#when I'm forced to just continue the conversation a certain way after picking one dialogue option

[yappacadaver]

so far i'm liking lucanis a lot more than i thought i would, and bellara unfortunately a lot less than i had hoped u_u

[octerminal]

Hi there! I'm a first time Mass Effect OT player thanks to the Legendary Edition. In relation to your post about avoiding the romances in Mass Effect 1 (which I bookmarked for reference,) I was wondering if you also made posts for avoiding romances in the other two games as well, and if you had, where I could find them? And if not, do you have any general advice for not triggering the romances? Thanks!

Hey! Thanks for the ask.

I’m sorry, but I haven’t made a guide for the other games. This is mainly because ME1 is the only game where it’s easy to accidentally trigger the actual romance, by which I mean the game now acts as if the two of you are in a dedicated romance and it will automatically proceed to all the major romance points, like the locker and en route to Ilos scenes. ME2 and ME3 still have issues where Shepard can accidentally trip flirtation (or be forced into it, depending on the LI), but it’s much harder to trigger the actual romances because in both games they're scenes where Shepard or the LI will point blank say, “Hey, wanna go out?” or some iteration, lol.

That being said, I still have plenty of tips I can give you to avoid those issues, sure! I can probably guess which LIs might’ve brought this question on since there are a few “main offenders” - if we want to use that term lol - but I’ll try to address what I know about each LI. Please be aware that this won’t be as specific as my ME1 guide because I don’t have any handy transcripts available so I’ll be working purely off memory.

If anyone has anymore specific knowledge on any of these LIs, or thinks I have made a mistake on any of them, please let me know. Thanks.

ME1 LOVE INTERESTS

General note: If you are not romancing Liara, whoever your VS is will always seek you out in the ME2 prologue. This is not romance specific. It is only romance specific with Liara.

Kaidan: I addressed how to avoid his flirtation issues in ME3 in my ME1 post because he is one of the aforementioned “main offenders” people complain about the most frequently, and all of his issues are easily fixed once you know how to do it.

Ashley: I don’t really have any data on her for ME3. I’ve only ever done Ashley-as-VS-with-mShep saves when I also romanced her in ME1. I don’t believe she’s similar to Kaidan in that she will always proposition you if you’re not locked into a romance (because I believe Kaidan does that for a variety of reasons that are purely mechanical/dev signalling in nature, which are irrelevant for Ashley). I would imagine that if you don’t want her to be romantic with you in the hospital, the same rule of thumb of “tell her the romance is over on Mars” would work, but I haven’t personally tested it.

Liara: There is not really any way around a lot of her scenes. A lot of her romanced content is shared with unromanced Shepards. Even in places where it’s not, Shepard is usually more intimate with Liara than they are with other squadmates. (Example of this: I’m pretty sure when you meet on Illium in ME2, every Shepard will hug her, but only romanced Shepards will kiss her.) This means wishing your Shepard didn’t hug her on Illium, or that she didn’t have your Shepard’s armor in LotSB, or certain banters of hers that trigger in ME3, etc., are impossible to avoid because it is not the game having her flirts easy to trip. It is the game just straight up making very little effort to make a distinction between romanced and unromanced Liara.

That being said, if it really bothers you, being renegade toward her when the option is available helps balance it out. For example: at the end of LotSB, Shepard is not forced into comforting Liara or hugging her; they can just let her cry and move on. Things like that.

ME2 LOVE INTERESTS

General note: When speaking to Kelly about any of these characters, it doesn’t hurt to go neutral or renegade. I think being forced into a discussion about how attractive you find these LIs is really only an issue for mShep and it’s fairly easy to avoid for femShep.

None of the romances can be properly triggered until after the LI’s loyalty has been successfully completed. No amount of flirtation negates this. So at the bare minimum, you really only need to be vigilant after completing a character’s loyalty.

All of these characters also do not really have any wonky mechanics going into ME3, because to have a romance with any of the ME2 LIs in ME3, you have trigger it in ME2 first.

