I’m going to be bold and I will hijack this post to link to two of my previous posts : one which compiles all canon facts (at the time of writing) about the volus (+ some inferences), including a subsection on Irune itself, and one where I hypothesize that volus breathe hydrogen gas. I hope you’ll find it enjoyable to some extent.

Welcome to my Halloween entry for @citadelfashionweek 2021!!

I could not participate for the main event but I wanted to contribute for a seasonal spook! This is a concept that was born from worldbuilding thoughts while working on my coming fanfiction The Empire of Preys.

Meet the Vrejjeen! I feel like many cultures share archetypes that follow some primal anxieties, so I wanted to figure out what would the salarian equivalent to a vampire look like. She's a legendary monster whose name refers to the co-dependant union of a salarian female infected with a melufer leech, a parasitic lifeform that breeds inside small living creatures, overtake their brain functions and eventually kill them. The popularity of that myth peaked during the rachni wars, but she's still a common figure in horror/gothic media nowadays, and would make for a cool costume for salarians pumped about human parties and traditions...

I left more "lore" informations about the Vrejjeen under the cut in case you want to hear about that spooky girl.......

a note on worldbuilding

It occurs to me that failure to properly worldbuild an SFFnal story is - sometimes, though not always - less reflective of a writer’s creative ability than it is a consequence of their real-world privilege. The concept of culture as something with multiple facets, that can be experienced from different perspectives and which - crucially - has consequences beyond the obvious is learned rather than innate, and if, in your own life, you’ve never stopped to consider (for instance) how class differences impact access to basic necessities, or the problem of social mobility, then that’s going to influence how you craft, or fail to craft, those elements in your narratives. Because while, in stories set in the present day, you can either compensate with research or write wholly within familiar contexts, in an invented setting, it’s going to be harder to hide the gaps in your knowledge.

And so we get stories whose cultures are founded on stereotypes: Noble Elves vs the Barbarian Orcs, an endless parade of faux-medieval Europes, and dystopias built around a single, reductive premise with no effort made to explore its wider consequences. This last seems especially troublesome to me, given that dystopias are, generally speaking, meant to be the sort of stories that understand class and subversion - but when written by someone who’s never considered that their own society operates on more than one level, that nuance may well be lost. The point of worldbuilding is to create new worlds, but they’re always going to be influenced by how we view our own.

I also think about these fantasy and science-fiction worlds. These authors - usually American - trying to describe some ~*~exotic market~*~ or ~*~bustling spaceship port~*~ with words they’ve read in other people’s books. Think about how they falteringly describe those markets: “They had lots of spices and some colorful rugs.”

(What spices? What color were the rugs?)

“You know - spices. Foreign spices. Foreign rugs.”

(But is it bright turmeric and cumin, cut with flour, glowing yellow in glass jars to attract the tourists? Is it the cinnamon and star anise of the Christmas market, the paper cup of mulled cider? Where are we supposed to be, again?)

But these authors copy-paste the rising and falling call of the muezzin and the air heavy with foreign spices and the hungry children with flies in their eyes - maybe even take a beautiful woman with her face veiled out of the box, or some exotic songbirds - and think “Nailed it.” Check out this exotic worldbuilding - we’ve really traveled here! Look: colorful silks and barbarians. Is this a good story, or what!

And it’s splendidly, laughingly obvious that they’ve never seen a street sign in Arabic, never walked through a North African market at nightfall, couldn’t tell silk from satin if their life depended on it, and that they don’t even know their own local songbirds, let alone how to identify an exotic one. Armchair tourists, copying and pasting the TripAdvisor reviews of other tourists, coloring half the people green, and calling it worldbuilding: oh deary me.

Then there’s the realism of research. Knowing where goods and products and knowledge came from. If your elves are eating chocolate they’d better have contact with the Aztecs. Don’t put poison ivy in England. Your medieval faux-European story had better justify itself if people are wearing cotton and eating potatoes and tomatoes. 

(Pictured: someone whose civilization has apparently had contact with the indigenous peoples of the Americas. So THAT’s what all of that “into the west” stuff is about… elves seeking out new sources of carbohydrates!)

