how did it take me so many playthroughs to realize private tilavi's brother was in that cerberus lab on decoris
noise dept.
Keni

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cherry valley forever
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@amorphousturtle
how did it take me so many playthroughs to realize private tilavi's brother was in that cerberus lab on decoris
Fallout: A Parody?
Do you consider Fallout to be parody?
If yes, do you think this was always the case?
Parody in this context would be imitation for comic effect.
Something can evoke 50's Americana and classic B-movie sci-fi without being parody. However cheesy some elements might seem, it can take itself seriously.
Imagine the difference between a 2026 black and white B-movie played straight, and a 2026 black and white B-movie poking fun at what it's replicating.
Which sounds more like Fallout?
Do you consider Fallout to be parody? If yes, do you think this was always the case?
Fallout is Parody. This was always the case.
Fallout is Parody. This hasn't always been the case.
Fallout is NOT parody. This was always the case.
Fallout is NOT parody. This hasn't always been the case.
I don't have a strong opinion, but I'd like to see the results now, thanks.
Now here's a little interesting tidbit: Karpyshyn hypothesizes in Mass Effect's Ascension that a species' genetic diversity decreases as its ability to travel (and therefore interbreed within itself) increases.
Humans are therefore more diverse than the other species in C-Space because they are the latest species to join the interstellar community (meaning they have most recently developed the ability to freely intermix across the globe).
So 'humans are more diverse than other species' seems to be based on the idea that humanity was until recently an isolated 'island' and humanity will become less diverse in the future.
In my opinion this fails to take into account the idea that many colonies will have self-sustaining populations and therefore form isolated communities (equaling genetic offshoots for their species) but it's not as wild as humans are inherently more diverse than other species.
"Even accounting for the fact that many of the physical differences were obscured by their environmental suits, it was a safe generalization to say that quarians all tended to look pretty much the same. They were of an almost uniformly similar size and build, with far less variety than was was found in humans."
...
"That same degree of variance simply didn't exist in the quarian population.
"It's like that with all the other races, Kahlee thought to herself. For some reason, humans just have more genetic diversity than the rest of the galaxy. She hadn't really noticed it before, not consciously, but here on the bridge of the Idenna it seemed to strike home.
"It's happening to us too, she realized as Hendel shook the captain's hand. The big man's mix of Nordic and Indian ancestry was the norm on Earth now, and the inevitable genetic by-product was a more physically homogeneous population. In the twenty-second century blond hair like hers was a rarity, and naturally blue eyes were nonexistent. But with hair dye, skin toning, and colored contact lenses, who really cares?" (Pages 279-289)
Sooooo… basically, the argument is that, since humans no longer live in discrete populations isolated from one another, they are no longer taking the long road to speciation ?
What I don't understand is why this would amount to loss of diversity ? Wouldn't random mutations, made all the likelier because of the greater population and the greater range of possible environments, be likelier to occur now ?
Sure, recessive genes no longer express themselves that easily, and the odds of reproducing with someone without such genes increase, so they might (maybe ?) be phased out of the general population over time (?), but is that the same as loss of genetic diversity ?
…does this suggest that the Reapers invaded Earth for our blondes ?
It also fails to take into account the increase in outside causes of genetic mutations, especially exposure to radioactive elements. As tech advances, more dangerous elements are exploited and more commonly. It's canon that Eezo exposure skyrocketed after its discovery and widespread application, with rather extreme mutations being common (usually cancer, but not always). And then there's unmentioned things like variations in solar radiation on different colony planets, the need to create your own protection against it on space stations and during interstellar travel, exposure to novel pathogens or environmental conditions on colony planets that can cause or encourage adaptations... (Paging @arburi more a more expert opinion on Space Hazards here <3)
Then there's the fact that simply being capable of traveling does not people people are going to actually do that. There's the classic "What's holding you back from traveling the world?" "Money." exchange for starters. Most colonies aren't going to have a reason to visit either, so even the people who can afford to travel aren't necessarily going to travel everywhere. You're still going to have your backwaters and boonies. Not to mention, a big part of what the Galapagos Islands such a genetic cornucopia wasn't that they were completely isolated but that travel between them WAS possible, just difficult enough to be uncommon. Isolated areas that could diversify, and then exchange that diversity with other areas! Adapt, travel, adapt again, travel again, etc etc. Sounds a lot like the great distances between colonies, huh?
