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#mass effect hcs
yarnnerdally · 2 years
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Hi Ally! Do you have any headcanons for Garrus cooking naked with nothing but a little apron?
I DIDN’T BEFORE BUT NOW I DO
Garrus Vakarian. Archangel. Shepard’s right hand man.
And your personal simp.
At least, that’s how Joker described it. You believe the term ‘male-wife’ also came up before EDI raised a single brow at him to shut him up. You weren’t sure what made him choose to wear nothing but an apron (a very. VERY. Small apron.) but you took a guess that it might’ve been the jab at his masculinity. There was also a chance he just wanted to mess with you and have a more than favorable outcome. You stood there at the end of the counter, zoning out as you appreciated his physique. He hadn’t noticed you yet when you snapped out of it and you crept closer to him, grinning as he started when you gently wrapped your hands around his hips.
“To what do I owe this divine pleasure?” You purred, bringing your head around and placing a kiss on his shoulder. You could hear his subvocals purring at the touches and the excitement under it as his mandibles wiggled.
“I just thought I’d give you a treat this morning,” he purred back, taking the pan off the range and putting an (interesting looking) omelette onto a plate. “Show off my new levo-cooking skills.” You laughed a little and waited until he put the pan down to play with the hem of the very tiny apron.
“You’re so attentive. What would I do without you?” You murmured, coming up on your toes to press a kiss at the softest spot on his neck, just inside the edge of his carapace. A near growl escaped him and the hem of that little apron began to rise on its own.
“Well, you wouldn’t be getting railed properly, that’s for damn sure.”
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@korblez I'm counting it as close enough to 'you asked', here's a chunk of drell thinks in general xD
And the realization I've had recently that... I think I've unconsciously been developing them as a sort of... foil?? Parallel? to the asari xD Which was probably running with the designer notes of 'this entire species based on creating a single individual of Pure Fanservice'.
But yes there's elements like:
Biotics! I HC Rakhana as an eezo rich planet, and most native life had biotic potential... but it never really developed beyond that. Unlike most contemporary sapient species, drell had no prothean ruins- the most alien tech present on the planet were a handful of discarded Dragon's Teeth style items from cycles long past, knowledge of which only survives in folklore today. Once introduced to the wider galactic community though, all refugees were identified as having biotic potential, and the few who remain on Rakhana do as well. Subsequent generations have markedly lower degrees, but there is a very distinct correlation of biotics born following pilgrimage trips to the homeworld.
Rakhana is actually still inhabited... but yeah it's rough. While there were offerings to try terraforming techniques to restore some of the ecosystem, they were refused- drell are creatures of memory, after all, and future generations must be allowed to see with their own eyes what unchecked progress for progress' sake wrought. Pilgrimage, for them, is mostly a matter of seeing their own ruin: here were once verdant oases teeming with life, now dried into dust, displays of flora and fauna driven to extinction, that sort of thing. The more spiritual/hardcore sorts have a parallel journey that stops at several temples, ruins, and natural formations. Traditionally, it's done on foot with no navigation equipment, following ancient migration paths still passed down through various songs, poems, and family histories.
Drell have an absolutely unmatched oral tradition and no one will ever convince me otherwise, The Oddesy ain't got shit on some of the drell epics xD However, this comes with an unfortunate drawback, especially with the climate crisis- there was a sharp lack of written works, and when communications/storage failed, they lost an enormous amount of information.
Their lifespan being around 80 years is... Flawed. Prior to evac, it was close to current human standards, but got skewed extremely hard once Kepral's became commonplace. It's starting to climb again, thanks to improving treatments, and there are high hopes for a widely available preventative gene therapy soon. (I choose to play it as - oh, it's severe, nasty to treat/prone to reoccurring... but it is treatable, especially with early diagnosis. Also, it's not an important hc, but I imagine Dr. Saleon had a lot of drell patients back when he was active...)
Gender/sex is interesting for drell - the closest Earth analog is a trioecy system, ultimately most drell unions can potentially produce offspring (and there's been around half a dozen known cases of parthenogenesis), but on the whole, birth rates stay fairly low without intervention. Certain environmental conditions (light, temperature, & diet) can have a masculinizing or femininizing effect, but in the current day it's a lot easier to go for direct targeted hormone treatment if you're dead-set on going towards an extreme end. (As far as presentation goes: earthy/warm tones have more of a feminine association, bright/jewel tones more masculine- kind of playing off the alleged bird inspirations lol, and fashion/cultural intricacies are all over the place- if there's much of a divide in the first place. They & the hanar got lucky, neither being a species with a hard binary situation, it was a lot less fun trying to figure out how to get things to translate well with others...)
