I think it's cute. I do wish all of the buildup wasn't tied to entirely optional shipboard chatter that's pretty easy to miss - if I remember correctly I ran into them in the battery on my first playthrough and went "huh, that's sudden."
2. What are your favorite things about the ship?
I like that they've both been around since ME 1 and I particularly like the bonding over them both being aliens who can't eat human food and Garrus's "I was young and wrong" banter re: the elevator convos in 1. The battery scene is a fun little conversation right before the very end of the game, at a time when it's nice to see something that's not grim.
3. Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?
I don't know how unpopular it is, but I'm a bigger Tali/Kal'Reegar fan than I am a Tali/Garrus fan. I live in a happy fantasy land where Kal'Reegar is totally fine in ME 3. Email? What email.
It's hard to compete with "So if you exile her, you might as well do the same to me" and even harder to compete with "Kal, just call me Tali"/"I'll work on that, ma'am."
I'm a little iffy on how long Tali/Garrus would last, given that her people are on Rannoch and his family's from Palaven, but maybe they could make it work long-term.
Rae's first Christmas at the Alenko household was an Experience because previous Christmases involved some celebrating with shipmates, a few presents from her mom (that, past childhood, tended to arrive weeks or months late since they went through the mail), and not having much in the way of decorations (due to not having much space and having to carry possessions around).
And now suddenly there's a tree! And snow! And festive sweaters! Lots of new trappings. More people to buy presents for!
(And I just realized that Kaidan's dad would not have been around for that since it would have happened post ME 3 and got sad. Hopefully having a new person around as a distraction would have made things a little easier on Kaidan and his mom).
House:
Post-war she and Kaidan have a dog and a very nice house on/near the beach that has a flower/possibly also vegetable garden (which is Rae's domain; she also has to chase the dog away from it so he won't dig there) and a hot tub.
Which makes James's "teach Rae how to surf" plan much easier because the ocean is Right There.
Rae's plan for mastering the whole biotic floating thing that Samara taught her also eventually involves "jumping off a low part of the roof while Kaidan spots her in case she doesn't manage to float."
⌛for your Shepard's. Also consider if two or more steps where in the same timeline
This got super long and I’m not sorry.
It’s not, like, ALL the AUs but it’s close?
In general:
AU Control ending for my Spacers if I feel like being sad (getting the imperfect-worldstate Sheps with “if you destroy us EDI dies but if you control us nobody else dies except you”).
vague Shep-survives-ME2′s-prologue AUs which don’t go much past “and then Rae kisses Kaidan’s face and Ash kisses Raleigh’s face and the okay-we’re-involved aspects of those relationships kick off a lot sooner than they usually do.” (Everyone else gets to make I’m-So-Relieved-You’re-Not-Dead faces at each other across crowded rooms and then the long-distance working-on-separate-ships-or-planets relationships kick off sooner than planned).
long-distance Shenko/Shepley romance in 3 due to Hackett (and probably the Council too, because Spectres) putting his foot down and going “actually, no, need the second human Spectre elsewhere” and Kaidan or Ash just showing up in the docking bay post-coup to be all “I would love to be on the Normandy but I have to go join Hackett’s team”
like I know everything’s a little shaky post-coup but there’s definitely goodbye kissing anyway and Rae/Kaidan and Ash/Raleigh gets kicked off a *lot* quicker than it does in canon because Kaidan and Ash mentally shrug and just go for the goodbye kiss
Everything else is basically a “one of my other Sheps is Commander Shepard and the Shep in an AU just runs around doing his or her own thing and making googly eyes at whoever the LI is and occasionally having to explain that no, they’re not *that* Shepard or a relation.”
Darrian minus the Mindoir raid and Elysium is interesting because then he doesn’t have that gotta-save-people drive and he would probably just end up as a perfectly happy Alliance mechanic, fixing all the vehicles.
Ends up fixing vehicles for Ash’s unit, runs into her, immediately goes “I’m gonna marry her,” and is, as always, unconcerned about the whole Williams thing aside from the “THAT’S why your CO treats you like that? I’ll fight him” aspect as Ash is all "I appreciate it but I can deal with it by myself."
