Die Hard Ain't Shit

And now, to the atrium of Grissom Academy.

This is one of the harder sections of the game. It's mostly hard because people do it too early. (Including me. I totally forgot and marched straight into Grissom.) But still, you will die in the Grissom atrium. Like, freals.

Also, most people bring EDI into Grissom, because this is the first mission where she's available. EDI will not help you in the atrium. This is what she does:

EDI also has a power called decoy, where she makes a second EDI, which does nothing except put a second ass in your face.

As you go along Grissom, you'll discover some kids who are trying to defend themselves against Cerberus.

If you didn't do the Mass Effect 2 DLC, Kahlee promptly comes over the loudspeaker and makes fun of the kids. But we DID, so:

Shepard comes across an Atlas pilot who isn't watching his back none too good, so she does the natural thing:

You can use the Atlas in the next combat area! I mean, you don't have to? But why would you not.

Finally, we can get to the shuttle!

.... it's .... it's just faster to assume that any time there's a cut scene, Shepard is in cool down.

Anyway, let's all pile into the shuttle and fly away from Grissom.

... yeah, so. The game gives you this choice by the way. Hey, I love kids? I don't trust most kids to handle hard candy, you sure as hell can bet that I'm not going to trust them to save the damn galaxy. Fuck no. Bitch, I have a house to worry about. You put those kids on the front line, they'll be too busy playing Pokemon or falling over or some shit to actually do anything.

I don't even know if that's the paragon or renegade option? I think I'm missing out on some war assets, and also this is my no1curr face.

Kahlee comes over the speaker in the shuttle and says some bullshit, to include:

Time to Space Skype! Hi, Anderson!

Hey everyone, that's how I celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior, by describing old people sex. Happy holidays!

Space Dad Did WHAT?!

Get used to this shit, Javik hates everything. Javik hates nouns, and also some verbs.

Okay, can we agree that I know a little bit of shit about Mass Effect? I know a little bit of shit about Mass Effect. I still had to look up the Metacon War.

And holy shit, you guys, holy shit. Why are we talking about literally anything else besides the Metacon War? Fuck the Morning War, fuck the First Contact war, this is the shit that we need to be studying. This. Is. The. Shit.

This is not a spoiler, but this is important shit to understand the ending of Mass Effect 3, mangled mess that it is. I think some of you scroll through the text and only look at the images. I care so deeply about this that I copied it into MSPaint just for you. Read this shit. From the Mass Effect wiki:

See, and after that shit? Reapers.

I ain't going to spell anything out yet, but you think about it, and you can start to see maybe what the reapers are after.

Hey, Traynor wants us.

Grissom Academy? Do we know that shit?

It damn well better be familiar. Legit, it should be.

Hey yo, Shep, Garrus is like, one floor below, keep it zipped up.

This scene is like 10 times funnier with dude shep. Ey yo, that's the wrong tree you're barking up, there.

(Husbando and I do this all the time: "Hey, thanks for bringing me dinner." "Aww, it's no big -- " "No. Thank you.")

You know one of the things I love about Mass Effect? Shepard doesn't know as much as we do. She wasn't present for, like, 99% of the media, and also she was dead for two years, so she missed at least half of the shit that everyone else was up to. They just kind of wheel her around in case they need a reaper punched in the face, and otherwise she's a need to know sort of lady.

They make this thing about Anderson being Shepard's mentor? Or maybe even Space Dad or something?

So that's what you want, you want to learn that your Space Yoda Dad Dude totally wants to roll, roll, roll in ze hay with some random space chick you're about to meet.

We're coming, Kahlee! But it might have to wait until Friday.

NEXT TIME: It does not get less horny.

You Never Saw This Post!

So, the members of my household: me, Husbando~, Max the little striped kitty, and Chloe the little fuzzy kitty. That's everyone, right?

There is one last member of my house that you haven't met.

My bunny Pepper hates the living room. She's never seen any Mass Effect as a result, and has thusfar avoided being immortalized in MSPaint.

When I read Mass Effect media, I go into Pepper's room and I sit in a beanbag and read on my iPad.

Pepper loves this dearly, and comes and hops to me and reads with me.

So. When I was reading this piece of media, Pepper had opinions.

That story is 100% true. When Pepper started reading this particular novel with me, she got so mad that she stole my pencil, threw it across the room, then attempted to EAT MY MSPIXEL NOTEBOOK so that I couldn't bring you today's entry. Pepper cares for you all. She cares.

She is a fucking rabbit, you think about that. This shit is so shitty that a fucking rabbit took a stand. She knows shit. Rabbits eat their own shit, okay? That is a true fact. She is a shit connoisseur.

(Also she'll come if you call her Commander Peppard. She is the best rabbit.)

