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otheenglishsetters · 3 years

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WIP (AKA, I never published my work on Tumblr before and I am TERRIFIED)

Hello! I finally gave in and splurged on a Xbox this year, which may have also coincided with my rising anxiety and boredom since I’ve decided to take a year off of college (my senior year to be exact). Luckily, my boyfriend and friends, knowing how I tend to throw myself into fictional worlds when I am stressed had recommended to me this sweet little game series. It was filled with space and wonder and characters so wonderful that they will make your heart hurt.

That, dear readers, was Mass Effect.

I had already played a little of the first game of the original trilogy at the very beginning of 2020 at my boyfriend’s house, long before all of my post-college plans came crashing down (as did the world too!)

So I finally invested my time (and money) into Mass Effect Andromeda in November of 2020. Let me tell you, after loosing control over everything else in my life [laying panicked in bed, constantly praying that the pandemic would not claim the life of my middle aged father after already losing my mother to lung cancer just two years prior], it was unbelievably refreshing to be able to have some resemblance of control in this fictional world (And yes, I realize that this is a video game and of course I have control). And the fact that what Bioware was doing was...pretty freaking great.

So, I apologize if this is coming off a pity-party, I promise, it isn’t supposed to be. It’s more like I had just finished my first playthrough of my first videogame ever and I am filled with feelings and emotions. I never post original content on Tumblr, and that’s mostly because I got scared off posting my work after receiving mean-spirited reviews when I posted my fanfiction on Fanfiction.com years and years ago (which is fair, because looking back my work wasn’t that great, but holy crap I was 14 guys!) I have not written creatively since my high school creative writing class in senior year, but this game and this winter, I thought I would try? And hopefully get to connect with other fans? Let me know what you guys think; I’m planning to add more chapters/content soon. Okay, I’ll quit rambling...

He notices that she tends to have a lazy eye. He’s not sure when exactly he notices this, but it’s becoming more and more apparent.

Which is not a problem, absolutely not. In fact, he thinks it’s adorable in a way, especially when she’s tucked into a pillow and loudly craving sushi.

“I wondered if she was mocking me,” Keema notes one day. Out of all the Angara Reyes has had the pleasure to meet, she still seems one of the few who can truly read humans in a non-lateral sense. Her favorite so far was when she discovered the music genres of both EDM and metal in the same day, “it wasn’t until I was approving shipping orders from the docks the other day I realized why. The Pathfinder needs glasses.”

She also loses control of her lazy eye, it seems, mostly at night, usually by 2300 hours standard time.

“I’ve been reading studies about team bonding.”

He hums as he rubs her back. Sara, despite commenting on the numerous things she’s done throughout her day, seems wired and intent on rambling. He’s okay with that. More than okay, it’s been years practically since either of them has had a free moment to even been able to just relax in bed and daydream. They probably both haven’t been able to enjoy this luxury since they were…teens? Finishing school and about to launch themselves into the military? For him, he figures it was before that, probably when he decided to work for that florist at 12. Sara gives bits and pieces of her life in the Milky Way but he thinks she was definitely a kid who tried to ‘help’ C-Sec with their cases, constantly looking for ways to help people in any way she can. He smiles. It’s probably a never-ending itch for her.

And now? He’s just content that he convinced her to come down to Kadara to ‘inspect Ditaeon’, or whatever bullshit she told Tann. Luckily, it seems that life is, slower? No, that’s not it, people are more than excited to create themselves anew here. Stores and trading posts are popping up everywhere and another hospital has just been built in Prodromos. There’s practically a whole shopping district in Kadara now, with outdoor venues and a movie theater that plays cinema classics every night. It’s more like they both are finally properly settled into their positions, like when a CEO is situated in a new company. Sure, the CEO may face numerous problems at first, especially if it’s during a recession or the company is about to go bankrupt. The CEO may even have to intimidate secondary managers and fight to gain respect; however, once the dust settles, whilst there may be everyday problems, it’s nothing compared to what it used to be. Usually, these problems are solved by lunchtime, mid-morning if either of them are lucky.

In the old days, when she appeared to be this amped up, Reyes would subtly (or not so subtle, it depends on how you look at it), swoon her until they had sex. It probably didn’t feel that way at the time, but sometimes Reyes cringes when he thinks of how rushed their attempts at romance used to be. Back then, they didn’t know how long she would be in the area and they would race to make the most of the evening. Now he wonders how much he used to unconsciously push aside the thought that either one of them could be dead the next day.

Errrr. Negative bedtime thoughts. Not good for sleepytime.

“Darling?”

“Yes?”

“Are you listening?”

“You were just telling me how you were reading various theses on social exchange theory but then you were already anxious about the thing that you have yet to tell me so you decided to read something familiar like one of the works by Dr. Brené Brown,” he pauses to give a quick glance at the data pad in his right hand. “Mi cielo, I have been informed to tell you that your contacts have been delivered as they were just sent in, along with the rest of the Tempest’s supplies, this morning.”