Eden Prime is just Ash and Kaidan and whoever Commander Shepard is (not Merrick; can’t have the Colonist dudes or the Spacers in the same universe or space and time would break, probably) doing their thing and mechanic Darrian like a mile away zooming around in a Mako and shooting at geth and feeling a little guilty for tearing up farmland in the process. And then he and Ash get to go “YOU’RE NOT DEAD” at each other later and long-distance romance ensues as she flies around in the Normandy and he gets missions elsewhere.
Any scenario where Neve doesn’t get out of the Reds is not a happy scenario, but Neve minus Akuze would have acquired one of her biotics instructors as a mentor (since Anderson would been be off mentoring whoever the future Commander Shepard is) and would have eventually ended up in a position teaching biotics (she’s very much a mom friend).
Runs into Kaidan at some point either on the same ship or as fellow teachers, they are instantly mutually smitten, and romance ensues (with possibly some “oh no we work together, the regs forbid it” issues a la canon, except “we’re coworkers” instead of the boss/subordinate thing).
Rae could theoretically have a perfect worldstate but the version where Things Go Wrong is firmly stuck in my head now for how it goes for her (same goes for Raleigh, except in hindsight he’d do Grunt’s loyalty mission out of sheer curiosity about what the krogan rite was and have instant regrets because thresher maw).
There is an AU scenario where she runs into Kaidan and they serve on the same ship and incredibly slowburn romance ensues and it’s just like. months of pining across the mess hall and then more months being on separate ships and sending messages and dating whenever they end up on shared shore leave before Kaidan finally proposes.
Rae (and Merrick) both end up as N7 even if Akuze doesn’t happen (it just takes longer than it does in canon because no Akuze and no Anderson) because Rae’s got ambition and Merrick’s like “being a soldier is pretty much the One Thing that I Am Good At.” Everyone else is content with teaching or being a mechanic or just traveling and happening to be a soldier along the way.
There is an AU scenario where no-Akuze Raleigh’s just cheerfully planet-hopping and ends up on Eden Prime on shore leave, runs into just-got-done-with-work-for-the-day Ash, and there is instant attraction and bonding and Ash is all “you’ve served in SPACE I’ve never done that” and he’s similarly interested in how living on a planet works.
Most of my AU Merrick headcanons are basically just variations on “Merrick’s off scouting and stumbles across one of Liara’s dig sites pre-ME 1″ and I’m okay with that. Without Akuze, he acts about like he does in 3 (still reserved, still quiet, still got the >:| face because that’s just how his face works, but a little warmer than he is in 1 and certainly less closed-off). Liara mentions in 1 that she’s run across small bands of dig-site-raiding privateers before (who presumably went “OH NO BIOTICS” and didn’t stick around when she put up a fight), and there’s definitely an AU scenario where, in addition to running into Liara, they also run into Liara’s unexpected backup consisting of one Alliance farmboy-turned-sniper (somewhere along the line between an N1 and N7) who is Not Fond of Pirates and took about two seconds to decide to get involved and who just popped up out of nowhere, as far as the privateers and Liara know.
(And then Liara’s all “<3 surprise backup! even though I was doing okay” and Merrick’s all "it's basically my job and I don't like pirates” and about two seconds later going “oh no she’s cute I didn’t realize that before I got involved” to himself.)
🌸 What are some of their favourite things and why? List as many as you can think of! Her job, actually! For the most part she feels like she’s doing what she’s meant to be doing (and she’s good at it, and a good share of the time it’s also fun). She’s real burned out by the end of the war but everything up until Alchera is great and everything between leaving Earth and - well, we’ll see, but probably around Thessia or Sanctuary - is pleasantly familiar (and she’s still good at it, and she still feels like she’s doing what she’s meant to be doing, and not *everything* is terrible).
Very much a fan of rules in general because generally there are good reasons for a particular rule and following them tends to pay off for her. Up until ME 2 and with the exception of Akuze, Anderson doesn't have to worry much about her at all because the answer to "is Rae doing something irresponsible and dumb?" is always "no."
(She will spend a lot of Garrus’s shooting contest hangout trying not to listen for C-Sec sirens and telling herself repeatedly that she is Going to Be Cool About This For Garrus Because This is Fun for Him even if they are Breaking Over 130 Regs and Probably Going to Jail Forever and Ever.)
Very much a fan of how the Alliance does things. Very unhappy during the Collector mission partly because all the familiar command structure and rules had vanished.
