User blog comment:The Milkman/Share Your Shepard's Story/@comment-4950455-20120713102344

So, going with your "first playthrough" suggestion, the history of Jim Shepard (note that the "I" here refers to how I was playing him, not to any of my own beliefs). I could probably add a lot more to the list, but I'm just going with the poll options here.

Origins: Spacer

Background: Ruthless (accidentally voted Sole Survivor, which was the background of my Paragon Shepard)

Mass Effect choices and rationales: (going with the big ones here until The Milkman adds polls)
 * Talked down Wrex on Virmire. I might have been ruthless, but I wasn't going to shoot a friend if there was another option.
 * Saved Kaiden on Virmire; he had gone with the STG team, so that was the option that would save the most lives (Kirrahe also survived).
 * Killed the rachni queen. Given everything I had been told about the Rachni Wars, I considered trusting it to be far too much of a risk; there was simply no way to be sure it was telling the truth.
 * Sacrificed the Council - I had no intention of sacrificing hundreds of men and women to save the lives of three short-sighted incompetents in the middle of a battle situation. Frankly, the only thing I felt much guilt about was the crew of the Destiny Ascension.
 * Romanced nobody. Ashley was a subordinate (and then dead), I friendzoned Liara from the start, and the one person I felt any interest in whatsoever was neither mature enough nor (yet) an option.

Mass Effect 2 choices and rationales:
 * Saved Maelon's data, because I had no intention of destroying anything that potentially valuable if needed. Plus, it was looking increasingly like the ruler of the krogan would be my buddy, and as such I was a bit less worried about them then I would be otherwise.
 * Did not buy either DLC squadmate on my first playthrough, so no Zaeed's loyalty mission.
 * Exonerated Tali via the court of popular opinion, thanks to having saved both Veetor and Kal'Reegar earlier (the former was a fairly easy choice, given my well-earned mistrust of Cerberus; the latter ultimately came down to the feeling that an injured man wouldn't be that much help). This needs, incidentally, to be an option on the poll.
 * Made peace between both Jack and Miranda and Tali and Legion; in the former case I was strongly tempted to side with Jack (again, between the nasty experiments and a few things a man named Toombs told me, my trust for Cerberus was fairly low), but ultimately felt a squad at ease was more likely to succeed.
 * Romanced Tali. As mentioned, I had a thing for her in the first game, but she wasn't mature enough even if she was an option; ME2 took care of that with a little character development.
 * Destroyed the Collector Base. Do I really need to repeat the "didn't trust Cerberus" thing?
 * Final suicide mission outcome: Left as soon as I had taken care of Legion's loyalty mission (where I destroyed the heretics), thus managing to save the Normandy's crew. Mordin died holding the line (the first in what would prove to be a string of salarian deaths around me), but all other members of my team survived.

I'll add the ME3 results tomorrow; this post is too long as it is.