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Post by Lee on Dec 21, 2018 4:01:45 GMT
I think if you don't specifically pick the one correct turndown option in the first game Liara assuming the matting position and you have to beat her to death with a stick or mount her like a station wagon. Whatever you like best.  (I'm not being completely serious-I've been watching too much Drag Race lately and I'm feeling my oats /Gia Gunn-ish ) If I play again I'm not doing her quest until after Virmire. F that noise. I don't have time for BioWare's agenda. I'm romancing Kaidan. |
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dmc1001
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Post by dmc1001 on Dec 21, 2018 4:03:17 GMT
Literally, I was trying to romance someone else (or maybe no one) when I found myself in a relationship with her. It was weird. Yea actually that reminds me of the one time I talked with Ashley a lot and somehow had to pick between her and Liara. 1 was weird in that regard if you were nice to people they wanted to hump you. I made sure in the ME1 PT I just finished that I didn't recruit Liara until after Virmire. I literally had no time to spend with her and romance never came up. At that point, Kaidan probably would have had a biotic showdown with her. |
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dmc1001
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Post by dmc1001 on Dec 21, 2018 4:04:34 GMT
If I play again I'm not doing her quest until after Virmire. F that noise. I don't have time for BioWare's agenda. I'm romancing Kaidan. Yes, exactly! I almost felt bad I didn't have her on Noveria. OTOH, does anyone really want to watch their mother be killed? |
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Post by Lee on Dec 21, 2018 4:06:26 GMT
If I play again I'm not doing her quest until after Virmire. F that noise. I don't have time for BioWare's agenda. I'm romancing Kaidan. Yes, exactly! I almost felt bad I didn't have her on Noveria. OTOH, does anyone really want to watch their mother be killed? No, I sort of think taking her on that quest is pretty cruel if you really think about it long enough. |
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Post by * on Dec 21, 2018 4:09:23 GMT
I think if you don't specifically pick the one correct turndown option in the first game Liara assuming the matting position and you have to beat her to death with a stick or mount her like a station wagon. Whatever you like best. (I'm not being completely serious-I've been watching too much Drag Race lately and I'm feeling my oats /Gia Gunn-ish ) If I play again I'm not doing her quest until after Virmire. F that noise. I don't have time for BioWare's agenda. I'm romancing Kaidan. Hahahahaha mount her like a station wagon, I'm using that from now on. |
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Post by * on Dec 21, 2018 4:10:13 GMT
Yes, exactly! I almost felt bad I didn't have her on Noveria. OTOH, does anyone really want to watch their mother be killed? No, I sort of think taking her on that quest is pretty cruel if you really think about it long enough. I'm the opposite, I feel bad not taking her as she never says goodbye to her mother. |
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dmc1001
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Post by dmc1001 on Dec 21, 2018 4:41:15 GMT
No, I sort of think taking her on that quest is pretty cruel if you really think about it long enough. I'm the opposite, I feel bad not taking her as she never says goodbye to her mother. They clearly weren't in touch. Liara was inconsistent anyway. "Should I tell them how to kill you!" It seemed like that was something she knew might be necessary. Anyway, the dialogue was strange. |
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Post by dgcatanisiri on Dec 21, 2018 4:47:47 GMT
I once accidentally stumbled into a Liara romance. Seriously, it was an accident in ME1 before s/s mods were around. Though I had probably used the gender swap console command. When ME3 rolled around I never even gave a thought to romancing Kaidan before breaking up with her. I always figure that if you don't want an m/m romance, don't do it. Amazingly simple. I remember when you go to the bar with Steve and he mentions something about the guys in the room and you can either agree with him or say I'm into the ladies and that's that. Sooooo hard to deal with that I know, never gave a second thought to that bit of dialogue. I like to have my romance with Kaidan locked in at that point so that Shepard will instead have an option of 'hey, aren't I eye candy?' and Steve responds with 'yes, but you're also off the market and I respect that.'
