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chaoticspacefam · 3 years

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Elven Rambles About Character Builds

So! As we know, SWTOR’s body types (especially for the women) are sorely lacking in proper variety in-game. It’s something that’s always bothered me, and I have specific images in my head for how I imagine each of my main girls to look in terms of their figure. But the problem is, for all of them, none of the in-game body presets that are available come close to their actual builds, I’ve just had to settle for “eh, I guess this is as close as I’m gonna get, whatever”

I’m putting the rest under a cut because it gets quite long, I do talk a little bit about the slavery plot point of the Inquisitor storyline so that’s something to be aware of before proceeding, but it’s mostly just a lot of me rambling about my dumb space children so be prepared for a lot of reading, I guess (there’s pictures too tho!) haha

Aria is certainly the “worst” for this, because while she has a “baby” face, her torso is a lot chunkier, and most importantly, she’s short, ya girl’s 5 ft 1 for God’s sakes! I don’t know if it’s just my eyes, but to me, BT2 looks the “shortest”, so even though BT4 is probably the “closest” I can get in game to her overall structure, it’s too tall for her. So, I’ve ended up having to “settle” for BT2 even though it makes her look way too slender, really. (honest to God, can we have someone on character design that doesn’t insist on every woman having a perfect hourglass figure because “they have to be that way or they’re not attractive”, PLEASE Bioware! Bigger, round or square, or pear-shaped or whatever, ladies, can still be beautiful too!)

And let’s not mention that there’s such a vast difference in all the different male body type options (look at male BT2 and male BT3 for instance) And yet for the ladies, the differences are so subtle that I honestly have to squint to see them (and yes, I have kinda crappy eyesight but it should be more easily noticeable, if you can do it for the men you can do it for the women, you fucking cowards) because that’s a whole other rant. ANYWAY

SO, Ela shared the link to this site in our wonderful SWTOR content creator discord that I’m resident in and of course my brain went “wait a minute, I can use this”

So I did. It’s certainly not perfect but it’s good enough to give a much closer representation of how I imagine their builds/shapes to look. As mentioned I have a general idea of how I want them to be shaped in my head, but it helps to have a visual reminder when I’m trying to draw them, so now I have been making these silhouettes to add to their (new) ref sheets when I get round to em

This is more along the lines of how I imagine Ari to look. She’s smol, and very square-shaped, with a fair bit of fat on her lower half especially (it all goes to her hips, I feel ya girl XD) So, I reiterate again, BT4 would be “correct” enough in terms of the pudge and the general shape, but it’s way too tall-looking in all the cutscenes I tried it in. So, BT2 was what I “settled” with, but this is the sort of build she should have.

and then in-game, Vano, Ni’kasi & Saarai are all BT3, because it’s the only “tall” option, but there’s a big problem with this because as the only option, it means your character has to be “tall and perfectly hourglass” which is....not the case really for any of them. There’s literally no options to have a “tall/big” lady but also have a different build or muscle structure and it frustrates me to no end, because even though they’re very close in height, their body types couldn’t be more different.

Exhibit A, the twins, put side-by-side to really show the difference between them:

Saarai is a 6 ft 3 wall of pure muscle, she’s a literal tank & even though she’s fit, she’s very “broad” in stance & stature, she does have a sort of hourglass dip on her hips but it’s very subtle because she’s just that muscly (thanks dad, she’s definitely your kid pfpfpfpf) Ni’kasi, on the other hand? She’s only 6ft, she took more after mom than dad height-wise, and there’s no way for me to show it easily on this silhouette (I’m working on other stuff & don’t have time to make an edit in Sketchbook just for this post), but she actually did get Kissai’s broad shoulders...the problem is, that unlike Saarai, Ni’kasi hasn’t had a steady, healthy diet after she got turfed down the social ladder into the slave pits. Poor diet (and a shortage of enough food, too, they had to keep her in line & stop her escaping somehow, obvious solution: “make sure she’s too weak to even think about it”) means she’s a lot skinnier and more “twiggy” than her twin. She’s not grossly underweight anymore, obviously the Overseers and Zash had to make sure she was fed up properly to gain enough strength to be able to train & then run around the galaxy killing things at Zash’s bidding, BUT because of the malnourishment she suffered at that point in her life, she’s never going to get as much muscle as Saarai did and even though she’s a healthier weight now, she’s still slender. She has more of an hourglass than her twin, but her hips are much narrower than her shoulders, so it’s not as prominent (and even this silhouette has too much of an hourglass for her as is, but as I mentioned earlier, don’t have time to make the edit myself rn, will do it later XD)

