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sky-scribbles · 9 months

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You know what I really appreciate about Kaidan's character arc? He gets a story about finding self-acceptance and letting himself let go and feel things - but at the same time, he still gets to be an introvert. He still gets to be, in his words, someone who isn't 'the life of the party, who has a lot of friends'.

I mean - in ME1, Kaidan fully admits to a romanced Shepard that he doesn't feel human. When he killed Vyrnnus, he became someone Rahna was afraid of, someone she saw as dangerous... so he holds himself to nigh-impossible standards. 'You never let yourself lose control,' Shepard tells him. He's very, very indirect in a lot of his conversations with Shep, because he's trying so hard not to be too direct, too forward; he's constantly polite and disciplined and professional because he can't be a problem. He can't let anyone see him as unpredictable or dangerous because that's when they start seeing you as terrifying. That's when people you love look at you like you're not human.

But Shepard can encourage him to let himself feel, and show it - 'I might need to loosen up. A little,' he admits, sheepishly - and when you see him again on Horizon, he lets his feelings be open and messy and a Problem. By ME3, he's completely embracing his nature as a biotic, gleefully letting everyone know at the Citadel party that he can Reave now, joining in with the other biotics roasting James in the 'biotics vs strength' argument. He's accepted himself, he knows his friends accept him, and he's letting himself laugh and drink and dance like a complete dork, and he's grown so much, and yet -

And yet, he's still a fundamentally quiet, self-contained person. Maybe I'm just jaded from all the media where introverted characters get told to loosen up, and then they suddenly realise that they do want to be the life of the party now actually. But Kaidan? Kaidan hangs out in the observation deck, perhaps the quietest part of the Normandy - the same place where Samara spent her time, a place where no other characters are present. (Ashley, in comparison, spends a lot of time hanging out in the bar, where there are constantly other characters around). Kaidan's Citadel hangout with Shepard? He doesn't head out onto the Silversun Strip with you like many of the other characters; his ideal evening is cooking a meal for his friend/partner and having a chill time with the two of you. A lot of the conversations you have with him on board ship are quiet, introspective. His hangout place on the Citadel is a quiet Presidium cafe.

It's just... comforting to me. He grows, but he doesn't have to change who he fundamentally is, y'know? ME3 Kaidan is more confident and sociable and (despite everything) happy than ME1 Kaidan, but he's still a guy who's not fond of too much lights or noise or crowds, who's soft-spoken and sensitive, who gets caught up in his own thoughts sometimes. I just really appreciate that.

#this is rambly. it's just such a comforting arc to me.#mass effect #kaidan alenko #mass effect meta

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lassieposting · 7 months

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Having feelings about Garrus during a successful Suicide Mission

It's. Fairly obvious throughout the game that the massacre of Archangel's team has taken a wrecking ball to Garrus's self-confidence. He sees himself as a failure - failed C-Sec detective, failed vigilante - and blames himself for their deaths. Nalah Butler tells Shepard outright that Garrus took every shot fired at his team as a personal failure to keep them safe. He's been holding himself to impossible ideals, as turians are wont to do, and he's fallen short, and it's shaken him badly.

However. He is, honestly, the obvious choice for leader of the second fire team on the Suicide Mission. We know Miranda can run a science project, but we've never seen her lead anything in the field, let alone anything so high stakes. Garrus is the only one on the team with a proven track record of active duty, under-fire leadership skills - obviously, Miranda would have a Cerberus file which Shep would've read, as would Jacob, but their field achievements are never relevant or really mentioned in-game, whereas Archangel is mentioned in background chatter on planets halfway across the galaxy. But he doesn't volunteer, when Jack and Miranda are kicking off. If Jack is killed, he's the one who tells Miranda that half the team doesn't even trust her, but he still doesn't nominate himself as an alternative. He stays quiet and keeps his head down, and if you give him command, he just gives you a tight nod. Because he doesn't believe in his own leadership abilities anymore. He knows he got his last team killed.

By the time you meet back up with him, he hasn't lost anyone, and he's getting back into the swing of it. You've been able to hear things going well for him over the comms, and he's been checking in regularly too. And if you have him take command again, it's framed as him actually volunteering this time, and strategizing with you - "I'll take a team and do ABC..."

Shep's trust, her faith in him, the fact that she believes he is still fit to lead, gives him his confidence back. I have feelings.

