#too weird

I think he and Miranda would vibe in spite of themselves — and of course there’s the weird indebtedness Kaidan would feel about Miranda having brought Shepard back to life! Doubly weird if it’s a romance, like this woman knows more about your girlfriend’s body than you could ever hope to learn.

I think he’d have a crazy amount of respect for Mordin and would want to pick his brain all the time and would have to, like, restrain himself from just hanging out and bothering him. I think Mordin would be like “wow, humans sure made a mess of the first couple generations of biotic implants, huh?” and try to figure out if there was anything he could do to decrease the severity of Kaidan’s L2 implant side effects. He tries to help out Shepard and Garrus if they’re in a romance, so I think this wouldn’t be dissimilar!

Zaeed would give him a heart attack, he’d for sure be like, “Shepard, this guy is a criminal!” and Erin would be like “No shit, Sherlock! We’re all criminals now!” and Kaidan would be like “okay but that’s not what I meant, this is different!” Same with Kasumi but less so.

Jacob is actually a really interesting case here, because in a universe where Kaidan quit the Alliance to join Cerberus because of Shepard, they'd actually have that in common!

Garrus, Tali, Joker, and Chakwas I'm sure would be happy to have another person from the SR1.

I feel like he'd therapy-speak circles around Traynor, like she'd leave every interaction thinking "Wow, that went great!" and then realize she didn't actually get any information.

Samaraaaaaa I think he'd find the Justicar thing really interesting! I think he'd have a lot of respect for her.

With Jack I feel like there would be SO much identification between the two of them with being an insanely powerful biotic and being experimented on in an evil facility that was abusing kids. I feel like Kaidan would try to connect with her and Jack would be like "you don't know me" and be all prickly and eventually he'd wear her down and he would end up being someone she could talk to about it who would at least sort of understand. Post ME2 they both become teachers and I actually feel like this would be a cool layer of both of their character arcs. Hmm. Crunch crunch.

Okay I'm not going to pretend he wouldn't struggle with Legion and be deeply disturbed. He and Tali could work through it together. I'm imagining Shepard being like "You. Have. To. Trust. Me."

I find Grunt extremely endearing, and I don't think he'd be any less endearing to Kaidan.

Damn I can't believe I almost forgot about Thane! Ugh this is where I need to replay the game, like Thane is a little bit of a black box for me. I struggled so hard on Thane's loyalty mission that that's all I remember about him. I'm so bad at stealth, team. I'm really bad at games. I just remember being in my first apartment in New Orleans and having to reload over. and over. and over. I blocked out everything else.

The sad part is that at least for Erin Shepard, she would have been doing a lot better during ME2 if Kaidan had joined them. Fraternization pales in comparison to joining Cerberus, and I think that he would have really been able to support her. The romance would still hinge on some of the same themes -- grief, resurrection, am I still the same person, can you trust me, and in order to make it still compelling I would probably lean on Kaidan having taking this blind leap by following her and then having to kind of be like... okay now what, though? Where do you draw the line between Shepard and Cerberus? Where does he drawn the line between HIMSELF and Cerberus?