veetor’nara is president of the goodboy club and i’m so proud of him. it’s so rewarding to have that initial choice to just say “hey fuck off cerberus, this man is traumatized and needs familiar surroundings and therapy” and have it pay off hours and hours down the line with veetor bouncing a little and starting to recover, he sounds much better and he has a therapist, he’s shy and is too scared to speak up for tali during her trial but he already went and privately told all the admirals how tali helped him! he’s bouncing up and down all proud of himself, he’s just.... very good.
and then if you [rally the crowd] and you’ve been a friend to the quarian people, he bolts up out of his chair like “hey you know what! I actually just decided this trial is a farce! this is stupid!” and it’s kal who follows him up! then when you go to thank him he’s all just “haha it’s fine, i didn’t do anything, kal’reegar said most of it...” meanwhile veetor is out here FIRMLY arguing that if tali is exiled, he should be as well... kal did it first but I have NO doubts that kal can take care of himself. please keep in mind, veetor chose freedom’s progress as the site of his pilgrimage because large crowds make him nervous - and he likely hasn’t technically completed his pilgrimage (unless he was able to bring the seeker data back and sell it to cerberus to present to a captain as his gift, maybe?)
he conquered his fear of crowds to be available on the rayya for tali’s trial in the first place... it was likely nerve wracking for him to seek out each admiral privately, they ALL kind of suck to talk to (can you imagine being veetor and trying to talk to admiral zaal’koris vas qwib-qwib about letting tali off for exemplary behavior when she’s just a pawn in his political game... like... fuck off, he’s hard enough to talk to when you actually agree with his views) and THEN he conquered his fear of people and crowds even more than his therapist thought he could to publicly assert that “tali’zorah is a good person, full stop, no other viewpoints are valid and if you don’t like it you can kick me out!”
veetor is just... he’s really great. there aren’t a lot of examples of neurodivergent and psychologically compromised characters in mass effect that aren’t just portrayed as helpless victims (han olar, the survivors from the hugo gernsback, the feros colonists, niftu cal, dr. manuel from eden prime) or violent/extremists (jack, morinth, L2 biotic terrorists, i’d even go out on a limb and say saren as a thrall to nazara and/or the heretic geth, whose “math error” in supporting sovereign is compared to a neurological defect that effects all higher cognitive functions)
anyway this is a veetor’nara appreciation post! he’s a brave young man and i love him