Teach, Blackbeard, most brilliant sailor alive and (actually good) leader.
Blackbeard’s crew notably has no love or loyalty for Izzy ... they reserve it for Edward, who also instantly wins over the crew of The Revenge, too.
His reputation precedes him.
Good leaders:
Say thank you.
Give credit to the team.
Listen to the ideas of others.
Remain confident and humble (because it’s important that people WANT to do the work).
Does the list above remind you of anyone? If you said Edward Teach you were correct.
It’s fun to watch Edward TEACH (haha a pun!) these techniques to Stede and it’s a bit FLABBERGASTING that Izzy has managed to serve and follow a good leader for so many years while LEARNING NOTHING.
Izzy believes he’s essential to Edward’s success ... when the crew has been organizing things just fine because they love Edward, a bit like Izzy himself does (while making it weird forever). In fact? When Izzy removes himself from The Revenge after the duel? Nothing melts down and nothing implodes.
Fang and Ivan have things on lock with or without Izzy giving them a hard time -- and we even get that beautiful “co-captains” moment with Edward and Stede that breaks me on every rewatch because they suggest it, bashfully, together in the same moment.
Izzy Hands You Elitist Jerk
Izzy Hands is the man who remains ignorant because he thinks he knows everything -- he’s the kind of person who cannot be taught.
In the rock-climbing world, a beginner who confidently ignores everyone’s offers of help or education is known as a “gumby” ... after the hard rubber kid’s toy that nothing will stick to.
While Izzy is far from a beginner at piracy (that’s Stede), unlike Stede he is willfully and comfortably blind to the talents and contributions of others.
Izzy is the kind of person who equates vulnerability with shame and who is terrified to admit he doesn’t know something.
Izzy is someone who demands respect without earning it (abuse of positional authority), who takes credit for the work without doing it, and who punishes people who have done nothing wrong (in pretty consistently gross ways).
I love to hate him and I hate understanding him. He’s a pretty good example of a toxicity death-spiral and, as Edward calls him: a real bummer. But enough about Izzy, let’s talk about one of the people he’s unjustly ignoring.
Consider Fang - My Hero
Fang is unironically the most amazing crew member and Izzy treats him horribly from Episode 03.
Who spots The Revenge run aground in the intro shot with Blackbeard’s crew? Ivan and Fang. Who leads the shore party? Izzy. Strike one.
Who pulls Fang by the beard (what the FUCK) when he asks why Blackbeard wants to follow Stede’s ship and then tells Fang it’s not his job to fuckin’ think (EXCUSE ME) in the most heinous way possible? Izzy.
To be honest if I were Fang I’d have murdered Izzy right there, but Fang’s too nice a person to do anything but tell it like it is:
FANG: Ow, that really hurts! I hate it when he does that.
Implying this is NOT THE FIRST TIME this has happened to him. This is yet another of Izzy’s toxic entitled power moves to keep other people “in their place.” With all the loaded classist, colorist, and racist associations of that phrase fully intact in these scenes, by the way!
We see Izzy once again making things awful in the scene with Lucius cleaning barnacles, which is yet another pointless cruelty and/or punishment. Who pulls Lucius up and rescues him? Fang. Who says no one has ever taken an interest in his form before? Fang.
Lucius is right to say that Fang’s never met anyone worth a damn!
Who is it that tells Lucius (and by extension Roach and Frenchie) about Izzy the Spewer? Fang.
Who listens to Edward telling ghost stories in Episode 06 and says it seems like he’s having an awfully nice time? Fang. Who says it’s the most open and emotionally available he’s ever seen Edward? Ivan.
Izzy is the only person in the named ‘original’ crew of Blackbeard who calls this openness seduction and insists that the plan is still on, because “he promised me.” Excuse me Izzy WHAT? When did Edward promise you shit? Never that’s when.
Which brings me around to the problem with Izzy: he thinks respect is what he’s owed, not something earned and voluntarily (freely) given. Izzy Hands doesn’t say thank you to anyone.
Even when Edward Teach signs the Act of Grace to save Stede Bonnet (because he loves Stede, because Stede is his friend), Izzy is the one in the corner telling him he doesn’t have to do this. Like the only reason anyone could ever make a sacrifice is because it was pried out of them by force rather than -- as the title puts it -- through grace.
Responsibility Doesn’t Mean Taking the Credit, It Means Taking the Blame
Let me tell you I, like Fang, have worked for “an Izzy.”
And in the MMO gaming realm (a bit more like piracy than most capitalist workplaces, imho!) ... the Izzy Hands attitude is pretty endemic and that dysfunction bleeds over into drama, greed, and self-serving petty awfulness.
Why compare MMO raid groups to piracy? A few reasons:
It’s not a formal commitment. You can stay or go at any time.
You have your choice of ‘crews.’
You have your choice of leaders (insofar as if someone pisses you off, and you’re in a place of trust, you can steal their shit and laugh your way to the bank - think Calico Jack)
Standard procedures vary based on the group (culture, respect, organizational structure, etc.)
The informal-but-still-structured nature of the endeavor means having to decide where to place your effort -- having just enough trust in the group leadership that you won’t get fucked over (you’ll get your loot) and that as a whole the group can take on big challenges without those being totally futile
Picking the wrong group is a waste of time (you get no loot; Stede’s crew is starts out here even though they get a salary)
Picking the group that gets things done but are miserable fucks is miserable (Calico Jack)
Picking the right group is badass and can be a source of pride AND loot (Edward Teach, Thee Great Blackbeard)
Edward is that phenomenal raid leader with a fantastic crew who has an absolutely jack-shit “co-leader” who is ruining everyone’s day.
Stede Bonnet has it right in Episode 04!
STEDE: Ed, do you know this guy? Because he’s an asshole!
And you know what really breaks me about this scene? Stede Bonnet in Blackbeard’s clothes is standing in for what Edward has to put up with in managing his unhinged, angry, furious, exhausted, taking-the-credit-but-not-the-responsibility first mate, one Israel Hands.
The biggest power move in my current place of work that defuses conflicts?
“I take full responsibility.”
Izzy Hands takes and takes and takes everything except responsibility.
Look What You Made Me Do
So yeah, as much as I enjoy Izzy Hands as a character, I can’t help but think his protestations and his viewpoint are not to be taken seriously, much less justified.
Leaning too far with OFMD meta analysis into Muppet-land, or corporatism, or any of a number of other useful metaphors ... can tip over into accepting Izzy’s harmful self-justification (excuses!).
Careless use of metaphor has the double-bind effect of letting Izzy take credit he has not earned while erasing the work that the rest of the crew are doing more quietly (very well, thanks, because they’re amazing and they just DO what needs to be done rather than grandstanding about it):
Frenchie - A bard. Invents pyramid schemes and fanfiction. Sews. Code-switching master who Edward picks for his “new crew” because he’s a badass who was ‘in service’ for a minute, has a mind like a steel trap, and navigates every situation with grace and aplomb.
Oluwande - Voted Captain after Izzy gets thrown overboard. Level-headed. The man Blackbeard’s crew picked to lead them instead of Izzy when they thought Edward Teach was never going to return.
Roach - A chef, a “knives are knives, meat’s meat” doctor who will always get the job done. Treats scurvy. Makes a mean tapas. Calls Stede on his bullshit (I wasn’t asking you, I was asking him (Buttons)). Embodiment of ‘fuck around and find out’ (entertained). Wins the award for best smile.
Ivan - Professional with an eye for valuables (spotted the Revenge aground; dibs on the gold teeth; ‘I’ve never seen him so open and emotionally available’).
Fang - BLACKBEARD’S HELMSMAN. Buries Lucius’s finger at sea. ‘That Brown Peter, he can’t be first mate. I saw him talking to Izzy about it before. Never. Disaster. No offense, Lucius.’ Give him a dog in season two.
Did you notice they were all men of color?
Because if we talk too much about how Izzy “just wants performance awards and recognition” I am afraid we are contributing to ignoring at whose expense he is operating, and once again justifying a white man’s mistreatment of POC while he(we!) ignore, minimize, and erase the actual work they are doing.
And that’s not a narrative I’m looking to repeat or reinforce, and I am as capable of fucking up as the next hyperfixated OFMD meta writer, so ...
Moving Forward
That mutiny scene at the end of Episode 09 has something to teach us!
Go back and re-watch it! It took me a bit to get all the dialogue (had to turn on captions because there’s a song playing at the same time):
IZZY: Okay, okay! Maybe, maybe we got off to a bad start. But, what, what, what, what, can I do differently, huh? I’m open to suggestions!
ROACH: Mm-hm! (Delighted, smiling like it’s his birthday, getting ready to throw Izzy overboard)
IZZY: Pete! Help me out here!
PETE: For the record, I never formally accepted the role of “first mate” and I fully endorse this mutiny.
IZZY: Gah! Y-you, you, you don’t have to do this. Part of good leadership is restraint. [Looking at Oluwande.]
OLUWANDE: Everyone’s got their own style.
Like LOOK AT IT???
This show is so good I swear. And if you’re gonna doubt me or doubt other meta writers about the anti-racist beats (Ivan and Fang are in the foreground during the mutiny, all of the people throwing Izzy overboard are men of color ... and the people Izzy has hurt the most are the ones taking the lead in pitching him overboard) ... FOR THE LOVE OF EVERYTHING BELIEVE THE SHOW.
Izzy even uses the classic racist tone-policing excuses to try to get some sympathy!
“Part of good leadership is restraint?”
IZZY GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK. WHERE WAS YOUR RESTRAINT WITH FANG? (His poor beard. It really hurts, Izzy you bag of dicks. As you would know if you ever listened to him.)
Anyway!
Thanks Izzy fandom I love you, I’m one of you, but let’s not make Izzy’s exact same mistake by believing his warped self-serving story about how he’s the one doing all the work.
Maybe (if you’re a white fan like me) ... start by taking responsibility to focus on THE HARM IZZY DOES TO OTHERS and taking a second or a third watch looking at the people around him rather than ... you know, minimizing the harm and exclaiming ‘but he did the work!’, just like he tries to do when he’s getting thrown overboard.
Here’s the on-screen truth: the crew’s just fine without him. Better than fine! Living their best lives! Getting free of a toxic ex!
Acting like Izzy is the only competent pirate on a crew of otherwise muppets erases the men of color who are amazing and doing just fine without him and don’t need that bullshit in their narrative -- from Izzy, from fandom, from meta writers like me, or from anyone.
Blackbeard’s crew and the crew of The Revenge deserve better, especially from people like me who write about Izzy Hands.
Because I’m thinking a lot about Fang and Frenchie lately, who are my personal heroes. And Jim.
And where OFMD is going to go with everyone, including Izzy, in our renewed-for-pride Season Two ... so what do we do? We talk it through as a crew.
See Also: It’s Not About You, Izzy for the other half of this meta where I talk about why OFMD is (rightly) Edward Teach’s story and the narrative framing could not be more clear about that.
#our flag means death meta#ofmd meta#ofmd izzy hands#ferus ofmd izzy meta#my writing#and you know this is just part of talking about a really problematic character#and we're all gonna fuck it up including me#but the first thing you do is take responsibility#and the next thing you do is change your behavior#oh izzy if you REALLY wanted a second chance#you would have done the Captain Hands thing so differently#but you just kept on like you were#the sad thing is how sad it is#and the show is SO GOOD about making Izzy's problems Izzy's fault#so let's agree as a fandom to keep it that way#and to keep up that talking it through as a crew#i love this show a normal amount#will i ever be the same person ever again?#nope probably not#ferus chats#ferus writes about izzy hands#why is it always izzy hands LET ME SLEEP YOU BASTARD#i for one haven't been the same person since i stayed up to watch the finale#all the way back in march#it seems like so long ago lol
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GETTING TO KNOW YOU.
respond to the following prompts out of character. then, tag others that you'd like to get to know a little bit better!
