#and the thane romance itself is evocative and packs a hell of a punch if you build around it

[anghraine]

Other tangentially related gaming thing: my bff J agreed to yet another run of Mass Effect to help me decompress/distract myself/maintain the even keel that's kind of required by the whole situation, but also difficult as an intensely anxious (if usually composed!) person.

For context: our first Shepard, who romanced Liara, was about as squeaky-clean Paragon as possible to be while still murdering the fuck out of Kai Leng. I had a blast with that one!

Then, we constructed a whole tragic arc for our second Shep, a somewhat older woman with maximal emotional scars (survivor of Mindoir + butcher of Torfan) and a lot more capacity for ruthlessness (we did every Renegade choice we could square with our consciences—no space racism but lots of space murder).

We decided she'd start to find love again with Kaidan, only for him, like everyone else in her life, to die (at Virmire in this case). Then she would experience a more mature and profound love with Thane that would be very gentle and fully reciprocated, yet bittersweet given that they both know he's dying soon. We had the idea that this initially harsh, ruthless Shepard coming to love Thane and diverge from her previous path of bloody vengeance would be really endearing, especially when the dying Thane wants the prayer read for her rather than himself, and then the rapport between Shep and Kolyat would also have this extra pathos, and killing Kai Leng would be even more satisfying.

(It totally was: our Shep was a Vanguard so there was a lot of punching involved, and then J indignantly went "this is for Thane, you fucker" as we stabbed KL.)

Anyway, the storyline did mostly work out, apart from any degree of nuance being rewarded by the game locking us out of cool dialogue options at particularly critical moments. Still, she was super enjoyable and I liked how we got her arc to weave into Thane's despite a bit of underwriting at times, and the idea of Shepard as this ultimately tragic figure who just keeps on living as her loved ones die over and over and over (we chose Destroy to underscore that fate!).

This time, we thought it'd be fun to go for a Shepard who isn't quiiiiiite as squeaky-clean as the first one, but more of a Paragon type than our tragic Shepard. Basically noble, but with more of an edge. She's a survivor of both Mindoir and Akuze, so she's seen some shit, but she's still quite young (we wanted her to be fresh-faced, pretty, yet also visibly scarred and managed all three :D). We particularly wanted a more youthful, impetuous Shepard who is less straitlaced and less world-weary than the previous ones for the Garrus romance, which after all these years, J has never done! And he's played both male and female Shepards to see how most of the romances play out, but not Garrus's specifically.

We thought it'd be especially fun for this Shepard to be a full Adept and for her to be basically a good influence on Garrus's unfortunate cowboy cop ways (we just shout out "RED TAPE!!!!" as a household joke at this point). But we didn't want her to be an elder mentor figure to him or an incredibly noble icon he'd revere so much as for them to be Reaper-fighting bros who help each other grow as people -> FWBs -> whatever happens in ME3.

So we've started our new run with our very attractive scarred Shepard (J: "I think it works for her, she's probably into scars"; me: "I bet Garrus is"; J: "Oh, for sure!") and it's a really nice distraction. Though now I'm thinking about the ME/P&P AU that's been percolating through my brain for upwards of seven months >_>