#kaidan alenko favoritism

[kaidanalenkosprmanager]

Sophie Shepard & Kaidan Alenko (ME2) 1/?

MIRA'S MORE CANON ME2 "The wrong place at the right time..." AKA: The aftermath of Stealing Memory. Mass Effect 2: Legendary Edition (2021)

[major-alenko]

Happiest of birthdays to my beloved Commander Tara Shepard-- spacer, war hero, infiltrator, and Kaidan Alenko's #1 fan 😉!

[laelior]

Periapsis Chapter 3: Dandelion Fluff

Mass Effect Kaidan Alenko/Beth Shepard Rating: E (eventual smut) Chapter 3/6 Periapsis: The point at which two objects in a binary system orbit nearest to each other. a.k.a., the Shenko shore leave fic that's been plaguing me non-stop lately. Ao3 link

It probably shouldn’t have come as a surprise to Kaidan that Shepard was the type to enjoy risky hobbies. After all, she routinely charged ahead in battle with little more than a shotgun and a biotic barrier between herself and the enemy. She drove with reckless disregard for concepts like gravity or basic safety. It was only natural that she would gravitate toward the kinds of activities even the most fervent adrenaline junkies flinch.

But here he was, heart in his throat as he watched her scale a sheer granite wall with absolutely nothing between her and the rocky, unforgiving ground below. It was a mystery to him how she had even found her way up as high as she had. There seemed to be zero visible handholds or footholds, but she’d ascended the cliff with unnerving ease.

“You sure you don't want to join me, Alenko?” she called down from her perch ten meters off the ground, pausing in her ascent to look down at him. “The view up here is pretty spectacular.”

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[anthurak]

So because I’m currently doing a playthrough of Mass Effect again, I thought I’d engage in an interesting thought-experiment regarding the inherently flexible narrative of the RPG plot structure.

Namely, is there actually a way to pin down a ‘canon’ choice for the Virmire survivor between Ashley and Kaidan? Specifically, by trying to eliminate the bias of the player and using aspects of the mission and Shepard’s character that aren’t controlled by the player to determine a most likely scenario for how the events and choices Shepard makes might likely play out.

To that end, let’s look at the Virmire mission leading up to ‘The Big Choice’. If we try to remove the x-factor that is ‘player bias’, thinking of Shepard not as a player-avatar but as an actual character, I think we can actually get a good idea how Virmire actually would have turned out.

To begin with, let’s establish a few qualities that we can assume about Commander Shepard when we ignore possible player biases:

Shepard is an exceptionally capable and experienced soldier and leader, and will thus be making decisions that will give them and their team and allies the best chance at success at this mission.

Shepard cares about their subordinates and allies and will likewise be doing everything they can to get as many people out alive as they can.

Shepard is NOT openly racist towards aliens, nor overtly distrustful or antagonist towards the Council and their agents. Or at least not so much that they would allow such distrust/antagonism to overly interfere with their judgement over the best way to accomplish the mission.

Shepard does in fact care a great deal about BOTH Ashley and Kaidan and does NOT actively want one of them dead.

With all that in mind, let’s look at all of the choices that affect the outcome of the Virmire mission and consider what the most likely choice that Shepard would make is:

First, which squadmate goes with Kirrahe and the STG team, and which one is relegated to bomb duty?

This one’s actually pretty easy when you think about it for more than five seconds. We have Ashley, a hardened frontline soldier with training in all standard alliance weaponry, and we have Kaidan, one of our team’s go-to tech-experts. Heck, Ashley even points out herself that Kaidan should be needed to arm the bomb when volunteering for the mission. Again, when we remove player bias from the equation, I think we can all agree that Shepard would send Ashley to help Kirrahe’s team while having Kaidan work on the bomb.

So with that choice locked in, let’s move to the next big choice: Does Shepard take the necessary steps that allows Kirrahe and much of his team to survive the mission? IE: Completing side-objectives and not diverting security forces towards the Salarians.

Again, removing player-bias from consideration, I think there’s no reason to assume Shepard wouldn’t do everything they could to assist the Salarians. It’s certainly in their best interests to support the Salarians so they can support their team in return. It’s also worth noting that Shepard would have an interest in depriving the Geth of resources by destroying their facilities to make their own task easier. While it may be true that completing the side-objectives doesn’t actually affect the difficulty of Shepard’s own mission, that’s only information that a PLAYER would know, not Shepard themself. And of course, Shepard has one of their own people (Ashley) with the Salarian teams, giving them even MORE reason to assist them. In short, we can assume that Kirrahe and his STG team ARE still alive by the time the bomb is armed.

