What Particularly Frustrated Me The First Time I Played Was That Shepard Can Literally Tell Them That

garrus lives rent free in my mind. garrus can do no wrong. he may be conflicted with his sense of justice but lest you forget that this man dropped everything multiple times to join his lady in saving the galaxy. he recognized her as soon as he saw her on Omega. he never questioned if she was really shepard after being brought back by cerberus. he said to hell with turian standards AND GRABBED HER HAND ON MENAE. he is simply unmatched.

listen ima say it too many of y’all write Halsin like a big serious daddy dom with no humor and not nearly enough of you are writing him as a silly willy nilly ol’ bear

please he is canonically a big fan of nature puns and dancing like a dad at a barbecue and being a big goof

let that man laugh and be goofy I beg you he loves ducks and bedtime stories and playing games and being silly and he deserves to smile more

hey... don't cry.... tesla recall for most cybertrucks, okay? >46,000 vehicles affected <3

I have an assignment due this week, so naturally I’ve spent all day thinking about a relatively minor aspect of Halsin’s characterisation: his sense of humour.

I haven’t often seen Halsin being funny in fanfic, and while there are probably good reasons for that (writers, including me, love to put him in angsty situations – or just PWP – where humour doesn’t necessarily fit) it makes me a little sad, because his sense of humour is something I really love about him. So I thought I’d do a little bit of analysis of his sense of humour as it appears in a few moments in canon.

First up, this comment he makes to Karlach, saying that being in the Underdark ‘dampens one’s sense of fun’ because ‘noises such as laughter tend to attract predators’:

He’s ostensibly talking about the Society having a dampened sense of fun, but of course it’s also an allusion to his own time in the Underdark, and so I think it’s reasonable to read the 'dampened sense of fun' line as referring to himself as well. I have Thoughts about what this quote says in terms of his time with his drow captors and what a formative experience it was for him, but keeping on topic, it points to something that’s backed up by the rest of canon: his sense of humour is dry, it's not performative or showy, and while I think he’s quite often joking he’s not often telling jokes.

Secondly, we have a moment from one of the conversations you can have with him in act 3 about his dislike for the city. He talks about his dream to find a better way where everyone can be cared for, and then he chuckles and says ‘Listen to me, preaching like an initiate in his cups.’

To me, this is quintessential Halsin sense of humour. He’s not telling a joke, he’s not even really trying to make the PC laugh; he’s just poking fun at himself in a wry sort of way. He’s also using humour as a defence mechanism here, I think; he’s minimising the impact of a potential dismissive response from the PC by undercutting his own speech before the PC gets a chance to do it.

Thirdly, we have his interaction with Lae’zel about the chimera:

I know some people seem to take this quote as him seriously admitting he’s fucked a chimera, but I will die on the hill of ‘he was joking’ (a chimera is functionally an animal! it has an INT score of 3! Halsin is canonically on record as uninterested in having sex with actual animals and has the scars to prove it!)

So this is one of the few instances I can remember of Halsin making an outright joke. Note though that it’s still in keeping with his particular sense of humour: it’s dry (to the point where it’s easy to miss that he’s joking at all) and it’s also self-deprecating, in a way: he’s playing with the conception of him as someone who’ll fuck anything that moves, leaning into that characterisation and by doing so, making fun of both it and of himself.

And finally, the other instance I can recall of him outright joking: when the PC tells him he’s quite large for an elf and his response is ‘I am?!’ I really love this one, both because it’s such an obvious example of him deliberately being funny and also because for once, the person he’s poking fun at is the PC (for stating the obvious) rather than himself.

Looking back at these examples, what strikes me is how much his sense of humour shows itself in relation to other people’s assumptions about him. It’s clearly an important way he copes with people misunderstanding him or being dismissive or seeing him as a caricature. Much of the time he seems to be joking to himself rather than anyone else, which makes sense given the interpretation that it’s a defence mechanism rather than a means of connecting with whoever he’s talking to. (I also have a theory that humour is one of the main ways in which he feels safe expressing anger – c.f. the interaction where he tells Shadowheart that she bleats too much – but this post is long enough as it is.)

