#me2 love interest

[acciokaidanalenko]

Obsessively thinking about Kasumi nudging Shepard & their ME2 LI together, with her own little hints and comments 🥺🤣🥰 ya girl knows everything that happens on that ship, and she's so into watching this unfold 👀

[lacquerheadd]

hiss hiss meow

[spacedlexi]

ive been replaying mass effect lately.. my shep gets existential about the scars she lost after project lazarus. the whole clone thing doesnt help either..

[warningsine]

Because of Shepard... I am alive. And I am not alone. —Edi

The rogue combat VI on Luna, which later becomes an unshackled AI with integrated Sovereign technology, i.e., EDI, crying out "HELP" as the player kills it.

EDI: "Gaining awareness while under attack was… confusing. I am pleased that my relationship with organics has become more cooperative."

The Cerberus tech guy talking about VI EDI: "It is smart enough to signal for help, but will not be talking philosophy anytime soon."

Meanwhile,

EDI's goodbye before the final mission: "Shepard? There is something I want you to know. The Illusive Man ordered my creation years ago. Jeff was the one who allowed me to think for myself. But only now do I feel alive. That is your influence."

[thyredwarden]

liara... the president of shepard fan club

[kaidanalenkosprmanager]

THE BEST OF PRIORITY: TUCHANKA (PART 2)

Featuring: Cmdr. Sophie Shepard, Lt. James Vega, EDI, Urdnot Wrex, and Dr. Mordin Solus With: Urdnot Bakara And a Special Guest Appearance by: Kalros, Mother of All Thresher Maws I MADE A MISTAKE! I made a mistake... big picture made of little pictures- too many variables. Can't hide behind statistics... can't ignore new data- my responsibility. Need to go- running out of time. Not your work, not your cure- not your decision. Had to be me- someone else might have gotten it wrong... Mass Effect 3: Legendary Edition (2021)

[that0nebird]

If Cove played mass effect he would be a MShep Kaidan romancer

[ququoquaw]

i wasnt that interested in thane originally but then i saw that he had a son and i knew what i had to do

[scionshtola]

i am holding back like a hundred thoughts about mir at all times

[breadedsinner]

Now I can't stop thinking about the VS and Joker. Was there a goodbye, an email? Or was the VS on a transferred mission and just heard other marine discuss it?

Was there bitterness about him leaving the Alliance? Did they argue because you KNOW what Cerberus did.

If Shepard was "with" the VS, did Joker suspect? Does that enter the conversation?

[husband-steve-cortez]

You know Ezra takes his encounter with Ashley on Horizon pretty in stride but I think if it had been a romanced Kaidan he would've been way bitchier.

Honestly considering him being bitchier to Ashley.

Though I kind of like that he's uncharacteristically. Nervous and guilty about seeing Ash and uncharacteristically non-combative. Which just adds to Ashley's feeling of unease and instincts telling her not to trust that this is Ezra. He should be telling her to get fucked not looking at her with those big brown sad eyes

[janewayintersection]

the amount of people who are like "omg i ditched kaidan for garrus after he was mean to me on horizon!!" baffle me. shit on bioware's writing for making shep work with cerberus all you want, but kaidan calling shep out on this and not joining them is NOT the issue. in fact, him reacting like this is why i love him??

he specifically states he trusts shep, just not cerberus. which is the only rational response in that whole entire goddamn game!! like?? you spend all of me1 stopping cerberus operations. they kill several alliance soldiers and admiral kahoku, try to make a rachni army -- they are WELL known for cloning and ais... miranda even outright states she wanted to plant shep with a control chip. there is literally zero reason for kaidan to believe the shep in front of him isn't some cerberus sleeper agent. or an ai. or indoctrinated. or being manipulated (THIS ONE IS CANON BTW). even if he trusts shepard, he doesn't trust cerberus not to pull any of this. quite frankly, i'm baffled more companions don't have this exact, entirely justified concern.

loyalty is important, but blind loyalty is dangerous.

