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[Fic & Podfic] Shepard's No One Fan

Summary:

During the events of Mass Effect 1, Conrad Verner starts up a WeeView channel. What starts out as a fangirl-for-Shepard channel turns into something much else during the events of Saren and the Geth's invasion of the Citadel.

Notes:

ThreeWhiskeyLunch: Djap has had blanket approval to record any of my fics into podfic and has posted quite a few of them, so naturally when the suggestion came along to do a collab like this, I threw myself and my house and my cats right into the sink hole with whole-hearted gusto. Much thanks to Djap for dragging me into this fun project!

Djap: A huge thanks to ThreeWhiskeyLunch for collaborating with me on this! Soundscaping these wonderfully silly chapters was lots of fun and I dearly love what we created here together. Technically I have long since moved on from the Mass Effect fandom, but your works always manage to drag me back for some smutty, silly amazingness full of nostalgia! Thank you, friend <3

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Chapter 1: Baking Cookies With Conrad

Chapter Text

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Download or stream the chapter on Google Drive

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Credits for Music, Cover Art & Sound Effects can be found at the bottom of chapter 3 below the text.

...

Baking Cookies with Conrad

Conrad (throughout): Hello everyone! Shepard's #1 fan, Conrad Verner, here for all of you on this most excellent WeView channel. Hey, we've got a new subscriber today! KroganDaddy1! I want to welcome you! Today we're gonna bake cookies for Commander Shepard and it's gonna be great. I've got the recipe right here and look! It's even got a picture here! So we're going to bake these delicious, decorated sugar cookies just for Commander Shepard that I will hand off to him the next time I see him on the Citadel. I've got all the ingredients here and I've got this mixer which I bought brand new just for the occasion. So let’s get to it! The first instruction is to cream the butter and sugar. In the interest of full disclosure, this is actually not cow butter. This is something else because I couldn't find the regular butter on the Citadel. I had to get this other butter from Sur'Kesh, but supposedly it tastes just the same so we'll see.
 
So, I’ll just toss the butter and sugar in the mixing bowl and I'm just going to turn it on here — 
 
[whine of mixer, butter and sugar explode from mixer]
 
Oh! Oh, gosh! Duh, Conrad! When you start the mixer don't start it on high! Lesson learned! Alright, let's clean this up a little bit and we're going to start again. Fortunately I have more butter…

[clean up process]
 
Okay, so we're starting on low this time with the butter and sugar. The recipe says to cream until light and I don't know really what that looks like, but I'm just gonna gradually turn it on high and we'll see what happens.

[whirring of blender]
 
So as you can see this hasn't turned white-white, but it's a little pale so I'm guessing that's Okay? It's pretty fluffy, so I’m gonna think that's alright. So now we're going to add the eggs. Again, I couldn't find eggs from earth from actual chickens so these are — I'm not even sure what -- it just says ‘eggs’ and I'm gonna just — oh thank you, uh, krogandaddy1 for the input. Yeah, so according to krogandaddy1, these are some sort of egg from Palaven. We're really hoping it's not turian eggs.
 
[light tapping in attempt to crack egg]
 
Um, yeah, so they have really hard shells. Wow.

[additional harder tapping]

Just a second here. I'm gonna use something heavy to sort of try and break it —
 
[loud smash and squelch as egg is smashed with hammer]
 
Ohh. Okay so that one's all over the — that one's all over the counter. Ohh gosh. Okay that one's all over the counter and dripping onto the floor, yes indeed it is SalamanderSalarian. Thank you for pointing that out. So we're not gonna use that one. Alright um let's try-- Let's think about this from an engineering perspective where the egg shell does not want to be broken, so we need to use force, but not so much force obviously as the hammer was in order to get this thing cracked open.  So, like um maybe try a knife. Yes. Good. We're gonna try a knife and see--
 
[slicey whacky sound]
 
Okay — yeah — Okay that — oh that's that's Okay it it's Okay it's umm I think we can use this one since the shell's not shattered into the goo like the other one. And welcome new subscriber rhymeswithleopard! Very glad to have you here! As you can see, we’re trying to get these very hard-shelled eggs open, so, uh — I'll just be trying to break these other ones.

[montage of slicey-whacky sounds and slurpy sounds]
 
So I've got all these eggs cracked! And yeah a whole influx of new subscribers! Welcome igotbigguns, bioticbacon, scratch1, chiquitamama, eatmyexhaust, and spacedoc! So happy to have you all here! We’re making sugar cookies for Commander Shepard and just managed to get these eggs all broken open and so now we're gonna add them in one by one here into this creamy buttery sugar mixture. Okay here we go.
 
