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I have a whole (not super coherent, and probably not very original) thing about how "they remind you of yourself and you can't stand it" is the engine for some of the trilogy's core conflicts.

(this became an essay, sorry)

In ME1 Shepard's pursuing Saren. Saren's not a generic powerful bad guy; he's specifically a Spectre who's gone off the rails, abused the powers of the title, and either been brainwashed into or voluntarily started working for the bad guys, while claiming secret knowledge that justifies him. You can easily read Shepard (especially a Ruthless or more renegade one) as partly motivated by the consciousness that they could become Saren and have a deep need not to.

Then in ME2 ... Shepard wakes up to find they've been saved from death by extremely sketchy people wielding equally sketchy technology (like Saren was), that they are being offered a deal to work with the bad guys (like Saren was), and decides, based on evidence almost nobody else believes, that working for the bad guys is currently the right thing to do (like Saren did). ME2 is the process of Shepard working out who they are again and exploring how far they are or aren't willing to go in Not Becoming That Guy.

(Meanwhile, in the background, the Illusive Man - unimaginably well resourced, master manipulator, galactic éminence grise, is having his own "that guy is doing to me what I specialise in doing to other people, but he's better at it" envy-crisis about the Reapers.)

In ME3, Shepard has four different antagonists:

* the actual Reapers, unstoppable killing machines who will happily erase large swathes of galactic life in pursuit of their own interests;

* the Illusive Man, who has concluded that the only thing wrong with the galaxy-ruling indoctrination swarm is that he/humanity isn't in charge of it;

* Kai Leng, a disgraced N7 with strong Main Character energy, who does to Shepard exactly what Shepard does to NPCs (turns up, grandstands, derails everything, is exasperatingly impossible to kill);

* the clone, who in this construction is really just the logical conclusion of Shepard having to fight various different refractions of themself.

Kai Leng and the clone are human-level, obvious parallels to other life choices Shepard could have made; while in attempting to simultaneously fight the Reapers and the Illusive Man Shepard is forced into choice after choice reminding them that this could be you (how many people are you willing to kill? How many people are you willing to manipulate?), culminating in the red and blue endings.

I think the tendency for hardcore fans to replay, and the fandom consciousness of other people's Shepards, only adds to all this: even if Shepard A would never do $thing, you've probably played a route or seen somebody else's route where otherwise-quite-similar Shepard B did do it. "This person is too like me and I can't stand it" transmutes into "I am constantly aware of all the other people I could easily become, and I can't stand that either."

read a post about why a character dislikes another and it's basically a "they remind you of yourself and you can't stand yourself" type of situation and i'm pretty sure that the clone scenario, if applied to other characters than shepard, would involve some tension like that

i don't think garrus would be too happy with clone!garrus, or jack or samara with their clone.

meanwhile, wrex would have the time of his life :D two times the laughter, both of them going "hehehe" at the same time

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I rarely get to do father/daughter vibe art, so I was super happy to work on this commission with a friendship between Shepard and Anderson 💕

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Doodled Garrus

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“Stand amongst the ashes of a trillion dead souls, and ask the ghosts if honor matters. The silence is your answer.”

I finally managed to finish Javik <3 Maybe some more Bioware or OC portraits next? I really have fun with these :3

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is this anything?

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Mass Effect - Legendary Edition

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“I am Omega”

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JUSTICAR SAMARA'S TITAN ARMORY MOD MASS EFFECT 2

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Mass Effect - Legendary Edition

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have a dorky zaeed

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Mass Effect Trilogy Appreciation Week Day 5: Struggle

RIP fish

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I participated in the Happy Holiday Harbinger gift exchange and i was lucky enough to get a gift from the incredible @unfair-water-plane !! Y'all, she made me a quilt! A quilt! Inspired by our favorite Quarian admiral, Tali.

Look how gorgeous it is! I was genuinely speechless when I opened the box. I can't believe she found such perfect fabric. It's also nice and warm, which has been very important recently haha.

Thank you so much! You have brought me much joy 😊

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posting niche fic on ao3 is like releasing a small creature into the wild and hoping it survives and finds sustenance

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Mass Effect - Legendary Edition