And then most damning of all, you have the Unification War. Turians colonization created such isolated communities that they became culturally differentiated to the point of rejecting all outsiders. It's a HELL of a lot easier to export a unified culture than it is unified genetics (see: americanization of media), and failed that? The Hierarchy had to make a massive concerted effort to prevent the natural isolation of colonies from bringing about a second Unification War... But somehow have so much inter-exchange that they homogenized their genetics on accident? Pull the other one, it's got bells on it.
This feels more like a 90s or 00s era rejection of the 80s scifi/futurism trope of racial isolationism than anything. Which, funnily enough, was originally inspired by realworld observation of the results of INCREASED immigration to other (western) countries. People would take advantage of the increased ease of travel, find themselves cultural outsiders in their new lands, and seek out others of similar cultures to consolidate social/political/economic power on a small (city/town/neighborhood) scale. Which was how you got regions of cities referred to as "Chinatown" or "Little Italy" or the like. It's easier to live your day to day life if you are surrounded by people who speak your Mother Language and remember how the Old Country did things, and a hell of a lot harder to get hatecrimed if there's hundreds (or thousands) of people like you in the area than if there's just a couple. And even then, 80s scifi also included a lot of ethnic and cultural mixing as a counterpoint to that, often in the same work. In the Cyberpunk 2020 setting, for example, some of the major gangs (Mob, Tong, Yakuza, etc) and Corps (Arasaka, Militech, etc) are very ethnically focused . But at the same time despite being (mostly) set in USA the "standard" language of the setting isn't English, it's Streetslang. "A universal polyglot of English, French, German, Japanese and a half dozen other languages". Plus, Kimiko Sanchez wasn't named that on accident. =P
Karpyshyn should probably stick to lore, or do some studying on speciation before speculating. I'll lightly cover some of the basics here from my (light) background interest in palaeontology, but your best bet for in-depth would be a biology person like @gammaraydeath or someone else involved with evolutionary biology. Everything else is just math and physics/chemistry.
We'll go with space-based hazards first, since that's why I was tagged.
The radiation is the biggest problem. Judging by how Shepard maps out mineral structures in ME1, it's common for people to just land on a planet, look for ores, and start digging. The ubiquitous mining tunnels point at this being the primary way everyone looks for resources that they can't detect from orbit. The presence of wIldcat miners like the ones found on Presrop means it can be a rather lucrative business.
Judging by how often people complain about managing extremely hazardous substances like eezo, it can be assumed that galactic standards are a bit lax with other substances. Workers are going to be contaminated; the more off-the-books you are, the more contamination you are likely to experience. Standard environmental suits are apparently terrible at managing radiation exposure judging by how quickly Ryder in Andromeda will succumb to external hazards. Full armor systems aren't even sealed effectively against airborne hazards (Shepard happily snorts Minagen X3 in Samara's recruitment mission despite being in "sealed" armor).
The prefab colonies you find on different planets are particularly bad. All that uranium sitting beneath the surface has a decay chain that includes radon, a rather hard to control element that you'll hear people discuss building up in residences and office buildings. It likes to percolate through gaps, but is limited by sealed surfaces like those you find in mines. Radon itself is bad when it decays, but its polonium decay product is worse. Then you have extra lead in your system on top of the radiation damage, so enjoy the heavy metal poisoning.
Stellar radiation is another concern. Tali's recruitment mission in Haestrom indicates that armors are weak against direct beam radiation, and colonists will have to contend with regular exposure to both ionizing and non-ionizing radiation.
Cancers will likely increase dramatically, and skin tones will probably darken over time in human populations as melanin production becomes more important.
Habitable planets, notably garden worlds, are noted in the game as highly prized because of the colonists' ability to live outside without environmental suits. However, these planets are unlikely to have the 78:21:1 ratio our atmosphere has of N:O:trace. Lower oxygen levels will require an expansion in chest cavities over time to properly oxygenate the blood, or the body will reduce functions to ensure survival. Higher levels release free radicals that severely damage organs, and people would have to adapt to that. Over time, a low oxygen population would adapt to be very dissimilar to a high oxygen population. Other gases in the atmosphere would cause a host of other issues that would have to be adapted for.
Another issue with Karpyshyn's idea is that that's just not how evolutionary biology or speciation works. When life gains access to a new niche, you get an adaptive radiation. There's tons of new niches to fill and compete for, and different adaptations occur rapidly to allow all resources to be exploited. New Zealand's avian species are a great example: there are no native non-bat mammals on the islands. Some marine life shows up on shore, but nothing moves inland. Birds filled those niches, and you can directly observe the birds behaving in the ways that mammals do in other parts of the world.
