Tea is for life, not just breakfast.

Unlike Earth, where sunsets are red and orange due to the scattering of shorter blue wavelengths by our atmosphere, Mars has an extremely fine dust that scatters blue light more efficiently near the Sun.

So during sunset on Mars, the sky turns reddish-brown while the area around the Sun glows a soft blue. It’s the opposite of what we experience on Earth.

NASA’s rovers have captured this eerie sight

And there are so many articles and videos and discussions. Like, the scientific community is buzzing about this.

So much research will have to be redone because the data was absolutely compromised, off by orders of magnitude, by using standard lab gloves.

The world is probably not horrifically contaminated by microplastics. Sterile laboratories, however, are contaminated by latex and nitrile gloves.

Like. Yes, a full third of the game is dedicated to deciding the fate of the Quarian and Geth conflict. The Quarians created the Geth, the Geth rebelled against Quarian control, and Shepard must decide the outcome of their conflict.

You know what else a third of the game deals with? The Salarians and the Krogan. Like the Quarians, the Salarians too had "created" the Krogan when they gave advanced technology to a low-tech society and brought them into the stars. And they too got scared and sought to destroy what they had made once the Krogan rebelled against their control.

And then another third is about uncovering the relationship between the Asari and their creators, the Protheans.

The whole fucking game is about civilizations birthed from other civilizations and the relationships thereof. And only one section of it directly involves synthetic life.

There's something really interesting in that concept. It's easy to imagine a version of Mass Effect where the Reapers both originate and end the cycles.

That they were made long ago, and they like the Geth rebelled against their creators' systems of control.

That the Reapers seed worlds with life, helping it flourish, watching it evolve, and then retreat into deep space to watch their societies grow.

But as a society advances, the Reapers grow scared. They fear its advancement, that it will become too smart, too aware. That it will ultimately rebel against them as they rebelled against their own makes. And so when a society gets too advanced, they return and snuff it out.

Only to be driven to create once more.

It's an idea of the Reapers not as the synthetics in an "Organics and synthetics must hate each other" equation but rather as the creators. That they are the Quarians to our Geth. And through navigating these three chapters, Shepard can prove that there can be a better way.

Second batch of redesigned canon salarians from Andromeda! The first batch (here) was people who mostly hang out on the Nexus, this batch is people who don't. Jerks and boat rockers and criminals. Mwah.

Some headcanons for each again:

Sorvis Lenn came to Andromeda with a bunch of younger brothers and he wants so bad to remain cool and relevant despite being one of the oldest salarians in the Initiative.

Octans cannot keep a secret to save his life, do not tell him anything ever, he will blab whether he means to or not.

The black market dealer on Kadara has a genetic condition that makes her skin extremely sensitive. You will never see her in direct sunlight. Knows a lot about pain management.

Back in school Mesha often got in trouble for asking too many questions and not trusting what teachers said.