#ask:rani

[anunquenchableflame]

Hi! Dark Nebula for Shepard ask meme, please? 🌌

[ Shepard Ask Meme ]

Dark nebula - Is there something they’d change about their past?

I think Rani would like to have been less of an obstructive little shit while growing up.

Her mother left her in the care of her aunt and uncle when Rani was five, so she could go back to her career as a badass space marine, and Rani always felt rather abandoned and unwanted. She'd act out and make trouble trying to get her mother's attention, but it really just made things harder for her aunt and uncle while her mother went on fairly oblivious and unconcerned right up until she was receiving a consent request for putting a biotic port in her teenage daughter who’d been arrested for illegal biotic prize fighting.

As an adult she regrets having made things so difficult for the people who raised her and loved her even though she’d been somewhat forced upon them and they’d never intended to be parents. Her impulse to spread it around when she’s displeased is not one of her favourite personal traits.

In an absolutely idealised version of her past, of course, she’d have grown up with both parents alive and actively involved in her life, and she’d have had this amazing vid-series worthy childhood seeing the galaxy while living on her parents starships.

[anunquenchableflame]

Tell me 5 things about your fav OC and 5 things about your least talked about OC :3 (I hope the rest of your bus ride goes fast!)

Five things about Rani Shepard, who is my obvious current fave.

Ever since Elysium, Rani does not trust shore leave. She never goes on holiday unarmed. Getting attacked at the sushi bar on the Citadel was just not a surprise to her, it fit right in with her expectations of shore leave. She was just annoyed that she’d left her pistol on her bed because there was really no way of hiding it under her outfit.

Her favourite festival is Holi. She doesn’t recall much about her parents but she does remember them both taking her to the festival when she was around 3 years old. Her father was on one of his rare visits and he hoisted her onto his shoulders so she could see over the crowds and sit up amidst the coloured powders being flung around. She came down completely coated and grinning hugely.

Etched on the inside of the chest piece of her old N7 armour was a list of all the people she’d lost under her command, so she’d see the names every time she put her armour on and do better this time. Ashley Williams was the last name on the list before Alchera.

She’s ridiculously competitive. You challenge her and you are going DOWN. Relatedly, she’s also a really grumpy loser on those occasions when she does lose…

Rani has a really sweet tooth. People expect her to like bitter things and are then very surprised when she shares a favourite food only to find it’s really sweet and their tooth enamel may be disolving. She and Ash used to order the most ghastly sugary cocktails in bars while Kaidan watched in horror.

And I’m not sure who my least talked about OC is tbh. There’s a bunch I’ve just never developed very much. I guess I haven’t talked about Nina much yet, so-o five things about Nina Ryder!

She’s a compulsive messenger. She is the friend who will send you fifteen stream of conciousness messages at 4am. Also lots of “saw this, thought of you” photos. She keeps sending messages to her twin, Adrien, while he’s comatose. When he wakes up one of the first things she says to him, with deadly seriousness, is “Delete your inbox”.

She and her brother take turns dying their hair and reverting to their natural shade. They never have the same colour at the same time, except for that one summer when they were 14 and both totally fried their hair by alternating between “Hanar Pink” and their natural colour every few days to unsettle their dad (they honestly weren’t sure he’d even notice).

Nina is 5'4" tall. Adrien is a good half foot taller and calls her Short Stack. Or Little Shit, depending on their company.

Nina once tried to chat up Shepard in a Citadel bar while on shore leave. She does not remember this because immediately after realising who she’d been talking to she got blind drunk in order to erase the embarassment from her memory. Adrien remembers though, and is keeping the memory tucked away for the right moment.

She wears super hero underpants at all times. Knowing she has Wonder Woman emblazoned across her crotch gives her great confidence.

Thank you for the ask, I may have waffled a bit! I still have a couple of hours to go :|

[anunquenchableflame]

Mass Effect Relationship questions - 1, 17, 23, 34?

