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acciokaidanalenko · 9 months

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The Survivors

“Come on, LT, open the door!”

He could hear her, loud and clear. Every pound of her fist against the metal door, and every call of his name, echoed around the small hotel room. He had nowhere to run, there was no escaping the person on the other side of the door.

“I’m not going away. So you might as well let me in!”

With a defeated sigh, he removed the pillow he’d been using to muffle the sounds from atop his head and sat up, running his hands through his unkempt hair before shuffling reluctantly toward the door. He’d wondered if anyone would show up today, trying to encourage him to clean himself up and be presentable enough to participate in the… event. He’d hoped they’d understand his grief and leave him be. He should’ve known that, of all people, Ashley Williams was not going to let him take the easy way out.

The door slid open and he tried not to take offense at her shocked silence. He watched her eyes move up and down his body, taking notice of the stains on his clothes, his unshaven face, and his disheveled hair.

“I already told you, Ash, I’m not going,” Kaidan insisted before he turned and walked away. Ashley followed him into the room, a solemn grimace on her face. She remained silent as she looked around. Normally he kept his lodgings neat and tidy, but this room was a disaster. Take out boxes and empty beer bottles littered the room. He could feel the tension as she struggled not to say anything about either the state of the room or his appearance.

“You can’t miss it, LT. You know that,” Ashley said as Kaidan threw himself backwards onto the bed. It was small, but large enough he could sprawl out. One hand tucked under his head, almost reflexively. The other rested across his abdomen as his gaze focused on the ceiling above him. He let out a heavy sigh.

“Do you remember that mission where we landed on Agebinium in the Amazon System?” he asked after a moment of silence. His voice was distant. Ashley wasn’t sure where this was going. What did that have to do with today?

“Uh, yeah, the one where we found the guy responsible for the Blitz? He tried to blow us up, and Nat kinda lost her shit? Who could forget something like that?” Ashley responded as she crossed her arms and leaned against the wall, watching her friend closely.

“When we got back to the ship, and she’d recovered enough for Chakwas to release her, I went to talk to her. I was worried about her. She’d almost killed herself when she faced Haliat, and the thought of losing her scared the shit out of me,” he admitted softly. Ashley remained silent as he seemed to grapple for the point he was trying to make. “I told her she was lucky. I told her she was invincible, that she could survive anything. And I promised to always be there for her.”

“Kaidan…” Ashley sighed softly as she pushed away from the wall. She approached the bed where he lay sprawled out, still staring up at the ceiling. He propped himself up on his elbows and met her gaze pointedly.

“If you’re going to tell me I did everything I could’ve, you’re wrong. You weren’t there, Ash. I should’ve just thrown Joker in the escape pod myself, or gone with her to make sure she made it.”

“She gave you an order, and you followed it. You did the right thing, regardless of whatever else you could’ve done,” she said matter-of-factly. He clearly didn’t like her answer. He huffed and threw himself back onto the bed again, once again turning his eyes upward.

“When we met, I’d just lost my entire unit on Eden Prime. I’d faced Geth and Husks and I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it.” She moved to the side of the bed, prompting Kaidan to turn his gaze to her as she towered over him.

“Then, you guys showed up and I had hope again. That mission was hard, but we made it through.” She extended her hand toward him, ignoring the glare he offered in return.

“Then when we got back to the Citadel some Alliance psychologist wanted to talk to me. I was reluctant. Didn’t want to dig up that fresh trauma just yet, but she reminded me of something one of my squad mates once said to me.” Kaidan reluctantly took her hand and let her pull him up. He stood before her, completely vulnerable.

“Luck is for the lonely.”

#just something that was knocking around my brain and wouldn't leave me alone #virmire survivors #ashley williams #kaidan alenko #my beloveds #yeah they both survive in my fic #no one needed to die on virmire #if you can save kirrahe you can save the other squad mate #this is a hill i will die on #mass effect #britt writes

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azatas · 3 months

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"we need more complex female characters" you couldn't even handle her

#ash: hey idk if it’s a good idea to give full access of the most advanced warship we have to a mercenary who shot a suspect in cold blood #and a cop who quit his job because there were too many rules (and also happens to be a member of the military we were recently at war with)#also i think the council will throw us to the wolves to save themselves #like half the fandom: omg space racist???#sorry for discourse posting™ but i saw a terrible post that rocketed me back into 2013 #anyway we may have preferences but we love and appreciate both virmire survivors in this house #mass effect #ashley williams

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qbedience · 8 months

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SR-1 squad advocate for mental health

#mass effect #tali'zorah #tali'zorah nar rayya #tali'zorah vas normandy #kaidan alenko #urdnot wrex #ashley williams #ashley m williams #garrus vakarian #liara t'soni #normandy crew #q talks #q edits #i want more wrex ashley and garrus trio i think theyre fun #the 'we will break you in half' squad #we deserved so much more from the virmire survivors ....