So with Ashley fighting alongside the still-alive STG team and Kaidan planting the bomb, we now come to the big choice:

Does Shepard press on to the AA Tower and save Ashley or double back to the bomb-site and save Kaidan?

And with everything we’ve established thus far, I wholeheartedly believe the most likely scenario is that Shepard saves ASHLEY.

Because Shepard’s choice isn’t actually between ‘Save Kaidan’ or ‘Save Ashley’. The choice is between ‘Save Kaidan’ or ‘Save Ashley AND the STG Team’.

Yes, it’s true that in the game if you fulfill the necessary side-objectives, Kirrahe and his team are picked up by the Normandy regardless of your choice to press on to the AA Tower or double back to the bomb-site, but I think we really have to ignore this fact.

First, it is a factor that positively reeks of ‘arbitrary game logic’. As in, Kirrahe and his teams are AT the AA tower, so if Joker picks up Shepard and their squad at the bomb site with only a minute or so before the bomb goes off, how exactly can he also rush over to the tower to pick up the Salarians too?

Worse still, if the Normandy is somehow able to pick up the STG team at the tower, then why can’t they pick up Ashley/Kaidan too?! Seriously, if you choose to go to the AA tower and fulfilled the side objectives, you find Kirrahe and the rest of the STG team fighting alongside the squadmate you sent with them! If Kirrahe and his team manage to survive, why can’t they? Looking back, I really feel like going to the AA Tower SHOULD have been a requirement for saving Kirrahe and his team.

And second, this detail of Kirrahe and his team surviving regardless of Shepard’s choice is entirely IRRELEVANT because there is no way SHEPARD could KNOW that!

Yes, the player might be able to know that this pivotal choice comes down to just ‘Save Ashley’ or ‘Save Kaidan’.

But as far as Commander Shepard knows, standing at that railing, weighing their options in this pivotal moment, this is a choice between going back to the bomb site to save one of their squadmates, and pushing on to the AA Tower to save one of their squadmates AND the Salarian STG team. This isn’t a choice of ‘one life weighed against one life’, this is a choice between ONE life, or about a dozen lives.

And again, if we’re removing as much ‘player bias’ from the equation as we can, I think we have no reason to assume that Shepard wouldn’t choose to save as many lives as they can. And since we established the most likely ‘in-universe’ choices are Ashley going with Kirrahe’s team and Kaidan on bomb-duty, I think it’s pretty clear that all things being equal, it’s ASHLEY who has the much better chance of being the Virmire survivor.

I’d say about the only especially plausible scenario where this doesn’t happen is if Shepard is romancing Kaidan, which might (emphasis on ‘MIGHT’) drive them to make the choice to save his life over those of Ashley and Kirrahe’s team. But again, that is only one specific scenario. In any other instance, I’d say that Shepard choosing Ashley over Kaidan is the most likely option.

And looking forward past ME1, I also can’t help but feel that Ashley works just a bit better than Kaidan in terms of what ME2 and ME3 expect the Virmire Survivor to actually do. Namely, how the narrative expects them to be VERY distrustful of Shepard starting in ME2 and eventually being entirely deceived by Udina in the leadup to the Cerberus Coup in ME3.

Now the thing is, does anyone else feel like this arc doesn’t exactly fit Kaidan all that well? Namely that he seems to be just a bit smarter than this?

Throughout ME1, we see that Kaidan is generally one to keep a cool head, and is well-experienced and savvy to the possible faults of his superiors, and generally one to be more thoughtful about a situation.

So I can’t help but feel like when they reunite on Horizon, Kaidan would be more willing to hear Shepard out and give them the benefit of the doubt, rather than becoming so immediately hostile. While I don’t see Kaidan outright joining Shepard’s team on Horizon, I do think he’d nonetheless be more open to reading between the lines of what’s going on and trusting that Shepard knows what they’re doing.

Now, that’s not to say that a super-distrustful Kaidan is entirely unrealistic. Namely, I think a romanced Kaidan feeling that Shepard has betrayed his trust by seemingly not reaching out to them in the two years and taking it pretty personally is a reasonable reaction. But other than that situation, I get the sense that Kaidan would mostly just be happy one of his closest friends is still alive and while he might have his reservations, is willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

And given Kaidan’s experience, I simply do not see him getting suckered by Udina THAT easily in Mass Effect 3. Unless Shepard has been deliberately blowing him off and/or antagonizing him, the moment Shepard came out that door with their squad and Udina starting spouting ‘Shepard must be with Cerberus!’, I have to imagine Kaidan would’ve started smelling bullshit and that whole standoff would NOT have happened.

