I must read your MShep/Liara fic because gaaaaaaah there was so much WEIRDNESS in her ME 1 romance that could have been fixed with better writing and the unfulfilled potential drove me bonkers. 2 was better, LotSB was hilarious, 3 I generally liked except for at least one “This dialogue would only make sense if Shepard were in a parallel universe where he and Liar had been totally platonic until now” moment.

sniperct:

strickycub:

swaps55:

This is the most overdue response ever, but because it’s important I wanted to make sure I had time to give this the proper answer.

You’re right, there is some weirdness going around in ME1. Their ‘chemistry’ almost comes out of nowhere, enough to blindside you, and you don’t even know if she really likes Shepard, or if he/she’s just a giant, exciting science experiment. And let’s not talk about the fact that if you don’t romance her, the corpse hunt she goes on for Shepard’s body is really creepy.

I feel like Liara gets overlooked or passed over, at least in the corner of tumblr I tend to inhabit, and I completely understand why. It can be hard to accept the asari in general when they’re so clearly designed as male eye candy; I think some people feel like Liara is a symptom of a larger problem in gaming in general, and therefore she suffers for it. And those criticisms aren’t wrong.

But if you can look past that, I think Bioware gave us a great character, one who grows tremendously between ME1 and ME2. She’s Sarah Connor-esque in her transformation from a scientist trapped in a bubble to a cutthroat information broker. She’s seen how cold the galaxy can be, and instead of hiding from it she gets even colder. That loss of innocence, that hardening of her spirit, really struck me. And I think it did Shepard, too. He(she) wakes up two years later to find a lover who is light years away from the woman he met on Therum. The argument they have before assaulting Hagalaz is one of my favorite moments in their arc, because it feels so real. He’s trying to understand her, she’s trying to understand herself, because she’s let anger and revenge take over her life and she can’t remember the woman he sees when he looks at her.

When I started Exordium, I really had to think about how their relationship develops, what draws them to each other. She’s a civilian on a ship full of soldiers. Garrus. Wrex. Even Tali all have more experience than she does. She’s an archeologist who somehow finds herself in the middle of one of the greatest battles in history, and she probably doesn’t even know how to fire a gun (or at least well). I think for someone like Shepard, that’s significant. She’s different. She’s alien to him in more ways than one, because he hasn’t been a civilian since he was 15. But despite her lack of combat experience, she accompanies Shepard into a snowy hell where she takes down her own mother for the greater good. That’s a woman shaped out of steel, whether she knows it or not. I think that’s something Shepard will always feel guilty for – that he had to ask her to come, put her in that position. She didn’t sign up for this, but she did it anyway, because it needed to be done.

I was really fascinated with the idea that maybe at first she does think of him as a fascinating science project, even if she doesn’t realize it. Shepard, someone who has been through so much and is so private, would really worry about that. He’d want to be sure. Which brings us to the melds. These two share an incredibly intimate experience. They join their minds. And if you want to try and tell me that the only thing they shared were his beacon experience I’ll laugh so hard I choke. No way. Whether they intend to or not, they are going to see things about each other that no one else would have access to. Do you have any idea how much fun I’ve had writing about those experience? Any idea? Gah.

So basically, I love their relationship. At the very least, I’ve thought about it in painstaking detail. Nothing would please me more than to have someone who isn’t high on Liara (or isn’t high on mShep) read Exordium and, if not jump on board the ship, at least understand why I care about it so much.

So I hope you check it out! And maybe see past some of that in-game weirdness.   

Agreed, the whole ME1 romance between Liara and Shep was weird and, at least to me, it felt rushed and yes it did blindside you a little. However, I also feel that (playing femshep) Kaidan was almost forcing himself on you with flirtations everytime you spoke to him.

I think as a whole ME1 was a good way for the devs to test the waters a little with how to handle relationships, they made obvious and glaring mistakes, especially in the writing department. It’s clear though that a lot of these issues have been resolved from ME2 onwards (except for the lack of in depth lesbian/gay relationships in 2, but that’s a different conversation I won’t talk about here).

It seems Liara does get a lot of hate in the ME community which has surprised me a shit ton; as someone who has played through the trilogy three times just in the last two months. Liara’s character is so deeply amazing and so much more than just ‘pretty, blue, eye-candy’.

I wish more people could find it within themselves to see Liara the way people like us do, to truly appreciate her as an amazingly developed and independent woman who has carved her own path from the once jittery, innocent young girl who got herself trapped in a bubble on Therum.

Wait. People hate Liara? I’ve never met one who did!

There’s actually a fairly large number who either hate her, or at the very least really dislike many aspects of how she’s written and her plot armor.