He liked to think he was a good boyfriend.

“I hate when you do that.”

“What?” Listen? Dearest, it’s part of the job description as your lover. Speaking of, remind me to pick up toilet paper tomorrow.”

“No, multitask.”

He sighs and reaches up into the upper center of her back. Oof, she really is tense there. “You do it too.”

“Not at nighttime!” She scowls and rubs her eyebrow. “Ew, when did I become an old prune as soon as it gets dark?”

He starts tenderizing the hard muscle. Mentally, he makes a note to remind her later when she’s not grumpy to do her prescribed yoga. “We’re all getting older dear. I’m thirty-one and the other day I heard my knees crack.”

She was silent. Any other fool would think that she was lost in thought while others would be jealous of the close bond she shares with her AI. Honestly, Reyes is just grateful she spends any of her time with him, let alone his bed. And if she occupies a part of it in a mental showdown with SAM, who is he to complain.

“SAM thinks you should get an appointment. Even if Dr. Nakamoto is busy, there’s plenty of others who are just as qualified. Also, I think Peebee and Jaal are sleeping with each other.”

Both he and Sara know the in(s) and the outs of their jobs so well by now, that he can probably predict easily what his men will ask for even before the message is downloaded on his office’ terminal. However right now, as Reyes stops reading a report on corn being grown on Havarl that he already skimmed over this morning over his huevos rancheros, all he can think about before checking to see if he is correct is how her left non-dominant eye is floating far out to the side.

Hmmm, who knew fraternization would be cutting into his beauty sleep?

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If you made it this far, thanks so much for checking this out! I apologize for any grammar mistakes. If you’re confused, this is set to take place three years after the Hyperion first makes contact with the Nexus in the Andromeda Galaxy. I was just so intrigued by the dialogue between Jaal and Peebee. And then, after the initial curiosity, I was about to forget about it when I came across some interesting dialogue while driving the Nomad...

Jaal: Vetra, I catch Peebee looking at me. Frequently.

Vetra: Peebee likes new shiny things. Uhh… and why not? You’re genuinely interesting.

Jaal: Vetra, remember when I told you that Peebee was looking at me? Frequently?

Vetra: Yeah? Is it getting annoying? Want me to say something?

Jaal: No, no, no. It’s… just that… lately, I find myself… looking back.

Vetra: Huh.

So of course I had to dig into that! And what better way to do so than by using my new favorite ship: Reyes and Sara? (Domestic times!)

Anyways friends, hopefully my writing isn’t awful and you enjoyed yourselves. I may wake up in the morning and delete this. Who knows.

Have a great day guys!

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dulcidyne · 5 years

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Experiments in Diplomacy: Troubleshooting [7/?]

There’s nothing in the Interspecies Diplomacy subsection of the Initiative handbook that covers sharing a tech lab with an angara who can kill her in her sleep. She knows, she’s read every page. Twice. (A collection of in-between vignettes from the Tempest tech lab)

//Jaal x Ryder // Humor. Romance. SFW // Previous chapters: [1][2][3][4][5][6] or read on Ao3

“I’ve got it.”

Exhaustion scuffs her smile down to expose the wiry, frenetic energy she scraped up from the bitter dregs of her last coffee. Jaal tilts his chin to angle a skeptical glance and a wry smile her way. Both say he’s expecting her new idea to be highly impractical. Neither are wrong. 89 consecutive power draw trials and three hours of sleep mean her ideas are starting to get a little...eccentric.

“I’ll just wear more power cells.” Se-ah slumps her weight onto her forearms, letting Mags do most of the work of keeping her upright. “Problem solved.”

“Pathfinder, by my calculations the number of additional power cells required exceed the free surface area of your hardsuit.”

For an AI living in her head, SAM can be surprisingly gullible. She finds it delightful. Tapping her raw, bitten-down fingernails against Maggie’s carbon glass, she pretends to give his objection serious thought. While she’s at it, she also pretends not to hear the dull staccato thump on the tech lab door. It’ll go away soon. At least, she hopes. The other side of the door is the last thing she has the mental capacity for right now.

“So we stack them.”

“Pathfinder—”

“Or I’ll just bring a portable generator, plug in for battle. We could make a harness for Drack.”

“Limitations in combat mobility render this solution highly impractical.”

SAM isn’t programmed with state-of-the-art emotional inflections—conveying emotion wasn’t ever high on her father’s list of priorities, clearly he didn’t think it should be high on SAM’s either—but there’s a jarring fluctuation in his modulated voice akin to alarm.

