Valentines Blues
I looked at the topic on the forum. "Aria's First-Ever Valentines Competition" was the subject. And I thought to myself, "why not? I can do a couple of thousands-word story for Valentine's day, no problem."
The little voice inside my head disagreed. "You can't write romance to save your life," it told me. "How many successful romances have you ever written in any of your stories, fanfic or otherwise?"
Naturally, I completely ignored the voice, which some people know as 'common sense'. I like to make impulse decisions sometimes, which listening to common sense is not exactly conducive to. Therefore, armed with my natural enthusiasm and the knowledge that I needed to write 'something Valentinsey', I opened up my word processing program and, for twenty minutes, sat looking at my tabula rasa. Lack of ideas was not my problem. In fact, it was just the opposite. I had too many ideas. I ran through them in my head, trying to filter the best one out.
A young quarian couple, kept apart by their pilgrimages - too long-distance. A pair of turian lovers belonging to separate colonies, their families divided by centuries of hatred - too Shakespeare. The trials of an asari matriarch and her short-lived salarian husband - not engaging enough. So then I turned my thoughts to the Normandy, and the crew members. Plenty of material there. And it didn't have to be Shepard as the protagonist, either. Tali and Garrus were fan favourites... but probably overdone. I wanted something different. Something that nobody else would have written in a million years.
Miranda/Jack - completely implausible. Legion and... no, no, that was a terrible idea. Geth romance just wouldn't work. Jacob and Kasumi? That could be nice. But Jacob doesn't seem like a particularly romantic guy. Could be difficult. Maybe it would be best to go with Shepard.
I turned to my 46-inch wall-mounted television, where my Shepard was loitering inside her quarters of the Normandy SR2. I'd left her listening to the dreadful in-game music whilst I went to top up my drink with ice. "What do you think?" I asked aloud.
To my complete and utter shock and amazement, Shepard turned on the spot and looked right at me from the screen. She folded her arms across her chest, obscuring the front of her black and white Cerberus shirt, and rested all her weight on one leg.
"You know, you're the first player to ever ask me that," she said.
My mouth fell open. I glanced at my half-empty tumbler of single malt whisky. It was definitely time to stop drinking. Perhaps an early night was in order. I reached for my remote control.
"Don't you dare turn the TV off!" my Shepard warned me sternly. Her steely grey eyes did not approve of my action. "You're the first fanfic writer who's actually asked what I want, and now you're damn well going to listen."
"I am going crazy," I said to myself. Though I had to wonder about that; crazy people rarely know they're nuts. Maybe I was just a logical, lucid kind of crazy. That made more sense than a game character talking to me through the TV.
"I don't know about crazy, but you definitely drink more whisky than anybody else I know," said Shepard. "You wanna watch that, or you'll end up sounding like Tom Waits."
I nodded dumbly. How the hell did Shepard know about Tom Waits? He wasn't alive during the time period of her game's setting. I asked her that very question.
"You play his music on your X-Box," she pointed out. "I'm privy to everything that happens on your console."
"Really?" It sounded about as plausible as a Miranda/Jack relationship, to me.
"What, you think that everything just stops once you save your game and exit?" Shepard scoffed, shaking her head. "And I thought Liara was naive."
"Uh..." I said, elegantly. In my head, the little voice continued to point out that I was a few sandwiches short of a picnic. I ignored it, of course. This was too good an opportunity to pass up just because I was a little bit loco. "So... you have some ideas about romance stories for my Valentine's competition?" I asked.
"That's more like it. Glad you've decided to be sensible about this," said Shepard. She unfolded her arms and made her way over to the comfy-looking sofa. There, she sank down onto it and sprawled out casually, curling her legs beneath her body. "So. What did you have in mind for this little competition?" she asked.
"Well," I said cautiously, aware that my suggestions might actually be offensive to this figment of my crazy imagination, "I was thinking that you and Garrus..."
"Yawn," she replied immediately. "Everybody does that. Besides, Garrus is the best bromance in the game. Why would you go and ruin something like that with 'feelings'?"