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valka-arialitan · 8 months

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Here's that, as a kind reminder for people to BE GENTLE TO KAIDAN.

I saw the ''Wolverine or Kaidan ; who's the best canadian'' poll on tumblr, and had the SHITTIEST idea to go trough the reblogs tags and HOLY SHIT PEOPLE NEED TO FUCKING CHILL ???

Like basically, people voting for Kaidan were like ''sorry Logan, but Kaidan is my sweet baby boy </3'' while people voting for Wolverine were literally shitting on Kaidan and his fans and MAN ?? I DID NOT LIKE SEEING THAT.

-------------------------------------

And in the middle of drawing this I thought that I absolutely had to make that second part.

Shepard is in his ''emotional battery'' recharge phase.

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lilmissnatcat24 · 8 months

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Yet another post in defense of the Virmire Survivor because they get the rawest deal by the fandom.

But people love to clown on Ashley and Kaidan for how they act in me2 on Horizon (which is completely justified, by the way. Imagine your friend/partner comes back from the dead with glowing red eyes working for terrorists. Are they supposed to be okay with that? No! But that's another post). What people forget is that Wrex and Tali literally do the SAME THING to Shepard, and no one bats an eye.

On Freedom's Progress, Tali is HORRIFIED Shep is working for Cerberus. She knows what Cerberus did to the quarians, she knows what Cerberus did to Kahoku and the rachni, and now the one person she admired more than anyone else is working for them? She tells Shepard that she can't trust them, that she can't join up with them. And this is after Tali drops EVERYTHING to join them in me1. Sure, she eventually joins later in the game, but Shepard was alone and scared and surrounded by strangers after being dead, and the first thing Tali tells them is no. And yet no one criticizes Tali for that.

And Wrex? You can KILL him in me1. He's so distraught and angry over what Saren doing on Virmire, but what makes it even worse is that Shepard doesn't even blink before telling him that they need to bomb the facility. Wrex, who was so vocal about his people and how they're dying, doesn't even get to give them the benefit of the doubt before expecting to fall in line. He questions Shepard, questions their choices and their motives, and depending on your choices you can kill Wrex for his doubt. And yet no one criticizes Wrex for that. If anything, he's praised for being a complex character with firm motivations.

But when the VS tells Shepard that they won't join them on Horizon and criticizes their choice to join Cerberus, all of a sudden the entire fandom decides that they're EVIL and they're UNREASONABLE and they're DRAMATIC. When what they're doing is having the most valid criticism of all time-- the same exact criticism that Tali has in the beginning of the game (and, to an extent Garrus too).

And again, in me3 when Udina makes them a Spectre and for just a second it looks like Shepard is back with Cerberus, the VS doubts Shepard. Which is REASONABLE! They don't necessarily have the best track record. They're protecting the Council and here comes shepshep pointing a gun at them. Who wouldn't doubt them? The VS is such a critical part to the story because Shepard needs someone to check their impulses and their decisions, or else you get people like Liara and Garrus who blindly support anything they do. Shepard needs to be kept in line by someone.

In conclusion, VS fans are entitled to financial compensation.

#mass effect #virmire survivor #kaidan alenko #ashley williams #mass effect trilogy

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ekjohnston · 6 months

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add relevant decision influences to the tags

edit: apologies about his name i have my own kaedan and i forgot which vowels to change

#mass effect #virmire survivor

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promises-atsundown · 1 year

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#anon is the virmire survivor #mass effect #mass effect trilogy #commander shepard #mass effect memes #femshep

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anthurak · 1 year

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So because I’m currently doing a playthrough of Mass Effect again, I thought I’d engage in an interesting thought-experiment regarding the inherently flexible narrative of the RPG plot structure.

Namely, is there actually a way to pin down a ‘canon’ choice for the Virmire survivor between Ashley and Kaidan? Specifically, by trying to eliminate the bias of the player and using aspects of the mission and Shepard’s character that aren’t controlled by the player to determine a most likely scenario for how the events and choices Shepard makes might likely play out.

To that end, let’s look at the Virmire mission leading up to ‘The Big Choice’. If we try to remove the x-factor that is ‘player bias’, thinking of Shepard not as a player-avatar but as an actual character, I think we can actually get a good idea how Virmire actually would have turned out.

To begin with, let’s establish a few qualities that we can assume about Commander Shepard when we ignore possible player biases:

Shepard is an exceptionally capable and experienced soldier and leader, and will thus be making decisions that will give them and their team and allies the best chance at success at this mission.

