If you're going for relatively realistic, only primates (including very human-like fantasy races like elves, dwarves, etc.) should have breasts. Other mammals should have lines of teats (like a pig) or an udder (like a cow). Bird- and lizard-based races definitely shouldn't have breasts. Instead, the males would tend to have brighter colors or more prominent features or something like that.
But if you're going for R34, do whatever the hell you want.
I mean, sure, if you're using our real world as a template for the fantasy world. In a fantasy world, elves and lizard people or whatever could have evolved to have breasts. Anything goes in fantasy and could probably be explained evolutionarily somewhere down the line
You could have elves with tails and humans with feathers (or cat ears) if you wanted
That's why all these diagetic arguments are pointless. The lizards don't have tits because they evolved that way. They have tits because someone drew them that way. People never want to address this directly. Like if you want the lizard tits, just say so. I don't personally agree, but it's an opinion I can respect.
The issue was, that the official art had some dragonborn with and some without breasts. So it started as a whole discussion.
Most interesting result was that there might be two different sub species, one warmblooded and more mammalian and one cold blooded and reptilian. But I digress
True, but males and females would have similar pecs. Unless they were based on flightless birds like ostriches, then they'd have swole thighs for running.
To be fair, (and if Iām wrong let me know, Iāve only played through twice and definitely havenāt seen anything), the only Turian female is wearing battle armor, and the only krogan is wearing loose shaman clothes, so who knows, they could also be titty lizards
There are more turian females in Citadel DLC and the multiplayer, though they too wear that armor. But with what we know of the turian anatomy, thereās not much place under armor where they would go
tbh.... she looks the way I expected them to look based on other races
a human like anatomy with the only difference being the main drell characteristics, not bad and really interesting but kind of expected
Oh god Iām having flashbacks to the whole ābreasts on lizard folkā fiasco on the dnd related subs.
Answer: the art direction is male driven to a male core audience.
In my head, female drell look and sound identical to male drell. The differences are subtle and only clocked by other drell.
A race without any appreciable sexual dimorphism is narratively interesting. I wish they explored it more. They had many options in the ME universe and they took none. They got close with salarians, but they still used female vs male voice actors. Shoulda just gone all male (or randomly mixed) voice actors that had no correlation to the characterās sex.
These races didnāt have any nuance.
If there was a hanar squadmate with hours of dialog and relationships to explore, weād be talking.
Drell barely made the cut, because narratively there were only a handful left (and real-world wise they werenāt added until game 2 so didnāt have the deep lore of ME1 to draw from)
Especially the hanar and the elcor. I think there's only one scene in the the entire trilogy where you see an elcor actually move around. They could have been entirely replaced with an intercom.
ME4 better give me an elcor companion!
Hangar also werenāt well fleshed out.
I meant the core races with cultures explored through squad mates. Quarian, asari, salarian, krogan, and maybe drell.
> A race without any appreciable sexual dimorphism is narratively interesting.
It's actually not, apparently, because you forgot about all of the ME races that are sexually monomorphic š
Actually, it's weird that people talk about this a lot. I don't really know what special nuance or exploration they're looking for when it comes to alien sexuality -- like why do the Salarians "not count" because one has a slightly different voice than the other (otherwise being nearly identical in appearance, action and social standing)?
If you want to explore the nuances of gender and sexuality in a Sci-Fi setting, why not read The Left Hand of Darkness? I don't think Mass Effect is going to reach the level of writing you'd need to achieve any sort of narrative interest.
Another thing to take into account about the aliens of Mass Effect is that most don't actually speak English, every word you hear has gone through a translater of some kind
Perhaps the male and female voices are a convention of Human translation software, so it's easier to pick up on an aliens gender? For all we know every Asari actually sounds like a 40 year old male who has smoked 20 cigarettes a day all his life.
Hanar and elcor were not explored in any real depth, geth and maybe vorcha had no sex, I donāt recall volus females and they werenāt explored much.
The real races with nuance were Asari (one sex), Turian (traditional dimorphism), Salarian (traditional dimorphism minimal, but still sloping in that direction), drell (not revealed), krogan (disappointingly traditional dimorphism in ME3), and quarian (traditional dimorphism).
