DuskWanderer wrote...
Yeah, I can't stand the hate Ash/Kaidan get for not being a blind Shepard loyalist. I think there's a lot of things Tali and Garrus fans don't consider when it comes to them.
1.) They are in the Alliance, and have their own lives. Garrus doesn't really have anything better to do: He was a viligante on Omega who would have been killed not for Shepard. Tali went through proper channels and received clearance from the Admiralty Board. Ash and Kaidan did not.
2.) Ash and Kaidan both have infinitely more reason to hate Cerberus because they are both humans, and military brats. This is more prominent with Ash than it is Kaidan, but while Cerberus has an obvious xenophobia for aliens, they claim to be making things better for humanity as a whole, including the VS. Given Ash's determined desire to prove she's not a weakling, and Kaidan's morality, it would set them off a lot more than Tali, who can simply hate Cerberus for it's xenophobia.
3.) While not true for Ash, Kaidan has no reason to simply "fall in line" behind Shepard: Kaidan outranks him: Major is higher than Commander. Shepard has no authority to give Kaidan orders.
4.) Tali and Garrus found out about Shepard by accident, Ash/Kaidan found out through second-hand rumors that Shepard was working with Cerberus, then had the rumors confirmed. Even if Shepard wanted to contact them, it never actually happened. How would you react when your best friend supposedly died, came back to life, and joined a terrorist organization, all the while not bothering to let you know they were, at the very least, okay.
5.) As ME3 showed us, Ash and Kaidan were right: Shepard couldn't trust Cerberus.
I know this is a delayed reaction but I'm just getting caught up. I certainly don't disagree with your point that Kaidan and Ash don't deserve all the hate just because they didn't drop their obligations and their careers to hop on the SR-2 like the rest of their lives meant nothing. However, I do disagree with some of what you've written.
First, how do Ash and Kaidan have more reason to hate Cerberus, a group whose stated mission is to promote humanity at the cost of every other species, than Tali? Consider the direct action of Cerberus against the Quarians. And Garrus was there for the same Cerberus missions that Shep and Kaidan/Ash were. Why should he trust them any more than the VS? Yet both of them set aside their reasons to join Shepard on a mission to save humans. Not any other species, just humans.
Second, Kaidan was not a Major in ME2 (though still a rank higher than what Shepard had been and again became in ME3) and Shepard was not with the Alliance at all. Regardless of the VS's rank, Shepard had no authority over him or her.
Shepard didn't contact Ash or Kaidan because she didn't know where they were. Their location and mission was classified by the Alliance and Shep had no access to their service records. TIM knows, but he ain't talking and Anderson is either on the Council and may not know or has no reason to trust Shepard with the information because, y'know, she's working for Cerberus and isn't part of the Alliance any more. Personally, I head-canon it that Shep sent a message to the address she had and it bounces back, because, really, it's an e-mail address and it should still work. Maybe ME1 addresses were like Hotmail and the Alliance switched to gmail.
Last, you can't use ME3 revelations to judge ME2 actions. And, hell, Shep didn't trust TIM any farther than she could throw him. Circumstance forced her hand in a way it did not for the VS. Again, I certainly don't think they deserve the sort of flak they get for NOT dropping everything, including their assignment to protect the colonists on Horizon (those that were still left), but neither do they get a pass from me. Tali went through proper channels but, as far as we know, the VS didn't even ask.
Retour en haut
Oh, and my disappointment with his completely missing my jerking awake after that last nightmare. I wanted him to be all consoling and have Shep really tell him what was going on with her and it was just brushed aside because he slept right through it.
' for Kaidan 