ROLEPLAYER NAME: Wolf, or WolfOf365
ROLEPLAYER PRONOUNS: He/Him
MUSE NAME: Brynhorn Fiske and Kaleh'a Quickdraw
PREFERRED COMMUNICATION: Tumblr messages, or Discord! Feel free to ask for the latter if you would prefer!
EXPERIENCE: I've been writing since I was in middle school, and RPing for almost 4 years now! I've done a myriad of different RPs, from completely original worlds and characters to stuff like FFXIV. I have enjoyed every second of it, and will continue to for as long as I can!
PREFERRED ROLEPLAY TYPE: Well, everything! Action, combat, drama, angst, fast paced, slow paced, ERP, one shots, all of it. I just really enjoy writing! As for mediums of RP, I do prefer writing, but I am slowly getting into RP in game. It's a challenging, but very expensive experience!
PET PEEVES & DEALBREAKERS: Hmm, I'm not really picky, but if I had to pick a few...
God moding/meta-ing the RP. Don't use info your character wouldn't know! What's in the mind is in the mind unless you're muse is a mind reader. Then it's a different story lol.
Judgement of writing style or ships. Everyone writes differently, everyone likes different ships and dynamics. While I don't shy away from writing most things, I am not perfect or good at it all! Judgement of the attempt or trying to push stuff a certain way I've said I'm not comfortable with would be a huge no. (Haven't had that happen yet though!) Constructive feedback though is welcome!
Minor/minor leaning content. For obvious reasons nope.
PLOTS OR MEMES: All of the above! I enjoy the memes and the plots, and will happily plan entire story lines if that's what you'd like!
LONG REPLIES OR SHORT REPLIES: Long replies 99.9% of the time, unless there is a need for a short one or an offshoot is occurring. Keeping it short and sweet is nice sometimes, but the meat and potatoes are in the long replies.
BEST TIME TO WRITE: Morning and evening! When I wake up or am about to sleep, my brain loves to want to write. I often fall asleep with a draft at my fingertips!
ARE YOU LIKE YOUR MUSES: Bryn? Nope, opposite! He's fun to write because of that! Kaleh'a though, his happy and trusting demeanor is very much like myself. Not much gets me down, and I like to cruise through life and take things in stride, just like the Miqo'te!
Tagged by: @altosk
Tagging: @the-crimson-rose @the-sycophant and @vulpes-ferus !
Thanks for the tag!
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man remember how ferus told vader that he thought anakin would beat him three years before this actually happened - even after vader ruined ferus’ life?
ferus had faith in anakin
he just also never liked anakin
and that is so interesting and awesome and fascinating and nuanced
#*ooc#this is imporant to me okay#haha can you tell I'm being a touch reactionary about the random hate ferus is getting right now#this is also a bit of a note to self because I want to write meta on this at some point#but honestly I love ferus' and anakin's relationship and how they're both at fault for the mess between them#they are both to blame for how things end up#and that's how real life works and a believable consequence to something neither of them were willing to fix properly#it's very well written and explored#in this house we love and appreciate jude watson
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A comprehensive rewrite of Ferus Olin
We’re gonna start with something simply; Ferus Olin is rather painful to watch sometimes since he has little to no flaws that are actually debilitating. He is shown as basically a foil to Anakin Skywalker. But, yes, there are still very crucial differences between each other. Well, this is just a little revamping of his character just for personal enjoyment and possibly my writing use. Feel free to use in your own works, make sure to credit me @lukegarmadon (same tag for both Ao3 and tumblr). With that in mind, let’s start :)
for starters, I rather like the set up of him being just as powerful as Anakin. Maybe, he’s a few thousand lower than Master Yoda in terms of midichlorians. I view him as a sort of second best to Anakin which instills a bit of jealousy in him. Jealousy is complicated; he does not know how to let go of it. So, he goes to bully Anakin as he does in the books just to make his insecurities feel better. He’s compassionate and kind yes, but he doesn’t show it. He has this sort of reservedness on affection.
Ferus is a people-pleaser much like Anakin but for far different reasons. Ferus seeks acceptance in the order; most of it is conditional so he strives to be the best he can be so as to be admired by the Council. However, when he does make a mistake, he tends to blame it on others , usual scapegoat being Anakin. Ferus works hard for his goals and cannot stand failure. The blaming of others helps him convince that it isn’t his fault and still worthy of admiration.
Ferus isn’t empathetic; for starters, Jedi are very detached from their emotions. This, this upbringing affects his empathy. He is compassionate but not empathetic. Thus, he has a hard time understanding Anakin’s traumatic past. Ferus feels threatened by his presence this, he finds anyway he can to put him down. He doesn’t realize how hard the boy is trying or what; he doesn’t understand the boy firstly. This also shows how isolated the order is in terms of public and another major pitfall. This is why the people didn’t come to support them—they were elusive for starters.
Ferus becomes a general in the clone wars. He is much goal-oriented to please the council. He cares for the clones but he doesn’t care for them enough that he focuses much on winning the battle. This results in him having high casualty rates but also high success rates. He quickly rises to be one of the most successful generals in the GAR. This is to show that he is disillusioned in some ways; he puts too much of himself into the Jedi—he thinks only the Jedi matters. He needs to please them and will do it at all costs. The conditional acceptance of the Jedi Council has lead him to this point. But, that doesn’t mean that he’s like Krell. He saves the clones whenever he can but ultimately puts the battle first. He isn’t attached to them like Anakin can be. To him, they are clones first and foremost (an unconscious thought that most Jedi (with the exception of Anakin — read clone wars gambit: siege and stealth to see anakin referring to them as men more than obi-wan or ahsoka does) show throughout the tcw.
He doesn’t interact with Anakin as much now but he is suspicious still of the man. He hears about his daring exploits and how he clenches the moniker of Hero-With-No-Fear. This is Anakin’s prime to say, where he truly shines with his daring exploits to save everybody. Ferus gets slightly jealous that it isn’t him that is worshipped by the Holonet. Do note that he’s still in his early twenties but he doesn’t let it get too much in the way unless around Anakin. Ferus, despite the obvious flaws in the order, doesn’t see their wrongs and worships them blindly. To say he is much rather to follow the crowd. Anakin is rebellious in spirit; Ferus is too obedient.
Some shortcomings of his too much obedience is struggling to make decisions in hot spots during the first few months of war. He, soon, realizes he needs to be quick on feet. It is not that he’s not intelligent but he’s far too used to following orders. He is not a natural leader but rather a follower. He becomes quick on his feet as we come to the twilight of the Republic but he isn’t invincible.
I guess he does leave eventually, like a few months before Ahsoka’s leave— he leaves upon feeling guilty over the death of one of Veld (do note I’m just switching the timelines for more interesting possibilities); anakin wasn’t involved in this, he was on the front with ahsoka— snips and skyguy, why did y’all - stupid canon — he finds himself wandering the galaxy until he finds his place
during the empire years, he won’t be as prominent as portrayed in legend (sorry, I cherrypick my canon, don’t be mad— canon is a suggestive buffet spread). Like yes, he works on intel and stuff but he isn’t as prominent. He gets caught during one of the missions in the factory and killed by the 501st (stormtrooper one) . Vader finds him ; he doesn’t care or feel vindicated. He’s far too into his own feelings; he doesn’t have it in him to feel sorry for anyone but himself.
So there we have it, a comprehensive guide to my rewrite of Ferus Olin. Images from Wookiepedia. I would like to thank a few people @padawanlost , @redrikki —their metas hugely helped me in crafting him up here. If you like Ferus Olin the way he is— that’s great! but, I didn’t . Thus, this was born.
#star wars#ferus olin#anakin skywalker#the clone wars#comprehensive rewrite guide#like ferus always caught me iffy#and some people around me showed the same dislike or hatred#so i decided to try my hand on this#feel free to use it#it’s open source lol#do add on!#ferus here is just a kid trying to find his way in the world#sometimes his emotions like jealousy and arrogance gets him#he’s disillusioned sometimes#he just wants to be liked#the main difference between him and anakin in the books were much of their upbringing and their general treatment#I never liked that palpatine wanted ferus to be a sith#compared to anakin#he seems a bit little on the force potential#hopefully#this makes him more flawed ig#he’s just a kid who wants to make the world a better place much like anakin#but his flaws like jealousy#arrogance and anger#it holds him back#but he doesn’t turn because of his jedi upbringing firmly implanted in him#and he doesn’t have palpatine whispering in his ears; manipulating#gaslighting and grooming him#interesting#lmao
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Normally, I'm Rexani but I've enjoying reading your snippets and hcs. This stuff 'Anakin doesn't care his men & Jedi treat clones much better than he is' made me sad (probably why there're few fics featuring him and 501st out there). Maybe fluff featuring Fives and Echo (also, Hevy, Cutup and Droidbait if you want) as shinies get first introduction to Anakin. Anakin, still remembers Shmi's teachings, tells them they are people, not tools.
oh Anon, I am Anakin x basically everyone. I LOVE rexani, anidala, obikin, Ani5, Anakin/Ferus, and more! And… yeah. I hate how people act. Anakin was one of the best Generals in the GAR, and, while I don’t blame people whose main perception is based off of TCW, which kind of wrote Ani as more Vader-y than they should have because of how fanboys complained about Vader having once been like, well, Anakin, I also get kind of pissed at certain misconceptions and iffy characterizations of my boy (though I do admit that this fic is a bit self-indulgent). Was he sometimes an asshole? Yes. Did he care about his troops? Read a book or watch Revenge of the Sith (and someone remind me to write a meta about Anakin and the clones in the live action films compared to TCW). As for the fics, I don’t know. I wish there was more…
It takes Fives a very long minute realize that the ceremony thing is over. You can’t blame him, though, when their new General is apparently the most gorgeous person in existence.
And General Skywalker even feels different, even from far away. Like an unstoppable fire, a blazing sun.
But, yes, it takes Fives a very long minute.
And Cutup elbowing him in the side.
“What are you thinking about that’s so interesting, vod?” He asks. Five stammers.
“N-Nothing,” he says. “Shut up.”
Droidbait follows his gaze.
“The General?” he asks. “What’s so interesting about him from here?”
Noooooooo…
“Oh brother,” Hevy says. “Do you have a crush?”
“N-no!”
Probably. Yes.
“There’s nothing in the reg manuals about dating a Jetii,” Echo says. “Well, no more than any other clone relationship. I think they have a code.”
Fives groans. Right. Great. Kriff his life and his brothers. Kriff their stupid smiling faces.
“Forget it,” he says. “It’s not going to—”
“Troopers.”
“—Happen.”
Kriiiiiiiffff. Anakin turns around, and… there’s the General. General Skywalker smiles.
“Now that the ceremony is out of the way, I wanted to introduce myself,” he says. “I’m Anakin Skywalker, and it seems that I’m your General now. I want to let you know now, though, that I’m not like most, and, if you have a problem, even if the problem is with me or my actions, feel free to tell me, or Rex if you’re not comfortable. You’re people, not tools, and I want you to know you can act like it.”
His brothers let out a chorus of “Yes, sir”s, but Fives just kind of… stares and nods. The General smiles.
“Thank you for your time,” he says. “And welcome to the 501st.”
His brothers smile at him teasingly and Fives—
————————————
“Fives,” Anakin says, shaking him awake. Fives groans. Funny. Usually he’s the first one up. “Love you need to get back to your room before we’re caught.”