By contrast, basically everything ME2 and ME3 expects of the Virmire Survivor I can ABSOLUTELY see Ashely doing. For good or ill, Ashely is THE hotheaded emotional one of Shepard’s original crew, so her taking Shepard’s disappearance and apparently not getting in touch with her very personally feels pretty in-character. And her being a very loyal and committed Alliance soldier makes her being extremely distrustful of Shepard working with Cerberus feels likewise understandable.

And as for Udina’s shenanigan’s in ME3? Yeah, I’d say Ashely is exactly loyal, unquestioning and gullible enough to fall for his bullshit. Especially after he made her a Spectre.

Finally, going back to the first game, I can’t help but feel that Kaidan making the big heroic sacrifice while Ashley gets saved is altogether a bit more fitting to their respective arcs and the narrative as a whole rather than the reverse.

In ME1, Ashley’s main defining character trait is that she basically has a martyr complex. She’s desperate to ‘redeem’ her family name after the ‘dishonor’ brought on it by her grandfather surrendering Shanxi during the First Contact War. Because of this, she is entirely willing to get herself killed if it would help the mission. She’s looking to throw herself on a sword to redeem her family name. Because of this, I feel like it’s more narratively fitting for Ashley to NOT get the big heroic death she’s partly looking for. Heck, Shepard will flat out call Ashley out on her martyr complex after Virmire if she’s saved. It feels like saving Ashley on Virmire gives her a real arc as a character.

By contrast, Kaidan doesn’t really have much of a character arc in ME1, or at least not one that is furthered by him being the Virmire survivor. Instead, because Kaidan starts the game already friends with Shepard, I’d argue that him being the one to die on Virmire has a bit more of an emotional gut-punch than Ashley’s death does. I mean, think of it like this; Kaidan is the first of your party members in the first game. Out of all their companions by this point of the story, Kaidan has been with Shepard the longest. Sure, Ashley has known Shepard second longest out of their companions, but I’d argue Shepard knowing him before the start of the game gives Kaidan’s death just a BIT more tragic punch.

All in all, after I started noticing all this a number of years back, it’s been one of those things I can’t really ‘unsee’ so to speak. Because my go-to ME1 route is FemShep romancing Liara, I tend to weigh Ashley and Kaidan fairly equally in terms of ‘who I like more’. So because of all this, I now view Ashley as more or less the ‘canon’ Virmire Survivor. Now that’s not to say I think other people who chose Kaidan over Ashley are ‘wrong’ in any way. Just that when we think of Mass Effect as its own self-contained narrative, rather than an interactive experience, it’s Ashley who is just the bit more likely to survive Virmire over Kaidan.

[clericofshadows]

"Goodbye, Shepard. And be careful."

[riyacrane]

[swaps55]

Mezzo - 04 - Peace in the Riot

Pairing: mshenko | Rating: M Tags: Canon-typical violence, trauma, dealing with your problems poorly, body autonomy struggles   Summary: The twists and turns of ME2, through the eyes of everyone but Commander Shepard. Chapter Summary: Shepard’s not dead and it’s everyone’s problem.    Thank you to @sinvraal for betaing!

Chapter 4: Peace in the Riot | Read on Ao3

30 October 2185, Omega Nebula, Sahrabarik System – Omega Approach, Normandy SR-2

Synthetic skin fibers. Skeletal-reinforcing bone weave. Muscle-perforating microfibers. Biomeimetic eyes with nanowire retinas. Biosynthetically fused spinal cord. The more Karin Chakwas learns about Shepard’s reconstruction, the more miraculous – and overwhelming – it becomes.

How did they do this?

Perhaps what distresses her most is the depth of repairs that had to be made. Lumbar burst fractures. Exposure to hard vacuum. Clinical brain death due to asphyxiation.

Shepard’s death hadn’t been slow, but it certainly had not been quick.

Knowing that his death had been all but certain the moment Moreau’s escape pod closed without him – that Alenko’s dedicated but fruitless search had indeed been in vain – somehow is not a comfort. Not when the Lazarus data makes it hard to deny the likelihood that he had lived long enough to know what his fate would be.