Jacob: Jacob is also a frequently complained about “main offender” because it’s easy for femShep to flirt with him. He is also one of the few LIs in ME2 where you can kind of kickstart his romance in ME2 by expressing interest and having a few conversations about that before Horizon, but this does not actually trigger the romance. You are not locked into it if you do trip into this scenario with him, because it’s completing the loyalties that allow for you to actually trigger a character’s romance. You cannot romance a character properly if you either don’t do their loyalty, or you do it but you failed to secure their loyalty during it.

If you tripped into this scenario with Jacob, you can just simply not continue it going forth, or you can do an organic “breakup” after his loyalty where you continually try to press him to unpack his feelings about what just happened with his father. He will end things with a Shepard who does this to him.

As for avoiding the flirtations at all: it is possible and I do it all the time, but I have no transcripts available so I can’t exactly show which dialogue options to pick. I want to say neutral and renegade dialogue options are your friend here, though some of those can still be flirtatious, if I recall correctly.

When he talks about leaving the Alliance, don’t pick the options that sound like it could be about his body/fitness. When he mentions that Cerberus rebuilt Shepard, don’t have her pick the options that seem like she’s asking if he likes what he sees, etc. Unfortunately, I remember the actual lines better than I remember what the dialogue wheel option was. I recommend saving before talking to him and going through all the dialogue options and reloading until you find the ones where femShep doesn’t sound flirty. (That’s how I found them.)

Or, if you play on PC: you could simply just wait for someone to re-release the mod that gets rid of the flirtatiousness between Jacob and femShep. There was one like that for original ME2, though I never used it so I’m not sure how it actually worked.

Garrus: It is really hard to both accidentally flirt with Garrus and to accidentally trip into his romance. He has little content before his loyalty, and after his loyalty, you have to take a very specific dialogue option to trigger Shepard’s proposition. Even after that, the game still gives you a way to back out if that was, in fact, not what you expected to happen.

Thane: Considering that Thane isn’t even available to recruit until after Horizon, his mechanics are also fairly “safe” compared to, say, Jacob’s. That being said, there is the infamous “I want you, Thane” option on the dialogue wheel, but that one is fairly...obvious. I recall most of Thane’s dialogue options seeming fairly obvious and thus easy to avoid if you’re not wanting to flirt with him. If you’re having trouble, neutral or renegade is probably the way to go. He also always calls femShep “siha” once loyal (I believe that conversation happens after his loyalty, anyway); there is no way around that outside simply not talking to him. Him calling femShep “siha” is not indicative of a romance being triggered.

Jack: Jack, like Jacob, is one of the characters who you can start a flirtation with before Horizon. Again, this doesn’t actually trigger the proper romance. To my knowledge, Jack will also always proposition mShepards. This also does not trigger her romance - in fact, if you accept, it locks you out of her actual romance because she no longer trusts you. Unfortunately, if you want to avoid the proposition entirely - I don’t know or remember if there’s a way to do that.

Tali: I recall Tali’s main issues being the conversation with Kelly after recruiting her (but this is hazy, sorry) where I think Kelly always implies Tali has a crush on you. If this is the case, I have no idea how to avoid it. The other main issue is after you successfully complete Tali’s loyalty and you get to the conversation where she talks about linking suits. It is very easy for mShep to accidentally trip into a romantic conversation with Tali here, and thus be forced into turning her down afterwards. I am pretty certain it’s possible to avoid this, and it likely involves not taking the paragon option. If it isn't possible to avoid though, then all you really have available is to turn her down when she brings it up.

Miranda: I don’t actually recall anything egregious with her mechanics. I am fairly certain that she is not like Jack and Jacob where you can soft start her romance before Horizon, because I remember noticing that when I did her romance recently. After Horizon, I want to say that her romance dialogue options are fairly obvious, but I could be wrong. Either way, the same as all the other LIs would apply: you’d have to complete her loyalty to begin with to even get access to those conversations, so you really only need to be vigilant after her loyalty has been completed.

Samara and Kelly: They are not “real” LIs, which means you don’t get a romance achievement for them and they have next to no content. Kelly’s romantic dialogue options are similar to Thane in how exaggerated they tend to be, and thus are easy to avoid. Samara is only receptive toward paragon Shepards to begin with, but also puts a hard stop to any flirtation attempts regardless, so tripping her “romance” is not really an issue.