That is one of my areas of microaggressions though - the dialogue between Shepard and Steve give off the impression that these characters believe that these bars/clubs will all have asari dancers, basically catering to no audience other than the female-attracted. I headcanon that the Citadel has a healthy and thriving gay district and Steve just went to Purgatory because of it being both an Alliance and humanity-friendly area of the Citadel and that he might be looking at the local eye candy, but he's not quite ready to eat it. (Wow, that metaphor gets creepy the more you stretch it...)
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Post by * on Dec 21, 2018 4:51:57 GMT
I remember when you go to the bar with Steve and he mentions something about the guys in the room and you can either agree with him or say I'm into the ladies and that's that. Sooooo hard to deal with that I know, never gave a second thought to that bit of dialogue. I like to have my romance with Kaidan locked in at that point so that Shepard will instead have an option of 'hey, aren't I eye candy?' and Steve responds with 'yes, but you're also off the market and I respect that.'
That is one of my areas of microaggressions though - the dialogue between Shepard and Steve give off the impression that these characters believe that these bars/clubs will all have asari dancers, basically catering to no audience other than the female-attracted. I headcanon that the Citadel has a healthy and thriving gay district and Steve just went to Purgatory because of it being both an Alliance and humanity-friendly area of the Citadel and that he might be looking at the local eye candy, but he's not quite ready to eat it. (Wow, that metaphor gets creepy the more you stretch it...)
I like these conversations because its a much different perspective, a lot of things I didn't think about until recently. |
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Post by dgcatanisiri on Dec 21, 2018 4:52:00 GMT
Yes, exactly! I almost felt bad I didn't have her on Noveria. OTOH, does anyone really want to watch their mother be killed? No, I sort of think taking her on that quest is pretty cruel if you really think about it long enough. Honestly, I do take her, purely because then her reaction back on the Normandy plays more as "repressing the shit out of that trauma for the time being." The whole "I choose to remember Benezia as she was" thing honestly feels like BioWare trying to "clean up" her emotions in order to make her okay with banging Shepard soon after they kill her mother.
At least when she's there to live through Benezia's final moments, she shows an honest, emotional reaction. When she doesn't have that, her turning rational seems less like a coping mechanism and just the machinations of the "BioWare boner for the blue" at work, to justify her jumping into Shepard's bed.
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Post by * on Dec 21, 2018 5:03:20 GMT
No, I sort of think taking her on that quest is pretty cruel if you really think about it long enough. Honestly, I do take her, purely because then her reaction back on the Normandy plays more as "repressing the shit out of that trauma for the time being." The whole "I choose to remember Benezia as she was" thing honestly feels like BioWare trying to "clean up" her emotions in order to make her okay with banging Shepard soon after they kill her mother.
At least when she's there to live through Benezia's final moments, she shows an honest, emotional reaction. When she doesn't have that, her turning rational seems less like a coping mechanism and just the machinations of the "BioWare boner for the blue" at work, to justify her jumping into Shepard's bed.
Biowares line of thought seems to be if it ain't blue, you don't sploo. They knew who they were targeting with the asari and it sure worked. |
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Post by dgcatanisiri on Dec 21, 2018 5:14:37 GMT
I really only recently realized how much Liara was shoved in your face since she was my default romance so I loved all the attention. Literally, I was trying to romance someone else (or maybe no one) when I found myself in a relationship with her. It was weird.
This is why I tend to have problems with Liara. I like her just fine outside of her possessive need to romance me, but that sort of puts me off. She moves a little too smoothly into wanting to be with you, versus Kaidan and Ash who you have to put some work into. I have an entire tag on my Tumblr dedicated to discussing my issues with Liara as a romance. It's clear that BIOWARE believes her to be Shepard's "perfect match" or "soulmate" *gags*, but the whole dynamic is just... unsettling to me. Like, the first game emphasizes her youth to a degree that makes me uncomfortable - we have Kaidan referring to her as a kid, which, sure, chronologically, she's older than he is by like a factor of four, but in terms of lived experiences, it's pretty clear that only Tali is roughly as "young" as she is, with everyone else in the equivalent of their late twenties/early thirties or older. Add to this the meld, which is explicitly said to be vital to asari reproduction. It is a plot point that Shepard have the equivalent to sex with Liara, and potentially before they've had more than a conversation or two with her.