Fives groans again, but he sits up.
It was just a dream. He’d only had Echo there teasing him that day.
And Echo’s gone, now, too.
Anakin must pick up on his sadness, because he stops teasing and grips his hand.
“You okay?” he asks. Fives just smiles.
“It’s nothing,” he says. “I was just dreaming about a happier first meeting.”
Anakin hmms.
“Oh?”
Fives sighs.
“Hevy, Cutup, and Droidbait were there,” he says. Anakin leans into him. He smiles. “Last Domino standing. I’m fine, cyare. I should go.”
Anakin smiles and kisses him.
“I stand my my word,” he says. “You can talk to me.”
Fives laughs.
“I know,” he says. “I love you.”
#replies#fic#anon friend#clone trooper hevy#clone trooper cutup#clone trooper droidbait#arc trooper fives#arc trooper echo#anakin skywalker#ani5#semi cannon compliant series#anon I really am sorry
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Does Siri know or ever find out that Anakin is Vader? How does this make her feel? Does she pity Vader, hate him? If she ever had the chance, would she try to reach out to him like Luke did?
( I assume these questions are strictly referring to AUs in which Siri survives past her canon death, and then also past Order 66 and all that jazz. )
I tend to leave it fairly open for Siri to know or not to know that Anakin became Vader. I don’t want to godmod any Obi-Wans by assuming that Obi-Wan would have told her, nor do I want any Anakin/Vaders to feel godmoded by Siri knowing, when not a whole lot of characters know ICly.
It also sort of depends on how much contact Siri has with Obi-Wan in any given verse, which can vary depending on other players. It also can depend on how much contact Siri has with Ferus throughout the events of the book series, The Last of the Jedi, because Ferus does figure out, near the end of the series, that Vader used to be Anakin.
I suppose that I tend to “default” to Siri finding out that Anakin became Vader, since I default to Siri having at least some interactions with Ferus throughout, or at least after, the events of the Last of the Jedi. ( Because let her see Ferus again, dammit. ) And if she didn’t know by the time Ferus finds out, or if she sees him for the first time after he already knows, he’d tell her. ( Again though, this is very open and it’s entirely possible that she hasn’t, for whatever reason, had any contact with Ferus when I’m interacting with Vaders who don’t want her to know that he used to be Anakin, which is an entirely reasonable thing for muns to want her not to know. )
As to how it would make her feel, I think she’d be shocked initially. It’s a shocking thing to find out for anyone, and she knew Anakin. She knew him well. She liked him a lot, she trusted him ( to a point ), she respected his opinions and abilities. Heck, she was willing and prepared to die for him when he was only eleven, she supported him to both the Jedi Council and the Senate when he straight-up murdered Krayn. ( One day I will write an entire meta on their relationship but I’ve been saying that for over two years and haven’t written it yet so until I do, please direct your attention to the Siri & Anakin tag in which you can find lots of ramblings and metas about various parts of their relationship. )
I think that she’d hate what Vader became, and how he destroyed who Anakin was. She might pity him, briefly, occasionally, but largely she wouldn’t pity him because he’s responsible for his actions and he’s done a lot of terrible things.
Her feelings towards Vader would also depend on the time frame during which she’s asked. If Obi-Wan is telling her about Vader shortly after Order 66, she’s probably going to pity Vader more after she’s gotten over the initial shock and betrayal of that knowledge. If we’re talking about late in, or after, the Last of the Jedi series, and therefore after Vader murdered Roan Lands ( aka Ferus’s husband, the love of his life, his soulmate ) just to spite Ferus ( literally, Vader narrates that he hadn’t planned on killing Roan the way he did but he’d derived so much satisfaction from it just because he could see how much it hurt Ferus, and he also narrates, shortly after narrating about Padmé’s death, that he’d “taken from Ferus what had been taken from him” ).... then she’s going to have a lot less pity and a lot more anger towards Vader. He also kills another close friend of Siri’s by the end of that series ( Garen Muln ). So after that point, there’s going to be more anger and resentment towards him.
Then if we’re talking years later, he kills Obi-Wan in ANH which is certainly not going to make Siri pity or feel sorry for him, and then he kills Ferus in between ANH and ESB, so that’s a lot of things that are going to stack up against him.
I don’t really think that she’d try to reach out to him like Luke did. Not in the way that she’d actively seek him out to go and try to reach out to him. But if she’d been captured by the Empire or something and was brought to him or something, then yes, there is a chance that she’d remind him that she remembers who he used to be, that she remembers Anakin Skywalker and how good and brave and strong he was. That she remembers the Anakin Skywalker who regularly risked his life to save other people, who became a hero to the galaxy. And that the Anakin Skywalker she remembers won’t let himself be a slave to the Emperor forever and he might just kill Vader one day.
#anonymous#(excellent questions thank you very much anon)#(I have a lot of feelings about Siri and Anakin and they only get more complicated when they become feelings about Vader too)#siri & anakin#:: liesl answers ( ooc asks )#Anonymous
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Spectre Evaluations Quartet
Ya’ll I can’t tell you how glad I am to have finished what started out as a silly one-shot and then decided to transform into a four-part series of developing-relationship ... Kryterius romantic comedy.
AO3 Links:
This will have no bearing on your evaluation.
Above center of mass in all respects.
Preserving joint environment lethality and ingenuity.
Adapt doctrine to circumstance.
... I’ve got a few fun background trivia points to expand on below the cut for anyone who is a fan of the pairing and this overall framework. ;)
Time for some fun character trivia that is alluded to in the stories, but that didn’t quite fit into the fics themselves:
1. This will have no bearing on your evaluation.
Nihlus in this AU is loosely based on the turian mercenary backstory I wrote for him in ‘The husbandry of victory is blood’, though only in the most raw outline. There are a few significant differences that will be apparent to anyone who has read both. It was important to me that Nihlus be both proud of his cultural differences and that Saren eventually take a great deal of care in acknowledging that pride.
I did not INTEND to write the whole quartet in such an experimental flavor of point of view! At least not at first. I tried to write the opening story in Chora’s Den with a more serious tone which just kept failing, no matter how I revised and poked and prodded. At some point, I just got the idea of Nihlus’s characteristic voice and reluctantly leaned into the absolutely ridiculous things it was telling me about what it was like to be a drunk ST&R candidate.
The most shocking moment in writing ‘This will have no bearing on your evaluation.’ (which was always its title!) occurred when wrapping up the ending scenes and realizing that Saren and Nihlus were respectively having two different conversations:
Saren: Realizing that Nihlus was making a genuine attempt to chat him up, since he hadn’t actually known that he was going to be chosen as a Spectre trainee. Saren has no idea what to do about a mentee who is personally interested in him, except put an immediate stop to all those questions so that he can focus on the job at hand. Beyond flustered by the implications, but also doesn’t want to admit to having anything remotely like an emotion, himself.
Nihlus: Confessing his many sins, still (unfortunately) realizing that Saren is actually his type for real and now they’re going to be working together. AWKWARD.
I wanted Nihlus to tell Saren the truth here even though it was going to make him look totally stupid!
The last scene is all about this dynamic and is intended to be the bedrock of their -- unique -- developing relationship:
Saren goes from interested, to blank-faced, to entirely still. Except that now his voice is flat, and his stare looks like it could melt a bulkhead.
“I will say this once,” Saren grates. “I expect you to keep the next two years professional. Your life and mine depend on whether or not you can maintain total focus on what I’m trying to teach you. Are we clear?”
Fuck, he’s hot.
“Aye, sir,” Nihlus answers, as automatic as if he were a fresh Ensign.
Saren accepts this answer, grudging. “While I am disappointed you did not acquire the selection results in advance of the announcement, I can appreciate the sheer audacity of your approach.”
What I intended to do here was illustrate on the one hand that Saren is absolutely laying down some ground rules for training, that Nihlus is still very much attracted to Saren (oops) and still capable of accepting those stated professional boundaries, and that Saren can respect Nihlus’s honesty and is offering a bit of concession or personal disclosure in return.
Even as the author, I didn’t expect Saren to admit that Nihlus had surprised or impressed him in any way. In retrospect (and after having written Saren as the background character in this series), I can see that Saren as a Spectre is used to nothing but lies and obfuscation and has no idea what to make of someone who is willing to confess to the truth of a situation so ridiculous that it beggars belief.
Nihlus doesn’t realize it yet, but Saren finds honesty to be a rare and valuable resource in his line of work. While Nihlus has a habit of constant internal narrative exaggeration, he’s also honest to a fault, especially with people he respects.
2. Above center of mass in all respects.
I wasn’t sure how much time I wanted to let pass between the first fic and this one, or where in the developing relationship I wanted to focus. However! I knew I wanted to stick to my absolutely rancid military jargon titles, and that I wanted to focus in some sense on the ‘evaluation’ implied by the previous story. What situation would create an opportunity for Nihlus to begin to realize that he’d earned Saren’s professional trust faster than anyone else in history?
Enter: the embassy hacking plotline, about six months into Nihlus’s training, after I thought Saren and Nihlus would have had time to get to know each other through regular assignments in the Skyllian Verge. I wanted to imply that they were busy enough outside the confines of the Citadel for something really dumb and standard to get overlooked (Nihlus’s security credentials).
At this point I also decided that I wanted Alleia (still no surname, hah!) to become a recurring character, and that she needed to be a Blackwatch technical expert stationed on the Citadel. I generally imply that Saren’s usual area of operations is in the Skyllian Verge, so I wanted to set up a situation that would prompt him to return to the Citadel to “take care of things personally.”
It’s implied that a suspected ‘rogue’ salarian Special Tactics Group agent is framing the batarian Special Intervention Unit for a hacking incident at the turian embassy on the Citadel. While I don’t cover this in the story, Saren knows for a fact that he’s well-respected enough that such a plot is unlikely to have been conducted by any of the special operations units he’s already cowed into submission. He suspects independent sabotage conducted by a group he’d already been watching in Zakera Ward, so he sends Nihlus to talk to Alleia while he does his own investigating.
Offscreen, Saren seizes a too-good-to-be-true ambush opportunity to catch the suspect and gets himself blown up in the process. Normal. His calculation is that, if he does end up seriously injured and/or overestimates his ability to shield, Nihlus will be inbound fast enough to handle the rest of the situation -- and it’ll be one less threat to galactic stability, since there will no longer be any questions about infighting between STG and SIU. Which he considers a waste of time and resources when he could be handling real problems.
It’s a MUCH bigger explosion and trap than Saren anticipated (who knew?), but he still walks away thanks to his crazy!strong biotic abilities.
What Saren didn’t anticipate is that Nihlus knows him well enough to intuit every step in his decision-making process and is also FURIOUS about it!
Nihlus incorrectly interprets the situation as Saren not waiting for backup on a whim, at least until Saren matter-of-factly states that he chose to take the risk only because he had Nihlus inbound as backup:
Nihlus has had enough.
“What, precisely, was the point of calling for backup if you were going to break down the front door. Alone! And then walk into a trap before we arrived?”
He can’t help the fury in his voice. He wants to snarl, too, but lets six years of Hierarchy discipline confine him to glaring full in Saren’s face, instead.
Alleia says nothing in the silence.
“It was a calculated risk,” Saren answers evenly, meeting him stare for stare. “I knew you weren’t far behind.”
This is the first time Saren has expressed that level of trust to Nihlus in so many words!
Right after this, I got to further reinforce Saren’s level of respect for Nihlus’s abilities and judgment by actually bringing in that first performance evaluation. ;) I had a lot of fun letting Nihlus realize that Saren’s seemingly arbitrary expectations for his assistance were ... very likely ... grounded in a more nuanced view of his abilities than he expected.
