#(bleh this is the never ending argument in fandoms and it's why i get worked up about it)

[icharchivist]

I'm really worried about Leorio in this arc. Like he hasn't seen half the shit Kurapika's been through and not even a quarter of half the shit Killua and Gon have been through. And this arc seems like/was stated to be even worse than the chimera ant arc? He's gonna get thrust in the middle of all of it! Thought it might also be his time to shine. Kurapika's def gonna get hurt and while he can heal himself normally he won't be able to if he's passed out/weakened from emperor time.

Yeee definitly agreed. Some shits are going to go down and that’s going to be hard.

I love Kurapika with all my heart but tbh I really wanted this arc to be more Leorio centric. I’m still a bit frustrated we didn’t get much of him, but I think the arc can set up a few things for him now if the storyline takes it.

and if it does? Leorio is going to suffer.

The thing is that, I think the main four are complementary in a sort of way when it comes to their respective trauma. Gon’s was dormant and truly kicked in in the CA arc when everything happened to Kite. He actively tried to confront that trauma and it ended badly. Killua’s was always kinda there and is still there, without exactly being addressed directly by Killua - he’s slowly recovering without exactly realizing it since it’s just by being away from a toxic environment that he’s doing better.Kurapika's trauma is still vivid and active and he’s completely aware of it, and he deals with it with the most unhealthy ways possible, and like Gon he tries to confront him.

If we go by that logic, Leorio’s trauma happened officially pre-canon with the death of his friend, and he had tried to recover as much as possible in the most healthy ways (how he’s becoming a doctor to prevent this loss to happen again). 

Out of the Four, it’s true Leorio is the one who suffered the least, and he’s the one who moved on from the trauma that kickstarted his plotline - as much as we can say, he recovered. 

Which is in itself a good theme when it comes down to it, but since it’s not exactly exploited by the narrative, it’s not exactly obvious and I doubt it was meant to be a point in itself but more a set up.

If it is a set up, we saw already a bit of payoff thus far. The multiple times he worred about Kurapika before the end of the York New Arc and grew concerned was one part, and his direct reaction to almost losing Gon was extremely frightening for him. It’s eventually what led him to ask the Zodiacs if they could find a way to get to Kurapika. 

I think that, at this point of the story, Leorio is more worried for his friends than ever. In the begining of the story he mostly focuses on his goal, becoming a doctor in order to be able to prevent the harm that could happen to people, but he ended up feeling extremely guilty in the Election arc where, after all this studying, he still wasn’t there when his friends were suffering, and he couldn’t have done anything to prevent it - and now again he was powerless.

Even when Gon wakes up Leorio still feels guilty for not having been there when all those troubles with Killua and Gon happened - he mentions it especially when Gon mentions the “horrible things” he said to Killua, which means more than saving his life, Leorio wanted to have been here to prevent all those bad things to happen, to even talk with them if possible.

Which is imo why he tried to reach out for Kurapika a bit more and ended up asking the Zodiac for a favor - because he wasn’t there previously and his friends ended up near death. And it’s all good to be able to help people, but if you’re not there when it happens, what’s the point?

I’m still a little unsure about that because as much as i love Leorio caring for his friends, I would have loved a more “Leorio-centric” narrative, but as the story is going on, I wonder if the catalyst won’t be even more harm happening to his closed ones and eventually re-traumatizing him, and having him try to do something about it.

That’s why I’ve kinda been thinking that Kurapika may not die but will be badly harmed by the end of the arc and it may bring oil on the fire for Leorio. But at the same time i’m still a bit doubtful, because a repetitive narrative can be either extremely clever as parallelism, or downright stupid because it’s basically the same thing. But it’s been in the back of my mind for a while, since it would find a place among Leorio’s themes in general.

Personally, I would wish to see him more involved with the Zodiacs and uses his political position as a means to an end. I would love to see more of his training too, but I don’t have any precise idea of where it could go from that point on in order to explore that.

All i still wish for though, is that - Leorio is supposed to be busy on the lower levels of the ship. Kurapika is dealing with the princes now, but Leorio is down there, far from the political fighting.