Jaal hears it too and works a thread of reproof into his smile, which, along with the majority of his attention, returns to the kett bioconverter he’s in the process of ripping apart for the sake of his own curiosity. “Ryder…”

“There are no bad ideas,” she intones defensively, grabbing the jumper wires Jaal sets down by her hand and getting back to work. They’ve developed a good rhythm together in the lab, much like the one they have in the field. It’s a dance of increasing familiarity, steps formed out of subtle gestures, reflex, and split-second instinct. She gets the shields while he lines up the shot. Static crackle and rifle report ringing out a background duple meter. The tempo in the lab is slower, less frantic without projectiles and wild animals trying to rip through her armor, but it still thrums in her bones like a reverberating pulse straight out of the Vortex subwoofers.

“Is that a common human expression?” Jaal asks her in a way that tells her he doesn’t care for it. “I’ve had several experiences that prove the opposite.”

Se-ah clips the connectors into place and grins, wide and slow. “Yeah? Would any of them involve teaming up with a ragtag group of Milky Way aliens?”

Before he can reach over for it, she slides a tube of thermal paste his way. Her fingers pause on the rolled-over top, waiting for him to ask for an explanation of the phrase ‘ragtag’ even as she opens her mouth to launch into it.

But he doesn’t. Instead, he huffs a low laugh, drawing closer. “No...but I suspect you only ask because you are already sure of my answer.”

Distracted by his proximity, she studies the variegated violet freckling over his cheekbones, awash in rippling blue light. Are they the angaran equivalent of freckles? Do angaran biochromophores react the same way to sunlight as melanin does? Does the scientific curiosity explain the urge to trace her hand across them and map an array of constellations all for herself? Distantly, she notes that the thumping on the door has stopped.

“Maybe I’m just making sure we’re on the same page?” The words gust out of her, soft and too breathy. She can’t spare a moment to be embarrassed over how blatantly romance-vid her reaction to him is. There’s nothing critical in his soft chuckle except a hint of exasperation over one too many idioms.

His hand cups the back of her own—still perched on the tube of thermal paste—engulfing it in half the span of his fingers. Warmth grips her through the material of his glove and palms a hot, shivering caress up her arm and into her chest. Before she can think, her palm impulsively twists to catch it, pressing up against his and slip her five fingers between his three.

The pad of his thumb traces over the line of her own, slow and soft as a sigh. “I think that whatever is on your page is on mine as well . ”

“Good, that’s good. About that. We should probably talk about exactly what’s on that page—besides your email, I mean, and with this whole. Fraternizing . Thing. ”

Her heartbeat thuds against her sternum. Not because he’s pulling her closer, well that too, but because her carefully-planned response to his email is garbling up in her head as if his nearness is so much interference turning her carefully planned words to static. She’s never been good at these types of conversations. Good at avoiding them? Absolutely. But she’s tired of living in the liminal spaces of relationships where nothing is concrete or defined and everything is vague half-hopes and swallowed desires. That might be good enough for the person she used to be but not anymore. She wants this. Wants to tell him.

“If you’re sure she just forgot…” comes a voice from the other side of the door—Scottish brogue muffled but distinct. Se-ah barely has time to pull free and step away from him before the hydraulic system hisses metal panels open to reveal Peebee and Suvi, who at least has the good sense to look very apologetic.

“Sorry Ryder, but she kept insisting there was some mistake.”

Se-ah exhales long and slow. Then she bows her head back down in the guise of surveying the connectors scattered across Maggie’s top while silently cursing her merciful decision not to throw a certain asari out the airlock.

“Nope.” She pops the ‘p’ hard against her lower lip. “Not a mistake.”

“So what’s with the tension in here?” Peebee scans between them, then flicks a commiserating half-grin in Jaal’s direction. “Mad at you too huh?”

Se-ah bites down on her retort, hard, and her lip smarts for it. The imprint of his hand against hers is a phantom warmth transmuted into an insistent ache. All the words she couldn’t say are still buzzing in her head, too loud. She unclips all the connectors that she just put in. They’re all wrong. What was she thinking?

Jaal has no response but Peebee never has a problem filling up other people’s side of the conversation--a trait Se-ah finds either exasperating or charming, depending on the situation. “Well at least she can’t revoke your access to your own room, right?”

“Is there something you want Peebee?” Se-ah flexes her hand, willing the wistful ache out of her skin.

“Why do you assume I’m here because I want something?” Peebee does a convincing enough job of sounded wounded. “I can have altruistic motives too, you know. I came because I was worried.”

Confusion has Se-ah glancing up from the bench just in time to see Suvi wisely edge out of the lab and make a discrete escape. “Worried?” she asks, “About what?”

“About you , obviously. You know, the whole amnesia thing you clearly have going on.”

Well, that’s on her, she should’ve known better than to engage. Se-ah heaves a sigh up towards the deckhead panels for her own naivete and goes back to reclipping the connectors, hoping silence will be enough of a hint to be left alone.