Nihlus is still confused and exasperated, but he’s also never gotten a performance review that unambiguously positive in his career -- much less from someone who appears to be the galaxy’s least enthusiastic mentor. Nihlus was prepared to be reprimanded for yelling at Saren, even if he was right about the risks and there being better alternative plans, but he was totally unprepared for positive feedback. XD
The theme/purpose of this chapter is establishing that Saren and Nihlus both exist with a professional rapport that (until now) they have been building together without openly acknowledging.
I had a great time allowing Nihlus to be beyond frustrated with Saren’s (apparent) neglect in the opening scenes, then frantic and worried at getting a request for backup, then furious about Saren’s decision to walk into a trap, and then finally deflated in the face of Saren’s regard.
Hard for Nihlus to stay mad about Saren relying on him for backup, after all! LOL.
3. Preserving joint environment lethality and ingenuity.
These events take place 18 months into Nihlus’s training, approximately a year after the previous fic’s embassy incident.
You can thank my research for my First Contact War AU fic for the whole opening scene with Nihlus as a marksman and armorer -- it decided to wake up and choose violence! Nihlus as a competitive shooter is a bit of a change from my other mercenary background handcanon thoughts, but it fit this AU setting really well and gave me an excuse to elaborate a bit on where Nihlus might have more expertise than Saren.
Alternative options to embarrass Nihlus I’d originally considered instead of Armax Arsenal Arena: damaged power armor and the undressing trope (but with an undersuit, and having to pretend he’s not attracted to the person he’s helping ... lol); something more mission-fic oriented with Alleia and Thanas as deputies/on loan from their regular units; Nihlus doing something a bit ridiculous and a bit brave and then having Saren get him out of trouble.
I’m really glad I went with the Arena plot in the end! Sparring-as-flirting is a favorite trope of mine, and this setup delivered on all counts. I got to turn it into a roundabout double-date thanks to Alleia and Thanas, with Nihlus snarking about Saren’s problems with pistol technique (see, Nihlus cares!) and then ... getting to write Nihlus doing a surprise trust fall with Saren! And Saren catching him!
They’re both surprised about this, by the way:
A barrel presses up beneath his jaw, and all at once he’s not alone.
“Surrender,” Saren says.
At point-blank, getting shot is gonna sting. He only has one chance to escape.
“Never,” he growls, going deadweight and fully expecting to hit the deck. In a real fight? Nope, not happening. But hitting a target on his back from prone isn't the craziest thing he's ever done.
Which is not what happens. A flare of dark energy catches him in the back, and then recedes until it’s just Saren’s hands between him and a hard landing on the floor.
“Really, Nihlus?” Saren asks, somewhere between amused and exasperated, still out of breath from the snap biotics.
Fuck, he may have miscalculated. Nihlus is warm from his neck to his toes. He’d give anything to see Saren’s face, but he doesn’t dare look.
This was so FUN to write! I didn’t even start knowing how or what was going to happen in this scenario, but the minute the whole ‘Saren catches Nihlus’ idea occurred to me, I knew it was the right direction to take.
Nihlus is expecting Saren’s reflex here to be totally different! He’s expecting to be shot, not caught! Everything happens so fast that there’s no hiding from either of them: Nihlus is personally invested enough to do free armory work for Saren on his off-time, and Saren’s actual instinct here is to keep Nihlus from falling.
Honestly, this was also my first real opportunity to hint that Saren is not as indifferent to Nihlus as he might have been at first. Wherever they started in relation to each other, I wanted to hint that the relationship dynamic and grown and changed in the intervening months even though both of them would still be reluctant to try to define or put any labels on each other.
Joke’s on Saren, too -- he thought he wanted things to stay professional, turns out he actually does kinda like Nihlus personally, as well. Oops! Didn’t see that one coming. ;)
While it’s not explicitly stated, Saren doesn’t have the consistent manual dexterity required to be an accurate shot without additional stabilizer mods or other aids. He prefers to rely on his biotics to do damage instead, though he still carries other armaments as options.
It wasn’t easy to keep this one true to the funny/snarky formula of the others while figuring out how to set up the emotional revelation in the end, but with tweaking it eventually fell into place.
4. Adapt doctrine to circumstance.
This was an absolute bear to write. While I knew that I wanted to at least give Alleia some screentime, and I suspected that was going to be at a promotion ceremony that turned into a larger event than Nihlus anticipated -- the intermediate transitions remained a challenge.
While my FCW AU fic has Saren as a Blackwatch recruit, for this scenario I chose to stick with a biotic Cabal background.
I knew I also wanted Nihlus to not expect Saren to commit to attending whatever ceremonies were taking place -- so that he could be pleasantly surprised. ;)
The formality of this occasion also let me take a little creative license with what a dress Cabal uniform might look like, as well as setting up Saren’s complex (implied) relationship with his military honors and infamy. I was NOT expecting any of that background to make it into the story, and there’s plenty that is still missing.
For instance: this is the first time Saren’s worn his Star of Palaven in public, too! He received it shortly before he rejected Anderson for Spectre candidacy in this timeline (the paperwork took a little more than seven years), but also not long before he met Nihlus, and there was no graceful way to get used to the protocols since he was already a Spectre when he was officially decorated.
Nihlus has no idea that Saren has already made a number of complicated choices in attending Fleet promotion ceremonies, while also arranging for Nihlus’s surprise promotion ... in a way that all of his Navy peers will respect:
“Not even a whisper of a warning,” she sighs. “If I’d known, I’d have been ready to take vids. Then I could show you what your face looked like when he decided you merited a rank-pinning honor that dates back to before the Unification, delivered by a Recipient of the Star of Palaven.”
Nihlus puts his head in his hands. “Don’t remind me.”
Saren pinning Nihlus with his own rank insignia is one of the few Navy gestures that still has all the old meanings. In front of a Fleet audience? Not a single turian will have missed the significance of that trust being given to someone merc-born.
If he thinks about it too long it still makes him dizzy.
“It was also romantic, if you believe in that sort of thing,” Alleia teases.
He wishes he didn’t.
Again, I had SO MUCH FUN with figuring out how else Saren might potentially choose to make Nihlus’s promotion an occasion.
I’d read somewhere that military officers who were being promoted themselves occasionally gave their old rank insignia to the officers who were coming up behind them, to fill their old position, as a mark of esteem -- and I chose to alter that symbolism a bit for the Hierarchy Navy.
While I only hint at this in the text: Saren pinning Nihlus with his rank insignia is one of those culturally Hierachy Navy touchstones that mixes the professional and the personal, and it’s also a gesture that, by its nature and by tradition, can only be done once in a career.
Alleia is correct that there are also romantic epics that feature this traditional gesture as a trope! XD
Finally, I knew from the very start that, since Saren was the one to draw the boundaries, he’d also have to be the one to instigate a discussion or an adjustment in the limits he’d set between him and Nihlus.
I considered a number of other scenarios where Saren left a note afterward, or put off that conversation, or did something else other than what happened here: immediately stating his intentions.
It was also hugely fun to work out how Saren might plausibly arrange to make Nihlus’s Spectre promotion as “by-the-book” Navy respectful as possible. I think you’ll agree that he outdid himself. ;)
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PHEW. Now that I’m finished with the series, I’m also open to other asks. Either about this AU, different background details, turian headcanons, or other curiosities.
If you’re reading this: I have a tentative plan for a longer fanfic featuring these two characters, though with a more traditional POV structure. I’m not a terribly fast writer, so that’s about as much as I can say at this point...
#mass effect fanfiction#kryterius#my writing#meta#bar!fic link masterpost#ferus chats#I'm open to asks about this variant of these characters#just decided to noodle around a bit with some reflections#now that I've finally put the quartet to bed#saren arterius#nihlus kryik#i should not be allowed anywhere near ao3#for obvious reasons#im laughing#i have so many wips at this point
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Mass Effect Universe Meta - 1
I suppose I should call this ‘mass effect critical’ but it’s really more a meditation on the questions that the series poses and the ones it chooses to ignore ... with a focus on ‘choice-based’ narrative, character-driven storylines, and geopolitical philosophy.
If any of the above annoys you, I’d recommend not hitting the read more. This’ll probably be the first part of a series. xD
This first one is just a meditation on the choice-based narrative implementation in ME as a series.
I’m sure I’m not saying anything someone else hasn’t already covered, in fairness, probably better or more extensively than I’m doing here ... but this is kinda where I have to begin in order to tackle my other themes.
If you just get annoyed by this sort of navel-gazing, probably best not to proceed past the cut. I’ll totally understand!
So You Want Choice-Based Story In Your AAA-Shooter
Starting with the above: much ink has been spilled on the way that gameplay implicates and frames morality. Back in the day, Mass Effect (2007) on release was stirring up controversy because it let players choose a lesbian relationship with Liara! We’ve come a long way since then.
In some respects, Mass Effect is a product of its time and also another milestone in BioWare’s narrative portfolio. Which, before Mass Effect, included other games such as Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.
Worth noting is that BioWare as a development house has refined its use of morality systems and mechanics over time! We’ve seen everything from lightside/darkside sliders, to paragon/renegade, to the innovation of ‘party approval’ ratings in the Dragon Age franchise. Of note is that once BioWare establishes a canon morality or choice-rating system, those mechanics tend to remain in place or consistent throughout a particular world.
There’s a notable (and expected) departure in Mass Effect: Andromeda because the writers felt like the Paragon/Renegade system was too tied to Commander Shepard, specifically, to be used as a basis for Ryder.
What makes these game narratives so engaging from a player viewpoint will also be necessarily limited by the under-the-hood mechanics of the systems and how they are capable of responding to the player. Without a set of key markers to help the game function and implement narrative choices, and without a highly-structured narrative framework that can accommodate or reflect those choices on-screen in ways that are emotionally resonant, we get ... whatever happened with Starchild.
... but we didn’t get there all at once.
Mass Effect 1: Cosmic Horrors and You
At a very high-level read, Mass Effect 1 sets the scene for the rest of the trilogy to follow and makes very clear the stakes and the plot-related questions it’s going to tackle. In the first five minutes of the game we’re confronted with eldritch horrors from beyond the stars, the return of the geth, AND Saren Arterius killing his friend, Nihlus Kryik!
I kinda knew right about then that the game was not going to be tackling plot questions (and cultures) in ways that were interesting to me, since if they were going to do that ... it would have made more sense for Nihlus to live. I have been (politely, affectionately) boo-boo-the-clown ever since.
While I still loved the aspects of universe exploration and getting to know my human and non-human crewmembers (Ashley, Kaidan, Wrex, Tali, Garrus, and Liara), the shocking moments of Virmire where you -- and I’m pretty sure this isn’t a spoiler at this point -- have to determine who lives and who dies and it’s a scripted loss?
Narratively powerful because you’ve spent a while getting to know both characters, but problematic from a mechanics standpoint because now you have to maintain a universe that more or less hangs together throughout the game no matter “who” you chose to survive. Death-as-choice becomes a notable proxy in Mass Effect’s storyline for morality and impact.
Mechanically, you’ll also note that a lot of “moral choices” are framed as kill/don’t kill, to various and sundry effects. Personally, I wasn’t a fan of the binary choice framework underpinning most of the game’s critical moments.
And rather than be totally critical I’ll just spotlight the one choice I DO remember: with enough paragon points, talking Saren into shooting himself before he gets reanimated as a Reaper abomination.
In fairness, I think it would’ve been nice for that moment not to be gated behind a Paragon points check, since it was a NEAT narrative flourish that I didn’t see structurally repeated in other areas in the game.