The most widely practiced branch of polytheism (particularly on Kajhe) is actually more accurately labeled a semi-omnism, drawing deities and spirits from many drell religions; an attempt to preserve as many elements of their cultures as possible and a declaration of unity as a people in the face of a broadened universe and their own near demise. Younger generations haven't held onto that so much, and there's even some who espouse an attitude of 'whatever gods we had, we killed', while others lean towards a pantheistic/siari deal. While practice isn't totally discouraged on Kajhe, it's hard to find more than a household shrine; several high-profile priests died under... questionable circumstances within the last twenty years or so, and funerary procedures are almost exclusively drawn from Enkindler doctrines; a drell enclave on the Citadel is the current hub for the more devout.
There was/still is a serious thing with debt/gratitude in drell culture- there's no convenient 'oh I forgot you did that!' lol. You treat people well, because they will remember! This is partly what led to the Compact- refugees who felt they owed the hanar a genuine life debt, and a few families feel it lingers through subsequent generations- after all, they wouldn't be there otherwise, right? Thane's family were among that group, so as far as he knew, that was just how things worked. He... never entirely reconciled Irikah's pointing out that it was one thing for first generation- or even present adults- to make that choice, something else entirely to give up a child just developing their permanent memory. (But hey, he agreed to keeping Kolyat out of it, so... progress?)
Drell cuisine tends to go wild on flavour/seasoning, and a major part of post-evacuation culture has been food-oriented- learning new dishes, adapting old ones, fusion cuisine is a massive hit, and if you're invited for a visit, you are getting dinner and extra for the next night.
On the whole they lean towards fairly social- multigenerational households are the norm, and especially around Kajhe and the Citadel, you'll often find otherwise unaffiliated single adults meeting at a dinner table. Even the more introverted will tend towards lurking in crowded spots. (Part of this may have developed due to the slippery nature of their memories- those who slip hard into something alone may be hurt or waste away, staying near crowds ups the chance of someone maybe helping bring you back to the present.)
Ok this one seems to go against a common take I've seen, and it's that drell can handle (relative) temperature extremes either way- I imagine Rakhana tends towards hot days and cold nights, so it takes a fair bit for either cold or heat to get to them. (That said, heat tolerance > cold tolerance, but it's still more than most humans can take xD)
Aaand I think that's all I got for now xD
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not-a-newt · 6 months
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Excerpt from Mass Effect Initiation on other species' perceptions of volus gender
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psychomishmello · 3 months
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Ooga booga I reappear
Anyway, have some Angel Dust Valentine's wallpapers as an apology for my absence<3
Angel Dust signatures can be removed, watermarks will not <3 happy smooch fest everyone!
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hellafluff · 1 year
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Cant sleep bc im thinking about Mass Effect Species Gender Headcanons
Asari, while "monogender" are established in Andromeda to sometimes prefer gendered or nonbinary pronouns (she, he, they, etc). I think the Asari languages make it very easy to slot pronouns from other languages into it, on top of having many pronouns to choose from. Many Asari are fluid in what pronouns they use, but in their writing, pronouns are chosen rather deliberately to establish mood, tone, or how a character is supposed to be viewed, which is often lost in translation. (I'm thinking like how Japanese has Boku vs Ore for boys)
Quarian culture has 4 genders, Male, Female, Bigender (both,) and None. The way one styles their suit cloth can give you an idea as to what their gender is, but pronouns are usually exchanged with names regardless. Quarian genders aren't put on record till after they return from Pilgrimage.
Turian society being so focused on military standing makes gender roles kind of irrelevant, but they do view male and female as distinct. They don't really have gendered facilities like bathrooms, however. Being trans is NBD since everything is co-ed anyway. Being intersex is rare but it tends to happen visibly, like bilateral gynandromorph birds. Their fringes will be much shorter on one side, with a longer mandible like a female turian, while the other has a longer fringe and shorter mandible. Coloration may also be visibly different.
Salarians don't really care about gender but also care about it A LOT, mostly because of how they reproduce. Salarians can pick any gender or lack of gender they want, but their birth sex is really all that matters in the end for them, because of reproduction contracts and the like 10 male to 1 female birthrates.