In any case, I’d be interested to know if anyone else has thoughts on this, or if there are any canon moments I've missed that might contradict these theories.

Look, can we please, NOT hate on Maximus to ship Ghoulcy? I like Ghoulcy, but I also like Max.

Got tired of the fandom shipping wars and the frequent harassment from some of the fans who hated Ghoulcy.

I don't need to hate on a character to like a ship. I don't want the ghoulcy fandom to be like the haters.

the "each bg3 character is a subversion of their usual class traits except halsin" is one of my favorite discussions but i think halsin is also a subversion he is just harder to pick out

when he kills he feels it is out of necessity and doesnt regret it even though life is lost vs. traditional druid who feels All Life is Sacred

part of druid group and was selected as the leader but is actually too much of a free soul and doesnt actually want to stay there vs. the reclusive druid who must be convinced to trek the world

halsin being a notorious bedbreaking harlot vs. the sexless-druid who is detached from intercourse/interpersonal sexual relationships

built like he got 10 meals a day vs. the tight-bodied lithe druid

I love his character, I feel like he is a druid who worships nature by experiencing it to the fullest. Which is why he doesnt take issue with things like sex and killing. It also contextualizes why he was chosen as the leader of the druid camp but wasnt happy in the position. Halsin doesnt want to be an overseer of nature, he wants to be a participant who walks and grows and fucks as much as he can

people are like "no one wants to work anymore" when every job application is like upload your resume and cover letter. okay now manually type out your resume and cover letter in our text boxes. okay now answer these 10 riddles. okay now take a rorschach test. okay now upload a photo of your childhood bedroom and explain the relationship between its layout and the adult you are today. okay now show us your youtube watch history. okay now define the color "red." okay now walk into a patch of poison ivy and take a selfie of you holding up a paper saying "i <3 ivy." okay now wave your hands in the air if you just don't care. that one was a trick to cull the applicants who don't care. okay now choose a loved one to sacrifice. great! thank you for submitting your application we will not be calling you

Reach

Female Tav x Halsin

(Just a personal headcanon for one of my Tavs)

The Imp patagium laid on the highest shelf, just a few inches out of her reach if she went on tiptoe. Normally, not a terrible inconvenience if she floated a bit, but with the lambent flames cooking the suspensions and the steam of the sublimates, she was reluctant to risk an accidental brush with her robes. She tried approaching from the side, but the distance just felt longer. She tried placing a knee on the edge of the stone slab used as an alchemical workspace, but the shelf was behind the arrangement of vials and flames and stinging steam.

"Let me, my heart." One long, broad arm reached above her head to pluck the small vial. Looking upwards, she could see the smile on his face.

"I could have gotten that."

"Indeed you could." Wrapping one arm around her waist, Halsin laid a gentle kiss on her head. "But I figured this was easier for you."

Luth could feel herself relaxing into his embrace, swaying with him as they often did during their moments alone.

"Thank you. Really." She turned around, smiling as she reached up to take the patagium from him.

He kept it out of her grasp.

Puzzled, she extended her arm, all the while looking at his broadly grinning face that never changed. He inched it further from her hand. Dawning comprehension revealed the mischievousness in his smile as he leaned a bit further back.

"You're almost there," One step, then two before he had already led her away from the alchemy bench and had sat down on a nearby slab. Every time her fingertips grazed the glass, he'd swap hands with it.

"How-" She let out a huff of laughter. "-how are you so tall?!"

Frustration had her gripping his forearm with both hands, hands that still could not encircle his arm completely, pulling herself further up until she finally snatched the elusive ingredient with a triumphant cry.

"Aha!"

"Very well done, my heart."

His grin had never faded and she had now realized, that he had maneuvered her so that she'd be draped all over him. Only the clothing they wore separated them from fully feeling the length of each other's bodies. From his vantage, he had the satisfaction of watching his beloved's face flush redder and redder, mere inches from his.

"You planned this."

"Mm-hmm." Thick fingers had already slid under her embroidered robes, rubbing circles on bare skin. "Whatever should be done about that now?"

"You-" Luth could not even pretend to be mad, not with growing evidence of his interest beneath where her legs were straddling him. "This is why we're behind on our potion stock."