As much as I fell in love with the universe, the idea of the Protheans, and what Vigil and Ilos implied about the murky past ... I was less enamored of the Reapers as a universe-ending threat and more intrigued by the internecine conflicts between the various species of the galaxy. Other game-defining options which carried over into ME2 included whether or not to save the Council (cake or death?), who to appoint as humanity’s first Councilor (slightly less death-driven), whether or not to shoot Wrex (also cake or death).
The amount of “save or kill” decisions and the lack of other equivalents (and those that WERE provided being given less narrative weight than the life-or-death elements) clued me in to the design philosophy that what the game and the narrative would most remember about the world state was who was still alive.
On the one hand, the narrative impacts of presence or absence are obvious for the player! We know these decisions are significant. On the other hand, as you’ll see in my description of ME2, this design choice did start to paint the team into a corner.
Mass Effect 2: About That Suicide Mission
Much as I loved the new squadmates for ME2 and the overall pacing of the story, as well as the interim character development for each former squad member, the clue that most of this was going to happen off-screen or not at all was that these developments occurred while Shepard was not present -- conveniently killed by the Collectors.
Again, this was my hint that this story was going to focus on different questions!
Cerberus, who played the role of minor mooks in the first game, were upgraded to a level of influence that would be a conspiracy-theorist’s dream. One of my personal soapbox “dead dove: do not eat” elements is “but the conspiracies were REAL!” So this was honestly my bad.
Favorite moments in this game included getting to know new squad members, reuniting with old characters (including Wrex! and Grunt, who has one of my favorite arcs in the game alongside Garrus). YMMV about which characters and squadmates you connected with the most/least, but we can all agree that The Suicide Mission was Certainly A Choice.
With that said, it’s possible for no-one to survive and to avoid recruiting the new squaddies. Because choices, remember?
Unfortunately this also has the impact of “kill/save” being, once again, the primary impactful narrative game mechanic.
One can forgive the developers and narrative designers for getting a little tired at this point, because we’re not sure who survived or how much narrative content we’re going to have to adapt to another totally new character in the third act, based on who survives The Suicide Mission. Which does rather put a crimp in the amount of relational development we can presuppose in the third game.
One gets the idea that Liara was the favorite child in part because she is more or less impossible to kill. She will survive all the games no matter what choices you make, unless that choice is getting killed by Harbinger’s laser beam at the very end of ME3 and failing the game.
Small wonder that, in many respects, one of the ways the game develops Liara’s character is actually taking away player choice to avoid having to do an “impactful kill/save” option that would otherwise render her permanently inaccessible to the narrative.
Mass Effect 3: Enter the Starchild
So, what are we to make of the “kill/save” and “presence/absence” dynamic as the most narratively impactful and important? Ironically, these choices have impact only insofar as they determine what resources and relationships your Commander Shepard has access to in the game. The narrative does not so much branch as continue on, with slightly different details, depending on who you saved or recruited.
There will still BE a Tuchanka mission with or without Mordin or Wrex, and you will still conquer the Reaper capital ship alongside Kalros, the mother of all thresher maws (which is a pretty cool moment, let’s be real).
From a narrative design standpoint, these moments are what’s absolutely critical to a functioning storyline -- the character-development bits are secondary, as they must be in a game where the suicide mission can deplete your squad so thoroughly that nobody is left.
I won’t spend too much time on the original choice to lock Javik behind a DLC gate, but that’s another unfortunate choice that limited the baked-in narrative options for the third installment of the game.
Outside of the Commander-Shepard-Driven set pieces on each world, at this point, character relationships were more the icing on the cake than the narrative bedrock, something as a consequence of deciding early in design that killing characters is the clearest way to communicate narrative impact.
However, the other side of this choice, is that killing off characters when you have no narrative attachment to them and no stake in that sacrifice, ends up having progressively less and less impact, even in a AAA-shooter where the whole point is to reduce endless waves of mooks into a fine mist...
... which is where Starchild comes in.
Commander Shepard is locked into a final color-coded narrative choice of who to kill and who to save. That’s the narrative’s way of making sure you know that the choice is important -- because, without that design choice, there’s really no other established way for the game to communicate significance.
Which is a tragedy in and of itself. So many other moments are often significant or meaningful ... and I really think the choice to go with life-and-death as the biggest, baddest, most narratively-supportive element is what essentially painted the team into this final corner.
If You’re So Smart, What Would You Do?
This is easy, since it’s ultimately what BioWare and its narrative designers decided to implement in its next games: party-based approval and relationship systems that operated separately from a Paragon/Renegade personal scale.
Yeah, yeah, a cop-out. I know. Essentially, this is just external evidence that the narrative designers learned from the limitations they encountered in the Mass Effect universe and applied those lessons to their Dragon Age games.
Which again is not to say that I’ve seen concrete evidence of leaning LESS into the “kill/save” dynamic as impactful (remember the Witherfang quest in DA:O?). But it’s the thought that counts!
Branching out to other choices being signaled and framed as impactful is a key to choice-based game design and storytelling being able to incorporate character-driven narrative alongside the raw individual plot.
While this ultimately didn’t happen in Mass Effect, I am interested to see how the mechanics will be implemented in DA4 to detail and interweave other motives and questions into that storyline.
That’s What Fanfiction is For
Watching the canon Mass Effect universe default to “kill/save” decisions as the framing morality structure is pretty much why I write fanfiction designed to fill in and detail out the other blank spaces in background and backstory, and to imagine what other questions might have arisen in a more flexible approach that would not have been possible before the relevant lessons for narrative design were learned in these games.
My motivation as a writer is to expand in areas that were dropped because they wouldn’t make the cut in a AAA-shooter on a protagonist-driven schedule.
For the same reason that narrative significance eluded the final “controversial” ending of the series, I find that there are enough other aspects of character-driven plot and geopolitical philosophy that remain interesting (and implied-if-you-squint by the codex material) to keep me sufficiently occupied for a number of WIP fanfics. ;)
Which, in the end, is more a testament to the strength of the central thesis of the game (what if humanity is the new kid on the block in a galaxy full of advanced alien species?) rather than the questions the narrative ultimately chose to center.
-Ferus, out.
#mass effect meta#choice-based story#my writing#mass effect critical#sorta?#i mean i think i'm being pretty fair to the design choices in the end#especially given what later design choices in DA imply about#the relative limitations of these systems of design#and hopefully it explains a bit about why i'm still so fascinated#with the mass effect universe overall#since my fanfic is all fix-it-of-sorts#I just allow myself a lot of room with or without Reapers#ferus chats
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I've been reading your ofmd meta. It's amazing! How did you learn to figure all that stuff out?
Thank you for the ask!
There are two distinct questions here:
What makes OFMD a compelling ground for media and critical (meta) analysis?
What’s the critical basis I’m using in writing meta analysis and how did I learn to use it the way I do?
Why Write Meta Analysis of “Our Flag Means Death”?
The first question is easy: THERE IS SO MUCH TO UNPACK HERE. It’s all right out in the open, too, and it’s a real credit to David Jenkins that he created a supportive environment for the cast, the creative directors, the writers, and his entire CREW to bring all of their creative selves.
OFMD is so full of love for its characters and story that it always takes my breath away whenever I think about it. So much creative energy and love was wrapped into this show in so many ways that I’ll never shut up about it ever.
The second question has a longer answer.
Analytical Training, Experience, and Practice (Not Necessarily In That Order)
While I am formally trained and have a BA in English, I would still credit my experience as a writer-practitioner as equally or more important in my analytical background as the formal training.
I am first and foremost a writer, and I “read” texts like a writer who wants to figure out what makes a narrative function. Learning how something is working is fundamental to being able to replicate it in your own artwork.
The simplest term for what I use as a framework for all my meta is a technique historically called close reading, but I’d openly admit that I am more flexible and informal with it than you’d find taught in a typical college class!
Think of a “reading” in literature or film/media analysis as a bit like what a study or practice sketch does for visual artists.
When I was writing my meta post on The Tragedy of Israel Hands, I very explicitly decided to tackle OFMD and what was happening with Izzy by breaking down the show into episode-by-episode readings from Izzy’s point of view.
I also chose to add some extra spice based on direct scene transcriptions, mentions of Izzy by-name even when he wasn’t on-screen, and what was happening for him as a character (what was his story?) vs. the obvious romance that was happening for Edward and Stede in the foreground.
David Jenkins had helpfully stated in an interview that OFMD was broken up into acts, so I just followed his lead on doing the same in my analysis. ;) He’d also suggested doing a rewatch with a focus on Con O’Neill and I was intrigued by the possibility of what I might find.
Turned out? Con managed to fit an actual three-act tragedy into the same visual and narrative space (albeit in the background) as Rhys and Taika acting the main romance in the foreground! This is fucking incredible in my opinion. Con’s narrative counterpoint with Izzy adds so much depth and richness to the romance and the comedy. I could chew glass over it (and I did! hence the post).
I firmly believe that ANYONE can do a good and detailed textual reading (with or without formal training), so here’s my quick(?) breakdown of how that works for me in the hope that it will inspire you and others to try your hand!
The best way to get good at analysis is to practice. Analyze, analyze, analyze! Write, write, write! Create in whatever way makes sense to your brain and energizes you to explore how you think about what you love. You don’t even have to publish/share the results. It can just be for you if you want.
As usual, only do what works for you.
If there’s a thought or a step that you want to skip? Skip it. Do what you want. Create and write meta! Enrich the OFMD fandom with your own readings. :D
Ferus-Style Close Reading Guide
Goal: Break things down to build a detailed, text-supported understanding of a creative product (story, episode, play, film, painting, etc.). You can do this whenever you’re interested in something and feel like spending more time with it as a method of learning more and deeply appreciating a work of art.
Pick a moment in the text (show, fanfic, story, etc.) that interests you.
Interest is crucial! Think about why you’re interested. Sit with the text a bit.
Take extensive notes on what’s happening. You can also use another method you prefer like outlining, grabbing screencaps, or some combination to record and organize your first impressions and thoughts.
This serves as a record of where you started.
Don’t necessarily try to interpret right away, but DO decide for yourself what you think is happening in a moment or a particular scene. This can be as short as a single line of text or a few seconds of interaction in a TV episode or film. Trust yourself! The best art, by and large, does what it does in plain sight and will repeat or reinforce the significant themes and symbols.
Hold off on interpretation to allow yourself time to develop a good understanding of what has actually taken place in the text. Plenty of professional critics are weak at this step and jump straight into reshaping events to fit their thesis and interpretation rather than reading “out of” a text. It’s not necessarily bad (and there are techniques that use this sort of interpretation), but it’s really not where I’m coming from.
Break down your favorite scenes into as many moments (or points of focus) as are likely to be relevant to your analysis. If you’re working with a specific character, focus on their actions or their scenes (or other ‘by name’ references when they’re not on-screen). If the focus is a motif (a visual element), try to figure out what its appearance or framing is accomplishing when it is present. How do other characters react to it or introduce it? How do these interactions “read” to you? Again, what is happening?
This is the focusing step that typically tells me where the rest of my analysis is going. At this point I usually have an idea of what I’m seeing when it’s either reinforced by one or more sequential scenes (reinforced) or dropped and sidelined in an interesting way.
Take a step back and think about how the moment you’re analyzing is ‘working.’ What does it do? What purpose does this story beat or moment serve? Why is it happening in this moment, at this specific time, and what important features of character, setting, or story are happening? What are the consequences that follow?
I can’t stress consequences enough! Actions having consequences is a fundamental element of a well-structured narrative. The narrative consequences for a character or a plotline are one of the things that is MOST controlled by authorial choice. Do these consequences fit in with the theme you’ve noticed? Why or why not? Whatever is happening here is usually some of the most interesting elements of the narrative (if they’re present).
