unfair-water-plane

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Chapters: 1/30 Fandom: Mass Effect Trilogy Rating: Not Rated Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Male Shepard & Garrus Vakarian, Male Shepard & Tali'Zorah nar Rayya, Male Shepard & Ashley Williams (Mass Effect), Kaidan Alenko & Male Shepard, Male Shepard & Liara T'Soni, David Anderson & Male Shepard (Mass Effect), Hannah Shepard/Shepard's Father, Normandy Crew & Male Shepard, Jeff "Joker" Moreau & Male Shepard Characters: Male Shepard (Mass Effect), Jeff "Joker" Moreau, Liara T'Soni, Urdnot Wrex, Garrus Vakarian, Tali'Zorah nar Rayya, Steven Hackett, Donnel Udina, Hannah Shepard, Milosh Shepard, Kaidan Alenko, Ashley Williams (Mass Effect), Lorik Qui'in, Tevos (Mass Effect), Sparatus (Mass Effect), Valern (Mass Effect), Saren Arterius, Jondum Bau, Nihlus Kryik, Khalisah bint Sinan al-Jilani, Emily Wong (Mass Effect), Mikhailovich (Mass Effect), Minor Characters from Mass Effect Additional Tags: Engineering, Mass Effect 1, Spacer (Mass Effect), Novel, Politics, liberties taken with canon, Nihlus Kryik Lives, Covert N7 Shepard, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, The Council hates humanity and humanity hates back, Art Series: Part 1 of EBIDTA Summary:

An unlikely rescue makes an even more unlikely hero. Isaiah Shepard might not want to save the day, but engineers always get left to fix things.

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Something that really stuck with me while I was playing Mass Effect 2, and that I feel was so important to understanding the relationship between Shepard and Garrus, whether you romance him or not, is that Garrus is your only companion from ME1 who never moved on.

You died. The crew watched you die. Assumedly they grieved you, there was a funeral service, there were tears and all five stages of grief. Things were rough, but eventually life took on a shade of normalcy again.

Kaiden/Ashley got reassigned and continued their work for the alliance. Liara fights tooth and nail to get your body to Cerberus, but then it’s out of her hands and she becomes an information broker. Tali goes back to the Floatilla, like she was always supposed to. Wrex becomes a clan leader. And yes, they’re all fundamentally changed by their time on the Normandy, but no one seems as stuck as Garrus Vakarian.

Because he doesn’t go back to the Citadel. He doesn’t join the Turian Hierarchy. He ships himself off to Omega, one of the most dangerous places he could be, and makes a life out of pissing off the most dangerous people there. It’s kind of a suicide mission, especially after what happened with Sidonis. He kind of figures he’s going to die doing this, but what else can he do?

There is no normalcy for Garrus in a world without Shepard, and I think that’s why he’s always immediately ready to come back to the Normandy. The Normandy, and Shepard, are home for Garrus and that’s why I think romancing him feels like the natural conclusion for so many femme Sheps, because Shepard feels that way too.

Of all the companions, no one needs Shepard to live more than Garrus, and no one needs Garrus more than Shepard. They’re perfectly matched, as lovers, as friends, as soldiers, as whatever they are in your universe and when you’re that perfectly matched with someone, you never quite feel whole without them.

No Shepard without Vakarian.

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More Mass Effect memes

You can't blaaame me

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Maximum fish is the end game of Mass Wffect and you cannot tell me differently

HOLY MACKEREL. You know how I said the Collector's Ship mission was bad? That was before the Arrival mission. Where I was completely alone. With a million enemies even though I'm on Little Baby Lamb Casual difficulty. I died SO MANY TIMES. But the worst thing?

I had to decide whether to blow up over 300K Batarians or let the Reapers invade. And, since this is Mass Effect 2 and the Reapers CAN'T invade yet, it didn't matter what I chose because the Batarians got Critical Mission Failure'd just as hard as I had in this mission.

And now I have to stand trial.