Sex and gender matters a lot for Krogan, and they don't really have a sense of nonbinary genders. Maybe before the genophage their philosophers might have argued that soldier, warlord, shaman, and mother, and other titles were all different genders, but it doesn't really matter now, post genophage.
Volus have a few genders but that tends to be very personal information and isnt shared outside of close relationships. They don't particularly care about the pronouns other Clans use for them either.
Hanar are a hermaphroditic species and tend to not care about pronouns.
Elcor gender is largely body language based.
Vorcha are also a monogendered race but no one likes to talk about it.
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Jaal reacting to seeing SAM kill you (and revive you thanks SAM) to escape from the Archon's trap, once you're both safely back on the Tempest (I feel like there should have been a scene with the LI about this, a dramatic you-almost-died-and-I-need-to-hold-you scene)
Funny how I can both not remember a scene well, but also know exactly what to do with it.That being said, we absolutely should’ve had a stronger reaction from Jaal. Even if it was barely contained emotion.
Doing this HC styled for the moment, but feel free to request this as a mini-fic, if that’s more your speed!
In the moment, he tries so hard to be okay with it. SAM said it was the only way, so it has to be the way this happens, right...?
However, Jaal is bitterly realizing he’d much rather bare through being on Kadara for hours on end if it meant he didn’t have to be here. Emotions are choking him up, especially watching your limp body collapse on the ground. Grinding his teeth when SAM is struggling a moment with reviving you.
He should be used to this. The grief. The risk of loss; why else enter the Resistance? One must face loss and still fight on. Even understanding that one’s own life is at risk. To protect the whole...
But just this once... Can’t he be greedy? Can he not wish for your survival? To not have to see you like this...?
Being revived is a relief he can hardly put to words- further choked up at you taking breaths of air once more- but his heart still aches with a fierceness unrivaled.
...For now, he holds his tongue. Stills his arms from reaching out and holding you to the point it hurts. (He’d be sorry for it, but to know your alive and can feel takes precedent over all else, at the moment.) There is still a mission to finish. He can do that much.
(As much as it maddens him to do so. For the first time in his life, Jaal loathes putting the mission first. He almost lost his darling one, and he cannot react until the end? It’s no different from past missions he’s had with other angara; this hurts in a way unlike those, however.)
He gives you some time. Gives himself a few moments to be composed, before you inevitably seek him out... Yet, he cannot still his shaking hands. Hold back a few tears from escaping. How can he find any semblance of peace when he does not want to lose you...?
His back is to you, staring at nothing, when you enter. And when your voice sounds in greeting, he is quick to turn and pull you into a hug. It’s almost crushing, but he seems to have pulled himself together just enough to prevent any further harm.
You still have to ask him to ease up!
Jaal pours out his heart without any further nudging. He loves you so, seeing that was one of the worst moments of his life, how can he bear to know you may end up like that again...?
...And yet, he cannot stop you. He needs the kett stopped as much as you do. To protect his cherished people. For the chance that someday, maybe, on an off-chance... That his creators may return. Because he loves this little “extended, friend-family” that the Tempest is for him, now.
He loves you. And to love you is to know that your people- all those from the Milky Way- need the kett gone, too. This isn’t something to give up on, even though seeing you die in front of him will haunt his nightmares for the rest of his days.
...You both cry. The hug he pulls you into is less constricting, but that’s what your heart is probably doing right now, anyways. His head nuzzles the top of yours, his tears getting on there...but you cannot find it in you to care right now.
Jaal admits that he wishes to not be without you. However, his bunk is...terribly small. Isn’t yours bigger?
You can’t help but laugh and agree. A small cutscene of the two flopping onto your bed, cuddling close. A momentary comfort, for the fight ahead.
“Keep me with you, won’t you, darling one...?”
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assassins-wasteland · 3 months
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Politically and militarily, humans and turians are at eachother’s throats at worst and tolerating each other as best.
But one on one? Person to person? You can’t tell me these guys aren’t besties. Humans and turians are a match made in heaven, total opposites in such a way that they just complete each other and fill in the blank spaces. Humanities chaos and the turians order just balance out. And I can imagine the human and turian politicians and military authorities HATE it.
