Disgruntled Dan

Me: 

If you think about it, he’s one of the few characters in the trilogy who really doesn’t have a loyalty mission of any kind. So many characters in the trilogy rely on Shepard to guide them, mentor them, or aid them in some vital way that affects who they are on the deepest levels. Ashley to a lesser extent, but even Ashley seeks Shepard’s help/comfort to grieve and come to terms with a death in her family. But Kaidan? He asks for Shepard’s help only to understand Shepard’s actions and alliance with Cerberus. That’s so, so powerful to me. He doesn’t want Shepard to help him sort himself out, he want’s Shepard’s help so he can understand Shepard.

Say what you will about that terribly written clusterfuck that is Horizon, but when you strip out all of the badly orchestrated bits, you still have a character whose professional and moral compass doesn’t align with Cerberus, and it’s important enough to him that he’s willing to walk away from Shepard to preserve those core beliefs. So many characters define themselves through Shepard, leaning on them to define or even re-prioritize their own code, but Kaidan doesn’t, and I love that so much. That’s not a knock on those characters at all – I just like that Kaidan is different.

In fact, when it comes to Kaidan and Shepard, to me it’s the reverse. I do a lot of thinking about Shepard and their similarities to Saren. Both of them started from a similar place, after all. Elite soldiers, Spectres, charged with getting their hands dirty to protect the needs of the galaxy. Where Saren went astray was losing his ability to see the people he was protecting as people instead of the ‘ruthless calculus’ that Garrus talks about. Saren allied with Sovereign not because he was an evil asshole, but because he thought it was the best way to save the most people. His intentions started out as true.  When you think of all the decisions Shepard has to make, how easy would it before them to look in the mirror one day and see Saren’s reflection instead of their own? Well, for me, Kaidan is a big piece of why Shepard is able to hold onto their own humanity, to “anthropomorphize” the galaxy, if I may quote my favorite salarian. To me, Kaidan is Shepard’s magnetic north. And that’s my absolute favorite thing about him.

Night Walk

Stannis Baratheon I Daenerys Targaryen & Their Journey to Madness Greatness.

Drawings of North Korean concentration camp by an escaped prisoner.