Um, is that going to be in this game or do I have that to look forward to in ME3?

The worst part? I just really wanted somebody to give me Shep a hug when we got back. Nobody offered one. 😭😭😭

Between the constant deaths and the horrible non-choices and now there's a trial hanging over my head? ME2 was a lot of not fun tonight.

Oh, wait! Shep did get a hug at the end of the last big mission:

*sniffle* Thanks, Liara. 🫂We feel a little better now.

Also, I loved the fact that both Shep and Liara have these beautiful aquariums in their rooms:

Shep now has the max amount of fish! But I haven't been able to trigger the conversation for Kelly to take care of them so I don't think they're going to survive ME2. 😭😭😭😭😭😭♾️😭😭😭😭😭😭

Also, yes, Shepard is carrying a small nuclear device on his back in that top pic. I invested in the Cain, though it takes so long to charge up, I've honestly died more times trying to use it than it's helped me. But I'm still carrying it around because I know there are some Very Big Bads still to come.

I hope we're done with the missions where Shep is all alone. We don't like that.

Love you, friends, and hope you're doing well! 💖

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# inappropriate use of biotic charge

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Cozy sleepy

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Boyfriends 🙈💕

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First Kodiak trip post Priority: Citadel! A lot has changed since the good old days

Bonus Garrus. He heard his name

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Gay people will listen to Chappell roan and go “this is just like Garrus and mshep”

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He's gonna climb that turian.

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Still love this.

it is (was) @unfair-water-plane 's birthday so you know what that means! Isaiah Shepard with some good mshakarian (the short king finally being higher. good for him)

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Still love this. My boys

A Mass Effect sketch commission ✨

commission info

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dear m!shakarian fans, I love you :-]

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Not really Valentine’s Day themed but this was the best I had in my backlog lol

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The Leviathan DLC was absolutely worth it if for nothing else than touch-her-and-you-die Garrus

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When writing always remember… a character flaw is only a flaw until becomes useful. 

Is your protagonist manipulative? Well that’s awful… until they manipulate the antagonist into making a decision that saves the lives of their friends. 

Is your protagonist a skeptic? Well that’s not good… until someone tries to lie to them. 

Is your protagonist overprotective? That sucks… until someone they love is in danger. 

Is your protagonist remorseless? Well that makes them pretty unlikeable… until a hard decision has to be made. 

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Oh I like this. I love when people's Shepards start wondering what the toll for being Commander Shepard is going to look like.

He doesn't snap at his crew often. Not often at all.

This is genuinely one of the choices for Liara's character that I really like. Many of the returning crew (in-game, not in-squad), right, give you sort've...key insights into the different races, or they're a foil, or whatever. I kinda love that Liara, whose whole thing was that she was not around people much/was super into the Protheans/had a mother connected to the villain, right. Like it was mostly tied to the circumstances of ME1 specifically, and now we've got another asari squad mate this game. Like Liara wasn't relegated to...idk, Asari Councillor or whatever. They got weird with her, because our asari info this time was from Samara (who is, wonderfully, a wholly unique and distinct character with very different info to relay).

I don't know. I really do love they made Liara and Garrus (and the Virmire Survivor, tho less so because they're keeping their distance and hurting) the human element of visibly, Shepard's friends fell apart without them. Garrus tried to emulate Shep, to some extant, and kinda fucked up his life over it. And Liara, because she didn't have a lot of friends and because her whole thing is she doesn't let things go (hi, anyone working with history), that translated into her doing some pretty ethically questionable things! That she knew Shepard wouldn't be okay with! But she couldn't stop herself, even knowing. It's a lot for Shepard to have to grapple with, especially if they're as anti-Cerberus as Ze'ev is. Like Liara fundamentally betrayed his values and his wishes, if he'd had the choice.

It adds an interesting dynamic to their relationship going forward. I think it might be the first time that Ze'ev has to step back and be like, what is being the Commander costing me? That people make these choices because I've made myself so indispensable to them?