But the intel had been true. Cerberus had reneged his death.

She could study the Lazarus records alone for years. It will be studied for years, if she can get a copy of it into the right hands. But research is not why she’s here.

She thumbs through the drug pack stores with a furrowed brow. “EDI, who do I speak to about requisitions?”

“What is it you need, Doctor?”

A uniform without a Cerberus logo, for starters, and a manual on caring for a patient who’s come back from the dead.

“More glucagon drug packs and electrolyte tablets. This is hardly enough for one biotic, much less three.”

“I will see to it crewman Hawthorne is made aware.”

“Thank you. That’s most kind.”

“Is there anything else you require?”

“I’ll let you know.”

The fact that serving on a ship integrated with an AI is so far down the list of her troubles it doesn’t bear worrying about should bother her more than it does. But she does indeed have far more pressing concerns, chief among them, the person walking into her medbay.

“Commander,” she says warmly when the doors swish open and Shepard enters. “You came.”

He nods at her and takes a seat on one of the biobeds, trepidation on his face. “I said I would. And…I had some questions.”

The scarring on his face is the most visible sign of his resurrection. Looking beyond the fissures that glow a pale red, he is exactly as she remembers, with no trace of the two years she’s lived in the meantime. He isn’t the only one with questions. Some of hers she may never get the answer to.

“Ask away.”

Sam Shepard has always had the mind of a surgeon, knowing exactly where and when to cut to get what he wants, so she prepares herself for a question, or a barrage of questions, that puts her to the test. But instead of ask her anything he sits in silence, expression empty, curl in his back. The outline of one of the spinal clamps shows through his shirt.

She hands him a cotton swab to use on the inside of his cheek. Dutifully, he gives it back when he’s done, surely recognizing the reason behind it. There is belief in what she is seeing, and there is supporting it with irrefutable DNA evidence.

Once she plugs the sample in to be analyzed, she picks up the medical scanner and hums an old song her mother used to sing when she was a girl. She’d always found it soothing.

When she reaches the chorus a second time, he speaks up at last, voice soft.

“What happened?”

Read from the beginning | Read the rest on Ao3 | The Mezzo Playlist

[hawkeykirsah]

Make a poll with five of your all time favourite characters, and then tag five people to do the same. See which character is everyone’s favourite! I was tagged by the wonderful @vorchagirl 💜

I'll tag @shotce, @lttrsfrmlnrrgby, @starlightvld, @laelior, and @wombywoo (only if you want to, of course!)

[jellyrump]

So im playing ME1 and I just got to Noveria. I decided to bring Liara and Kaidan which is, in my opinion, the funniest duo I could've brought. You'll talk to Liara and she's like "the goddess looks down on places like these, darkest in the places with the most light" or some shit and then you talk to Kaidan and he's like "the chill is making my nipples hard" like

[kaidanalenkosprmanager]

THE BEST OF SHENKO 1/?

The end of the world has a way of reminding you of all the things you forgot to say do. Mass Effect: Legendary Edition (2021)

[cr-noble-writes]

WIP Wednesday

After agonizing a ton about the latest chapter I wrote of The Ties That Bind (vampire au), I finally have fixed the parts of it I was having trouble with to my satisfaction. Just want to say thank you for the solidarity and encouragement of @mallaidhsomo @blakelyohgee and @swaps55 among others <3

Anyway, have Alex finding out that Kaidan is sort of maybe the source of all of his trauma in this AU