honestly, the crew in me2 is lucky that the illusive man was so weirdly and uncharacteristically insistent on shepard remaining untouched. things could have gotten very bad otherwise.

being best friends with someone, or more notably, being in love with someone, isn't the end all be all magic potion in this world. being in love with someone doesn't mean you should blindly trust their actions. if my significant other joined a terrorist group, you can bet my ass i wouldn't join them! sorry! if anything, it's healthy that kaidan has his own sense of morals and priorities he follows over shepard. he's his OWN person, love shouldn't be something that makes you suddenly give up who you are and what you believe in.

not to mention kaidan is entirely out of the loop for the whole game. his intel states that cerberus is behind the abductions (the horizon incident is partially a result of cerberus' fiddling btw), and that shep has been alive and never even reached out to anyone. he doesn't have the information we the players have. he doesn't know that the illusive man insisted on no control chip. he doesn't know about the lazarus project or its specifics.

and as for the "cheating" discourse if you romance someone new in me2, i do personally believe shep getting with one of the me2 love interests is cheating on their me1 love interest. to shep, they skipped those two years. they wake up as they did during the me2 prologue. no time has passed. and then they immediately get with someone else after one (1) argument with their love interest over them, may i remind you, joining a terrorist group. even if you don't think it's "technically" cheating, it's at the very least pretty trashy and flakey.

if anything, i'm gonna say it! kaidan is more forgiving than i'd be! the fact that he even sends an email saying he still cares and that they can see what happens after this is all resolved is WAY more than i would have done. the fact that kaidan will find out shep got with someone else, and STILL be willing to give shep a chance is like. man. it's saying a lot. i am just saying.

imagine losing someone. you see them literally die as your ship explodes and they burn up in the nearby planet's atmosphere. you grieve. you put yourself into your work. then suddenly, two years, later. they pop back up again. ALIVE. and with a terrorist group. and basically tell you the equivalent of "just trust me bro" despite the fact that while you trust them, you don't trust the terrorist group. so you're like hey, what the fuck. why are you with a terrorist group. and they're like i'm not with them, we just have common goals. and you're like. i'm gonna say it again. i trust you, not the terrorist group. okay?? i can't join you for this reason. please be careful out there, seriously.

and then they immediately jump into the pants of that one guy you knew back on a mission from two years ago.

what would you do?? would you not feel hurt? betrayed? upset? confused?? i'm sorry, i'm completely on kaidan's side. i'd go as far to say that he's far more understanding than he should be in me2.

me3 is all about regaining that complete and undying trust back, and that cerberus didn't fuck around w shep. or that being with cerberus didn't change them. his "loyalty" quest is just visiting him in the hospital and showing him shepard still cares. that they're still the same. that cerberus truly didn't alter them. that there was more going on. that shepard was forced to work with cerberus out of complete necessity and only did what they thought was right. and i think that's neat!!!!

[anneapocalypse]

I realize I already haven't been posting a lot of DA stuff relative to how much FFXIV is on here these days, and that is probably going to be the case for the next couple months, until I've had time to play the new game at my own pace.

While I have found the barrage of promo material a bit overwhelming and have mostly chosen for myself not to worry about keeping up with it all, I'm not especially worried about spoilers ruining the game for me. For one thing, spoilers don't ruin a story for me, and for another, Bioware loves to do fake-outs in promo material where they show you something out of context that look like a massive spoiler and in some sense is but they don't give the context and it usually turns out to be something very different than the impression it gave us (showing In Hushed Whispers Leliana without revealing the time travel thing, for example, or showing Shepard's death like it was a potential ending for ME2 and not the prologue to the game). So like, whatever wild shit they've already shown or will get talked about after previewers get to play a scant few hours of the game, I'm pretty confident that there's going to be plenty of big moments and story context that very deliberately will not be shown before release. I'm going to beef up my blacklist, but I'm also not worried about it, personally.

Mostly, I am probably just not going to be engaging in a lot of meta discussion for a bit, because this just isn't my favorite time to be doing that. I was around for the hype train for DAI and also for the game's initial reception and I'll just say it was not the most pleasant time to be in DA fandom. And please don't misunderstand me--I'm not saying that none of the criticism was warranted or that nobody should complain when they play a new game and don't like something.