Mizai had said that riots started happening on the lower levels, and I want to know if it’s going to bring somewhere, especially with Leorio who’s after all, working in that aera. It would be an opportunity to open up a plot line for him.

If we can’t have a totally centric Leorio arc like I wish, there’s still the fact the Troupe and Hisoka are also on those lower levels. At best, Leorio could get involved because he knows them and can try to come up with ways to limitate the damages (also it could also finally explore why Hisoka took an interest on him in the Hunter Exam by having those two at least having a conversation.). At worst, if it’s not entierely Leorio-centric, he could be worried that learning the Troupe is on board would be of harm for Kurapika and try to deal with it for it.

Regardless, I still believe the arc will be divided in, well, 3 for now. First part was the introduction we saw so far, until the departure of the boat, second would be the Succession War and everything happening on the Boat to the Dark Continent. Lastly, the Exploration of the Dark Continent itself.

I think it may be why the likes of Ging and Pariston hadn’t been seen again since the Succession War sub-arc started. The introduction would have set the players for the following arcs, and the Dark Continent exploration would be a complete different story.

Kurapika’s entiere purpose for participating in that arc is the Succession War (which again is one of the reason I think he’ll be out of commission by the end of this pat). Leorio, however, promised to help alongside Cheadle with every means he could, and I believe it might be that he’ll therefore be a more major player in the Exploration of the Dark Continent itself.

Whenever it would be to further his own storyline, which i really hope for, or to help wounded friends (after all, one of the wonders of the Dark Continent includes a rice that makes you life longer, that would come handy), i think Leorio would have more of a plotline in the Dark Continent Itself.

(especially even more if the Dark Continent would head up into a commentary about collonialism the way the CA arc had a commentary about war, and that I think (really take it with a grain of salt bc it’s something i’ve been thinking to myself for a while) that therefore Nanika’s powers could have been a forshadow of the commentary itself - for your selfish gain you will only get suffering, a suffering the next people involved, regardless of their own intend, will pay even harder, but if you’re there because you want to help, if you work it out of love, either toward the land/the person or toward the people you’re trying to help, you may find a welcome. I think it was stated that the guardian of the DC wouldn’t let a lot of people in, and we saw the scientific team talking about the DC only see horrors from the people who came back - yet apparently Don Freecss, who embrassed and loved the new land, could benefits from its goodness.)(and i’m completely overanalysing so don’t take that part any seriously until we get any confirmation, because for now we don’t know anything.)

Also the Zodiac are planning on letting all the people on the Boat (aside from those who are actively working on the exploration of the dark continent) into an Unknown Continent, I suppose eventually a few stuff could happen there, at least as it would come to organize the people who will be brought there.

I’m really scared for what’s to come though because ye, it seems to be going in a dark path, and things are going to get tense. And I worry too that Leorio’s “lack of drama” (for lack of better word) will eventually backlash on him getting even worse on his head.

The problem is that so far the most I can think about is him reacting to his friends and... While on one way I consider it to be in character, and it’s not a shame for character to be dedicated to their friends (a lot of Killua’s storyline centers a lot more around helping Gon that it does on his own goal, textually so. And Leorio’s goal is, as a mean to an end, a way to help people, among those, his friends.). 

On the other, I would love a storyline that would explore much more about Leorio, first because I really want to see him evolve and see him going through stuff, and second because I don’t want to hear anything about how he’s not interesting or useless or any Bad Word Of The Month people use on him. And the sad truth is that people who’s goal are usually really “caring” centric are often sidelined, both by the narrative and the fandom, more than once.

So in recap, i do think he’ll get involved in the plotline and he will end up getting in danger in one way or another. But I also believe he will be more involved either with the Zodiac or with the Exploration, and maybe with the Riots on the boat, which could be an excellent opportunity to explore much, much more of him. Even if you have to use other people’s suffering to come there, i just wish at least it wouldn’t break him.

I’m still hopeful for Leorio’s involvement and story arc, but ye, there’s no way it will happen without suffering. Brace for it.