And finally, Exhibit B, Vano:

Now, I would argue Vano would be the closest of the three to being pretty much BT3. But note “the closest”, not “exact”. Why? Vano’s 6 ft 2, so she’s only an inch shorter than Rai, but their builds are very different. Saarai’s a beefcake, but Vano’s a Mirialan, so she’s got muscle, but she’s lean and tall. Vano here is about 80% or so legs and 20% the rest of her body, she’s got legs for daaayss and that’s what gives her the height, but apart from a six pack, you won’t actually see most of her muscle, whereas Saarai could flex with her guns out and you’d totally notice.

This got very long, so if you made it all the way to the end of this post of me blabbing about how I wish the body types had more variety & why I want that for my girls, I appreciate you very much, have a cookie! 🍪 🍪 🍪 🍪 🍪 < take one and pass it on as they say ;) hahaha

#swtor #long post #elven's swtor headcanons #elven's character references #< a new tag for later that'll have all their refs in once i've made them. plus i want to be able to find this later when i need it lol #i don't think this warrants a ''critical'' tag necessarily bc it's mostly just me babbling about the girl's builds/muscle structures etc.#there's a *teeny* bit of criticising but anyone who's played the game by now should've noticed & i don't think it's unfair to point it out #tw: slavery mention #(canon-typical inquisitor storyline but ya know)#i'm on the fence abt whether to add these silhouettes to the bio page in the pinned post #it'd mean i have to make them for the others on there which i don't have time to do rn #i've only done the four mains so i could talk about it with the visuals in this post #but maybe when i have time i will :D #swtor oc: vano shenly #swtor oc: aria saal #swtor oc: saarai ahaszaai #swtor oc: ni'kasi ahaszaai #the ahaszaai twins

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expertmakodriver · 4 years

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30 Day Mass Effect Challenge: Day 5

5. Favorite character?

Surprising (hopefully) not a soul: Garry Vakary himself

(Disclaimer: I’m going to be talking about him in the context of the first two games while disregarding the third. Also, while Femshep technically is my favorite character, I already made a post about her, so I’m making this section about Garrus.)

Strap in, folks, because this is going to be a long post.

When I first encountered Garrus, I immediately felt a connection to him since he seemed like one of the few people on the Citadel who actually gave a shit about stopping Saren. Despite being a C-Sec officer bound by red tape, he proved that he was a man of action by leaving all of the bureaucracy behind and getting some real work done with Shepard and the Normandy crew. Since turians and humans had a few remnants of tension between them as a result of the Relay 314 Incident/First Contact War, which was still somewhat recent, it was nice to see another turian, besides Nihlus, act civilly towards a human.

Garrus was so eager to step up and take action against Saren; of course I let him aboard the Normandy. His struggle and Shepard’s struggle with politics are very similar; they both don’t like being told what to do by clueless politicians/higher-ups who try to prevent them from solving problems. This comes into play when Garrus and Shepard begin conversing more and more on the Normandy. I’ve always felt that Garrus’s interactions were a bit more profound than those of any other crew member; they don’t just talk to each other, but exchange opinions and feedback and really try to understand each other. They eventually develop a sort of mentor-protégé relationship to the point where Shepard really has a deep effect on Garrus in terms of his way of viewing the world. I had Shepard lead Garrus down the Renegade path while enforcing a few Paragon ideas (such as being cautious of the thin moral line that any Spectre walks as someone with nearly unlimited power in Citadel space), and I still do to this day.

I’ve always found it funny that Garrus is always super respectful to Shepard despite being a bit of a jerk to pretty much everyone else. Seeing him thank the commander at the end of the game for letting him in on the action and teaching him some valuable lessons was heartwarming, too. It made me kind of sad to think that he would go back to C-Sec after the war with Saren and Soverign was over, especially since he seemed to be so miserable there, but it was nice to know that he would follow Shepard’s lead and train to be a Spectre later on.

Fast forward to Mass Effect 2, and I was so upset when The Illusive Man said that Garrus had disappeared a few months after the Normandy was destroyed. I kept wondering what had happened to him and if he would ever appear in the game again, but when I took a closer look at Archangel’s dossier and noticed the line “omni-tool expert and noted sniper” on it, I became very suspicious despite not wanting to get my hopes up.