ME3 LOVE INTERESTS

General note: Just lock into your preferred LI’s romance first. I am serious. That will solve nearly every issue. Locking into your LI’s romance is not Shepard still expressing interest when they first meet again unless your LI is Tali, whose lock-in is her cabin date right after she comes aboard for the first time. Otherwise, the lock-in moment for most of the LIs are their Citadel dates that happen after the Coup.

James: Technically, he’s not a love interest. I’m including him because he always flirts with femShep. There is no way around this, sorry. The best you can do is to not allow him to call femShep “Lola”, which happens after the sparring match you two can have in the cargo bay. He still flirts with femShep outside that however, and there are a few times where femShep unavoidably flirts back. If you don’t like this, you just kind of have to plug your ears and pretend it’s not happening. Or just not speak to him at all, lol.

Hopefully with MELE’s new modding capabilities, someone will release a mod that fixes this since James’ conversations with mShep are more normal.

Allers: She is similar to Kelly and Samara in that she is not a “real” LI. I believe you can’t even trip her “romance” until after you finish Rannoch anyway, since it’s tied to the interview you do with her. There can be an awkward moment after Tuchanka or the Coup (I don’t recall which, or if it’s both) where she might sound flirtatious and you’re forced into flirting back or turning her down, but nothing comes from this. If it does happen after the Coup’s interview, you could try pushing it off until you lock into your preferred romance, but it’d have to be before you complete Rannoch since I imagine the Coup one would expire and be replaced with Rannoch’s.

Traynor: Traynor’s romance is actually easy to miss if you play renegade. I know this because I finished her romance a few months before MELE came out and I had to redo twenty hours of gameplay before that because I got locked out of it for being too much of an asshole to her. (Absolutely hilarious in hindsight, incredibly annoying in the moment.) After some digging, I found some old forums detailing that you apparently cannot be renegade toward her about her toothbrush in your first conversation and when she tells you about Grissom academy or else she evidently decides you are too mean and/or not interested in her. (Whether or not this is true, I have no idea. I didn’t bother risking it and went straight paragon with her in all of our conversations until I was able to lock it in.)

What this means is that if you want to avoid her shower scene entirely, just be renegade toward her until you get her cabin date, because you straight up do not even get the option to offer your shower to her if you were renegade enough.

If you're roleplaying and your Shepard wouldn’t take those renegade dialogue options, follow the advice in the general note: lock into your preferred romance before doing Traynor’s cabin date. Like Kaidan, this does mean that if you romanced Jacob or Thane and don’t wish to move on to anyone else, you’re a bit out of luck if you want to avoid the option triggering entirely.

That being said, even if you are doing a paragon Jacob, Thane, or no romance run, and thus still get the shower option, just...simply don’t let her in your shower. Problem solved.

Cortez: Cortez’ romance does not have any egregious romance mechanics that I’m aware of. To my knowledge, he never flirts with Shepard first before his romance is locked in. In fact, if you do flirt with him but you had a pre-existing romance from ME1 or ME2 (or I think if you are already locked into your romance with Kaidan as mShep) he will make a mention of that romance when you do try to flirt with him. This is all to say: to my knowledge, there is really nothing to avoid with Cortez. You have to go out of your way to flirt with him and lock in the romance. That being said, if there is something I’m missing, the same “lock into your preferred LI’s romance” rule of thumb should apply.

Hopefully some of this helped! If you have any other general questions about this issue or about a specific LI, let me know. Please note that I am also basing all of this off my knowledge of the original games, but I’m assuming nothing has changed in MELE.

[arisefairsun]

ok I seriously love romeo. when I read this in freshman year everyone hated him bc he was so sensitive and emotional but that was what I loved about him. even though I'm a girl I relate to him so much bc of that and he thinks with his heart far more than he does with his brain. I love how he is so different from the other boys in verona bc he doesn't want to fight, and I love his contrast w juliet. it's like they're fire and water or the sun and the moon like I just love his character so much

THANK YOU. It’s nice to know that I’m not the only one in the world who loves Romeo’s personality. Let me just ramble about him because I absolutely love this boy.