"Umm... okay then," I said, slightly disappointed. I like Garrus, because he's basically space-Batman. "I suppose I could explore a touching relationship between you and Thane."
"Are you kidding? The guy just told me that he's going to die. I'm not getting emotionally invested in somebody who'll be shuffling loose the mortal coil in less than twelve months."
"Huh." I couldn't think of a more diplomatic response. I'd never realised that Shepard could be so pragmatic and... well... cold. "What about Jacob? He's a nice, reliable guy, right?"
"To be honest," said Shepard, "I prefer not to engage in office-relationships. It's bad for team morale for a start, and it just gets awkward at the Christmas parties."
"I see." My mind went into overdrive as I started thinking outside the box. In fact, I was so far outside the box, I couldn't even see it anymore.
"Conrad Verner-"
"He's practically a stalker."
"Captain Anderson-"
"Breaks military procedure. Besides, human. Been there, done that. I'd like to try something new."
"One of the Council members might-"
"I don't want to get into politics," Shepard interrupted.
"Executor Pallin?"
"Too old."
"I could find you a nice salarian."
"They don't live long enough."
"Um... a batarian?"
"Too grabby." Shepard made a clutching motion with her fingers. "Plus, they're creepy. The eyes are like... the window to the soul, right? How am I supposed to know which pair to look at? It's not at all romantic."
I mentally considered the list of other available aliens. Elcor were too monotonous. Vorcha were vermin. Volus couldn't take their pressure suits off, but that might make an interesting contradiction for a romance. I suggested it to Shepard.
"You're twisted," she replied immediately. "You're almost as bad as those guys at Fornax. Do you know, they emailed me a few weeks back asking if I'd appear nude on the front cover of their mag? I asked them how they'd cover up my unmentionables, and they said they were going to put a damn hanar in the shoot with me! Can you imagine? They wanted to put me in a bloody hentai!"
"Umm... yeah," I agreed. "That sounds horrible." Then, I said something foolish. "I do think you're being a bit too particular, though. Maybe I should have gone with a Male Shepard."
"Actually, that's not a bad idea," said Shepard. "You write better male protagonists anyway. Why don't we get a man's perspective on this?"
She stood up and waved her hands in the air by her side, as if she was dancing the hula at a luau. For a moment I thought she'd gone even more cuckoo than me. Then, something happened. The air sort of... shimmered, in a sort of pixelly way. The outline of a form became visible, and a few seconds later I was looking at an armour-clad representation of John Shepard - or as I usually think of him, MaleShep.
"This better be good, Jane," he grumbled. Only then did I notice the assault rifle in his hands, and the spatters of blue and red liquid across the front of his armour. "I was on Zorya, taking care of some Blue Suns. Zaeed will be pissed if I'm gone for too long, and you know he can't be trusted to save those refinery workers on his own."
"It won't take long," FemShep assured him. Then she gestured to... well... me. "This is one of the writers, who's taking part in a Valentines Day short story competition. We'd like your input on romances. Apparently I'm 'too picky'. I call it 'having standards', but whatever."
"Oh," said MaleShep. He looked at me, and lowered his rifle. It was uncanny; he looked exactly like he did on the box. This, I realised, was the physical appearance of the default MaleShep. I usually preferred FemShep, as I liked Jennifer Hale's VO better than Mark Meers'. "I have two absolute rules," he said, holding his hand up with two fingers towards me. One, I don't do men. Two, I don't do robots. I'm not gay, and I'm not Joker. Sometimes people write me gay, but it's against my wishes."
"That works for me," I told him.
"Other than that, I do have some preferences."
They couldn't be any worse than FemShep's. "Let's hear them," I said.
"First, I don't like those lovey dovey scenes with breathless whispers and staring lovingly into someone's eyes. That sort of stuff makes me want to puke."
"Umm... okay," I said, realising that I'd used the word 'umm' a ridiculous amount of times. But what else could you do, when your game characters started talking to you? "No fairytale scenes. That's fine. I'm not good at writing those anyway."
"Good. Second; asari. I don't mind hooking up with them, but I want more than 'aligning the nervous system', if you know what I mean. I'm a guy, I have needs, and those needs do not involve a relationship made entirely of Vulcan mind-melding."
