When the Battlestar Galactica makes their desperate jump towards Earth, lead by Kara Thrace and four of the Final Five Cylons, they don’t find the Earth they expect. They find an Earth encircled by giant black ships and a woman calling herself Commander Shepard telling them to leave before the Reapers attack them. With Earth not the safe haven they’d hoped for, a multi-species conflict raging around them, and the enemy Cylons still a threat, the Colonial Fleet and their Cylon allies struggle to make a place for themselves in this new universe.
Chapter 17 is up! In which Caprica and Baltar make decisions and Tyrol gets a rude awakening about Earth religion. (Going to try posting updates to Tumblr again. Let’s see how long that lasts.)
Are you a rare pair shipper? Do you love those pairings that canon never supplied? Or maybe you’re just good ol’ shipping trash who loves to ship almost EVERYONE in the Mass Effect universe? Then boy do we have good news for you!
The Spectre Requisitions Rare Pair Exchangeis here! We’re a rare pair exchange that’s open for the Mass Effect Trilogy and Mass Effect Andromeda. We exchange fanfiction and fanart, and we welcome fans both new and old!
Nominations begin: January 24 Nominations end: January 31 Signup begins: February 1 Signup ends: February 14 Assignments:February 17 (at latest) Assignments due: March 27 Assignment reveal: April 3 Creator reveal: April 10
We’re baaack! Esteemed creators, Spectre Requisitions is returning for another year of rare pair goodness! Mark the dates on your calendar and get those thinking caps on for nominations!
If you’re not already in the Discord, come join us! It’s open year-round for all your rare pair needs.
Can you imagine, if Archie’s daughter had access to AITA-reddit in 2012, after the Last Dam Job?
“AITA for ignoring my father after I found out he has a secret daughter and he disappered on me for days?
I (F, 42) recently visited my father (M, 72) with my husband and daughter. The relationship between me and my father has been a bit strained lately, ever since my mother passed about 6 months ago. Since he’d retired from his job as an accountant a few years ago, he doesn’t really have anything to do. I had been worried he was getting lonely by himself in his old house, and suggested several solutions such as moving closer to me and my family, or even residential care (he uses a cane, and can barely walk at all on bad days) but he always shot me down, telling me he was fine. He’s always been a bit distant, and can be really stubborn, so I didn’t think anything of it, but I live out of state and can’t exactly take care of him like this.
During the recent visit, my daughter, my father and me went for a walk in the neighbourhood, where I raised the topic again. However, we were interrupted, when a strange blond woman (F, early 30s?) bumped into us. My father turned around and called out to her, and asked she return his wallet, my wallet and my daughters candy! She must have pickpocketed us without me noticing, but my father seemed strangely happy about it. I asked whether they knew each other and my father just hooked his arm around the woman, said "That’s my daughter!” and walked off with her. I was too shocked to follow, and by the time I had caught myself I couldn’t find them. We returned to my father’s place and tried to call him several times, but he didn’t pick up. My husband is far more patient than I am, and told me my father would surely be back and that this must be a misunderstanding, but when he still wasn’t back by several hours later, we got worried. We asked around the neighbourhood, but no one had ever seen the blond woman before. We contacted the police but they told us they couldn’t help. The next morning I’d gotten a message from my father, telling me he’d be dealing with some “important family business” for a few days and that we shouldn’t worry about him. I tried calling him again, but couldn’t reach him.
I didn’t know what to do by then, so I started searching through his bedroom and his office. I don’t even know what I was looking for anymore, but after a while I found some hidden compartment behind one of his book shelves, with a box of fake ID’s and newspaper clippings, mostly about robberies all over the world. This on its own wouldn’t be too worrisome, as my father is a an art enthusiast and most of the articles seem to be about art robberies, I’d chalk it up to a weird part of his hobby. But for example one of the newspaper articles is from a french paper about a men dying in a car crash about 10 years ago, which matches one of the fake ID’s. I still don’t know what to think, but there’s clearly more going on. I couldn’t find anything on the woman, however.