It’s typically always some sort of flowery scent, but she has several differently scented shampoos (and occasionally perfume) and uses different ones on different days. Late in ME 3 Kaidan randomly points out that it must be a specific day because her hair smells like a particular scent and she’s just like “....I didn’t realize I was doing that in a specific pattern” and he’s all “yeah, you absolutely switch from one to another in a specific order.”
Post-war, being able to choose whether or not she goes outside when the weather’s bad, which is wonderful after spending most of her life having to go out in the blazing sun/sleet/rain/snow/blizzard whether she wanted to or not due to her job.
Flowers, actually! One of those things she heard about but didn’t see much of growing up in space. She has none to very few physical books (easier to move with less stuff; Kasumi is mildly horrified by her I-can-just-read-the-digital-version attitude) but a pretty decent-sized digital book collection of books about flowers. Which results in several here’s-a-fact-about-that-particular-flower moments while on missions.
Her strictly-for-shore-leave-and-kept-somewhere-she-can’t-just-grab-them-blindly socks - because the idea of being awakened at 3 am for some work problem or another and showing up in non-regulation socks is horrifying - have flower patterns on them.
Baths and hot tubs! Much more relaxing than a shower. She immediately decides that she wants a hot tub after Anderson gives her apartment (well, he decides that it’s hers now; she interprets that as “I am watching Anderson’s apartment for him and preserving it as it is as much as I can for when he gets back).
🌼 Who are this character’s friends and found family? How did they meet, how long have they been friends for, could they ever be something more than just friends? What do they look for in a friend or a romantic partner?
Rae is short on friends and long on acquaintances pre-ME 1, partly due to all the moving and partly due to Akuze.
(I generally go with “very few close friends pre-ME 1″ for all my Sheps, mostly because ingame Shepard doesn’t mention anyone else, really, and seems so isolated if Anderson or the squad’s not in the picture.)
She does have a fabulous colony kid roommate from Arcturus - the “I had a roommate on Arcturus who taught me to cook” remains one of my very favorite lore bits from Citadel, although canon’s all “it was a guy” and I gleefully go “nope, fabulous fellow lady roommate for my FemSheps” - who’s out there somewhere and they rekindle that friendship post-war.
Ash and Tali (and eventually Liara and Kasumi) are her closest female friends. I like to think she stays in touch
with Gianna Parasini and fellow N7 Captain Lee Riley post-war.
Samara’s a friend and mentor and, like Thane, is one of her rocks in ME 2.
Garrus is a friend and ends up being pretty close; same for Steeeeeeeeve and best space bro James Vega although she clicked with them more quickly than she did Garrus. (I am very excited to drag James everywhere because on her first run I got that “who says I’m blaming myself?”/”just a guess” exchange and immediately went “THEY ARE THE SAME” and their relationship is great).
Miranda’s on the road to being her friend in 3 (and there’s a lot of mutual respect and you-saved-me/you-convinced-me-to-leave Cerberus affection there, now that Rae’s in better shape and now having to listen to TIM all the time). Different sort of friendship than the ones with Ash or Tali or Liara.
Thane fell in love with her and initially I figured she would have been much closer to actually falling in love with him right back and then went “mmph. no. too many deal-breakers there” as I was actually going through ME 2 and so the romance there is entirely one-sided (although she thinks of him as a close friend and will be very sad when he dies).
Kaidan’s about it for the more-than-just-friends category (I suspect there were one or two previous boys who hung around and thought about asking Rae out and were unsuccessful and she remained clueless).
What she looks for in a friend: kindness, loyalty, patience. Same qualities in a romantic partner, along with “must be ok with no kids because I sure don’t want any” and steadiness and generally having his ducks in a row.
Prothean relic - How does the character feel towards other species? Do they believe that their own species is exceptional in some way?
Rae doesn't have any bones to pick with any particular species.
She is a little wary of batarians, but that's from Balak and from hearing about Mindoir, and she's run into enough non-slaver ones that she's not inclined to write them all off.
If I remember correctly, there's a dialogue line with Pressly to the effect of "but the First Contact War was years back; that's got nothing to do with Nihlus" so I suspect by the time ME 1 rolls around she'd gotten over any learned suspicion of turians that she might have picked up growing up in the Alliance.
She rather likes quarians in general and Tali in particular; she's always lived in ships, they live in ships. And she admires the asari for how experienced they are with biotics.
