I'm just here for the donuts

Every week I ask a basic question about your Shepard, vote and elaborate in the tags!

Note on this week's poll: I assume every Shepard does the requisite work to stay in shape. I'm asking about what they like to do, what they would still do even if they had a completely different job.

The crew ventures out into the expanse of Shanxi. Shepard is faced with her first obstacle.

lil text blurb

"Commander…" he said, his voice trailing off, parched. He cleared his throat. "Pardon me, I was just…" This time, his voice trailed for a very different reason. She looked as though she barely heard him. He stepped to the side, giving her room back into the storehouse, hoping the shame that festered in his belly couldn't be felt like heat on her face.

Suddenly, she realized exactly where she was. She looked up at Garrus, the light from the fire behind him catching in her one eye that hadn't been slashed with silver. Except it was lit by something other than a fire, something that came from within. "Actually, Vakarian, do you have a second to talk?"

It took him a second to register that she was talking to him, and another five on top of that for what she said. She was patient with him at the very least. "With… me?" he finally managed, which was about as eloquent as he could get away with.

"No, actually, I was thinking that I could talk to that pile of bricks outside, and you could stand guard." Far too late, he realized she was joking. His blank expression drew something out in hers, a crinkled expression that could have been a smile or a grimace. "Okay, not in a joking mood, got it." Except he didn't think she was really in a joking mood, either. It was too forced. He had heard Commander Shepard attempt three jokes since their mission started, and all of them were so unfunny that he thought she surely had to threaten the people around her to laugh.

my illustrations for @kayarenwick’s minibang fic Be Between Thee and Me!

Having the story take place within a series of emails, i had to include the in-game message terminal.

(these are really interesting questions 👀!)

Hi Em! thank you for playing ♥️

3: throw this character at any other character of your choice to bounce off each other as outsider pov to each other

Hmm who to bounce Garrus off of…

Let’s pick Samara for this one.

She’s not old quite yet, but the last time even the most grizzled of turians seemed old to her was several centuries ago, and the life she has chosen ties her so strictly to the Code that at first glance, Vakarian is nothing more than a rebellious child acting out against the order his society placed on him. She looks at him and sees a young man who paid for this transgression with his own blood, his appearance, and still doesn’t seem reformed. She’s not privy to the details. They’re none of her business, can’t be her business for the sake of his own life and Shepard’s mission, so she reserves the full brunt of her judgment — but she’s seen many young men of various species eschew order and fall apart in the pursuit of something else. She doesn’t know what that something may be, and she’s not going to ask, but he’s clearly troubled. A shadow over his eyes, pain still in his jaw, the report of his rifle sounding more often than she’d expected from a sniper. But it doesn’t take her long to see past her first impression and recognizes that the other thing he clearly is, is essential to the mission. Competent, more of a team player than she’d have thought at first glance, and invaluable to Shepard, who leans on him implicitly both in the field and, as hasn’t escaped her notice, in private. She is content reserving her judgement indefinitely, or for as long as Shepard’s mission lasts.

Garrus, you could say, doesn’t care. Not about anything that isn’t Shepard or the mission or tracking down Sidonis, not right now. But he’s perceptive enough, and he was there when they picked her up: the asari Justicar, who he’s ninety percent sure Shepard only let on the ship in an effort to save the people working in that Nos Astra precinct. He gets it. If he bothered to think about it more, he’d also be uncomfortable with her presence. He respects those in the pursuit of justice — but it’s hard to pinpoint if that’s what her Justicar Code boils down to, justice, if that’s what he’d personally even call it, or most importantly Samara herself, who as he understands it has surrendered her own reasoning and understanding of what’s just to what’s written in some old tome in some old asari temple somewhere, probably, he doesn’t know. But that’s what doesn’t sit right with him: that she’d act like a drone, only according to the ancient law rather than what she feels is right. He’s seen enough of systems of order to know that they fail where they’re inflexible, and the sharpest instrument of justice is not the letter of the law but the mind of who interprets it. A justicar is if someone had handed red tape a gun. He’s not exactly sorry she keeps to her chosen quarters, and that Shepard keeps her off her squad unless tactics demand otherwise. 

*

I think it’s an interesting contrast… They’re both all in for justice, you could even say that a Justicar is the asari version of a spectre, but their understanding of what justice is couldn’t be more different. I do think that if Samara knew that Garrus’ objective wasn’t revenge as much as avenging, she would respect him for it, but also I don’t really know what the Justicar Code says and I’m sure there’s many things in there I would completely disagree with, as would Garrus. He’d only ever manage an uneasy alliance with her because he knows that her decisions aren’t her own, by choice. And the only vision he’s ever seen for achieving justice has been to trail-blaze his own way towards it.

Title: Be Between Me and Thee

Rating: T

Word Count: 6,337

Summary:

On multiple occasions in the years they've known each other, Shepard and Garrus have been kept apart by space, time, commitments, and on one memorable occasion, death. That has never stopped them from keeping in touch, however. Be Between Me and Thee records the messages sent between Shepard and Garrus (or from Garrus to Shepard) on four occasions in their lives: after Garrus leaves the SR-1, while Garrus is alone on Omega, during Shepard's house arrest after the destruction of the Alpha Relay, and after the Battle for London. It explores their evolving relationship and what they mean to one another through these significant milestones.

Through Time Challenge - 01 - Shepard

So I really want to improve my art style/ artistic ability in general, so I made this little challenge for myself! I am going to try to draw all of the Mass Effect characters through time.

Idk how longs its gonna take but its just a fun lil excercise cuz damn I really want to find my art style 😂

now that you're glorious death, now that you're faithless flesh.

Title: Hypothesis Testing aka Humans and Turians and Blowjobs, Oh My!

Rating: E

Word Count: 9,208

Summary:

When Mordin gives Adrienne Shepard a very dubious piece of medical advice regarding the ingestion of turian bodily fluids, Shepard immediately calls bullshit — and Garrus is more than happy to help her prove the hypothesis wrong.

same face