Canadian Delicacy - The Kaidan Alenko Thread

I don't even see where Kaidan was whiny. When asked, he tells you about his past. He also says he'd made peace with it. He doesn't complain about being an L2, instead grateful he doesn't have it as bad as others. He didn't complain turians were jerks, just that Vyrnnus was. He's reserved, because when he unleashes his power, people were known to accidentally die. (Which was the issue: it wasn't on his terms.) Yet, he's clear in ME1 that he's not holding back any longer.  Oh, and before anyone brings up ME2, if that's evidence then it's also evidence that Ashley is whiny since she behaves pretty much the same way.

The scene above, "don't leave me behind", that just shows the depth of how much he cares. He's been through it once before (romanced or not) and would rather die by Shepard's side than live on alone. Because he knows what that's like. Shepard, though, is the same as always: choosing to make the sacrifice and allow others to survive. "Know that I love you. Always." Honestly, gets me a little emotional thinking about it.

They made not have had the perfect romance, but it was very passionate and the love ran deep.

I have an idea why I think Kaidan sometimes gets flak.

Kaidan likely isn't as popular because he doesn't spew one liners, isn't the typical dudebro who is seen as a badass like Garrus who keeps claiming he can drink you under the table, and he doesn't act flamboyant or over the top. He's a guy with his own feeling and doesn't blindly follow you romanced or not. He also reacts more human than most characters. It reminds me of Resident Evil where Chris is not as popular because he's more normal and human, but Leon is a typical brodude spewing one liners, doing ridiculous stunts, and people act like he's a god.

Kaidan is similar in the same way. He's more normal and he's more human, but yet he gets dumped on a lot by fans and most mainstream media I see as boring and uninteresting. I've tried to actually engage in an actual conversation with people who dislike Kaidan. Most people either can't come back at me with anything, just continue to blindly hate him, or say he's a beta male who acts obnoxious with his distrust towards Shepard. Dunno what makes him a beta male, but whatever. And his distrust towards Shepard makes sense to me in general. And if talk with him enough in ME3, he out right trusts Shepard and then claims he will never doubt him/her again.

But then again, I also get the feeling most people didn't even give him a chance because most likely saved Ashley because she's a woman.

Yeah. But also:

1) his armor sux in ME1. Evebody have a cool/diferent aparence in char seletion, but not Kaidan.

gamedesignreviews.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/mass_pt2_character.jpg

2) in the same screen, evebody have a nice pose (fucking love Tali in this screen), but Kaidan is just there.

3) In the metagame he is, imho, the best companion in ME1. Playing casual he's only a weak version of Liara.

4) He's a initial companion. Course people will take the first oportunity to exchange him for a brand new companion. Also, he's only a human, not a cool alien.

Its probably his personality. He's more quiet and reserved. Even with femshep, he's actually pretty shy and not as up front about his feelings for her. He drops little hints that he's interested. He isn't like "yo baby girl lemme holla atchu for a minute. You cute and yo' body on point. Lemme hit dat." Ow, my brain hurt from typing that.

So that's probably why he's seen as beta. He's not aggressive or acts like he's a big man. I don't agree with it, just telling you what I've seen from my experience. I personally like his approach towards female Shepard. He reminds me of Cullen in that he's polite, has good intentions, but isn't that experienced with women despite being a strong warrior. Can't speak about male Shepard/Kaidan as I've never romanced him before. Also, him being whiny is completely overblown as he never whines once. He just mentions he has issues with his L2s and says "but I'll deal with it." Soooo whiny.

I've actually seen some people that are so petty that they let Kaidan die on Virmire just so they can kill Ashley in ME3 so she doesn't get to be labelled as a hero. Some ME fans are really weird I tell ya. Oh and I was in the same boat as you with Ash. I never really gave her a chance. Then I decided to romance her, but the Shepard that did was a "screw everything that moves" Shepard, so she wasn't all that nice about it. Then I made a Shepard based on myself and romanced her and stayed faithful. I thought Ash can actually be pretty sweet, but her content is sorely lacking in ME3. Even her Citadel DLC scenes suck compared to Kaidan. But all in all, she has great chemistry with broshep. Paragon broshep can be a complete cornball with her and her reactions are great. So she moved up a great deal for me. But I still think Kaidan was handled better throughout the series.

And I think Ash is even weaker if she's not romanced and you have her past ME3 as most of her arc is about her sister like Miranda. So maybe you're better off. Though Steve is not an option for you? But even then, I'm guessing it would be hard for you to let Kaidan die on Virmire. Its was hard for me when I wanted to romance Ash. Kaidan is easily in my top 3 best characters of the series. 

This is a cut scene from when they went to the beach on Virmire before going after Saren.