These adaptations, genetically, take a little time. But structural changes occur quickly. Modern humans aren't that genetically dissimilar from our ancestors 5000 years ago, but our bodies are building up differences. If you had/have crooked teeth, it's not something your ancient ancestors had! The jaw develops due to stress loads, so our modern soft diets have causes our jaws to soften and teeth to grow crooked. Hunter-gatherers in the past had more aligned teeth due to the need to regularly chew harder materials for nutritional sources. Your grandparents and great-grandparents likely had longer feet and toes that modern regular shoe-wearing has reduced due to growth restrictions. Even your brain is different compared to past peoples, with some speculation that modern brains tend to be good at specialization, while earlier peoples' brains were more jack-of-all-trades in function.
It's not just humans. During the end of the Pleistocene, short-toothed mammals largely vanished from the Americas. Vegetation experienced a rapid increase in silicate uptake, making it coarse and damaging to teeth. Mammals that didn't have constant tooth growth had their teeth wear away quickly, and they starved to death. Long-toothed mammals had their teeth constantly grow and replace lost material, allowing them to thrive. Ever wonder why squirrels constantly chew on things? It's directly related to these adaptations.
"What does this have to do with colonies?" you might ask. Well, planets are different! They have different surface gravities, different radiation rates, different foods, etc. The people living on those planets will change over time, even with new genes entering the pool, and different colonies will diversify from each other.
The last issue is a lore one: there simply hasn't been enough time for different species to restrict their gene pools, and their initial populations prior to space travel likely means that there won't be a bottleneck that forces them to interbreed enough to make a genetic difference.
Mass Effect: Ascension takes place in 2183, just 157 years from now. 157 years ago was the year 1869. Do you want to take a guess at how much humans have changed genetically since 1869? (hint: it's basically zero) Even with rapid expansion of international trade and travel over the past century, children born to mixed-race parents are still a minority. Here in the U.S., where multiracial relationships are somewhat common (about 15% of new marriages in 2010), only about 10% identify as multiracial. This includes cities where multiracial relationships are more likely to happen. In more rural areas, you're going to see a substantially reduced number of multiracial families.
The colonies will act primarily as "rural" environments for different species. Even with a multiracial starter group, it's going to take several generations to clear off qualities like "blonde hair" and "blue eyes". Hell, my own green eyes are considered the rarest of the common eye colors, but they're still common enough to not warrant comment.
We can't be too anthropocentric on this though, can we? The whole point was to compare humans to other species.
Asari: This is the only species that I'm going to shrug my shoulders at, and it's because they don't mate the same way as other species. The child's genes deviate from the parent by chosen randomization for the "best qualities" of the asari's partner. I don't know anything about how this works, and neither do the writers, because they didn't really elaborate.
I do know about the New Mexico whiptail (Aspidoscelis neomexicanus) though. It's an all-female species of lizards that parthenogenetic. The parent duplicates her chromosomes, and lays clonal eggs. The offspring still have heterozygous chromosomes, and do experience genetic change over time due to mutation. So, while they all look similar, they are still rather genetically diverse.
The one issue I will put my foot down on is that the asari would have limited genetic diversity simply due to interbreeding. They achieved FTL space travel in 580 BCE, just under 3000 years ago. Sure, that sounds like a long time, but asari live for over 1000 years. Even if every generation immediately popped out a kid at 300 years of age, that's still only 10 generations. It would be the equivalent of remarking how humans have changed since 1826: ridiculous. Salarians: This is the one species that I can say might experience some genetic issues. 270-some generations from 520 BCE to 2183 CE (assuming 10 years for fertility) would be the equivalent of 5400 years for humans. There's a lot of time for interbreeding in this environment.
However, salarians are shown several times in the series to be highly selective when it comes to breeding. They keep family logs like horse breeders, and their background would suggest they understand the importance of genetic diversity.
If you include the lystheni cut content, it appears that salarians may have, in fact, genetically diversified in the past five millenia. Turians: This one is rather simple, but I want to make a note at the end.
The turians use their military monoculture to ensure that the inhabitants of different worlds don't diversify enough that a second Unification War happens. The emphasis on meritocracy additionally means that different turians will look at an individual's capability rather than their racial-equivalent history.
