I'll never forget when she played through Mass Effect and fell in love with that universe as quickly and deeply as I did, recognizing it as not only a landmark gaming experience, but also an exemplar of science-fiction beyond its medium. It's clear that her thirst for immersion was sated as it had never been before, and she found the storytelling just as stimulating as I always have. I sent her two SCs over the course of that playthrough: one asking her about the technical feasibility of mass effect fields, which, unsurprisingly, prompted her to reread all the pertinent codex entries... and another during her post-game analysis, asking her to hum along with Vigil's Theme (a song uncannily befitting her lovely voice, I'm sure you'll agree). Unwilling to disrupt her dissertation, she promised to do so at her next karaoke. I kind of wish that I hadn't requested it, because she collapsed into sobs midway through, overcome by bittersweet reminiscence. But hey, who could blame her or me?
She naturally continued on to the sequels, and while she held an appreciation for the ancillary elements like the humor and characterization, she explained—at length—how the airtight narrative integrity of the previous game seemed to have been lost. Spending fifteen minutes at a clip lamenting the degradation of the fiction, she confessed that the intellectual appeal was vastly diminished by the end of Mass Effect 2.
By the time she began Mass Effect 3, she was understandably cynical about the franchise, and was suitably acerbic in her criticism. While she maintained a semblance of positivity in regard to the game's incidentals, it was, by her own declaration, simply failing to invest her in the same way as its progenitor. By the end of the game, she'd become so disillusioned that she was barely fazed by the inanity of the trilogy's culmination/resolution.
I sent her a message—not even a SC—referring her to the original storyline proposed by Drew Karpyshyn himself (whom she's come to intensely admire, of course). Somehow, miraculously, she glimpsed my message amidst the rush of custom N7 emojis and eagerly sought out this tantalizingly pseudo-canonical alternative to the disappointment she'd been given. A few minutes later, she was proclaiming it to be the patently superior fiction, worthy of the first game, and proceeded to discuss it for the remainder of the stream.
That's my oshi, my inimitable Fictitia. How can any girl be so perfect, anons?