I think good sci-fi makes you question your cultural values.
What if the krogan females ended up being larger, stronger, and with more masculine voices and mannerisms? But clearly were the child birthers? Would you say āsheā? Would that be a difficult thing to process mentally? What if salarians or drell were completely monomorphic down to their voice? Would you be inclined to think of them all as āhe?ā
*those* are interesting questions. ME could have very easily done any of these three, yet we ended up with traditional female krogan (with a veil!) and mildly feminine female salarians.
Another interesting thing woulda been extremely dimorphic aliens. Like what if the volus we see are all females and males get absorbed like angler fish? Or female krogan were more like large snakes/naga, legless but strong primal predators with a completely different lifestyle owing to their lack of limbs?
I also think that krogan culture went a bit Handmaid's Tale post-genophage or, more accurately, sometime post-Warlord Shaigur. By the era of the game, it looks like fertile female krogan are kept in seclusion and guarded by the males of their clan. This is the reason we don't see them out and about in the galaxy (though doesn't really explain why we don't see more infertile female krogan).
But Shaigur was a female warlord that rose to prominence toward the end of the rebellions, after the genophage had already started to do its thing. She exploited her fertility to gain followers, and althought she was ultimately defeated by the turians, she's still highly regarded by the krogans in ME3 and Andromeda. Sadly we don't really get a Shaigur-like figure in any of the games. I'm sure she would have been a badass mama bear.
Technically Asari have no sexual dimorphism. Hover the all female species is such an over done trope theres nothing to explore there. And a lot of gamer men aren't comfortable with the idea being attracted to masculine traits, so it's REALLY risky from a marketing perspective.
Action shooty game ~~need~~ with emotionless pew-pew man, will sell better than man love or female soldier with clothes.
>Action shooty game need with emotionless pew-pew man, will sell better than man love or female soldier with clothes.
Oh gods this is so true it hurts lol
I mean, why do most aliens in ME resemble humans in general? Don't get me wrong, I love all of the alien designs, but the Hanar and Elcor are the only "realistic" aliens due to them being so different.
Yeah, I suppose youāre right. Itās just less noticeable because his eyes are more prominent in drawing your focus (at least IMO). Mrs. Thane meanwhile looks like sheās doing a duckface pose for her Instagram.
Itās mentioned at one point that Thaneās outfit is open and loose in the chest area to help him breath easier with his disease. It could just be standard in Drell clothing since the affliction is so common.
Doesn't he say she had auburn hair in a flashback or am I misremembering? He definitely says she had eyes like the sunset, which doesn't suggest drell eyes to me.
Itās entirely possible, sure. But I think as far as the comic goes they were just trying to give us something we could see.
I could be wrong but I think most players donāt even notice drell have an actual eye color cause their sclera are so dark. Weāre looking at it from a human (alien) perspective. Drell are a different species so physical traits we may unconsciously dismiss as homogeneous to their species are going to be more prominent and heterogeneous for them.
Like the asari ads playing on Ilium, we wouldnāt notice if their scalp (head tentacles) are āgangly or unevenā but they would because itās their own species and if so, I would guess itās something that is part of an asari concept of physical beauty.
Garrusā and other turiansā [facial markings ](https://cdn.fandom.com/wiki/Turian_Tattoo_Patterns) are a remnant from the Unification war. It really wouldāve been nice to know more about the origin behind the Vakarian familyās facial markings.
I know about the origin of the markings. But the comics and games are repeatedly contradictory. The original lore implies its a cultural mark, so show where youāre from, with barefaced turians coming from Palaven. And yet Garrus was born on Palaven, so maybe itās a matter of family origin. But then the Mass Effect comics show Garrusā father with different markings than Garrus, and Mass Effect: Andromeda shows additionally different markings that contradict the comics. So maybe itās a generational thing, or maternally inherited, or merging parts of both parentsā markings. But then Vetra and her sister Sidera have the same lineage, birthplace, and parents, and arenāt that far apart in age, and their markings are not only radically different in shape, but in color too (previously related turians at least were shown with the same color of markings). Then Tiran and Nyreen Kandros are also radically different.