[whine of mixer]
 
Oh, yeah! Turn it down, don't forget to start on low, Conrad! We don't want to be doing that on high. Um, yeah that kind of stings. I got a little bit in my eye, but I'm doing alright! I’ll just get that cleaned up. And it's all mixing in pretty well. So I think it’s safe now to start mixing in the dry ingredients, which I've got them all measured out and mixed in a separate bowl that you can see here. The recipe says to mix them all together in a bowl separately so that’s this right here. The recipe also says to add the dry ingredients slowly, so I’m turning down the speed on the mixer and I'm going to just add it in a little bit at a time with it on low because we don't want flour everywhere in the kitchen, right? Right!

And hello to new subscribers professorprothean, elcorhamlet, c-sec-c-sec-run! We are making cookies for Commander Shepard!

Oh man, Shepard's gonna be so impressed with this. I'm just so — okay okay — never mind I'm just like a little bit excited! Calm down, Conrad, calm down, okay?

[takes deep breaths]

Yeah, krogandaddy1, thank you for your advice to add ryncol to the mixture. That's very well noted and I’ll try it for the next time! Oh hey, ohh look there's new subscriber tothestarsandbeyond! Hey, you are very welcome here! We're making cookies! We're making cookies for Commander Shepard!
 
Alright, so we're slowly adding in all the dry ingredients and it's looking pretty good so far. I'm gonna let this mix so it all looks, you know like, uniform, I guess is the word for it and then we're going to roll the dough out and then we’ll cut these bad boys out.
 
Now as you can see, I've got the dough all mixed up and now it’s time to roll them out here on the counter. It should be fairly easy. 

Oh, new subscriber rhymeswithleopard asks ‘What if Commander Shepard is allergic to those sus eggs?’ Oh I guess I didn’t think about that! I guess we’ll just have to hope that he’s not! And, yeah, you’re right. I should tell him, but I don’t think I’ll say ‘sus’ eggs, ya know? 

Anyway, getting back to rolling out the dough, I didn't have a rolling pin, but I do have this replica elcor mating totem that I’m going to use instead. I think it’s about the right size for our purposes. Maybe a little big, but —no, no chaquitamama, I don’t think the ridges will be a problem. They’re not too large, I don’t think. But let’s find out here, shall we? So, just sort of, you know, spread it out as like — Um. I don't know really how thick the dough should be I guess so I'm just going to kind of press down — Oh, it's pretty sticky. Okay, so umm I'm just gonna sort of, yeah, um, press it down and kind of smoosh it around. Like this I guess? Oh, gosh. The totem is completely covered. I’ll just finish it off with my hands.

Uh, I don’t get that joke scratch1.
 
Anyway. I have this very cool cookie cutter in the shape of the Normandy SR1 that I bought at the Citadel souvenir shop!

[scraping noise] 

Cutting them out is a little difficult because the dough is quite sticky and the cookies want to stick to the counter, so I'm just gonna —
 
[clang of utensils]
 
Alright, I've got this spatula here and it's gonna — this is gonna be fine. So I'll just transfer these over to the cookie sheet. It doesn't exactly look like the cookie cut out, but it should be — um. Oh gosh, maybe getting the Normandy as the cookie cutter was a little bit too complex, but it'll be fine. It'll be fine.

[deep breaths]

It’s fine, Conrad! You’re Shepard’s #1 fan!
 
As you can see, we've got six cookies cut out here and, um, well they don't exactly look like the Normandy SR1, but once we get the decorations on we can fix that right up!
 
And now they're going in the oven! I tried to fix them up a little bit, but I'm not really an artist, so, you know well just bear with me. Well, like I said we'll fix it up when we get to the decorating part. So while they bake, I'm going to get this frosting ready to go, so —
 
[blaring fire alarm]
 
This is fine! No, not the dish cloth! Oh, gosh!
 
[clang, bang, very loud bang]
 
It's all — I've got it all under control! No need to call the fire brigade, bioticbacon! It's all —
 
[fire extinguisher spray]
 
Yeah, there we go! It's  —

[cough cough]

— um — Maybe—
 
[loud, long, prolonged crash]

Well, this is Conrad Verner, Shepard’s #1 fan, signing off until next time!