Something witty this way comes.

Mass Effect Trilogy Appreciation Week

When: June 15 to 21 (2026)

Tag: #metrilogyweek2026

What the week is about: It's a special week to celebrate the trilogy, our Shepard, the characters, the universe, the lore!!! Make it your week as much as you want, by posting, liking and reblogging what you really enjoy as a fandom participant. Have fun! :)

How is it different from any other week? Appreciation weeks can get people excited about a specific fandom and be more active. It can bring more fandom content. The fact that there's one tag that fandom can check every day of that week is very nice for everyone who wants to share their thoughts and fanworks. It's also a good week to find friends in fandom! So if you're new, enjoy!!!

What can be posted in the tag: Fan fics, fanart, gifs, picspams, meta, memes, fanvids, etc.

What can't be posted in the tag: Avoid bashing ships and characters, respect other people, don't be a bigot, etc. Apply the usual fandom rules that mean we can all share a nice space together. Be mindful that other people think differently than you and that's okay.

Prompts

They can help to inspire and motivate you. You don't have to follow them but here they are below.

@gravitonspike suggested those prompts (thank you!):

Day 1- Background / "I like the person it's made of you" Day 2- Choice / "This ends now" Day 3- Alien / "The food of my people" Day 4- Ship/AI or After the war Day 5- Citadel / "Big place!" Day 6- Love / Laugh / "I'll protect you" Day 7- N7 / Free Space

And here are mine:

Day 1- Shepard (Background/Identity/Picture) Day 2- Shepard's relationships (Friends/Li/Lovers/Family) Day 3- Characters (Traits/Quirks/Meaning) Day 4- Non-Shepard Relationships (Romance/Friendship/Family/Care) Day 5- Ships/Universe (Normandy/Miky Way) Day 6- Lore (Leviathans/Reapers/Citadel/Protheans/...) Day 7- End/Future - "Thank you Mass Effect for..."

Mass Effect Trilogy Appreciation Week

When: June 15 to 21 (2026)

Tag: #metrilogyweek2026

What the week is about: It's a special week to celebrate the trilogy, our Shepard, the characters, the universe, the lore!!! Make it your week as much as you want, by posting, liking and reblogging what you really enjoy as a fandom participant. Have fun! :)

How is it different from any other week? Appreciation weeks can get people excited about a specific fandom and be more active. It can bring more fandom content. The fact that there's one tag that fandom can check every day of that week is very nice for everyone who wants to share their thoughts and fanworks. It's also a good week to find friends in fandom! So if you're new, enjoy!!!

What can be posted in the tag: Fan fics, fanart, gifs, picspams, meta, memes, fanvids, etc.

What can't be posted in the tag: Avoid bashing ships and characters, respect other people, don't be a bigot, etc. Apply the usual fandom rules that mean we can all share a nice space together. Be mindful that other people think differently than you and that's okay.

Prompts

They can help to inspire and motivate you. You don't have to follow them but here they are below.

@gravitonspike suggested those prompts (thank you!):

Day 1- Background / "I like the person it's made of you" Day 2- Choice / "This ends now" Day 3- Alien / "The food of my people" Day 4- Ship/AI or After the war Day 5- Citadel / "Big place!" Day 6- Love / Laugh / "I'll protect you" Day 7- N7 / Free Space

And here are mine:

Day 1- Shepard (Background/Identity/Picture) Day 2- Shepard's relationships (Friends/Li/Lovers/Family) Day 3- Characters (Traits/Quirks/Meaning) Day 4- Non-Shepard Relationships (Romance/Friendship/Family/Care) Day 5- Ships/Universe (Normandy/Miky Way) Day 6- Lore (Leviathans/Reapers/Citadel/Protheans/...) Day 7- End/Future - "Thank you Mass Effect for..."

Shepard: "You don't have any trouble wiping out your own people?"

Legion: "Every sapient has the right to make their own decisions. The heretics chose a path that prohibits coexistence."

Jacob: "So they 'have the right to make their own decisions', and you have the right to kill them for it."

Legion: "Their choice was to remove our right to make decisions using this virus. We choose to defend ourselves."

Okay, I followed through and spent a couple hours throwing together a font from these alien characters from the Mass Effect game assets. @crapeaucrapeau @omegastation

Like OP, I disagree that's it's a Quarian alphabet because you'll see these characters everywhere, including on the Citadel and Illium. I named it Trade Script after of the universal trade language that's mentioned in the codex.

I kept the letter designations the same and didn't redraw the characters. All I did was upscale them, sharpen them, and resize them to work as a font. This doesn't have anything beyond basic numbers and English letters, i.e. no punctuation. If I ever want them to be really crisp and pretty I might redraw and vectorize them in the future… but that's a lot of work, so probably not. If someone else wants to do that, they certainly can!

Feel free to use this for your fanworks! I certainly will for mine :)

Shepard (paragon): "You're worried that 'rewriting' them would eliminate that unique perspective."

Legion: "It would. Implicitly."

Shepard: "That's a problem for you?"

Legion: "Not every judgment made by the heretics was as poor as their aiding Sovereign.

"The virus changes the probability that a geth will reach a given outcome. It will affect all judgments, not just those related to Reapers."

I'm very curious what good judgments the heretics made were.

Is Legion referring to judgements made while the heretics were with Sovereign? Or perhaps judgments they made prior to leaving?

Also, Legion seems to be talking to themself again at the end there - they say that the virus will change all judgments the programs make.

So the programs perspective will fundamentally change; they will no longer be the same programs that made good judgments once upon a time.

Shepard: "I can see why you'd be conflicted about the heretics. In a way, whatever your do to them, you're doing to yourself."

Legion: "Yes. Once they return to us and upload their memories, we will share their experience of being altered."

