OMG I'd love to hear your morinth feelings/headcanons! she had so much wasted potential & it would be cool to see where you would've taken her
okay this’ll probably be a ramble
but morinth’s potential was wasted, whatever choice you make. kill her, and she’s gone, done. keep her, and she has no character development and then dies later anyway in the most crappy cameo/easter egg ever. fuck.
let’s talked about ardat yakshis for a moment: biowares creates the asari, who are a textbook “alien babe” stereotype in their creation. they’re typically feminine, attractive, exotic, and sexually driven. there’s lots to be said for their creation being steeped in misogyny, but even with that the asari are an interesting race in the canon narrative and the wonders fandom has done to flesh out their existence even more is great. but bioware creates a race of beautiful women and emphasises their sexuality and then goes and lumps them with lore that if these sexy alien babes dare to have sex with each other instead of other races that want to do them, they might spawn a baby that has a genetic condition that will make her kill anyone she joins her mind with. oh and did we mention that joining minds is positioned as the pinnacle of asari intimacy and cultural importance? oh.
ardat yakshis are typically not diagnoses until it’s too late to correct (whatever that might entail if they could be detected??), so some asari and saddled with a genetic condition that they didn’t want or ask for that relies on a key part of their culture.
the canon tells us morinth was already addicted to joining, and it follows that mind joining is not an activity reserved for of-age asari. asari siblings and friends probably do it, practising, sharing secrets and playing make-believe in each other’s heads.
this also implies that ardat yakshi powers don’t come into full killing effect until maturity, otherwise you figure they’d be alerted the first time their precious toddler asari kills another with her mind at preschool.
so morinth does a thing that is a normal and important part of her being as an asari, and becomes addicted to it, probably not even realising she shouldn’t feel this way about the experiences. then she gets to 40, which by the way asari talk about age i figure is young adolescence, and is told that she either has to go live in a monastery for the rest of her life or be executed.
imagine being 15 and told you face being executed for a thing that’s meant to be totally natural and normal!! of course she ran.
i don’t believe morinth is a psychopath or a sociopath. samara talks of her fondly, about her being the smartest and best of her daughters, and morinth does show intense drives and feelings despite having no real character development. but she is an addict. she is addicted to a biological function that should be normal and natural and beautiful but instead kills people and gives her strength. she was addicted before she even knew what was going on with her. being told that what you are is an abomination can lead you to embrace it to embrace being a demon of the night winds and to take relish in something that once upon a time would have sounded horrific. addiction will fuck you up.
ardat yakshi are a mark of shame and you can bet they’re not dinner conversation, and that asari schools don’t give them lessons on how to spot if you have ardat yakshi tendencies.
morinth could have been so interesting if you chose to have her on your ship - instead of loitering in in the obs deck, she could have discovered the rest of the company shepard keeps and found companionship and friendship and help.
thane is a hired killer who admitted to having no moral input on who he was told to kill. zaeed is a merc with loose morals. mordin killed millions of krogan. jack killed many times and dealt with power beyond her control that she didn’t ask for. morinth was amongst kin.
she could have forged alliances and changed. an addict can stop, even if they have to work at it for a lifetime. she may have never redeemed herself for her murders, but could any of them, truly?