Write down your initial guesses about the answers the questions above. Or answer a few of your own questions in a first pass. Theorize!
Now that you’ve considered the individual moments, scenes, or elements and taken a stab at the larger emergent themes it’s time to mash them together into a coherent picture (what are YOU seeing?). How are you seeing this text?
Keep repeating the process above for other surrounding scenes (the context) or moments relevant to your analysis.
YMMV with repetition. A longer analysis takes more repetition. A shorter or more contained analysis may only go through this process once. Again -- no one person will see the same scene the same way as another! Everyone has a valuable perspective to contribute.
Theorize once again after stringing the analytical moments together and connecting them -- what new ideas occur to you once you’ve chewed over the “small” interesting bits separately? Does a pattern begin to emerge? Why or why not?
You can learn as much from figuring out your first impressions were wrong (and looking again to see what’s ACTUALLY happening) as you will from being “right” the first time. Enjoy the experience!
You can learn almost as much from absence as from presence. While that may sound cryptic at first, glaring absences when characters or significant elements are NOT present are just as important in their own way, and may help you discover other themes in the same text. Strategic absences are MUCH more difficult to identify without careful attention. They’ll be obvious when you begin to look for them (which is the fun bit).
“Establishing” shots (introductions, first/last shots, first/last words) are always important.
Repeated and reinforced themes are generally stronger indications that a particular symbol or motif is significant. Looking for repetition or apparently deliberate call-backs to previous episodes, comments, scenes, or character relationships are often where the most fruitful opportunities for analysis are located.
Write up your general conclusions based on what you’ve learned from your smaller (close) bite-size readings and why you believe they’re significant along with how they’re functioning. If you observe a theme or pattern, focus your writing on how that pattern is built up and the evidence you found to support that conclusion.
And you’re done! Or whatever process you prefer is finished. For now. ;)
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The most important element in my analytical process is close attention to the different on-screen choices (in framing, acting, and dialogue) that I’m seeing in a particular episode.
I take extensive notes on what’s happening, sometimes by recording transcripts of the dialogue and often through watching and re-watching a scene of particular interest.
To continue with my example meta, The Tragedy of Israel Hands was based on rewatching OFMD with a focus on what was happening to Izzy in both the foreground and the background, with these questions in mind:
What would this story arc appear to be from Izzy’s perspective?
What extent was that interpretation supported by: each character’s arc, the framing of various shots, and the choices and tone throughout the context of Con O’Neill’s overall performance of this character?
Was there a narrative thread linking together Izzy Hands’s story as a contrast to Edward and Stede’s foreground romance?
And now you have the meta on the meta. METACEPTION. -is shot-
You probably didn’t want an answer this long, dear asker, but regrettably I Am Just Like This.
#our flag means death meta#ofmd meta#ferus ofmd meta#how ferus writes meta#answering asks#close reading#sorta close reading?#i do a very very detailed version of close reading that works for me#and it's considerably less formal than the historical or theoretical background#would suggest#metaception#the tragedy of israel hands#look the day has arrived when i write meta on meta#is shot#im laughing#ferus chats
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Turian Culture Meta - Ferus Style
Yeah so -- ready to descend into crazyland?
We’re gonna dive into some meta thoughts I have about what sort of cultural educational and military system would produce the interesting client-state relationship between the turian Hierarchy and the Vol Protectorate.
Disclaimer: The opinions of the author (me) are naturally my own and are not intended to argue for or against anyone else’s ideas. This is not even intended to be an interpretation of canon, in point of fact. Canon doesn’t have much to say about things that actually interest me. -shrug-
This is my ‘plausible’ version of conceptual options and social structures that canon either glosses over or fumbles entirely. Because it’s just not interested in these ideas, really ... BUT I AM. :D
If you find any of these concepts compelling? Fantastic, please liberate them! Go and use them in any or all transformative work with or without attribution.
I really Do Not Want to be the only one writing this stuff, so... be welcome!
Full post (long) underneath the cut.
The Situation
The turian Hierarchy makes first contact with the Citadel some 1000 years after the volus have drawn up the Unified Banking Act (300 B.C.E.) and have a thriving economic network of colonies after discovering FTL travel. The volus in point of fact have more than a millennia of advanced experience in working with multi-species ventures and are a pillar of the galactic economy long before the turians finish off their brutal Unification Wars.
If you took just the game’s on-screen hints as fact, none of this is evident in the galaxy by the time Shepard encounters volus on the Citadel. They’re treated as a sort of minor curiosity in comparison to the turian characters -- whether because of the mask, or just because economics is “less interesting” in a AAA-shooter. OH WELL.
Another interesting element is that the volus are “accepted” as a protectorate of the Hierarchy around 700 C.E., shortly after the Krogan rebellions.
To my mind, this is translation for: the Hierarchy’s war economy in the aftermath of the Krogan rebellions would have collapsed without the intervention of volus administrators, economists, logicians, and other bureaucratic types. What the Hierarchy DOES have of a peacetime bureaucracy was likely or nearly entirely trained and reformed by the Vol Protectorate’s extremely professional civil service. Fight a series of wars and warlords in the colonies for around 1000 years while someone else is running the galactic banking system ... and you’re probably woefully behind the curve in that area, just saying.
When you’ve “elevated” one warlike species (the Krogan) and then been surprised that they’ve gone on to aggressively contest the rest of Citadel space, it even seems likely/possible that this was a grand strategic bargain on the part of the Citadel species to avoid the turians becoming a “second” Krogan incident.
A values-driven and rules-based collectivist civil society that managed to transition to a peacetime footing without an accompanying economic collapse would be a much more stable galactic force ... plus you get the opportunity to fill in C-Sec ranks, develop a galactic security fleet (employing turian Dreadnoughts), and use those related tasks and duties to bring turians (an otherwise very militaristic society with a historical doctrine of total war) into better compliance as galactic citizens. In essence: the Vol Protectorate gives the Hierarchy something to protect rather than conquer.
Naturally, turian cultural perspectives on the purpose of the Hierarchy and the relative values of the culture probably run the gamut from the more imperialistic Unification and pre-Unification end of the spectrum to the more socially/galatically communitarian version of the Hierarchy, itself, as a participant in creating civil society within the Milky Way.
When in doubt? I prefer to view individuals on a spectrum or continuum of different possible viewpoints -- and to prefer that a full spectrum of interpretations be available to my characters. So that’s the type of environment I’d use as backdrop for, say, a fic.
Education (Given: The Situation)
Which takes us back to the Hierarchy’s mandatory service culture and boot camp at age 15, with mandatory service from age 15-30.
“Public service” as opposed to private industry is more a matter of organization and aims than it is a limitation of ‘choices.’ Take, for instance, the example of ‘national’ industries owned by a state. Any state-owned enterprise might conceivably count toward ‘public service’ citizen credit. These enterprises could include everything from arts museums and public art projects (ala the Works Projects Administration of Roosevelt Depression-era US policy) to industrial fabricators, dockyards, and other collectively owned and operated institutions.
Note that I also don’t equate state-owned industry to CENTRALLY-PLANNED industry! You might, in a turian society that prizes both individual accountability AND public service, have for instance a federated system of local control within a centrally-organized public works or other department.
Fair warning: this is my professional bureaucrat side talking. There are MANY aspects of infrastructure, particularly public works infrastructure, that are site- and context-dependent. Central planning of these features quite literally doesn’t work outside of administration and funding (which you WANT organized in larger packages if possible, to secure the best possible loan terms).
I also imagine that a public service-oriented society would work on incorporating the economic fates of its outer colonies into the trading lanes and patterns of the central Hierarchy (in order to secure greater loyalty and collective bargaining power, alongside the Vol Protectorate’s economic management engine).
So what would education in a “man-of-action”/”public service” society look like? I’d think more a system of apprenticeships and practical qualification or on-the-job (OJT) training and certification where available!
A boot camp experience is usually important both for training in values and standard procedures, so it’s less likely to vary appreciably between any one place and another beyond basics related to climate and environment. I’d expect boot camp training to be purposely standardized -- individual accountability doesn’t necessarily lead me to conclude that turians would be keen to judge themselves on anything other than “demonstrated merit” (and testing would be ONE part, but probably not the most significant -- outside of genuine performance on practical tasks, and the ability to produce measurable results!).
Pre-boot-camp education would likely be designed to expose juveniles to as many professions as possible -- there’s a bit in the codex about the turian respect for “knowing one’s place” and finding a comfortable place where the individual best serves the community (rather than individual prestige or economic gain). This would also track with turians being ‘poor’ entrepreneurs (i.e. less inclined to start their own businesses for profit, or with less opportunity when they’re in State-mandated service) ... and account for some of the distrust of ‘merc-born’ turians who chose to opt out of the traditional Hierarchy structure.
I’d also expect a classical turian education to include emphasis on health, community values, and being able to communicate in a general way with their volus partners/collaborators in areas that are less often viewed as strengths of turian culture (aka: economics and business, anyone?).
If turian culture is truly militaristic and communitarian, both, and formed around a sort of military hierarchy, that society will also be shaped by what doctrine views as effective deployment of force and possible missions and required capabilities In military terms, this would be defined both by a theoretical ‘ideal’ force structure and various desired concepts of operations.
Military Doctrine (Given: The Situation)
So, what capabilities would be valuable for the turian Hierarchy to provide to the galaxy? What are its internal needs? What are the needs of its closest allies and partners?
We already know (or suspect) that Dreadnoughts are one sign of military status. These immense warships are required to secure and hold space stations and other important remote outposts, alongside the smaller cruisers, frigate wolfpacks, and other space Navy-type forces.
We can also consider C-Sec (civil and criminal investigation on the Citadel, security for ports, anti-smuggling operations, etc.) as a separate civil branch and outgrowth of skills are learned and taught within the Hierarchy and something of a stereotypical (and desirable!) turian job outside of Hierarchy space.
Other valuable services provided by the Hierarchy include staffing and operating a force (32 fleets!) large enough to secure not just Hierarchy space but also to protect the Citadel. Turians canonically value combined arms and disciplined maneuver warfare, decentralized command-and-control, and are also the primary military arm and security force for the rest of the galaxy.
In summary: the turians are so good at staffing and maintaining fleets that the rest of the Council species seem to prefer handing these civil functions over to the turians in proportion to their relative expertise and cultural strengths.
All of the above implies that turian culture would need to be an extraordinarily flexible (structurally) society, if individually somewhat set and rigid in expectations and values for fulfilling assigned duties.
I’d believe that assignments, once given, were equivalent to anyone else’s ultimatum! I’d also imagine that turians would find it VERY personally important to seek out roles where they could fulfill all potential assignments to the best of their individual abilities, and that ‘finding’ that place/role in society would be akin to a life path.
Amateurs Study Tactics
A short aside that warfighting ability, alone, at least on an individual level, is a minor strength in comparison to building an effective collaborative combined arms force. The organization required at an individual level? Not much! Just personal training and supply.
Problems mount as soon as the force expands in size, complexity, and desired mission capabilities. I could see volus economists and logicians, as well as military scholars, being the preeminent organizers and administrators of turian force structures. I could see the volus economic influence being a quite effective force multiplier for the turian Hierarchy, in terms of creatively organizing fleets and their sub-units into autonomous mission-capable interchangeable “parts” which all know how to work together and communicate to achieve complex adaptability and integration of vastly different forces, hardware, and weapons systems at a variety of scales (from galactic, to orbital, to low-orbit, to planetside ground).
Which leads us to ...
