This is your captain speaking, and this is your pilot joking

I drew a gorgeous original dnd character as a Quarian from Mass Effect for a fandom-crossover art event called Fandom Mayhem on Insta!

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.

it's vibes-based because one could argue Illium is more like that, which I get, but Bekenstein is kinda called humans' Illium anyway.

So every time I do Kasumi's mission and I'm outside looking at all those shapes in the distance, it really feels like I get flashbacks from Dad telling me about this adventure in space and how I'll like the Jedis, you know? He took me to see the movies in the theaters, which means that there were new showings in the 90's because I was still in primary school. Nostalgia is quite a thing isn't it?

Anyway, I love that we don't see everything of Bekenstein and all of the locations in Mass Effect but we can guess and project.

(side note: they also made a planet that resembles Virmire!)