Thank you for the questions, I’m sorry the answers are so very very late! I moved house at really short notice and all was chaos for a while. I’ve already done 1 and 17.

Mass Effect Relationship Questions - send me an ask!

23. Do they have any inside jokes? (Romance)

Not exactly inside jokes. They make stuff up about old missions when they’re around James and see how far they can strain his belief. Kaidan’s surprisingly good at making things up on the spot and Rani always looks so serious that it’s hard to doubt her when she plays along adding details on the fly. They always start out fairly plausible but then the stories get progressively wilder and more unlikely until either one of them breaks down laughing or James can’t take it anymore and starts crying “faaake!”. But sometimes he just lets them keep on going because the sight of Galactic Badasses Spectres Shepard and Alenko leaning on eachother because they can’t laugh and breathe at the same time is a special kind of hilarious. Then they switch tactics and start telling him stories that are 100% genuine (if still pretty wild, you wouldn’t blame him for disbelieving some of the things they’ve truly done). It’s all pretty good natured but after a while he just can’t trust a word they say, even when Garrus or Liara back them up, though he does have a newfound respect for their combined ability to bullshit. Maybe it’s the only way they can deal with the Council.

34. What do they find most attractive about the other?

Rani likes Kaidan’s willingness to challenge her. That he didn’t just agree with her because superior officer or hero of Elysium or first human Spectre, or whatever, was what first made her want to know him better.Kaidan kind of admires how stubborn she can be, even when it’s driving him mad. She’s straight forward, resolute and no-nonsense, and he admires the hell out of that.

Physically, Rani rather likes his greys, though she suspects she may be contributing to their appearance. She loves his eyes: they hide nothing of what he’s feeling. And, y’know, that ass is a dangerous distraction in battle, she was sort of relieved when he started wearing heavier armour that didn’t hug his form quite so snugly. Kaidan was half in love with her already before he realised “shit, and she’s hot too”. He loves her hair: It’s really thick and soft and he’s the one person in the galaxy who can get away with calling her fluffy bob “cute”. He’s also quite appreciative of a woman who can comfortably lift him over her shoulder and would maybe like to be fully conscious and not bleeding heavily for the experience one day.

[anunquenchableflame]

11, 17, 25?

Thanks for your questions!

Mass Effect Relationship Questions - send me an ask!

11. Are Shepard’s parents still alive?

Rani’s mother is alive but her father is not; She didn’t know anything about either of them until she’d died once herself though.

Her mother, Kalpita, is an ex-Alliance officer who turned street-thug after receiving a bad conduct discharge. She spent most of Rani’s life serving a prison sentence, while Rani believed her mother dead. Her father, Jalil, was also an Alliance officer and died in service during the First Contact war.

17. Who did Shepard romance?

Rani romanced Kaidan. They were pretty discreet to start with, though anyone who spent much time with them together could see it plain as day. When they’re back together in ME3 they’re a lot less concerned with discretion, they’ve had too much time stolen from them to spend what they have sneaking around and pretending they’re nothing more than friends and they’re willing to take whatever consequences that has.

There were moments during her time with Cerberus, when she was at her most tired and frustrated and so incredibly lonely, when she thought about seeking comfort with someone else, but she could never bring herself to act on the thought.

25. Is there something they fight about?

Usually it’s Rani’s reckless behaviour. She’s never had much of a sense of self-preservation and seeing her charge around paying so little heed to her own defense scares the shit out of Kaidan every time. He’s convinced she’s got a death wish, but she just won’t talk about it so it always ends up in a circular unhelpful argument. He pulls rank on her a couple of times when she looks like she’s going to get the whole team killed because she just won’t back down. She usually appreciates a little bit of a challenge from him, but not in this case. She in turn thinks Kaidan’s too cautious and that any risk is worth it if it gets the job done. Her death over Alchera hangs over the whole subject and every time he takes her to task for being “reckless” all she can think is that he’s being needlessly over-protective and ridiculous and not appreciating what’s at stake.

