Hey There! It’s Been A While 🤝🏻

That moment of feeling old when you hear a word you don't recognize and you have no idea if it's an app, a service, a product, a brand or a new slang term, etc....

In light of the latest Discourse, I wanted to point out this as-yet unimplemented dialogue I datamined.

"Friendship is no consolation trophy."

That is the one thing you will never hear an incel, nice guy, etc say. It is the attitude of someone with a healthy sense of boundaries and respect for others.

NPCs

Sometimes my mind keeps going back to that one Bhaal cultist who wanted things to be quiet and I wonder what if she was a far more tragic figure than anyone would ever know. It's no surprise that most are sadistic, most are mentally ill or simply craved power, but what if that one's desire was born from trauma? What if she had once been a child, born in an abusive environment, unable to relax because it'd make whoever she was around angry? What if her days had consisted of fear and pain, a constant theme of screaming and yelling that scraped her nerves raw while she was silently wishing for things to be quiet? What if she had been praying for the gods to answer, only to be met with shattering glass and deafening thumps of pottery and metal hurled at her head?

Day in, day out.

The noise just won't stop.

Why won't it stop?

Why won't they be quiet?

When will it stop hurting?

Until one day, something snaps and before she knows it, she's standing in the middle of the room, hands bloodied, her tormenter(s) dead.

And for the first time, it's quiet. So blissfully quiet.

A lost soul that begged for mercy and peace. And Bhaal was the only God who answered her pleas.

There are a couple more Garrus-Vakarian-related hills I'm willing to die on.

Maybe this particular bit of fanon has faded over the years, but there used to be a lot of insistence that Garrus is young and somehow inexperienced when he meets Shepard. Canon doesn't really support this. Turians start their mandatory service at 15. Garrus has at least a decade of experience. Even if he's 2-4 of years younger than Shepard (according to Patrick Weekes), he's got at least as much field experience as she does by dint of the difference in turian and human "enlistment" ages.

Garrus is really damn good at his job at C-Sec. You don't give the Case of Investigating the Rogue Spectre to a greenhorn. You give it to your best, most tenacious agent. Pallin may not always approve of Garrus's actions, but that doesn't actually stop him from putting Garrus on the tough case. Also, we don't know much about how C-Sec works but we do know a bit about how the turian hierarchy works, and we know C-Sec was essentially a turian initiative. That means it's a meritocracy where failure reflects on the superior, not the one who failed. So, in roughly a decade (Shepard's 29 in ME1; I always think of Garrus as about 27), Garrus has not only done shipboard military service, but he's also risen to be one of C-Sec's top investigators; Pallin wouldn't risk having Garrus's "failure" reflect poorly on HIM otherwise. I'd say that actually makes Garrus as remarkable in civilian law enforcement terms as Shepard is considered to be within the ranks of the Alliance military.

Of course Garrus was scouted by the Spectre program. And honestly, if his dad hadn't stepped in, I think Garrus would have become a Spectre, no problem. Especially for a turian, he's cut from precisely the cloth the Spectres would be looking for: extremely skilled, extremely capable, and--most importantly--he's a turian not just able but willing to work outside the chains of command that turians are taught from birth to revere and be loyal to above all else. This is the reason Pallin is leery about Spectres: he's a good turian. Good turians follow straight lines; they don't carve out their own paths.

Garrus's dad's not dumb, and he's not cruel, and he, too, rose to the top of the C-Sec hierarchy. He took one look at his kid, I think, and said, "I love my child, but I'd say it's a 50-50 chance he ends up a shooting-first-asking-questions-later Spectre like Saren Arterius, and I don't want to see that happen." Yeah, he uses his parental influence to try and jam square-peg-Garrus into round-hole-C-Sec and Garrus resents him for it, but there's no way he did it just to stop his son from getting his way or because he doesn't like Spectres. I expect Vakarian Sr. had to clean up more post-Spectre-interference messes than we can possibly imagine. But we also know he and Alec Ryder were pals later.

So the importance of what Garrus learns from a Paragon Spectre Shepard is this: You can't just do what you want and claim the ends always justify the means. That's what Saren does. Over and over again. Garrus's code and his idealism and his sense of justice and his ability to work alone should make him a great Spectre, actually, but he needs Paragon Spectre Shepard's actions to show him the lesson he tells her he's learned during ME1: "If the people I'm sworn to protect can't trust me... well, then I don't deserve to be the one protecting them." (And the seed of Archangel was planted.) I think for the first time he realizes that even though he believes his sense of justice to be correct, it doesn't matter for shit if he can't show others why that's so. And that's where the trust comes in. (Also, ow, the extra level of importance this gives their exchange where she tells him she trusts him and he tells her she's about the only friend he has left is... a lot. Cool, cool. I'm totally fine. Nothing to see here.)