When you all figured out I was doing media, don't a single one of you lie to me: every one of you sat straight up in your chair and was like, "Oh, fuck me, she's going to do Deception." So yes, fuck it, merry fuckin'a, let's go, let's do Mass Effect Deception.

This bullshit was published on January 31, 2012. Since Drew Karpyshyn had left the project to pursue getting more Ys put in his name, William C. Dietz wrote this book. Mr. Dietz also wrote the Halo novels. The Halo novels are like Reason Prime as to why I'm not going to do Halo for MSPixel. At least for a while.

Anyway, I think Bioware described Mass Effect over Google Hangouts to Dietz one evening, but there was probably some drinking and loud children and a mariachi band in the background, and the result is a novel that sort of resembles a horse anus spelunking adventure. This novel is so bad that Bioware actually declared it non-canonical. So SHHHSHSHSHSHHSHHH, this shit? Never happened! We weren't here!

Before we start, there's a ton of stuff in Deception that doesn't fit with canon. I could hit on every single point, but you'd get bored, and anyway, people much smarter than me have compiled everything into a lovely Google doc that I reccomend reading. Some stuff is small potatoes, I don't know that we all need to get mad about a krogan losing a knife fight. Some stuff is ... uh, we'll get to it.

Deception starts by Kai Leng traveling to the ancient city of Thandu on the batarian homeworld to buy an artifact that's seriously never mentioned again. There's a lot of this novel that's seriously never mentioned again. Remember while you're reading this that you're getting the version of Deception that I've had to cut and edit to make some damn sense.

Anyway, Anderson (who the novel describes as having "olive-colored skin," the weirdest description ever for a orange black dude) and Kahlee come to the council chambers to show off something they picked up in the last novel:

It's Paul Grayson's corpse! Anderson and Kahlee are just, like, dragging that shit around, I guess because they're totally gross? They're hoping to convince the council that the reapers are a'comin', and it works, because they decide that there's a non-zero chance that reapers might actually be somewhere in the galaxy.

Which, by the way, is the only piece of plot that Deception actually contributes to the Mass Effect canon. That's it. We're like 20 pages in and we can all go home now.

Real quick: do you remember at the end of Mass Effect 1, when Shepard could elect Udina or Anderson to the council? That choice hella fucks with the comics and novels. As far as the novels are concerned, Anderson is a councillor, but he rage quit back in Retribution. Deception, however, makes a big damn deal out of all the influence Anderson has as a councillor that he's not? Also, the novel refuses to mention Udina by name, since Udina is the councillor, since Anderson rage quit, except he didn't, so why is Udina not even not in this?

By the way, do you remember Nick? Of course you don't, no one remembers Nick, but Nick's back, and he's living with Anderson and Kahlee because _____. He wanders off, though, and Anderson and Kahlee freak out.

Hey, let's go check in on Gillian Grayson and Hendel. We last left them on the Idenna, a quarian ship, right? Hey, Gillian, how you doin'?

Oh, that's good, you guys! They cured autism! I guess the cure is horse anuses mass effects!

That was a major criticism of Deception at the time, that Gillian just sort of got over her autism. That ... doesn't ... you don't do that. But anyway, in the scope of the story, WOOO WE CURED IT WOOOOO~

The Idenna gets into a space fight with a slave ship called The Glory of Kar'Shan. The Idenna sends its battle krogans to fight (... not sure why quarians have krogans just, like, around?), captures The Glory of Kar'Shan, and takes all the slaves as prisoners. Among them is a fellow named McCann, who Gillian talks to.

McCann then recounts Retribution for Gillian, and says she could probably find Paul's killer on the Citadel, so she's like, "Rad, let's me and you and Hendel all go to the Citadel."

Meanwhile, Nick still isn't anywhere, so Anderson and Kahlee call his parents. If his parents are alive and well, why is Nick not living with them? Nick's parents are PISSED, and rightly so, because two assholes just lost their kid. They track Nick's omnitool to the morgue, but he's not there. I don't know, I guess Dietz just needed some suspense.

Anderson decides to dress up as a 'shady businessman' and wears a very flashy suit with a big fancy hat, and has Kahlee dress in a slinky outfit with a ton of gold jewelry.

...

... I, uh.

... Could we maybe not dress the black guy up as a pimp, complete with a ho? Please?

I'm not fucking drawing that.

Anyway, he goes to the shady parts of the Citadel, gets his ass beat, and decides that they'll just have to dress as another tremendous racial caricature to get what they need.

Meanwhile, Kai Leng decides that he needs to bug Anderson's apartment, so he busts in and does so. And then he ...

Welp.

Follow me for a moment, I'm going somewhere.

