MidnightRaith wrote...
I would like to weigh in on the asari culture vs human culture topic.
Honestly, I don't like it very much when fics have Shepard completely adopting asari culture and letting his/her own fall to the side. I find it a bit unrealistic. On a personal note, I am biracial and while I was raised primarily in one culture, that doesn't mean the other culture was completely ignored. I think the same would work here for Shepard and Liara as a couple and with a family. Perhaps they'd even strike for a balance.
It kind of irritated me when Aethyta became angry when Shepard tells her she'd be called the mother as well as far as humans are concerned. We have two genders and our society is largely patriarchal. Of course we'd insist on a difference. But, then again, this is Aethyta. She doesn't exactly come across as the tolerant asari trope....
Anyway, this goes back to my original point. I really have a hard time reading fics in which the authors state that Femshep goes by father. Is it just me, or doesn't that seem a bit unrealistic? She's human and just because I play the ultra-tolerant, understanding Paragon Shep, that doesn't mean I'm able to accept Shepard referring to herself as such. Especially a Colonist or Spacer Femshep. "Father" is very masculine, in a human's point of view and when you're also raised with a father and are exposed to the masculine and patriarchal human parenting techniques, I would think that would be difficult for a Femshep to accept. While I don't think that any Femshep is largely feminine, her accepting the patriarchal and masculine parental title is way on the otherside of the spectrum, in my opinion.
It just wouldn't fit Femshep's human culture and goes back to my point that I don't believe Liara and Shepard would just go against it. Yes, Shepard would largely accept Liara's culture, I'm not doubting that at all. However, this is an interspecies couple. It would kind of defeat the purpose of their being so if they ignored one of their cultures in favor of the other. Not to mention a tad disrespectful. Liara might as well have fallen in love with another asari. Or Shepard another human. I believe that some of their attraction to the other is each other's culture.
Of course, Manshep wouldn't have this problem, but there are other aspects of it. For instance, I'd like to think that Shepard and Liara would hyphenate their names. They'd probably raise their kids in both asari and human culture. Maybe they wouldn't actually move to Thessia but perhaps a planet that feature many species and many cultures. I'm just saying that neither needs to give up a part of themselves here. Liara is an alien, however Shepard is also a human. Ignoring one fact over the other would cheapen them both, in my opinion.
I, too, dislike it when Shepard completely abandons his/her human culture and wholeheartedly adopts the asari culture, to the point where Shepard is actually treated as an asari (thankfully, only one/two such fics that I've come across are guilty of this). In my eyes, the asari culture is all about plurality, enriching one's own culture by acknowledging and accepting others'. It's for this reason that I like to think of any children that Shep and Liara have as being raised in a wildly multicultural setting, with many races all going to the same school together.
That said, I like the idea of FemShep calling herself "dad". I like the idea of FemShep proposing to Liara in the asari way. It's acknowledging the others' culture without completely abandoning their own. Of course, my Alice Shepard has no family to speak of (go Earthborns!) so it's not like she's really giving up any traditions.
Retour en haut
There are several of these around and all of them fall flat. I guess I prefer the in-game model renderings from our resident photoshop/3DMax masters. 