#mass effect #mass effect headcanons #mass effect meta #shakarian #garrus vakarian

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rawliverandcigarettes · 8 months

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I think one of the reasons why I latched onto asari characters but not super onto asari culture itself, is because I think there's something inherently... bi-cultural about being asari, in a way? Either you have to live with the heritage of another species weighing down on you regarding its expectations, history and shortcoming, knowing that by nature, you probably won't even get to spend that much time with your dad and will have to accomodate for the hole they'll leave behind; or you're pureblood, and you're also ostracized by default.

Every asari is kind of doomed to feel culturally incomplete in some way, and I think it's pretty wild that it's baked deep within the biology itself.

#mass effect #asari #mass effect meta #bicultural #hey look at me still thinking about mass effect wow #(I edited TEoP's first chapter yesterday so that's why)#(it slaps!!!!! I'm genuinely so happy whenever I reread it)#(rhanda truly being the working class bi disaster of the century)#(her daddy issues are so IMMEDIATELY apparent it's so funny to me)#(her daddy issues being extremely different from nagatha's because the cultural baggage is completely different)#(in spite of them being half sisters and having lived in each other's faces far longer than they did with their respective dads)

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c-rowlesdraws · 1 year

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This afternoon I’m having an english muffin and working on a fanfic and thinking about the shared volus-elcor embassy.

Because the shared office wasn’t the way things always were.

The volus were the third species to find the Citadel. At that time, this enormous, miraculous ancient space station had plenty of room for everyone to share. Even if the asari and salarians balked at the volus’ environmental requirements, the Keepers would have happily converted large sections of the station to accommodate the new arrivals— it’s their job to encourage aliens to settle there, after all...

Centuries pass, and more aliens start showing up, and they want to settle on the Citadel, too. As fate would have it, all of them are adapted to a thin nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere incompatible with volus biology. And of course, the Keepers accommodate them by re-allocating some of the station’s space. They depressurize volus residential and commercial areas, refill them with alien air, adjust the height of ceilings and doors; they leave no trace, as unsentimental as they are efficient. It’s only fair, of course, and the volus still have some neighborhoods left, but it still stings every time those green things come around and start knocking down the walls. Every time the volus are made to cede territory to aliens without argument.

Imagine you’re the volus ambassador in the year the first elcor ambassador is officially appointed. You know all of this history. It’s a familiar story: your people are strong and successful, but they’ve also experienced sacrifice and dismissal. They’ve been rejected from a seat on the Council for over a thousand years, despite proving their worth over and over again. They’ve held tenaciously onto the power they’ve won, but everything has strings attached. Your people have to be clever and quick, on the bleeding edge of galactic economic and political trends— for a people regarded as not physically adept, they’re keeping a lot of plates spinning. You’re the volus ambassador, and you come into work one day and your colleagues tell you, oh, you’re going to be sharing your office from now on.

With the elcor.

The elcor, who have only just established a regular route to the Citadel three hundred years* after first contact, who consider that bold and speedy. The elcor, still in that honeymoon just-happy-to-be-here phase of galactic integration. The elcor, who live in scattered countryside settlements instead of cities, who care little for trade because they already produce everything their citizens need. The elcor, governed by a council of elders who discuss old laws and historical precedents in patient circles until a fair and respectful consensus is reached or everyone involved has died of old age, leaving a new generation to pick up the debate. Elcor C-SPAN is the biggest snoozefest on galactic television.

And now one of these rustic, ponderous hippies has been given half of your office.

Of course, the elcor ambassador probably thinks this is super awkward too, but you’re the volus ambassador; you’re not thinking about that. You’re steamed. Your exosuit is doubling as a crockpot. You have to sit there at your desk and do e-mails like everything is fine while on the inside you’re simmering like buffalo chicken dip on game day, and you know: no matter how many top economists and businessvol your people produce, you’re never getting the respect you deserve.

And you’re never getting that Council seat.

*in ME1, Calyn proudly tells Shepard that the elcor established a regular route to the Citadel “within one lifetime”. Later official media giving the elcor a 400-year lifespan makes this line, in retrospect, extremely funny.

