Sort of Triumphant

So somehow - and I'm not sure how I managed this, considering the timeline involved - I mastered the keyboard controls for Mass Effect. Seriously; I came home, thought that I would give the keyboard another shot rather than try to change the settings on my Xpadder profile for the 360 controller again, and I started right from the beginning of the Eden Prime mission as sort of a warm-up act. Surprisingly, I did really well, and got through it with a minimum of fuss, beyond the problem with Eden Prime blowing up with me on it. Yeah, Saren's a dick. And I eventually had to Google the location of the explosive charges because I couldn't find the last one. Now I'm in the Citadel, poking at things in a typical 'doing random shit for money' sort of way and trying to track down Garrus.

I also have a pre-game story in my head for my Earthborn street-rat-made-good war hero Shep. Because I'm like that.

I will probably at some point have a bit of a rant about how shit the wonderful world of the internet seems to be going at the moment - for instance, Google tracking its users universally across all its services and sharing data on user activity on all of them, which really is just turning the damn thing into Facebook and reducing the whole right to privacy thing given the hurdles they put on using a pseudonym on Google services. (Incidentally, I am now looking for another RSS feed reader, as that and searches are the only thing I use Google for now anyway.) But right now I am not in the mood. Partly this is because the coffee has not kicked in yet, I am fed up with the typing and on the whole, I want the weekend to be now, please.

From tiny cookies, giant fanmemes grow

Oh, it occurs to me. I never actually spun out the Cookie Saga, did I?

So ... you remember awhile back there was that whole deal where I posted my geektastic recipe for "Sten Approves" cookies? I first posted this on Tumblr, and the recipe ... it got around. The first person who actually made those cookies apart from me, as part as I'm aware, was Reg, otherwise known as skiesovergideon, who started following me because of some alternadialogue I posted to a reblog of her Reg Liveblogs Dragon Age routine. Anyway, she baked the cookies and she loved them. Lots and lots.

Enter Reg's Mom. Who had, by this point, already seen her daughter playing Dragon Age and asked at least once "Why isn't Sten your boyfriend?" (Reg's Mom has a very interesting view of the IC/OOC divide.) So Reg's Mom asks what Reg is baking and Reg tells her. Reg's Mom likes them.

This is where it starts to get complicated.

I think Reg's Mom had at some point watched Reg play Warcrack and got the general idea about crafting food items, and it all got a little mixed up because of the name I gave the cookies, and to sum it up, Reg's Mom thought (maybe still thinks, for all I know) that this particular cookie is something that your Warden can craft in-game and give to Sten to make him like you better. And that a dev gave the fans an actual recipe so that they could make these crafting items IRL. Also, apparently, that I am a dev. (At least she gets the hang of the fact that I'm female now...)

It ... doesn't stop there. For varying reasons, my cookies being the icing on the proverbial cake, Reg's Mom decides to play Dragon Age. In part to be looking for that crafting recipe. Which doesn't exist. Which did not stop her looking. From this was born Dragon Age According to Reg's Mom. Which has kind of exploded to the point where it's damn near a Tumblr-fan-community meme. Gaider has actually been made aware of this and replied to tweets about it at least once. (This involved a potential Chris Evans look-alike as a party member, as Reg's Mom suggested - with the addition of the comment, "We're sending him cookies; he'd better". Yes, apparently Reg's Mom wanted to send the Bioware crew what were responsible for Dragon Age some Sten Approves cookies as a thank-you, or something. She has since started playing the city elf origin and has rescinded this bit of nice out of protest on the subject of Vaughan.)

...All I did was suggest that this was an awesome alternative to the bog-standard choc-chip cookie recipe... I mean, I clearly can't take a whole terrible lot in the way of credit, since it's Reg and her mother who have all the funny here, but I feel like I may have catalysed this. Just a tiny bit. Iiiiittybittybit.