so average-mako-enjoyer made this post about Shepard being forced to have a social media account for morale and only posting hamster pictures and like
I read that and immediately had four different Shepards yelling at me in my head (I blame @shadoedseptmbr's Aedan tags) 🤣🤣🤣
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Weaver would in fact include hamster pictures, but they'd be macro pictures of like, whiskers and toes only.
The whole account would all only be macro photos. No tags, no comments, no explanations, no definitions. No time stamps or metadata, all expertly wiped, no location cues beyond maybe the quality of the light... which isn't that hard to manipulate after all, if you've got an omnitool and some good flashlight/spotlight blueprints.
It's all just exquisite close-ups of pieces of gravel and seeds and leaves and pollen or fractions of circuit boards and weird screws or clamps or the odd pattern of wear on a [redacted but clearly the Mako for those in the know] tire.
She and Aeden would clearly get along great.
*
Ngaio would flat out refuse. (She would've done it if she'd met Traynor sooner, because she can refuse Traynor nothing, but that was too late, on several levels.)
*
Ella would be asked to make an account after she gets her N7 status and starts showing up in the news periodically; she's told to try and soften the public image of the infamous Butcher of Torfan.
She does set something up, posts some generic pretty Alliance Training Stock Photos, the kind you get in a recruiters office, but that's it for ages.
And then she posts five separate in-depth tutorials in a row, three on astronomy and two on France of all things, one specifically about the language, one about cooking.
Then nothing again.
And then a three-part series on astral navigation, and how different species figured out the math for measuring where the fuck they were in space.
Then a thing on baking with chocolate, including how to convert levo recipes to dextro (and vice versa) and which things were more likely to translate into something that might still taste good.
She never shows herself however, so it does fuck all to counter all the pics and videos of her stalking around heavily armed and armored in full gear, occasionally with a bit of a blue halo from biotics usage, generally glaring or scowling as she avoids reporters trying to get a comment.
Most people don't connect her socials to the Butcher of Torfan at all, and those that do assume someone else is running the account in her name in a failed Alliance PR stunt.
After the Battle of the Citadel, there are enough recordings of her helping with clean-up efforts and being polite at formal ceremonies to make it clear that the Butcher and the Shepard-who-goes-on-weird-tangents-on-social-media are actually the same person, who is also POSSIBLY a galactic hero, so the whispers about Torfan finally start to fade out a little...
And then she dies.
*
Ward would be some terrifying (but delightful once you got past the scowl) combination of Adam Savage and Mercury Stardust because he would legit show people how to take things apart and upgrade and fix them (and which bits are 'legal-ish' depending on whether they technically own them or not) but also things probably explode sometimes (or at the very least spark A Lot™️) and Tali guests wearing glorious (flame-retardant) Turian fashions and ALSO sometimes PROPRIETARY TECH THAT IS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE and no one ever bleeps ANY of Jack's swearing and sometimes the three of them are gleefully trying to make something that probably shouldn't exist and some poor Alliance PR officer cries in their office sometimes because they are actually spectacular PR and GREAT for morale and also they break so many TOS's but it's Commander Fucking Shepard so who's gonna tell him to stop?
oooh do you have anymore head canons of WardxJack? I really enjoy your shep and the way you write their interactions.. :3 have u any for them in a modern au? domestic or otherwise~ ;D
Aw thank you nonny, what a kind thing to say, and what interesting questions. <3
To start with, it’s not headcanon but actual canon but I LOVE Jack calling Shepard King of the Boyscouts and it makes me actual snort-laugh whenever I think about it, as that’s pretty much what I’ve always called Ward Shepard even before he fell for Jack and I saw the whole romance arc. My one and only 100% paragon boyscout DARLING
/and he’s got the scariest scowl.
(Ella is way more likely to fuck someone up, but she’s pretty gosh darn adorable. Which she hates.)
Shepard doesn’t rejoin the Alliance after ME3, though he still stays in touch with Hackett and helps out where he can; instead he and Jack are part of a foster home/school program for all the kids who don’t have anywhere else to go anymore. (There are more biotics than there used to be, secondary exposures via all the fall-out of the Reaper attacks and the Citadel’s destruction in orbit, and Jack and Ward are, unsurprisingly, really good at helping them out.) They end up having several swear jars with slightly different rules as to what swearing is, because they’re both very bad at not doing it in front of impressionable little-ish people, but they can get away with a bit more in front of the teenagers.