All of that being said, there’s still a lot this arc has to offer and Togashi had always managed to surprise us in one way or another, and he always added stuff to the scenario that we couldn’t exactly anticipate. Notice that all I say is my overanalysis of current information that might be completely wrong after a next update because of new elements. I totally believe Togashi can be completely misleading, and that he will bring the story where it has to be brought and that it will be interesting.  But we can’t predict it, even with all the amount of overinterpretation one can use.

Take care!!

[sceawere]

We’ve lost more than just the plot: my thoughts on the season 4 finale

I have a lot of problems with this season. I have problems with characterisation. I have problems with storylines. I have problems with the way things were shown (I’m looking at you, informed consent).

But last episode was so good! The Luca/Alfie scene was one of the best pieces of television I’ve had the pleasure of consuming. So, there were problems, but I went in with high hopes because, you know, it’s Peaky Blinders, and I love it, so I ignored stuff. But how am I supposed to ignore that raging inferno of a dumpster fire that was the finale. Look. I’m so mad I’m using Americanisms. On that note, give me a Changretta spin off because we deserve it.

A lot of the arguments I make here are going to circle back to a few main points which can be covered by various subtitles such as: ‘Holy Fuck, is someone going to jump a shark in the cut at some point?’, ‘Tommy Shelby is a 4D chess master, except he hasn’t told anyone else where the board is kept’, and ‘Why?’.

This is rambing and probably at times confusing but bleh. Let’s begin.

-

Major shout out to dorahog for her comment where she said that it seemed very truncated – I think the events of the finale should have been spread over at least two episodes, and maybe three. A lot of the tying of the knots to me still left loose threads and didn’t really seem complete.

I think this, and some of the editing as a result is what causes some of the major problems I have with the episode. Lots of rushed finishing off to introduce too many new lines, idk. Anyway, I’m going to walk through it pretty much scene by scene, so buckle in.

We spend at least the first quarter (in terms of irl play time) of the episode at the boxing match. I was pumped. It was great. The Gold’s are my new faves, and while I may try to present myself as a refined you know, whatever, I love watching two people kick six shades of shit out of each other in a semi controlled manner any day of the week.

Even better when everyone is wearing sharp tailoring and it was someone’s entire job to light the place fantastically. I was about to write an ode to the costumes and props people but then I got a shot of Abbeys wig and the feeling swiftly fled.

Still, I will give the editing people props for this particular section. The pacing was great, the frenetic activity, the flicking back and forth between sets. Here, the editing was spot on. It built up the feeling of not only the excitement, but a sense of panic. Arthurs paranoia really seeped into me and I was on edge about whether Bonnie might be just a little over his head.

Since I’m going to reference pay off recurrently, I want to point out these elements. Arthur is always a paranoid, frenetic, madman. Bonnie has been woven into this season and everything has been building to this moment. The scene with the garotte and Bonnie winning the match – that’s how you do payoff.

Before we move on, I’m focusing on Alfie’s story a lot more later, so I’m skipping over that particular scene for the moment.

I loved the scene in the loos. It was funny, it was an accurate depiction of the politics and preening that goes on, the interplay between the women was indulgent. We got exposition, we got characterisation, we got costumes that made me salivate. More of all of this please.

I’m assuming that Linda is going to get a bigger role in Season 5 – the focus on her descent into Shelby Ladyhood, and the mentions of her past and family (especially her mother) seems to point that way. Which, I for one would enjoy. I think Linda gets a lot of hate because she’s written to. She’s portrayed as the shrew who tore poor little rabid dog Arthur away and leashed him up. I don’t think their relationship is completely healthy, I think there’s co-dependence issues there. But the way I’ve seen her described in fandom is eye-rolling to an extent that I physically injured myself on at least three occasions. So, please, give me more of her as a character and less as a caricature.

I’m so upset that Tommy would lie to Finn about Arthur being dead. Finn, the baby of the family, who wasn’t in the war, and doesn’t think and feel the way they do, was lied to about his brother dying just months after his other brother died. I think it’s sick emotional manipulation and unconscionable on Tommy’s part. If you can’t trust Finn, don’t bring him near the business. You can’t have it both ways. Either he’s in and you bring him in, or you don’t, and he needs to leave. I understand keeping the circle small, but they’ve just learned with the ‘don’t tell Michael about the plan’ plan that it doesn’t really work, and you just end up causing more problems.