Throughout Archangel’s recruitment mission, I kept worrying. Hearing the mercs talk about how Archangel had been cornered and put through hell for the past few days didn’t sit well with me. I think that was the one point at which I hoped that Archangel wasn’t Garrus, because I didn’t want to imagine Garrus going through all of that on his own. When I saw that Archangel had blue armor, I knew for sure it was him. Taking off his helmet and revealing his identity to Shepard made me so happy that I wasn’t at all bothered by how little I was surprised. I wasn’t entirely relieved, though, because Garrus was still in immediate danger. Seeing him so tired and damaged was rough; he was fairly different from the enthusiastic C-Sec officer that I had brought with me on every mission in the previous game. Even though he was exhausted and didn’t exactly have sufficient energy to physically display his emotion, you could tell just how happy he was to see Shepard alive and kicking. “Yeah I shot at you, Shepard. I wanted to get you moving so you could come get my ass out of here.”

When Shepard was forced to leave his side to close the shutters in the base’s lower level, I was in full panic mode. I didn’t trust Jacob or Miranda enough to leave them alone with him. Then when Garrus was nearly killed by the rocket that blew half of his face off, I literally had to pause the game and calm myself down because of how pissed I was. Of course I was distraught at the sight of his motionless body bleeding out on the ground, but I was also upset with the possibility that the game would give me a surprise reunion with my favorite character just to kill him off so quickly. I was, for the second time, overjoyed when I saw that he was alive a few moments later, but hearing him gasping for breath and choking on his own blood with Shepard, who is almost always composed and level-headed, freaking out while trying to help him was heart-wrenching.

Then, right after I see Shepard looking very nervous and upset as Jacob explains the extent of Garrus’s injuries to her back on the Normandy, the smug bastard himself walks out of surgery and just casually waltzes up to Shepard like, “It’s only a flesh wound, I’ve had worse” and I literally thanked BioWare out loud for not killing Garrus. Shepard’s look of absolute relief and joy when she saw that he was okay was very touching, as was the fact that Garrus expresses that he’s more worried about Shepard than himself even though he nearly died a few hours ago. Garrus was so eager to fight alongside Shepard again that he put himself right to work at the Main Battery, and that really demonstrated how much trust he had in Shepard and her motives though I wish there was an option to have Shepard tell Garrus to focus on relaxing and getting some rest. Poor guy just went through hell and already wants to bury himself in calibrations.

While Shepard and Garrus were catching up later on, Shepard was so gentle with Garrus while she asked him about his team and what he had been doing while she was gone, and I could see how broken he was by the death of his team and the betrayal of his former teammate. I felt bad for him. When he asked Shepard to help him find Sidonis a few hours of gameplay later, I knew it was because he wanted the moral support - he wanted Shepard to be there with him while he sought closure with Sidonis (regardless of how he gets it).

Seeing Shepard and Garrus so synchronized while they tracked down Harkin and obtained information about Sidonis was great. They seem more like partners than mentor and student, and that was exactly what the writers were going for.

When it came to allowing or preventing Sidonis’s death, I let Garrus shoot him, and I continue to do so during every playthrough. There are three main reasons for this, the first being that I felt that Shepard shouldn’t be involved in the situation as both a separate party and a non-turian. Turians have their own culture and deal with responsibility and leadership a bit differently than humans do; they pride themselves on taking ownership over their choices and putting the safety and interests of the whole before the individual. Sidonis broke both of these cardinal rules. Garrus, as both a turian and the leader of the group who Sidonis had betrayed, felt obligated to serve justice to Sidonis, another turian, and that is inherently something that Shepard cannot fully understand as a human. It wouldn’t feel right to let Shepard deny Garrus the right to deal with Sidonis in the way that he saw fit.

The second reason is that Sidonis was more than just a coward; he had the opportunity to warn Garrus of the trap set by the mercs for his squad, but he didn’t. Garrus says that he learned through some old contacts that Sidonis “booked transport off of Omega just before the attack” and disappeared. He didn’t even try to make things right with Garrus by confronting him afterwards and apologizing. This is why I’m not bothered by Garrus wanting to kill Sidonis. If I felt that Garrus was being too destructive or going too far, I would have had Shepard steer him back in the right direction. He kept himself in check well enough (like when he didn’t kill Harkin).

And finally, the third reason: If Shepard came back to the Normandy one day and found that everyone - Garrus, Joker, Mordin, Tali, etc - had been slowly and painfully killed by an enemy group because, say, Jacob had been captured and sold Shepard out (and didn’t even try to warn Shepard or stop the attack), you know damn well that most, if not all, players would bring the fury of hell onto him.