"How do you even know about Vulcan mind-melding?" I asked. "That's something specific to the Star Trek universe. You shouldn't have any knowledge of it."
"I already told you," said FemShep impatiently. "Whatever you do on your X-Box, we have knowledge of. If you want to keep your non-gaming stuff private, get a separate DVD player."
"You know," I said, as a thought crossed my mind, "I could just write a MaleShep/FemShep romance."
They both looked at me as if I'd just suggested murdering puppies.
"That would be... like... incest!" MaleShep said, horror and disgust on his chiselled face.
I held up my hands to stall their barrage of objections. "Alright, alright. No Shep/Shep 'ships." Neither looked impressed by my use of alliteration. "Very well, MaleShep. If you could pick your own partner for this competition, who would you choose?"
"Easy," he said. "Doctor Chakwas."
"Are you kidding?" I asked flatly. "FemShep just said she doesn't want an office romance."
He shrugged. "That's her choice. Personally, I don't mind it that much."
"But Doctor Chakwas is... old enough to be your mother!" I objected.
"Karin's an experienced woman who knows her own mind. I like that. Besides, with all the anti-aging treatments available, she looks like a woman half her age, and she's hardly a Mrs Robinson to begin with. Yeah, we've seen The Graduate, too. Tell me something, writer; why is it okay to hook a man up with a seven-hundred year old asari, but not okay to pair him off with a human woman only a couple of decades older? You writers are all ageist."
I shook my head, and almost adopted the famous Picard-facepalm posture, narrowly stopping myself. Suddenly, that remaining half a glass of whisky was looking very tempting. I wasn't entirely convinced that a romantic short story involving MaleShep and Chakwas would be all that interesting, and I thought I could maybe provide some better suggestions. "If you don't mind office-relationships, why not pair you up with Miranda?" I asked.
"She's a cold-hearted bitch of a woman who only cares about herself and her sister," he replied. Then he quickly looked around, before stepping forward to come closer to me and lowering his voice to a whisper. "Just don't tell her I said that."
"Okay, so no Miranda. But there are plenty of other options, none of which involve men or robots. There's Jack, for example."
"Her tattoos turn me off."
"Samara? Nothing captivates an audience like a tale of forbidden love." Hell, it's what put Titanic at the top of the box office, after all.
"Ugh," said MaleShep, rolling his eyes. "You know those two melons on the front of her chest? Completely fake. I prefer my women to be a bit more... natural."
"Tali'Zorah? She's as natural as it gets!"
"You can't do that," said FemShep. "Tali and John as over-done as Garrus and me. It's hardly original."
"Kasumi?! I asked desperately, realising I was coming to the end of the list of potentials.
"She's still grieving over that Keiji guy," said MaleShep. "I don't wanna be with someone in a one-shot under conditions like that."
"I give up!" I declared, throwing my arms into the air. It was all very melodramatic. "You two are the pickiest people I have ever met! No wonder writers don't bother to consult you before shoving you in romances with somebody. They know that you'd just complain and make excuses. I mean... honestly! You haven't been any use to me at all."
"Hey, I told you about Karin," MaleShep said defensively.
"But nobody out there wants to read about you and Doctor Chakwas."
"That's because you're all jackals," he scowled.
"And perverts," FemShep added.
I sighed. "Well, alright. Thanks for your input, guys. I'll be sure to let you know what I decide."
"S'pose it's about time I got back to Zorya," MaleShep nodded, reloading his rifle. "See what trouble Zaeed's getting upto without me to keep an eye on him."
"And you and I have a galaxy to save," FemShep told me. "Do you think this time we could keep the Collector Base and see what happens? Maybe it'll end better for me than the last Shepard you made."
MaleShep disappeared in a pixelly haze, FemShep resumed her previous position of waiting for my orders, and I reached for the bottle of whisky. Nobody would ever believe what had just happened to me. And worse, I still didn't have a story for the competition. This had just been a complete waste of my time. But FemShep was right; we had a mission to complete. I might not be able to write a convincing romance to save my life, but I could at least save the galaxy.