#mass effect aus

[dr-ladybird]

Shep x Garrus x Tali Sengoku Japan AU.

Garrus is the confused younger son of a respectable samurai family.

Shepard’s nicked Yasuke’s backstory - he was living happily in a little village in West Africa till some assholes showed up and enslaved them all, he gets sold to some Portuguese missionaries who take him to Japan and give him to a local warlord as a present, he really impressed the local warlord and now he’s a samurai.

Tali’s an ambitious Jewish merchant who showed up looking for money and adventure and accidentally got mixed up in local politics.

Saren is an EXTREMELY RESPECTABLE Japanese lord, who’s using evil magic to try to invade.

[warcorrupted-blog]

@ccajax | liked for a lyric based starter

“Talk about space. Well it's a beautiful place But it's so damn cold.”

[dr-ladybird]

You know what’d be a brilliant AU for fanfic writers who don’t like Liara?

Trade her in for her dad.

Aethyta realises something horrible is going on with her ex, tries to help out, and this leads to her joining your crew (she may or may not need rescuing).

Some kind of loyalty quest where you rescue her kid from a bubble. The kid is nice and sweet and loves Prothean studies and just isn’t cut out for combat, and you help Aethyta get to know her and then send her back to Thessia where she’ll be safe.

Does Aethyta mess with your brain to help clarify the Prothean vision? Maybe? It’s not like she’s any less qualified than Canon!Liara is! Or honestly, it’d make just as much sense for the vision to be clear to begin with, and for you to explain it to her using your words.

Can’t snap Benezia out of it for more than a few minutes, but that’s long enough for her to give you information on Saren. Aethyta helps shoot her. Aethyta gets drunk and cries on you and swears revenge.

Miranda steals your corpse on her own, without asari help. Meanwhile Aethyta runs off to Ilium, gets in touch with all the old friends she’s made over the last 900 years, starts gathering information and spreading rumours about upcoming war because it’s the most useful thing she can do... and then beats the crap out of the Shadow Broker for [insert good reasons... ooh did he kidnap Liara?]. With her fists.

I don’t think Aethyta’s scientifically qualified, so the kid can help design the Crucible.

Can Aethyta be your girlfriend? Eh, why not? I’d be interested! So she’s elderly - so what? You’re both mature adults so that’s just a minor bit of weirdness.

Aethyta would be SO MUCH FUN as a representative of her species :-) I’m generally pro-Liara myself, but I would absolutely still read that!

[dr-ladybird]

A thought:

Aratoht inspires a lot of great fanfic, but in game it’s a little uninspired and more than a little grimderp. Ooh yeah, you can tell this is a game for REAL MEN because we made the hero commit mass genocide! Now let’s never mention it again! Or have anyone be upset about it (except one awful terrorist whose opinions are hardly valid)

So for fanfic purposes, who wants to delete the whole Aratoht subplot, have Shep only be guilty of joining a terrorist group, and have them talk their way out of jail by informing on Cerberus? Then they can spend the next six months trying to get Earth ready for the apocalypse. Or Palaven if they listen better.

Maybe they brought Miranda and she talked herself out of jail the same way?

This’d go so well with a Thanemance… take a couple of days off and go to New Mexico with your boyfriend before he dies…

Or Shepard x James. James gets to be Shep’s straight-up this-is-not-a-euphemism bodyguard (probably with a side order of double-checking they’re not doing anything sketchy?)… much less disturbing to have sexual tension with your bodyguard than your jailor!

[dr-ladybird]

Random AU idea for Hierarchy fans:

The Hierarchy patrol that discovered humans had more reasonable people and fewer trigger-happy idiots, and managed not to start a war.

Hierarchy talks Alliance into being their new client race. This works out... mostly pretty OK.

Anderson, and Hannah if she exists, work on human integration with the Hierarchy Navy.

Your Shepard OC grows up in the Hierarchy and makes waves as the first human to do (insert cool shit here).

Human/volus/any other client races you want to make up/solidarity!

This’d be a great context for Shakarian - combine Garrus’s confusion about his identity and where he belongs, with the half-integrated minority client species angle, @garrus-vakarus had fun with that is a slightly different AU - but I think I’m more interested in the Shep/Tali or Shep/Ash rivals-to-lovers options.

[dr-ladybird]

AU where Kaidan Alenko is a turian: tragic past involves the nastier end of Cabals training. Hopefully the training got better oversight after that incident?

AU where Kaidan Alenko is a salarian: tragic past involves mad science and experimental tech. And possibly a dalatrass who thought spare male descendants were expendable and made good lab rats?

AU where Kaidan Alenko is an asari: VAMPIRE TIME. They’re all biotic - that’s not going to be a problem. VAMPIRE TIME. Made it out of the monastery and into the army by behaving extremely well. Terrified he (she?) might actually turn into a monster. VAMPIRE TIME.

I mean, yeah, he makes an *excellent* human, but if you’re sick of humans I can name a few other possibilities...

[bioswear]

Mass Effect in a college setting would totally be a sports story. Citadel State University has a well respected soccer team, but every year they lose to their arch rivals: Reaper Technical Institute. Shepard is a ROTC kid, alongside Ashley Williams, and they're the captain of the team. Kaidan Alenko's been friends with the two of them for a long time, and goes to school as a mental/social health major. he attributes his choice in majors to the brain tumor he's lived with for most of his life.

Send me your Headcanons for a College AU Mass Effect

Nice! And probably entirely true. 

Also, I didn’t expect anyone to do this, so I’m glad you did!