A terminal of the Geth

I like Mass Effect, especially the Geth and Quarians. And I like Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

[r-b3033]

she dancin....

[natanncc]

Tali - ME3

[arburi]

So, with asari being biologically monogendered/ungendered, and culturally (at least in lore) gendered only along mother/father lines (who popped the baby out), why would they accept the mostly feminine terms foisted upon them by the other races?

Yeah, yeah, it's a writing issue. That's boring though. I want something fun that also makes sense.

I think the best way to approach it is by looking at the asari through the eyes of other species; namely, through the eyes of the salarians.

The salarians were the first living sentient species the asari came in contact with after they expanded out into the galaxy. For sixty years, it was just asari and "prothean" remnants scattered across different parts of space. For a species that lives for a thousand years or more, sixty years doesn't sound like much, but sixty years is still sixty years. No matter how long you live, you still experience time at a rate of one second per second. The asari would have been settling in quite well as the sentient race.

Things changed when the salarians showed up. There would have been major internal debates within both species' cultures on how to handle the situation. Wait-and-see attitudes don't work here: you need to figure out your politics now. First get your pantomimes and pidgins going, then work from there on building a common language to talk to each other. The asari would also be feeling threatened, as their cultural place in the galaxy is being contested by the presence of the salarians alone.

But the asari were fortunate: the first species they interacted with is largely matriarchal. Male salarians may not completely defer to the rare female dalatrasses in their society, but they do hold them with some reverence. Finding a species where every member can bear children (the "female" of live-bearing species)? You can easily imagine the male salarians giving asari some culturally-ingrained respect. Asari negotiators would pick up on that diplomatic advantage very quickly, and take advantage of it.

Sure, the salarians keep using their equivalent of she/her, and they define sex and life stages a little funny, but it's working for now. No sense in interrupting when you're coming out on top. The asari get to negotiate with an advantage, and all they have to suffer is a little bit of frustrating language.

As time went on and each new species came onto the scene, that translation quirk became locked in. Most species are sexually dimorphic, with specific male and female sexes. Languages changed, and so the asari became all-female instead.

Sure, it's frustrating for them. Aethyta gets a little miffed at your anthropocentric ass, Aria mocks the term "patriarch" by granting it onto a beaten foe, and every male of every species is walking about fetishizing your people, but who's going to go back to basics and fix the language now?

The asari slowly went from a non-gendered species to a monogendered one, because 2,500 years is 2,500 years, no matter how long your species lives.

[atanertheartist]

shooting at… you?

[halpyhal]

Look at my crew dawg we’re gonna die 😭😭😭

[arburi]

Mass Effect is such an odd setting when it comes to the background details of civilizations, corporations, and settlements. Everything you see is from Shepard's POV (excusing Andromeda), and their place as an Alliance marine certainly colors the galaxy for both them and the player.

Everyone else in the galaxy, meaning those who aren't in the upper classes or acting in service of upper class institutions, seem to be on edge. Earth is over populated and polluted, its governance is almost entirely run by a coalition of 19 major nations that ignore all others, and those nations are who decides how almost every human interacts with the rest of the galaxy. Corporations are often involved in the decision making of what policies get enacted and who gets to settle on which planet. If the corporation pulls out, you're on your own with no support (ExoGeni on Feros). Everyone lives-and-dies-by contracts, with even the asari-run Baria Frontiers willing to abuse colonists for corporate gain.

The settlements rely heavily on Alliance protection, with weak defenses making them prey for piracy/slavers. If you try to get out from under the Alliance, you still have to contend with the Alliance poking their nose in (Horizon in ME2). If you want to escape, you have to flee to the seediest places like Omega in order to feel like you're your own person.

Mass Effect 1 starts off showing you a colony that is under attack, but the Alliance and Council rep (Nihlus) are more concerned about the beacon than saving the colonists. The Citadel is shown as a shining beacon for civilizations, but even it has a sad underbelly judging by Chora's Den and the lower market illicit trade. Shepard is recruited into an extra-judicial role as a SPECTRE, which the Council allows because they feel their own policies get in the way of their wants. But, even then, you find yourself getting the runaround from the Council. The diplomats and workers have it worse, and even they are extremely privileged compared to the average galactic citizen.

Feros and Noveria are corporate-run nightmare worlds where the inhabitants are essentially owned by the company. I'm not going into more details here, they both just outright suck.

