I can answer 1. Have you ever tried to reform anything or looked at the history of bureaucratic and governmental reform? Bill Clinton once said government bueracy is the only real immortality on Earth. Yeah it’s really that bad. The only times significant reforms are passed are after war, during a war, or because a polity is under direct threat of war. To put it simply, no one will give up their tiny powerbase, job, or position unless forced and the only was to do that is if you can convince the powerful elite or general public to support your actions, preferably both. But the public rarely rises unless things are really bad and the elite are usually entrenched in the existing power structure. So good luck changing anything without the perstige of a won war or the outrage of a failed one. Just about every democratic system currently in use requires a bill to be written, go through committee, at least one elected body, implemented with the compermises from the steps. Then you have to stop people coming through and changing it afterword. Now try to enact changes across more than one nation while fighting media from those who will lose out on any reorganzarion of power. Starting over from the ashes without making so many compromises starts looking better and better. But once on top you start to compromise to keep your position and implemented your desired changes or just because you don’t want to deal with trivial shot and the cycle starts anew.

Not to mention Victor’s suggested sexist, racist, classist, and religious tendencies. Zealots rarely examine the cost of their actions.

Victor Manswell was a narcissistic paranoid megalomaniac with heavy beliefs that he was the Chosen Vessel of God to purify the Earth.

That being said, he did it for the same reason most sociopaths do things — there’s nothing stopping him. NPC200’s comments are right on the money, but his discovery of his own ‘royal’ blood made him feel outraged that he — the world’s richest man — would have to bow down to the whims of a (ugh) ruler elected by the filthy mob masses.

This arrogance only increased once Victor’s machinations made it seem as if representative democracy and controlled socialism alike were self-destructive dead ends.

I’m not sure exactly why there’s so much going on in FF.net circles about Tevos and Aria, but they don’t even know each other in the Premiseverse. Aria hasn’t slept with anything but female turians and one krogan for over five hundred years, and Tevos is banging Lidanya T’Armal.

In a more general sense, even in canon it makes no sense whatsoever. Tevos is a galactic politician who if ever linked with an arch-criminal like Aria would lose a lot of influence.

I don’t think a Garrus/Shep pairing would work well at this point. I considered it as something that might happen after both Shep and Garrus thought their lovers were dead, but it interferes with the vibe I wanted them to have. Besides, I can recycle all of Garrus’s awkward sex dialogue with Grunt.