I'm just saying that a big new story with lots of new characters and lore and locations and details takes time to absorb. It takes more than a couple of weeks to fully process and analyze a complex story sometimes. And in my experience, the meta and lore discussions get better and more nuanced and interesting with a bit of distance from the initial release. And personally, that's where I start to really enjoy it. I had a lot more fun talking with people about DAI--its strengths and its faults--once the initial hype and backlash had died down. I expect it will probably be that way with DATV too. Again, I want to stress that I don't think there's anything wrong with sharing and discussing first impressions, including negative ones, just that I will probably enjoy the discussions more once things settle a bit.

So if I'm not talking about Dragon Age much here for a while, it's not from lack of interest, I just might chill for a bit and enjoy it on my own before jumping back in.

[dispatchwithlove]

The evolution of our dear Garrus Vakarian.

ME1: (shocked pikachu face) Take Shepard in a fight? The impertinence! She’s a decorated war hero and our commander.

ME2: (in a sexy drawl) Take Shepard? No way, with her biotics and training… oh you mean sex? (shocked pikachu face) Oh, I, um…. why, did she say something?

ME3: (most interesting man in the world pose) Yeah, I can take Shepard…out for the best night of dancing she’s ever had. (accidental uwu face) Because I love my honey and I don’t care who knows!

[preztee]

Asexuality and Kaidan Alenko

Or, how a bisexual romance option is the only asexual friendly one. With a bit of work.

For a while, there was not a single Mass Effect romance I enjoyed. I found all of the ones I've played through fairly shallow, and as a result, I played as a single Shepard more often than not. Part of this is due to my being aroace - or for the purposes of this post, asexual.

I so badly wanted a romance with ample build up. With an emotional bond before getting together. But due to the nature of the series, most romances are sudden, and are directly tied with sex. Each romance culminates in a sex (or implied sex) scene, where they will leave if you turn it down. This is no fault of the characters, but of the writers for assuming turning down sex was equal to turning down the character entirely.

Even romances without sex scenes aren't exempt from their direct ties with sex. For example, the fan favorite romance with Garrus starts off with Shepard asking for sex out of no where. When it comes to Mass Effect, even if it is not shown, it is implied.

So, where does Kaidan fit into this?

The reason why I didn't even consider Kaidan at first was the knowledge that he (and the other ME1 love interests) were subject to a disease called the late 2000s. Romances are easy to lock into and all culminate in a sex scene. ME2 also default assumes you didn't turn them down for sex and will still act like you banged. Which. Epic game design there!

Even for a Male Shepard romancing Kaidan in ME3, it skips to a sex scene (though this I didn't mind since the build up with the trilogy long Kaidan slow burn was so fulfilling, but that's besides the point).

And then I found out that if you play as a Female Shepard, you can turn Kaidan down for sex in ME3, and he will be the only (and I mean only) romance option who doesn't leave, and instead chooses to cuddle with Shepard. Which. First of all, game changer.

Second of all, and most importantly, this meant that if I wanted to play as an asexual Shepard, all I had to do was play as a Female Shepard, abort Kaidan's romance path early on in ME1 by keeping up formalities, and then romance him in ME3, where you can turn him down for sex two times and he is totally okay with it. And he stays. Both times.

I'm not entirely sure where I'm going with this, but having the option to do such a thing in a game series spanning from 2007-2012 meant a lot to me as an asexual.

[sol-consort]

Omg, I don't know if you remember, but that shepard cam girl/streamer au you did, I absolutely loved it!! I loved Shepard being so nonchalant about being tits-out in front of the crew, also them passing around the video and being embarrassed about making eye contact with Shep. You killed me!! That was so good

Oh god, this one? I wrote it while half asleep, didn't expect anyone to read it. I just checked it over again–damn the amount of typos. I fixed as much as I could rn. Hopefully, it reads smoother.