I'm sure there's some ingrained the-Alliance-military-is-The-Best thought processes going on in there, but Our Military is the Best Military And The Way You Turians/Asari/Humans, etc. Do Things is Strange is no doubt an incredibly common and cross-species thing, so that's pretty normal. She did like getting the chance to work with the STG and then later very briefly with turians and commandos on Menae and Thessia.
As of ME 1: as her parents' daughter, but also for things she's done herself. She's pretty proud of becoming N7 and then a Spectre and commanding the Normandy. And the Savior of the Citadel title is nice. :D
Akuze is....complicated, I think. Talking to Ash about that and about Ash's unit on Eden Prime helps, but she'd rather be remembered for other things.
As of ME 2: mostly she just hopes that if she dies during the suicide mission she's not just remembered as a traitor who worked for Cerberus.
And we'll see how she feels on the subject once ME 3 rolls around.
8 is here. Three people - including you - asked me that, which is pretty funny.
The actual meme is here.
6. How do they react to the realization that they like the other character?
I assume this is going for “like in a romantic fashion,” so:
Kaidan had his ducks in a row and figured out extremely early on that he liked her, cautiously flirted with her, and short-circuited a bit when she flirted back (”I’ll...need some time to process that, ma’am”).
Rae also figured out pretty early on that she liked him (and was pleasantly surprised during the Citadel view scene at him obviously liking her back).
So then she ignored the This-Is-Not-Appropriate-And-Will-End-Badly alarm bells going off in her head for months on end until Kaidan basically went ‘ok, I’m serious about this” and she couldn’t ignore the alarm bells or the possible consequences of it officially getting serious any more.
10. What scares them about entering a relationship?
Kaidan is a cautious dude who, as of the locker scene in Neve’s worldstate, still had to be told multiple times to Please Chill before he’d do the good boyfriend thing and just tell her everything was gonna be fine. And then did the hi-you’ve-been-a-good-boss thing pre-Ilos before Neve was just like “can please you stop acting like a subordinate.”
(Neve occasionally got a little frustrated with him because she was giving him so many green lights and yet there he’d be going on about how they’d mutinied or whatever when she was trying to get him to talk to her like he wasn’t just her subordinate. But they were fine and getting back together in 3 was pretty smooth sailing).
Kaidan is, if possible, even more cautious with Rae - in addition to all the issues he’s normally dealing with (regs, etc.) he thought he was getting romantic signals and apparently wasn’t and then was again and then Alchera happened and so now what are they.
Rae worries about things like the difficulties of combining a career with dating - which would be almost certainly be long-distance dating and with someone also in her (rather dangerous) profession/getting married and the fact that she doesn’t (and never had) wanted kids.
As of ME 1 she’s pretty steady and isn’t real nervous about how’d she do in a relationship; as of ME 3 she’s a little more uncertain since she’s rather aware that her mental state is not superb (in a “war is stressful and friends dying is stressful and I’m so tired” way).
She’s always been inclined to stay in instead of going out in her leisure time and does worry a little that she’s boring Kaidan in 3 because when they have downtime she just wants to cuddle or sleep or read instead of going out and doing much (dinner out is fine, clubs are a not).
Which she probably tells him a few weeks or months into their relationship (after wondering if she’s boring and missing one or two whoops-Kaidan-wanted-to-do-x-thing-but-I-wanted-to-do-y-and-got-my-own-way situations).
This presumably got an amused response to the effect of “you’re not working or zooming at Reapers, so this is fine” (Kaidan having not yet hit his limit of “times I will throw out an activity only to get shot down” and probably determined to not worry about that since there’s more important things going on).
But she does make a concerted effort anyway after that to sometimes go “ok, I will gracefully and enthusiastically go do this social activity that Kaidan clearly wants to do even though in my heart I would rather lie in the hot tub until I turn into a prune.” And post-war she mends quite a bit and the “I don’t want to do anything because I’m so stressed out” aspect fades eventually and she’s back to her usual I’d-still-rather-stay-in-but-going-out-is-no-longer-a-chore self.
(It’s essentially the reverse of him and Neve since Neve wants to go Do Stuff Always LET’S GO DANCING and sometimes Neve has to go “ok, I will curl up on the couch instead of bugging him to go dancing.” And with both ladies, Kaidan makes similar “ok, I will do x thing because that’s clearly what she wants to do even though I’d rather do y” decisions and it all kind of evens out in the end.)
