Shepard Tattoo: Complete!

Okay hi, I haven't blogged in forever! Mostly because I've been dealing with not-very-crippling anxiety and depression, which is just crippling enough to make me not want to put myself out there very much, both in real life and online. It's okay, it's being dealt with and isn't that big of a deal, but I thought I'd explain!

That said, I wanted to share my beautiful Commander Shepard tattoo with you guys now that she's healed. I love her so, so much. I'm thrilled with her, she means the world to me, and I'm so happy with her I want to die. The artist, Gin Hicks, is incredible. She really, really is. My crappy selfies do not do justice to her delicate linework or her subtle coloring. It's such a lovely tattoo and well worth every penny. If you live in Portland or nearby I would highly recommend her! She's attentive, listened to what I wanted, and even though I gave her a lot of artistic freedom, she came up with a piece that I'm so proud to wear. I want to cry just looking at it.

Back in July I blogged about my feels regarding Commander Shepard (from the game Mass Effect, obvs), which will give you a tiny bit of an idea of just how much I adore her. It's hard talking about my love for Shep without sounding like a complete freak who is 100% removed from normal society and real life in any form. I have a hard enough time articulating my love for Mass Effect itself without feeling like a cray cray, and there are plenty of people out there who I know love it just as much as I do.

Shepard is, to be totally honest, my first real fictional female hero. I fall for male characters all the time. I identify with them, lust after them, admire them, take inspiration from them. But I've never felt quite the same way about any female characters, until now. And Shepard blows them all out of the water. She is everything to me. If she were real, I would kill for her. I would die for her if she asked. I wish I was exaggerating but I'm pretty sure I'm not?? I would legitimately sacrifice my life for Shepard's cause. I'd follow her into hell, and I wouldn't follow the Doctor there. Shepard is a fucking force. She means so much to me I get physical pangs sometimes when I think about her, okay. In my chest. Physical chest pangs.

Whatever you guys, it's fine it's not a big deal. It's fine.

Anyway, I think David Anderson, a superior officer in the Systems Alliance Navy, puts it well (and in a way that makes me weep like a tiny child every time I listen to the voice recording in his apartment):

Thing is, you never heard a complaint. Never once got 'No, sir. I can't do that.' She never hesitated. Few people know what Shepard's been through. I'd like to think I come pretty close. And I worry sometimes she forgets: there's a whole bunch of people who lose sleep over her getting back home. Maybe it doesn't need to be said. Maybe we're too dumb to say it. 

Soldiers like the Commander are rare. Women like Shepard... even more rare.

Let's Talk About Commander Shepard

Let's just take a moment to talk about Commander Shepard, shall we? I have already filled the first four pages of my brand new journal with thoughts about Shepard, because I'm a terrible person who writes about fictional characters in her journal at the age of 28. But I'm not done thinking about Shepard, and I'm not done writing about her. So because my blog has already devolved into an empty, echoing place where I very occasionally yell into the ether about my love for Loki or a video game or whatever, I may as well just carry on in that vein and shriek about Commander Shepard for a while.

Commander Shepard is the protagonist, and the character you play, in the Mass Effect trilogy. From the very beginning you shape her, from her face to her first name to her personality and her moral compass. She is your baby. And she can even be male if you want, which is 100% the wrong choice, but fine if you wanna listen to that guy's derpy voice for 240+ hours I guess.

But Shepard isn't just my baby, the lens through which I saw the world in Mass Effect. She's my hero. She's a hero, yeah, but she's also mine. Not just because I created her, in the limited way that one can in a video game like this. Not just because it's up to her to unite the galaxy and lead a rag-tag band of badasses to save the day. But also because she never understood why she should be the one to do it. Because she has a group of friends and allies who love her, who would kill and die for her, and because she would do the same for them. Because she's scared she'll fuck up. And because she does fuck up sometimes, and can be an ass sometimes, and punches reporters in the face sometimes. But she's also kind and risks her life for strangers and sucks at dancing and doesn't have time for your shit. She's real and complex and I love her.

I can't think of another female character in a game, in anything, who has come to life so fully and won me over so quickly and completely. Shepard is written to be gender neutral, which rescues her from the typical gender-specific tropes that writers fall into so often with video game characters. And because you have full control over her dialogue, her reactions, and her decisions, she comes to life in subtle and complex ways that I haven't seen before in a female character.