The note I want to make here is about their home world, Palaven. It's stated in-game that turians have thulium in their plates that help mitigate harmful stellar radiation. Thulium is rare. 200 parts-per-trillion rare. It's an r-type element, produced only in supernovae and kilonovae. It likely even rarer in the Apien Crest, as that is closer to the outer reaches of the galaxy (see a similar situation concerning the quarians here). Even if the chemistry of Palaven encourages biologically exploitable ores of Thulium, there probably isn't enough of it to really make a difference.
On other planets in the region? Forget it. The turians either have species-wide declining thulium levels in their bodies, or off-world members of the species have almost none, and possibly can't stay on Palaven long. (Hey, maybe that armor they all wear has a purpose?)
Others: Elcor, hanar, and volus all have such specific colonization environments that you can effectively treat any world as an island situation here on Earth. A colony will genetically diversify and speciate over time based on distance. The drell are in a genetic bottleneck, and most probably look like each other.
The krogan are currently being genetically managed by the genophage. I can't say how they'll diversify, but their hardiness indicates they can survive most environments without adaptation. They do rapidly mutate though, so who knows.
Anyway, my apologies to Kahlee, but she's not going to notice the homogenization of human races.
A thought that occurred to me while reading Ascension: If slavery is illegal in C-Space but a caste in the Batarian Hegemony, how were batarians every a part of C-Space?
And did their slave raids start before or after they broke away?
"Slavery was illegal in Council Space, but here in the Terminus Systems it was an accepted - even a common - practice." (Pel POV, page 60)
I suspect it's a case of Cujus regio, ejus religio : the Council species may have binding treaties and so on, but I expect those dictate how each constituent member behaves with each other (and constituent members can strike individual deals, cf. that ME1 quest where the Alliance and the Salarian Union were negotiating a trade agreement ; it's not, for example, like the European Union where constituent members cannot give preferential treatment (or the opposite) to some other members but not all) but they can keep doing what they want inside their borders. When the Batarian Hegemony left, Citadel space became a region where slavery was prohibited de facto but not de jure (two questions being : have they officially agreed to ban slavery together since 2171 ? Probably not, cf. my post on the Illium and Omega news stories about the Council and slavery. And did they have some kind of common law in places like the Presidium which are not under the jurisdiction of any one species ? Probably, and I'd expect that any enslaved person that was there was automatically manumitted, if only because at least one of the big players of Citadel politics (the volus) is very strongly against the concept of owning a person, but at the same time I'd expect visiting Hegemony dignitaries to find loopholes (e.g. slaves staying in embassies and vehicles which count as sovereign Hegemony territory, the charade of "servants" where there's some kind of blackmail going on to ensure no one would be tempted with running away, lethal devices, etc) and the Citadel authorities not to bother them at all because they're engaged in big picture chessmaster stuff, and what is the life and dignity of one person compared to plans that reshape the galaxy ?)
(Everything)
Presumably, they never banned slavery outright because they wanted to keep the Batarian Hegemony as an Associate Member. Why ? Probably because it's easier to influence (and bully) a member state than a "rogue state". A member state has integrated markets, treaties, etc which can be leveraged against the population and, through them, the government. A rogue state has no such thing, and basically only intimidation and a form of violence remain (for both sides) to compel the other into doing what they want. So better a moral compromise that allows a greater degree of control than a grand moral gesture that achieves nothing and introduces a greater degree of uncertainty in the international system. I 100% expect this is the rationale of the Asari Republics and that it's what the Council "stomached" the Hegemony, since the asari lead in diplomacy.
(Presumably there were other immediate economic advantages. I'm sure the Citadel species were turning up their noses at the Hegemony but it didn't stop them from making a profit if they could.)
Now the big, big question is : taking into account the circumstantial evidence suggesting that the Council wanted the Batarian Hegemony, for some time at least, to remain an Associate Member, when the Hegemony left in 2171 over Alliance expansionism, was it a) a Council blunder because they hadn't expected the Hegemony to quit over that, b) a sign of shifting attitudes and of indifference and weariness over what the Hegemony might do on its own, or c) a new step in asari plans within plans that span centuries ?
No idea. The franchise just isn't interested in batarians or slavery.
