Forever Thinking About The Way Shepard Says "He's Been Hurt, Betrayed. He Deserves Something Better."

I'll never get tired of seeing Halsin included in this cutscene. It was....not a fun discovery back in the older versions seeing him missing. I figured I'd at least settle for Tav exploring this tower without anyone on the team if Halsin wasn't showing up, but the game auto selected 2 random teammates instead 😑.

It's often the little things like that, that can enhance a game for me.

already seeing "ugh male Rook with Neve in the trailer... that's a LESBIAN" posts on twitter and I'm beating them with a big stick that says "you can HEADCANON whatever you want about anything ever but your HEADCANON is factually incorrect and if it chaps your ass even a little bit when anyone up to and including the literal creators of the character disagrees with your HEADCANON then that's fully a you problem and you should consider developing coping skills about it rather than contributing to this fandom's legendary hostility by policing (even in a manner you'll claim was "joking" when someone stands up for themselvs) people who are only enjoying their own playthrough, headcanon, or ship" and by stick I do mean the block button

enough silliness what’s y’all’s favorite fruit

*Looks at Halsin*

*Imagines sorceress Tav recreating the Weave scene Gale taught her so she can share her thoughts to him*

*Imagines Halsin sharing his imagination of her with over 3 centuries worth of experience*

*Now imagines Tav too stunned to think and the spell breaks*

Do you think romanced companions use the tadpole to sext each other?

Like they’d be in their own tents across camp and suddenly you get a dirty message from your camp sweetheart. Or you’d be walking to wherever you’re going and get a message. And your companions would suddenly be asking if you’re ok because you’re blushing so badly.

Chef’s kiss

Garrus and Shepard on their honeymoon. Reports of her death have been greatly exaggerated.

listen ima say it too many of y’all write Halsin like a big serious daddy dom with no humor and not nearly enough of you are writing him as a silly willy nilly ol’ bear

please he is canonically a big fan of nature puns and dancing like a dad at a barbecue and being a big goof

let that man laugh and be goofy I beg you he loves ducks and bedtime stories and playing games and being silly and he deserves to smile more

To add to this, Garrus can die in the suicide mission in ME2. ME3 is designed to go on without him in that scenario. You can flat out refuse to let him on the team in ME1. I have literally done a Shepard run who kept him off the team as much as possible (and discovered that his romance hinges on being on the team in ME1).

Meanwhile, I'm finding out that Liara had intentionally stayed quiet in ME1 about Tali's crush to increase her chances of getting with Shepard. That in of itself isn't a bad thing, but it does bring up questions as to whether she refused to update Ashley/Kaidan (to whom Shepard could even be romantically involved with) for the same reasons. She somehow can remember details on Tali's masturbation habits from 6 months ago to spite her in front of Shepard, but she couldn't remember to update Shepard's potential girlfriend/boyfriend about them being in Cerberus hands?! We should not be wondering whether Horizon is the result of Liara trying to sabotage Shepard's potential romantic relationship at Shepard's expense.

This is one of the many reasons why Liara creeps out people.

if u haven't read it a lot of liara's more action-oriented shift was told in the comics. the shadow broker DLC didn't quite capture how much effort she went thru to secure shep's body and how big feron's role. i personally welcome the change and while i like archeologist liara i think her ME1 characterization is so superficial. she's mostly just a fan girl. the shift is abrupt but it's nice that in ME2 she has her own thing going on outside shepard cos i believe the writers wrote her as the canon love interest in mind so her character often suffers from the fangirl disease. i think a lot of people in the fandom dislike how the game shove her to us so much. which is funny since another famous shepard ship is garrus, who's equally as pushed as liara and is just as much of a shep fan. it's just that he's a guy so he doesn't suffer sexist hate.

I haven't read/seen anything outside the games, no! I've been thinking of getting into that, but first I'd like to sort out all of my feelings wrt the main event - the games. I feel like if I got into the "peripheric" media, it could maybe influence how I view the games and i want to analyze those by themselves (i'm thinking i'll finish this playthrough + another one in which i might or might not play as mshep) and then see about everything else. Thank you for the rec, though! I knew there was extra stuff about tali and garrus but this is the first i'm hearing about liara <3

And well... let's be real, most of the squad is part of the Shepard fan club, even those that can't be romanced, like Grunt and Wrex. The fact that Shepard gets a breeding request in Tuchanka after completing grunt's loyalty mission is like the most Mary Sue thing ever (and I don't necessarily mean this in a bad way). The asari, sex symbols of the galaxy, are throwing themselves at them left and right (Liara, Shiala, arguably Sha'ira, Morinth...). Shepard is the main character, everyone wants a piece of them. It's one of the entertaining parts of the games (or at least I have a lot of fun with it, if maybe a little bit ironically).

I suppose people might single out Liara because she's the one whose actions are the most extreme, and thus it crosses the line from "cute" to "creepy", but she's not the only one. Legion literally wears the armor off their dead body. As I said in my post, maybe her actions and/or attitude aren't 100% justifiable, but they are understandable.

I'm not sure about the game pushing Garrus as a love interest (I think the game itself is skeptical of the player making this choice, like when Shepard says she "can't believe she finds comfort in the arms of a turian" or something like that), but I do think he's definitely meant to be one of the characters that's most influenced by Shepard, regardless of gender.

Personally, I think him being so popular a choice (at least on Tumblr, which has a mostly female userbase compared to other social media) is due to him being a man, yes, but not necessarily because of sexism (or not always), but because het ships are farrrr more popular than femslash. Also, it's very clear how much he respects Shepard in basically every aspect, and it's incredibly fucking rare to see a het relationship in such equal ground, especially with a """bad guy""" lmao. (though ME in general does quite good in that regard I think, the romances in general are not toxic™️ or unequal) (mostly... ignoring that Shepard is basically everyone's boss... lol).

I completely agree that there's a double standard in how female characters are expected to behave vs male ones, and from what i've seen Liara is 100% a victim of this (I had the very bad idea of reading some threads on reddit...yikes). I don't know the fandom enough to know how it compares in relation to Garrus in particular, though, or if there's a correlation between Shakarian fans and Liara haters.

"The trannies should be able to piss in whatever toilet they want and change their bodies however they want. Why is it my business if some chick has a dick or a guy has a pie? I'm not a trannie or a fag so I don't care, just give 'em the medicine they need."

"This is an LGBT safe space. Of COURSE I fully support individuals who identify as transgender and their right to self-determination! I just think that transitioning is a very serious choice and should be heavily regulated. And there could be a lot of harm in exposing cis children to such topics, so we should be really careful about when it is appropriate to mention trans issues or have too much trans visibility."

One of the above statements is Problematic and the other is slightly annoying. If we disagree on which is which then working together for a better future is going to get really fucking difficult.