Sometimes for MSPixel, I'm a parodist. I take what I see and twist it and hope it makes you laugh. Sometimes I go through this series and annotate, sometimes I explain or clarify. What I'm saying is, I wear many hats, all of which are poorly drawn.

Sometimes I'm just a presenter, because there's just nothing more that I can say to make the story any funnier. This is one of those times.

This is what Kai Leng did while in Anderson's apartment.

That is the kitchen.

This is going where you think it is.

Kai Leng steals Anderson's cereal and pours himself a bowl, just for the sheer shit of it.

I thought people were fucking around when I first heard about this. ("I'm going to eat your cereal!" is a common taunt among Mass Effect nerds.) Then Husbando~ explained that no, Virginia, this shit was real, this shit was really really real, and I laughed for an hour.

Welp, they always after his Lucky Charms, I guess.

Fuck it. Gillian, McCann and Hendel land on the Citadel and run into Kahlee and Anderson, who all totally recognize each other, even though Anderson's never met Gillain, McCann or Hendel in his life. Kahlee catches Gillain up on Retribution again, and also none of them do anything towards finding Nick. I think somehow they decide he's in a capsule somewhere?

Gillian decides she needs to upgrade her biotics from a "level 3" to a "level 4." I think Mr. Dietz didn't understand a lot of shit what Bioware meant by L3 and L4 implants, so Deception uses a weird level nomenclature. Anyway, Gillain gets them upgraded and also doesn't dress like a pimp to do it. She pays for them in "beryllium slugs" because Bioware forgot to tell Dietz that the galaxy pays for shit in electronic credits.

Mr. Dietz then gets bored of McCann, so Kai Leng takes care of him.

No really, after having a meal that is a complete part of a balanced breakfast, Kai Leng likes to position corpses on toilets. If you ever do lose your mind and read Deception, skip around and read the parts with Kai Leng in them, because they're at least insane enough to be funny.

Next, Kai Leng walks into a bar and tells someone he needs to hire two "honzos." What the fuck is a honzo? I read that part like six times and I still have no idea what the fuck a honzo is. I thought maybe he meant "hanar," but he winds up with two humans. WHAT THE FUCK IS A HONZO.

So anyway, two characters just approach him cold, all honzo-like.

I have no idea why Ken, Ken Hobbs tickles me so.

Ken, Ken Hobbs is joined by Ree Nefari, who is black and has dreadlocks. I only mention this because I wanted my Shepard to be black and have dreadlocks, so she sets off my feelings of face maker regret.

Nefari busts Ken, Ken Hobbs in the shit, and Kai Leng decides she's totally cool and hires her. They break into this facility and steal Paul Grayson's nasty reaperized corpse. You guys, I've known blankets and stuffed bears that don't get dragged around as much as Paul Grayson's corpse. Anyway, Kai Leng leaves Ken, Ken Hobbs' body in a tank in the facility to suffocate and knifes Nefari in the parking lot because Dietz doesn't leave a character alive longer than ten pages if he doesn't have to.

We now cut to Aria, who's now in her mansion on Thessia --

... yeah, no, really. She's there for Liselle's funeral, but still, Aria on Thessia? Aria is the OMEGA QUEEN. Her whole story arc hinges on how dear Omega is to her, she doesn't just fucking summer on fucking Thessia much less bury her family there.

Anderson and Kahlee go to see the Salarian councillor. He explains that a C-SEC officer has been combing Anderson's apartment, because C-SEC officers are totally above the law and can do what they need to do given authorization from the council. (... what?)

This happened, Kai Leng sat around and ate fruit loops while watching Anderson fruit Kahlee's loop because even when Mass Effect is shitty and nonsensical, it's still Mass Effect, the horniest series ever.

Anyway, they decide to go to Omega to rescue Gillian and Nick.

They get on this little shuttle, and on the very next page they fuck, and it's such an abrupt change that I woke Husbando~ up laughing at it.

No really, and you know why they were fucking on their vessel? They were sitting close to each other. Would you not hate to see Anderson on a bus? Like, how do you function if sitting next to someone gets you that hot?

Meanwhile, Hendel has a major Thing, so a volus comes to get them.

I guess Kahlee is coo coo for cocoa puffs?

Holy shit I apologize, that's like the worst joke I've ever made.

I might hate this book.

They pull out, roll off, get dressed, and go find Hendel, who's gone batshit and beaten up a bunch of crew members because he's sad because Gillian ... went off on her own? I have no idea, Hendel was always carted as this really level-headed character who could handle shit, this scene is just bizarre. Kahlee offers him ice cream or some shit and he feels better.

There is much more Deception to do, I couldn't fit it all in one post.

NEXT TIME: Get your vases ready!