When Shepard asks him what happened on Omega, he replies, "My feelings got in the way of my better judgement." Something tells me that this never happens to "good" turians, which just makes the line so much more devastating. And although the lesson some might take away from this is "feelings bad; no feelings ever," the "grey" that Garrus has to learn to deal with is precisely the grey of recognizing feelings, validating them even, but not acting on them until they've been examined. (Which is why my Shepard stands between him and Sidonis; she doesn't give a shit about Sidonis. But Garrus has refused to process his own feelings of failure and self-loathing, so they have to take the therapy session to the Citadel and deal with it there.)

Ahh yes. The mountain range of character analysis.

My headcanon for Karlach is that after a long, exhausting fight to get her a functional replacement for her engine, she and Wyll finally return from Avernus, taking a long, long moment to just. Breathe. Fresh air at last, but this time for good. A huge burst of laughter as she picks Wyll up and whirls in a loop with him, tossing him in the air before catching him and giving him the most affectionate (painful) hug she's ever given.

Years later, she's settled into a life where she's running a tavern funded by Wyll, called the Battleaxe where the plates, bowls and cutlery are reinforced to handle the barfights that break out and there's an extra fee charged for every participant (or you clean the mess up yourself). The street kids come by to hang out with her and call her Mama K. They have dubbed themselves the "Kar-lackeys", aspiring to grow up as strong and fearless as her as she fixes troublesome patrons with a steely eye and a crooked grin before launching them into a pile of outside hay she has replaced every other day due to the vomit.

Her teammates visit her often, Astarion frequently trying to get her to spot him just this once, Gale always bringing homemade cooking that he knows she missed, Halsin bringing her carvings that she keeps on a shelf behind the bar, Shadowheart hiding out there with her on occasion for relief from Sharrans and to share a drink or 5, Lae'zel comparing fighting techniques with her regarding patrons and of course, Wyll, who is always there for her because after all they've been through, how could they part ways just like that? Jaheira's kids are also frequent visitors, with Jaheira there to congratulate her on getting back and Minsc of course to tell her more of what Boo told him.

And once a year, they all gather in her tavern after last call, to share a round together as they sing rounds of the worst ballads they've ever heard. She smiles as she says silently to herself, "Mom. Dad. I made it back."

I know a lot of people think Halsin whittles a duck for the player simply because he likes them or for the metaphor of 'coming home', but I honestly think he's a sentimental creature and it goes deeper than that.

your very first conversation as friends, you have to push quite hard to learn what he likes. I think a century of being Archdruid meant people didn't actually care about who he was as a person, only that he could fix their problems.

So when the player makes an effort to get to know him - a genuine effort and not allowing halsin to give a polite dismissal- it's novel for him! And you've endeared yourself to him greatly with that one conversation.

So when he has the chance to make a gift for you, he chooses something out of the most romanticized memory in his mind.

The simple conversation where you got him to speak of whittling and ducks

A simple conversation for you, but one that meant the world to him

"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.

I love Liara to death but sometimes it does frustrate me how hard the games push you towards her. I'm not romancing Liara. I didn't romance her in ME1. Why does my Shepard have to have so much weird romantic tension with her when they're just friends?

With characters like Garrus and Tali you can see how Shepard has a brilliant friendship with them even if they are not romanced. But with Liara, Ashley and Kaiden it just feels like the games are forcing you to interact with them romantically. Which is sad, because it diminishes their characters as friends and squad mates as well as just romance options.

Hear me out. Falmer/Dwemer Ghoulcy!

i haven’t been able to finish my current me3 playthrough yet due to my brother hogging the xbox so he can play ARC: Evolved but here’s a list of things i remembered i hate in the OT in no particular order

the elevators

the asari

mark meer’s voice acting in ME1

liara’s writing if you don’t romance her (wtf bioware)…especially considering that the reason i generally DON’T romance her is because in ME1 at least, it feels like an adult dating a teenage girl.

femshep’s romance options and how most of them get fucking shafted to shit in ME3

how heteronormative ME2 was

jacob taylor’s loyalty mission and how racist it was

how racist and lazy the writing for jacob taylor was in general (ofc there are many reasons i dislike jacob in and of itself, but some it can be chalked up to bad writing)

jack’s chuppy ass default outfit in me2 (really bioware??? a woman could have the smallest titties in existence and she still wouldn’t be able to strap ‘em down with just a fucking belt. even if this game was written by mostly men, that’s still dumb as hell)

miranda’s largely unnecessary ass-shots

thane’s death

kai leng

that fact that you can’t call out kaidan for his bullshit cheating accusations in ME3 if you DO choose to romance someone else in ME2 as femshep if you romanced him in ME1, but mshep can do that to ashley (????? BIOWARE!)

the fact that an aro ace shepard it practically impossible to play after a certain point in the series without being a complete dick (and if you play the citadel dlc, impossible as femshep! because if you don’t romance anyone you wake up next to javik! lmao)

the fact that the dlc for the ME2 and 3 literally never goes on sale on pc like it does for the console versions, forcing me to pirate shit i already fucking paid for because i am unwilling to shell out £200+ on this shit again because EA and bioware are lazy money-grubbing fucks thanks ea thanks very much for your business practices

related to the above, but why did they never sell me2 or 3 with all the dlc included? that shit would sell like no one’s business…oh wait, EA…again.

the elevators