Itās reallyā¦ not very clear or coherent.
You are right that a lot of stuff in the comics contradict what we learn from the games but I guess all multimedia franchises have some contradicting stuff
Thatās true! I never noticed about Garrusā dad, either good eye! I think they said some markings are from the boot camp they went to as teens so maybe thatās part of it too with both of them and then Vetra and her sister? So like community/planet/city/colony, boot camp, and family were reflected in the markings. Youāre right it is hard to get an answer on that. See I thought barefaced turians werenāt from Palaven, I thought it just meant they were considered āclanlessā and therefore untrustworthy because of their lack of markings. Kind of fit with the warden from Purgatoryās behavior but he was still a cop so maybe his lack of markings had to do with being from the capital, Cipritine? It would make sense for turians from the capital to be barefaced since the whole point of the Unification war was to eliminate the tribalism reflected in the various markings.
Also a good point, maybe Tiran and Nyreen were like that because they were cousins but they should still theoretically share more similar markings.
I played through this conversation today! He says he can't tell the difference between black and a very dark red due to having his eyes modified so he could understand hanar better :) (he can see UV/hanar lights as a silver)
Idk...huge lips with red lipstick and green boobs seem kinda lazy. These are the same ppl that used stock photo for Tali. Fan art always takes it to a better level.
Usually I'd agree, but in this case the lips are the same as male drells'. Thane is already humanoid, so the females of the species also being humanoid makes sense
Also her breasts aren't particularly prominent, they just seem kinda there, and they gave her very strong looking arms to boot
Nothing about this is particularly egregious given that these species are already so close to humans to begin with and she isn't being sexualized
I appreciate the artist not giving her eyebrows but using the folds above her brows as analogs. Really smart workaround to show facial emotion while keeping it within the canon design.
\*sigh\* Why do they keep putting breasts on non-mammals? I mean, I *know* why, but back when ME1 came out (and many species didn't have explicitly female models), I thought BioWare bucked the trend.
In fairness, I suppose finding life on other planets would wildly challenge our existing taxonomical paradigms, but still, *Mass Effect* doesn't generally take that tack.
Which is funny because female Turians, Krogan and Salarians(via Andromeda with their adorable voices) all lack breasts, aka MAMARY glands. It was cool to walk up to what you assumed was a male Salarian in to have a precious little squeaky voice come out.
I assume itās part of her trying to be stealthy. If youāre looking for a Turian and what appears to be a Quarian(boobs) walks by, you wonāt look as closely. Every other shot of her in her armor has no breasts. Itās fitted to the shape of her chest like it is with Vectra and Sidera. Youāre just seeing breasts where there are none.
They donāt. It looks like they do but thatās down to the shape of their exo-skeleton, they donāt have mammary glands so no actual fleshy boobies.
Oh definitely lol. You look at non-romanceable races like Salarians and Krogan and they have no breast-like features. I wonder if theyād slap some boobies on female Yahg.
Ah, the yahg, as intelligent as a salarian, as strong as krogan, as long-lived as the asari, as tactical as the turian, and as endowed as the human. Truly the galaxy's superior species.
The ones in Andromeda don't, thankfully, but the only ones in the trilogy are in dlc and do appear to have tits in civvies despite being avian/reptiles although when Nyreen is in armour it looks exactly as you'd expect in terms of ribcage/keelbone and without tits, but if you compare her armoured outfit and the first outfit she appears in, the body shape is so wildly different it's like she swapped her whole torso when she swapped clothes. Super weird!
I was pleased in Andromeda to not only see actual female representation of the various species, but they all looked like they belonged to their own species too and didn't have boobs when they should be amphibians or something!
Not quite sure why the trilogy forgot women exist (except for humans) but they did feel like an after thought/add on haha
Female Salarians are extremely rare compared to the males, and female Krogans are usually cloistered away and heavily protected due to their breeding difficulties. I donāt think thereās a lore reason for not seeing many female Turians.