#mass effect #mass effect meta #volus #elcor #it's a rarepair of champions calyn/din korlack fanfic if anyone is wondering what i'm doing with my finite time on this earth

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not-a-newt · 9 months

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I keep thinking abt members of other species doing research into the most random, innocuous pools of human knowledge where, like, councilor sparatus will unexpectedly use niche, antiquated human idioms or how director tann randomly dropped that he knows exactly what a kangaroo is...

and it's not something that the writers overlooked either, because they'll provide context TELLING YOU that this niche information is something that the character is individually familiar with —presumably drawn from some kind of extranet Wikipedia-equivalent, rabbit-hole style, personal research into humans that they then consciously decided to make you, the player character, a human, aware of...

Like, I get there's a certain level of research that's expected of political leaders in order to facilitate polite, socially appropriate interactions with alien species, but then there's this step beyond that of them just being nerdily interested in human culture specifically

I don't know how to explain it, it just really kills me. It's so fucking funny imagining one of the pre-eminent leaders of galactic civilization sitting up late at night in bed on his ipad datapad, reading about silly little niche human topics, like, I don't know, ancient sword making techniques (damascus steel) or the deadly molasses flood of 1919

Does anyone else think about this or am I just not normal??

#mass effect #mass effect andromeda #mass effect meta #councilor sparatus #jarun tann #space newt #newt speaks

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bagog · 6 months

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Something I think about a lot in Mass Effect is when Javik talks about how they used to eat Salarians in his cycle.

But like... homo sapiens were around more than 50,000 years ago and were using tools and stuff.

So, if the other species in the galaxy follow a similar evolutionary time-table... was... did Javik eat sentient creatures?

#javik #mass effect #mass effect meta #or did salarians and hanar evolve much more rapidly than humanity?#“But bagog you eat octopus!”#no i don't but fair point

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shadesofmauve · 1 year

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The Alliance Normandy SR-2: That cabin

We all know that the reason Shepard has a double bed on the SR-1 is because vidya game sex is more important than space!military realism. But I find it completely plausible that The Illusive Man — a man who clearly likes his carnal pleasures and believes firmly in the Great Man theory of history — would think a king-size bed is an absolutely required and reasonable perk of power, and would assume Shepard has the same standards. Every ridiculous thing about Shepard's cabin on the SR-2, from the giant bed to the fish-tank to the sheer size of the thing, is the way it is because The Illusive Man got his hands on the plans and scribbled in what he thought the bare minimum of modest living for a Capital-L Leader looked like.

What's funny is imagining the conversations after the Normandy was seized by the Alliance and they started retrofitting her for Admiral Anderson, and the careful conversations Anderson had to have in order to keep the super-comfy king-sized bed without looking like he wanted to keep the super-comfy king-sized bed.

#The Illusive Man does blow off the asses of asari hookers #and you will not convince me otherwise #I was going to save this and post it w/ my Normandy plans #but it stands alone #sexy sexy spaceship #Mass Effect meta #the normandy #fire the headcan(n)on #normandy sr2 #mass effect

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drelldreams · 5 months

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Mass Effect Lore: Common technologies in the 2180‘s (Part 2)

This post is both a collection of canon technologies in the Mass Effect universe, and personal headcanon which may be borrowing common concepts from sci fi.

Infrastructure:

Autonomous public transportation vessels of all sorts. As seen with the tram on Noveria. Trains, buses and cabs are also autonomous. Rude bus drivers, trains and buses being cancelled or too late are problems of the past.

Some of those buses and cabs drive on land; others are flying vessels that travel through the sky.

Trains travel at immense speed, with most trains being able to travel at least 1000km/h. Low pressure tunnels allow for this level of speed.

Suspension railways are a common means of public transportation and are widely featured all across the galaxy on various space station, colonies and in most Earth countries. This also includes maglevs (magnetic levitation trains).

Cities commonly not only feature terminals providing rentable e-bikes, e-scooters or even e-rollerblade, but also rent flying hoverboards.

Medicine & Health:

Needles have become obsolete. Technologies akin to Star Trek's hypospray have replaced them. (This contradicts with Mordin's line in ME3: „Fear of needles. Common phobia." I know.)

Genetic therapy has advanced so far as to being able to cure almost any genetic disease. (Book canon).

Cybernetics can fix deafness and blindness. (Canon implied, I believe?)

Advancement in technology and medicine have slowed down human aging significantly. Women can have healthy children in their sixties. (Book canon). Anti aging therapies and cybernetics can allow humans to reach ages of up to 250 years.

