History Characters / MassEffectTaliZorah

* AmbiguouslyBi: During the Citadel DLC, if Garrus is romanced by female Shepard, depending on how the party goes, she can be found drunk and talking to herself in a pretend conversation with him, in which the possibility of a threesome intrigues her. PlayedForLaughs, but considering how flustered she got around female Shepard in the second game during that suit-linking conversation...
** Also during the Citadel DLC party you can get a drunk Tali to tell you about her ridiculously elaborate tattoo, one element of which is a naked lady riding a Thresher Maw. While it's perfectly possible for straight females to appreciate the female form from a purely aesthetic standpoint, it does add a bit more weight to the idea that Tali has, shall we say, curiosities.
** Her Shadow Broker Dossier mentions that she's done some research on human body language, courting, and mating, regardless of whether Shepard is male or female, and regardless of whether she's romanced.

* AmbiguouslyBi: During the Citadel DLC, if Garrus is romanced by Fem!Shep, depending on how the party goes, she can be found drunk and talking to herself in a pretend conversation with him, in which the possibility of a threesome intrigues her. PlayedForLaughs, but considering how flustered she got around Fem!Shep in the second game during that suit-linking conversation...

* NiceToTheWaiter: Cites this as why she fell in love with a Paragon!Shepard; even years later, she vividly remembers watching him risk his safety to spare the Feros colonists.

* GoodPeopleHaveGoodSex: If romanced by Paragon Shepard. It's a wonder half the ship [[TheImmodestOrgasm can't hear them.]]

** How she shuts up Garrus pestering her about talking about her [[IllGirl immune system]] on the Citadel in ''2''.

* IllGirl: Something of a RunningGag concerning her; she finds the perception irksome.

* NobleBigot: Reconstructed. As selfless and heroic as Tali is, she ''hates'' synthetic lifeforms -- and she's one of the more ''open-minded'' quarians. This is based on the unfortunate fact that her people were driven off their home planet and nearly annihilated by their own created AI race, and the geth later [[spoiler:kill her father as well]]. ** As the games go on, however, she is forced to confront the uncomfortable reality that while the quarians have good reasons to hate the geth, a lot of their suffering is of their own making. By her loyalty mission in 2, she's already instinctively horrified by her father's experiments on living geth; in the loyalty fight with Legion near the end of the second game, a Paragon response prompts her to haltingly acknowledge that Legion's reaction was justified and she would have done the same thing in its place; she even takes the initiative in offering a compromise to protect both the geth and the safety of the Fleet, foreshadowing the potential for her to help someday [[spoiler: end the Morning War.]] Eventually, thanks to this CharacterDevelopment, she fights for peace with the geth and even calmly states that her previous bigotry was wrong, thanking Shepard for so consistently challenging it.

* ImprobableAge: As the description for her 'Quarian Machinist' power notes: "Though young, Tali is a true genius when it comes to dealing with mechanical and electronic equipment". Indeed, Tali is only 22 in the first game, and 25 by the third, yet she's one of the best engineers and hackers in the galaxy as well as a frontline combatant with a kill count possibly into the hundreds, and is the recipient of "the best military training on the quarian fleet". This is quite insane when you remember that the average starting age for a Navy SEAL or Delta Force operator in RealLife is between 29 and 33, while the average mechanical engineer tends to start around 27 (and, you know, they're usually not both). [[spoiler: Gets taken UpToEleven in the third game, where she's a genius hacker, engineer, roboticist and borderline OneWomanArmy who is also an ADMIRAL. At 25.]]

* TheKnightsWhoSaySquee: Towards Shepard. Upped in the later games. [[UpToEleven BIG time.]]

* MsFanservice: Tali is a very attractive woman who draws the attention of multiple people during the series despite being stuck in a environmental suit.

* MinoredInAsskicking: She's most notable for her genius in electronics, hacking, and robotics, rather than her skill with a gun. Even in combat missions, most of her powers revolve around disabling enemy equipment (e.g. Overload/Energy Drain disables shields, Hacking/Sabotage turns robotic enemies against their masters) or deploying a AttackDrone to aid her (particularly in the third game, where the combat drone can be upgraded to [[MoreDakka fire rockets]] and can be deployed with an additional "Defense Drone"). However, she still does have [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yk8_iHLSwMA&t=1m6s the best military training on the Migrant Fleet]], and is fully capable of slaughtering her way through mercenaries, geth, and Cerberus with a good shotgun and HandCannon.

