Liara

tl;dr? song link here: Liara (mp3)

I just finished Mass Effect 3 on our Xbox a few days ago. For the uninitiated, it's a sci-fi role playing game with combat elements that involves saving the galaxy from genocidal invaders, putting together a team in the course of the game to do so. The first two games establish the nature of the threat to the galaxy and are where most of the new characters are introduced, while the third one deals with actually fighting off the invasion.  The game trilogy has fans as devoted as any movie or book series, and at least touches on deep moral and ethical questions, even if it doesn't always resolve them. 

As with many games of this type, the relationships between characters develop with time (and with how you treat them). Many of the characters are "romanceable", several to players of either gender. This is true even though relatively few of the romanceable characters are human. Both of these facts were somewhat controversial when the first installment of the game came out, and both centered on an alien character of the asari race named Liara-- the only non-human romanceable character in Mass Effect 1, and the only one romanceable by either gender.   

I've been using the same character (Mordechai Shepard) for all three games, importing him from one game to the next as each installment became available. While the ending was...not what I was quite expecting, I'm thinking I may start again from the beginning in 2013 and play through all of them without having to wait for years in between. The one major change I imagine making in the next playthrough will be romancing Liara. She's not the favorite character of the fanbase (that crown probably belongs to Garrus, though Tali has a strong contingent), but certainly some of the sweetest moments in the series involved her. While other romances and squadmates from the first installments may lose faith in you or get drawn off on their own obligations, Liara never does.

So, even though I'm 43 years old, I wrote a song for a blue alien character in an Xbox game. It's just me and a guitar, basically just a demo.  It may never get more developed or better performed than this, but after spending hundreds of hours with her over the course of 5 years or so, maybe I'll rerecord it at some point. :)

Here it is:  Liara (mp3)