Don’t even get me started on science realism in science fiction; I am personally plagued by every written fictional description of viruses AND I’M JUST LIKE

So the Western SF/F canon swallows itself endlessly, a snake chasing its tail. It’s fun, but the tiresome bits get recycled, because people think that’s what forests and markets and ships are really like.

“That’s not realistic in this setting,” we scoff when someone wants a disabled princess or a lady king or - gasp! - a black woman in their literature.

But most of this shit is so unrealistic, say people like me, rolling their eyes politely: “What spices were they, precisely? They’re wearing silk, are they? Are you sure of that? Are you absolutely sure? And then the virus killed everybody, did it? In seven minutes? much wow.” 

So it sounds like I’m going “don’t write about markets unless you’ve been to a market” or “don’t write unless you have a really expensive education” or “don’t write.

But of course - this isn’t fair. Who am I to demand that people be well-traveled? Most people cannot afford to. And those who do travel rarely pay attention. They are expecting foreign spices and children with flies in their eyes, and they come back and regurgitate them.

(The spices were cardamom and cinnamon, you silly fool, and the children in your hometown are hungrier. The songbird was a woodlark, and the only exotic thing there was you.)

You don’t have to actually travel. You just have to care. As you type that someone is eating a potato you have to ask “where did they get the potato?” and as you type that someone is ugly you have to ask “why are they ugly?” and if you’re going to write about a prairie, look it up on Google Maps and sit with it for a while until you’ve got your own words for it.

People know the difference between waving your hands dismissively, using other people’s words because you don’t think it’s important, and when genuinely caring, especially when you’re touching something they love. You’ll fuck up, but people will usually forgive fuck-ups if you were being honest and wondering and respectful. 

It’s the difference between the standard Western method of travel - showing up sneeringly in someone else’s house and expecting to be hailed as a savior, to be served by the unimportant natives - and the kind of travel where OH MY GOD WAS THAT ONE OF YOUR MAGPIES? THAT’S WHAT YOUR MAGPIES LOOK LIKE? ARE YOU KIDDING ME RIGHT NOW? OH MY GOD THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING. GUYS. HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT THEIR MAGPIES? 

Because wherever you go in this universe, you are going to somebody’s home. Tread lightly, because you tread as a guest. If you fail to lovingly respect your beggar woman and lowly engineer because they’re more “boring” than your hero - well, you’ve just described what kind of person you are, and it’s not the sort that comes to my dinner parties.

Whether you are learning, or traveling, or writing, you have to care and you have to care about getting it right. You can be tongue-tied and broken-hearted and fundamentally lost. My favorite people usually are. But you have to care about the magpies and the trade routes and the cardamom. You’ll have to bring me with you, or you’ll lose me. (Believe me, I have so many wonderful places to be.)

So I don’t ask that authors be perfect in their worldbuilding. I only ask that they try, and take my hand, and believe that this place they have created is important and worthy and full of the most interesting things, and worthy of thought and care, because all places are.

that comic really is a testament to lazy worldbuilding and “all aliens are exactly like us” bullshit that the ME writers like to pull. like, oh they’re kissing in an airport and she’s doing the foot pop thing. there’s a picture of their wedding and thane’s wearing black and irikah’s wearing a white dress and there’s a priest and a crowd of well-wishers. it’s so fuckign like. obviously human (specifically american/western/whatever) culture being copy/pasted onto an alien species because the writers are too lazy to think critically and realize that no, this alien species would not have the exact same romance tropes + wedding ceremonies as their own specific culture in human society. like it’s bizarre. it’s bad worldbuilding guys

the wedding picture that pisses me off so much, in case anyone was curious

That is… a white wedding dress.

A fashion that seems to have started with people stealing style ideas from Queen Victoria I of England (who, to my knowledge, went with white because she really liked fancy artisanal lace, wanted to support the lace industry, and white goes well with lace), became common when she was elderly, and became “standard” in the 1950s.