And then... Mass Effect 2. Where Liara goes to the ends of the universe ENTIRELY on her own, to recover Shepard's corpse. And no one ever ever EVER questions it. Her reasoning is explicitly because she "couldn't let [Shepard] go," regardless of romance status, or when she joined the Normandy. Nothing about how Shepard was the best chance for the galaxy against the Reapers, it is purely about her inability to let go of Shepard. And Shepard greets her with a warm hug and she's in a stationary on a hub world. Meanwhile, Ashley/Kaidan have one scene where they lash out at Shepard, because from their position, Shepard had gone dark for two years and reemerged working with a known terrorist organization. They spend ME2 locked out of the loop - by LIARA. Because she never told them what she was doing, or what became of Shepard because of her actions.
Lair of the Shadow Broker just compounds this, because it's all about Liara and Shepard, bickering like an old married couple. Shepard could have not romanced her, brought along their ME2 romance, and they still dive to knock her out of the Shadow Broker tossing a table at them, letting their actual love interest get knocked out. She gets an emotionally intimate conversation back on the Normandy, where she'll call Ashley/Kaidan short-sighted for not joining Shepard, when, again, SHE locked them out of the loop and didn't bother to talk to them, to tell them what she did. And, if you refuse to have that meeting on the Normandy, telling her to keep things professional, she'll end up KEEPING Shepard's dogtags. And don't get me started on the camera holding on her after the Broker is defeated, all "you should kiss her Shepard, why aren't you kissing her, aw, you didn't kiss her, and now she has a sad."
ME3 front-loading the emotionally intimate conversations to the point where Liara is the only returning companion/romance is bad, but there are times that I just feel that ME2 is actually the worst offender of this PUSH for Liara as "Shepard's one true love."
*clears throat* Yeah, this is something of a hot button topic for me. Hence WHY I have a tag for the discussion on my Tumblr.
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Post by Beefy Titans on Dec 21, 2018 5:19:18 GMT
Great Tumblr post, dgcatanisiriYeah, I hate saying this, but Liara is one of the biggest problems in ME trilogy. She is the bad case of writer's pet. The writers put way too much emphasis on her and did not distribute resource evenly. It is the same reason why especially m/m romance has less amount of content. They just went with a heteronormative assumption that all players will like her. |
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dmc1001
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Post by dmc1001 on Dec 21, 2018 5:55:24 GMT
Great Tumblr post, dgcatanisiri Yeah, I hate saying this, but Liara is one of the biggest problems in ME trilogy. She is the bad case of writer's pet. The writers put way too much emphasis on her and did not distribute resource evenly. It is the same reason why especially m/m romance has less amount of content. They just went with a heteronormative assumption that all players will like her. She bothers a lot of people. I tend not to talk too much about it here because a lot of women here romance her. On BSN one guy who romances her as a FemShep said he only just now realized how pushed on Shepard she is. He hadn't noticed precisely because he romances her. |
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Post by dgcatanisiri on Dec 21, 2018 7:11:04 GMT
Great Tumblr post, dgcatanisiri Yeah, I hate saying this, but Liara is one of the biggest problems in ME trilogy. She is the bad case of writer's pet. The writers put way too much emphasis on her and did not distribute resource evenly. It is the same reason why especially m/m romance has less amount of content. They just went with a heteronormative assumption that all players will like her. She bothers a lot of people. I tend not to talk too much about it here because a lot of women here romance her. On BSN one guy who romances her as a FemShep said he only just now realized how pushed on Shepard she is. He hadn't noticed precisely because he romances her. Yeah, that's why the contention is so bitter on this one - to those who have never romanced Liara, or romanced her after romancing another character, she is intrusive on the dynamic that those players are there for, taking up time with Shepard with no alternative with other characters. But when she's the first or even only romance that the player in question is giving their time to, of course they see her in a different light - it is more reasonable (if still concerning) that a Liara who was in a romantic relationship with Shepard would set out on her own to recover their body, and to decide to give their body to Cerberus on the unlikely chance they can bring them back to her. But what is an act of love and devotion with a romance becomes an act of unhealthy obsession without it.