Education:

Paper and pens being used in schools is a thing of the past. Students use tablets (which are made of ultra-light also foldable) with either keyboards or tablet pens for handwritten notes. (Book canon implied - Gillian uses a computer to work on her assignments in Mass Effect: Ascension).

Some teachers and students would prefer to have their textbooks in form of super light datapads (like e books) rather than have them all digitally stored on their computer.

Learning programs are highly advanced and VI‘s provide students with custom tailored, individualized exercises and study plans and games.

Food:

Liquid food drinks, nutrient pastes and bars that replace entire meals are available just about everywhere. With biotics burning huge amount of calories, the asari have perfected such products. Being cheaper than freshly cooked take out meals and coming in all sorts of flavors and textures, such nutrient pastes proved to be a saving grace for poorer individuals. Some poor people nearly only eat 3D printed nutrient paste, which does not have the same feeling as eating real meals, but nutrient paste in Mass Effect is of such high quality that it provides the body with all nutrients it needs while being free of unhealthy ingredients.

People-prepared foods (by humans/aliens) are still appreciated, but many foods available in grocery stores are 3D printed. Cafés tend to feature feature people-prepared foods. A café selling 3D printed cakes for instance would be looked down upon.

Synthetic flavors have been perfected. While technology has been advanced to the point where you could grow strawberries on Omega without issues (using environmental control systems in a hydroponic bay), the ultimate cheapest way to replicate the flavor is using synthetic ingredients. This way, you can find foods of any flavor, no matter what exotic fruit from Palaven or Khar'Shan it might be, anywhere.

Sugar free snacks and candy are as common as the sugar variants. Ice cream cates feature sugar free ice cream options. Sugar free chocolate or cookies are available at any grocery store. Various synthetic ingredients are used to replace sugar.

Lab grown meat is incredibly common (canon) and meat from Earth animals found on space stations is grown from animal stem cells.

Home:

Significantly less time is spent on chores due to robots doing most of the work. With floor wiping and vacuum robots being affordable for middle class people in the 21st century, in the 22nd, the majority of cleaning is done by robots in a middle class household. Advanced kitchen aid machines are found in most households and make cooking less time consuming and complicated for most people.

Blinds, curtains, light, air filtration systems, thermal regulation systems (air conditioning or heating systems) and television are typically navigated via a voice command (for example, „Light on“ or „Television off).

Holographic home ambiences like in Cyberpunk 2077 are common. Windows can be made to look like they‘re displaying a galaxy full of stars via holographic projections. Some people use those home ambience holographs to create the appearance of a luxurious club lounge, or to project beautiful landscapes into a corner of their room.

Personal Care:

Like in Star Trek, sonic showers can be used to clean the body effectively. Ultrasonic vibrations remove dirt, bacteria, excess oil and dead skin cells without requiring soap or water. While more expensive than typical showers, the use of sonic showers saves water. This sort of technology is found within quarian environmental suits. Drell with Kepral's Syndrome generally use sonic showers rather than water showers.

In addition to having an inbuild shower function, quarian environmental suits are equipped with a dental hygiene program that cleans the teeth and mouth of the wearer effectively using ultrasonic vibrations.

Certain suit upgrades can even use nanobots to moisturize the body.

Toothbrushes are also generally sonic toothbrushes that use the same technology as showers do; ultrasonic vibrations.

Clothes are typically self-cleaning with nanoparticles that kill bacteria and prevent the build up of odor.

#mass effect fanlore #mass effect headcanon #mass effect meta #headcanon #technology #food

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wingsy-keeper-of-songs · 8 months

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Gimme more turian culture. Gimme decorations like piercings in the side fringe or feathers from animals on Palaveni braided in-between the blades. Colorful colony tattoos if it's just the pattern that matters and not the color. More clothes that drape and emphasize parts that turians find attractive like the hips and waist. Give me even more insight into their language and what the sub-vocals mean to them. More turian art and music and folklore that doesn't focus on their military service.

I dunno I just want to know more things about the space raptor-cats along the lines of what we learn about the quarians, krogan, and asari.

#mass effect meta #turian headcanons #give me all the turian headcanons pls #we hardly know much about them since humanity has mad beef and the codex doesn't have much to say #gimme culture shit man

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swaps55 · 11 months

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I think a lot about Shepard's fish tank wipeout in the Citadel DLC.