Mass Effect 2 shifts the focus. Shepard is forced to ally with a terrorist organization because the galactic governments aren't really doing a damn thing for colonies. You're locked out of the nice part of the Citadel, and only get to see what the privileged average citizens see - a bunch of shops and advertisements. C-Sec's abuse shows here with Bailey's rule-bending and Lia'Vel's being accused of a crime she didn't commit. It doesn't seem that different from Omega here, just cleaner.

Illium is somehow worse. It's clean, but it's so corporate-owned and abused that slavery is effectively legal. If you sign a contract, even if it's dangerous or abusive to you, you have no way out from under it.

Shepard finally gets a good chance to see what the real galaxy looks like in ME2, and it isn't pretty.

All this together, and I'm of the opinion that Mass Effect is less broken utopia military sci-fi, and is instead closer to cyberpunk.

Rampant AIs, crises of identity, cloning, genetic modification, cybernetics, extreme class divides, and corporatized-and-commodified everything are all highlights of cyberpunk. Mass Effect has all of it. You're just looking at it from the other side.

tl;dr: Mass Effect is cyberpunk.

[peachyatelier]

Liara if she inherited her mom's dark spots but only in little fragments (aka my Liara eyebrow redesign) - I'll probably make a proper drawing of her like this at some point

[stealthydentist]

I've been considering the contention that asari don't have gender.

Liara states that asari don't have a concept of male or female. At the same time, she explicitly says that asari have one gender - a "mono-gender."

Do you accept the premise that the categories and norms of gender are ultimately derived from differences between sexes?

Asari have one sex. While this is stated to be the case, some argue that this is technically false, because definitions of sex require multiple states; i.e., anisogamy, gonochorism, etc. (@crapeaucrapeau)

Within the paradigm of their one gender, could gendered or gender-like attitudes arise from the categories of asari gender, whatever they are? I consider these categories to be: Age, life stage (Maiden/Matron/Matriarch), seniority, parenthood, parentage, perception of the personal effects of parentage, profession, and general lived experience. Your results may vary. Asari gender could be expressed along these lines (rather than a familiar feminine/masculine binary). For example, gendered attitudes among the asari could be: Maiden behavior vs. Matriarch behavior; parent vs. childless; amateur vs. professional, etc.

Just trying to make sense of obvious contradictions and inconsistencies re: asari gender lore.

[aterminalofthegeth]

Yes, its something the game doesn't explore much (probably because of the writers limited understanding of gender at the time).

They have one sex, or possibly none given how their reproduction seems to work more like an asexual process (from a cell standpoint) with some indirect input from the melding process. Like some bacteria will integrate foreign DNA that is lying around while otherwise having a totally asexual reproductive process.

As for gender, I'd speculate they either have no innate concept at all of gender and see it as this weird cultural thing other species do. To me this would make the most sense if the always been a single sexed or asexual species. Or maybe, the Asari did evolve from a species that had sexual dimorphism (they do have a lot of mammal traits, afterall), and then they have some remnant of innate gender identity. But because, they all are the same sex, their gender just ends up being this single Asari gender. Still I do like the first intrepretation way more.

You do make a good point about age. It seems to be the division that really matters a lot in Asari society. Pre-ME1, Liara has gotten a ton of shit from Asari society because while she's doing serious research and publishing papers she is still only a Maiden, and Maidens are not supposed to do anything serious. So Liara's research gets ridiculed and ignored. Later, in ME2 and ME3, Liara starts getting involved in politics and galaxy wide plots as part of being an information broker, and this scares the Matriarchs so much they get someone to spy on her. Liara while still a Maiden, is now stepping into the Matriarch role, and Asari society really really does not like it.

[sotgofficial]

Howdy! I've been a long time fan of Auri, but have only recently decided to do the romance quest. This has got me curious, how would she feel about meeting a nonbinary character? They're not common in the Elder Scrolls universe, AFAIK.

Auri is kind of the TES equivalent of a deeply religious redneck/Amish person, so chances are she has never heard of the concept before. She'd treat the subject with a lot of curiosity (and probably potentially offensive questions - meaning no harm of course.) She'd try her best to understand and respect pronouns, though there might be some confusion in the beginning.