Now for the juicy part: Garrus’s romance. When I was innocently exploring Garrus’s dialogue options after his loyalty mission and stumbled across the “We could ease stress together” line, I lost my freaking mind. The game is going to let Shepard sleep with Garrus? Is this for real? I didn’t immediately realize that “easing tension” would turn into “making love and wordlessly declaring mutual feelings for each other”, so I was a little disappointed at first, but I was willing to take what I could get. Garrus was so flustered by Shepard’s proposition, to the point where he seems like he wasn’t expecting her to be interested in him at all, and seeing badass vigilante, merc leader, and hero of Omega turn into a shy softy around her was cute.

Through further dialogue, Garrus began to hint that he had feelings for Shepard, and ugh it was so endearing. He made subtle remarks about wanting more than just “blowing off steam” with her without making his feelings obvious, probably because he didn’t want to chase her away with his heart, and when I combined this with the fact that despite these feelings, which he has had for who knows how long now (maybe even the first game?), he isn’t the one to make the first move, I realized that Garrus was probably too afraid of approaching Shepard with any sort of interest that he had in her because he didn’t want to be rejected and/or feared ruining their relationship. That was the final straw for me: I was super attached to his character at this point. The little dork wanted to watch porn to learn how to properly satisfy a human woman and thought that playing shitty club music was a good idea. The nerd. The doofus. I love him.

I’m just going to admit it: the first time I saw his romance scene with Shepard right before the Omega 4 Relay, I went from laughing as he awkwardly played techno music and tried to woo Shep with his bad flirting skills to tearing up as he confessed to her that he wanted their time together to be special and that he wanted to do things right. Notice how this is different from something he said previously about how if their romantic rendezvous goes south due to species incompatibility, fighting the Collectors would be “a welcome distraction” and wouldn’t be a big deal. Oh, no. It would be a big deal. Garrus wants to give Shepard the best final moment of peace he can before they take on the Collector base, and when Shepard shut him up and they touched foreheads (which I suppose is like the turian equivalent of a kiss given that turians don’t have lips to kiss with) I just lost my mind. I cried and I’m not ashamed to say it. It takes a lot to make me cry, since I’m not easily moved, but seeing Garrus and Shepard so happy in such a tender moment was too much for me. My two favorite characters enjoying peace and joy that they deserve. Beautiful.

The suicide mission - I have all my upgrades, all loyalty missions complete, and I’m still freaking out about who is going to die and who is going to survive. I made the right choices in terms of who I assigned to what, but even with Garrus at Shepard’s side the whole time, I was again in full panic mode. I had like three separate heart attacks thinking that Garrus was about to be killed. I was literally shouting in horror as this happened:

Everything worked out in the end, though. The whole crew survived, the base was destroyed, and Shepard got to snuggle with Garrus in her cabin afterwards. I was very, very happy.

So yeah, Garrus having such a profound character and being not just a likable badass but also Shepard’s most loyal companion is why I love him so much. Evidently, this is also why he’s one of the most, if not the most, popular characters from Mass Effect. Archangel owns all of our asses.

#mass effect #30dayMEchallenge #day5 #tl;dr garrus is best boy #me1 #me2 #femshep #shakarian

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bornpariah-a · 5 years

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so the fact that you deal with the undead in two different locations in inquisition, but the fact that dorian is a NECROMANCER somehow doesn’t effect things whatsoever is utterly ridiculous. not even a token voice line beyond making a comment about the veil in the fallow mire? it’s like they decided to make him a necromancer and then forgot about it !! also, you can learn necromancy and he doesn’t say a thing?? utterly preposterous. and this is precisely where i come in.

for a quick overview of dorian’s relationship with Death and death spirits, you should probably read this headcanon, which goes more in depth on that. i had a headcanon somewhere about the extent of dorian’s necromancer abilities, but it’s outdated and i don’t think i agree with my past self anymore. that may be meta for another time, but for the time being know this :

dorian can, obviously, do everything that the necromancer tree entails in the game. his talents lie in being able to bind death spirits and utilize them to their fullest extents, whether to put the fear of death into his enemies or to curse them. beyond that, he can sense when people die ( as well as when they are about to die, but it’s very shortly before death that he gets a sort of premonition of their death ), and yes, DORIAN CAN RAISE THE DEAD. he does this by utilizing death spirits to possess their bodies, and because he’s a very skilled mage he can do it on his own and to multiple corpses, but it takes quite a bit of energy. therefore, he doesn’t do it very often, especially because there’s more practical uses of his energy in battle.