The entire DLC is this lighthearted love letter to Mass Effect, and it's beautiful. But then there's THIS moment. When Shepard falls through a fish tank.

The entire way down, they desperately try to arrest their fall. They have no shields. No combat armor. There is no one to catch them. It feels like this is one of the few times there is ever fear. And they don't land gently. And the cut scene lingers on it. There is no levity in this moment. Shepard is on the ground, groaning in pain, slow to get up, clutching their ribs. First instinct before they try to get to their feet? Reach for the gun. Have that first. Then see if you can stand.

And I think the only reason we can have this moment, where Shepard is vulnerable, injured, and in trouble, is because there is no one there to see. The moment Brooks gets on the comm, they crack a joke. "Yup. Feeling good." While unable to stand up straight.

We get this at the end of the game, too, but that's when the stakes are at their highest. That's when it's supposed to be hard. It's no less magnificent then, but now, in this moment? When everything was happy and fun and silly? MAN.

And afterward, everyone jokes about it. Every single member of your squad makes a crack about the sushi place. And Shepard plays along. Haha, yeah, fell right through it, while trying to change the subject.

No one knows what that fall was like. No one saw Shepard lying on the ground in the bowls of the Silversun Strip, water dripping off them, struggling to get to their feet.

And no one asks, because it's Shepard.

#mass effect #commander shepard #i have a lot of feelings about this #mass effect meta #citadel dlc is the best dlc

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lassieposting · 7 months

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Clears throat

AHEM

Actual Detective* Garrus Vakarian noticing immediately when Shep's accessories - the paint she puts on her fingernails, the signature stripe on her armour, the dust she puts on her eyelids - start to skew towards what she calls "Vakarian blue". The shade his armour is, the shade his colony markings are. And being lowkey emotional about it because he's always kind of been the disappointment - the rebellious son, the mouthy recruit, the cop who quit, the failed vigilante - and he's never really been in a situation where someone whose opinion he cared about was proud of him and wanted to be associated with him, wanted to make it clear they're a matching set

* i see a lot of "garrus was basically a beat cop before shepard" but if you think about it. He's actually not

When he introduces himself in ME1, he says he was in charge of the investigation into Saren. He also mentions on the Normandy that c-sec didn't suck at first, but every time he got promoted it came with more red tape = he's a detective.

Corruption in a high-profile Spectre is not gonna be assigned to a rookie = he's a damn good detective

His personal quest and his comments when you talk to him around the citadel give insight into the kind of cases he worked at c-sec, which include black market trafficking and homicides.

He also speaks to Detective Chellick in a way that's familiar enough to imply they were work colleagues, and what's Chellick investigating? Black market gunrunning.

Anyway, my point: garrus wasn't a beat cop, he worked the turian equivalent of major crimes/vice/robbery homicide. And for someone who's only in his mid-twenties? That's like. impressive as fuck, his progression through the ranks must've been meteoric

He does talk about his time as a beat cop though - "My first posting at c-sec was here on the presidium. Mostly for show, not much crime up here."

#mass effect #mass effect headcanons #mass effect meta #shakarian #garrus vakarian

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ferusaurelius · 1 year

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Turian Culture Meta - Ferus Style

Yeah so -- ready to descend into crazyland?

We’re gonna dive into some meta thoughts I have about what sort of cultural educational and military system would produce the interesting client-state relationship between the turian Hierarchy and the Vol Protectorate.

Disclaimer: The opinions of the author (me) are naturally my own and are not intended to argue for or against anyone else’s ideas. This is not even intended to be an interpretation of canon, in point of fact. Canon doesn’t have much to say about things that actually interest me. -shrug-

This is my ‘plausible’ version of conceptual options and social structures that canon either glosses over or fumbles entirely. Because it’s just not interested in these ideas, really ... BUT I AM. :D

If you find any of these concepts compelling? Fantastic, please liberate them! Go and use them in any or all transformative work with or without attribution.

I really Do Not Want to be the only one writing this stuff, so... be welcome!

Full post (long) underneath the cut.

The Situation

The turian Hierarchy makes first contact with the Citadel some 1000 years after the volus have drawn up the Unified Banking Act (300 B.C.E.) and have a thriving economic network of colonies after discovering FTL travel. The volus in point of fact have more than a millennia of advanced experience in working with multi-species ventures and are a pillar of the galactic economy long before the turians finish off their brutal Unification Wars.

