Thought I’d do a list of headcanons for my Ryder: list from Ryder appreciation week (late) - and this got surprisingly long!
Scott never had a good relationship with Alec. His father was always distant and absent from his life. He knew that Alec wasn’t a bad person, just that he was always too occupied with something or someone else. He yearns for Alec’s approval, and never really got one until the end.
Scott loves Sara - and Sara loves Scott. They’re very close with each other, but not the kind that keeps the communications up. For months or years they might go on without seeing one another & won’t even send a single message, but when they meet up it’s like they’ve seen each other just yesterday.
Sara is always the better girl, and Scott is the one who’s always looking for trouble. He simply thinks that there’s no need for both of them to be so perfect - Sara’s got that covered. He just wants to have some fun, skip some classes, dive into the Presidium pools.
Scott never had many human friends while growing up. He was taught by Asaris to hone his biotic skills, and his best friends at the Citadel used to be a Krogan & Turian pair. With others he never had to hide his powers or be ashamed of them - but often around his own kind he felt ostracised.
Scott loves Earth. It’s good to be in a place where everything is just right for humans to thrive and exist - until a girl cries when she sees Scott moving some heavy books in the library with his biotics.
Scott absolutely hates to fight.
He learns that in order for him to protect the people (or the things) that he loves, he needs to fight. He learns to be a soldier.
Scott is terrible at driving the Nomad. Which is unfortunate, because he is also the one that gets motion sickness easiest. Cora and Vetra tried to volunteer to drive the Nomad instead to see if it got any better - Scott stopped the car and threw up in 10 minutes flat. Despite his mad driving skills, apparently it helps when he knows he has control with all the bumpiness. The crew suffers.
Scott considers SAM like a younger brother, with some jealousy. He teases SAM saying that both Sara and himself came from Ellen, but SAM is the only one that was born from Alec. And that makes Alec SAM’s mother. SAM gives a 8 minute lecture about how that conjecture is illogical. Scott falls asleep next to his pyjak.
When Scott was young, Ellen made him a small hanar plush. He took the hanar everywhere - until the toy lost all its tentacles. He still carries the cushion-like plush (his original name was jelly, but later he re-named it blasto) everywhere. Sara has a elcor plush that Scott made for her, named Bubin.
Scott manages to get Sara’s personal items out, and keeps it in the Pathfinder’s quarters. He visits Sara more than often, and gives Bubin to her on one of those trips. It’s been with her ever since.
Scott also manages to move dad’s good luck rock into the Tempest, and keeps it with the helmet.
Scott is a huge fan of Shepard.
Scott is a huge fan of Shepard. It’s so important, it had to be written twice. He used to keep all the news clips about her, would read up about her past (how she started as an orphan from Earth - wow.) and drool over the Normandy’s models.
When he became pathfinder, he secretly thought of hacking SAM into calling him ‘Commander Ryder’ instead of ‘Pathfinder Ryder’.
Of course, you can’t really ‘secretly think’ without SAM knowing (SAM says: your ideas were just too loud.) and SAM calls Scott ‘Commander Ryder’ in front of the whole crew for a day. Scott’s avoids everyone for the next three days.
Scott’s favourite place in Andromeda is Voeld. After he’s scrubbed the atmosphere through a gruelling four-month worth of hard work, he comes out from the Vault to see the beautiful northern lights dancing in the sky. He cries when he sees it, and the other crew pretend that they didn’t hear his muffled voice as he heads to the potential outpost site. He doesn’t come back often, but when he does - he simply takes a seat at one of the observatory windows, hugs his blasto plush, and stares in to the sky for hours.
Every time Scott walks into a new memory shard, he is both excited and horrified at the same time. When he visits SAM to replay Alec’s memories, he never takes it well. He cries when he hears Ellen again, and more than often doesn’t know what to do with all the emotions coming at him. It takes a lot of courage for him to start talking to Lexi - even then, he doesn’t say much. He misses Sara terribly.
Scott flirts with Cora, then Gil, moves on to Vetra for a while, and seems like he’s settling with Reyes. But things don’t work out between them - and he’s left alone most of the time. He’s comfortable with himself, but fears the lonely hours that come more than often.
Scott always carries himself with a casual demeanor - constantly joking, and never serious. It’s just that he’s never trusted himself with people, and that’s how he keeps his distance with everyone. Now that he’s the pathfinder Lexi advised him to start opening himself up to others - but Scott doesn’t know how.