Professionals Study Logistics
This is just the study of the application of “effective force.” What makes a force effective? It needs to be supplied with personnel and materiel such that it can accomplish its assigned mission -- preserve the capability of the force through the supply of the necessary tools at the right time, alongside the ability to maintain, repair, replace, or rotate those tools as needed.
A force that has been improperly positioned (is too far forward of supply lines, or too far in the rear to be applied at the right time) is by definition an ineffective force. It is unavailable to accomplish the mission.
There’s a long, rich tradition of economists studying the choice behaviors of nations seeking war, the application of deterrence, and the conditions of victory and defeat on a multitude of different battlefields in different historical and cultural contexts. We get just about NONE of this (barring some high-level generalizations) in Mass Effect, proper!
If we did, we might have seen a bit more nuance in illustrating the Vol Protectorate as not just the economic backbone of Citadel space, but also the preeminent experts in military grand strategy and supply. They’re likely the most closely associated Citadel species and have the most experience collaborating with turian systems of organization! The volus would be just as good at turian military history as turians are, if not BETTER observers and critics on the logistics/economics side, in terms of patterns of thinking and history!
At some point I’m going to have to write the “lessons learned” memo on the First Contact War from the point of view of an eminent volus logistician and economist (ala Thomas Schelling).
Because I’m a nerd, and if the FCW was a failure due to logistics and supply errors? You can just BET the volus were kept out of the First Contact loop as a some sort of power play on the part of less-qualified frontline personnel... no, they’re not salty about that, why do you ask?
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HATE ME YET? Yeah, I can’t stop thinking about this stuff, either ... and now you know why my fanfiction is the way it is. :D
#mass effect meta#turian#volus#apparently i have TOO MANY THOUGHTS#ferus chats#my way of thinking#shrug#jazz hands#it is what it is
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Playlist ask
I was tagged by @rosenkow on pairing playlists but since I write majority genfic, I’ll be a bit more broad.
I tag: @vampirepunks @dr-ladybird @neonbutchery @datsonyat @rosebud1773 @danypooh80 @cosmicallium
No obligations of course! I’m just working hard on my wips today (obviously >_>) and in the mood to gush about some background.
Below the ‘read more’ tag: four songs for two fics.
Two for Air Needing Light (in progress). - My Blackwatch!Saren longfic wip.
Two for ‘This will have no bearing on your evaluation.’ - A Nihlus/Saren oneshot that may(?) turn into a few more oneshots.
Air Needing Light Playlist (aka: Blackwatch!Saren No Reapers AU) - Excerpt of what I use as background/writing music.
ALPHA - Layto: I like this song for AU-Saren on multiple levels. One of the reasons he passes Blackwatch selection and gets put on a team, despite being fantastically inexperienced, is his overall “get shit done” personality. He’s not the biggest, strongest, or fastest anything -- but he’s creative, near-fanatical about being prepared, and strikingly observant and calm under pressure. Creative pragmatism is a rare trait. My preference is to write Saren as someone who can get things done as an individual when required but who is (growing into and learning to be) a valuable force multiplier when on a team. I feel like this song covers both the attitude and the occasional self-doubt of trying to live up to who you’re trying to be. I’m treating the lyrics here as more of a metaphorical conversation. Also the beat SLAPS.
Violin Duel - “Taste” - DSharp feat. Rhett Price: I’m a slut for violin covers, but this song covers my soon-to-be-introduced biotic Kabalim OC Vallen. He’s unflappable and methodical, and I like the “duel” element of the song because he’s fundamentally who ends up taking charge of strategy on the ground. There’s no other option for him or the team. It turns into a duel between the Hierarchy military and the Alliance forces on Shanxi. This is really how I want to write the FCW -- two elite opponents doing everything in their power to test and outmaneuver each other. Really? Both forces are fighting for survival in this dynamic, awful situation. The “brighter” tone of the violin keeps me even-keeled in mood while also thinking about the overall structure of the fic’s plot.
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This will have no bearing on your evaluation. - (aka: Bar!fic!) Nihlus/Saren
don’t mind - Kent Jones (Sickick Version): I love the beat and the sheer audacity. I listen to this one fairly often, but drunk Nihlus embodies this attitude. Sober Nihlus has the same energy just with more inhibitions.
head first - Christian French (Young Bombs remix): This is pretty much sober Nihlus realizing how much shit he’s in. And fortunately/unfortunately (entertainingly?) this version of Saren has no idea what to do about this, since the whole mentoring experience is fairly involved as it is. Mostly they don’t talk about it and Nihlus goes on Having Emotions and trying to keep anything too personal to himself. Saren takes QUITE a bit longer to come around to this and go from appreciating Nihlus and his ability on a purely professional level (where he’s still excellent!), to allowing that OKAY maybe this is platonic and they’re friends (aka: Nihlus keeps predictably respecting Saren’s boundaries and being consistent in behavior to the point where Saren feels like he has a steady read on Nihlus, despite the frequently unpredictable tactics related to literally every other assignment and situation), to finally allowing the possibility that he might also care about Nihlus on a personal level. Aka: Saren is fanatic about personal boundaries and Nihlus spends time navigating those until “complacency is dangerous, Nihlus” Saren Arterius is actually comfortable around him. Unstoppable force meets immovable object for the two years of Nihlus’s training. While that kind of relationship would have been against Saren’s ironclad principles during those two years, Nihlus is stubborn as fuck, and since nothing about his intentions has changed even AFTER those two years, Saren eventually allows the possibility that Nihlus’s interest is genuine. ROFL.
#my writing#air-needing-light#playlist#rosenkow#tag games#ferus writing meta#how i construct things#genfic#saren arterius#nihlus kryik#kryterius#mass effect#fanfiction
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Izzy Hands in a Minor Key
In this essay I will ... add to excellent discussion about the companion structures and themes of Episodes 07 and 08.
First, this is inspired by @bookshelfdreams and @mikimeiko and dedicated to @speckled-jim (and a few other folks, you know who you are, who also like to scream about Izzy the Ratbastard).
As background, please consider this post (Mikimeiko) about Edward and Stede’s fear of losing each other and then follow up with this post (bookshelfdreams) about the themes of loss and abandonment in Episode 07 and 08. This is an excellent addition about Calico Jack’s role in the narrative and between the two of them you will be well-prepared to consider the following:
I will submit to all of you that Izzy Hands and his terrible life choices are the glue holding these companion episodes together, because Izzy planned this situation and he used his deeply personal knowledge and understanding of Edward to instigate the breakup.
The full arc of these episodes is about loss, abandonment ... and betrayal.
Izzy Hands is once again making everything awful and Making It Weird Forever (thanks @knowlesian). Ready to suffer? :D
Proceed past the cut.
Full Disclosure: This is the top-level summary or I’d be here all night.
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07 - This is Happening
A brief summary of the situation between Ed and Stede: they are still deciding whether or not to accept each other and what that means during the treasure hunt. We get the lovely improvisational restaurant conversation, Edward does his ‘please touch my beard’ flirting thing, and then -- oh no! The map burns and is ruined!
Lucius helpfully clues in Ed to the fact that Stede has set up this very Stede-directed adventure for him. Edward has heart eyes 100% of the time because this is probably the nicest thing anyone has ever tried to do (while being a lovable pure idiot about it). God, Stede is the most cinnamon of rolls. And Edward makes an effort to be sweet in return (Lucius reinforces this; it’s so fucking brilliant that Edward still threatens to stab him in the ‘fuckin face).
Did you notice that it’s an Izzy-style threat? A bit softer and gentler, but still with admirable cursing and pitch-perfect comedic timing.
Which brings us to Izzy.
Izzy is conspicuous by his absence. Where would Edward go if Edward left? Back to Izzy and the ‘next adventure!’ And it wouldn’t much look like this very impractical treasure hunt with a petrified orange as the prize.
If we compare the prizes Izzy recently took: one of Stede’s hostages, a Spanish warship, and The Revenge, itself. All very respectable (except Stede; Izzy put him back!)
Izzy, after trying to ‘put Stede back’ post-duel scene: None of this is going how I planned. I hate my entire life and my best friend just banished me from the ship. What is a first mate going to do without a captain to serve?
“This is Happening” is where we see Edward and Stede begin to recognize their relationship while Izzy experiences the full-on terror of his identity being stripped away. Read: loss and abandonment. Izzy is experiencing both of these in the background, and it’s this terror of losing Edward and of contemplating a future without that relationship that prompts him to FUCKING CALL UP CHAUNCEY FUCKING BADMINTON.
Izzy. What the fuck.
08 - We Gull Way Back
Now for a quick linguistic aside on the episode title that you need to understand before we proceed further. “We Gull Way Back” is directly referencing three things:
1. “We Go Way Back” = Calico Jack is Edward’s old friend, buddy, and ex-lover.
2. “Gull” = the Death of Karl and Buttons’s fabulous ability to hex Calico Jack. It’s a weird reverse ex(orcism). Yes this is a pun. Shoot me.
3. “Gull” = an archaic term for “to trick, to subvert, or to fool.” This last theme is where Izzy Hands comes in and it’s a direct title reference to his role in this episode and in setting up the entire circumstances of this arc without being present on-screen. Because David Jenkins is brilliant.
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You may be wondering: Ferus, if Izzy doesn’t show up in this episode, what are you going to analyze?
Ready to be fucked up? Because this has been fucking me up all day. Brace yourselves. Recall all the previously cited meta about Calico Jack and the role he plays in questioning Stede’s identity and making Edward think Stede couldn’t handle the old days?
Izzy knew:
All of Edward’s history
What Edward’s reaction would be to seeing this old friend and ex-lover
What Calico Jack would think of Stede
What old hobbies Jack and Blackbeard used to share
The story of Blind Man’s Cove, that Jack once saved his life there, and that it had no escape routes
That neither Stede nor the rest of the crew would suspect this trap (because none of them know Edward and their history as Blackbeard as well as he does)
That this trap was calibrated specifically and personally to trick Edward into being the one who took Stede to a place where the English could catch and execute him
It’s fucking me up so bad, fam.
It’s not just a betrayal, it’s probably one of the most intimately personal and subtle betrayals I’ve seen depicted on screen.
What the FUCK, Izzy. No shit Edward was right to punch you right in your fucking face!
And it’s the first time we really see Edward lose his temper with Izzy, by the way. Foreshadowing the descent into The Kraken we get in Episode 10.
Izzy set up the whole fucking thing and he’s paying the price.
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Additional Disclaimer: If you’d like very specific dialogue and scene examples of how all of the above is working, my ask box is always open for screaming about Izzy Hands. My word is not definitive in any way, shape, or form. If you also like to scream about Izzy Hands please know that I am very friendly and open to being challenged, contradicted, dismantled, or otherwise appropriated with or without credit and/or reference. I love OFMD a totally normal amount.
#our flag means death meta#izzy hands#edward teach#calico jack#stede bonnet#episode 07 this is happening#episode 08 we gull way back#I respect Izzy Hands and I scream about him and he continues to live in my brain without paying rent.#I wrote this post and I do not like it because of the level of existential suffering and admiration Izzy’s stupidass situation provokes#i still can't sleep#give con o'neill a fuckin' emmy#i'm so fucked up about this#my writing#turned into a professor izzy studies against my will#i like this show a normal amount#ofmd meta#our flag means death#never shutting up about the gay pirate show and neither is my brain#ferus izzy meta
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Day Six
For @the-wip-project #100DaysOfWriting Challenge
Prompt: What worldbuilding idea did you come up with that you would have loved to use but just couldn’t get to work?
Worldbuilding that doesn’t fit into the main story? One-shot fics are great for that.
So, so many things are really cool ideas that won’t fit into the main storyline for one reason or another.
