Thane was handled SO poorly in Mass Effect. Now bear with me, this is a rant.
He's a galaxy known assassin, one of the best, with a terminal illness. He has lost his wife and has no contact with his son. He's content with dying and doesn't fear it.
Shepard reunites him with his son (if they succeed the loyalty mission) and he feels better and is still content with dying, because now his greatest regret has been solved.
A female Shepard who romances him? The same. The difference is, now Thane has more to lose. He's angry and sad right before the final mission. Upset about dying, upset about being scared of it. Everything has changed, he does not want to die anymore.
You learn through the shadow broker that Thane has refused to having a lung transplant which would give him a few extra years. They could have had Shepard point that out, get the man some more years of his life! (My memory is fuzzy here.) Fine, tragic romances exists. Fine.
This continues below, have fun.
And now we come to Mass Effect 3 which has its own whole amount of issues. Shepard is forced to be on Earth for 6 months. No outside contact. Thane can only send her messages. This guy is dying and Shepard can't even be around for what is basically the remainder of his time.
She finally gets away and can meet him face to face and now suddenly he's back to being content to die. He doesn't mind it anymore! She'll be fine without him! No worries.
On top of that, this master class assassin decides to jump right into a sword during a battle with the most annoyingly written plot-protected character in the whole series. Because, oh, heroic! it's stupid is what it is
ON TOP OF THAT, the writers admitted they forgot Thane was a love interest in ME3. His writer had left after ME2 so it was a quick scramble to make something work and it was, sorry, so half arsed.
Shepard watches Thane die right before Liara's homeworld is struck and I'm pretty sure no character said anything to Shep about it and she was forced to comfort Liara with no regards to the fact that she had just lost her partner. Because they Forgot. About. Thane.
(oh sure they had a memorial in the dlc and what not to make up for it but come on.)
Oh and my Shepard later on is ogling one of the npcs outside of the player's control. My Shep who was still heartbroken and barely finding a reason to move on.
A female Shepard has several questionable romance endings beyond the 'flings' with npcs and two main game characters (Garrus and Liara)
Thane dies (after having his character and skill massacred) You can't change this.
Jacob cheats on Shepard and gets another woman pregnant (Which on top of just being problematic on its own, is also stereotypical.) You can't change this.
Kaidan (Mostly fine, I think, I've never romanced him) But if you break up with him/or move on with a ME2 romance - where Kaidan is not around and also doesn't wanna talk to you- he will chew you out in ME3 and Shep has no chance to defend herself or even counter -argue. AND HERE IS THE KICKER. A male Shepard can counter-argue with Ashley in the exact same scenario. He can even get angry.
And to my memory, Male Shepard doesn't have any romances that END in that sense. They're all choice driven. There's no forced deaths. The ME2 ones into ME3 aren't as deep, no (but I don't count Thane becoming ooc and dying as deep either lol) but they all at least survive/stick around!
The game series is old by now and they did struggle with A LOT of things, including these issues. It's still a game I bought blind only to realize that 'holy shit, I can play as a WOMAN'. I WAS so happy when I received ME3 that I ran around with the CD box. Only to end up in tears as they destroyed everything I liked about the game series (this was before they "fixed" the ending with the epilogue shots etc, it was really bad back then). I still can't look or read about the game without getting sad.
This was a long rant, it's not proof read and I'm sure I insulted at least someone with this but I'm still angry to this day about what they did to Thane.
My thought process when I commission the same artist more than once:
HIII IM SORRY TO BOTHER YOU AGAIN you're allowed to do this BUT ID LOVE ANOTHER PIECE IM SORRY IM WEIRD they probably don't mind the money dude HI IM BACK FOR THE FIFTH TIME GOD YOU HATE ME RIGHT it's been several months in between you are fine! HOW MANY TIMES ARE TOO MANY god
but also what if I'm really annoying and they don't wanna be mean
Playing star wars outlaws is just giving me so many ideas for TBB in that era and then realising that they're not criminals so they wouldn't really... do half of this stuff but also at that point in time... WELL it'd just be more interesting dammit.
Thinky thoughts. I've already got a wild plan for how to introduce them to end Empire times without changing them too much... :D
Late night shift panicking over how the hell am I gonna tie up the season 2 of the tbb rewrite 😭
Like after years of struggling with season 1, I'm almost a little burned out. But also I've had a shitty shitty shitty day and nothing feels like it'll ever be right again.