A quarian machinist who specializes in technology or resources valuable to the Migrant Fleet. She is double-crossed during a meeting but is rescued by the timely arrival of Shepard, who sought information Tali obtained on Saren. Tali joins the Commander out of gratitude and to help bring down Saren. She becomes one of Shepard's closest friends, [[UndyingLoyalty being one of only two people to be a party member in all three games]] (DLC pushes this up to three). In ''Mass Effect 2'', she becomes a romance option for a male Shepard.

* BestFriend: By the end of the trilogy, she and Garrus have stood by Shepard through ''everything''. Shepard can even acknowledge both of them as his/her most trusted allies.

* EstablishingCharacterMoment: When Fist's men start pulling guns during their meeting with her, she hits two of them with a grenade (destroying their shields and knocking them down), rushes to cover, and pulls out her pistol. If you wait a few seconds to intervene after the gameplay starts, she then guns one or two of the assassins down. After Shepard kills the remaining assassins, she thanks Shepard for the help, and tells him/her about how she obtained the data proving Saren is a traitor by disabling and then hacking information from a geth platform to Shepard's shock, as s/he thought such a thing was impossible.

** She gets her turn twice in ''3'' as she saves Shepard from falling to his/her death on a collapsing elevator, and [[spoiler: kills Legion/Geth VI if you side with the quarians in their conflict with the geth]]. And she can do both as his girlfriend.

* ShootTheDog: [[spoiler: If you can't broker peace between the quarians and the geth, then you must choose one of the two. If you choose the quarians, then Legion will knock Shepard down, strangle him/her, and hold him/her over the edge of a cliff. Tali then stabs it. In Legion's final moments, Tali tells it that she's sorry and that it does have a soul; if it's the Geth VI she says that "Legion would have understood" (she is mistaken), or that she knew it would turn on her and Shepard]].

* SomethingOnlyTheyWouldSay: How she can potentially realize that, yes, that is Shepard standing in front of her in the beginning of the second game. Only s/he would know about how she got the geth data for her Pilgrimage. This depends on whether you ''did'' give her the geth data way back in the first game.

* WhatTheHellHero: She ''will'' call Shepard out if he/she betrays her trust.

** She emulates Shepard's [[NiceJobBreakingItHero nice job with the mining laser]] back on Therum with demolition charges. We'll just assume she forgot about how that kind of blew up in Shepard's face when s/he tried it... but hey, [[GoneHorriblyRight it still got Shepard what s/he wanted]].

* {{Meganekko}}: In a sense -- She doesn't wear glasses but her hazmat suit is a constant reminder of her vulnerability, both physical and emotional. Adding to that, she is very sweet, intelligent, and endearingly awkward when approached for as a romance option.

[[labelnote:Click here to see her unmasked]][[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/bza7plz6z4z61.png]][[/labelnote]]]]

* IAteWhat: In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2Gsz7LyvtE one version of the party]] in the ''Citadel'' DLC, she poisons herself with cheese made for levo-chiral consumers. Though it was really a desperate attempt to ChangeTheUncomfortableSubject of EDI discussing Traynor's... [[LesYay desires]] [[ArousedByTheirVoice for EDI's voice.]]
-->'''Tali:''' Well, I'm just going to sit here quietly til someone changes the subject.\\
'''Shepard:''' Awkward?\\
'''Tali:''' Awkward.

* AllLoveIsUnrequited: Her dialogue when romanced in ''2'' indicates that she develops feelings for Male Shepard, even if the player never pursues her.

** The Shadow Broker Dossiers further show that, after being authorized for Project Haestrom (shortly before the [=ME2=]'s beginning), she installed several apps. These include videos dealing with loss, but eventually lead to apps on human mating rituals, Immuno-Boosters (for [[DoubleEntendre professionals]]) and several [[ADateWithRosiePalms Nerve Stims]] (which she un-installs and re-installs several times ... until finally settling on the ''deluxe model'').

** During ''2'', it's shown that she believes that Shepard, a human, has been a better friend to her than any quarian ever has. It's notable that despite having "vas Normandy" shoved on her as a political play, if exonerated, she decides to keep the name. She's also one of only two party members from ''1'' who trusts Shepard enough to rejoin them more-or-less immediately in ''2'', Cerberus or not. The other is Garrus.

