#gammaraydeath

ahh hi!

i really enjoy seeing how things take shape and come together. from concept to execution: having an idea and then having something tangible to show for it. more recently (within the last year or so) i've started "sketching" some scenes out first instead of trying to write them out fully from the jump. it's usually a bunch of rushed half-sentences, maybe a few quick lines of dialogue, and it's very rough but gives me something to work with when i come back to it. this is typically when it's either late and i should already be in bed, or when i'm short on time. coming back and tweaking this also sometimes leads to the scene ending up very different than what i had usually planned on too! i like visuals so i'm pulling up links lmao. yes it's text instead but my point remains:

like in the beginning of the second chapter of triptych, in the first draft of the scene garrus was going to bring shepard up to her cabin and sleep on the couch, but that didn't work because he'd already been up to her cabin twice before. in the second version, she came back to hang out in the battery with him, but that didn't work either because the tone felt off. in the final version, he asks if she wants to spar in lieu of talking through her tangled up emotions. the heart of the scene remains the same though, which is important to me!

or looking at my current drafts, in my #wipdwednesday from a few weeks ago, it was supposed to be a short scene to establish setting and tone for the main fic with shepard in her cabin having a moment, but then a few lines of exposition turned into a few lines of dialogue and it added more meat, more emotional weight, i thought. it's a flashback, but it works better to establish her relationship/friendship with garrus too

First of all, one million kisses for you my beloved thank you so much for the ask <3 my friend <3 my friend the gnome in my inbox <3

Okay so... I have loved the ME3 default Shep since ME3 came out. I was soooo upset I couldn't play as her in ME1 and ME2, and that's why I made Cassidy. Also it was a time in the fandom when people kinda looked down on you for enjoying default Shep, so I felt like I "had" to have a custom Shepard to participate in fandom. So like in my older fics I will namedrop Cassidy's first name a lot 😅 it's like... painfully obvious when I look back on that writing now lol

I think it was after MELE came out that the general public shifted towards appreciating default shep more -- I don't know if it was just getting to see her the most beautiful perfect woman ever my wife and the love of my life, from the start of her journey to the end without mods, or if it's shifting fandom trends in video game fandoms in general and not just mass effect, or if it's people like @milkywayes showing a lot of love for default shep and that sentiment spreading across the fandom, but that shift was definitely there. We're at a time in the fandom when there's a lot of art of default femshep being created! Which I love because my wife love of my life etc etc.

But I also still love Cassidy. I think it's now that I feel more "allowed" to enjoy default Shep that I've also allowed myself to take Cassidy in the direction I wanted to without feeling like I "have to" include her in my fanworks to be a "real" fan (all of this in quotations because it's a huge oversimplification of the complex feelings and fandom dynamics at play there). I don't "have to" do anything with her, and that's allowed me to do what I want with her.

I'm not sure how I choose which Shepard to use. With my fics, I don't think of them as the "same" Shepard every time? I kind of treat each of them as a separate thing. I have a small collection of Cassidy-specific fics on my AO3 profile, but even those aren't in the same timeline. Every one-shot I write is to me completely standalone and disconnected from everything else I write. Like a million different timelienes I guess? lol I'm not sure how to explain it. I just don't think of them as existing together.

Cassidy has been my vehicle for examining Shepard's sense of duty and self-sacrifice a lot, especially in ME3, so when I write a fic that focuses on that aspect of Shepard's character, I tend to go with Cassidy over default or unspecified Shepard. Most of the time though I really don't care or specify: in the end, Cassidy Shepard is just as much Shepard as the default Shepard, so it won't make a difference if I drop her first name in there or not because it's really irrelevant. Shepard is Shepard or something lol

As for art, I feel like Cassidy is easier to draw? I do find myself drawing default Shep more because I'm just like deeply into her, but I've been trying to get myself to make more art of Cassidy as well recenty -- after all, other people will draw default Shep too, but Cassidy is mine! I should force everyone to look at her..... When ArtFight is over, I promise to draw a lot of her so everyone has to see her....

a number of times! here are a few:

The first time he’d done any sort of space walk his equilibrium had been thrown by just how loud his breathing was in his helmet. He’d rejoined his squad in their bunks, the rest of them also contending with the shift back to the familiar artificial gravity of a ship. 

Garrus shifts his weight to his right. He’s tired. He wants to go back up to the cabin. Wants to close his eyes and open them at a bar somewhere, hear what took you so long?

He can hear the subtle shift, the war between Commander and Shepard for command.

hahaha hi!!

"me 3 post" is a post-canon fic that started out with throwing words (see: bricks) around with @mounted-archer and is now slowly taking shape! it's shakarian post-destroy figuring out who they are as people and where they fit into a galaxy that's being held together by its fingernails. it's mostly character driven now, but it's taking form. one of my favorite parts has been filling in all the background tidbits and highlighting their relationships with other characters too. (it's tied directly into "me 3 post notes" which is pretty much what it says on the tin and backing up a lot of DMs and plot points from discord.)

omg hiii

Featuring a pair of OCs I've had on the backburner for about ten years or so!

[Private chat server logs, circa 2185]

Gammaaaaaa!!!!!!

It's such a hard pull between character art/design and kisses/almost kisses