"By all means, don't let me stop you, my love."

Luth had to laugh. "You are dangerous."

His chuckle joined hers as the vial of patagium fell to the ground.

There are a couple more Garrus-Vakarian-related hills I'm willing to die on.

Maybe this particular bit of fanon has faded over the years, but there used to be a lot of insistence that Garrus is young and somehow inexperienced when he meets Shepard. Canon doesn't really support this. Turians start their mandatory service at 15. Garrus has at least a decade of experience. Even if he's 2-4 of years younger than Shepard (according to Patrick Weekes), he's got at least as much field experience as she does by dint of the difference in turian and human "enlistment" ages.

Garrus is really damn good at his job at C-Sec. You don't give the Case of Investigating the Rogue Spectre to a greenhorn. You give it to your best, most tenacious agent. Pallin may not always approve of Garrus's actions, but that doesn't actually stop him from putting Garrus on the tough case. Also, we don't know much about how C-Sec works but we do know a bit about how the turian hierarchy works, and we know C-Sec was essentially a turian initiative. That means it's a meritocracy where failure reflects on the superior, not the one who failed. So, in roughly a decade (Shepard's 29 in ME1; I always think of Garrus as about 27), Garrus has not only done shipboard military service, but he's also risen to be one of C-Sec's top investigators; Pallin wouldn't risk having Garrus's "failure" reflect poorly on HIM otherwise. I'd say that actually makes Garrus as remarkable in civilian law enforcement terms as Shepard is considered to be within the ranks of the Alliance military.

Of course Garrus was scouted by the Spectre program. And honestly, if his dad hadn't stepped in, I think Garrus would have become a Spectre, no problem. Especially for a turian, he's cut from precisely the cloth the Spectres would be looking for: extremely skilled, extremely capable, and--most importantly--he's a turian not just able but willing to work outside the chains of command that turians are taught from birth to revere and be loyal to above all else. This is the reason Pallin is leery about Spectres: he's a good turian. Good turians follow straight lines; they don't carve out their own paths.

Garrus's dad's not dumb, and he's not cruel, and he, too, rose to the top of the C-Sec hierarchy. He took one look at his kid, I think, and said, "I love my child, but I'd say it's a 50-50 chance he ends up a shooting-first-asking-questions-later Spectre like Saren Arterius, and I don't want to see that happen." Yeah, he uses his parental influence to try and jam square-peg-Garrus into round-hole-C-Sec and Garrus resents him for it, but there's no way he did it just to stop his son from getting his way or because he doesn't like Spectres. I expect Vakarian Sr. had to clean up more post-Spectre-interference messes than we can possibly imagine. But we also know he and Alec Ryder were pals later.

So the importance of what Garrus learns from a Paragon Spectre Shepard is this: You can't just do what you want and claim the ends always justify the means. That's what Saren does. Over and over again. Garrus's code and his idealism and his sense of justice and his ability to work alone should make him a great Spectre, actually, but he needs Paragon Spectre Shepard's actions to show him the lesson he tells her he's learned during ME1: "If the people I'm sworn to protect can't trust me... well, then I don't deserve to be the one protecting them." (And the seed of Archangel was planted.) I think for the first time he realizes that even though he believes his sense of justice to be correct, it doesn't matter for shit if he can't show others why that's so. And that's where the trust comes in. (Also, ow, the extra level of importance this gives their exchange where she tells him she trusts him and he tells her she's about the only friend he has left is... a lot. Cool, cool. I'm totally fine. Nothing to see here.)

When Shepard asks him what happened on Omega, he replies, "My feelings got in the way of my better judgement." Something tells me that this never happens to "good" turians, which just makes the line so much more devastating. And although the lesson some might take away from this is "feelings bad; no feelings ever," the "grey" that Garrus has to learn to deal with is precisely the grey of recognizing feelings, validating them even, but not acting on them until they've been examined. (Which is why my Shepard stands between him and Sidonis; she doesn't give a shit about Sidonis. But Garrus has refused to process his own feelings of failure and self-loathing, so they have to take the therapy session to the Citadel and deal with it there.)

Ahh yes. The mountain range of character analysis.