* UndyingLoyalty: Tali is one of the only two squadmates from ''1'' who immediately rejoin Shepard once they have the chance, no questions asked. The other is Garrus. Best summed up in three simple words:

** It goes beyond this during ''2'', when it's shown that she believes that Shepard, a human, has been a better friend to her than any quarian ever has. It's notable that despite having "vas Normandy" shoved on her as a political play, if exonerated, she decides to keep the name.

* UndyingLoyalty: Best summed up in three simple words:

!Admiral Tali'Zorah vas Normandy[[labelnote:*]]vas Neema (formerly)[[/labelnote]] nar Rayya

!Admiral Tali'Zorah vas Normandy [[labelnote:*]]vas Neema (formerly)[[/labelnote]] nar Rayya

!Admiral Tali'Zorah nar Rayya vas Normandy[[labelnote:*]]vas Neema (formerly)[[/labelnote]]

* IDidWhatIHadToDo: Like most quarians, she believes that her ancestors made the right decision to try and exterminate the geth, at first. But gets better about it in ''[=ME3=]'', provicded she met Legion.

* IDidWhatIHadToDo: Like most quarians, she believes that her ancestors made the right decision to try and exterminate the geth, at first. But gets better about it in ''[=ME3=]''.

* LifeImitatesArt: InUniverse. Like her favorite movie, ''Fleet and Flotilla'', she falls for someone in the Turian military (Garrus) if she's not romanced by Shepard.

* MyCountryRightOrWrong: Something of a difficulty for her. Tali is unflinchingly loyal to the quarian fleet, even after the admirals jerk her over in her loyalty mission in ''2''. Come ''3'', she helps kick off the war with the geth partly because she didn't want to divide the quarian people, even though it's mentioned the vote would've been split (Admiral Koris against, Xen and Gerrel for, Raan unwilling to go against the majority) and she ''didn't'' want to go to war. Which can potentially get the entire quarian race, and her, killed.

![[spoiler: Admiral]] Tali'Zorah nar Rayya [[spoiler:/vas Neema]] [[spoiler:/vas Normandy]]

[[caption-width-right:350:I [[MemeticMutation have a]] [[BadassAdorable shotgun.]]]]\\

* NobleBigot: Reconstructed. As selfless and heroic as Tali is, she ''hates'' synthetic lifeforms -- and she's one of the more ''open-minded'' quarians. This is based on the unfortunate fact that her people were driven off their home planet and nearly annihilated by their own created AI race, and the geth later [[spoiler:kill her father as well]]. ** As the games go on, however, she is forced to confront the uncomfortable reality that while the quarians have good reasons to hate the geth, a lot of their suffering is of their own making. By her loyalty mission in 2, she's already instinctively horrified by her father's experiments on living geth; in the loyalty fight with Legion near the end of the second game, a Paragon response prompts her to haltingly acknowledge that [[NotSoDifferent Legion's reaction was justified]] and she would have done the same thing in its place; she even takes the initiative in offering a compromise to protect both the geth and the safety of the Fleet, foreshadowing the potential for her to help someday [[spoiler: end the Morning War.]] Eventually, thanks to this CharacterDevelopment, she fights for peace with the geth and even calmly states that her previous bigotry was wrong, thanking Shepard for so consistently challenging it.

* NotSoDifferent: From a Spacer Shepard, since both are {{Military Brat}}s whose parents eventually became an Admiral of their respective fleet. Even more-so when/if she becomes a high-ranked member of the hierarchy whom even higher-ups defer to.

* CriticalResearchFailure: In the first game, Tali states that quarians are only allowed to have one child per couple to maintain zero population growth, due to the cramped conditions on the flotilla.
-->'''Tali:''' Unfortunately, we have had to surrender many of the freedoms and civil liberties other species take for granted.
-->'''Shepard:''' What kind of freedoms?
-->'''Tali:''' Well, it's illegal for parents to have more than one child. If our population grows too much, it would strain our resources to their breaking point.
** Problem is that a fertility rate of one child isn't even half the replacement-level fertility, i.e., the value actually needed for long-term zero growth. After centuries on the flotilla, such massive sub-replacement fertility would already have caused a steep population decline.
** Tali mentions that the policy may get rescinded if the [[HandWave population gets too low]].
-->'''Tali:''' Of course, we also can't allow our numbers become too few. If our population is in decline, the rule aginst single births is temporarily repealed.
** This of course immediately begs the question of why anybody would implement a policy that is in constant need of correction let alone how massive these constant corrections would need to be given the substantial fertiliy gap.