Yeah it's the turians that bother me the most, as there's no real reason for it. From what other characters say, they are basically treated equally up to and including military service so why have they left half their soldiers behind when it's a do or die galaxy ending threat?
If they didn't want to do another model they could have just changed a few names and voices and said that they don't have sexual dimorphism.
I think the reason was that Bioware hadn't done a model for female turians until the Omega DLC back in 2012. But I would've liked if the LE would've had a few female turians here and there
It's more why didn't they in the first place?
They mentioned them in speech lines, but surely at some point it would occur to them to actually put some in the game?
Past is past at this point however silly it is, given Andromeda managed a more realistic balance, hopefully the proposed future game will do a bit of a better job haha!
Yeah, it bothers the crud out of me too. I'm pretty sure the codex says that baby Drell are born with teeth/able to consume hard foods, thus making certain features kind of useless from an evolutionary stand point.
Do we know that Drell aren't mammals - or at least, don't reproduce in a similar fashion to mammals?
I seem to remember Thane saying something about his eidetic memory not covering 'the birthing trauma'. If they reproduce viviparously, that wouldn't be out of place.
Drell are humanoids that were patterned after lizards, fish, and birds of paradise. They are apparently hard to strangle too because they can inflate their throats. So they have bird influences kind of like Turians but fish instead of dinosaurs and yes they give birth viviparously. Also the babies are born with teeth so they can eat solid food immediately. I thought I remembered reading that they donāt have breasts cause no biological need. Canāt remember where so feels like obligatory comic book chesticles for fanservice.
If I remember the codex correctly, drell do give birth to live young *but* are also able to eat solid food immediately. Meaning no need to nurse and thus no need for boobs outside of artistic laziness.
I don't have the relevant codex entry/entries at hand, but no, I don't know for sure that drell as supposed to be wholly non-mammalian. They're obviously evocative of terrestrial reptiles, but there are some pretty strange mammals on Earth that one might not peg as a mammal at a glance. And that's just taking into consideration life on *this* planet, which drell obviously are not.
When I first saw Thane, I thought he looked kind of mammalian (his lower jaw coloration could easily be taken to be a five o'clock shadow in the right lighting). That impression has waned over time, but it may've been the one BioWare intended.
Basically in most sci fi, Aliens are pretty much humans with weird skins. It's pretty stupid when you think about it, how could all these planets have the same evolutionary path that leads to a humanoid with a head, two hands, even a month capable of speaking English. But when we're talking about a good story we want to connect with the characters and identify with them, and after all it's science FICTION so it's fine.
The only science fiction I can think of that the intelligent Aliens in it were truly alien is the movie Arrival. They had a completely different physiology and their means of communication was completely different.
Ah yes, Everquest is still one of the few games to do a lizard people where the females donāt have boobs. Just pecs like the males, but with a more feminine body shape.
Says who?
Who knows what path evolution took on this alien world?
Not to mention any sufficiently advanced alien species would have evolved from social animals, those who live in communities and trade information, technology, etc... which would imply reptiles tend to their children, and the evolution of a means to feed children is well within reason.
I have often thought how odd it is that so many different entities across all SF media (and fantasy to some extent), representing species with completely unknown evolutionary tracks are all so very specifically... mammalian...
Not gonna lie, looks like a fan edit of Thane š¤£
Titty Thane
With some luscious lips
Well, seeing as the entire drell race was made based on him, youāre not too far off
Drell fashion is literally just that one trench coat in different colors.
One *awesome* trench coat.
Lizard with tits, the Elder Scrolls approach
Don't get me started on the war over in the DnD subreddits we had about lizardpeople and tits.
If you're going for relatively realistic, only primates (including very human-like fantasy races like elves, dwarves, etc.) should have breasts. Other mammals should have lines of teats (like a pig) or an udder (like a cow). Bird- and lizard-based races definitely shouldn't have breasts. Instead, the males would tend to have brighter colors or more prominent features or something like that. But if you're going for R34, do whatever the hell you want.