Neither of them are entirely wrong, really.

[anunquenchableflame]

Mass Effect relationship questions: 5, 29 and 40!

Thank you for the questions, sorry these took me a while to write!

Mass Effect Relationship Questions - send me an ask!

5. Who’s Shepard’s best friend? (Friendships)

She’d probably find it hard to say who was her “best” friend. She finds different things in each of them. She’s definitely closest to her crew from the SR-1.

In the early days it was Ashley and Kaidan. They bonded quickly, they were her go-to ground team and they hung out off-duty a lot. Losing Ash broke her pretty badly and being suddenly without either of them through ME2 was very hard.

Tali’s like a little sister. Rani starts off feeling very responsible for her, and ends up so proud of who she becomes. Tali’s one of the few people she feels happy to be a bit more girly around- though Tali is sworn to utter deadly secrecy regarding the fact.

Garrus is her solid right-hand turian. She can always rely on him to back her up no matter what. He’s largely the reason she gets through any of their time with Cerberus.

29. What was their first impression of each other? (Romance)

The very first time they met they were a good 8 years younger, and Kaidan pulled Rani out of a fist-fight with another serviceman that was about to turn very bad. He thought she was a belligerent little shit who was probably overdue a discharge, she thought he was a self-righteous prick who should mind his own goddamn business. But neither of them particularly recalls it, or recognises the other in the memory.

The second time they met he was sent to meet her off her shuttle before reporting to the Normandy. He gave her an electric shock when they shook hands and their biotic fields earthed. So one of the first thing she said to him was “damn lieutenant, how high do you spike?!” while she tried to massage life back into her hand.

She found him a little stuffy to start with: Straight-laced, by-the-book, reserved, nice but not much fun. He’d heard all sorts of things about her and wasn’t sure how much to believe or expect from serving with her. He took a while to figure her out, but he knew fairly quickly that she wasn’t quite the humourless hard-ass he’d imagined.

40. Is there someone in the squad of ME/ME2/ME3 Shepard dislikes? Why? (Random)

There’s no-one she outright despises. If there were they’d be off her ship in a heartbeat. There are people she finds hard work to start with but grows more tolerant of, and even fond of, as she gets to know and understand them better.

She doesn’t get on with Miranda at all to the start with, and there are things that will always be between them, but she begins to understand to her a little better when she realises how little Miranda thinks of herself and they’re able to move on from there.

Zaeed brings out the worst in Rani. His company makes it very easy to slip into bad old habits. She’d doesn’t exactly dislike him, but she doesn’t like who he makes her.

She finds Javik unpleasant company, but she gives him his space and tolerates him. She figures she’d be pretty unpleasant in his place too, probably more so.

[anunquenchableflame]

Omniblade and Dog Tags for Rani?

Mass Effect OC ask meme

Omniblade - How temperamental are they? Do they show their anger or keep it hidden? What’s the fastest way to provoke them? 

Rani can be pretty short-tempered. She’s impatient and impulsive and those traits often lead to her opening her mouth before her brain has a chance to go “now wait just a minute”. She’s quite heavily influenced by the company she’s keeping; Among her more reasonable companions it’s easier to stay level headed but when her company is more volatile (basically most of ME2) she finds herself getting riled up much more easily.She tries, really tries, to keep her anger and frustration in check but people don’t exactly make it easy. Someone’s always got a stupid problem that only Commander Shepard can possibly fix for them. She spends most of her time among Cerberus with this simmering rage bubbling away under the surface because she hates knowing that she’s being used and manipulated and that she’s helpless to act against that or fully express her anger because she needs these people and, very worst of all, she owes them her life. So she ends up taking it out on people who (probably) don’t deserve it.It’s not hard to provoke her. You merely have to question her abilities. She’s quite up for a good-natured challenge between friends (though she is always going to do her very best to hand you your ass- she’s super competitive) but as soon as a stranger questions whether Commander Shepard really knows what she’s doing, there’s absolutely no talking her down. 