If you took just the game’s on-screen hints as fact, none of this is evident in the galaxy by the time Shepard encounters volus on the Citadel. They’re treated as a sort of minor curiosity in comparison to the turian characters -- whether because of the mask, or just because economics is “less interesting” in a AAA-shooter. OH WELL.

Another interesting element is that the volus are “accepted” as a protectorate of the Hierarchy around 700 C.E., shortly after the Krogan rebellions.

To my mind, this is translation for: the Hierarchy’s war economy in the aftermath of the Krogan rebellions would have collapsed without the intervention of volus administrators, economists, logicians, and other bureaucratic types. What the Hierarchy DOES have of a peacetime bureaucracy was likely or nearly entirely trained and reformed by the Vol Protectorate’s extremely professional civil service. Fight a series of wars and warlords in the colonies for around 1000 years while someone else is running the galactic banking system ... and you’re probably woefully behind the curve in that area, just saying.

When you’ve “elevated” one warlike species (the Krogan) and then been surprised that they’ve gone on to aggressively contest the rest of Citadel space, it even seems likely/possible that this was a grand strategic bargain on the part of the Citadel species to avoid the turians becoming a “second” Krogan incident.

A values-driven and rules-based collectivist civil society that managed to transition to a peacetime footing without an accompanying economic collapse would be a much more stable galactic force ... plus you get the opportunity to fill in C-Sec ranks, develop a galactic security fleet (employing turian Dreadnoughts), and use those related tasks and duties to bring turians (an otherwise very militaristic society with a historical doctrine of total war) into better compliance as galactic citizens. In essence: the Vol Protectorate gives the Hierarchy something to protect rather than conquer.

Naturally, turian cultural perspectives on the purpose of the Hierarchy and the relative values of the culture probably run the gamut from the more imperialistic Unification and pre-Unification end of the spectrum to the more socially/galatically communitarian version of the Hierarchy, itself, as a participant in creating civil society within the Milky Way.

When in doubt? I prefer to view individuals on a spectrum or continuum of different possible viewpoints -- and to prefer that a full spectrum of interpretations be available to my characters. So that’s the type of environment I’d use as backdrop for, say, a fic.

Education (Given: The Situation)

Which takes us back to the Hierarchy’s mandatory service culture and boot camp at age 15, with mandatory service from age 15-30.

“Public service” as opposed to private industry is more a matter of organization and aims than it is a limitation of ‘choices.’ Take, for instance, the example of ‘national’ industries owned by a state. Any state-owned enterprise might conceivably count toward ‘public service’ citizen credit. These enterprises could include everything from arts museums and public art projects (ala the Works Projects Administration of Roosevelt Depression-era US policy) to industrial fabricators, dockyards, and other collectively owned and operated institutions.

Note that I also don’t equate state-owned industry to CENTRALLY-PLANNED industry! You might, in a turian society that prizes both individual accountability AND public service, have for instance a federated system of local control within a centrally-organized public works or other department.

Fair warning: this is my professional bureaucrat side talking. There are MANY aspects of infrastructure, particularly public works infrastructure, that are site- and context-dependent. Central planning of these features quite literally doesn’t work outside of administration and funding (which you WANT organized in larger packages if possible, to secure the best possible loan terms).

I also imagine that a public service-oriented society would work on incorporating the economic fates of its outer colonies into the trading lanes and patterns of the central Hierarchy (in order to secure greater loyalty and collective bargaining power, alongside the Vol Protectorate’s economic management engine).

So what would education in a “man-of-action”/”public service” society look like? I’d think more a system of apprenticeships and practical qualification or on-the-job (OJT) training and certification where available!

A boot camp experience is usually important both for training in values and standard procedures, so it’s less likely to vary appreciably between any one place and another beyond basics related to climate and environment. I’d expect boot camp training to be purposely standardized -- individual accountability doesn’t necessarily lead me to conclude that turians would be keen to judge themselves on anything other than “demonstrated merit” (and testing would be ONE part, but probably not the most significant -- outside of genuine performance on practical tasks, and the ability to produce measurable results!).