He lives in such a dark, abusive, coercive society, doesn’t he? A society that does not allow its citizens to achieve freedom—a society that despotically forces the men into violence, war, bravado, machismo, and this empty, meaningless concept of a dehumanized man that should have no feelings, no fears, because otherwise he is unmanly and shameful. It is a society that does not accept those men that do not behave as such. Look at the deification of machismo in the opening dialogue between Sampson and Gregory. Look at Mercutio’s constant mocking of Romeo for choosing to be a lover and a poet rather than a fighter:

Alas poor Romeo! he is already dead; stabbed with awhite wench’s black eye; shot through the ear with a love-song; the very pin of his heart cleft with the blind bow-boy’s butt-shaft: and is he a man to encounter Tybalt?

Look at the way the Nurse urges him to ‘man up’: ‘Stand up, stand up; stand, an you be a man’. Even Friar Lawrence shows his contempt for his unmanly attitude:

Art thou a man? thy form cries out thou art.Thy tears are womanish; thy wild acts denoteThe unreasonable fury of a beast.Unseemly woman in a seeming man!O ill-beseeming beast in seeming both!

Romeo, as Montague’s heir, is expected to perpetuate these senseless masculine ideals. Benvolio is certain that Romeo will fight Tybalt (‘Romeo will answer it’), and so does Mercutio (‘Marry, go before to field, he’ll be your follower’). He does not, cannot comprehend why Romeo didn’t accept Tybalt’s challenge, why he stated that he loved the Capuet surname ‘as dearly as mine own’, why he literally said he loved Tybalt (‘O calm, dishonorable, vile submission’). To Mercutio, Romeo is only truly Romeo when he is jesting in his male circle: ‘Is not this better now than groaning for love? Now art thou sociable; now art thou Romeo. Now art thou what thou art by art as well as by nature’. (Little does he know that the reason Romeo is in such a good mood in this scene is that he spent the previous night talking to Capulet’s daughter about the insignificance of names and social labels.)

This is brutal. This is terrible. This is the abusive impact that patriarchy and toxic masculinity and social oppression have on a boy who just wants to go on talking about blushing pilgrims and love’s light wings. Unlike the other boys in Verona, Romeo does not care about his social identity. He simply chooses to ignore it. Think of his reaction to the fight in the first scene: ‘O me! What fray was here? / Yet tell me not, for I’ve heard it all.’ There is weariness in his words. He is tired of the feud. He immediately starts rambling about love instead: ‘Here’s much to do with hate, but more with love. / Why then, O brawling love, O loving hate…’ But it’s not as simple; he just cannot forget about it so easily. In act III, his identity as Montague’s heir brings him so much anxiety and distress that he attempts to take his own life, hoping that this will allow him to extirpate his own name from himself:

O, tell me, friar, tell me,In what vile part of this anatomyDoth my name lodge? tell me, that I may sackThe hateful mansion.Drawing his sword.

These lines are heartbreaking. He is so tired. He is ‘world-wearied flesh’. I don’t think it’s fair to dismiss his emotions and say that he’s just an idiot going through an emo phase. No. Romeo is desperate. Romeo needs affection to survive, and I don’t think that’s a joke if we take into account the brutality of his society. He needs to believe that there is something that’s more powerful than hate in life.

For instance, I can never get enough of the juxtaposition in the first scene. The chaos of the fight, the phallic violence, the toxic pride of Sampson and Gregory—all of this contrasts beautifully with Romeo’s first entrance. From the moment Lady Montague asks, ‘O where is Romeo?’, the characters shift toward a more lyrical, dreamlike speech. They mention Aurora’s bed, the worshipped sun, an artificial night, etc. The force of poetry accompanies Romeo’s character even before he comes on the stage. The language of the scene invites us to conceive Romeo as a different boy, one that isolates himself, one that cries under sycamores, ‘with tears augmenting the fresh morning dew, / Adding to clouds more clouds with his deep sighs’, while the other men shed blood over a thumb-biting gesture. Romeo is lyrical, he is poetry itself, an ardent defensor of the power of dreaming. And yet, in the first act, his poetry is poor and his understanding of love limited, stereotyped, void. It’s artificial and forced. As Friar Lawrence remarks, ‘thy love did read by rote, that could not spell’. Romeo’s 'love’ for Rosaline exposes again the banality of his society. 