THERE ARE WORSE SINS AGAINST WORLDBUILDING THAN TITS ON LIZARDS

I always find it kind of weird that matriarchal cultures in fiction are always “women fight and hunt, men stay home and care for the babies” because world-building-wise, it makes no sense

think about it. like, assuming that gender even works the same in this fantasy culture as it does in ours, with gender conflated with sex (because let’s be real, all of these stories assume that), men wouldn’t be the ones to make the babies, so why would they be the ones to care for the babies? why is fighting and hunting necessary for leadership?

writing a matriarchy this way is just lazy, because you’re just taking the patriarchy and just swapping the people in it, rather than actually swapping the culture. especially when there are so many other cool things you could explore. like, what if it’s not a swap of roles but of what society deems important?

maybe a matriarchy would have hunting and fighting be part of the man’s job, but undervalued. like taking the trash out or cleaning toilets: necessary, but gross, and not noble or interesting. maybe farming is now the most important thing, and is given a lot of spiritual and cultural weight.

how would law work? what crimes would exist, and what things would be considered too trivial to make illegal? who gets what property? why?

how would religion work? how would you mark time or the passage into adulthood? what would marriage look like? if bloodlines are through the mother, bastardy wouldn’t even be a concept - how does that work?

what qualities would be most important in a person? how would you define strength or leadership? what knowledge would be the most coveted and protected? what acts or roles are considered useless or degrading?

like, you can’t just take our current society and say you’re turning it on its head when you’re just regurgitating it wholesale. you have to really think about why things are the way they are and change that. 

THIS IS SUCH A GOOD POST THOUGH.

I think what really bothers me about the whole “men take care of the children and tend house because they’re not in charge” thing is that it reinforces the idea that traditionally feminine work SHOULD be undervalued. That there’s no way anyone could see raising children and think, “wow, what a valuable contribution to society”. Even though families are what societies are MADE of, and if you ignore the welfare of your children the society falls apart in a generation or two.

Imagine if women were seen as the ideal political leaders BECAUSE they’re the ones best suited for raising young children. What if it was assumed that government positions were sort of scaled-up households, and that only a leader who saw their subjects as their children could be fair and compassionate enough to rule effectively? What is a village, or a country, but an extended family?

On the one hand, the ability to use physical force effectively is super important for a low-tech society, and there’s always the threat of hostile military takeover, either from outsiders or via internal revolt. On the other hand, a society where all the men want to rebel is probably not a society that’s being run at all effectively, and there are other ways of maintaining control (ie religion, cultural traditions, propaganda, etc). Women could be the more educated group–in some ways that’s even intuitive, since a non-magical preindustrial society is one with a high infant mortality rate, which means it has to have a high birth rate to compensate, which means women will be pregnant a lot. If they have trouble consistently working physically demanding trades, why not assign them to jobs that require more mental exertion? Why not a society where all the lawyers are female, all the doctors are female, all the historians and most respected poets are female? If you keep that up for long enough, eventually that gets seen as an inherent sex difference, and men don’t exert physical force because holy shit they’d have no idea what they were doing once they gained power.

It doesn’t have to be these specific differences, of course. But I think that’s the thought process that most of the best worldbuilding comes from–why are things this way? How have they stayed this way? Just saying “what if women could tell MEN what to do!” is so boring compared to asking why we value the things we value. Besides, fictional societies that are created without asking why things are the way they are are not going to stand up under close scrutiny, whether they play into or subvert our expectations.

This is such an excellent addition to my post, @apprenticebard, I am rubbing my hands together with glee.

(Not aliens, but goes along with some discussions on how cultures might differ.)

Mass Spec

For all the depth and detail Bioware put into Mass Effect’s sapient races, the wildlife of the galaxy is severely lacking in my opinion. There’s got to be more than just varren, maws, shifty-looking cows, and pyjaks.

A whole lot of krogan temper in a much smaller package

The only surviving relative of the drell

A species rescued from the brink of extinction by the geth

Javik finds this animal’s meat to be a poor substitute for salarian liver

Like an electric eel, but with biotics

The turians once tried to domesticate the Palavenian lion, with limited success

Does anyone else ever think about how strange it is that a galactic community ruled by

supposedly came up with a very human-like misogynistic culture complete with gentlemen’s clubs and sexist comments (but only to Femshep) and rampant objectification of the asari? Like, isn’t it silly that the galaxy’s supposed culturally dominant race doesn’t actually dictate the cultural norms and instead is misunderstood and diminished for being more open about their sexuality? THAT’S NOT HOW CULTURAL IMPERIALISM WORKS GDI.