#very interesting analysis!#i do think there are some laws binding in all of c-space - see: AI and prothean artifacts - but slavery must not have been one of them#at least prior to the Hegemony leaving#the logic that as long as the Hegemony is part of c-space they can influence them would be a strong one for the asari#i do think it's implied the Council was getting sick of the hegemony#the whole seizing an asari colony couldn't have been popular#why does everyone always seize asari colonies?
Ah, you're right ! And there's also the proscription about inactive mass relays. That's what I get from posting things in a hurry ><"
So this does reinforce the interpretation that the Council really wanted the Hegemony to remain an Associate Member.
re : the Council getting sick of the Hegemony — yeah, even though Esan/Lorek was an independent colony, you can be sure there are asari alive today who lost friends or relatives to the invasion. And it's not just the asari : in the secondary canon (Cerberus Daily News) there's a minor storyline about the return of salarian artifacts kept in an asari museum to Mannovai. The artifacts were evacuated - and salarians died to evacuate them - because a batarian fleet bombarded the planet four centuries before ME2.
Now we don't know what's the context, what actions might have led to the bombardment, BUT ! Mannovai is the second salarian colony world ever, and it's implied throughout CDN that it's the biggest salarian world beside Sur'Kesh itself. So I'm pretty sure there's going to be, uh, animosity between the Salarian Union and the Batarian Hegemony.
So yeah, I can 100% see the Council species getting fed up with the Hegemony over time, and basically washing their hands of whatever conflict might spring up between the Alliance and the Hegemony.
(Hey, that's also something to consider : how did the emergence of the Alliance shift the political calculus of the Council species ?)
One possibility for why the Council wanted to keep the Hegemony around was, well, exactly what they're using the Alliance for. To expand Council territory, push back against the pirates in the Traverse and Terminous, act as a buffer against any incursions into their own respective territories, and possibly act as an alternative to Turian military power (and thus weaken the political power that comes from it).
The Alliance just happened to be expanding faster, flexing their military might harder, and creating fewer "pirate" raids on other member states. Sure, they are whining about the Council not bending over backwards to satisfy their outrageous demands more than the Hegemony did, but that's more an annoyance than a problem, especially since these Humans haven't tried to take any of your worlds yet like Batarians and Krogan have. All in all it's an upgrade.
As for the Hegemony trying to take its ball and go home... that's a kind of ultimatum that no one wins with. It's not something you can threaten lightly. It's the card you play when you have nothing left to barter with. And the thing is, the Council wasn't ever going to give the Hegemony special treatment in awarding territory for colonization (they might have plans to eventually colonize the area, but the Alliance is doing it now). So Batarian politicians had two options: take it back (and never be taken seriously again) or follow through (and lose out on all the perks of being on friendly neutral terms with the other Council species). They put themselves in this position, not the Council. I guess they had noticed how, uh, not protected the Human colonies were and figured they could bleed the Alliance dry with their raids, make it so they couldn't fulfill the Council's goals for the area, and negotiate their own way back onto the Citadel.
And yeah, after all that setup in ME1... Bioware said "I don't want to play with you anymore" to the politics.
so the synopsis of The Ring is: you will die 7 days after watching this videotape. my question is does that apply to rewatching the tape. let's say I watch the tape, wait 6 days, and watch it again. does the timer reset to 7 days? can I do this indefinitely? can I become functionally immortal by watching the evil videotape on a weekly basis?
I require the film where someone decides this means they are functionally immortal for 6 days after watching the tape so seeks it out before going on a series of utterly batshit suicide missions. The tape keeps trying to do creepy crap around them and they're just like "I have 3 days 12 hours left to do this prison break so you're not even on my top 10 concerns, either distract this guard for me or go do something about that hair while you're waiting"
The ghost is so baffled and has no idea how to explain that's not how any of this works that it does save them a couple times while trying to get this across, thus convincing them the theory has been validated
It is very important to me that someone else (less confident in the theory) also watches the tape for the "immortality" and then immediately dies. I'm talking turns off the tv, stands up, slips on something, hits their head, and dies on impact. The degree of Final Destination vs Slapstick Comedy presentation is negotiable, but it's important that the death be otherwise completely mundane.
The Lead regards this information as hearsay and alarmist conspiracy thinking. The fact that they are in fact Survives Georg Adn Should Not Be Counted must be glaringly obvious to everyone but them.
just because i want to, inspired by tim collins' video
Which duo in Mass Effect can assemble flat pack furniture together without screaming at each other once?
