Tag: ME2

Tiny fic thing about how Shepard decides to handle losing her scars after Cerberus brings her back, and how Dr. Chakwas reacts to Shepard’s decision.

“I needed this, doc.”

Somehow, Chakwas thinks, the bloody towel pressed diagonally across Shepard’s face takes years off. Looking at Shepard now, she sees the twenty-three-year-old whose dogged tenacity brought her through the ordeals of Akuze. She sees the sixteen-year-old farm girl who lost everything she’d ever known when the batarians attacked Mindoir.

But as she eases the towel away from Shepard’s face, the years and the hardships and the toil come rushing back. All the terrible weight of knowing the truth about something and having so very few believe you. The weight of losing two years after going down with the ship. And the weight no one had thought of, the weight of losing all the scars you’d gained along the way that reminded you it was all real.

Shepard glances up at her, as if expecting reproach or judgement. Chakwas examines the Commander’s handiwork without a word. The cut went through Shepard’s right eyebrow, across the bridge of her nose, and down into her cheek. It was a near perfect tracing of the scar that had been there before Shepard’s death.

“Well, Commander. I suppose I should clean you up and stitch this up for you.” Shepard wants a scar. Chakwas isn’t going to judge her for that. And seeing the tension go out of the Commander’s face and shoulders is enough of a reward.

Morgan Shepard: Spacer. War Hero. Soldier. ME1 to ME3. I don’t have good ME pics of her, but she had a big honkin’ scar across the bridge of her nose. Took a while to get her right in ME3: I didn’t use the Save Editor on her, just ME2 pics for comparison. Will see what the Save Editor version looks like, but I kind of got attached to this look. Even if the redder hair makes her look like a vampire half the time; girl could blind people she is so pasty.

Roman Shepard: Earthborn. Ruthless. Vanguard. ME1, ME2, & ME3. Used Save Editor to fix him up for ME3, and i think he turned out closest to his original looks out of my three ME1 Shepards. Poor Jen Shepard suffers the most from the facial changes, as she had the ME1 default-Jane face as a base 😐 

Random things that pop into my head at 5am…eh, 5:40am…

Hmm.

Thoughts on my general tendencies when doing BioWare romances below the cut.

I had this much bigger, longer, and likely to end up rambly thing started, but remembered I’d done actually completed two femalePC/malePartyMember romances instead of one. Make that three: remembered I completed female Sith Warrior/Malavai Quinn is SWTOR.

I generally find BioWare’s ladies more interesting than their dudes, partly because my reaction ends up being “Oh, a VARIETY of interesting and non-damsel-in-distress female characters? LET ME KNOW AS MUCH AS I POSSIBLY CAN ABOUT THEM.”

But the main idea of my random thought was wondering if my own real-world fear of accidentally dating a Nice Guy if/when I ever start dating impacts how I view BioWare’s male LIs when I’m playing a female character. It might also have to do with my perception of power dynamics, though I think that’s a little less involved in why I wasn’t drawn to femPC/maleNPC in most BioWare games; in SWTOR, though, the fact that the power dynamic in the female Sith Warrior/Malavai Qunn relationship was pretty darn clearly in my Warrior’s favor did have a big impact of why I went for it.

Random thoughts. Partly brought on by spoilery semi-confirmation info about ME3 romanceoptions that I found on an LJ comm.

Finished LotSB with Jen Shepard. Who mostly saw taking down the Shadow Broker as a way to get her mind off losing a crew member. Only she went and read Miranda’s file.

And I just about cried. Jen’s response to getting to know a different side of Miranda has been added to my list of things I need to address in short fics.

Because Tumblr’s photoset thing is NOT my friend tonight, click the little grey box, plzthx.

Jen Shepard – Colonist, Sole Survivor, Infiltrator, Paragade.

I really like the shadows on this. And the way her eyes are narrowed just slightly, and the slight frowning indentations between her eyes.

This is the first Shepard I’ve finished the game with who lost anyone on the suicide mission. This is the Shepard I ship with Jack in fics, the Shepard I hope will be able to romance Ash in ME3. In this run, Miranda died. Because there was no way this Shepard wasn’t going to tell Miranda to back the hell off when it came to Jack, and there was no way this Shepard would say some really rather horribly condescending things about Jack to get back in Miranda’s good graces. And because of things I will eventually do with my femShep/Jack drabbles, this Shepard and Jack, for my narrative purposes, needed to hear Miranda resign, needed to hear her realize that, yes, you could not blame TIM wanting to keep the human Reaper on a “rogue cell.” These two choices meant, because of game mechanics, Miranda died in this run.

So instead of a moment alone in an empty cabin, Jen Shepard got a moment alone with an empty casket, a moment to promise herself this will never happen again, that she’ll do better next time, that she won’t leave anyone behind next time. It’s a promise she makes herself, even though she knows it may be a promise she can’t keep.