Oh, sorry. I don't normally post on the Mass Effect threads. 

Regarding the Kadian hate, Hi by the way new here don't eat me, I think it all depends on what kind of Shepard you are playning. Female faithful Shepard all is well. A female Shepard that cheated/moved on, depending on how you read the  horizon aftermath has a different outcome, I guess this has been discussed before, but for me that is where I have a problem with him. I get his angle and all, but It comes down to femsheps responses, or the lack of responses. And then the cerberus thing on mars. Calling my femshep a husk. Not cool. Her feelings got hurt. But after shuttning him down, and by doing so ending the romance, he grew on me. Like losing Shepard made him a better man. So I had problem with him. But I got over them. What I would have loved to have in the game would have been a scen between Joker and Kaidan, after the Cerberus Coup. Beacause Joker for me is really voicing Shepards frustration, about the whole working with cerberus stuff. Sorry if my english is bad.    

I did say that I understand his angle. And Kaidan is doing a great job expressing his feelings about it all. But my shep is not really getting her chans to do the same. But joker, atleast in from the way I see it say alot of things I wish we could say to Kaidans face. Beacause shep is not the only one that was working for cerberus, but she is the only one getting crap for it. And  I think a person like Kaidan would have like to know why joker and chakwas joined up with cerberus, so a scen where he asks them would have been nice.   

There should be more story than what Joker was whining about how Alliance aren't doing anything and why he's still so pissed off with Kaidan.

What Joker did to save the Normandy SR-1 was unnecessary, he put his life in danger when he should've evacuate. He did ignore Kaidan's orders which directly caused the death of Commander Shepard. Considering, Kaidan is the next senior officer after Shepard and Pressly's death, he should be the next commanding officer. So I wasn't surprised of it was Kaidan who recommend to ground Joker for recklessness and disobedience. Why wouldn't Joker resent Kaidan for this?

As for Chakwas, I personally headcanon her as a double agent working for Hackett and Anderson. I don't think she would stupidly commit treason that simply and neither the Admirals seems surprised about Shepard so there's some truth to this.

And I don't think people view Cerberus as a militant terrorist organization which they are. They have loyal operatives who would resort to suicide to protect their interest. They infiltrated, attacked and sabotaged both Alliance and Citadel governments. They worked together with Batarian slavers for the science projects. I don't suppose you'd expect anyone today to treat very lightly how military officers openly defected from your government to work with ISIS or Nazi. This is treason and it is a criminal offense. Not "ends justify the means" thing.

Regardless, how you see it (whether you agree or not), Shepard have no choice but to be with Cerberus and even more so after she found out they have her friends. Even Gabby don't really agree with Cerberus's agenda and merely followed Ken who was recruited along, that was the third Alliance woman (if you count Shepard) being brought into these mess because of reckless actions of their men. Mother of all ironies.

Neither the Alliance or Council are treating the reaper threat lightly. It was just the image that they're not actively doing anything that Cerberus tried to push especially in ME2. The evidence is very contrary; Alliance and Turian military and STGs are all aware of how serious the reaper threat are and are somewhat prepared for the invasion (while they suffered but they still hold on against the bulk off the attcks). Its nonsense that they could survive that long in ME3 if they hadn't strengthen their military at some point after ME1. In ME2 itself, if you sacrifice the council, the news already brewing that Turian Military are already starting arms race by ME2, partly in fear of Alliance dominance.

As for the politicians, they were trying to preserve order and stability and to maintain peace. They are just the face of their government. It was Shepard who had to pursue the matter strongly in ME3 by going directly to the chain of command to actually do something; brokering with the Turian Primarch, the Salarian Dalatrass, the Krogan Clan Leader, the Quarian Admiralty, the Geth representative and saving the Citadel Council.. all of this was not a coincidence. And a lot of your past actions in the previous games affected the outcome of these interactions. Which fall back to ME2, where you're told that nobody is doing anything which is what Cerberus trying to push as a propaganda... they have their own reasons to invest in Shepard, they want the wealth of Reaper technologies from the Collectors which Shepard can give to them either directly (collector's base) or indirectly (through the progression of the ME2 story, where you infiltrated various places which Cerberus take note - invasion of Omega and infiltration of Citadel and C-Sec).

And falling back to the whole Joker and Kaidan enigma... easier explained if you play Shepard as a woman - romanced or not, they're two men who was in love with Shepard (its obvious.. duh). Joker hated Kaidan even more because he was jealous of Kaidan's relationship with Shepard (obvious in ME1 when he interrupt them twice, 2 and 3 whenever he talked about kaidan specifically and indirectly; his resentment to biotics as a disability). And later they both blame each other for her death and both never reconcile with each other. Without Shepard to buffer between them, they virtually had nothing in common.

