#fshawson

my hands are up!!!!! bobbing to that fshawson beat…

so, i love miranda. such a complex character that starts off so cool and detached but keeps revealing layer after intriguing layer, and she seems to think that telling you about how unnatural she is will convince you to view her that way, but really what it does is humanize her instead, and you end up with a woman who is surprisingly easy to sympathize with.

and also a woman who is clearly a lesbian. by the way. @ bioware @ ea @ whoever just bought ea.

i could launch into miranda analysis here but this isn’t the time or place. [EDIT: I did it anyway.] but femshep x miranda is SO GOOD because here miranda, who is convinced she’s only worthy because of how she was made and not because of who she is or what she’s done, works her ass off for years and spends three billion credits to bring back (read: recreate) (which is a form of making) a woman that is worthy of all this effort only because of who she is and what she’s done. she’s here making who she’s always wanted to be but believes she can never be. she’s here putting the finest tech in her, trying to give her the best chance for success, and there’s no way she isn’t thinking about whether someone would do that for her and knowing: no, they’d just clone her again, and it doesn’t matter who she’s become or what she’s done. no one would try again for miranda. only for her base stats.

and that woman she remade doesn’t play by her rules — just like miranda didn’t play by her father’s. that woman she made can be manipulated for a time, but not controlled. that woman she made, that should by all rights be Her accomplishment too, continues being great in a way that’s completely unrelated to all the fancy damn tech, and keeps rubbing that greatness in miranda’s face. that woman she made and that she knows so intimately and is so bizarrely jealous of is human and an individual, and all the research and DNA analysis in the world couldn’t have allowed her to anticipate what she’s truly like. and it’s that woman that simply will not be convinced that miranda isn’t human just like her, no matter how plainly she tells her the facts.

miranda doesn’t really know her sister at all. she doesn’t know anyone in her situation, but she knows shepard now. and if they were both made, deliberately and on purpose (disregarding how different that purpose is) then for the first time in her life, that’s something foundational that she has in common with someone. and the more they interact, the more she realizes that things in common don’t have to be a recurring theme between them that she has to keep thematizing and rehashing. they can also be an equalizer. something neither has to bring up with the other, for it is understood.

damn it, she’s understood.

late in doing this but thank you for the tag @dispatchwithlove! tagging @kesla @navigatorwrongway @laerugo and @skogrr. pls enjoy this snippet from my horny fshawson piece in which shepard discovers that she can't get off post-resurrection