#here have some brainsludge

[invinciblerodent]

Ryder Twins Headcanons II.

Because my lovely partner in crime @mccreeapologist posted some of our joint little headcanons on the Wonder Twins of the Andromeda Initiative, I thought I should try to clean up my notes a little bit and follow her example <3 I tried to weed out some of the repetitions, but more or less, these are just my vaguely altered notes. :) So this is kind of a part two, and kind of an “Elliot Edition”.

(forewarning, while normally I try to stick to the canon as closely as humanly possible, this time we have elected to make some changes, which I will continue to consider the canon I work in, unless it contradicts something absolutely fundamental in-game plotpoint. :))

((and even then it’s debatable because lbr ¯\_(ツ)_/¯))

- Born in 2157, Elliot and her twin brother Brooks (who is precisely two minutes younger than she is) are 28 years of age at launch.

- While their intellect and talent for the field were largely equal, Brooks (after much pressure from their father) chose to enlist into the Alliance navy at 18, in 2175. Elliot, emboldened by that resolve (and slightly envious of the attention that got Brooks), decided to pursue their shared dream alone, and partake in the xenobotany program at the Dobzhansky Institute of Science and Technology in the Exodus Cluster.

- While Dobzhansky (colloquially referred to by students and alumni as “D.I.S.K.” or “The Disk”) is a human-built and -owned station, it is one of the first Alliance establishments advocating specifically for interspecies cooperation, and it functions almost as an informational trading post. Students of numerous different species are encouraged by scholarship programs, and the instructors come from almost every species in the student body- asari, salarian, turian, and even volus and elcor, making Dobzhansky a frontrunner of humanity’s seamless and peaceful integration into the Council species. In the remarkably few years of its existence, it has managed to establish more interspecies connections in the field of xenoscience than any other human civilian- or military initiative.

- Elliot was mentored by the asari professor, Leossa D’zedri, along with three other students from her year- two of them turian, and one salarian. D’zedri, while more conservative than several of her colleagues, encouraged a healthy competition between her mentees, which only stoked the competitive flame in Elliot, and she graduated magna cum laude in 2183.

- Throughout her education, with the weekly data bursts, she made sure to always send (the heavily annotated versions of) her study materials and as much of her notes as she could over to the Alliance station on which her baby brother served. It didn’t only give him the opportunity to also study along with her to a degree, it was a great source of emotional comfort for the both of them. (Not to mention that teaching him was a way for her to study and revise, and it also made him visibly happy to learn about stuff he couldn’t otherwise, which in turn helped her push on to be able to teach him more stuff, creating a mutually beneficial and entertaining feedback loop. :))

- She applied for the Andromeda Initiative (2185) on a fluke. She had worked on the project as part of her master’s and wrote her doctoral thesis on off-Earth agriculture and trans-galactic travel, but she had never expected to leave the galaxy herself. It was only after her graduation and after her father and brother were recruited into the Pathfinder program that she panicked, and submitted her own application mere days before the deadline.

- Elliot, while not exactly known for it, has worked as Professor D’zedri’s assistant on what was later dubbed as the Horae Project. The project’s goal was the invention of five distinct farm systems that then provide a primary food source for both the levo- and dextro-amino-based crew members. These farms were developed as a joint effort of asari, human, salarian, and quarian scientists working in tandem, basing their work off the designs of the Prothean-built cryopods found on Eden Prime and Ilos, the Atrium of the human-built Grissom Academy, and the Liveships of the Migrant Fleet. In the end, while the exact research didn’t end up being used in the final design, it did serve as a base for it.

- That being said, her plans are often too big for her hands. She is ambitious to a fault, known to bite off more than she can chew, but chewing it anyway, even if it nearly suffocates her. She often jokes that the only reason she went through with getting her doctorate was because she didn’t have the good sense to drop out before, although everyone who has known her for more than a second will confirm that if given a chance, she would have started work on her second doctorate right after submitting her final thesis.

- As all personnel affiliated with the Alliance Systems Military is required to go through basic training, Elliot embarked upon that journey right after having earned her doctorate. That was when it came to her attention that, while an outstanding intellect, she lacks not only biotic-, but also any sort of physical aptitude. Throughout her training, while her theoretical test scores were always excellent and she performed well in the tasks involving problem-solving and reconnaissance, in the physical challenges she hardly managed to scrape by. It was only by the skin of her teeth (and her dear brother’s blessedly patient tutoring) that she managed to reach the middle of the pack by the end of the basic training program. This, she considers a failure.