By then, my husband suggested we should go home the next day, as the end of our planned stay was coming up anyway and I was clearly shaken. However, the next morning, my father returned, happy and acting as if nothing had happened, and I snapped. I yelled at him about how worried we were, and that I had found his secret stash of ID’s in his office. He got mad in turn, told me that I had no business snooping through his stuff. We said some pretty hurtful things to each other, but in the end he confirmed the woman’s name, and that she was “his daughter”. He told me in no uncertain terms that he would not discuss anything about her, as it wasn’t my business and that we should just “trust him”, but he ensured me that he had never cheated on my mother. I don’t know how he thinks that works, since the woman was clearly younger than me and my brother.
Still fuming I packed up my family and went home. He tried calling me several times in the following week, but I was so pissed I blocked his number and his facebook. My husband suggested I
should attempt to talk to my father again, and that I should try to calm down and try to salvage the situation, as there was clearly more to the story than we knew. But I have a right to be mad and frankly, since my father is making no effort, I want nothing to do with this mess anymore. Am I overreacting?
Edit: Thank you for the many supportive messages, it feels good to know I wasn’t overreacting. In the end, I informed my brother about the situation, like some of you suggested. He also had no idea what to make of any of this. In the end, however, my father came to visit (unannounced) and we had a long conversation I’m still a bit overwhelmed from. My father told us he met the woman when she had been a homeless teenager. She tried to rob him, and he caught her and decided to help her out, so over the next few years he gave her financial support. Her recent visit was because she ran into some kind of legal trouble (he remained cagey on what exactly, but assured us the situation was resolved) and reached out to him for help. He said he never told us about her because he knew how it would look if a man like him suddenly came home with a strange child. Our family is fairly wealthy, but at least that would explain all the extra work shifts he used to take on. When we asked why he didn’t put her into foster care, he said that she had had severe behavioural issues back then, and would have just ended up on the street regardless, at least by providing her with money and shelter, he knew she would be fine. There’s still some things I don’t understand and I’m still reeling, but I really hope he’s telling the truth and that he was a misguided philanthrope instead of cheating on my mother. I never would have expected anything like that from him. I still feel like I’m missing something, and he is far from forgiven, but at least some of the situation seems to be resolved.
Edit²: So it has been a while, but I guess you people deserve an update because a lot has happened since then. Since my father refused to give out any information on the woman, I kind of dropped the subject and our weekly calls, because I was still mad at him from keeping such a big secret. However, since my brother and I both felt like we were missing information, he ended up badgering my father about the woman’s contact information, and my father eventually caved. We managed to contact her, and she essentially confirmed what my father had told me about her. She used to be a homeless orphan until my father caught her pickpocketing. They hadn’t had much contact over the past few years anymore, and he had explicitely forbidden her from interacting with us the entire time they knew each other. I don’t think she felt too comfortable interacting with us, but I felt kind of bad and extended the offer that we could keep in contact… She really didn’t seem like she was lying, and if anything, the whole situation isn’t her fault anyway.
Long story short, we called each other a few times since then, and I ended up asking her about the fake ID’s and some other weird things she mentioned. She went really quiet and said that this was my father’s secret to tell.
Fed up, my brother and I joined forces to get all of the answers out of my father once and for all. It was a very intense conversation, but here is the gist of it: Apparently, my father was faking being an accountant for our entire lifes. He used to be a successfull international art thief up until about ten years ago, when he “retired from the business” by faking his death in a car accident, which was about the time he found the pickpocketing woman. He let her stay in a warehouse (?!) and trained her up to be his successor as a thief, although my father claims she also got out of that business recently and is now running a restaurant with her boyfriend. My mother never found out about any of this. Also, his cane doubles as some sort of taser, which I found out because my daughter almost zapped herself with it.
Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought anything like this could be real, and I really hope this is the last surprise in this particular mess. Thank you for your support and all the comments. I’m still mad at my father, but the entire situation has become so absurd I really don’t know what to think anymore.“
Hello! I haven’t been using Tumblr much recently, and I know I picked up some new followers since starting to post Critical Role drabbles. So here’s a little bit of information on me and my primary fandom stuff.
RL Info: She/her/hers, mid-30s, Librarian/Archivist, living in the Mid-Atlantic USA, married, and mom to a beautiful, amazing little girl (born mid-2019).
Fandoms I Write In: Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Person of Interest, Critical Role.
The Critical Role Thing You Might Know Me From: Parallels, where I thought about, er, parallels between C1 and C2 characters that weren’t just comparisons between the same player’s characters. Note that I wrote this relatively early in C2 - aka in the Molly era, where a lot of secrets had yet to be revealed.
Long-Term Writing Projects: I have a bunch of WIPs, but the ones that I’m most likely to continue are my two Mass Effect Giant Crossovers of Doom.
No More Gallifreys: Mass Effect x Doctor Who (2005). Main characters: Female Shepard and the 11th Doctor. Eleven joins the Normandy mid-ME2; clashes with Shepard at first, makes friends with Mordin and Tali, and learns a surprising truth about himself and his connection to the ME universe.
In retrospect, large-scale crossover was not a great choice for my first foray into fanfic, and I got discouraged for a while - but there was a moment recently where I genuinely wanted to continue, so I ended the 2.5 year gap by resolving one cliffhanger and introducing a far less dramatic one.
Exodus Into Fire:Mass Effect x Battlestar Galactica (2003). Main character: Kara “Starbuck” Thrace; secondary important characters: Female Shepard, William Adama, Sharon “Athena” Agathon, Galen Tyrol, and likely others as the story goes along. The Earth that Starbuck guides Galactica to mid-S4 turns out to be Shepard’s Earth at the beginning of ME3. With Earth not the safe haven they’d hoped for, a multi-species conflict raging around them, and the enemy Cylons still a threat, the Colonial Fleet and their Cylon allies struggle to make a place for themselves in this new universe.
At one point, I’d intended to complete No More Gallifreys before starting this one. Hah. There’s an alternate universe where I had the Mass Effect romance be Male Shepard/Tali instead of Shakarian. Female Shepard was a main character at the start, but Starbuck is now the linchpin. I learned from my previous mistakes and chucked ME canon out the airlock sooner, or kept it offscreen if it wasn’t changed by the presence of BSG characters. I’m determined to fit a crossover romance in there somewhere, besides Starbuck hooking up with Septimus Oraka at Afterlife (why? Because she could).
Fandom Exchanges: After creating an excessive amount of spreadsheets for them, @acequeenking asked me to help moderate the two Bioware Rare Pair exchanges that she started - Spectre Requisitions (Mass Effect) and Black Emporium (Dragon Age). Running these two exchanges has turned me into a serious multi-shipper, and I have fun with both of them every year.
Doing those two also inspired me to create the Exchange of Interest for Person of Interest. This one’s for any and all POI relationships. I love this show so much - the lore is amazing and incredibly detailed, and it has some seriously badass characters that are easily some of my favorites ever. I’m grateful to @livenudebigfoot for co-running with me and look forward to Year 4 in Spring 2021!
Stand-Alone Works: Because of the aforementioned exchange participation, I’ve written a LOT of stand-alone ‘shippy stories in the past few years. Here’s a highlighted one from each canon.
So What’s Next?: Another round of Spectre Requisitions starting shortly after the new year; and hopefully more progress soon on my Giant Crossovers (I say that every time. Sometimes it’s true.)
Two updates to this:
RL info: mother of two, baby boy born Fall 2021
Fandoms:On top of everything already mentioned there will be a TON of reblogged Wheel of Time content because that book series is my favorite and has been an important part of my life since I was 14. I am stupidly excited for the show and intend to go back to mentally shrieking about the new trailer as soon as I hit post.