Steve and James
Samantha and EDI
Shepard and Anderson
Miranda and Samara
Jack and Kasumi
Ashley and Kaidan
Jacob and Thane
Liara and Javik
Garrus and Wrex
Tali and Legion
Joker and Zaeed
Mordin and Urdnot Bakara
Further questions from the finance team
bowtie placement?
A
B
C
necktie placement?
A
B
C
FURTHERMORE! When the giraffe swallows, the bowtie should start at the top, go ALL the way to the bottom of the neck, and then go back to the top.
The Committee has no further clarifications at this time.
In Mass Effect Ascension, it says that after the Battle of the Citadel the Alliance was the greatest military force:
"The Citadel forces had been decimated by the geth, leaving the Alliance fleet unchallenged as the galaxy's single most dominant power." (TIM POV, page 4).
I'm... skeptical of this and inclined to credit it to TIM's human supremacy views.
The forces at the Citadel took a hard pounding when Sovereign and the geth came through.
However, the rest of the galaxy was cut off from the Citadel. Hence why the Alliance could come through and save the day - Shepard opened the mass relay to let them through.
However, were all of the Hierarchy's, Asari Republics', and Salarian Union's forces at the Citadel? Or even the majority?
I imagine that the standard defense forces were at the Citadel - maybe more than normal - and the majority of the rest of the fleets were scattered throughout their territories.
(The Council tells Shepard when they're grounded that there are "patrols are stationed at every mass relay linking Citadel Space to the Terminus Systems"! We know not everyone was at the Citadel!)
So while the Council's forces reduced, I doubt the Alliance was left "the single most dominant power'. Particularly if the Council banded together against the Alliance.
Yeah, the whole point was that Council forces were spread out elsewhere to protect against a conventional invasion fleet and pointedly not at the Citadel to protect it. The Alliance had more forces there than normal, because they at least somewhat listened to Shepard, but that was only a portion of their fleets too. (No fucking way would the Council let a significant portion, let alone the majority, of a military congregate at their front door without specifically requesting it.)
So like... the Alliance likely had an increase in their reputation as a military power (and rep is no small factor), but their actual forces (which are already stretched thing with their rapid expansion) were decreased due to loses during the Battle (especially if Shepard chooses to save the Council). While everyone who was away at the boarders would be just as strong as before. The only faction whose forces would have been seen as weaker after would be the Citadel Defence Fleet itself. Which would then call on its members (including Humans now! Thanks for the ships! *yoink*) to reconstitute it.
Plus, are we just going to ignore the fact that the Hierarchy has WAY more Dreadnoughts than everyone else combined still? Were there even Dreadnoughts present for the Battle Of The Citadel? DEFINITELY TIMmy's biases showing through.
#i think there was at least one dreadnought? #the one Pallin might have died on? #and the Destiny Ascension obviously
Right, right, I should have specified I meant Alliance Dreadnoughts, my bad.
Also: Schrodinger's Pallin strikes again! Is he alive or dead? No one can say! XD
In Mass Effect Ascension, it says that after the Battle of the Citadel the Alliance was the greatest military force:
"The Citadel forces had been decimated by the geth, leaving the Alliance fleet unchallenged as the galaxy's single most dominant power." (TIM POV, page 4).
I'm... skeptical of this and inclined to credit it to TIM's human supremacy views.
The forces at the Citadel took a hard pounding when Sovereign and the geth came through.
However, the rest of the galaxy was cut off from the Citadel. Hence why the Alliance could come through and save the day - Shepard opened the mass relay to let them through.
However, were all of the Hierarchy's, Asari Republics', and Salarian Union's forces at the Citadel? Or even the majority?
I imagine that the standard defense forces were at the Citadel - maybe more than normal - and the majority of the rest of the fleets were scattered throughout their territories.
(The Council tells Shepard when they're grounded that there are "patrols are stationed at every mass relay linking Citadel Space to the Terminus Systems"! We know not everyone was at the Citadel!)
So while the Council's forces reduced, I doubt the Alliance was left "the single most dominant power'. Particularly if the Council banded together against the Alliance.
Yeah, the whole point was that Council forces were spread out elsewhere to protect against a conventional invasion fleet and pointedly not at the Citadel to protect it. The Alliance had more forces there than normal, because they at least somewhat listened to Shepard, but that was only a portion of their fleets too. (No fucking way would the Council let a significant portion, let alone the majority, of a military congregate at their front door without specifically requesting it.)
