#Bioware pls give me more content for him but also please don't

[flatstarcarcosa]

Reese... i am absolutely clueless but i don't WANT to be. so. please explain to me who Zaeed is. i wanna know everything. what's his story. where is he from. what does he do. what is he like. literally use this as an excuse to talk about him at length and also tell me how he came into your life, pls and thank u!!! -heavenshipped

@heavenshipped

he's an old pissy mercenary with a fucked up face, a fat ass, and one good eyeball.

"isn't that just slade?" you may be thinking and the answer to that is........

no, but actually, yes.

also there do be light mentions of drugs and general Junkie ShenanigansTM below

he's a dlc squadmate that shows up in mass effect 2. unfortunately being dlc means there's a lot of content and ideas that were originally cut, and there's not as many dynamic conversations w him as there are with others. he's also not romanceable but it works for selfshipping because any of the romanceable characters (and one other who isn't) are too tied to my shepards for me to ship with them.

i've actually been Looking Respectfully for a while but it was before i started selfshipping so i didn't really do much aside from curse bioware and the home of phobia of not letting us romance him.

i'm still fleshing out the details of our ship but i'm thinking i grew up on earth, it was inherently BadTM so i jumped at the first chance to hit up a colony. it did not go any better, and i just spent a lot of time hopping from place to place, causing mild chaos and abusing Many, Many substances.

when we do meet it's because i was running a con/hustle to get some quick credits, and zaeed thought i was a Literal Child that was about to Get Murdered by some pissed off aliens and intervened. i lost out on my money marks, he discovered i was actually An Adult and it left us in an awkward position of 'well, what now?'

for reasons he cannot immediately parse, he decides to give me a place to crash, initially just temporarily. we're having a grand ol time when i suddenly inform him mid sentence that i may have Taken Too Much and proceed to hit the floor and have a mild drug induced seizure in the middle of his kitchen.

for reasons he also cannot parse, he decides against his initial thought of dumping me in an alley and instead locks me in his bathroom and proceeds to detox my ass after he digs through my bag and sees just how many drugs i have on me.

(later on we pointedly ignore any medical professional who comments that detoxing someone in this way is dangerous as hell and you're more likely to kill them anything else because like. we know. it was fine. move on, we sure did.)

i spend the first three and a half days beating on the bathroom door and telling him all the ways i'm gonna eviscerate him if he doesn't open the door and give me my fucking shit back.

all total it takes about 10 days to clean me out, with him opening the bathroom long enough to make sure i'm at least drinking fluids if i won't eat. withdrawal kills your appetite, and makes you prone to puking for no reason.

the 11th day, i'm sitting at the table in the kitchen of the shitty rental apartment on whatever crappy colony we're on while he scrambles eggs and fries bacon and i ask him why the hell he bothered with any of this.

"beats me," he says. "i'm normally not one for doing anything that doesn't have a payoff in the end."

"i guess it beats waking up behind a dumpster again," i say.

after that we kind of just fall into a natural rhythm with each other, a weirdly comfortable fit despite his usual aversion to others and my inherent skittishness around them.

it takes a while for him to think about it, to realize that maybe it was just the timing of everything. maybe even he of all people was tired of never being able to put anything back into the galaxy. maybe the way i just calmly announced 'oh shit, i'm ODing again', with more annoyance and exhaustion in my voice than panic just stuck out to him. made him think of all the people he's run into before, lost and strung out and on their own.

all of them dead or dying and none of them knowing it yet.

maybe he just wanted to know if he could even keep someone alive, rather than being a walking curse and death sentence for anyone he meets.

maybe he was just lonely, and figured i was too.

he never really settles on one single answer that seems like it fits, and after a while, he figures it doesn't matter. what happened, happened.

and more importantly, it happened exactly the way it needed to, and thats all that really matters.

by the time the events of ME2 start, and commander shepard comes to recruit zaeed, i'm figuring him and i have been together about 5-7 years.

after the events of me2 and 3, and after the reaper war is over, zaeed uses his money he's been hoarding all these years and we buy a plot of land of bekenstein. the only thing on it is a dock on a lake that needs some TLC.

we build a two story cabin bit by bit, and zaeed of course builds a weapons bunker underneath, "just in case". there's a porch on the second story, a hot tub in the back yard, and a fireplace in the living room.

he spends the mornings drinking coffee and watching the sunrise, and the evenings with scotch and a cigar, watching it set, and every time he's amazed the both of us lived long enough to get to settle into something as mundane as this.

there's also stuff obviously related to me2 and 3 that i'm fleshing out of course.

also, this is some of the best content of the whole game and it's a simple fact.

also related to the above video:

i have a cheap ass, well worn, purple plush krogan toy that probably ended up costing him as much as a case of heat sinks and a whole fucking box of other prizes from the same claw machine.

oh!

we both got drunk one time and ended up at a vegas style space chapel, and neither of us have any recollection about it. he doesn't even know until he's visiting the citadel one day and the citadel tourism VI has his name hyphenated to massani-wilson.

"fuckin wot did you just call me?" "records indicate you and reese wilson-massani were married three years ago at-" "the goddamn hell we were-" "-Slicky Rickys Love Shack" "oh goddamn it. well, that explains the matching rings."

i also love the idea this comes out after shepard's recruited him, and shepard is just like

"wait you two have had matching ring for three years and didn't wonder what it was about?" "reese gets sentimental about weird shit, i figured it was just that." "well, cerberus didn't hire you for your critical thinking skills, i guess." "keep talkin' shepard and you'll be learning to do it out your arse." "i do that well enough already." "fair enough."