Shepard cares about their subordinates and allies and will likewise be doing everything they can to get as many people out alive as they can.

Shepard is NOT openly racist towards aliens, nor overtly distrustful or antagonist towards the Council and their agents. Or at least not so much that they would allow such distrust/antagonism to overly interfere with their judgement over the best way to accomplish the mission.

Shepard does in fact care a great deal about BOTH Ashley and Kaidan and does NOT actively want one of them dead.

With all that in mind, let’s look at all of the choices that affect the outcome of the Virmire mission and consider what the most likely choice that Shepard would make is:

First, which squadmate goes with Kirrahe and the STG team, and which one is relegated to bomb duty?

This one’s actually pretty easy when you think about it for more than five seconds. We have Ashley, a hardened frontline soldier with training in all standard alliance weaponry, and we have Kaidan, one of our team’s go-to tech-experts. Heck, Ashley even points out herself that Kaidan should be needed to arm the bomb when volunteering for the mission. Again, when we remove player bias from the equation, I think we can all agree that Shepard would send Ashley to help Kirrahe’s team while having Kaidan work on the bomb.

So with that choice locked in, let’s move to the next big choice: Does Shepard take the necessary steps that allows Kirrahe and much of his team to survive the mission? IE: Completing side-objectives and not diverting security forces towards the Salarians.

Again, removing player-bias from consideration, I think there’s no reason to assume Shepard wouldn’t do everything they could to assist the Salarians. It’s certainly in their best interests to support the Salarians so they can support their team in return. It’s also worth noting that Shepard would have an interest in depriving the Geth of resources by destroying their facilities to make their own task easier. While it may be true that completing the side-objectives doesn’t actually affect the difficulty of Shepard’s own mission, that’s only information that a PLAYER would know, not Shepard themself. And of course, Shepard has one of their own people (Ashley) with the Salarian teams, giving them even MORE reason to assist them. In short, we can assume that Kirrahe and his STG team ARE still alive by the time the bomb is armed.

So with Ashley fighting alongside the still-alive STG team and Kaidan planting the bomb, we now come to the big choice:

Does Shepard press on to the AA Tower and save Ashley or double back to the bomb-site and save Kaidan?

And with everything we’ve established thus far, I wholeheartedly believe the most likely scenario is that Shepard saves ASHLEY.

Because Shepard’s choice isn’t actually between ‘Save Kaidan’ or ‘Save Ashley’. The choice is between ‘Save Kaidan’ or ‘Save Ashley AND the STG Team’.

Yes, it’s true that in the game if you fulfill the necessary side-objectives, Kirrahe and his team are picked up by the Normandy regardless of your choice to press on to the AA Tower or double back to the bomb-site, but I think we really have to ignore this fact.

First, it is a factor that positively reeks of ‘arbitrary game logic’. As in, Kirrahe and his teams are AT the AA tower, so if Joker picks up Shepard and their squad at the bomb site with only a minute or so before the bomb goes off, how exactly can he also rush over to the tower to pick up the Salarians too?

Worse still, if the Normandy is somehow able to pick up the STG team at the tower, then why can’t they pick up Ashley/Kaidan too?! Seriously, if you choose to go to the AA tower and fulfilled the side objectives, you find Kirrahe and the rest of the STG team fighting alongside the squadmate you sent with them! If Kirrahe and his team manage to survive, why can’t they? Looking back, I really feel like going to the AA Tower SHOULD have been a requirement for saving Kirrahe and his team.

And second, this detail of Kirrahe and his team surviving regardless of Shepard’s choice is entirely IRRELEVANT because there is no way SHEPARD could KNOW that!

Yes, the player might be able to know that this pivotal choice comes down to just ‘Save Ashley’ or ‘Save Kaidan’.

But as far as Commander Shepard knows, standing at that railing, weighing their options in this pivotal moment, this is a choice between going back to the bomb site to save one of their squadmates, and pushing on to the AA Tower to save one of their squadmates AND the Salarian STG team. This isn’t a choice of ‘one life weighed against one life’, this is a choice between ONE life, or about a dozen lives.

And again, if we’re removing as much ‘player bias’ from the equation as we can, I think we have no reason to assume that Shepard wouldn’t choose to save as many lives as they can. And since we established the most likely ‘in-universe’ choices are Ashley going with Kirrahe’s team and Kaidan on bomb-duty, I think it’s pretty clear that all things being equal, it’s ASHLEY who has the much better chance of being the Virmire survivor.

I’d say about the only especially plausible scenario where this doesn’t happen is if Shepard is romancing Kaidan, which might (emphasis on ‘MIGHT’) drive them to make the choice to save his life over those of Ashley and Kirrahe’s team. But again, that is only one specific scenario. In any other instance, I’d say that Shepard choosing Ashley over Kaidan is the most likely option.