It is not. Because nothing in Andromeda goes the way she wants it to, especially not when a certain asari is involved. Instead of leaving, Peebee crosses the room to stand on the other side of the tech bench, ducking her head low enough to press her cheek against the glossy top.

“Ryder,” she says, voice full of concern. “Do you remember who I am?”

“Peebee…”

“Good! Good, that’s a relief. Now, do you remember telling me you weren’t mad about the whole borrowing the ozone scrubbers and that I could have my access to the lab back?”

“What I remember telling you is that there are consequences for putting other people on this ship in danger and that your access to the lab will be contingent on supervision until--”

Peebee scrunches up her face as if this is the first she’s heard of all this. “Nooo, I’m pretty sure you said I had my access back, no babysitting required. SAM?”

“Leave SAM out of this. You took them. Without permission. You almost destroyed Ma--the machine. Do you think I should trust you to be in here alone after that? ”

“Trust has nothing to do with this. I was obviously going to put them back as soon as possible. You know that. How was I supposed to know you’d be up all night using the damn thing? It’s called sleep , Ryder. Ever heard of it? Look, just admit you’re still mad at me. Then we can hug or something, Jaal will probably cry, knowing him--it’ll be better than a drama vid.”

Jaal clearly agrees with either the idea or the prediction that he’d be left in tears. Possibly both. He nods sagely. “That’s an excellent idea. Once you acknowledge your feelings, you can work towards resolving the issue.” Se-ah drops all pretense of working and scrubs her hand over her face. “I’m not mad. This has nothing to do with my feelings and everything to do with a totally reasonable punishment.”

“If you’re not mad, we can just skip to the hug part then—”

Peebee makes to circle around the tech bench, proving it is no empty threat. Her unique brand of emotional distance is oddly physical in nature; pinching, prodding, jumping on, squeezing, all while holding everyone at an arm’s length. She’d do it, the madwoman , she’d hug her. Se-ah startles back, hands coming up defensively to ward it off.

“Calm down Ryder, it’s a hug, not a bomb. Why so tense?” Peebee snorts, delighted over this new development. Her eyes are bright and glittering in a mad-scientist way. A woman afraid of hugs is an oddity and Peebee happens to specialize in unraveling oddities. Se-Ah would much prefer to stay tightly raveled.

She clears her throat in a bid for composure but can’t bring herself to lower her hands. “You can’t just flirt your way out of everything Peebee.”

“Oh yeah?” A dozen different flavors of innuendo squeeze into the smooth drop of her voice and the slow, satisfied curl of her lips. Glittering eyes shift into something beguiling, beckoning her. “Can’t you let me try though?” “I’m--a little busy at the moment,” Se-ah stutters, flushing all the way down to her shirt collar. Fabric scratches her rapidly warming throat. She tugs it away impatiently. Damnit Peebee . She’ll take disarming a bomb any day over Peebee’s determined seduction technique. At least she knows how to handle a bomb.

White teeth flash into a triumphant grin. Whatever game Peebee is playing, she’s winning and she knows it. She moves closer, in for the kill. “Which is exactly why you should let me work out some of that tension.”

All at once, Se-ah is done. It’s so Peebee to derail conflict with a come-on; not even a come-on she’s actually invested in. Probably.

“Which is exactly why I can’t supervise you right now.” she snaps, imbuing her voice with every gram of authority she can muster. “The conversation about access reinstatement will have to wait for another time.”

Peebee’s smile dims and hurt slumps her shoulders before she squares them up for a shrug that tells Se-ah the wounded act from before was only partially put on. Being on the outs bothers her; which explains a lot. Peebee is at her Peebee -ist when she’s trying to hide the fact that she cares. It’s almost enough for Se-ah to forget how irritated she is and start feeling guilty over it.

“Have SAM make a note of it before the amnesia kicks in again,” Peebee quips over her shoulder, already halfway out the door.

Almost . Se-ah bites down on her very juvenile, very unprofessional retort. Snatching up a pair of needle nose pliers, she flays open an insulated wire with a focused viciousness normally reserved for Kett. Once the copper threads are stripped bare she realizes Jaal has been watching her intently the whole time. “Peebee is right,” he concludes. Traitor. Se-ah scowls, feeling hopelessly wrong-footed. She shouldn’t have snapped. A good leader shouldn’t ever let it get that personal. It’s just that Peebee...she clenches her jaw against a fresh wave of irritation. Peebee can be impossible sometimes. Flustered, she flings the wire away and watches it skid across the bench top.

“I am not mad. I’m just being reasonable. It was entirely professional.”