It’s not until he meets Juliet that he transcends the limited customs of his society and begins to explore his real self. With Juliet he finds a new kind of love, one that’s personal, real, daring, full of meaning. During his first conversation with Juliet, they both triumph at composing a perfect Shakespearean sonnet together. The poetry is finally mutual, real, alive. From that moment on, though, they will generally speak in blank verse together; Romeo finds a new voice, a different sort of dream, in Juliet’s company. He changes his nonsense, excessively elaborated speech for a much more honest, spontaneous language. He can do so much better than his society—he can be a far better poet than he thinks. Juliet, who shows a greater command of her language, demonstrates this to him.

Something I love about him is that even if he is the romantic lead of the story, he is far from being the perfect prince: he is a helpless, scared child. Juliet is certainly more determined than him, far more careful and resourceful. When she is threatened by her father to marry a man she dislikes, she immediately asks the Nurse for help (‘O Nurse! How shall this be prevented?’). When the Nurse betrays her, she immediately turns to the friar (‘I’ll to the friar to know his remedy’). After Romeo’s banishment, on the contrary, he just lies on the floor 'with his own tears made drunk’, refuses to listen to the friar’s advices, and even attempts to kill himself. But I don’t think we should despise Romeo for this; Romeo needs help and protection and that is not a joke. Romeo goes through a lot of anxiety because he is forced to become someone he doesn’t want to be and that’s just not his fault.

Even if both of them are very protective of each other, it is Juliet who most mentions her need to protect 'my Romeo’. Despite all her fears, this is what finally makes her drink the friar’s potion:

O look! Methinks I see my cousin’s ghost,Seeking out Romeo that did spit his bodyUpon a rapier’s point: Stay, Tybalt, stay!Romeo, I come. This do I drink to thee.

Juliet fears that Tybalt, one of the major exponents of toxic masculinity in the play, will destroy her Romeo if she doesn’t defend him. It is as if there were two Romeos: his imposed identity as Romeo Montague, based on honor and violence; and then the identity he chose himself as her Romeo, based on love and tenderness. He attempts to break the patriarchal norms by rejecting his household in the balcony scene ('Had I [my name] written, I would tear the word’); however, he doesn’t ask the same from her. Ultimately, his death in Capulet’s vault destroys his obedience to the feud (and he uses poison, often attributed to women and weakness, as opposed to Juliet’s dagger).

Juliet revitalizes him in every possible way. She introduces him to a brighter, kinder world. Picking up again the saint/pilgrim motif, he asks her to 'call me but love and I’ll be new baptized’. He finally finds someone who doesn’t believe in the coercive customs of their society—someone who fearlessly states that he would still be as valuable even if he were not a Montague. While their households continue to fight over the importance of names and honor, Juliet is so skeptical that she even wonders, 'What’s Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot, / Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part / Belonging to a man.’ She’ll fight anyone over her Romeo. She is ready to do anything in order to take care of him (more on this here). And Romeo himself rejoices in her protectiveness. He knows she’s stronger than all the swords in Verona ('Look thou but sweet and I am proof against their enemy’). To him, she is a light forcing her way through the physical restrictions of their world, freely expanding her light across the whole sky and shaming 'those stars / As daylight doth a lamp’. She is his sun. There is so much life in her that he believes she could revive him with her kisses as if he were a Disney princess (‘… And breathed such life with kisses in my lips / That I revived and was an emperor’). He is in love with her mind, with her light, and not only with her body (FIGHT ME): 'How is’t, my soul? Let’s talk, it is not day.’

In short, Juliet builds a new identity for him, one that’s free from Verona’s rules and the feud, one that’s tender and blissful and full of light, as they always say. This brings him hope—Juliet’s brave, restless energy turns his dreams into reality. Look at his intrepid words:

With love’s light wings did I o'er-perch these walls,For stony limits cannot hold love out, And what love can do, that dares love attempt.Therefore thy kinsmen are no stop to me.