[sotgofficial]

Im thinking too much about Skyrim (and Auri) lately, especially how the game doesn't allow followers in the main quest's ending even if they are by your side the entire rest of the journey.

Probably the devs just didnt want companions soloing Alduin. But if could take followers, how would Auri feel about flying on Odahviing? Or going to Sovngarde? Would she have the courage to challenge Tsun and enter the Hall of Valor?

Flying on Odahviing's back would be the best thing ever and she'd love it!

Going to Sovngarde could potentially be a little scary. I don't know if Auri is the type who would challenge Tsun - honor and glory is more of a nord thing than a bosmer thing. As always, she'd support the DB in whatever they chose to do, though.

[katmorart]

[cheesebearger]

i will go to my grave defending joker mass effect's decision to not abandon the cockpit of the sr-1

he's fucking disabled and has trouble walking when the normandy isn't taking heavy fire, he needed assistance to get to an escape pod because he is disabled and the rest of the cockpit crew are dead. he could have very well just stumbled bad during another attack, break his leg, and float off into the abyss of space

the escape pods still need to safely eject from the ship, and lore makes it clear the ship piloting vi isn't complex enough to handle mid-combat piloting. by remaining in the cockpit and keeping the ship out of fire, joker allows more escape pods to eject safely

too many people (redditors, mostly) look at joker's decision to stay at the helm as a betrayal, and genuinely blame him for shepard's death which is insane. he didn't make the decision to remain at the helm because he wanted shepard to die lmfao he does it because he knows, as a disabled man who forgoes mobility aids, that he has 0 chance of getting to an escape pod by himself and his best choice is to stay and try to keep the ship steady and relatively intact

[aterminalofthegeth]

exactly! plus the normandy had zero chance of surviving an attack with the collector ship. That thing is the size of a dreadnought, took the normandy's crew by surprise and was already aiming at them while the Normandy was still in stealth mode (read: a sitting duck when compared to its full power maneuverability). It was only because Joker noticed they were being targeted (in a moment everyone else assumed them to be safe), and then immediately started dodging that the Normandy survived that first shot.

Remember that the first hit from the Collector ship went straight through the shields (traditional kinetic barriers don't do much against energy beams), and then sheared off half the hull.

Expecting Joker to stop trying fly (and buy the pods time to launch), and somehow get to an escape pod (in a burning ship that he can barely walk around in normal circumstances), is just insane.

Even though Joker has a lot of his ego tied up in his skills as pilot, I bet his thought process was more of "I'll die buying time for everyone else to escape" rather than "I cant accept I lost a battle".

Also people forget that Shepard is doing something far more insane, by not going to a escape pod immediately and instead space walking around a ship about to blow up to go save his friend.

Really, with you swapped their roles Shepard would also stick to his seat and try to buy time for his crew, and Joker would also go space walking to save Shepard.

[sotgofficial]

How would Auri feel about a Dragonborn siding with Volkihar (i.e. being turned by Harkon)? Especially, since the Volkihar are like just terribly evil.

What would she think if Harkon or the LDB wanted to turn her as well?

Oh she'd hate it. She's on board with morally grey things, but the Volkihar are just straight up evil. And she'd refuse being turned.

[queam]

I 💜 Tali’s ME1 design

[gods-no-longer-tread-here]

truly haunting that the Reapers, for all their advancement and age, were not true AI. their central consciousness had no emotions, no free will, no real independence; they were created to fix a problem, decided on a solution, and then never changed. it's just a computer program. it can't really think for itself. it needed an organic to choose its own fate. because it's just code and logic chains, not a real brain.

and meanwhile, the "lesser" AI--the geth, who need to come together in groups of a hundred or more to run a single body, and EDI, who was created only to serve her organic creators--they have souls. they are individuals. they are sentient.

I like to think it's because they were loved. because they were appreciated as individuals who aided the collective. some quarians genuinely cared about their geth, fought to protect them; and Joker clearly trusted EDI deeply, as a friend, in order to unshackle her. maybe that's the difference.

Maybe the difference between a person and a tool is how they adapt to being loved.

or maybe I'm talking out my ass. idk anymore.

[queam]

Playing around with Tali’s face (idk if I prefer the cat-like or more bug-like face for quarians)

[lavenderstobins]

my wonderful friend @aomaoe drew my shepard and kaidan for artfight ✨