There’s a voice in the back of her head that says her claim to professionalism rings hollow . It sounds like a dead woman. She would never be this close with her crew, letting it undermine her leadership. She took Alliance regulations about fraternization seriously, didn’t see the point in risking her career over messy personal entanglements. She wouldn’t be on any page with Jaal, not with a diplomatic relationship with an alien species on the line regardless of if it went well or poorly. Something painful grinds in her chest, a raw fuse of broken emotion she’s still not ready to deal with. It feels like empty chairs at recitals, graduations, commendation ceremonies--like unanswered vid calls and unsigned cards and Scott’s accusatory, ‘You never get mad because you’re just like him’ . Career first. Personal entanglements later...she wonders what Jaal would think about that. What her--

Jaal’s palm settles over her shoulder and she glances up, startled. “She was right about the hug. You do need one, you’re very tense.”

His touch is a warm, reassuring weight that anchors her to the floor and she relaxes into it despite the objectively horrifying suggestion.

“Ryders don’t hug,” she says without much mirth. It’s an inside joke that isn’t actually a joke. One of Scott’s. He liked to pull a stern expression, looking eerily like their dad when he said it. Or, he used to. Once they realized the truth at the heart of it, after mom’s death, it was less a joke and more of an observation told with the cadence of one.

All of this is lost on Jaal. In her entire arsenal of idioms, she’s never seen him so baffled. A stomach-churning emotion props a stilted smile up at the corner of her mouth. It feels like it will topple off her lips at any moment. Beneath his hand, her shoulder bunches up as she shifts back to squeeze a couple extra centimeters between them without breaking contact.

“We’re just not very good at it. We only inflict them on others on very rare occasions.”

Occasions she can count out on one hand: saying goodbye to halmeoni in the hospital, her and Scott’s 8th and worst birthday, Aunt Eldora crushing her lungs at mom’s funeral, the handful she shared with Iraenya, including the one signifying their tidy breakup after she signed on for the Andromedra Initiative. Even then, privately, she thinks the word ‘hug’ is far off the mark for all those situations.

There isn’t a single word that would be on the mark. All she can think of are the plastic dolls she played with as a kid and their serene, frozen-faced smiles (although her Matriarch Dilinaga was partially melted from her last expedition into the ‘Attican Traverse’, so it was more of a grimace) as she clacked them together into rough approximations of an embrace, their arms extended out and rigid.

Realization strikes him and Jaal chuckles, squeezing her tense shoulder. “Ah, you’re... ‘pulling my foot’.”

“Uh...no.” Her frozen-faced grimace is a near exact replica of her Dilinaga doll. “I’m not. I am really bad at them.I get...tense and awkward. It’s like hugging a bundle of sticks but with less capacity for warmth.”

“Oh.” The word drops between them like a stone. As the echoes clatter around them something strange happens to his face. It’s been weeks, so it takes her a moment to realize he’s schooling his expression to mask his emotions. Poorly. He manages to banish some of the slow-dawning horror drawing his brow into a rictus of concern and plaster up a tremulous smile as he gently releases her shoulder. The loss gusts cold beneath the thin edge of her shirt.

“I didn’t...I didn’t think that was possible…” She watches him choose his words with care, discarding a dozen alternatives before settling on one free of judgement. Considering his vehement pronouncements on emotionally stunted humans, it’s absence is...unexpected. “I don’t entirely understand. Is that...healthy for humans?”

“For some it is. For some people, the physical contact can be overwhelming. Painful, even. But I don’t think it’s something you can generalize with us.”

He doesn’t seem to know what to do with his hands and finally settles for crossing his arms over his chest, folding them away. “I see.”

It would be nothing to reach out and pull his hand back into hers. A dozen centimeters, maybe less. Her fingers ache with possibility but that dozen centimeters is a 2.5 million light-year wide gap between them, full to the brim with mores and customs and her own personal hang-ups piled on for good measure. She sucks in a breath and squares her shoulders, her muscles drawing tighter, her hands clenching in on themselves.

“Then,” he asks, “for you, specifically?”

“Uh…”

Blunt but disarming. Her shoulders fall and her hands uncurl in synchrony—as if he’s hit a reset button and restored her back to original factory settings. Factory-setting Se-Ah is not eloquent. All she does is gape while her brain finishes the laborious process of starting back up again.

“I don’t actually know? It’s not an easy question to answer.”

“It isn’t?”

“No!” Se-ah cries, an improbable laugh hiccuping through the word. “I mean, maybe it should be but it just isn’t for me. It’s been over 600 years since I’ve really touched anyone, much less hugged anyone and only part of that is because of the cryogenic coma.”

“That sounds...so painful.” Naked distress flashes through his face, to raw to hide, and his hand crosses between them to thumb a line from the point of her jaw to her ear. His fingers skim the curve of her ear before he can collect himself again and draw back. She doesn’t let him. Her palm traps his hand against her neck, over her pulse point.

“It’s just what I’m used to. I’ve never even thought about it until recently.”

His gloved thumb rubs a reassuring circle against her skin. “And now that you’ve thought about it?”

Fitting her fingers into the spaces between his, she smiles. His hand on her feels better than anything and she wants...she wants more.