- The first time she ever shot a gun, an M-97 Viper sniper rifle, it immediately kicked one of her molars out. That experience has made her wary of any and all sniper rifles, and instead, she chose to train in the use of a weapon that doesn’t come anywhere near her face. Which works out well because her aim is shit anyway.

- As their father tended to place emphasis on his legacy which he saw in Brooks throughout their upbringing, Elliot grew up striving and working herself to the bone for attention- attention which her brother received seemingly without having had to work for it. But rather than blaming either of them for favoritism, she ended up internalizing a lot of that crap and ignorant neglect until it drove her to an almost paranoid need for success.

- Which sort of bequests that she is an incredibly sore loser. While her brother’s obvious love for the field was also important, one of the main reasons she became interested in xenobiology was simply that not understanding the world around her pissed her off to no end.

- A hell of a perfectionist with a whole lot of control issues. She doesn't only want to pour the world into neat little petri dishes, she also wants everything to go according to plan down to every minute detail, and she feels that the philosophy of doing it yourself is the best approach to everything… that results in her often struggling to overcome simple issues, only because she doesn’t even consider the possibility of asking for help. (The time she had to ask her brother for help with the weapons training, she could only do so in the middle of the night, with frustrated tears dried on her face, after having spent hours struggling on her own at the shooting range.)

- Has difficulties engaging emotionally. She is so focused on theoretical knowledge that she is known to get absorbed in thought experiments and forget to see the trees from the forest, which, while making her an excellent scientist and a great candidate for the Pathfinders, may make her appear clinical as well as cynical in her dealings. Not devoid of a moral compass, but her mind operates in leaps and bounds that do not exclude the consideration of options that might seem less than tasteful to most of her kind.

- Has had just about every hair color under the Sun. Naturally hers is the same, warm inky black as her brother's, but when she was about 14, she had it bleached to a white-blonde, and then dyed all sorts of colors all the way through high school and college. Only when she was about 22 and it was damaged beyond belief did she resort to cutting all of it off into a pixie, and going back to her natural hair color for about a year. About two months before the Andromeda Initiative would have launched she got bored and had it bleached again. By the time the plot of Andromeda ends, she'll have almost a bob with roots all the way to her ears.

- Her pet pyjack is named “Ampersand”, after the capuchin monkey from the (by then vintage) visual novel, Y: The Last Man, from 2002. In the limited number of personal belongings allowed to bring aboard, Elliot carries a digital copy of the comic book with herself into the new world. (Her first ever crush was on Dr. Allison Mann, after having read the comic at the tender age of 11.)

- Dumped by her high school sweetheart when they found out that she would participate in any way in the Andromeda Initiative. They had quite a thunderous relationship spanning multiple years of on-off romance, but just after Elliot had finished her undergraduate program in 2179, they broke it off for good. It would be a flagrant lie if someone were to imply that Ellie is not bitter and resentful over it, but she is a master of overcompensation.

- Loves old vids, especially old school sci-fi, mostly from the 20th and 21st century. They have a crafty, low-budget sort of charm to them, and it's bittersweet to know she isn't really living in that utopia- she finds that optimism and ambition admirable and somehow inspiring. To think about people have always fantasized about the future and what it might be like, it's almost a feeling of longing for something that never was and never will be. That retro vibe is something that is very close to her heart as well; it used to be a bonding activity between her and her and brother. At times of great emotional duress, they often just plopped down in each other’s rooms with a couple seasons of some tacky show, and kept each other company

- Her affection for the old-fashioned is something that is also reflected in her sense of style. Has a particular fondness for replica faux-leather clothing and colorful accessories. Her girlfriend used to say that Ellie is “just tacky enough to be chic”.

- Has short, bitten nails- not severely, but being a botanist, she spent a lot of time with her hands in the soil. It's a bad habit, but she grew used to cleaning the dirt out from underneath her nails with her teeth. She's desperately trying to stop, but it's a nervous mechanism rooted in that habit of making sure her hands look clean.

- She follows a mostly vegetarian diet: it still includes eggs, milk, and seafood, but she doesn’t eat any red- or white meat. Made the decision at 16, mostly because she simply doesn’t like the taste of meat.

- I would be lying if I said that the reason she gives her brother so many dumb nicknames (like Schnooksie and Scooter and Brookiebear) is because that way her calling him “Scott" in the game is not as awkward. Loopholes! ;)

- and let’s not forget,

- TL;DR she is a lovely problematic space lesbian whom I already really love with a brother too sweet for words who also has a lot of issues but they are both already my favorite