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jrmaxwell · 9 months
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im drawing javik in barbie themed clothes
and boy howdy i am having the time of my life, im giggling and kicking my feet but also cackling like a madman like -- i'm doing great ya'll
my fave hc is that javik doesn't understand modern fashion and will just wear whatever he feels like regardless of any gendering, which means my lil fashionista shepard can and WILL dress him up, and you know what he slays it EVERY time
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striderincosmos · 2 months
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Mass Effect Shower Headcanon
As time and technology has advanced on, medical aids of various kinds have advanced along with them. Joker's service in the Alliance military, despite what would otherwise be a crippling genetic defect, is the most shining example of this. However, consider:
The humble hearing aid has likely become both unobtrusive enough to be an otherwise invisible part of a person, and advanced enough to allow someone to hear in a range of frequencies (with some adjustment for the brain to recognize what it's hearing).
Hearing things just out of the range of regular human hearing... like turian subvocals. I trust you can do the rest of the math.
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x3no9 · 4 months
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I had to sketch General Oleg Petrovsky as I imagine him in my fan fics. I believe he has a very storied past, at eighteen he joins the Russian military and puts in two years until the Alliance grabs him up as they rush to get recruits for the war with the Turians. I believe that he makes it up to Captain and then gets disheartened with all the red tape the Alliance has to deal with. Before joining Jack Harper and Cerberus as the General we know, he becomes a pro-boxer. ( he trained as a youth and all throughout his younger years)
Then he joins Jack.
After Shepard talks Aria down, Petrovsky becomes an Alliance prisoner but ends up becoming friends with Hackett due to mutual respect and a similar past ( I see Hackett as being a boxer too). Oleg trains a special ops team for Hackett post ME3 as he reunites with Jack. (Jack survives through various different scenarios in my fics)
Oleg is much more Russian in my mind and he and Jack are lovers. Depending on which fiction piece it is, Jack is with Hackett as well at some point. ( or at the same time lol)
Just crazy fabrications but its sexy and fun. Also got a bit too creative with his mustache lol. And to be frank, I believe Hackett and Harper are a forever couple. I just can't imagine life without them as a couple. 🖤🖤
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yarnnerdally · 1 year
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New favorite Turian hc I found in a fic:
Biting their mandible to show your submission.
Thank you to Lady_Fenikkusu on AO3 in their collection of turian loving titled Moments with her; Turians. (unsure if @lady-fenikkusu is the same author. If not, apologies!)
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Okay but with how much the Alliance pulls from maritime tradition, I need to know:
Do they have spacefaring versions of sea shanties
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crimsonshield75 · 6 months
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So I've been sitting on this piece for a really long time ... it was actually the first piece of Mass Effect fanfiction I ever wrote. I was keeping it in my library because I wanted to finish more of the greater story before I started posting it, but with how my priorities have shifted, I'm not quite sure I'll ever complete the full series. But I have two stories already written, so I figured, why not post them? At least get them out there, because they're serving me no good just sitting in my folder. So without further ado, here's the first chapter of my interpretation of Kaidan's time at BAaT. I hope you enjoy!
Fandom: Mass Effect Pairing: Kaidan Alenko/Rahna Rating: General Chapters will be updated every Monday!
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psychomishmello · 4 months
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Gift for my bestie, the rock in my life, and my ride or die
Ladies and gentleman, the men, the myths, the legends
Mr. Vakarian and Mr. Ohnn giving her a little smooch 💋
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hawkepockets · 1 year
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hi hi, dropping in your inbox to ask for more details on prem's relationship with dwayna? you might have shared some before but i cannot find much and i am Curious, if you'd like to talk about it :) @kerra-and-company
!!! omg of course 🫰 this is like a core issue for prem so strap in there’s a lot to say.
prem’s relationship to dwayna is the earliest iteration of a repeating pattern in his life: he gets a taste of attention, power-sharing, and passing fondness from someone higher than him (in the echelons of the city, like anise, in heroism, like the commander and vlast, or in the workings of the world, like dwayna) and devotes his whole self to them, often taking years to realize there’s no reward coming and the love is one-sided or wrong somehow.
when prem was about a year old, the zephyr airship his mothers sailed on, the ikaros, was part of a strike mission to the east of the blood legion homelands, where kralkatorrik was dormant. the zephyrites were supposed to harvest his crystallized blood for glint’s weapons, but before they could poke the sleeping dragon, the ships were strafed by a shatterer. the ikaros pulled up and evaded a direct hit from the monster, but was caught in the minor brandstorm coming off its wings. the ikaros was and is a ramshackle luxon antique. it was all the crew could do to keep the hull from shaking to pieces, long enough to power up a big sun aspect crystal and jump the ship forward out of the brandstorm. in mortal terror, the all-human crew couldn’t syncronize a song of praise for glint, and resorted to an older, simpler hymn to dwayna, using the harmonies to charge the crystal while crying out to the air goddess to keep their ship aloft.