Love is his strength. Romeo’s courage is of a different kind than that of the other men. It is not based on violence and rage—he dislikes those. Romeo’s bravery lies in his tears, his softness, his emotions, his dreams. His inability to live without Juliet denotes his inability to live without freedom, subjugated to the toxicity of the feud and masculinity. In the balcony scene he tells Juliet 'I would I were thy bird’; he tells her he wishes to say there 'forgetting any other home but this’. And indeed, he chooses Juliet’s breast as his final resting place. Productions don’t generally make him die on her breast, but that’s what Friar Lawrence describes: 'Thy husband in thy bosom there lies dead.’ It tragically echoes his words in the balcony scene: 'Sleep dwell upon thine eyes, peace in thy breast, / Would I were sleep and peace so sweet to rest!’

They are a team. They love, help, save, trust each other. The intimacy they achieve by the end of act III is remarkable. Look at the Nurse’s words when she finds Romeo crying in the friar’s cell:

O, he is even in my mistress’ case,Just in her case! O woeful sympathy!Piteous predicament! Even so lies she,Blubbering and weeping, weeping and blubbering.

He shows as much despair as her. They are not the typical straight couple—a perfectly disciplined man, an oversensitive woman—Romeo and Juliet share their pain. For instance, I’m in love with this passage from the farewell scene:

JULIETO god! I have an ill-divining soul!Methinks I see thee there, thou art so low,As one dead in the bottom of a tomb.Either my eyesight fails or thou lookst pale.ROMEOAnd trust me, love, in my eye so do you.Dry sorrow drinks our love. Adieu, adieu!

This could be paraphrased as ‘I’m scared.’ ‘I’m scared, too.’ This is beautiful and not so easy to find in literature. This is a man who doesn’t pretend he is too strong to show weakness. Romeo imagines his blood being sucked by sorrow, and he doesn’t mind telling Juliet. Indeed, he always stands up for his own emotions and his right to feel. I’ve always been in love with his response to the friar’s words in 3.3:

Thou canst not speak of that thou dost not feel:Wert thou as young as I, Juliet thy love,An hour but married, Tybalt murdered,Doting like me and like me banished,Then mightst thou speak, then mightst thou tear thy hair,And fall upon the ground, as I do now,Taking the measure of an unmade grave.

Romeo is unable to cope; he is weak, sensitive, and spends too much time dreaming. He is the kind of person who needs people by his side. He simply needs affection and that’s precisely what his society prohibits him from having. But instead of mocking him for this, I believe it would be fairer to judge those that instill such anxiety and despair in this poor child who just wants to spend his life poetizing the power of love but who is tragically forced to kill and hate. He is such an idealistic young boy, isn’t he?—completely governed by his dreams, madly in love with his own fantasies. I can never get enough of this funny exchange between Mercutio and Romeo:

ROMEOI dreamt a dream tonight.MERCUTIOAnd so did I.ROMEOWell, what was yours?MERCUTIOThat dreamers often lie.ROMEOIn bed asleep while they do dream things true.

This is not only a man showing his emotions and clinging to his dreams, this is a man who was raised to promote toxic masculinity, rage, and violence, and who does what he can to distance himself from that. We should never forget that. Let’s not decontextualize Romeo and Juliet’s actions from the feud. They are not ‘normal’ kids living in a ‘normal’ world. I think that’s people’s problem with this play—they forget the patriarchal, abusive society Romeo and Juliet were raised in. Two idiots getting themselves killed? That’s dumb indeed. But that’s not what happens in Romeo and Juliet. Romeo and Juliet cling to each other because they accept each other for what they truly are. It’s the fact that they are left alone, that nobody else is willing to accept them, that their society feeds itself with blood and hate and prejudice—this is what kills Romeo and Juliet. To me, it’s the story of two young people who rebel against all the chaos they are to inherit from their parents. And Romeo’s rebellion lies in his emotions. This is the 21st century, for God’s sake. Are we going to mock a boy who is just too tired of all the unhealthy ideals being forced on him? Romeo is quite a unique character—how many men living in a society that encourages them to show off their masculinity would refuse to perpetuate it? Let Romeo cry. Let him fall on the ground in tears. Let him sigh and talk about how his 'heartsick groans, mist-like,’ will 'infold me from the search of eyes’. The fact that he is vulnerable is proof that he doesn’t want to be dehumanized by social constructs. It’s the bravest, most revolutionary thing he could have done in his world. The problem is not Romeo, but Romeo’s society.