1, 7, and 8 for neve and kaidan, and rae and kaidan!
I nearly accidentally deleted this and was briefly horrified. Anyway!
1, 8 for Rae is here.
7 for Rae and 1, 7, 8 for both Neve/Kaidan and this is very long.
7 for Rae: Would they/how would they pursue the other character's affection
You know that tentative early ME 3 flirting where Shepard's all "or maybe you have [improved with age]" or (possibly) "you were always stubborn?" That's very Rae. That's Rae through roughly half of 1 and half of 3.
Kaidan was all ":) she is smiling at me from across the mess hall :)" often in 1 and does the Exact Same Thing with her in 3 as James is in the corner going "Esteban, do you see this? This happens all the time but they're not really talking" and Cortez is all "fine, fine, I'll help you play wingman."
(James and Cortez have much better things to do with their time but absolutely do the wingman thing.)
I do think the fellow biotics aspect made for a quick bond - whole lot of shared experience there.
Rae trips all over actually honestly explaining how she feels which is, as of the breakup convo, "I have feelings for you but there are regs" and as of pre-Ilos is "I love him but there are regs and I lied through my teeth earlier about not being serious, oh no."
Kaidan made an effort to squash his feelings but then realized he was in love with her about 3/4 of the way through ME 1 and went "oh well. I will sit on my feelings and enjoy having her as a friend."
Rae got about halfway through spitting out the "I love you but there are regs" explanation to Kaidan and then Alchera happened and so up until about halfway through 3 they're just gonna continue taking turns tossing the I'm-In-Love-But-Can't-Tell-The-Other-Person-That-Because-Circumstances ball back and forth, which they have been doing since ME 1.
She does try to give him a present in 3 but alas, she is flailing and all the hospital store has available is whiskey and he is on painkillers at the time, so it is not the best gift ever.
1. Catalyst for physical attraction
Kaidan liked her eyes (which are big and a pretty shade of blue/gray) and Neve liked his eyes and admired his hair (which he obviously was taking care of).
7. Would they/how did they pursue other character’s affection
Neve is pretty outgoing and fairly flirty and made it extremely clear that she was, in fact, seriously interested.
Fellow biotics ahoy! Lots of bonding over that.
Lots of casually brushing past him. May or may not have dragged most of the crew out to go dancing in Flux (she went there and heard Ash’s comments about how her sisters would love it and went “we are going to make time to go dancing”) both because she loves to dance and because if almost everyone’s on the dance floor then it’s not real obvious if she and Kaidan just. happen to be next to each other.
Absolutely did the take-a-little-longer-than-strictly-necessary to check Kaidan’s armor thing. (Although all my Sheps do that with whoever the LI is).
Immediately found out what Kaidan’s favorite type of ration bar was and started carrying some of them around all the time.
Kaidan was considerably more cautious about the whole thing than she was which is how they ended up at the lockers while he was all “are we trusted? are we not? who knows?” and generally rambling while she was sitting there going “Kaidan, would you please just tell me everything’s going to be fine.”
She and Kaidan were on pretty solid ground (lots of “I love yous,” Kaidan went shopping for a ring, they had a game plan of okay-Kaidan’ll-transfer-and-we’ll-go-from-there-but-we-are-both-Committed) and then Alchera happened.
She gets him the whiskey in 3 (it is mostly an impulse buy) and also buys him an actual good present to give to him in the hospital. Probably something techy for him to fiddle with.
8. Opinion of romantic love (baggage, etc.)
The Reds did not provide any stellar examples of romantic love, so Neve’s running off of what she’s picked up from Anderson (not much, the subject didn’t really come up often) and vids and friends and her roommate.
Neve's Arcturus roommate basically fell into a Elizabeth Bennet + Mr. Darcy type of relationship and is happily married (and told Neve via messages over the years between Arcturus and Akuze all about her boyfriend-turned-fiance-turned husband; Neve ended up missing the wedding due to an assignment and was very disappointed), so that's kind of her example of romantic love.
So she idealizes it quite a bit. She was vaguely on the lookout for romance during training and pre-ME 1 but didn’t run into anyone she was really interested in (Toombs was a close buddy, but she didn’t like him that way) and had the good sense to avoid any unsavory guys that she ran across.
And then she went head-over-heels for Kaidan and was very fortunate in her choice. XD