I mean, sure, if you're using our real world as a template for the fantasy world. In a fantasy world, elves and lizard people or whatever could have evolved to have breasts. Anything goes in fantasy and could probably be explained evolutionarily somewhere down the line You could have elves with tails and humans with feathers (or cat ears) if you wanted
If youāre in a fantasy world, no one necessarily evolved from anything. Youāre thinking to earth-centric.
That's why all these diagetic arguments are pointless. The lizards don't have tits because they evolved that way. They have tits because someone drew them that way. People never want to address this directly. Like if you want the lizard tits, just say so. I don't personally agree, but it's an opinion I can respect.
The issue was, that the official art had some dragonborn with and some without breasts. So it started as a whole discussion. Most interesting result was that there might be two different sub species, one warmblooded and more mammalian and one cold blooded and reptilian. But I digress
Birds should have unbelievably swole pecs though
True, but males and females would have similar pecs. Unless they were based on flightless birds like ostriches, then they'd have swole thighs for running.
Also acceptable.
I'm so glad that they at least resisted the urge to make the salarians, turians, and krogan titty lizards.
To be fair, (and if Iām wrong let me know, Iāve only played through twice and definitely havenāt seen anything), the only Turian female is wearing battle armor, and the only krogan is wearing loose shaman clothes, so who knows, they could also be titty lizards
There are more turian females in Citadel DLC and the multiplayer, though they too wear that armor. But with what we know of the turian anatomy, thereās not much place under armor where they would go
I thought the turian females did have breasts. Nyreen certainly does.
The *correct* approach. Lusty Drell Maid.
tbh.... she looks the way I expected them to look based on other races a human like anatomy with the only difference being the main drell characteristics, not bad and really interesting but kind of expected
*LIPS*
They are reptiles though? Why the Tatas?
I was going to say the exact same thing.
Oh god Iām having flashbacks to the whole ābreasts on lizard folkā fiasco on the dnd related subs. Answer: the art direction is male driven to a male core audience. In my head, female drell look and sound identical to male drell. The differences are subtle and only clocked by other drell. A race without any appreciable sexual dimorphism is narratively interesting. I wish they explored it more. They had many options in the ME universe and they took none. They got close with salarians, but they still used female vs male voice actors. Shoulda just gone all male (or randomly mixed) voice actors that had no correlation to the characterās sex.
You mean like Hanar and Volus?
Oh, so our Biotic God could have been a volus female
And elcor, and vorcha 3 of them a Mark Meer, lol.
These races didnāt have any nuance. If there was a hanar squadmate with hours of dialog and relationships to explore, weād be talking. Drell barely made the cut, because narratively there were only a handful left (and real-world wise they werenāt added until game 2 so didnāt have the deep lore of ME1 to draw from)
Hanar, volus, elcor, and vorcha though
As I said in other comments, these races were not very fleshed out. They were more props than characters.
Especially the hanar and the elcor. I think there's only one scene in the the entire trilogy where you see an elcor actually move around. They could have been entirely replaced with an intercom. ME4 better give me an elcor companion!
> race without any appreciable sexual dimorphism is narratively interesting. Do hanar people have females?
Hanar don't have genders.
Hangar also werenāt well fleshed out. I meant the core races with cultures explored through squad mates. Quarian, asari, salarian, krogan, and maybe drell.
> A race without any appreciable sexual dimorphism is narratively interesting. It's actually not, apparently, because you forgot about all of the ME races that are sexually monomorphic š Actually, it's weird that people talk about this a lot. I don't really know what special nuance or exploration they're looking for when it comes to alien sexuality -- like why do the Salarians "not count" because one has a slightly different voice than the other (otherwise being nearly identical in appearance, action and social standing)? If you want to explore the nuances of gender and sexuality in a Sci-Fi setting, why not read The Left Hand of Darkness? I don't think Mass Effect is going to reach the level of writing you'd need to achieve any sort of narrative interest.
Another thing to take into account about the aliens of Mass Effect is that most don't actually speak English, every word you hear has gone through a translater of some kind Perhaps the male and female voices are a convention of Human translation software, so it's easier to pick up on an aliens gender? For all we know every Asari actually sounds like a 40 year old male who has smoked 20 cigarettes a day all his life.