Asari attitudes towards sex (and most other things) should be the standard in Citadel space… but no, Bioware wanted sexy babes but also didn’t want to give them any actual power, so we get this weird universe with a race that’s simultaneously discriminated against while supposedly dominating in culture and philosophy. How even does that happen.

I’m always fascinated by worldbuilding that’s borked in this way, because it provides such a clear insight into the cultural blindspots of the writer/s, and can thus be used as a springboard for discussing cultural bias as a more general phenomenon.

For instance: in Guardians of the Galaxy, Drax is meant to be incapable of understanding metaphor - everything he says is literal, as is his interpretation of what other people say. But even knowing she’s not a whore, that’s still what he calls Gamora at one point, because casual sexist slurs against women are so culturally normative that the writers didn’t see it as a glitch in the characterisation. Similarly, in Firefly, despite the fact that being a Companion is a highly trained, socially respected profession, Mal still routinely insults Inara by calling her a whore - which, yes, I get that he was opposed to Unification, so there may be some cultural dissonance, but it’s jarring given that he’s shown to have no issues with women, sex or promiscuity otherwise, and especially given that he himself works as a smuggler. He certainly never insults Nandi the same way, or any of her girls. But it’s culturally normative for us, and so it sneaks into a setting where it otherwise makes no sense.

The problem in such instances is, I think, a failure to recognise the interdependence of various social mores: that cultures, whether fictional or real, are living ecosystems. In English, a great deal of our swear words centre around sex, women, genitals and their various confluences, because that’s the stuff we’ve historically considered shameful. But if you’re writing (for instance) a matriarchal, sexually permissive society, English swearing makes no sense: in that context, calling someone a bitch, a slut or a whore isn’t going to make sense. But because it’s an obvious insult to the writer, they don’t stop to think about why that is, and so miss an opportunity for worldbuilding.  

Yup.

The “whore” comment in GotG nearly ruined the movie for me, honestly. It’s not just a cultural blind spot, it’s bad writing.

For another way to spot the cultural glitch? So I recently had a son (or, at least, a baby with male genitalia). He’s now 4 months old. We didn’t find out gender before he was born and we bought everything we thought was cute at Goodwill so we have clothing in all the colors. There is nothing gendered about colors. They’re just colors. Yet when I put him in something pink and “girly” (right now he’s b a onesie with pink trim and little pink, magenta, blue and yellow flowers on it…) my brain goes “look at that adorable little girl.” I KNOW it’s a boy. I change his diapers. I’ve touched his dick. Yet, nope, pink clothes and my mind immediately goes “girl!” That’s culture telling us shit. That’s the glitch right there. (And it’s damn weird to experience, too…it happens less now than when he was first born and it was the first few times and I was more sleep deprived, but still…)

@mordinette might find this discussion interesting…

Similar to unforth’s comments on kids and cultural reinforcement of gender roles…  Also recently had a son.  My mom, for all her liberal politics, is a little old-fashioned.  When I started ice skating, she asked if I was going to try “boy’s skates” or “girl’s skates” (i.e. hockey or figure skating).  Recently, we took my son to a gym for little kids so he could play around.  When we were getting ready to leave, he started walking over and playing with someone’s shoes.  My mom’s comment to him was, “No, don’t touch those… Those are girl’s shoes.”  I explained to her that the problem wasn’t that they were “girl’s shoes”… the problem is that they’re not his shoes.  She’s also commented when I wear necklaces he likes, so I put them on him and he smiles.  “Very pretty, but would Daddy want you wearing that?”  Uh, his dad does not give a shit, I assure you.  (I also got him a pink shirt recently cuz it’s damn cute.)  

Some things are so ingrained that if you were to try and go against them in your writing, viewers or readers consuming what you put out will probably think it’s odd.  More so than when you follow along and are comfortable being sexist to FemShep over BroShep.

