Nothing fucks me up more than Anderson calling Shepard “child” because everybody in the entire galaxy sees her as a legend and depends on her to save them but then here comes Anderson who sees her as a person and probably one who’s scared and stressed and terribly fiercely HUMAN and he’s watched her grow so much and he’s so proud of her and I just. I fucking love Shepard and I’m so proud of her too Anderson so like honestly BIG FUCKING MOOD
“don’t move, i’m the only thing standing between you and a hole in the
head” says canonically 5"3’ shepard to a possibly 7"0’ sidonis,
with garrus’ scope trained on them from both distance and height. from his
vantage point up on that gangway, she probably only came up to sidonis’ waist
which means shepard knew damn well her being ‘in’ garrus’ scope would have little
to no effect on whether or not he chose to take the shot. the only thing that
was holding him back was his trust in shepard, not her head in his scope. it was such a visceral moment
and they both knew it
and when i think about the extent of the unconditional trust between these two,
and how this right here was probably the defining moment when they fully realised just how much faith they had in each other and how that faith was wholly returned,
these two soldiers from different species, species who have a leery past and were
taught at a young age to distrust the other, it just
i know that generally when it comes to scarecrow’s fear toxin/gas/whatever the favored interpretation is scary hallucinogen/really bad trip with a lot of “oh no everything is monsters” BUT LIKE personally i think it would be interesting if he just bypasses all of that and skips right to triggering the physiological mechanisms of fear. like if he’s isolated the part of irukandji syndrome that causes feelings of impending doom, or found a drug that kicks the
amygdala
into high gear to trigger panic attacks (i know that i am oversimplifying this but it’s comic book logic so whatever). so instead of
EVERYTHING LOOKS LIKE MONSTERS TRYING TO KILL ME AND THAT’S TERRIFYING
it’s
I DON’T KNOW WHY I’M SO SURE YOU’RE ALL TRYING TO KILL ME BUT THE WORST PART IS THE ANTICIPATION, MY WHOLE WORLD IS JUMPSCARES NOW
but tbh my reasons are mostly self-indulgent because i would find it hilarious if batman got gassed and then kicked crane’s ass anyway, leaving crane under the impression that batman is immune to fear, but actually batman is just already hypervigilant and prone to catastrophic thinking and has a lot of practice dealing with panic attacks
“Batman doesn’t notice he got fear gassed because he just assumed he was having an episode and ignored it” is my whole Batman aesthetic tbh
just moving along like everyone else 