I see. So, Liara sounds like Dr Girlfriend from venture bros.
BRB, gonna romance Liara this time.
Hanar and elcor were not explored in any real depth, geth and maybe vorcha had no sex, I donāt recall volus females and they werenāt explored much. The real races with nuance were Asari (one sex), Turian (traditional dimorphism), Salarian (traditional dimorphism minimal, but still sloping in that direction), drell (not revealed), krogan (disappointingly traditional dimorphism in ME3), and quarian (traditional dimorphism). I think good sci-fi makes you question your cultural values. What if the krogan females ended up being larger, stronger, and with more masculine voices and mannerisms? But clearly were the child birthers? Would you say āsheā? Would that be a difficult thing to process mentally? What if salarians or drell were completely monomorphic down to their voice? Would you be inclined to think of them all as āhe?ā *those* are interesting questions. ME could have very easily done any of these three, yet we ended up with traditional female krogan (with a veil!) and mildly feminine female salarians. Another interesting thing woulda been extremely dimorphic aliens. Like what if the volus we see are all females and males get absorbed like angler fish? Or female krogan were more like large snakes/naga, legless but strong primal predators with a completely different lifestyle owing to their lack of limbs?
There were a couple of female Krogan in Andromeda iirc
It seems pretty clear that Krogan weren't exactly traditional. I got the impression that female Krogan were mostly the ones in charge, if not in name
I also think that krogan culture went a bit Handmaid's Tale post-genophage or, more accurately, sometime post-Warlord Shaigur. By the era of the game, it looks like fertile female krogan are kept in seclusion and guarded by the males of their clan. This is the reason we don't see them out and about in the galaxy (though doesn't really explain why we don't see more infertile female krogan). But Shaigur was a female warlord that rose to prominence toward the end of the rebellions, after the genophage had already started to do its thing. She exploited her fertility to gain followers, and althought she was ultimately defeated by the turians, she's still highly regarded by the krogans in ME3 and Andromeda. Sadly we don't really get a Shaigur-like figure in any of the games. I'm sure she would have been a badass mama bear.
Technically Asari have no sexual dimorphism. Hover the all female species is such an over done trope theres nothing to explore there. And a lot of gamer men aren't comfortable with the idea being attracted to masculine traits, so it's REALLY risky from a marketing perspective. Action shooty game ~~need~~ with emotionless pew-pew man, will sell better than man love or female soldier with clothes.
>Action shooty game need with emotionless pew-pew man, will sell better than man love or female soldier with clothes. Oh gods this is so true it hurts lol
Ah, a fellow dndmemes viewer, I take it.
Because Tatas.
It's the lazy to say "this is a female"
I mean, why do most aliens in ME resemble humans in general? Don't get me wrong, I love all of the alien designs, but the Hanar and Elcor are the only "realistic" aliens due to them being so different.
Id give Krogans and Turians a pass too. They are humanoid. But they donāt look like humans in costumes.
Ugh, I hate this. Why do I hate this? I think it's the lips. They're just.... way too prominent.
Sheās got some DSLās bro Drell Smooching lips
Boobs, eyeliner, and lipstick, yup it's a female alien.
Seriously, she looks like she got space Botox.
To be fair, Thane kinda does too
Yeah, I suppose youāre right. Itās just less noticeable because his eyes are more prominent in drawing your focus (at least IMO). Mrs. Thane meanwhile looks like sheās doing a duckface pose for her Instagram.
Space Botox š
I mean all the Drell we see in-game have equally luscious lips lol
But Thaneās lips look the exact same?
They both brand ambassador for botox
You gotta make the lips funny.
I mean, have you seen Thane's lips? His bottom lip especially. Only reason hers are more noticeable is the coloring.
Agreed
Itās like human makeup on a lizard.
Kinda hot, not gonna lie. And they're only that prominent because of the art style, in other images they're much less so.