Shepard is mine, an extension of me, a woman who is my idol but isn't free of fault. She's made tough choices and has broken hearts. And as much as she accomplishes, she still doesn't understand why she's the one who's expected to save the galaxy. She's just a marine who happened to be at the right place and the right time when shit hit the fan. She's no chosen one and she's no hero -- at least not at first. But she's my hero. And I love her so much.

I would follow Shepard anywhere, do anything for her, and trust her unequivocally. I know she's a character in a video game, and I know that everything she does is guided by me, and maybe that's why I love her so much -- because she is me, in a sense. But I've cried for her, shrieked like an idiot when she fell in love, laughed with her, felt rage at those who wronged her, fought with her. All of those emotions were real. And while the game itself is just a game, what I've taken away from it is true and genuine. I experienced a story that was so visceral I spent the entire last hour of the game sobbing brokenly. (And I still cry when I listen to the music from the sad parts because I'm the worst.)

Those hours and hours I spent with Shepard mean so much to me. That experience means so much to me. I'll write later about the game beyond my Shepard-related feels, but she is at the crux of my all-out adoration of Mass Effect. I cannot say enough how important she is to me, or how important she is to gaming and the future of female characters.

But I'll shut up now, as I'm sure you're all like, "Wow Meg you are horrible stop blogging about things we don't care about." Well I'm sorry! Not I'm not. Now go play Mass Effect if you haven't, for the love of all things good in this world. Go. Get the fuck out. Go now. Right now.

Hey, people who give other people shit for reading shit: STOP

Since when do we have the right to state a preference for what people read and what they don't read? People who mock others for reading books like Twilight, making the broad assumption that whoever reads it must be too stupid or confused to make a better choice about what they read, can shove it up their ass. Seriously. 


I'm an intelligent person who enjoys "classic literature" or whatever bullshit I'm supposed to read, I'm getting my goddamn masters degree in fucking WRITING for godsake, but I actually enjoyed reading the Twilight books. Oh shit, fuck, what does it mean??? SMART PEOPLE CAN READ STUPID BOOKS? Yes, they can. And so can non-smart people! And every person ever. Because they are allowed to make that choice. 


And, weirdly enough, they're allowed to read whatever trashy books they want, in addition to Twilight. When I see a woman reading Fifty Shades of Grey, I don't think, "Oh I wish she would read something better than that." Fuck, no. I think, "Oh I bet one of her friends recommended that, or she heard the buzz and thought she'd see what it was all about. I wonder if she likes it?" I've seen professional women reading it, teenage girls, women my age, everyone. Just because it seems cool to hate on something due to its popularity doesn't make it so. 


Yeah, from the snippets I've read online, the writing in Fifty Shades is terrible. It is horrible. It is so bad. But so what? Intelligent people are not REQUIRED by some law to read ONLY books that are well-written and high quality. Nor are people of average or low intelligence! Surprise! 


I mean what's the standard here? Are we only allowed to read classic literature like A Tale of Two Cities and Lady Chatterley's Lover? Oh, wait. Shit. Dickens wrote popular literature and Lady Chatterley was considered porn at the time. So... maybe we should only read books that express a high standard of style? Like prose poems? Yeah, let's just read artsy books that don't tell a story but are just written really well from now on. No more stories, no more enjoying yourself, just quality writing OKAY? Otherwise PEOPLE WILL JUDGE YOU.


Give me a goddamn break. 

Yeah, it really annoys me when people claim, in all seriousness, "Stephanie Meyer is suuuuch a good writerrrr!" And it probably annoys me extra because I'm a writer and it's frustrating to see someone with such a poor grasp of the language becoming so successful as a writer. So yeah, that annoys me. But I don't assume that just because someone is reading a badly-written book that "OMG THEY DO NOT UNDERSTAND BOOKS AND LITERATURE, I WISH I COULD SHOW THEM A REAL QUALITY BOOK INSTEAD OF THAT TRIPE." Who the fuck are you to assume what this person has or has not read? My goddamn dad has read the Twilight books. He liked Bella. He also reads a fuckton of nonfiction, philosophy, news sites, blogs, and other fictional works. He's written a series of essays on philosophy and the evolution of consciousness, and published them in his own book. So... are you gonna tell him that you're glad he's reading, but wish he'd just read something else, something better? No, because you now know that he does read other things, "better" things, and you'd sound like a condescending dick if you said that to him. So why is some stranger on the tube any better? Why is someone on the internet more worthy of your patronizing shit than someone who you know is well-read?