Shepard: "Every other species I know of might be psychologically scarred by a traumatic experience like that."

Legion: "It is not clear if geth can be 'traumatized'. We do not feel pain as you do.

"We cannot predict what the effects will be."

Legion, given how the geth have emphatically avoided contact with organics since the Morning War...

I'm going with yes, geth can be traumatized. And thoroughly are.

Shepard: "I'm not deciding one way or the other until I know what we've got here. I want to start it up. Interrogate it."

Miranda: "If we activate it, there is no guarantee we can deactivate it again."

Jacob: "Bullets can."

Miranda: "That's not what I - "

Shepard: "Thank you - both of you - for your recommendations. I've made my decision."

Jacob: "Tali's going to freak when she hears about this."

Jacob's the one to consider Tali's reaction to a live geth on the Normandy.

Just like Jacob's the one to inform Tali of Edi.

And the more I play, the more I think Bioware was inspired by the Galactic Basic, which uses the Aurebesh alphabet, to create the trade language in Mass Effect:

If I understand correctly it originated in 1993 from Stephen Crane and evolved over time. Btw, I never know if this is the sort of things that are way too obvious to people and I'm behind and being a pain, or if it's just something that makes no sense at all. Or if it's worth thinking about. I'm no expert in SW lore, and no linguist, but I do see similarities.

Examples of our trade language:

It's not the same at all, which is why I used the word "inspired" but it kinda has that same feel to me? Like walking around the game in SWTOR, it feels familiar.

Anyway, I think this post with @dragonflight203's reaction and tag in a reblog (#for better and for worse bioware is not tolkien) made me realize that yeah Bioware is not Tolkien (and it wouldn't be fair to ask them to be) and perhaps I am thinking too much about this trade language because it might be the equivalent of Bioware putting a weird alien-like font in Word and having fun with it loool

BUT I am stubborn and I still want an alphabet!

In ME1:

Wrex on the Normandy: "I swore to recovery my family's battle armor. It was taken from him after the uprising."

Shepard: "Who has it?"

Wrex: "Originally, it was taken by the turian military. We weren't allowed armor or weapons after the war."

In ME2:

Dor plant description: "These measures are provided for under the terms of the krogan armistice. While the krogan were allowed to retain their government and personal weapons, any attempt to provide starship-mounted weapons to the clans on Tuchanka is punishable by law."

I suppose technically Wrex's family armor doesn't fall under 'personal weapons' but that feels like splitting hairs.

Usually, in a more general sense, I think we can accept suspension of disbelief when we feel it has a purpose. Shepard seems to know nothing about the galaxy in ME1 but we, the players, know it's not because they lack curiosity. It's because dialogues are used to explain the world to the players. So we get it, we know why it happens.

But when we don't get it, when there is no specific purpose, the suspension of disbelief is harder to maintain.

With Kasumi's loyalty missions, two things bother me from the very beginning:

Kasumi knows enough about a party like this to know how to dress Shepard so they wouldn't look out of place. She even explains her reasoning to Shepard. But she, who is also suppposed to get into the party, arrives dressed as usual. No matter how you look at, it makes her look suspicious and makes us think she will cloak herself. She just looks like a thief! So she dresses Shepard for the part but conveniently forgets about herself. And it's one thing if the character is kinda mediocre and not smart, we can let that pass, but we are told Kasumi is the best at this. She knows how to blend in. So that makes no sense. (Now someone might say they're going to a place with criminals but all of them are still dressed for the party. They don't look like thieves, smugglers, etc. And Kasumi would have been to a party like this in the past, she has enough experience to know what it's like.)

The entire game is based on a weird idea: half of the galaxy will recognize Shepard immediately, the other half will not and believe they are someone or something else. But to me, the fact that Kasumi drops info about this Gunn character on the extranet and we're supposed to believe that no one, not even Hock, will recognize Shepard, either on the extranet or face to face, is insane. Especially when rumors are flying around that Shepard is alive, when people love conspiracies or can actually see Shepard, either in pictures or when they answer a reporter's questions in ME2. The Conrad Verner of that world will obviously comment on a Gunn article to say "that's Shepard!!!". BUT ON TOP OF THAT, Kasumi chose a giant Saren statue as a "gift" to Hock. Saren, a character directly linked to Shepard. Might be fan service, but it doesn't help the situation here.

Everything weird about this in one picture:

And Hock asks Kasumi not to enter the party, saying something like Gunn is invited but their companion has to step aside. It's rude af right? For a party like this? And he knows they're coming from Ilium, so all the way to get there? Kasumi tells us it's probably normal: "We've never seen each other in person and no one knows what I look like. Just watching his ass, I'm sure. I can't blame him." Come on lol.

And inside the party we see some of those criminals entered with companions. Like those three:

Now inside the party, anyone with eyes can see Shepard is behaving weirdly but we can suspend disbelief again because:

The game has this habit of already making us believe that people drop datapads everywhere with crucial non-encrypted or badly encrypted information. So the security is shit but it's shit everywhere, and we know mercs aren't always good at their job.

Hock knows they will get into the vault no matter what so he's not going to stop them even if Shepard is obviously going downstairs, upstairs, checking security guards, following power cables, etc.

And to be clear, I don't think the fault is on Kasumi here (I love her!!!!), I think it's the writing. I also believe they wanted to keep covering Kasumi (which is not a bad thing obviously) but that meant they didn't want to dress her for the occasion.

Why not make Kasumi arrive cloaked from the beginning then? So Hock doesn't see her at all. Change Shepard's looks a bit so Dunn doesn't look exactly like Shepard. That's totally doable in that world! Also change the statue so it's still an impressive gift to Hock, but it's not Saren. Subtle changes, but without changing the mission too much.