Liara is used by the writers as a narrative crutch - she's a guaranteed variable, so they lean on having her in these emotionally intimate moments, since writing variants for every romance option and every companion who could be deemed by the player as "Shepard's best friend" is costly, both in money and in time. Like it's been said by the actual developers, for everything that goes in, something got left out. She's emotionally standing in for the various characters who, in any given playthrough, may actually be dead. The problem is, when they AREN'T dead, when they're fully alive, even on board the Normandy in that moment, she comes across as an intruder.
My go-to example on this is that I wait two and a half games in order to reach a point where I can romance Kaidan, but really, in practice, this romance has no effect - the only difference is a couple 'pull my string' one-line comments on the Normandy and Kaidan comes for the "quick drink" before Chronos. There's no emotionally intimate discussion of the relationship, or even the burden of command on Shepard's shoulders - after all, Kaidan's best chances of being in any given run of ME3 are about 50/50 to begin with, and then there's his possible death during the Coup, so with him having those odds, well, the decision was made not to allocate him that much in the way of resources, as opposed to Liara.
I mean, Garrus certainly gets this too, being defaulted to acting as Shepard's best friend, but since interacting with Liara has that romantic undercurrent, what with the writing using Shepard as a power fantasy for the heterosexual male, it comes across as worse in her case, because to someone not romancing Liara, she comes across as intruding on things and trying to MAKE herself Shepard's girlfriend, while Garrus just stands there beside Shepard and looks cool.
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Post by Sir Drell on Dec 21, 2018 12:25:49 GMT
I headcanon that the Citadel has a healthy and thriving gay district But we know that this shit, shit, shit universe created by borderline homophobes isn't like that... |
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dmc1001
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Post by dmc1001 on Dec 21, 2018 15:47:29 GMT
I headcanon that the Citadel has a healthy and thriving gay district But we know that this shit, shit, shit universe created by borderline homophobes isn't like that... For me, being gay isn't a thing in the ME universe. Hence, no need for a gay district. But this is just me. My Kaidan is bi, which lines up with his feelings about Rahna. Shepard could be gay or bi. Doesn't make a difference to me so long as he's head over heels for Kaidan. More evidence is in MEA. Scott Ryder can flirt with Liam and Liam will say he's not into guys. NBD. It says that men have no problem going up to other men to flirt without knowing that persons sexuality. I assume the same is true with Sara. That tells me it's not a "thing" to worry about and no offense is taken.
Similarly, in DAI during Dorian's LM, you get the Inquisitor potentially asking about if it's even a "thing" to consider gay relationships in a negative way in Tevinter. It clearly meant that Thedas didn't care. Giselle had issues with him, but because he came from Tevinter and for no other reason. She had the same concerns about him regardless of romance status. |
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Post by dgcatanisiri on Dec 21, 2018 16:10:02 GMT
“Need” is relative - considering Mass Effect is drawing on real world history as its background, the fact that there WAS a time where it made a difference means that the culture is still there, in the same way that there are still historically black communities and other ethnicities that have their ‘districts’ in major cities. Because of that history carrying over, I see humanity in Mass Rffect still having the communal connections, even if (supposedly) these are differences that make no difference.
I mean, I’m rationalizing an absence either way, but that’s the how of my rationalization.
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izut
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Post by izut on Jan 11, 2019 11:00:02 GMT
I decided to do 2 romances this year. My 1st (full) pt was Peebee, 2nd (not finished) was Peebee, 3rd (not finished was Jaal). So this year I intend to do 2 full pts: 1) Jaal, 2) Suvi.
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Post by * on Jan 13, 2019 7:42:13 GMT
I decided to do 2 romances this year. My 1st (full) pt was Peebee, 2nd (not finished) was Peebee, 3rd (not finished was Jaal). So this year I intend to do 2 full pts: 1) Jaal, 2) Suvi. I was gonna do Peebee but I always end up going back to Vetra. |
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(I'm not being completely serious-I've been watching too much Drag Race lately and I'm feeling my oats /Gia Gunn-ish )