Tommy has no consideration for people’s emotions or their state as beings of their own. They’re players to him, pieces on a board, and he’ll move them how he wants. He gets to make all the decisions, they don’t have any real input, and they have no ability to decide if they want to accept the consequences or not, because they’re already five steps deep in the process by the time they learn about it.

Side note: I’m bored of all the plans being made off screen and magically revealed to us later. If you’ve seen the really good video essay about why Sherlock is shitty for doing this, that’s the basis of my argument. It’s not smart or exciting to say ah! Got you! When I never had a chance to work it out in the first place. It’s just kind of lazy and boring.

Also, Tommy lied to a pregnant woman and caused her great distress, so that’s nice.

I cannot believe this is the first proper scene with Isaiah we get, because opening car doors and skulking in the background doesn’t count. Jordan Bolger is a great actor who brings so much to the character and they continually waste him. Isaiah could be so much more – he’s a black, working class kid, with a preacher for a father, in a crime family, and all he gets is a two-minute scene where he’s a bystander to Finn’s character development. Give me his struggle, give me him working through the moral conflicts – even the times they’ve just shown him to be a young lad being a young lad it’s been great, give us more. I assumed with the including of him in the heist plot that he would be stepping up into actual business, but they seem to have abandoned that idea and it’s disappointing. He can firmly join the ‘they deserve better’ club.

Finn should be left to be smol and soft, those are my complete thoughts.

Also, Tommy terrifies and holds hostage a whole room of innocent people as a charade because he doesn’t give a fuck about anyone else’s feelings or autonomy any longer than they are useful to him.

Also, I love Goliath and I’m sad that with Alfie gone we’re probably not going to see anymore of him, my big son, I loved you while I had you.

-

We move away from the boxing scenes and get Arthur’s ‘funeral’.

I will say, I bloody love the wagons and wish my alternate theory that the Shelby’s did in fact lose everything to Luca and have to start from scratch could have happened because they were would have got more shots of them being ethereal in the forest somewhere surrounded by beautiful woodwork a la the Polly/Abbey scenes, but alas…we get this instead.

The shot of the empty room and the fireplace was beautiful, and poignant, and I’m gonna give them that.

Also, was that Karl? Thank fuck if it was because I had assumed Ada had abandoned him in the states somewhere for all we’ve seen/heard of him so far. It’s not as if any of the children are seen to be particularly important or have any type of characterisation of their own though so why am I surprised?

-

The way that Tommy treats Michael is ridiculous. You can’t complain about Michael keeping something back from you when you are lying to him about the exact same thing. I am so heartened by Michael saying, ‘I chose my mum’ because it not only shows that Michael isn’t Tommy Jr after all, but also that there’s a chance that the new generation will succeed the old guard after all and that this won’t just carry on forever.

Also, if Tommy can’t trust Michael with his life of all things, why would he trust him to handle the American business alone? How ridiculous. If I think someone was willing to screw me over in a double-cross that led to my death, I wouldn’t hand them the key to my secondary kingdom. Sense – this makes none.

-

Audrey Changretta turning up at the funeral like the badass she is and I’m so sad that her whole life has been torn apart in order to make Tommy Shelby look like a big man. Honestly, if you ask me, the Shelbys should have lost. Luca should have won. It would have made more sense, and provided such great material for next season.

The Shelby’s, having lost everything and become the people they used to rule, must fight to get back to the top. It should have been everything this season was meant to be, getting back to their roots, scrapping again. It would have provided stakes again. They need to be taken down a few pegs. If I know that Tommy is just going to fix everything off screen at the end anyway and everything turns out the same, then why am I wasting my time?

But that’s what the show has become. It started off as an interesting look at the moral complexities of the family, how they worked together, struggling to be something other than what they were destined for by the people who consistently maligned them. Now it’s a show about how amazing Tommy Shelby is. But the only way they’ve made Tommy Shelby great, is by making everyone else an idiot.