Back to the original commentary… I would honestly love the chance to do some serious world-building (which I will need to whenever I sit down and work on some original stuff), and this is definitely something to keep in mind.  The casual ways our own cultural biases might infiltrate our writing, and the way editors and readers might be inclined to overlook it.

A lot of very good points. (Thank you, @jhoomwrites, for tagging me.) I do think that a lot of it is tied to culture and society, but I think sexism exists, in one form or another, basically all over the world. The color pink might not be associated with girls everywhere, but sexism might take another form, depending on history and culture and conventions.

It’s definitely something to keep in mind when creating a new world.

Great commentary, thank you!

As someone who originally trained as a social historian of the Medieval Period, I have some things to add in support of the main point.  Most people dramatically underestimate the economic importance of Medieval women and their level of agency.  Part of the problem here is when modern people think of medieval people they are imagining the upper end of the nobility and not the rest of society. 

Your average low end farming family could not survive without women’s labour.  Yes, there was gender separation of labour.  Yes, the men did the bulk of the grain farming, outside of peak times like planting and harvest, but unless you were very well off, you generally didn’t live on that.  The women had primary responsibility for the chickens, ducks, or geese the family owned, and thus the eggs, feathers, and meat.  (Egg money is nothing to sneeze at and was often the main source of protein unless you were very well off).  They grew vegetables, and if she was lucky she might sell the excess.  Her hands were always busy, and not just with the tasks you expect like cooking, mending, child care, etc.. As she walked, as she rested, as she went about her day, if her hands would have otherwise been free, she was spinning thread with a hand distaff.  (You can see them tucked in the belts of peasant women in art of the era).  Unless her husband was a weaver, most of that thread was for sale to the folks making clothe as men didn’t spin.  Depending where she lived and the ages of her children, she might have primary responsibility for the families sheep and thus takes part in sheering and carding.  (Sheep were important and there are plenty of court cases of women stealing loose wool or even shearing other people’s sheep.)  She might gather firewood, nuts, fruit, or rushes, again depending on geography.  She might own and harvest fruit trees and thus make things out of that fruit.   She might keep bees and sell honey.  She might make and sell cheese if they had cows, sheep, or goats.  Just as her husband might have part time work as a carpenter or other skilled craft when the fields didn’t need him, she might do piece work for a craftsman or be a brewer of ale, cider, or perry (depending on geography).  Ale doesn’t keep so women in a village took it in turn to brew batches, the water not being potable on it’s own, so everyone needed some form of alcohol they could water down to drink.  The women’s labour and the money she bought in kept the family alive between the pay outs for the men as well as being utterly essential on a day to day survival level.

Something similar goes on in towns and cities.  The husband might be a craftsman or merchant, but trust me, so is his wife and she has the right to carry on the trade after his death.

Also, unless there was a lot of money, goods, lands, and/or titles involved, people generally got a say in who they married.  No really.  Keep in mind that the average age of first marriage for a yeoman was late teens or early twenties (depending when and where), but the average age of first marriage for the working poor was more like 27-29.  The average age of death for men in both those categories was 35.  with women, if you survived your first few child births you might live to see grandchildren.

Do the math there.  Odds are if your father was a small farmer, he’s been dead for some time before you gather enough goods to be marrying a man.  For sure your mother (and grandmother and/or step father if you have them) likely has opinions, but you can have a valid marriage by having sex after saying yes to a proposal or exchanging vows in the present (I thee wed), unless you live in Italy, where you likely need a notary.  You do not need clergy as church weddings don’t exist until the Reformation.  For sure, it’s better if you publish banns three Sundays running in case someone remembers you are too closely related, but it’s not a legal requirement.  Who exactly can stop you if you are both determined?

