It's a little funny that Liara is the most renegade one if you bring Liara and Kaidan to the final fight in ME1. Your inner Shadowbroker is showing, T'soni.

Bonus picture for 10/10 facial expressions.

So Anderson gets a call from Shepard on Eden Prime saying ‘we found the beacon, can we get a pickup, everything’s fine’

then not five minutes later Kaidan rings up and goes

‘yeah so the beacon’s exploded and Shepard is unconscious, and it’s probably my fault, could you please hurry up’

#DAD PICK US UP WE FUCKED UP (via hoiist)

The squad rolling in to the Barbie movie at the Citadel Cineplex.

Ashley caught a live production of Oppenheimer.

Mass Effect Legendary Edition (2021) dev. BioWare

MASS EFFECT ― PROLOGUE: FIND THE BEACON

Kaidan has so many roles

Kaidan 100% had an ancient prothean phase as a kid the way every kid has an ancient Egyptian phase. They probably did a project at school and he got way too invested and spent hours building little models of prothean relics like the beacons and reading books with shiny covers all about them.

Fast forward to liara joining the Normandy and the childlike wonder comes back and he's practically nine again asking her questions all about them. He'd also keep her going about it too.

"You know, I'd always heard the Protheans rode great beasts into battle."

"Really? I've found no evidence to suggest that - there's no archeological finds or any writings from scholors I've came across that speak of it. Where did you hear this?"

"Oh it was 'little explorers guide to Protheans', it was a pop up book that roared as you turned the pages"

"A... Pop- up book? I don't think that's a reputable source."

"I dunno, the cartoon prothean was really convincing. Next you'll tell me the beasts couldn't fly."

"That they - whAT?"

Then when they dig up Javik he would 100% back up anything Kaidan said to drive Liara wild.

"So Javik, me and T'soni have been wondering this for a while - did the protheans fly into battle on the backs of winged beasts?"

"I said that there's no archeological basis for it and surely you can -"

"Yes - it was a great honour to be gifted with your beast as you came of age, they were said to have been bestowed to us by the gods themselves."

"the little explorers guide to protheans is looking good right now"

"Kaidan please-"

But like, this makes even more sense and is even more endearing and sad when you think of Kaidan’s personal backstory. His late childhood and teenage years were abnormal and so full of abuse that 1) He probably had difficulty feeling like he fit in anywhere when he finally came back home and it’s canon that this feeling of non-belonging carried on through his adulthood (”Human biotics are--We're different, freaks even”), so he tends to roll with social norms, like politeness, which are very helpful guides when you don’t know how to interact with folks; 2) Plenty of crises that would have distressed other people, or even himself once upon a time, do not shake him as easily because it takes a lot to meet his threshold for an emergency after a typical day at school involved getting beat up. Not to mention he lives with chronic pain and knows the importance of choosing his battles; 3) His empathy and sense of right and wrong only became fortified after BAaT, so he still reacts to preventable violence with disapproval or shock or, eventually anger (think Shepard hitting Manuel in Eden Prime, Wrex killing Fist, and Shepard’s appearance in Horizon), and 4) While he has wonderful maturity, he did miss out on plenty of regular experiences growing up, which means he continues to find amazement in the little things that other adults become apathetic towards or stop pointing out aloud. Like tiles in a Prothean ruin looking like a bathroom (let me be clear: any human would have thought the same, he was just the one to say it), or the sight of a really big place. I also suspect sometimes he knows damn well he’s saying something a bit ridiculous but he values breaking the ice for the sake of morale, so he says the thing anyway. 

So I guess what I’m trying to say is Kaidan Alenko was once like an isekai dude who woke up in a YA Gifted Kid Dystopia, and he adapted to that as best he could until he broke free... but by the time he did, the normal world had become his isekai. And that he just goes along with it because he is too good for this galaxy. When people point out how normal he is I’m like “YES. EXACTLY. I AM SO FUCKING PROUD OF HIM.”

Who needs a knife when you have an omni blade

AU: Garrus as Virmire Victim (sorry)

Kaidan and Ash have a fascinating character dynamic, are a good influence on each other, and they’d make a great couple if you’re into that. There are good reasons that “everyone survives Virmire!” AUs are popular.

But personally, I find it a bit low-conflict/excessively happy when everyone survives Virmire. And killing off Wrex is interesting in its own way, but it’s not the same thing at all. Ash or Kaidan dying nobly in the line of duty, that’s a clean tragedy. When Wrex dies, you’ve got a man who was told all his life that he was a mindless brute, and started actually acting like a mindless brute at an understandable but really stupid moment, and was killed for it and never got the chance to be anything more than a brute. Much nastier!

So how about an AU where Ash and Kaidan both survive - maybe they share the VS role, maybe one of them winds up on the SR-2 somehow, maybe things go further afield - but Garrus dies on Virmire?

Sure, you miss out on his lovely character development if he dies young and stupid and relatively innocent, but there’s plenty of fics starring Garrus.

-While he’s not Alliance, Shepard probably trusts him enough by Virmire to choose him to guard the bomb. 

-He’s a tech expert. Pretty sure he’s just as qualified in improvised bombs as Kaidan, and more than Ash. (I can’t see him being much use as cultural translator between Shepard’s team and Kirrahe’s team. It’d have to be the bomb)

-He’s committed to stopping Saren, intensely loyal to Shepard, desperately wants to do something dramatic to improve the galaxy, and probably has martyrdom-culture tendencies. I can easily see him telling Shepard to leave him behind and rescue the other guy and Kirrahe’s team instead.

Then your Kaidan/Ash bromance or romance can continue till the end of the war and beyond… after we get the detailed description of Garrus going down fighting, and everything he regrets, and hoping his family will cope and hoping his father will be proud of him. And the detailed description of how much everyone misses him. Even Wrex makes grudgingly respectful comments.

  …and then journalists try to paint the situation as Shepard sacrificing an alien in order to save humans. And Shepard has to explain what happened to Castis. And his wife, who’s probably still compos mentis (or worse, maybe she’s not?)   Removing Garrus from ME2 and ME3 doesn’t actually alter the plot much - Joker and Tali can cover his “emotional support on a Cerberus ship” role, and so can any Virmire survivors who wind up on the SR-2. And when he canonically dies in the suicide mission, the turians are still fairly well prepared for war.

And then maybe Castis or Solana winds up joining the Normandy with Primarch Victus? 

Kaidan trying to stop his dumbass bf from doing dumb shit