Tommy is a 4D chess-master, but only because no else knows where the table is being kept.

Luca Changretta was introduced as what should have been the most terrifying antagonist yet. And they turned him into an idiot. Luca Changretta, mob boss, doesn’t know to leave men behind to keep an eye on the kingdom? Bullshit.

I understand that Tommy is the main guy and has plot armour, but he doesn’t need to be the centre of the universe to be compelling as a character. This guy has manipulated Churchill and the king, got a city, a country, and an empire revolving around him, been given an OBE and now is an MP. But he can’t count two steps in front of himself and predict that killing a mob boss’ father might bring the mob down on him? He never really sees the consequences of his actions. His wife dying didn’t change him as a person, he just got meaner. His brother dying didn’t change him as a person, he just got reckless. I need a little bit more.

Alfie is such a beloved character not just because Tom Hardy plays him so well, not just because he belts out hilarious nonsense like a slightly faulty spitfire, but because he’s a match for Tommy. A much-needed match. He can go toe-to-toe with him, hell, even half the time get one over on him. He tells it straight when he knows Tommy needs it, and he doesn’t take his bullshit. He’s a breath of fresh air in a show that wants to convince us the literal world (or at least the empire, and America, and the political-social climate of the period, and every woman in sights life) revolves around Thomas Shelby.

Even add Campbell to that pile. He was a shit show. He was disgusting. He was mildly inept at times. But he was menacing. He had political connections. You knew he was the guy they sent out to do the work that everyone turned an eye to, and how much damage he could cause without official recompense. But in the end, it wasn’t Grand Master Tommy who got him – it was Grace, and then Polly. Hell hath no fury like women scorned, and the beauty came so much more from the fact that it wasn’t the person who he perceived as his adversary that ended up doing him in. Someone he trusted, and someone he abused, doing what needed to be done. The priest last season was menacing because of the same, and in the end, it wasn’t Tommy that brought him down, it was Michael. It meant something because it was Michael.

I don’t see how killing Luca makes sense except it as a way to make Tommy look good and have the big Arthur reveal, which was bullshit anyway. There was little pay off there.

-

And Alfie. Oh, sweet love, Alfie. So, not only do they take what is pretty much the most beloved character in the fandom, even casuals love the shit out of this man, and dispatch of him like a secondary mop up, but they do it in such a shitty way.

When the spoilers came out about Alfie’s cancer I had a personal reflexive ‘well fuck off with that’ having just lost someone irl to a long and messy cancer battle, so mainly I pushed it away and thought ‘ah, that won’t get dealt with yet, they’ve done nothing about it for season upon season, it’s probably just internal backstory bullshit’. Nope.

Alfie has been chronically underused in this show, and I understand it. I think the rare glimpses we get are so powerful that it makes sense. It’s Christmas Day. It’s an island in the sea of winter, and the anticipation’s half the fun. You get presents every day, and you’re just going to turn out to be a spoiled brat. But we spend seasons adoring this guy who lives in the damn shadows, scrapping together parts of his life so that we can better understand him, only to be fed a massive plot point as an offhand spoiler and then have the entire thing resolved in what felt like 20 minutes? There was no anticipation. There were no stakes. There was no payoff. I was just…sighing, mostly.

I knew when he started talking about Margate that I was about to be emotionally ruined, but I expected at least to get a fitting end. But no. We got Alfie screwing Tommy over again in a predictable but fucking useless way. We got Tommy shooting him on a beach and walking away. And that was it.

-

I think the Tommy breakdown scenes would have had a bigger impact on me two seasons ago when I still had care for his character, but I just used the time to check my messages, so it didn’t really land with me tbh. The whole last segment of this ep just flew over me.

The malignment of Jessie Eden’s character will likely get a post of its own soon. Except I am going to say here that I’m entirely sure that what Tommy is doing counts as sexual assault – see the case of the woman who had a child with someone she didn’t know was an undercover agent in her what I think was also Communist action group, and also the new laws that stop undercover people from sleeping with those they are surveying. Because you can’t give informed consent. But they’re probably not going to address that, because we have a love triangle to deal with now.

