#sorry for loving evil tragic messy problematic anti-heroes doomed by their own altered perceptions and unhealthy coping skills

[veshialles]

Was there a tipping point for Hyacinth, one decision that really sent her story crashing?

Or was the point that she was always going to end up here? That it wasn't just one big thing, but the culmination of a thousand little cuts?

~Jasper

It was a bit of both, truth be told! My original thought processes when building her as a character were: "what if I made a girl who Gets Worse™" and "Oh shit what if she was a space witch also!" But I have a lot of details about how it all went wrong. Anyways! time to psychoanalyze my own OC

So, Hyacinth's upbringing definitely brought with it a thousand little cuts for sure; orphaned in a traumatic shuttle crash at a young age, growing up in the slums of Marseille, France, feeling alone and abandoned, ending up forced to do morally questionable things just to survive and get enough to eat, fell in with a local street gang that had connections to a larger criminal empire. And, well, when you spend so long "just trying to survive", you might find that the mental switch for your fight or flight response could get permenantly set to "Fight", especially if your circumstances have you trapped in an environment that reinforces and even rewards your aggressive reactions and you've never sought counselling in your life because you didn't have access to those resources (and later because you think you're above "all that mushy crap".) Such as the case was for her, unfortunately.

When her biotics came in, Hyacinth (by then already well immersed in the crminal underbelly of Alliance and UNIN territories) began to make a name for herself as "La Sorciere de La Viste" and suddenly that scared little kid, tired of being pushed around, decided to become something to fear. Taking part in shakedowns, heists, smuggling rings, extortion rackets, hit jobs, the lot of it; doing whatever she could to gain an edge. A reputation which served her gang well, but soon caught the attention of the Alliance Military, who sought her out for questioning (and recruitment). They offered to clear Hyacinth's extensive criminal record if she signed a plea deal, in exhange she would get 3 full meals a day and consistent living arrangements, and while it took some intense prying on their part because of her "authority issues", she eventually accepted the offer and betrayed her old gang.

No less than a month later, the Alliance shipped her off to Jump Zero "Brain Camp", where their trainers honed Hyacinth's biotic powers into a deadly weapon, and she chose to specialize in Vanguard tactics. So now, all that rage and pain and hurt was being concentrated into raw mass effect fields with one goal: cripple the enemy with overwhelming force. She showed such proficiency in this that, after some years of dedicated service, Hyacinth was recommended for the N7 Program. Her hardheadedness served her well in some tests, and caused her to nearly fail in others, but eventually she did pass, through sheer force of will. Clawing her way up from a scrawny street rat to a fully fledged biotic warrior.

A few years later, Alliance Command shipped her off to the front lines of their conflict with the Batarian Hegemony, where she saw some of the bloodiest battles she would witness until the Reaper War. Which, as desensitized as she was to violence, did obviously leave her with even more physical and psychological scars for sure (not that she would ever honestly admit it, of course). All of this culminated to Hyacinth being put in charge of the final assault, where she ordered her unit to mercilessly pursue the Batarian forces stationed there, wiping them out at the cost of most of her unit's lives. There were rumours that her terrifying display of biotic power during the firefight could have created a "friendly fire" situation when she tore those Batarians to shreds, and while it was never fully investigated, she earned her unofficial title, The Witch Of Torfan.

The final tipping point though, in my opinion at least, was when Ashley died on Virmire. Because although her ruthless tendencies were alive and well in the pursuit against Saren, when Hyacinth was travelling with the Normandy crew, she finally had some sense of "normalcy". She didn't exactly "soften up" but she did allow herself to get closer to her crewmates than she normally would have on any given mission, because before she figured there was no point to it. The places she got assigned to were usually temporary posts, with temporary CO's and temporary squadmates, most of whom might probably die in the field anyway, so she tended to think "what's the point?".

But, over the course of her Spectre-authorized investigation, Hyacinth got very close with Ashley, who became someone Hyacinth could let her guard down around and actually have a (fairly) open dialogue with. Although they didn't agree on everything, they got along well and had some inexplicable raw chemistry, and Ashley even took to calling Hyacinth "Skipper" as a flirty nickname. (thank you modding community 💕)

If things had turned out differently, maybe she would have done at least some healing, or maybe she would have stayed the same. But when the fateful call came in, and Hyacinth was forced to make a choice, she ran back to the bomb-site. Not to save Kaidan, but to defend the team's main objective and ensure the facility's destruction. She hoped Ashley by some miracle might make it out alive, having seen her resourcefulness in the field first-hand. And when Ashley didn't make it back to the Normandy, instead of facing her grief and loss and taking responsibility for the call she made, Hyacinth chose instead to turn around take out all of her rage on Kaidan, lashing out at him in the conference room after the mission, in front of everybody, starting the bitter rivalry between the two of them that will likely never truly end. (yes he just survived the Cerberus Attack in my pt, and yeah she's a kinda pissed about it)

Hyacinth's loss on Virmire was what really "cemented" her ongoing train-wreck of harsh choices, because it was at that point when Hyacinth began to truly believe, whether she realized it consciously or not, that she was unworthy of "having good things" and "being the better woman", and that just maybe she was incapable and/or undeserving of changing her ways, and that the universe was an inherently cruel place as she had always believed. And by reinforcing that narrative in her mind, Hyacinth spiraled into a self-fulfilling prophecy, and would continue to make terribly harsh choices under this justification, with each Renegade action hammering this belief ever further into her psyche.

While Hyacinth did eventually find love and understanding again in Jack - a woman who, like her, had lead a similarly harsh life of violent crime, was hardened by it, and even understood what a life with biotics could be like - their tender connection borne from common struggles still wasn't enough to turn Hyacinth away from the path she was on. (At least she was a good influence on Jack?? Somehow??? something something cautionary tales I guess idk. thank you again, modding community💕)

I guess, in a way, the other major reason why she is Like That™ is because, at her core, Hyacinth never really stops being that scared little kid, struggling to eke out an existence in one of Earth's many forgotten gutters. She is still reacting to every potential threat and problem like a hammer to a nail, still willing to manipulate and betray her "allies" if she thinks it would give her an advantage (oftentimes without fully considering the full implications, and later on simply not caring about the long-reaching effects). Because she's simply never learned how else to operate.

So yeah, long story short; Hyacinth Shepard's unhealed trauma and apathetic/pessimistic worldview informs a LOT of her decision-making. And even though her regrets and sins will haunt her to the end of her days, she holds onto the core belief that she deserves to be haunted by what she has done, and the belief that she doesn't deserve to get better. And that's the tragedy of it all. Because like, it really didn't have to turn out like this. She was handed so many chances to do differently, to make a better choice, but when you take all of those events combined, it acted like some kind of horrible cascading domino effect for her, and because of that, it probably couldn't have turned out any other way for Hyacinth, sadly :(