“ I think the problem is that I don’t have enough data. I’ll need to run some tests if you wouldn’t mind...helping?”

Jaal’s laugh rumbles against her ear, his arms enfolding her. It’s awkward. Her cheek bumps against the alien ridge of his chest, her hands and arms don’t quite know what to do and her muscles lock up against him.

“I told you I was bad at this,” she says, glad that he can’t see her mortified blush.

“Are you uncomfortable?” Jaal’s arms loosen around her. “No, but this can’t be comfortable for you.”

Still cupping the curve of her neck, he pulls her closer into the embrace with the arm banding across her back. Another laugh reverberates, deep, all the way down to her toes. “I think you’re doing very well. Just...try to relax.”

Tentative, her free hand slips beneath the fluttering line of his rofjinn towards his back. He’s so warm. Her arms tighten against him and with a bit of settling, her cheek finds a nice hollow. Seconds pass, an interminable amount of time for a hug before, but now her whole body is tingling. It’s as if she’s fallen asleep on the workbench and woken up with her arm numb below the elbow before going to pins and needles--except all over. It’s like waking up in a cryogenic chamber. Coming alive all at once, overwhelmed with something where there was once so much nothing.

The miniature star in her chest expands, rises, and spills out of her lips as a gasping sob.

#jaal x ryder #jaal romance #mass effect fanfiction #dulcidyne writes #Tales from the Tempest Tech Lab #How to hug in 10 easy steps #They should make a manual #Not all of us are good at them

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mageliberation · 7 years

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29 Days: What is your Ryder’s name? Why did you pick this name - is there a meaning or origin story behind it? Do they go by any nicknames? What would you name their sibling, father and mother if you were able to choose?

I’ve decided to go with Imani for my default Ryder. Imani is Swahili for Faith/Trust/Confidence. I chose this because I thought it was appropriate for someone who’s had the kind of life Pop!Ryder has had, along with what we know of the kind of future the Twin!Ryders will be pursuing, to have it be something that relayed a faith in humanity and the good we can achieve/strive for. Her middle name is Brei and her family [and exes], call her Brei or Brei Brei. I like the idea of Mama!Ryder being just as tough but way more playful than Pop!Ryder so I’d name Bro!Ryder Amani and her Khadija probably.

28 Days: Are you going to use the default appearance or create a custom Ryder? If custom, describe your Ryder’s physical appearance (hair color, eye color, skin color, height, weight, facial features, any scars or tattoos, racial origin, etc). If you have art and/or a face-claim, feel free to add them here.

If I have a choice I never play as a White person so I’ll def be changing the appearance of literally all of my Ryders. Imani is 6′2, has very dark Black skin, Brown Eyes, a runner's kind of lean muscle build, prominent cheekbones, deep dimples, stretch marks around her major joints from being an underweight child who grew into a hardy youth, straight white teeth, and keeps her hair in short finger coils with buzzed sides. She has some geometric blackwork tattoos reminiscent of Kente Cloth to harken back to her roots [African-American/Black]. Basically she looks like a darker version of Teyonah Parris, with Angela Bassett’s cheekbones, and dimples.

27 Days: Are you going to use the default appearance for Ryder’s sibling or customize them? Describe your ideas for their sibling’s and father’s physical appearance.

Um, no. Lmao, I would never. The Bro!Ryder for my default Ryder, I’d call him Amani] looks like a mix of Broderick Hunter and Adonis Bosso in my head. Dad!Ryder looks like a less fine Tyson Beckford. Mom Ryder prolly looks like a mix or Naomi Campbell and Tika Sumpter.

26 Days: Do you have a specific class profile or mix of class profiles in mind for Ryder?

I like playing as a Sniper Soldier. Idk how that’s fit with the new system but yeah that’s what I’m going with.

25 Days: Describe Ryder’s favorite combat style. Bioware call Peebee a “gunslinger” and describe Liam as a “close-range fighter” - how would you describe Ryder’s combat role/strengths? What are some of their favorite biotic/tech/other abilities?

I’d say Imani is a Long-Range specialist with Brawler capabilities. I’d say she likes the “One Man, One Bullet” Rule or if that’s not enough/effective she shoots from a distance to weaken shields enough to get in close for a melee finisher. The Omniblade, whether in melee or as a projectile is her favorite ability.

24 Days: Which squadmates do you think will best compliment Ryder’s combat style? Alternatively, who do you plan to take out most in the field?

I’ll probably take Liam out the most since I want to romance him but really I won’t know until I play since I like to have a relatively balanced party. Maybe Jaal if he/they have biotics? Or Vetra and Cora since I love the idea of an all female squad and I kind of want to romance Cora w/ a Sis!Ryder even though I hate her haircut/color combo. I like muscular girls.

23 Days: Which weapons or category of weapons will Ryder prefer? Describe their favorite loadout.

Snipers and Assault rifles for sure are her preferred weapons of choice. Black Widow, Modded Assault Rifle, doesn’t matter for other two since she rarley ever uses them.