Pre-boot-camp education would likely be designed to expose juveniles to as many professions as possible -- there’s a bit in the codex about the turian respect for “knowing one’s place” and finding a comfortable place where the individual best serves the community (rather than individual prestige or economic gain). This would also track with turians being ‘poor’ entrepreneurs (i.e. less inclined to start their own businesses for profit, or with less opportunity when they’re in State-mandated service) ... and account for some of the distrust of ‘merc-born’ turians who chose to opt out of the traditional Hierarchy structure.

I’d also expect a classical turian education to include emphasis on health, community values, and being able to communicate in a general way with their volus partners/collaborators in areas that are less often viewed as strengths of turian culture (aka: economics and business, anyone?).

If turian culture is truly militaristic and communitarian, both, and formed around a sort of military hierarchy, that society will also be shaped by what doctrine views as effective deployment of force and possible missions and required capabilities In military terms, this would be defined both by a theoretical ‘ideal’ force structure and various desired concepts of operations.

Military Doctrine (Given: The Situation)

So, what capabilities would be valuable for the turian Hierarchy to provide to the galaxy? What are its internal needs? What are the needs of its closest allies and partners?

We already know (or suspect) that Dreadnoughts are one sign of military status. These immense warships are required to secure and hold space stations and other important remote outposts, alongside the smaller cruisers, frigate wolfpacks, and other space Navy-type forces.

We can also consider C-Sec (civil and criminal investigation on the Citadel, security for ports, anti-smuggling operations, etc.) as a separate civil branch and outgrowth of skills are learned and taught within the Hierarchy and something of a stereotypical (and desirable!) turian job outside of Hierarchy space.

Other valuable services provided by the Hierarchy include staffing and operating a force (32 fleets!) large enough to secure not just Hierarchy space but also to protect the Citadel. Turians canonically value combined arms and disciplined maneuver warfare, decentralized command-and-control, and are also the primary military arm and security force for the rest of the galaxy.

In summary: the turians are so good at staffing and maintaining fleets that the rest of the Council species seem to prefer handing these civil functions over to the turians in proportion to their relative expertise and cultural strengths.

All of the above implies that turian culture would need to be an extraordinarily flexible (structurally) society, if individually somewhat set and rigid in expectations and values for fulfilling assigned duties.

I’d believe that assignments, once given, were equivalent to anyone else’s ultimatum! I’d also imagine that turians would find it VERY personally important to seek out roles where they could fulfill all potential assignments to the best of their individual abilities, and that ‘finding’ that place/role in society would be akin to a life path.

Amateurs Study Tactics

A short aside that warfighting ability, alone, at least on an individual level, is a minor strength in comparison to building an effective collaborative combined arms force. The organization required at an individual level? Not much! Just personal training and supply.

Problems mount as soon as the force expands in size, complexity, and desired mission capabilities. I could see volus economists and logicians, as well as military scholars, being the preeminent organizers and administrators of turian force structures. I could see the volus economic influence being a quite effective force multiplier for the turian Hierarchy, in terms of creatively organizing fleets and their sub-units into autonomous mission-capable interchangeable “parts” which all know how to work together and communicate to achieve complex adaptability and integration of vastly different forces, hardware, and weapons systems at a variety of scales (from galactic, to orbital, to low-orbit, to planetside ground).

Which leads us to ...

Professionals Study Logistics

This is just the study of the application of “effective force.” What makes a force effective? It needs to be supplied with personnel and materiel such that it can accomplish its assigned mission -- preserve the capability of the force through the supply of the necessary tools at the right time, alongside the ability to maintain, repair, replace, or rotate those tools as needed.

A force that has been improperly positioned (is too far forward of supply lines, or too far in the rear to be applied at the right time) is by definition an ineffective force. It is unavailable to accomplish the mission.

There’s a long, rich tradition of economists studying the choice behaviors of nations seeking war, the application of deterrence, and the conditions of victory and defeat on a multitude of different battlefields in different historical and cultural contexts. We get just about NONE of this (barring some high-level generalizations) in Mass Effect, proper!

If we did, we might have seen a bit more nuance in illustrating the Vol Protectorate as not just the economic backbone of Citadel space, but also the preeminent experts in military grand strategy and supply. They’re likely the most closely associated Citadel species and have the most experience collaborating with turian systems of organization! The volus would be just as good at turian military history as turians are, if not BETTER observers and critics on the logistics/economics side, in terms of patterns of thinking and history!