For instance: POV character conflict.
Air Needing Light is from Saren’s POV during the FCW. I haven’t decided if I’ll stick with that for the second fic, but it’s a very high likelihood that it’ll also stay in Saren’s “voice.”
However!
I still wanted to write out a very particular type of character background for Nihlus Kryik. Our in-game canon codex implies that Nihlus is a merc-born turian.
Does a whole-ass one-shot fic count as worldbuilding that didn’t fit into the main story? Because that’s what Nihlus demanded.
Instead of being forced to write a multi-chapter background story for his character, I decided to give him a one-shot: The husbandry of victory is blood. It’s a character sketch of the kind I’d normally write for myself and never actually publish ... but this time, I published it and let it out into the world. There’s a whole other post detailing a series of author annotations on worldbuilding that go along with the fic, because it’s SUPER DENSE and not very reader-friendly.
Can’t really apologize for it, since this is the kind of background sketch I do for my real novel-length work all the time.
But it’s the writing equivalent of letting everyone peer into my jumbled sock drawer.
I like adding in a bunch of background detail without full-on explaining everything. More or less as easter eggs or just to entertain myself. While there may be points in the main stories where these details become important, many just function as aesthetic flavor.
One of the benefits of writing is getting to entertain yourself! I feel for my readers, though...
“Ferus, explain!” is a real mood.
#100daysofwriting#mass effect fanfiction#ferusaurelius#saren arterius#nihlus kryik#air-needing-light#mass effect fanfiction meta#turian headcanons#turian mercenary culture headcanons#ferus is a giant worldbuilding nerd#ferus chats#my writing
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Day Two
For @the-wip-project #100DaysOfWriting challenge.
Prompt:
For your current WIP: (do you have many WIPs? I have so many WIPs. So I mean current as of right this moment, the project you’re thinking about right now.) What motivates you to write this specific story? What makes this story special for you? Is there a special twist/trope/setting you want to explore? What got you started on this particular story?
I answered a bit of this in Day One but have some more meta for how and why I picked no-Reapers (and other tidbits and world details) for my “Air Needing Light” Mass Effect-based universe.
Ferus, why no-Reapers?
I immediately loved the world of Mass Effect and the whole visual phrasing of going off to retrieve an artifact where humanity was the galaxy’s quintessential new kid on the block. I thought that was great! And then Nihlus Kryik ended up dying in the prologue and we ended up with deep space eldritch horror monsters. Not sure if I should admit this, but that’s about the moment I went: oh, so it’s that kind of story.
I knew from that moment, early in my first playthrough of the first game, that I was going to just have to grin and bear it through the eldritch abominations being the big bad behind the scenes, whatever the game implied up front about Saren, the geth, and whatever else was going on in this universe.
It ended up feeling very flavor-of-the-week episodic with whatever villainous obstacle du jour we were going to encounter on each mission. In retrospect, I’m surprised I caught as much of the story as I did? I loved ME1 for the atmosphere and the background world, but I knew it wasn’t going to tell the stories I was most interested in.
The Reapers, in that sense, are just the primary plot element of ME1 that never worked for me.
While I can appreciate some excellent takes and rewrites in the fandom that have done great things with the Reapers, I wanted to go in a different direction.
Okay, so no-Reapers. What’s the central thesis of your plot?
I want to write something about the political tensions between the human Systems Alliance and the batarian Hegemony in the Skyllian Verge. That’s it, that’s the reason!
Batarians were criminally underutilized and ignored. Historically, they made contact with Citadel space 1000 years before the turians and 2000 years before humanity, and if you didn’t read the codex entries you’d never know it.
Wait, I thought Air Needing Light was about the First Contact War?
I’ve got roughly a trilogy planned. Every fic is designed to be standalone with some easter eggs present for anyone who reads all three.
There’s just enough background changes that I need to rewrite from the First Contact War, which gave me an opportunity to do something a little different with Saren’s character and throw him into a great political game. Nihlus also becomes a more central figure, as does his backstory.
The first fic is setting up Saren’s military background. While there are allusions to later plot points which will crop up in this fic, you won’t have to read it if you just want to skip to the other two.
The second fic is setting up a very different galactic situation and environment before Eden Prime. The focus is on a few critical events in the Skyllian Verge and the motivations for Saren recruiting Nihlus to the Spectres. Batarians and Nihlus’s mercenary background play more of a role. This is going to be the ‘turian mercenary / batarian culture’ fic.
All of this setup then serves as the backdrop for the third fic, covering a very different Eden Prime and Normandy SR-1 crew. Assuming I get there? I’ll be happy if I just finish the first two. The third fic would be the icing on the cake.
The third fic and outline breaks far enough from canon that I’d have to decide where to go after I finished it? So it’s just a different take on what I’d have liked to build into during ME1.
So what about all those one-shots? Got any more?
Funny story. I’ve got four one-shots in WIP. I think? Maybe more.
YOU WHAT.
Yeah, sorry, I’ve got a lot of ideas, I swear!
When are you posting next and what will it be?
Your guess is as good as mine. I’d like to think the next chapter(s) of Air Needing Light will finish up first, but if I have a really good day on a one-shot, that’ll get posted, instead.
I have to roll with what I feel like working on, or the drafting and revising would never end.
I’ve been working on chapter (2+) of Air Needing Light for months at this point, but the bright side is that the rest of it shouldn’t be as complicated as I get over this hurdle. I’m also introducing the last primary member of the cast of characters!
There’s a chance my next update for this story will be two or three chapters long...
#100daysofwriting#my writing#air-needing-light#mass effect fanfiction#saren arterius#turian#ferus chats#ferus is a nerd#nihlus kryik#fanfiction#fanfiction meta
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Day One
For @the-wip-project #100DaysOfWriting Challenge.
Prompt 001 - What keeps you writing?
Other than not being able to stop myself, who knows.
Full disclosure, I love everything about the writing process.
I’ve got a degree in English and I’ve been a professional freelance editor, as well as a tutor and a writing teacher. I wrote my undergrad thesis on revision.
But all of that is ancillary to the reason I write in the first place, or what keeps me going.
It never occurred to me that stopping (permanently) was an option.
Writing is my primary mode of communication, a method of reasoning and polishing thoughts, and a record of experience. It’s a fundamental processing tool.
I learned to touch-type because it would make it easier for me to write without handwriting, and my handwriting is shit. At this point I type fast enough to draft at the speed of thought, even if I spend quite a bit of time outlining and revising.
Most days I just don’t have the energy to get through a draft. One of the reasons I switched careers was that I needed to take the pressure to make money off of my creative process, which is lengthy and wandering and abstracted.
I do other things for money now.
I gave myself the gift of time, and patience, and space.
Without that pressure bearing me down into the black void of doubt and self-criticism, I’m free to gather as much material as I like and to take my time mulling it over and enjoying the journey.
The best thing I ever did for myself and my writing was forgive it for being what it needed to be.
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Why Mass Effect, Ferus?
Blame FFXIV Shadowbringers. The game writing is fantastic and I found myself wishing that someone would go back to the Mass Effect universe and do for those characters what Natsuko Ishikawa accomplished for the Warrior of Light and the Scions.
And then I thought -- why not me? Why don’t I try to do that.
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Why the “Air Needing Light” AU, and why Saren as the POV character?
The pandemic did a number on my emotions. I’d stopped writing outside of RP for a few years, and something in me just bubbled to the surface. This idea for a no-Reapers alternative universe, where galactic political intrigue and first contact with humanity are the focus, just wouldn’t let me sleep.
There’s an ME3 codex entry on turian Blackwatch that jokingly refers to rumors that Saren was a part of the organization, though “this was unlikely due to his youth.” And I thought: challenge accepted.
From a meta standpoint, then, it was about deciding how a turian biotic might reasonably avoid the cabals.
To my mind, the answer to that question was that a mistake had been made in training or evaluation, and that Saren was allowed to continue in his chosen Blackwatch career path because he’d supposedly washed out of biotic training. A young turian with biotic potential that just never came to fruition.
Not that uncommon! Except that, whoops, he’s actually biotic and he figures this out during his first combat deployment with Blackwatch. On Shanxi. During the First Contact War. ;D
Please look forward to the next chapter(s)! I’m hard at work on them.
#my writing#air-needing-light#meta#mass effect#mass effect fanfiction#on writing#ferus is a nerd#100daysofwriting
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Day Thirty
For @the-wip-project #100DaysOfWriting Challenge
Prompt: Did your main characters change as you wrote them? Was that the plan or did they surprise you?
I’ve always thought of drafting as the process of “writing into” characters.
My overall creative workflow for longer pieces starts with backstory and a sketch of the general structure. I do some rapid prototyping through dialogue snippets, just to give myself an idea of how characters are going to operate and their relative personalities.
The challenge for Air Needing Light is that I’m writing an entire team of characters. So a POV character with his four oc teammates, plus one they pick up later.
Each of these ocs has a variably fleshed out backstory, but they all have distinct personalities and voices.
One of my goals in my writing is to show characters growing and changing through their disparate stories. Change is in that sense inevitable.
I’m always pleased when my characters surprise me.
Ranike (breacher and heavy weapons) surprised me by being an exceptional leader and jumping right into command responsibility. That’s what Cirrus trained him to do, and (minor spoiler), when the team leader is incapacitated they’re able to move forward as a group and deal with adversity. Ranike is also ex-Hastatim and the one with the most Blackwatch experience aside from their leader.
Trevia is the other seasoned assaulter in the group, and she and Saren are the ones who bust in doors and work most often and most closely as a pair.
What makes this interesting is that Cirrus asked Trevia which of the hopefuls she wanted, and she picked Saren. They’re the same height and she liked his absolute grit.
Careful what you wish for, Trev!
I think it’s hilarious that she and Saren are at each other’s throats so often. Assuming they don’t kill each other in training, they’re the top hand-to-hand fighters on the team. Their joint methodical, aggressive, take-no-prisoners approach is something Trevia has always wanted in her teammates. Before she qualified for Blackwatch, Trevia was part of the 75th Armiger Legion cracking down on pirates in Council space.
And then there’s Ari! Ari is brilliant and lacks confidence after a rough patch in her assignments. Cirrus picked her up from another team that ended up being a poor fit for her personality. While she excelled in her duties, the other differences were becoming overwhelming.
Ari appreciates that both Trevia and Saren, while aggressive, are all-business and direct. Neither of them backstab each other (it’s always straight to the face!). Ari has done even better with clear objectives, standards, and NOT being the newest on the team. Saren takes all that attention and pressure off her. Ari was another young recruit from the ‘big’ Army who excelled in more or less any qualifications she took. Cirrus grabbed her out of her situation to make sure she got some field seasoning that didn’t end up destroying her career or her confidence.
Which leaves Cirrus, who yes, is named after the cloud formation (sue me). He’s trained so many Blackwatch operators that there is nothing he hasn’t seen or a job he hasn’t done on a team. There’s talk of Aeda (his similarly-ranked junior officer who appears briefly at the beginning of my fic) taking over his position when he retires, and Ranike being promoted and stepping into Aeda’s place for Ravus Three.
You’ll just have to wait to meet Vallen!
All of these characters, including Saren as the POV, constantly surprise me as I continue to get to know them.
#100daysofwriting#ferusaurelius#mass effect fanfiction#air-needing-light#blackwatch!saren#first contact war#turian ocs#blackwatch turian ocs#my ocs#no-Reapers AU#ferus chats#ferus rewrites the first contact war#my writing#on writing fanfiction#air-needing-light meta and character background#ranike lucinis#trevia vynos#ari lenius#cirrus minax#vallen haliat#saren arterius
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