But yes! I still adore the concept and would love to expand upon it.

The army life + staying on a ship in the middle of the galaxy and sharing space with your crew has got to result in a lot of accidental nudity and flashing situations. Someone new on warships–like Tali or Liara might find it surprising, feel a bit more shy, while someone like Shepard, who was the Normandy second in command during Captian Anderson days got used to it by now.

Or maybe it's a human army thing? Quarians can't strip for first aid because it will only worsen the situation, Krogans have their thick skin and shells, and Turian skin has metal outer plating.

Only humans are this squishy, easily injured, easy to tear into. Mix that with the fact that we have a pretty good immunity system that gives us high tolerance to different microbiomes and the most genetically diverse genes in the Mass Effect canon–Mordin mentions it in ME2—it's not hard to understand why a human soldier would nonchalantly strip on an alien planet, in the middle of the battlefield, just to ensure the wound is treated properly.

But it's still hot—Shepard's total disregard to having your tits out on full display, chest heaving with every breath. Your crew desperately trying to maintain eye contact and not get distracted by the way your bare tits bounce with every powerful command and order you bark at them.

Biotics grant people healing abilities, at least ingame. It's not strange for someone like Kaidan or Liara to act as an emergency medic while on the battlefield.

Kaidan attempts to stay professional, stuttering more than usual as the raspiness in his voice becomes more apparent courtesy of his dry throat.

The tips of his ears reddish, summoning all of his will to keep his finger study as he pressed against your wound with the disinfected pad. Having to lower himself into your naked form, his clothed chest almost fully pressing against your own. The hiss you let out as your nipples touch the cold metal surface of his armour—it almost makes his heart jump out from his ribcage–barely remaining collected by the end of it.

Sneaking one lustful glance at your still exposed chest on the shuffle ride back to the Normandy before forcing himself to look away, feeling ashamed of his actions, excusing himself to his own sleeping pod the second the crew is back on board.

-

Anyway, so streamer Shepard hmm.

Miranda would quickly catch wind of this open secret and become your number one patron under a fake pseudo name. She keeps toning in each stream, even if she's working, simply setting the tablet on the table while she files the papers away. Dropping big stacks occasionally whenever you do something she likes, using the carrot method to subtly get you to act more and more slutty, exactly how she likes it.

Samara convinced herself that as long as she only watches—no touching herself, no writing a comment, no sending any money–then it's basically okay and doesn't break her code. She does, however, pay attention to your frequent commenters, checking their profiles, tracking their other socials... just in case one of them crosses the line. It is her job to make this world a safer place for everyone, right?

Thane–oh god, poor Thane. His own Siha...? Humans sure are uh... more adventurous than he thought they were. Drells are moved by emotions and romantic feelings more than sexual ones. He has very little interest in pornagrophy in any form of media because he just can't get off to a stranger, someone he doesn't love. But once he discovers that it is you in those videos, his commander Shepard, his siha. A flood of emotions wash over him. It becomes a boderline addiction.

Thane especially knows about the common human prono trope of fucking a drell because of the skin acting as both a stim and an aphrodisiac. He wonders if you'd be open to...having him on the stream for that? Just to boost your views...no other reason :) Definitely not to sate some deep primal instinct within him, the need to state his claim by fucking you in front of all of your adoring fans, he is such a tender gentle soul, he would never have those possessive thoughts, right?....right?

The poor guy almost voices this suggestion out each time you come over for a little chat.

Jack would be your top commenter, not even under a fake profile or a different name. Straight up Jack with her own profile picture to boost. Spewing filth and ordering you around like her own personal whore. Of course you don't pay her any mind and only oblige her requests after you make her beg.

Garrus wants to join you so badly. Picture this, the first ever human/turian streamers ever since the war! It will be a hit with both planets. Your profile will skyrocket in popularity. Especially if this is in ME1 where the human-turian intergalactic relationship was still strained and tense. Meditate the tension between your civilisations by letting him stuff you full with his gaint blue glowing cock <3 huh huh!? A million credit worth idea right?