Also, Tommy abandoned a dog and tampered with an election so he’s everyone I hate now. You don’t come for the animals or the democratic process. Taking inspiration from my dear love, Alfie Solomons, what a fucking cunt.

But besides that, it was fine.

[meggannn]

ironically one of my favorite things about shepard/garrus is one of the things i think bioware did least successfully, at least for my personal taste. and i admit this is mostly cause i prefer developing/reading professional or emotionally reserved sheps (at least on the surface) who gradually open up to their li over time, over sheps who wear their heart on their sleeves from the beginning, and there are very few bw romances that really allow you to play that first kind of character, considering you, the pc, have to instigate the romance dialogue. there’s only so much a game can do to mimic a ‘real’ romance after all. even so i do prefer a bit of, if not subtlety, then.... tactfulness, i guess, when the pc pops the question, especially with a character like shepard who is so duty-focused and (until the proposing scene) never really indicated they were driven by their libido when looking for a partner (even if they were joking). so that “do you wanna bang” scene gives me such second hand embarrassment i gotta rewrite most of their entire me2 romance in my head and one day i’ll put it to a fic, but in the meantime...... i’ll just blab about it on tumblr dot com i guess....

like, i like the VIBE that is established. i like that in me2, we get confirmation that: a) garrus’s confidence in personal matters is absolutely nil when it comes to romance, much less an interracial romance; b) it sets up a real sweet theme of realizing they actually DONT know that much about each other’s culture or biology or anything related to their race, and the romance is staged to give them each time to do research on the other’s biology and anatomy (which is practical and common courtesy and the right thing to do! and also a little sweet when you consider how terrified garrus is of screwing it up!), c) however it started, whether facetiously or nervously or enthusiastically, these two are still able to have a nice moment together and acknowledge there are feelings between them that can (and if you ask me, do) still go unsaid. and in me3, we see them both (or at least garrus) in a bit more emotionally stable situation, maybe driven by a desire to see something go right in the middle of the war, so we establish a) garrus is still nervous and treading cautiously, but b) confident enough to prepare for a reunion, to articulate his questions about their relationship, to let shepard know he’s there for them regardless, and c) if you confirm the relationship, shepard and garrus can tease each other as friends and work together as soldiers and still have a supportive emotional/intimate partnership in their private time. 

i just think you can have all of these angles to their relationship without the current get-together. imo you lose a lot of possible development and depth when you start all of this by having shepard walk in and say “heyyyyyyy let’s you and me ‘‘‘ease some tension’’’ together ;) :) ;) do you see me winking”, like.... how does a commanding officer say that to another adult they respect and (possibly) genuinely like, idk. it seemed like such a lazy way for the writers to get them into bed together without considering who these people are. and yeah, every shepard’s different, it’s possible someone found that very ic for their shepard. personally i’ve always been more of a fan of piecing together canon clues to tell me who the pc is and extrapolating an oc from there, and what most of canon tells me, is that shepard is someone who prioritizes duty (either to the alliance, or to saving innocents, or to just getting the job done) above nearly all else, including their own personal life. that doesn’t mean i don’t see shepard being an instigator or an occasional flirt. just......

bleh. is it too much to want a better get together than “let’s fuck”? idk. i feel like a whiner bc shepard/garrus is obviously the most popular pairing in the fandom, it dwarfs so many others in content and you can’t throw a stone without meeting an insufferable stan, and here i am complaining about it not being done my way. i guess i just feel like the writers listened to the fans who wanted garrus as an li from me1, but didn’t listen to why. they drew the shortest line between a and b (“they want to bone the alien? here you go, i guess!”) and left it at that.

