huh

Garrus Vakarian + his little turian smiles

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[photo of the character]

i love my this. the charactr

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charac te r. ... ... . .... #FUUUUCK. THE CHARACTER.

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DOES ANYBODY EVER THINK ABOUT .THE CHARACTER

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[1.5k word essay about the character] #but like idk maybe im wrong

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character i love youso badly.

^dash when someone is possessed by The Character core (this post is positive)

yes Ashley forces Shepard to briefly visualise kissing turians but uncle Wrex takes no prisoners

starting a collection

monty likes to sit in front of an open window and tell the bin men he loves them (they cant see him)

Garrus' character arc is incredibly interesting in that, in my opinion, it's a sort of deconstruction of the bad cop trope. You know, the typical Hollywood detective who justifies any means to catch the perp, your run-of-the-mill copaganda guy.

He starts just like that. He joins Shepard because by running with a spectre he can avoid C-Sec regulations. He wants to endanger Dr Saleon's hostages because he thinks catching him is more important than their lives. He wants to catch Saren and kill him, period. He went off the rails, so he needs to be punished, and in his mind that means he should die, so thats why he expects Shepard to do just that, why he's got trouble understanding why a more paragon Shepard would want to capture and arrest him, instead of killing him. In his own words, he sees the world in black and white, and he decides what's good and what's bad. If it's good, fine. If it's bad, it should die. At this point, he ignores the gray, or maybe he doesn't even see it.

After the battle of the Citadel and Shepard's death, as the Council keeps burying their heads in the sand about the reapers, he realizes his objective (killing bad people so they don't hurt good people, mainly, since "stopping the reapers" at the time probably felt to him like something that was not going to happen) cannot be completed on the Citadel.

This leads him to become a vigilante on Omega. This is ideal for him. As he tells Shepard (and I'm paraphrasing), if he wants to find someone bad to kill he just has to point his gun. He does the Archangel thing for a while, and then he fails. Spectacularly. The sort of traumatic failure that stays with you for a long damn while. There's a reason, in my opinion, that he's got so little unique dialogue on the Normandy. Three conversations after his loyalty mission, and how many? 3 more at most before it? Poor man's got a shit ton of survivor's guilt to work through. He channels it into anger at Sidonis, into trying to avenge them, but still: he was responsible for their lives (in his mind), and they all, 100% of them, died.

He has all the time in ME2 to come to terms with the fact that he was wrong. To understand why he was wrong and how he failed. I'm pretty sure that by the time Shepard goes back to the alliance, he's learned his lesson: vigilante work, revenge, killing bad guys to save good guys, avoiding the law... all of that won't lead to a better galaxy. Sure, he and his team did good work in Omega, for as long as they lasted, but they weren't going to turn the tables. Archangel was good in concept, he changed lives for the better, but he wasn't going to save the galaxy.

So what does he do, when he sees his methods have failed and shit's about to hit the fan? He finally turns to the official channels. He goes to his ex-C-Sec father, with whom he "did not see eye to eye", and he asks him for his help, in what is, in my opinion, the narrative showing his changed attitude towards formal authority, that which made him a "bad turian".

He gets official government help, he gets his task force, and he gets recognition for his work. He helps the turians' chances against the reapers. He gets formal recognition for his work, as even generals are saluting him.

He learns that there's value in following procedure. He finally starts seeing that gray, a little at least. He outgrows the "bad cop" persona.

on a more serious note when you finish the Leviathan dlc, you walk away with the idea that the known gods in the Mass Effect universe are enslavers who require tributes (often in blood) and are utterly incapable of changing or seeing another point of view after who knows how many years spent in isolation hiding from their own creations.

so in that universe, what is there to do? i guess the answer is what shepard is doing. believing in a collective that can be powerful and strong and kind, and making steps to bring everyone together.

it all leads to the fleets arriving - something no one thought would actually happen at the beginning of me3 or even before that. but it did happen. shepard made it happen.

the leviathans said shepard was an anomaly but i don't believe shepard is the only one, in all cycles, who had that strength and willingness to work with others. someone like shepard can only be as strong as the people around them. i mean shepard's support system (which include hackett, anderson, the whole squad, normandy crew, alliance) + everyone who ends up negociating (the primarch, wrex, ...) + everyone the leviathans think are "lesser" beings doing little things to win the war and save people. all of them together? that's the true anomaly.

it doesn't take away at all from what shepard is doing because they're the driving force making it possible. but still, it all comes down to this: we face our enemy together.

with the added meaning: or not at all. because if not together, there is no anomaly, no change in the cycle. it's just the harvest.

when i finally finish this fucking fic im gonna run head first into the wall like the koolaid man

important update

why the hell is he standing like that

he needs it….