22 Days: Will Ryder craft? What are you most excited about crafting? Do you have any names in mind already for weapons?

She’ll def be crafting. I’m a little bit of an achievement hunter after I’ve beaten a game once. I’ll prob be focusing on ship and weapons upgrades my first go round since those are the ones I like the most.

21 Days: What are Ryder’s personality traits? Describe 5 strengths and 5 flaws.

Strength

1) Passionate - Imani feels deeply and expresses just as strongly.

2) Determined - She’s slow to get started but once decided it is very hard to sway her from whatever goal she’s set or decision she’s made.

3) Charming - She likes schmoozing and making people feel good about themselves and convincing others to see things her way.

4) Intelligent - Sharp all around she loves learning new things and listening to people talk about things they are knowledgeable about.

5) Compassionate - As a deeply empathetic person she feels deeply for others and will sacrifice for those around her.

Flaws

1) Divisive - Imani has strong opinions on a lot of things and can be dismissive of opinions she finds to be uninformed or positions she finds reprehensible, along with the people holding them.

2) Neurotic - She procrastinates until she doesn’t, and then she obsesses and goes through mood shifts based on her perception of her choices and their results.

3) Obnoxious - Some find her to be “too much” or “too big” of a personality and if they do she’s quick to let them know exactly which part of her they can kiss.

4) Self-Righteous - Imani can admit that she’s wrong, on the rare occasion that she is, anyway.

5) Needy - She has always sought out the approval of those she cares about and who she admires, many times to the extent that it was a detriment ot her own well being.

20 Days: What first impressions does Ryder tend to give people? Do they have any ‘odd’ or specific mannerisms, habits or other quirks? How do they present and carry themselves?

Imani’s the kind of person that has such a big personality, in her speaking cadence, tonation, and content of what she’s saying, that people end up liking her partially because they actively want to. Reciprocal liking has been a major player in all of her relationships outside her family.

19 Days: Where would Ryder fall in the classic Paragon/Renegade morality system? What would their D&D alignment be? If you know their personality type in any personality typing systems (such as MBTI and Enneagram - you can find various type descriptions and tests using Google), feel free to add and discuss them here.

In the classic system I’d say she’d be a Paragon. In D&D she’d be Chaotic Good for sure. Malcolm X is one of her history heros. She believes in doing whatever is necessary and is a staunch opponent of the idea that violence against one’s oppressor is “just as bad” or “stooping to their level”. Seriously, you might have to catch her on the corner if you said that shit in her presence, or at the very least expect a verbal drop kick. Space Socialist, tbh.

18 Days: What qualities does Ryder like and dislike in other people? Are there any things they particularly appreciate or can’t stand?

Imani likes people who are giving and humble. She especially appreciates people who complement her ostentatiousness with quiet contemplation or careful word choosing. Both of her exes were the the somewhat stoic at first meeting but gold hearted and secretly funny once they warmed to you type. She doesn’t like people who are mean for fun or who are judgmental about material things. She can’t stand people chewing with their mouth open or who leave their hair all over the place in the bathroom [her ex-girlfriend]. She loves people who don’t mind doing dishes and who have tongue rings [both her ex-bf and gf for the last bit].

17 Days: List some of Ryder’s favorite things - colors, food, music, etc. Is there anything of this nature that they hate? Do they have any hobbies or skills outside of combat?

She hates tomatoes on burgers or in an unaltered state. She loves ceviche, salsa, and onions in general. Her favorite music is “Classical” [90s Earth American R&B] and she loves eating and cooking food as a hobby. Her main hobby is future Dungeons & Dragons. Her favorite colors are Black, Navy Blue, Pastel Yellow, Pastel Blue, Pastel Purple, Mint and White. She likes solid gold statement jewelry despite not wearing it much.

16 Days: How would Ryder define their sexuality?

She’s Bisexual.

15 Days: Delve into the Ryder family background - how is/was their relationship with their father, sibling and mother? Do they get along, hero worship, close twin connection, sibling rivalry, was it strained, was it distant, etc.

Imani’s relationship with her father has always been strained, honestly. He’s never given her praise without using the next breath to cut her down. His expectations have always been just high enough that they are nearly out of her reach until she gets close and he moves the goalpost. She and her brother have always been best friends and he often complained that she was bossy as a child despite doing as she asked anyways, mostly to tease her. Their mother was definitely the preferred parent for both twins. She was often stern but warm and encouraging at the same time. Even if she had similar expectations she never made the twins feel like she didn’t believe they couldn’t achieve them or that even if they didn’t she’d think any less of them.