i mean admittedly, left up to me, i’d stuff so much drawn-up pining into a canon shepard/garrus get-together that neither of them would be able to breathe through the ust. there’s a line i like in kaidan’s romance (not to hijack a shenko line for a shakarian thing, but it’s something i find so true to shepard’s character i adopt it for my shepard too, even though i don’t romance kaidan and save ashley) when shepard tells kaidan in the moment that she needs a shoulder, not a subordinate, and kaidan says “cut me a little slack, shepard, it’s not like you’re easy to read.” that is how i tend to play and read shepard: as someone who is emotionally available for their crew but plays things close to the vest with their own feelings. paired up with garrus, who is a better turian than he thinks and is pretty goal-oriented and professional under shepard’s command, it’s hard for me to believe these two would just fall into bed with each other after only one or two conversations of known build-up (stressing “known” here is as “acknowledged feelings” but could also be notable ust, which is my hc). in my reading, these two are much better at reading others (c-sec and officer training) than themselves, and one could argue are duty-driven enough to maybe not even bring up/realize their attraction until me3 (why couldn’t garrus have been an li in me3 for new romances or mshep!!!! who tf knows!!!!!)

all those times femshepard tells garrus she loves him in me3? not really my shepard’s style..... how’s an earthborn kid who’s been a marine all their adult life and never had a family or serious relationship know how to recognize and admit love out loud? garrus himself doesn’t tell shepard he loves them till the beam run, and even then, he barely whispers it. i have to turn my freaking speakers up just to hear him. it’s hard for him to say out loud. maybe turians have different language for it, or maybe there’s a stigma, or maybe the culture’s different. i dunno! but i keep thinking about the impact it would’ve had for that to be the first time shepard says it, too. like they’ve just realized it and want to get it out because they know it’s the end. or you could get away with not saying it at all, if you pick the renegade option. or you could have them try to say it and fail! come on, isn’t that sadder?

shepard wants to say -- she doesn’t know what she wants to say. whatever great emotion she’s been holding back since that night in her cabin is stuck in her throat and refuses to form. the bay door can’t remain open for long. garrus’s skull is caked with dark blue blood, his leg bent awfully, and shepard sees a sharp, snapped edge to his armor where his spur used to be. he should be in the med bay. he needs medical attention more than he needs to be wasting time saying goodbyes.

but he won’t go, he refuses, he won’t leave her be. “shepard -- i’m still good. just give me my gun. i can still fight.” blood dribbles into his eye from a crack in his forehead. he’s crouching so low to stand that he nearly meets her height. she’s never heard him plead before.

“vakarian -- ” her voice is hoarse when she talks; her throat burns. she’s been shouting all day. she’s surprised she can still talk at all. “don’t make me give you an order.”

“that’s not fair.” he laughs desperately, a bit disbelieving. half of his visor is dangling, interface dead; his armor scorched and chipped across the carapace; and his eyes, still, are locked on hers. “don’t -- shepard. please.” she’s ever heard him plead before.

“shepard,” tali says quietly under garrus’s arm. her helmet is cracked, badly, suit ruptured in a dozen places. but shepard hasn’t heard a single complaint from her, from either of them, and she realizes in this moment that she can’t let them go on. if they followed her, they’d follow her through hell again, follow her until they dropped, and she cannot abide by that.

“we’re in this -- ” garrus coughs, badly. fresh dark blood spits up from his throat; spots hit shepard’s chestpiece. his eyes water. “we’re in this ‘till the end. shepard.”

she’s never pleaded in her life either; she will not start now. “i need.” her voice is too hoarse, too quiet; he can’t hear her over the roar of the thrusters. she swallows, tries again. “i need to know people are getting out of this alive. i need you to be one of them.” to tali: “both of you.”

garrus stares at her, lost for words. “shepard,” he whispers. he looks prepared to say something great, and she readies herself for another argument -- but then she sees the moment the fight leaves his eyes, the moment lays down his gun, and she hates herself for being relieved. “just,” he says, “make sure that includes you too.”

harbinger roars in the distance; she glances to the great white beam heading their way, then back to the bleeding pair of them, waving firmly toward the ship as she moves off the gangplank. “go! tali -- take care of him!”

she realizes belatedly that those will be logged as her final words, and the last he’ll remember her by. and then he’s gone, and so is the normandy. the moment is over and she’s missed her chance. she thinks, garrus will understand. he couldn’t say it either.

i mean that’s garbage but i like it better than shepard dropping the l-word in every romance scene! fuck! i just want a little nuance ok leave me alone