amazinmango:

• Start the game. Ask yourself why. Justify it by not looking at the Mass Effect 3 box on the desk.
• Shiver with the opening credits. Optional: wiggle in seat.
• Spec out a custom Shepard that’s gonna be different this time. Keep telling yourself that.
• Don’t think about who you’re gonna get cozy with, who’s gonna get left behind.
• Start thinking too far ahead, like Virmire. Put that out of your head, keep it simple.
• Remember the milk runs on backwaters, take a moment to appreciate the sky.
• Remember Jenkins.
• Remember when your first Colossus intimidated the crap out of you.
• Remember how much fun it was to run them over, giggling like an idiot.
• Remember ragdoll physics and CRITICAL MISSION FAILURE. This is the only time when Shepard biting it is funny because Commander Shepard doesn’t die, Commander Shepard swoons.
• Remember nobody can drive the Mako for shit.
• Especially Shepard.
• Smile at Anderson. Realize that the more you keep playing, the less bittersweet it becomes, the more natural it is.
• Roll your eyes at Udina. Resist urge to apply fist to face.
• Chat with Chakwas, Adams, Pressly.
• Grin at Garrus.
• “Wrex.”
• “Shepard.”
• Smother yourself in the adorable youth that is Liara, the quirky charm that is Tali.
• Meet the best pilot in the Alliance Navy, possibly the galaxy. Trade snark, then immediately tell him you should go.
• Rub people the wrong way everywhere you go on accident.
• Start doing it on purpose.
• With Idiotic Happiness: listen to elcor speak for the first time.
• Learn about Cerberus.
• This one has many good things to sell.
• Aw, Joker, looks like we lost the signal.
• Chase Saren. Always chasing Saren.
• Noveria, Feros, Artemis Tau, dozens of worlds in between, assignments and side missions and lost artifacts. Pyjacks and pollen and red giants in the void.
• Take Liara with you to Noveria, freeze your bits off, meet her mom. Have a nice talk.
• Tea with the Queen.
• Don’t think of sour yellow notes. Think of now, when she’s young and relatively unblemished.
• When there’s still hope.
• Because this is now, this is just the first overture, when Sovereign wasn’t something you quite knew yet, when its voice was just so much arrogance and distant villainy, something unreal, just out of frame.
• Stop messing around, because you know Virmire’s there, you know you’ve got to touch down, and you know Joker’ll get you under the AA fire.
• Trust your team. Send one off with Jaeto, Aeghor, Mannovai.
• Hold the line.
• Make your choice.

• I understand, Commander. I don’t regret a thing.
• Pick up, dust off, push forward.
• Stop thinking of the dialogue you know you won’t be hearing. Stop thinking.
• Don’t waste your breath on the Council.
• Anderson has your back, because he’s awesome like that.
• Steal the Normandy.

• GET LOST ON ILOS EVERY FUCKING TIME YOU SHOULD KNOW THIS BLOODY PLACE ALREADY
• Race to the Conduit. Sway Saren or don’t.
• Remember Sovereign’s approach to the Citadel, when its arms opened. What they looked like up close.
• Heh. Sovereign wears nail polish.
• Bring the Alliance in, watch Joker be a badass, bring it all down.
• Grin at Anderson because you’re a smug bastard, and no way you’re getting the council seat, Udina.
• Remember why you play this game. 
• Smile through the credits. Feel satisfied.
• Look at the ME2 and ME3 boxes, sitting there on the desk.
• Sitting there.
• Mocking.
• Waiting.
• Rudimentary creatures of blood and flesh.
• Fumbling in ignorance.
• Incapable of understanding.
• Inevitable.
• You probably should have just stabbed yourself in the eye with a fork. It would have been kinder.