So the less money, goods, lands, and power your family has, the more likely you are to be choosing your partner.  There is an exception in that unfree folk can be required to remarry, but they are give time and plenty of warning before a partner would be picked for them.  It happened a lot less than you’d think.  If you were born free and had enough money to hire help as needed whether for farm or shop or other business, there was no requirement of remarriage at all.  You could pick a partner or choose to stay single.  Do the math again on death rates.  It’s pretty common to marry more than once.  Maybe the first wife died in childbirth.  The widower needs the work and income a wife brings in and that’s double if the baby survives.  Maybe the second wife has wide hips, but he dies from a work related injury when she’s still young.  She could sure use a man’s labour around the farm or shop.  Let’s say he dies in a fight or drowns in a ditch.  She’s been doing well.  Her children are old enough to help with the farm or shop, she picks a pretty youth for his looks instead of his economic value.  You get marriages for love and lust as well as economics just like you get now and May/December cuts both ways.

A lot of our ideas about how people lived in the past tends to get viewed through a Victorian or early Hollywood lens, but that tends to be particularly extreme as far was writing out women’s agency and contribution as well as white washing populations in our histories, films, and therefore our minds eyes.

Real life is more complicated than that.

BTW, there are plenty of women at the top end of the scale who showed plenty of agency and who wielded political and economic power.  I’ve seen people argue that the were exceptions, but I think they were part of a whole society that had a tradition of strong women living on just as they always had sermons and homilies admonishing them to be otherwise to the contrary.  There’s also a whole other thing going on with the Pope trying to centralized power from the thirteenth century on being vigorously resisted by powerful abbesses and other holy women.  Yes, they eventually mostly lost, but it took so many centuries because there were such strong traditions of those women having political power.

Boss post! To add to that, many historians have theorised that modern gender roles evolved alongside industrialisation, when there was suddenly a conceptual division between work/public spaces, and home/private spaces. The factory became the place of work, where previously work happened at home. Gender became entangled in this division, with women becoming associated with the home, and men with public spaces. It might be assumable, therefore, that women had (have?) greater freedoms in agrarian societies; or, at least, had (have?) different demands placed on them with regard to their gender.

(Please note that the above historical reading is profoundly Eurocentric, and not universally applicable. At the same time, when I say that the factory became the place of work, I mean it in conceptual sense, not a literal sense. Not everyone worked in the factory, but there is a lot of literature about how the institution of the factory, as a symbol of industrialisation, reshaped the way people thought about labour.)

I am broadly of that opinion.  You can see upper class women being encouraged to be less useful as the piecework system grows and spreads.  You can see that spread to the middle class around when the early factory system gears up.  By mid-19th century that domestic sphere vs, public sphere is full swing for everyone who can afford it and those who can’t are explicitly looked down on and treated as lesser.  You can see the class system slowly calcify from the 17th century on.

Grain of salt that I get less accurate between 1605-French Revolution or thereabouts.  I’ve periodically studied early modern stuff, but it’s more piecemeal.

I too was confining my remarks to Medieval Europe because 1. That was my specialty.  2. A lot of English language fantasy literature is based on Medieval Europe, often badly and more based on misapprehension than what real lives were like.

I am very grateful that progress is occurring and more traditions are influencing people’s writing.  I hate that so much of the fantasy writing of my childhood was so narrow.

Isn’t it strange how in Mass Effect there are no countries, only planets

this is actually more a storytelling thing than worldbuilding. we hear about nations on earth because we’re human, shepard is human, most of the normandy crew is human- we know where that is, and usually have a rough estimate of its significance in the context it’s being discussed in.

in the case of other planets, it’s not actually relevant to mention country names. we know garrus is from cipritine because on menae he has you look up at palaven so he can point out where he was born. it adds a personal note to the story, a bit of background so you know exactly how the reaper attack is hitting garrus, but it’s not particularly any sort of worldbuilding.

when a character or plot aspect is introduced, it’s not really all that important to the narrative to say “this is character a from country x on planet q.” infodumping like that breaks up the flow of the story, and can be jarring for some readers. you get a lot of reviewers complaining about infodumps in movies because of that. it’s much better writing and storytelling to say “this is character a, this is what they do, and here’s why they’re important to the current plot.”