I won't say I actually experience the whole cheating mess since I never play Shepard's story that way as for each Shepard, I always choose to stay faithful to my chosen LI. If I want to switch LIs, I like to stay faithful and break up officially rather than sleeping with anyone available immediately and while assuming you already broke up (I actually waited three years to break up with Quinn... and I wanted to end it since he tried to kill his own WIFE and actually attacked her.... Horizon is the least form of betrayal than this). I know people like to play polyamory fantasy with these sort of games, but they're always badly written and even MEA didn't do it better (where I am, polygamy is legal, doesn't mean I am okay with it..) they could have a scene at the hospital where Shepard could watch Kaidan having a talk with either Thane or Garrus but I like how Kaidan gleefully sarcastic about Jacob.

This is not the first time I've engaged with the conversation about two-timing Kaidan in this thread but I've seen this happen very frequently for years (on BSN forum, on tumblr, on facebook, on twitter etc), the deluge of people who felt the necessity to constantly circle jerking on Kaidan and wanted everyone to agree with how asshole Kaidan was to them. I really get it, Garrusmancers hated that Kaidan don't see how precious their Garrus are or how Garrus is always loyal to them and always trust everything they said and always had their back. Thanemancers hated that Kaidan don't sympathize with Thane's death. Jacobmancer already get rejected by him and Kaidan himself aren't exactly sympathetic to that. I get it, everyone who choose to sleep with these characters in ME2 was incensed that ME3 Kaidan expect Shepard to apologize to him and hated even more when Kaidan said " I understand why you cheated" because to you it was not cheating since you think Horizon was a big break up (^again my Wrath's husband tried to kill her which should annulled their marriage... Kaidan merely don't like Shepard working with terrorists).


I really don't want another session of this in Kaidan's own thread... I really don't care it if people want to vent about it on your preferred romanced character's thread (that's the whole point wasn't it?). But as I stand, I won't make excuses for your Shepard's choices since it was what you made. If you don't like it, just don't romance him at all instead of expecting anyone to justifying its worth to treat Kaidan that way. 

 I did not try to offend anyone, I just tought I put in my two cent aobut why I think Kaidan get alot of hate. To put it simple, some people, like my self got protective over Shepard. That is what I think, I might be wrong.  And I don't think he is whiny.  

obbie1984 No. Kaidan is the only one in the entire series who use the actual word "cheating" to describe Shepard sleeping with someone else before they get the chance to sort out their relationship and he demanded Shepard to apologize to him directly. Not surprisingly, it rub badly for players who was surprised that this came out from a character widely known as being a boring good-natured nice soldier. There's even a BackOff mod specifically done with a special intention of "giving the backbone back to FemShep" when Kaidan confronted her.

Meanwhile BroShep have the chance to tell off Ashley with "I needed connection with you, and you shut me out and now you're angry because I moved on?". In ME2, you can have Liara being completely understanding that you choose someone over her, in ME3 she only get angry if you lead her on and for the entirety she will talk miserably about how you and her are "just friends". There's really no conversation line that pointedly portrayed all of these female LIs in a situation where they express anything but being miserable about themselves that BroShep would choose someone over them. As if it was humiliating on their part that BroShep didn't grace them with his genital rather than taking everything as his own decision. That was the fantasy - of having beautiful women being jealous of each other over you and you never get the full brunt of their outrage if you played them.

And it was correct that FemShep's male LIs generally aren't negatively affected after being rejected by Shepard. Garrus get Tali, Jacob get Brynn Cole and a baby. Even Thane still rather die by a sword than being killed by his own disease - with or without romance, he was at peace in the end leaving FemShep being more miserable in entirety. Kaidan simply brush it off when rejected and only show jealousy through passive aggressively "I understand why you cheated, but I still love you, Shepard." which wasn't exactly attacking his other male love rivals. You're still playing the same Commander Shepard but apparently only GirlShepard get to have her ego constantly needled.. whereas the game protected male Shep from facing anything remotely emasculating as being belittled by a girl they've wronged. There's virtually no moment where BroShep ever felt responsibly guilty as in being in a situation where he was confronted by being a cheater and must apologize directly (whether you personally felt it or not.. it was never shown in the game does it?). The only true consequences was him directly or indirectly causing their deaths.. which was really excessive (... like you get cheated on and suddenly the game increases your chance of getting killed off...).

Liara react the exact same between the Shepards but she never was made specifically for FemShep unlike all of her male LIs. She and the Asari in the trilogy are always primarily catered for men and portrayed through male gaze. I won't use the convenience that they're all pansexual monogendered species to make her relationship count as queer when it was exact opposite for their all-female culture. And she is plot-armored to the teeth requiring low EMS to be threatened.. which is not afforded to ALL of her love rivals.