Dogtags - How do they want to be remembered?

Honestly. That’s really all she wants.The good, the bad, everything. She doesn’t want her legacy to be like the Alliance recruitment posters and vids that she barely recognises her image in. They ought to be flattering, but she can barely look at them, they’re not her. She wants the Commander Shepard that history recalls to be the real person. The one who was a street thug at fourteen and lived off prize fighting. The one who made mistakes and bad calls and had to keep on choosing between evils that all seemed equally as bad. The one who won incredible victories and never gave up and was damn good at her job. The Commander Shepard who was just a soldier, who always did what needed to be done.But if history could lay off her dancing skills, that’d be nice.

[anunquenchableflame]

I've been fan of Rani since I first saw your art of her, and I was wondering if you have any specific head canons about her and Kaidan? They seem so sweet together in that art.

I don’t have many headcanons yet, they’re still very new characters to me and I’m still working them out! But I do have one about their first meeting, a long time before serving on the Normandy together.

At the time Rani is a newly enlisted recruit, bad tempered and not exactly making friends. She gets in a fight in the mess one day, not for the first time. She’s been fighting most of her life- for her life, or for some gang boss or other, or for prize money- so she never holds back, which the other recruits who keep pushing her haven’t quite grasped yet. On the other side of the mess sits a young Private Alenko between assignments, who can see what’s about to happen: another screwed up kid is about to make a big mistake. When she’s about to give this particular guy a full powered biotic punch to the head Kaidan intervenes- He knocks her back with his own biotics and restrains her while his friends drag her barely conscious opponent off to the medical wing. They barely talk because she’s furious and completely ready to punch him out too, but he does warn her that she’s going to get kicked straight out of the service if she keeps this up.

They don’t meet again until assigned to the Normandy- an older, wiser, calmer commander and lieutenant- and they never quite connect that scrawny scrappy little shit/that interfering self-righteous jerk with the person they’re falling in love with and breaking regulations for. But Kaidan being the one who reminds her to take a step back and think whether she really needs to shoot and punch her way through every situation is a theme that continues nonetheless. He kind of becomes her moral compass. Talking with him always helps her see things more clearly, because they don’t always agree and he’s not afraid to challenge her, and she misses that painfully after Cerberus revive her and she’s feeling lost and alone and angry and frustrated by everything.

[anunquenchableflame]

Moon for Rani!

[ Shepard Ask Meme ]  

Moon - Did your Shepard have any dreams as a child? (dream job, plans for future etc)

When she was six she was definitely going to be a Tyrannosaurus when she grew up 🦖 Or maybe an elephant 🐘 It varied week-to-week. Once that hope was dashed, she flitted through a lot of ideas about what she was going to be but never really commited to anything for long. She was going to be a singer, a scientist, a doctor, a pilot, an actor, an athlete, all the usual “when I grow up” stuff. Athlete was maybe the longest held idea, she was always very competitive and liked being active, and sports were maybe the one thing she really got an enjoyable challenge out of at school. She tended to lack the discipline for actually pursuing any of it as a career goal though. Not turning up for practice, being a bit of an attention hog in team sports, and a flexible approach to the rules got her booted from a lot of stuff. For a while after her biotics manifested she thought it’d be pretty cool to be the first human biotiball player; there weren’t any humans in the sport yet since the oldest human biotics were only a couple of years older than her and weren’t quite adults yet. It lost some of its appeal once there was a human player and she couldn’t be the first. One things she did always want, and never wavered on, was to see the galaxy. Her uncle was a cargo-shuttle pilot and sometimes went on off-world runs —even through the relay!— and she often badgered him to let her come along, but he never caved. She never dreamt about being a soldier. She was pretty actively against joining the Alliance Navy almost right up until she did join.