Lurking in the Background

Mostly, I’m thinking about this in how just… unlikely and improbable Liara seems in 1. She’s 106, studying the protheans for fifty years, considered barely more than a child in asari terms, and yet she’s somehow managed to come up with a theory on the protheans’ disappearance that no one else believes. AND SHE’S RIGHT. She’s hit on the reason for the protheans disappearance and the existence of the cycles exactly, and yet no one in the scientific community gives her any credit or accepts that she might be on to something? While her age is an understandable reason for why she isn’t taken very seriously, how is she the first person to come along and piece all of this together? The Citadel races have had like two thousand years to figure this all out, yet it’s only when Liara comes along that anyone actually does? Sure, the pieces had to be found and put together, but I find it credibility straining that she’s the first one to ever do it.

And then there’s the fact that, as is, she stays on the Normandy for plot reasons, not character reasons - she’s an archeologist, not a soldier, and, though she has great biotic potential, how often has she really had to use her biotics in combat? Realistically, she should be sent back to the Citadel to be under C-Sec guard, because she’s a civilian. Combine her with Shiala, give her a history with the commandos, now she explicitly has the skills to expect her to go into a combat situation and survive, and to justify her low levels in ME’s leveling system, she’s gotten rusty from a few decades out of active duty. Her commando history could also replace her youth as reason for not being taken seriously - the old ‘brain versus brawn’ debate, with assumptions that she’s seeing patterns that aren’t there because she’s still thinking like a commando, or even drawing on the fact that she’s Benezia’s daughter, that they disbelieve that she COULD come along and, with only a few decades of experience, come up with an explanation that none of them have (to at least show that the narrative understands that, yeah, actually, her being EXACTLY RIGHT about the protheans and being the first to come up with this idea is a little farfetched).

It would also be a good launchpad for her later characterization - the narrative currently makes her so many things seemingly at the same time, it confuses her character. She’s the shy and book-smart introvert, she’s the prothean expert, she’s the badass information broker, she’s the super-commando able to take down the Shadow Broker… Her development from simple archeologist to the Shadow Broker over the course of three years seems questionable at best from where I sit, because who she is in 1 doesn’t connect well to who she is in 2/LotSB, even with a few handwaves in place.

As I say in the linked post, Liara's youth is emphasized so heavily in the first game, and it just makes her trajectory so confused - she emphasizes in the first game that her youth is why her theory on the cycle of extinction is not given much credence (which, by the way, also means that she is championing a fringe theory that turns out to be right, so the equivalent to someone roughly considered a grad student has a theory that bucks the accepted theories is able to put together what no one else had - even with the later reveal of the asari government hiding the beacon, it's still something that the scientific community is said to discount, not just the government), yet two years later, she is a respected information broker (a complete change of career from archeologist between those two years), and then the third game features her as a government contact, while trying to hinge that more on her status as an information broker, rather than her as Benezia's daughter.

Plus you can throw in the Paragon Lost movie having the asari, Treeya, claim Liara as having been her mentor before becoming "obsessed" with the Reapers (since it's set shortly before ME3, so before the Reapers become public knowledge), again, despite Liara's youth being emphasized in the first game.

And, as I say in that post, Liara, circa ME1, is not really combat ready. She's an archeologist, and not even the Indiana Jones style, but the kind who just has maybe basic combat training, if that. Realistically, it's a valid question to ask why she joins the Normandy crew, rather than, say, settling in on the Citadel, under guard, particularly in the case of reasonable mistrust that the daughter of Matriarch Benezia is acting to assist her? At least in combining her with Shiala, she has combat training reasonable enough to make her a squad member.

I'm easily moved by everything Liara so I always react strongly to her distress, I hate seeing her like this. But I'm also a fan of the way those two are positioned in those two scenes, because I feel like the more distance they have between them, the more Liara feels okay to open up.

In the first scene, Shepard uses a Paragon interrupt to try to reassure Liara, and she says: "You're here to help. Just like always." Shepard asks her if it's not a good thing, and she replies: "When we first met on Therum, you saved me from the geth. You fought a krogan battlemaster while I cowered. Now you're doing it again. And I'm still leaning on you for help." Shepard replies that this is what friends do, and Liara walks away, doesn't reply.

So the distance is there as they face each other in the conversation, but I believe this is the closest they can be to each other at the time, at least emotionally. Because Liara is basically confessing her truth: she needs Shepard and Shepard has become THE savior in her life. Need and guilt and self-hatred are all over her in this scene. At least, that's how it feels like to me, and I understand perfectly why, because those feelings can easily appear when you love and need someone that badly. But there's not just that, there's also the idea that Liara is unable to save herself, that without Shepard she feels she's a mess and a coward.

In the second scene, when they are so close to each other and Shepard is basically telling her to calm down and that they need to talk, that Liara has changed, Liara goes on a rant about Feron and how it would be an insult to him to stop and enjoy the scenery. It feels frantic and disconnected. Fear surrounds her. So they're close physically, but the distance is back again, as Liara is closing herself off, no longer wanting to talk. But she does say she mourned Shepard, and I think the mission shows the grief and guilt that she has been carrying with her for far too long. And that's one of the many reasons I say a lot of characters mourned Shepard intensely, they just all had different ways of expressing it.

It's clear to me that Liara worked herself to death and took no time to deal with her feelings in a healthy way. She's not okay, and hasn't been in a very long time, since Shepard died. And obviously, she has a duty to Feron, but this is like a giant mix of everything that Liara hates about herself in this mission, so duty/responsibility is associated with cowardice/failure. And I think she's starting to believe that her intense need for others or the intense way that she loves is dooming her, because she can't save people, she can't save herself, she will let people down in a way. Liara easily gets into those cycles in her head. (and this is why her becoming the Shadow Broker matters a lot, but that's another topic!)

And again, this is only my interpretation, but even in her frantic ways, she fully acknowledges how thankful she is that Shepard is helping her and the full meaning of their presence in her life. But that is the sweet part. The bitter part is that she is also fully aware that her need is not just a want. It's overwhelming.

Needing someone like that, I believe it does say something about who you are and how you feel, regardless of the person needing you back or not. And once you know, you know. You now have to deal with that need while also finding ways to come back to yourself, to save yourself. To me, it's the only thing that matters.