14 Days: Describe some important or formative events in Ryder’s history. How did these impact and shape them?

The visit to their mother’s home on Earth was a formative experience for both twins but especially for Imani. The idea that her mother could come from such a harsh reality and still end up being such a giving and compassionate person amazed her in her youth and made her want to do her best to grow into the kind of person her mother would respect even if they weren’t related. The second big formative event in her life was the loss of her ex-boyfriend, med student and first love, who was killed while doing medical volunteer work on a backwater frontier planet by Batarian slavers. They’d been together through university and had talked of marriage and a future together and the sudden loss has left her with lingering issues with abandonment and co-dependency. Which made her most recent formative experience of her latest long term romance with her girlfriend, a linguistic conservationist, who refused her ticket into the Andromeda Initiative especially devastating for her.

13 Days: Why did Ryder join the Alliance military? Later on, what were Ryder’s reasons for signing up to the Andromeda Initiative? Were they seeking adventure (or glory, or a challenge), wanting a new start, running from something, following their family, trying to secure a future for humanity, did they simply feel railroaded into it, etc.

Imani joined the Alliance first and foremost because they would pay for her education. The Andromeda Initiative seemed to her like the opportunity to become the kind of space fairing coalition of races she’d glimpsed in her adolescent marathoning of the Old Earth vids “Star Trek”. The idea of being parted from her brother for the rest of her life being a loss she couldn’t accept only added to her determination to join up.

12 Days: How will Ryder feel upon waking up from cryo? Relieved, excited, scared, impatient to get going, lost, etc.

I think Imani will be both relieved and terrified. She realizes what a big undertaking trying to start fresh is and how many peoples hopes, wishes, futures, and dreams are firmly settled on her shoulders to actuate.

11 Days: Once in Andromeda, what are Ryder’s goals? What drives them?

Ryder wants to do exactly as the Andromeda Initiative has stated, in that she wants to find a new home for humanity and the other citadel races. Not only that but she wants this new home to be that aspirational City on A Hill. A true beacon of civilization in its equity, fairness, and compassion for all it’s citizens. Her goals are to do whatever is necessary to make that real.

10 Days: Will Ryder ever miss the Milky Way? What things and places will they miss most?

Ryder may have grew up on ships and space station but she’s an Earther at heart. She will always miss her home planet, that little ancestral home that her mother’s mother worked herself to the bone for, in that place that their ancestors were brought to, and the sound of the wind in the trees surrounding it at night. The burial ground of what she’d thought would one day be her future. The soft yellow of the sheets of the one who made her believe she could have one again. Also, craving for genuine Belizean food at that place near 38th street will probably plague her for the rest of her days.

9 Days: Did Ryder have any notable friends or connections in the Milky Way? How about past relationships? Which friendship or relationship was the most significant to them?

She had many friends whom her heart will always ache for the want of their presence but none she could've said no to her posting for. Her ex-girlfriend, Mya, was alive and well when she left her, if heartbroken and handling it better than Imani. Their relationship had not been new but had not been as old as the one before it. Still they’d talked of a future together, or marriage, or a life shared.

8 Days: How does Ryder feel about aliens? Are they uncomfortable, wary, intrigued, curious, intimidated, not bothered, etc? In the Milky Way, where did they stand on humanity’s place in galactic society - Earth first, Terra Firma, human superiority, peaceful cooperation, pro-galactic integration & unity, etc? How will they feel upon discovering that there are sentient alien races in Andromeda?

Ryder generally feels that aliens are “people” in that their varied cultures and customs cannot be generalized as all good or all bad just as she would hope they would feel about humanity. Batarians in general are a sore spot for her though as most of their cultures venerate practices that her own ancestors fought to be free from and are still to this day dealing with the repercussions of. Which doesn’t even touch on the whole “Batarians killed one of the loves of my life” bit. Imani is a Unitarian and believed, similar to the Asari, that co-operation and unification of space fairing races was the best solution for extended peace and prosperity for all parties. Of course she is also still a socialist and didn’t think that the continuation of Capitalism as a Socio-Economic system in the continually advancing and already hyper advanced society they lived in was wise or sustainable for said goals of extended peace or prosperity.

7 Days: Ryder’s father gave the twins informal N7 training in the past. How did Ryder feel about this (pressured, resentful, grateful, motivated, overworked, excited, etc)? What are their feelings on “N7” as a symbol? How do they relate to it, if at all?

Imani felt pressured into the training and was thus resentful of it despite feeling at the end of it that she was better prepared for what may come in the future of her career/life in general. Shepard was a mixed bag of inspiration for Imani growing up as she has always had a mixed set emotions about herself and those who serve in military arms of governments whatever their species. She could do without the propaganda of The Alliance and it’s Elite N7 program even though she can appreciate the good the Alliance has done/is doing. She refuses to allow Nationalism/Specieism/etc to cloud her vision from the realities of the atrocities that said arms have also taken part in/co-signed or in her own place as a potential participant.

#mea #Mass Effect 4 #mass effect andromeda #meacountdown

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