Jack makes really good coffee. Shepard inexplicably makes terrible coffee, but is a dab hand at really fluffy scrambled eggs so they like to have breakfast together, no matter what else happens or who has to go where and train for whatever. They also tend to have breakfast so early it’s still dark, as they’re both of them prone to variable sorts of insomnia, and when they’re done they tend to cuddle up somewhere and say stupidly sappy things in the dark and make love as the sun starts to rise.
/gods I’m sappy, sorry not sorry
I haven’t really thought about a Modern AU, since the abuse of her biotics and being viewed as a weapon to be developed rather than a person are such a part of Jack’s history. The fact that she took the very trait that had been so valued in her as an object and used it to make herself feel human, to connect to other humans by teaching them, protecting them; that’s a truly satisfying character arc for her, and there aren’t a lot of things in a mundane world that would have the same sort of weight, you know?
(I do think, however differently they got there, they would still end up as teacher/mentor types. They know what it’s like to have a crappy childhood, though obviously in varying degrees. They’d like to prevent that as much as possible.)
Felt the difference in the shoulder leaning against him, no more breath, no more heartbeat.
He wasn’t sure why he wasn’t dead too.
‘Sides the fact Jack’d give him hell for not coming back.
He felt a laugh try to rise from his chest but it hurt, it hurt, and all he managed to do was spit to the side, blood dark enough he couldn’t help but wonder again how much time he had left.
Shepard wasn’t sure what Jack did think about it, but her shoulders weren’t always tense, she’d been known occasionally to actually sit in a chair rather than perch at the edge of the table, she laughed at Joker and Garrus when they descended into another pun war, and she sometimes even ate in the mess instead of disappearing somewhere else with her haul of food.
Not when other people were eating, but still.
It was a singular act of trust, to let people see you eat. He remembered that, though it was clear her nightmares were even worse than his had been, once upon a time.
He missed Luka, sharp and fierce between his ribs, even worse than the usual dull ache every morning when he realized he didn’t dare send that e-mail, the one he kept writing and re-writing over and over again before he went to sleep.
Luka would have known what to say to her.
Luka would have known how to help.
Too bad Luka thought he was dead, so he couldn’t ask him.
Luka would also have known exactly what the non-expression on Shepard’s face meant and never stopped teasing him about it.
Maybe it was good he wasn’t here? No one else seemed to have figured out Shepard was rather disastrously full of feelings every time he saw Jack.
Or heard her boots on the deck plates, or saw the flicker of red-lights down in her claim-stake below engineering.
He was a mess, is what he was.
At least he was pretty sure he was a well contained mess? Knowing he was personally a disaster wasn’t nearly as bad as thinking any of his disaster had spilled over and made a single second of her life harder than it already had been.
Aw fuck that was sappy.
He stared down into his coffee mug and tried to figure out how not to impersonate cotton-candy in public.
He heard the boots.
He sighed, and slipped out of the mess back to his quarters. No reason to get in the way of her breakfast.
Maybe someday he’d convince her to join him for some reconstituted eggs or meal-bars?
‘Cause everyone just loves fake eggs.
He shook his head and took a swig of his coffee.
Luka was never going to stop laughing, when they finally got caught up again.
The Reds first got their name from the stains on their clothes, the mud on their shoes, the ground up dirt and grease under their nails.
They emphasized it on purpose now, scrounging and trading for red clothes and tech whenever possible.
Anyone else with too much red got it taken from them.
No one outside the Reds knew where it had started.
Once you were in, you found out. Once you were in, they took you home.
Home had probably been some sort of garage, something for the larger shipping trucks that used to deliver goods across the country. It was big enough for a barracks in the old storage room, there was a mostly functional shower between the bathrooms, a make-shift kitchen in the what had probably once been an office.
And in the bay? Everything else. Scrounged tech and weapons and blankets and drugs. Tools and toys and things that sparked and sizzled and fried the nerves or made you forget whatever you’d known before you found home.
Anything they’d ever need, anything that would pay for whatever else they wanted.
Home was surrounded by rusted out shells of old cars, actual cars, rims for tires and everything, old appliances, old anything made from metal that needed any of the old fuels that no one made anymore. Piled up, a maze of sharp edges and crumbling sides, impossible to get through without it marking you, scratches and rust-stains and bruises.
Especially impossible now, with only one route that shifted each month or so, booby-traps scattered everywhere else.
There were bones in their junkyard, people who’d poked their noses in too far. Some of the dirt was stained red with blood, old and dark. Most of it was rust though, deeper and redder every time it rained.