beyond the storytelling aspect, there are actually countries, which we know from a tidbit of salarian culture that’s easy to miss unless you use every single possible dialogue option. from the wiki (emphasis mine):

there are two salarians whose full names are given, ledra (the salarian merchant on feros) and anoleis (the snobby administrator dude on noveria). neither are from sur’kesh, ledra being from gorot ii and anoleis from rannadril, so we know this isn’t a homeworld-specific thing. further, a bit of digging on the wiki shows aegohr, one of the colonies kirrahe mentions at virmire, is on the planet nasurn, implying aegohr itself is either a city or country in its own right. i’m inclined to believe city, but the point stands.

tl;dr: there are other countries in mass effect, and we know some of their names!! but due to the limitations of storytelling, it’s simply not relevant enough to mention.

you know i also think this is the reason mordin says “humans are more diverse than other species.” limitations in world building. if they had to build alien races as diverse as humans, both genetically and culturally, they would’ve had loads of work on their hands creating unique features, and writing hundreds of pages of codex on different types of asari and turian cultures. so that’s why in mass effect universe, humans are kinda unique in being so different from one another. its not necessarily a bad thing, it’s just something thats interesting to me.

It’s also why one member of a species will represent all members of the species, like Tali is supposed to do in ME1. In her case, it was temporary but I think they have that mentality more often than not.

Also, Asari have republics on Thessia, turians have colonies and the Unification War. I think the word “country” might not be used but you have concepts close to it, only the full story is in the codex and not always in the games themselves, unless in specific dialogues that you have to really want to hear like @nonbinarysparatus said

they have republics and colonies but i don’t think that they are much different from each other, for humans it’s impossible to understand all the customs of all different cultures, interacting with someone who isn’t from our own country is not easy for us because of that. other races never seem to feel that kind of thing with each other. for example all turians paint their faces, except politicans. face paint has different purpose in different human cultures, unlike turians who all seem to do it to signify their colonies. or the difference between how different human cultures view age. where i live it’s common for people to live together with their parents until they can fully support themselves, or even until marriage. in united states people who live with their parents are sometimes even looked down on. asari have a general concept of what to do in which stage of their life. and other things like whether you wear shoes at home, whether you prefer mild or spicy food, concept of personal space, etc. we can see a distinct difference between kaidan and kasumi and vega for example. with aliens that cultural difference isn’t as steep as its with humans imo.

maybe it just feels like theres a lack of difference because they are not relevant enough, but i like to think that since other alien races have been interacting with each other for so long their concept of “cultural difference” changed from international to interspecies. like the differences between two asari cultures are not as significant as the difference between asari and quarians for example.

I was thinking in terms of locations and governments, not culture, but yes, it’s not the same at all if you think about the differences between say, asari and another species, or between two different republics of Thessia.

But pointing out that other races don’t have that problem, that’s also showing a problem with worldbuilding, since it means all members of a species are alike, and we know that can’t be true? I mean, correct me if I’m wrong.

yeah technically it’s an error in world building. but since the game mainly focuses on humans it’s kind of too much effort to create different cultures within different species, creating a whole new species is already hard by itself. maybe in andromeda they try to explore alien species more, they’re popular and people want to learn more about  them so its possible. they’d definately have to do it if they decide to give the option to play as another species (i still have hope…)

Hey guys! My random shower thought turned into an Epic Meta Post! I love tumblr sometimes.

[spaces out wondering what asari pillows look like]

I’ve spent far too much time wondering about that one as well

I’ve always pictured them like Chinese porcelain pillows or African wooden pillows. The latter in particular is designed not to muss up your hair when you rest (as they like to wear complicated hairstyles that are too much of a hassle to redo everyday) and I figure a design that can preserve an elaborate coiffure can also accommodate asari head tentacles comfortably.

Pillows are only a big issue in terms of crests if our asari are sleeping on their backs: small pillows don’t look like they’d get in the way of the crests if they were sleeping on their sides, and it’s pretty much a non-issue for front-sleepers (though, personally speaking, I find boobs make the latter difficult).  If they do sleep on their backs, could the crests themselves provide some measure of support?  

But I do like the suggestions above.

Hm, yes. I do like to imagine that the head tentacles are flexible. They could work just like ears, which stick out naturally but (with gentle force) can also fold painlessly over themselves. And it’s a natural extension of that slicked-back hair aesthetic if the the tentacles can flex enough to follow the curve of the skull and cushion the rest of the head. Tada, instant pillow!