So like... the Alliance likely had an increase in their reputation as a military power (and rep is no small factor), but their actual forces (which are already stretched thing with their rapid expansion) were decreased due to loses during the Battle (especially if Shepard chooses to save the Council). While everyone who was away at the boarders would be just as strong as before. The only faction whose forces would have been seen as weaker after would be the Citadel Defence Fleet itself. Which would then call on its members (including Humans now! Thanks for the ships! *yoink*) to reconstitute it.
Plus, are we just going to ignore the fact that the Hierarchy has WAY more Dreadnoughts than everyone else combined still? Were there even Dreadnoughts present for the Battle Of The Citadel? DEFINITELY TIMmy's biases showing through.
Now here's a little interesting tidbit: Karpyshyn hypothesizes in Mass Effect's Ascension that a species' genetic diversity decreases as its ability to travel (and therefore interbreed within itself) increases.
Humans are therefore more diverse than the other species in C-Space because they are the latest species to join the interstellar community (meaning they have most recently developed the ability to freely intermix across the globe).
So 'humans are more diverse than other species' seems to be based on the idea that humanity was until recently an isolated 'island' and humanity will become less diverse in the future.
In my opinion this fails to take into account the idea that many colonies will have self-sustaining populations and therefore form isolated communities (equaling genetic offshoots for their species) but it's not as wild as humans are inherently more diverse than other species.
"Even accounting for the fact that many of the physical differences were obscured by their environmental suits, it was a safe generalization to say that quarians all tended to look pretty much the same. They were of an almost uniformly similar size and build, with far less variety than was was found in humans."
...
"That same degree of variance simply didn't exist in the quarian population.
"It's like that with all the other races, Kahlee thought to herself. For some reason, humans just have more genetic diversity than the rest of the galaxy. She hadn't really noticed it before, not consciously, but here on the bridge of the Idenna it seemed to strike home.
"It's happening to us too, she realized as Hendel shook the captain's hand. The big man's mix of Nordic and Indian ancestry was the norm on Earth now, and the inevitable genetic by-product was a more physically homogeneous population. In the twenty-second century blond hair like hers was a rarity, and naturally blue eyes were nonexistent. But with hair dye, skin toning, and colored contact lenses, who really cares?" (Pages 279-289)
Sooooo… basically, the argument is that, since humans no longer live in discrete populations isolated from one another, they are no longer taking the long road to speciation ?
What I don't understand is why this would amount to loss of diversity ? Wouldn't random mutations, made all the likelier because of the greater population and the greater range of possible environments, be likelier to occur now ?
Sure, recessive genes no longer express themselves that easily, and the odds of reproducing with someone without such genes increase, so they might (maybe ?) be phased out of the general population over time (?), but is that the same as loss of genetic diversity ?
…does this suggest that the Reapers invaded Earth for our blondes ?
It also fails to take into account the increase in outside causes of genetic mutations, especially exposure to radioactive elements. As tech advances, more dangerous elements are exploited and more commonly. It's canon that Eezo exposure skyrocketed after its discovery and widespread application, with rather extreme mutations being common (usually cancer, but not always). And then there's unmentioned things like variations in solar radiation on different colony planets, the need to create your own protection against it on space stations and during interstellar travel, exposure to novel pathogens or environmental conditions on colony planets that can cause or encourage adaptations... (Paging @arburi more a more expert opinion on Space Hazards here <3)
Then there's the fact that simply being capable of traveling does not people people are going to actually do that. There's the classic "What's holding you back from traveling the world?" "Money." exchange for starters. Most colonies aren't going to have a reason to visit either, so even the people who can afford to travel aren't necessarily going to travel everywhere. You're still going to have your backwaters and boonies. Not to mention, a big part of what the Galapagos Islands such a genetic cornucopia wasn't that they were completely isolated but that travel between them WAS possible, just difficult enough to be uncommon. Isolated areas that could diversify, and then exchange that diversity with other areas! Adapt, travel, adapt again, travel again, etc etc. Sounds a lot like the great distances between colonies, huh?
And then most damning of all, you have the Unification War. Turians colonization created such isolated communities that they became culturally differentiated to the point of rejecting all outsiders. It's a HELL of a lot easier to export a unified culture than it is unified genetics (see: americanization of media), and failed that? The Hierarchy had to make a massive concerted effort to prevent the natural isolation of colonies from bringing about a second Unification War... But somehow have so much inter-exchange that they homogenized their genetics on accident? Pull the other one, it's got bells on it.