He liked to sneak out behind Home after the rain, scuff his boots through the mud ‘til the soles and sides were covered, ‘til the bottoms of his pants had picked up a spatter of orange and red and brown. He had to keep his hands clean in case they found a particularly fiddly bit of wiring to play with, but he liked to know he was marked nonetheless, liked to know that anyone who saw him knew.
Knew that if they messed with him, the fury of the Reds would fall on them.
so I have this sneaking desire to uh ... not pick Liara up until last to avoid the repetitive and weird dubiously consensual mind-meld thing happening repeatedly
but I’m not sure what to do instead, as Feros requires that maxed out charm check to not shoot a guy in the head (and Ward would not shoot a guy in the head) and I am conflicted re: Noveria w/o Liara (also that fight with Benezia’s difficult, iirc)
SO INSTEAD
we went and rescued Chairman Burns and are now looking for that one guy’s brother
Which seems like appropriate priorities for Boyscout Shepard
What are some of your Shepard/Jack headcanons, nsfw and domestic? Also, what do you think Jack's own feelings towards Murtock were? Do you think she was actually in love with him? Thx in advance! :)
Why hello there nonny, thank you. :)
I do not think it occurred to Jack to have feelings for Murtock, like. That wasn’t even on her radar as a thing that was possible for her until after he died. And then I think she couldn’t really get away from the idea, the fact that maybe her life didn’t have to be what it had been, what she thought it was, what she thought it was going to be. (Maybe people weren’t actually always the worst? Usually, still, but maybe not always.) I don’t think, no matter how great she and Shepard can be together, she ever would have really given them the chance, ever would have let the romance really happen, ever would have come up to their cabin before the Suicide Mission, if she hadn’t known Murtock and then lost him, and had to be faced with a what-could-have-been that she could almost picture as a good thing on its own, rather than just an absence of bad things.
Because there’s a big difference between Not a Nightmare and Actually a Dream, ykwim?
As far as headcanons, hmmm
I don’t think they had sex before the Suicide Mission. I do think she slept in Shepard’s cabin though, which is a much more dramatic show of trust in her case, and they definitely had sex after the Suicide Mission turned out not to actually be suicide.
(Lots of sex. So much sex. Didn’t talk to anyone else for a couple days sex. Shepard barely staggered down to the mess to get food to refuel part way through, Jack had to deal with Mordin to get more lube, EDI had to turn off half her sensors half way down the elevator shaft not to pick up on more than she wanted to know or she knew they would want her to know about sex.)
And then Shepard got a call from Hackett, and Arrival happened, and he turned himself in, and Jack was scared for him (which she hated) and annoyed about everything and though she wouldn’t admit it, concerned that she’d been right in the first place and he’d gotten his pounding of flesh and cut and run and why the fuck couldn’t she learn better?
She mostly didn’t believe it, but she couldn’t help thinking it.
Let’s play a game, shall we? Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is this:
- pick one (or more, or all) of your characters
- tell us about something that makes them happy (can be meta, fic, in their own voice, whatever you like)
- pass it on to a few people you think might enjoy playing, too
my computer’s been having tumblr issues, so I’m not entirely sure who has played yet, but if you haven’t, and you’d like, consider yourself tagged. Alternatively, um. @shadoedseptmbr @lunamax1214 @shadesofmauve @sinvraal @leahazel @siawrites, @evilsapphyre
Mass Effect Edition!
Ella Shepard
chocolate
good music, dancing shoes, and a short skirt
old french songs
finding a new restaurant, recipe, or cocktail
(did I mention chocolate?)
did I mention a good stiff drink?
you know, good and stiff apply to other things, don’t they?
now you’re thinking way more about Joker and me than you want to, aren’t you? ;)
Ward Shepard
the warm buzz a fixed desk or datapad makes when you turn them back on and they boot up properly
Jack swearing
Tali’s giggle
the sound Jack makes when she accidentally steps on her earpiece because when she took it off she just dropped it on the floor again
The way Garrus’ mandible flares when he realizes I just rebuilt the autochef or the cannon interface
Jack Not Swearing
an email from Luka
Jack’s eyes when she’s pretending not to smile
Ngaio Shepard
hitting send on a finished AAR
a clean desk and an empty inbox
actual fresh coffee
Mom’s laugh
the smell of an armory, clean and sharp and metallic
the little dance Sam does in her chair when she wins a game
the sound she makes when I kiss the back of her neck
wait that’s none of your damn business
being able to tell people my life is none of their damn business