At some point I’m going to have to write the “lessons learned” memo on the First Contact War from the point of view of an eminent volus logistician and economist (ala Thomas Schelling).

Because I’m a nerd, and if the FCW was a failure due to logistics and supply errors? You can just BET the volus were kept out of the First Contact loop as a some sort of power play on the part of less-qualified frontline personnel... no, they’re not salty about that, why do you ask?

HATE ME YET? Yeah, I can’t stop thinking about this stuff, either ... and now you know why my fanfiction is the way it is. :D

#mass effect meta #turian #volus #apparently i have TOO MANY THOUGHTS #ferus chats #my way of thinking #shrug #jazz hands #it is what it is

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sapphodera · 10 months

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Is anyone else surprised that the destroy ending seems to be the most popular considering it’s objectively the worst ending? (In terms of the condition the galaxy is left in.)

Like, think about it. All the mass relays are broken and the Citadel is severely damaged. All AIs are gone. The catalyst does say the remaining survivors will have little difficulty repairing the damage, but that’s complete bullshit. The galaxy has been at war for a year, many people have died, whole worlds have practically been destroyed. AIs were relied on. The mass relays are the only way for a ship to leave a cluster (at least quickly). So basically you have a bunch of people stranded with no way of getting from one cluster to another. Remind me how that’s supposed to be easily fixed? It would take decades for all the relays to be restored! Compared to the control and synthesis endings, where you have the massive army of Reapers to help restore everything.

I get narratively it makes the most sense, as your goal throughout the whole trilogy is to destroy the reapers. It is also the only ending where Shepard lives. Still, I am surprised that it seems to be the most popular ending when to me the disadvantages clearly outweigh the benefits.

#mass effect trilogy #mass effect 3 #mass effect meta #mass effect ending #control ending #destroy ending #synthesis ending

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c-rowlesdraws · 1 year

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Does Siwa have a personalized or customized suit in any way? I've always felt like the Volus suits (and to a lesser extend the quarian suits) that we see in game are a bit too 'one size fits all' to really represent all the options that would be available.

I wanted her to look similar to the other volus NPCs, like she could blend in with a crowd, so her suit isn't customized beyond some painted details, but she does accessorize! Her quarian friend Kesh'Vataar once gave her a Fleet-made belt made of woven cloth, the same kind of cloth quarians wear wrapped around their exosuits, as a present. It's an extremely meaningful gift and Siwa never leaves the airlock without it.

I think individual fashion choices in Mass Effect across species are for sure more complicated "in real life" than we saw in-game, where factors like budget and time and design priorities keep things like NPC fashion diversity low. I can imagine volus' approach to exosuit style being like how humans are with cars: most people choose from amongst affordable but fairly standard and unremarkable-looking models, some people drop heaps of credits on luxury designs and custom paintjobs for a more flashy and extravagant life-support experience, and some people get full-body wraps of anime characters.

For quarians, though, I can see them taking a different approach to decoration, because the context for their own exosuit usage is very different: the highly-industrialized volus, master navigators of the great currents of galactic commercial culture, mass-produce shiny new exosuits all the time (alongside a thriving secondhand market), but the quarians are a nomadic, isolated community with extremely limited material resources-- an exosuit that's completely newly-made, with no re-used parts at all, must be incredibly rare to nonexistent. In addition, a volus suit is a luxury purchase that the majority of the population never has a reason to go for, while each and every quarian must wear a suit for almost their entire life. I can imagine quarian suit style being all about combining used-and-reused components with newer ones in aesthetically-pleasing ways. Tarnished metal is polished mirror-bright around permanent dents and scratches, skillful stitching and artfully-draped wraps hide awkward seams.

Additionally, the quarians are (understandably) obsessed with holding onto their shattered history, and I can see their fashion reflecting that, too. Small family heirlooms made of gold and precious metals survive to be passed down because their cultural and personal value is greater than their material worth would be to the Fleet, were they melted down for use in electronics. Traditional patterns woven into cloth portray stylized forms of Rannochian ecology and natural features no living quarian has ever seen. I bet they're big on embroidery, too. But yeah, anyway, yes, I can see both the volus and the quarians having more diverse exosuit designs than shown in canon, but i think volus and quarian design sensibilities would also be distinct from each other in significant ways.

#mass effect meta #mass effect #quarian #quarians #volus #ask #catie talks #siwa rusk #kesh'vataar #my art

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