My new female Commander Shepard in the game Mass Effect (also known as a FemShep) looks like a girl who got a standing ovation at a poetry slam I hosted years ago for reading a poem about humming The Star-Spangled Banner while giving a blowjob in a public park. My FemShep also looks like a girl who broke up with me in college because I was “like a brother to her.” A brother that has sex with you and takes you to see Ben Folds Five in concert, I guess. My FemShep is completely ruthless. She shot a Salarian in the face even after he begged for his life. To be fair, the Salarian was wearing a Ben Folds Five shirt, so you know he was going to try to have conservative, missionary style sex with her.

And it is this combination of ruthlessness and resemblance to women I have known who were willing to give carefree patriotic blowjobs in the park or have unadventurous sex to the tinkling piano keys of Whatever and Ever Amen that makes me feel a real connection with my FemShep. Though I wish she had a more ample bottom, which I can’t fault the game designers for not including an option for.

If games like Mass Effect started including ass-widening menus, I think we’d be living in a world where the wrong time travelers saved the wrong historical figures from dying. Namely, our ninth U.S. president, William Henry “Pull Over Girl, That Ass Is Too Fat” Harrison, who was rescued from pneumonia by futuristically dressed strangers and later passed several laws requiring mandatory descriptions of women’s bottoms in all forms of art, performance and literature.

Incidentally, I was hosting the poetry slam because I’d been driving around delivering pizzas and listening to enough pirated Saul Williams and Blackalicious mp3s to make a senator in favor of a draconian anti-piracy bill fall to his knees and shake his liver spotted fist. I’d also delivered enough pizzas late to make a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle fall to his knees and shake his liver spotted fist. So, I fancied myself a slam poet.

I later gave up my slam poet dreams after finishing in last place at a New York poetry slam for incorrectly using the phrase “dirty south” in one of my poems. Even though Andre 3000 gave my ex-girlfriend’s (admittedly enormous) breasts a long, lingering look at an Atlanta music festival while I was shaking his hand, so I’m practically a member of Outkast.

Another thing I like about my FemShep is that she reminds me of the character Roland from Stephen King’s The Gunslinger series, about a gunslinger who travels through time and alternate dimensions to find the dark tower at the center of all existence. So take that, cartoon owl trying to find the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop. That owl didn’t even go out and buy his own Tootsie Pop, he took it from a child by fraudulently claiming to work in academia. Just because an owl is wearing a mortarboard does not mean he’s a professor. The fact that he’s essentially nude except for the mortarboard confirms he’s either a dirty grifter or posing for a sexy owl professor website.

The appeal of games like Mass Effect is that the protagonists end up being hollow vessels that the player can invest with as much emotional weight as they want. When you can control so many aspects of your character, down to the width of her cheekbones, filling in the little details can add an extra layer of depth even though the story of the game itself is more rigid.

So if I’m reminded of a girl I once dated who smoked joints rolled with tobacco while dipping her toes in the bathtub, as I blast Krogan Warlords in the face with incendiary ammo, it is because the best types of stories leave room for our own little stories. Except for the alternate dimension where William Henry Harrison survived and the best stories are mostly about women’s shapely rear ends, and where the national anthem is ”Poison” by Bell Biv Devoe and the words “Never trust a big butt and a smile” are written on our currency. Beware, she’s schemin’, she’ll make you think you’re dreamin’! You’ll fall in love and you’ll be screamin’ demon, HOO!

Article image incorporates a photo by Flickr user ewen and donabel.