“This is very powerful magic,” Samara says softly as she reads over some of the notes he’s scribbled in the margins of the small, leather-bound tome. “What did your great great grandmother do to warrant such a binding?” Alex frowns. “Nothing warrants such a binding, but she killed the right hand of the Reds’ leader at the time, Vyrnnus.” Kaidan’s eyebrows shoot up to his hairline. “That’s…” He pushes up from the table and turns away, scrubbing a hand across his face. His voice is low and strained. “No. That’s not right.” He leans forward, resting his palms on the jutting edge of the hutch’s middle shelf. “That’s not what happened.”  “What do you mean?” Alex asks. “Rahna didn’t do it.” He turns and looks at Alex, brows furrowed and frowning. Confusion and guilt play in Kaidan’s eyes. It makes Alex’s heart hammer against his ribs. “I did.” The words cut into him, deeper than any knife. An unfamiliar ache spreads through his chest, and he grips the arms of his chair like a lifeline. “What? No. You…” He nearly chokes on his own disbelief. “You were her friend.” “Alex, I—” Kaidan cuts himself off, closing his eyes. He sets his jaw. “I killed Vyrnnus.” “And what?” Alex stands so fast, his heavy wooden chair tips and clatters to the floor. “You just left her to take the blame?” Kaidan just looks at him with pleading eyes, his mouth working like it’s trying to find something to say. “I didn’t—” “You didn’t what?” Alex hisses. “You didn’t let her take the punishment for what you did?” “I didn’t know,” he replies. “I wouldn’t have left if I had.” Blood rushes in Alex’s ears. His vision blurs, and he looks down at the table. He tries to breathe, but his lungs refuse to cooperate. He trusted Kaidan. It’s like his legs have been swept out from under him. The scream building in his mind escapes as a whisper. “It’s your fault. All of it. Everything I’ve been through is because of you.” Betrayal settles like a lead weight in the pit of his stomach. His mouth tastes bitter. The world spins to a halt and closes in around him, and he needs to get out. He turns, stumbling over the leg of his overturned chair and all but runs for the door.

[queen-scribbles]

Girl help, I’ve gone down the “watching Mass Effect romance compilations on youtube” tunnel and I can’t stop.😂

[timptoe]

Pretty Sweet Hoverboard

Based on this post by @zet-sway. Because hoverboards are pretty sweet. Read it on Ao3.

--

“What the hell is that?”

Kaidan looks up at Shepard—a few feet up, in fact—a mixture of worry and consternation on his face. He knows what that is, of course. The last time he saw one, it was strapped to the feet of a genocidal maniac hell-bent on letting the Reapers into the galaxy through the Citadel so they could go on their harvesting rampage. He still remembers the feel of the water in the sluice, the tang of ozone in the air as the salarian bomb spun up, the crick in his neck as he looked up at Saren silhouetted in Virmire’s blinding sun. 

It’s a fucking hoverboard.

“It’s a hoverboard, Kaidan,” Shepard says simply.

“Yeah, I know that, but where did you get it?” Kaidan responds, trying to keep the frustration out of his voice. “Saren’s the only person I’ve ever seen with one.”

Shepard floats down to where Kaidan’s standing on the Presidum balcony overlooking the mass relay statue. He lands at an angle, kicking the side of the hoverboard so that it flips up into his outstretched hand.

“Aw, sick kick, dude,” says a passing teenager.

“Thanks kid,” Shepard says with a grin. “Pretty sweet, right?”

Kaidan’s eye twitches. “Shepard.”

“Yes?” Shepard’s grin gets bigger.

“Where. Did you. Get it.”

Shepard twirls the hoverboard on its end, showing it off. The whole piece is about a meter and a half long, shiny chrome gleaming in the Presidium’s artificial sunlight. The lights and inset cabling give it a slightly eerie aesthetic. A…familiar aesthetic. It looks like something Kaidan’s encountered before, but he can’t quite figure out where. He leans forward to get a better look.

“This unit prefers ‘she,’ not ‘it,’” the hoverboard says in a mechanical voice.

Kaidan yells and jumps back.

“The unit prefers ‘she,’ Kaidan,” Shepard calmly says with the biggest shit-eating grin Kaidan’s ever seen.

“Shepard! It’s a g—“ Kaidan stops and glances around at the scene they’re making and stomps closer to Shepard. “It’s a geth!” he whispers fiercely.

Shepard looks down at the board with a worried glance. “Are you a geth, hoverboard?”

“Yes.” One of the lights blinks blue in Kaidan’s direction.

Shepard shrugs. “Looks like you’re right, Kaidan.”

“This unit’s designation is Kevin,” the hoverboard continues.

“She says her name’s Kevin,” Shepard explains.

Both of Kaidan’s eyes are twitching now, fists clenched at his side. He definitely feels a migraine coming on. Shepard continues to look at him calmly, the barest hint of mischief in his eyes. The only thing keeping Kaidan from chucking him off the balcony is the fact that he loves him so goddamn much.

“Relax, Kaidan,” Shepard chuckles, presumably at the pained grimace on his face. “This is one of the new units who allied with us after Rannoch. They’ve been working on ways to integrate into our operations. Someone somewhere made a comment about how mobile Saren was with that ‘board of his, and how we haven’t cracked that tech yet, so the geth analyzed the data and figured out it was Reaper tech that made it work. Since Legion integrated Reaper tech into the geth consensus to give them their individuality, they were able to backsolve the issues involved to create a fully operational mobile platform.”

