#let! Liara! be! mad! at! Aethyta!

[springagainafter]

Liara's first convo, part 3, as I gleefully skip past the whole "we have learnt to take a philosophical approach to our unions" discussion because yeaaah that's definitely not happening until probably after Noveria.

Merrick and Liara are, of course, still stranded on some random planet and have successfully navigated past all the awkward about dissections and indepth studies.

Having a whole dialogue available right away with Liara on How Asari Reproduce strikes me as really weird, but anyway, it's there.

Ingame you can't get to the bit about Liara not knowing Aethyta without going through that whole talk, but I am confident in Merrick's ability to ask Liara about her family without getting into All That yet.

So he asks about her parents and Liara tells him that "Benezia rarely spoke of her partner, though I know my father - if you want to use that term - was another asari."

Shepard: Benezia never told you her partner's name?

Yeah, Benezia and Aethyta could have handled this better.

Liara: Union with our kind is no longer common. Not for the purposes of reproduction. Most asari believe it weakens our species. Liara: Asari daughters inherit racial traits from the father species. If both parents are asari, than nothing has been gained. Or so conventional wisdom would hold.

The Ardat-Yakshi are also a factor. (I suspect the writers didn't come up with them until developing ME2.)

Liara: I am what is sometimes called a "pureblood," though no asari would ever be cruel enough to say the word to my face. It is a great insult among my people.

Vasir would. :/

I do wonder if Liara had to deal with anyone saying that behind her back while younger, or if being Benezia's daughter protected her from that.

Liara: It is possible that Benezia's partner was embarrassed by their union. She may have been too ashamed to publicly acknowledge me as her offspring.

That is awful.

I've said it before and I'll said it again: she should absolutely get to be mad at or about Aethyta in 3. I am convinced she lost it offscreen pre-ME3 once she figured it out.

I've decided she absolutely does just lose it back on the Normandy after that little conversation on the Presidium and goes into a full "Where Was She My Entire Life/Where Was She After Alchera/Why Didn't She Come Talk To Me First/Why Didn't Benezia Tell Me Who She Was" meltdown and Merrick just lets her vent.

Shepard: Maybe she wanted to meet you but couldn't. Maybe something happened to her. Maybe she passed away.

Merrick sees Aethyta in 3 and immediately goes hostile when he figures out who she is because Where Have YOU Been For Liara's Entire Life. It is not a pleasant conversation.

Liara: You might be right. I hope you are. But I have no way to know for sure.

So wild that the best option there is an implicit "it's not you" + "something terrible must have happened to her" and LIARA HOPES THAT'S THE CASE.

The game does not really allow for Shepard to have an opinion on this, but Merrick does get quietly fierce about it's not at all fair to Liara and Benezia should have told her more.

And since what's the point of being stranded if things don't get worse and the game should have thrown in a broken translators bit at some point, their translators *both* break down shortly after that and they are reduced to charades and military signals and trying to read each other's body language while trying to get back to the Mako.

Merrick can speak a little bit of the same asari language Liara does but it's a different dialect *and* he's rusty at it *and* he has an accent so it is a struggle. There's a lot of "so what were you saying right then" when they get back to the ship.