it worked, barely. the sails were cut to ribbons by branded shrapnel, the cargo blasted clean off by the winds and the momentum of the aspect jump, and whole chunks of less-aerodynamic storage and living space were just gone when the ikaros made its “controlled” emergency ground landing, as if kralkatorrik had woken up to take bites out… including the transom storage locker where baby prem had been stashed for safekeeping. the crew was sure that their gambit with the sun aspect crystal had killed their smallest member—until prem heard his mother phaibun scream and started crying in answer from where he was safely tangled in the rigging, high above anyone’s heads. as phaibun scrambled to retrieve him, she felt a brush of warm air and presence pass by her, and felt sure dwayna had saved her son in answer to the zephyrites’ prayer.
and she was right ! prem seemed to be uniquely blessed by dwayna. his attunement to the wind aspect was instinctive, he loved to be in the air, he was obsessed with the story of malchor from the first time he heard it, and when he hurt himself and called dwayna’s name the wounds would close themselves (in game human cultural heal skill 😉)—which was unheard of this many years into the silence of the six gods.
he was four when his mothers moved with him to divinity’s reach, and growing up there he refused to walk past dwayna’s shrine in the palace garden unless he had a coin to donate. he built a tiny shrine to her at home where he could pray and make daily offerings of songs, food scraps, little kid artwork, breath from his lungs. he kept building and rebuilding that shrine every place he slept, from his screened-in sleeping corner in his mothers’ single room above their glider shop, to the shining blade headquarters, to campsites in maguuma and elona.
he had a childhood habit of conflating dwayna with glint and mixing up which prayers and melodies were written for whom, which got him in some hot water around teachers and priests, who considered reverence for glint heretical. he became very meticulous about praying “right” in front of krytan humans. just 1 of many ways he enforced assimilation on himself.
his whole life, he pulled comfort and inspiration from dwayna’s image. he identified powerfully with malchor’s love for her, using it half-consciously as a blueprint for his own blinding (wink) devotion to anise. he thought dwayna had blessed him with good luck, which made him more likely to accept without question things that others would call “too good to be true” (like anise’s offer to groom mentor him). he thought he was dwayna’s favorite!
he rarely got treatment for injuries, relying on prayers to stop the bleeding and glamours to cover the marks. but every time he invoked her name, the delay would be a little longer, the healing a little less perfect. he took this as a sign he was losing her favor, and got only more devout and more zealous as a shining blade exemplar.
then he met kormir, and she told him the gods were leaving—had been leaving, for a long time. dwayna had been gone from tyria since prem was very young. he had been one of the last humans, maybe the last human she’d ever blessed, as a goodbye.
so he’d just been imagining her closeness and favor all this time, and the small well of her power she’d left in him had been diminishing with each use ever since. soon it would dry up, and he’d have nothing left from her. she wasn’t coming back to him. she’d never been with him at all for more than a second. forget caring about one human, she’d left humanity to the dragons. the version of her in his head wasn’t real. it broke his heart.
he renounced all the gods, kicked his shrine apart, and true to his word to kas, hasn’t stepped foot in a temple ever since. he knows it seems like a spoiled reaction to other humans who never had their prayers answered in the first place, but he can’t help it. one of the presences he counted on most for almost 30 years, and it turned out to be just a trick of his mind and the wind.
he spent his last healing prayer in cantha, for a faint swell of warmth and fresh air after soo-won almost drowned him in a cold whirlpool. he felt the blessing disappear from him, without fanfare, leaving no residue. he feels totally stripped down after that. no delusions about divine guidance, no illusions about kryta, no one left to swear oaths to, nothing but his own thoughts to navigate by. truly Just Some Guy.
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Oh so when I write ridiculous nonsense fanfiction about Mass Effect so the characters can bone me, and it's cringe. Meanwhile EA-Bioware writes ridiculous nonsense fanfiction and it's the third installment in the series and it makes a metric fuckton of money. I want MY cringe monetized and get access to veteran voice actors goddammit
Besides my self insert OC is better than Kai Leng, but I know that's a low bar. But what sounds more interesting: a Naruto OC that fell into Mass Effect, or a human with ancestors that were part of a private Prothean experiment to give primitive races their emotion/memory-reading abilities? The tradeoff is that they ONLY get that Prothean ability, so they either have no biotic ability or they have middling or ok-by-human-standards biotic if anything.
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