But then all these problems of pillow design can be solved if the asari don’t actually sleep in beds. Think about all the fanon floating around about their possible aquatic origins. What if the traditional sleeping area is like a giant swimming pool or a fancy bath where everyone disrobes and slips into the water at the end of the day, with a relieved sigh and a prayer of thanks to the Goddess because she taught them civil engineering and now they can build settlements inland instead of sticking to the shores for decent sleeping areas, isn’t civilization great? And asari could instinctively adjust their mass to stay afloat while they sleep, it’s an autonomous bodily function they all have, similar to breathing. It makes sense for them to have some unconscious (and scarily energy-efficient) low-grade uses of biotics outside of reproduction, come to think of it.

(Okay, well, they still probably have pillow design problems especially when roughing it or traveling... but I don't think they would approach it the way we do as a species that doesn't have universal biotics. I'm not sure what form that would take yet.)

[spaces out wondering what asari pillows look like]

I’ve spent far too much time wondering about that one as well

I’ve always pictured them like Chinese porcelain pillows or African wooden pillows. The latter in particular is designed not to muss up your hair when you rest (as they like to wear complicated hairstyles that are too much of a hassle to redo everyday) and I figure a design that can preserve an elaborate coiffure can also accommodate asari head tentacles comfortably.

Haemocyanin and Turian Anatomy

Here’s a completely unexpected thought: two little things in the Mass Effect background that actually potentially *fit together* really neatly.

Turians apparently bleed blue, which could imply that the oxygen-carrying proteins in their blood use copper instead of the iron that we have in our haemoglobin.

This isn’t crazy - in fact, there are species on Earth which have so-called haemocyanin in their blood. However, haemocyanin is a lot rarer than haemoglobin. In fact on Earth, it’s only observed amongst the molluscs and the arthropods. This seems to be because although copper-based blood will work, it’s not as efficient at oxygen transport as iron-based blood. The only exceptions, apparently, are for creatures living in cold environments with low partial oxygen pressure; under these specific circumstances, haemocyanin is actually more efficient than haemoglobin. And, on Earth, these are exactly the niches in which we see things with copper-based blood.

But, Palaven is described as being a rather hot planet with a higher-than-Earth surface atmospheric pressure. So on the face of it, why would evolution have opted for haemocyanin, given that it should be second-best under those conditions?

The answer, interestingly, could lie in the planet’s formation history. Palaven is described as having a weak magnetic field, due in part to a metal-poor core. The Earth’s inner core is mainly nickel and iron (in fact by mass, the Earth as a whole is 32.1% iron); Palaven presumably isn’t. Perhaps Palaven is simply weirdly deficient in iron for whatever reason? [Fn. 1] If there was proportionately less iron available for biological metabolisms to use, then evolution might basically find its hand forced in favour of copper.

Food for thought…

________ [Fn. 1] This is rather odd from a formation point of view, and it suggests that Trebia’s elemental abundances are weird. But, non-solar abundances are A Real Thing, so this is probably possible.

Dextro won't kill you, honey. Still, proceed with caution.

I’ve been reading a variety of materials on amino acids lately and my good friend who has a phd in microbiology has also informed me of some fascinating facts.  Mass Effect is not a perfect example of real science, but I really wish it was because they did so much right.  Sometimes, however, they do fudge up.  I mean, breath masks in space?  And it's because you like them not because they’re practical and a viable option?

Kill me now.

But one fallacy in the Mass Effect universe is the prevalent assertion that Turians/Quarians cannot ingest human food and vice versa.  It is stated many times in all three games that it’s not possible for Turians/Quarians to obtain nutrition from Levo proteins and that it is even potentially fatal, causing an allergic reaction.  This would not only include food but other things such as saliva and semen, which would make sexual relations between the species a bit difficult.  The sexual issues seem to have become null and void as of ME3 (which is strange given the writers’ continued stance on Levo food being unfit for Dextros), but this whole “Dextro can potentially kill me” thing is far from the truth.

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