#director addison

Tiran Kandros is one of those minor characters where we know just enough about him to be fascinated and want to know more. I don’t recommend paying money for the Discovery comic, because the plot makes no sense and the artist can’t draw turians, but I definitely recommend reading the plot summary on the Mass Effect wiki and mining it for fanfic purposes (HIS MUM hell yeah!), and I definitely recommend reading Nexus Uprising because it’s a good book. So it's perfectly reasonable for his characterisation to vary wildly in fanfiction.

But there’s one thing I keep seeing, that definitely isn’t right:

He’s not morally pure. He’s not some shining beacon of morality and justice amid the dark.

He was willing to exile Nilken Rensus without a proper investigation. The circumstances made it pretty damn hard to get a proper investigation, but still?

His reaction to idiots holding a peaceful protest in Hydroponics was to volunteer to march them out at gunpoint. I can see why he’s paranoid about civil disobedience, but that’s hardly justifiable, and it’s certainly not going to reduce tensions!

He was fine with jailing Keri T’Vessa for telling the uncensored truth. Sure, telling too much truth apparently caused a few riots, and I can see why he’s paranoid about civil disobedience, and I can see why he really doesn’t want to disobey orders from Tann, and he does sound like he feels guilty about it, but he did it.

I’m not calling him a bad person. He’s clearly doing his absolute best, and it’s an astonishingly good best under the circumstances. He’s thirty and his resume reads “good at shooting bad guys, also good at going undercover and then shooting bad guys” and he didn’t sign up to build and lead an army, any more than Ryder signed up to be Pathfinder. He’s been through a variety of truly horrific shit lately and he could probably do with more mental health care than he’s getting. I’m wondering if his overreaction to the hydroponics protest was related to cultural confusion? “What the fuck are these aliens doing, this would never happen in the culture I’m from, I need to stop them before they do something much worse!!” And he’s certainly more competent than Tann or Addison, more moral than Tann, and less prone to inappropriately being a complete dick than Addison. Those two aren’t demons either, and I empathise with them most of the time, but I hope they get demoted to jobs they’re competent at and replaced with democratically elected officials ASAP.

But Kandros is a flawed man. Incredibly cool? Heroic? Does his best to be kind? Sure! Boyfriend material for pathfinder!Sara? Sure, if you like, and I’d also like to nominate him as potential boyfriend material for pathfinder!Scott, coma-twin, Avitus, Vetra, Addison, Sloane Kelly, or Evfra. Perfect? Nah. You want a morally pure spiky boyfriend for Sara, then write an OC.

(I could also do without the frequent “velociraptor-shaped blow-up doll for Sara!” characterisation, er, lack of characterisation. Nothing against porn, but I like everyone involved to have a personality - more of this sort of thing, please:

Okay I understand that Ryder and Addison don’t typically get along, because she and my Ryder sure as hell don’t, but as a player I kind of love-hate her. She says things that make me go “well, fuck you, too” but I appreciate how unfiltered she can be for someone who seems so uptight and by-the-books. For example, after you find Dr. Kennedy for her and she asks you about her on vidcon, Ryder’s like “yeah I found her, and she’s eight months pregnant”. Addison goes “Fucking hell”. Like, a COMPLETE slip in the composure of a woman who was at one point counting to five to avoid Going Off on my Ryder. 

I also appreciate that she cares more about her job than the rest of the leadership’s feelings. Like, after putting an outpost on Elaaden she says something along the lines of “The numbers are good and this is a win but Tann’s going to be pissed”, and Ryder can respond with something like this: “I don’t give a single flying fuck about Tann or his opinion” and Addison just says “I, of course, can’t comment”. I don’t know if she agrees or disagrees, or just doesn’t care, but the woman knows a victory when she sees one.

Ok, here is the captioned conversation about