And looking forward past ME1, I also can’t help but feel that Ashley works just a bit better than Kaidan in terms of what ME2 and ME3 expect the Virmire Survivor to actually do. Namely, how the narrative expects them to be VERY distrustful of Shepard starting in ME2 and eventually being entirely deceived by Udina in the leadup to the Cerberus Coup in ME3.

Now the thing is, does anyone else feel like this arc doesn’t exactly fit Kaidan all that well? Namely that he seems to be just a bit smarter than this?

Throughout ME1, we see that Kaidan is generally one to keep a cool head, and is well-experienced and savvy to the possible faults of his superiors, and generally one to be more thoughtful about a situation.

So I can’t help but feel like when they reunite on Horizon, Kaidan would be more willing to hear Shepard out and give them the benefit of the doubt, rather than becoming so immediately hostile. While I don’t see Kaidan outright joining Shepard’s team on Horizon, I do think he’d nonetheless be more open to reading between the lines of what’s going on and trusting that Shepard knows what they’re doing.

Now, that’s not to say that a super-distrustful Kaidan is entirely unrealistic. Namely, I think a romanced Kaidan feeling that Shepard has betrayed his trust by seemingly not reaching out to them in the two years and taking it pretty personally is a reasonable reaction. But other than that situation, I get the sense that Kaidan would mostly just be happy one of his closest friends is still alive and while he might have his reservations, is willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

And given Kaidan’s experience, I simply do not see him getting suckered by Udina THAT easily in Mass Effect 3. Unless Shepard has been deliberately blowing him off and/or antagonizing him, the moment Shepard came out that door with their squad and Udina starting spouting ‘Shepard must be with Cerberus!’, I have to imagine Kaidan would’ve started smelling bullshit and that whole standoff would NOT have happened.

By contrast, basically everything ME2 and ME3 expects of the Virmire Survivor I can ABSOLUTELY see Ashely doing. For good or ill, Ashely is THE hotheaded emotional one of Shepard’s original crew, so her taking Shepard’s disappearance and apparently not getting in touch with her very personally feels pretty in-character. And her being a very loyal and committed Alliance soldier makes her being extremely distrustful of Shepard working with Cerberus feels likewise understandable.

And as for Udina’s shenanigan’s in ME3? Yeah, I’d say Ashely is exactly loyal, unquestioning and gullible enough to fall for his bullshit. Especially after he made her a Spectre.

Finally, going back to the first game, I can’t help but feel that Kaidan making the big heroic sacrifice while Ashley gets saved is altogether a bit more fitting to their respective arcs and the narrative as a whole rather than the reverse.

In ME1, Ashley’s main defining character trait is that she basically has a martyr complex. She’s desperate to ‘redeem’ her family name after the ‘dishonor’ brought on it by her grandfather surrendering Shanxi during the First Contact War. Because of this, she is entirely willing to get herself killed if it would help the mission. She’s looking to throw herself on a sword to redeem her family name. Because of this, I feel like it’s more narratively fitting for Ashley to NOT get the big heroic death she’s partly looking for. Heck, Shepard will flat out call Ashley out on her martyr complex after Virmire if she’s saved. It feels like saving Ashley on Virmire gives her a real arc as a character.

By contrast, Kaidan doesn’t really have much of a character arc in ME1, or at least not one that is furthered by him being the Virmire survivor. Instead, because Kaidan starts the game already friends with Shepard, I’d argue that him being the one to die on Virmire has a bit more of an emotional gut-punch than Ashley’s death does. I mean, think of it like this; Kaidan is the first of your party members in the first game. Out of all their companions by this point of the story, Kaidan has been with Shepard the longest. Sure, Ashley has known Shepard second longest out of their companions, but I’d argue Shepard knowing him before the start of the game gives Kaidan’s death just a BIT more tragic punch.

All in all, after I started noticing all this a number of years back, it’s been one of those things I can’t really ‘unsee’ so to speak. Because my go-to ME1 route is FemShep romancing Liara, I tend to weigh Ashley and Kaidan fairly equally in terms of ‘who I like more’. So because of all this, I now view Ashley as more or less the ‘canon’ Virmire Survivor. Now that’s not to say I think other people who chose Kaidan over Ashley are ‘wrong’ in any way. Just that when we think of Mass Effect as its own self-contained narrative, rather than an interactive experience, it’s Ashley who is just the bit more likely to survive Virmire over Kaidan.

#mass effect #mass effect 1 #rambling #anthurak rambles #commander shepard #ashley williams #kaidan alenko #rambling about one of my favorite games #virmire survivor #trying to determine canon choices in an RPG

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