OH AND ALSO, guess what, even if somebody loves Stephanie Meyer and thinks she's the best writer in the land and wants her to write a million more Twilight books, you are STILL a dick if you belittle them for reading trash. Yeah you can be annoyed; it is annoying, I'll admit, when people genuinely don't realize how horrible some things are (e.g. Justin Bieber, Jeffrey Campbell Litas, Comic Sans). But that doesn't mean it's cool for you to make fun of them, feel sorry for them, or be condescending all over them for reading what they want to read. OKAY?

I mean for fuck's sake. I'm gonna read Fifty Shades of Grey as soon as I get a chance. I may not finish it due to the shitty writing, but I'm super curious about it, and I want to see what all the fuss is about, and shit, it's not like my life is ruined and I'm sullied forever and I can never wear white at my wedding because I've read glorified AU Twilight fanfic.

So SERIOUSLY people. Be elitist assholes in private all you want, but just shut up and let people read whatever they want. You don't know the whole story, and more often than not you'll make yourself look like a prick. So stop. Thank you.

Faraway Friends

Feeling sentimental again. Or did I ever stop? I suppose my life is an unending cycle of sentimentality and melancholy, interspersed with moments of sleeping. I'm usually relatively happy, but lately I'm feeling like such a useless lump that it's hard. I am a useless lump; Greg confirmed it. I won't deny it. It's true.

I miss my friends. I mean, I always did, but tonight it actually hurts. Greg's absence has been hurting me every day since I flew out of Portland, I cry almost every night (I feel so pathetic typing that), but the absence of my friends has been a dull ache. Of course I miss them, but then I'm used to friends moving, going to college, leaving Montana, joining the Peace Corps, going to grad school. I was even the one leaving, once, but nobody really missed me except my mom, and I went to Portland where my best friends were. Now I've left them, not even a full two years later, and I'm alone again. Tonight the dull ache is a sharper pang.






I'm being a sadsack but if I can't be a sadsack in my own blog where the hell can I be one? I guess I'm writing this for my friends back in Portland, mostly. I miss you guys. I miss you guys so much. At the end of this stint in England, what I want most is to go back to Portland and see you all again, drink Oregon beer with you again, eat a shit-ton of Thai food because there's so much of it in Portland (and so little by comparison in London), and watch Trek in the Park or have coffee on Hawthorne. I think of home, and it's Portland. It's all of you there.

I don't know if I'll make it back. There are so many things that could happen in a year. I could be taken on by a British publishing house, doomed to spend years in London working with my agent and editing and promoting my novel (ha!). I could decide to fly back to Utah to meet Greg, and stay there for years. I might decide I need to cut all earthly bonds and ascend, like Daniel Jackson in SG-1. I could even fall so deeply in love with England that I could never imagine leaving. You never know. I accept that. I do. I think I do, a little. Maybe? ...I accept, anyway, that I don't know what's ahead.






I do know that if I had my way, "home" would always be in Portland. I'd have a city to go back to. Because ever since Missoula grew too small for me, I've only felt at home in one place, and it was my one-bedroom apartment in Southeast Portland. I fucking loved that place. It was the best place. Greg and I made it ours. It was our cozy Portland place. I miss it.




I don't regret a thing, though. London? I love it here! It's London! But it's huge, chaotic, and grasping. I imagine when it's done with me it'll spit me out, like an owl pellet, whereas Portland would always hold me close to its beating heart. I don't mind. London might be too much for me in the long-term, but there's always the rest of England. And the world.

You never know.

I do know that I miss you all. My friends. You mean more to me than anything else in the world. So come visit me, you giant lazy butts. ♥

Finally, though, I'm more than a pile of fucking grateful for Shaun, my fellow ex-patriot trapped in London's wonderful claws. We love it here. It's absolutely amazing. We're like adventurers, explorers, spelunking in the great foreign recesses of the city. Sometimes we get lost, feel lonely or homesick, have weird emotional outbursts for no reason, but at least we have each other. And we make this city pretty damn fun when we have a mind to.