Kaidan blinks. “Which means…?”

“Which means,” Shepard says, mischief in his eyes again, “I get a hoverboard.”

Kaidan sighs.

“I didn’t fly down here to discuss science with you, though.” 

“They why did you fly down here, Shepard?” Kaidan rubs his temple.

“This.”

In one fluid motion, Shepard drops the upright end of the hoverboard to the ground, grabs Kaidan around the shoulders, and pulls them both onto the back of the ‘board, chest-to-chest. Kaidan’s breath catches in his throat.

“Do you trust me?” Shepard whispers in his ear.

“Nope,” Kaidan half-whispers, half-laughs in spite of himself.

“Liar,” Shepard murmurs, low heat in his tone. He hits a switch with his foot.

They take off.

Kaidan yelps in surprise, flailing for a moment before wrapping both arms around Shepard’s waist, clinging on for dear life. He closes his eyes and buries his face in Shepard’s shoulder. He can faintly feel the sensation of wind rushing past his ears, but he’s concentrating so much on keeping his balance that everything fades into the background.

Well, almost everything. He can smell the faint tang of eezo and leather on Shepard, feel Shepard’s heart beating in his chest. He grips tighter—definitely just for balance.

Definitely.

“Open your eyes, Kaidan.” Shepard’s breath ghosts across his ear. The goosebumps on his skin have nothing to do with the rushing air.

Kaidan opens his eyes.

He gasps and holds on to Shepard even tighter. They’re high above the Presidium commons, almost high enough to touch the simulated clouds. He can see everything up here. The water that stretches out and up around the ring of the station. The dozens and dozens of balconies that line either side of the endless pool. The scars on the buildings left behind by Cerberus’ attack, or maybe Sovereign’s. Even the people, so small from so high up but dozens, maybe hundreds of them, all going about their days. 

“It’s beautiful,” he breathes.

“I know.” He glances at Shepard. Shepard only has eyes for him.

Kaidan’s face softens, and he lets go of Shepard’s waist with one hand, bringing it up to caress his boyfriend’s cheek.

“Yeah,” he murmurs.

“Pretty sweet, though, right?” Shepard says with a slightly bashful look.

Kaidan chuckles. “Yeah.”

“I agree,” Kevin’s mechanical voice says, “this is pretty sweet.”

“Shut up, Kevin,” Shepard says pleasantly, pulling Kaidan into a kiss that lasts for a long time.

The hoverboard stays quiet.

—

“That’s…Shepard, right?” Tali asks, looking up from where they’re walking along the bridge to the restaurant.

Garrus squints into the artificial light. “And Kaidan too, I think.”

“Is that a hoverboard? A…geth hoverboard?” He can’t quite tell if that’s apprehension or excitement in her voice. Might be both.

“Knowing Shepard, he took it off Saren three years ago and just remembered it was in storage,” Garrus muses.

Tali stops to get a better look. “Are they kissing?”

Garrus waits a beat, tilting his head. “You know, I bet I could wing that thing from all the way down here.”

“Garrus.”

“Ten credits says I can take out one of the anti-grav motors and bring them down slowly.”

“Garrus.”

“I’m just saying, if they’re willing to give me PTSD flashbacks to Virmire, they can take a little friendly fire.”

“Come on,” Tali laughs, pushing him on towards their date.

That hoverboard does look pretty sweet, though.

[clericofshadows]

I love them so much <3 and I love making them match thanks to virmire savior!

anyway, I'm nearly done with my Ashley's Armory update, still need to test every patch combo and more scenarios to make sure I didn't break anything :)

[swaps55]

a funny, am not sure if coincidence or Planned, at the start of Cantata, Shepard decides to repay the pancakes by finding a problem Kaidan has that he can help fix? But funny thing is, Kaidan took off halways across the planet to avoid when his parents tried to fix him, he is notta fan :D let him have his woes in peace

You are SO right. Kaidan most definitely did not appreciate it. XD

Lucky for Kaidan, Sam isn't the chronic fixer his mother is. Lora has to fix, and she tends to only do so through her own lens of understanding, without listening to what someone really needs. Her heart is always in the right place, she just often misses the mark.

Sam's modus operandi is to take something apart he does not understand, poke it until he understands it, and then put it back together.

He just does not poke gently, lol.