This feels more like a 90s or 00s era rejection of the 80s scifi/futurism trope of racial isolationism than anything. Which, funnily enough, was originally inspired by realworld observation of the results of INCREASED immigration to other (western) countries. People would take advantage of the increased ease of travel, find themselves cultural outsiders in their new lands, and seek out others of similar cultures to consolidate social/political/economic power on a small (city/town/neighborhood) scale. Which was how you got regions of cities referred to as "Chinatown" or "Little Italy" or the like. It's easier to live your day to day life if you are surrounded by people who speak your Mother Language and remember how the Old Country did things, and a hell of a lot harder to get hatecrimed if there's hundreds (or thousands) of people like you in the area than if there's just a couple. And even then, 80s scifi also included a lot of ethnic and cultural mixing as a counterpoint to that, often in the same work. In the Cyberpunk 2020 setting, for example, some of the major gangs (Mob, Tong, Yakuza, etc) and Corps (Arasaka, Militech, etc) are very ethnically focused . But at the same time despite being (mostly) set in USA the "standard" language of the setting isn't English, it's Streetslang. "A universal polyglot of English, French, German, Japanese and a half dozen other languages". Plus, Kimiko Sanchez wasn't named that on accident. =P
Why is so much adult oriented 2d animation bastard ugly, do they know they don’t have to do that? The characters don’t have to projectile vomit all the time either, but maybe that’s asking too much
now that you're glorious death, now that you're faithless flesh.
commander shepard and the illusive man as cellini's perseus with the head of medusa
Kada & Vani doodlings
...been wondering if I should post story chapters here, but I know there's a character limit (and idk about content ratings etc)
i think it's funny when a character is almost exclusively referred to by their last name by other people and this carries over into their internal monologue when someone writes from their pov. not even on a first name basis with herself
Which of the three remaining european countries in the World Cup colonized your country?
Spain
France
England
Most Redditcore thing I have ever made but I needed to get the point across
Krogan genophage deployment recording in Citadel Archives:
Turian: "We have our orders. Release of the genophage against the kogan has been authorized."
Salarian: "Not by my government."
Turian: "Your government invented it. What good is a weapon if you don't use it?"
@crapeaucrapeau noted in a comment in this post that the genophage may have existed for a long time and was only deployed when the turians learned of it.
Going by this recording... Yeah, that sounds likely. The Hierarchy saw a shiny new weapon and had to try it out.
I suspect the salarians and asari modified their information distribution protocols after that.
Maybe it's just me being pessimistic, but I've always suspected it was less a case of the Hierarchy discovering the Union had a secret sterility plague, and more the Hierarchy "discovering" the Union had a "secret" sterility plague.
Which is to say that the Turian government was (directly or indirectly) given all the knowledge and access needed to implement the Genophage (by the Asari govt?) knowing that they would use it, regardless of any official (insincere) objections. One singular government developing and releasing a genocidal plague is one thing. But splitting the responsibility? One making but not authorizing it, another using it but not developing it, a third neither making nor using it but enabling those who did? There's no single target to villainize. Anyone pointing the finger will have it deflected to someone else.
And at the same time, once it's been done... they can't say they are above it either. Everyone has to defend its use, because everyone was involved. If punishments were to be handed out, if its use were to be condemned, every major government would suffer the consequences.
"We're all to blame... so none of us are".
Or maybe I'm being overly melodramatic about it, and the Turians were given the keys because they were the new kids on the block and it saved face for the Council species. Turians getting a Council seat centuries later being unrelated.
I just can't help but see the issue of "how was the Hierarchy ABLE to unleash it?" and suspect it was part of a plan.
Also very possible! It fits the manipulative nature of the salarians and asari very well.
It could also be groups within the Union and Republics wanted the genophage used, arranged for the Hierarchy to learn of and obtain it, and the official Union and Republic governments were not involved.
Neither the Union nor the Republics strike me as very centralized. I can easily imagine a Salarian clan or asari Republic going behind their government’s back ‘for the greater good’. (Which is not to say their government would necessarily disapprove if they were aware.)
Regardless of the details, once the genophage was deployed I’m sure everyone was very happy to lean into group responsibility means no one can actually be held accountable.
(I’m also certain the salarians have a shit ton of similar plagues in storage and development regardless of when the genophage was created. Some by the Union, some by clans. The genophage proved they work! Of course you invest in established methodology!)