the rest is under a cut because this got... lengthy lmao

the two places in inquisition where you encounter the undead as the foremost enemies are the fallow mire and the exalted plains. taking dorian to either of this locations with you is both a good idea and a bad one. mostly a good one.

if you take dorian with you, he will comment on the fact that death spirits are NUMEROUS in the area, and that he can sense where the undead are lurking beneath the surface of the water / within the forts where they are numerous. he will also comment on the fact that it’s strange that corpses apparently just started to get up and walk around, thanks to demons running amok. if you were to ask him if he can use his necromancy abilities to help you guys in battle against them, he would say yes, of course he can, but he won’t be anything battle ending, so to speak, because there are so many corpses and so many death spirits / spirits in general lurking about.

how does he help, you may ask? he utilizes the ample number of death spirits pressing against the veil to override the demonic possession —— effectively raising the dead. re-raising the dead. this is why doing this EXHAUSTS HIM considerably.

COMMENTS IN THE FALLOW MIRE :

d : charming place. there are dozens, if not hundreds, of corpses beneath the water —— watch your step.

d : the veil’s thin here, demons seeping into every corpse and tree they can. d : most likely, they were spirits of death trying to get closer to the source, and when they crossed the veil : demon.

i : they’re —— corpses, right? dorian, can you help us? d : it will tire me out, but yes, i should be able to manage something.

i : dorian, are you alright? d : hm? yes, quite. i : you seem distracted. d : death spirits are quite chatty, if you give them an opening. they’ve been trying to tell me something, but i can’t work out what it is. sera : that’s not normal !!

( dorian falls to his knees after a particularly lengthy battle against the undead ) i : dorian !! d : no, i’m alright. just a bit out of breath.

d : we should burn the bodies. they’ll be possessed again, otherwise.

( at a campsite ) d : shall we make camp? now?

COMMENTS IN THE EXALTED PLAINS:

d : more demons possessing bodies? strange. where have they come from?

i : dorian, will you be able to —— d : come to the rescue again? don’t start to underestimate me now, inquisitor.

d : just a moment, i think i’ve caught the trace of where it all began.

d : quiet. ( someone ) : what —— d : they’re trying to tell me something. ( someone ) : what? i : death spirits are trying to tell him something. ( someone ) : creepy.

and so on and so forth. bringing dorian along to any location with the undead makes battle easier, and makes it so that less undead run at you IN GENERAL. so, it’s a very good thing to take dorian with you to these locations. on the flip side, dorian gets easily exhausted ( evidenced in-game by his mana depleting faster than usual, in my writing as him needing to rest frequently and having a horrible headache ) and irritable ( because of the exhaustion and because death spirits are trying to speak to him more than usual ) as well as easily distracted by trying to find the source —— he gets more distracted in the exalted plains, however, because there’s not a straightforward explanation like the veil being thin. he also gets distracted by trying to piece together what the spirits are trying to tell him.

essentially what they’re trying to tell him is why the undead keep rising, over and over again. ( they’re also trying to get his attention, but anyways ) the answer is straightforward enough in the fallow mire, where there isn’t much to do about the veil thinning, but in the exalted plains there is a strange enchantment that has been placed by a rogue mage somewhere within the hills, warping the veil subtly. it’s a new quest to track down the source of the enchantment and to nullify it, so that spirits stop slipping through the veil and end up turning into demons, possessing corpses.

( so, pretty much, it's a good thing for everyone else to bring dorian along, not the best thing for dorian, but that’s alright. )

outside of these locations, dorian’s necromancy specialty has impacts other places, as well. he does comment if you choose necromancy as a specialty ( what he says depends on the inquisitor, but anyways ) and he also offers to teach you. dorian is a very good teacher, as he taught in the minrathous circle throughout his early 20s, and he especially offers to teach you if you are FRIENDS.

furthermore, people will talk about the fact that he’s a necromancer as ambient conversation, and they’re predictably scandalized by the mere thought of him raising the dead and interacting with the dead and whatnot. you can also, if you wish, ask him about necromancy and he will have a conversation with you regarding it, whether or not you’re a mage.

in summary : bioware’s a fucking coward and dorian’s a powerful necromancer.

#( ∞ ┈┈ headcanon ) SOMEWHERE IN THE HISTORY BOOKS.#[ pls read this it's very important actually ]

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