This is petty, but

[anghraine]

I was reading some older Mass Effect threads on f_fa and while some were fun, and some were just "huh, guess it takes all kinds," they are (or were) so OTT hostile towards Liara while very generously reading into bland dude characters like Kaidan that I'm just "...ugh." Allegedly it's about Liara ninjamancing Shepard, but Kaidan is an entitled asshole if you're moderately friendly and don't romance him, so the double standard is really glaring. Bleh.

Comments

[alias_sqbr]

Haaa, yeah, welcome to Bioware fandom :/

There's definitely a sexist double standard (idk if you've ever bumped into the Alshey hate but even as someone who doesn't particularly like Ashley it made me defensive for her) but there are also pockets of people who vocally hate Kaiden, too. And there is no hate for a love interest so vicious as that of straight male gamers who feel they were ninjamanced by a male love interest. It all gets very exhausting!

[anghraine]

The kind of funny thing is that I've heard distant rumbles about/from Bioware fandom over the years. But I never actually participated in any of the canons or fandom stuff and didn't have context for any of it so it was just like ... the cheeping of angry mice in the walls.

And once I got into ME, I knew I didn't want to dip any toes in dudebro corners of the fandom (Mass Effect itself is already dudebro enough, much as I love it) for that kind of reason, but figured f_fa would be more on my wavelength. NOT SO, lol.

I haven't bumped into Ashley hate (she's improved on me a lot on this second run, since the bff and I decided to kill off Kaidan at Virmire and she had the chance to get some character growth), but mostly because I'm keeping myself pretty isolated from the rest of the fandom.

[alias_sqbr]

Good choice, the mice bite :(

[alias_sqbr]

You got me thinking about how I have any sort of positive Bioware fan experience, and asides from knowing chill individual people (mostly in Dragon Age fandom) I enjoy the odd gifset from fuckyeahbioware on tumblr. So, here's their mass effect tag: https://www.tumblr.com/fuckyeahbioware/tagged/Mass%20Effect

[anghraine]

Hey, thanks! That looks really cool.