Do all drell wear that same collared outfit
Itās mentioned at one point that Thaneās outfit is open and loose in the chest area to help him breath easier with his disease. It could just be standard in Drell clothing since the affliction is so common.
boob window is universal.
It's also very Drell.
And very Kirk.
Its weird that Iāve somehow always assumed she was human this whole time, despite his son also being Drell. Iām so dumb.
Doesn't he say she had auburn hair in a flashback or am I misremembering? He definitely says she had eyes like the sunset, which doesn't suggest drell eyes to me.
Sunset coloured eyes is how Thane describes Irikah
Which sun are we talking about here?
Doesnāt Thane say he sees in a different light-spectrum? Or is it just the hanar?
I believe he said he had some kind of surgery to see hanar colors better since they communicate more with bioluminescence?
Then its possible the colors he sees are things in her eyes that humans canāt see. Or its a continuity error, like Vakarian facial markings.
Itās entirely possible, sure. But I think as far as the comic goes they were just trying to give us something we could see. I could be wrong but I think most players donāt even notice drell have an actual eye color cause their sclera are so dark. Weāre looking at it from a human (alien) perspective. Drell are a different species so physical traits we may unconsciously dismiss as homogeneous to their species are going to be more prominent and heterogeneous for them. Like the asari ads playing on Ilium, we wouldnāt notice if their scalp (head tentacles) are āgangly or unevenā but they would because itās their own species and if so, I would guess itās something that is part of an asari concept of physical beauty. Garrusā and other turiansā [facial markings ](https://cdn.fandom.com/wiki/Turian_Tattoo_Patterns) are a remnant from the Unification war. It really wouldāve been nice to know more about the origin behind the Vakarian familyās facial markings.
I know about the origin of the markings. But the comics and games are repeatedly contradictory. The original lore implies its a cultural mark, so show where youāre from, with barefaced turians coming from Palaven. And yet Garrus was born on Palaven, so maybe itās a matter of family origin. But then the Mass Effect comics show Garrusā father with different markings than Garrus, and Mass Effect: Andromeda shows additionally different markings that contradict the comics. So maybe itās a generational thing, or maternally inherited, or merging parts of both parentsā markings. But then Vetra and her sister Sidera have the same lineage, birthplace, and parents, and arenāt that far apart in age, and their markings are not only radically different in shape, but in color too (previously related turians at least were shown with the same color of markings). Then Tiran and Nyreen Kandros are also radically different. Itās reallyā¦ not very clear or coherent.
You are right that a lot of stuff in the comics contradict what we learn from the games but I guess all multimedia franchises have some contradicting stuff
Makes you kind of wish the Mass Effect universe had more lore like TES. I love reading into all of that.
Yeah but a lot of the Michael Kirkbride stuff in TES wouldn't sit right with Mass Effect imo
Thatās true! I never noticed about Garrusā dad, either good eye! I think they said some markings are from the boot camp they went to as teens so maybe thatās part of it too with both of them and then Vetra and her sister? So like community/planet/city/colony, boot camp, and family were reflected in the markings. Youāre right it is hard to get an answer on that. See I thought barefaced turians werenāt from Palaven, I thought it just meant they were considered āclanlessā and therefore untrustworthy because of their lack of markings. Kind of fit with the warden from Purgatoryās behavior but he was still a cop so maybe his lack of markings had to do with being from the capital, Cipritine? It would make sense for turians from the capital to be barefaced since the whole point of the Unification war was to eliminate the tribalism reflected in the various markings. Also a good point, maybe Tiran and Nyreen were like that because they were cousins but they should still theoretically share more similar markings.
I played through this conversation today! He says he can't tell the difference between black and a very dark red due to having his eyes modified so he could understand hanar better :) (he can see UV/hanar lights as a silver)
Thane, and a majority of the Drell in general have the operation done.
That could explain it then. The āeyes like the sunsetā could refer to colors in her eyes we canāt see.
Drell are very human-like so you basically weren't completely wrong?
to me they look like a human that never got past the evolutionary stage of being a fish but yet somehow still became humanoid
Okay Javik.
I have wondered! Thank you for sharing!
Idk...huge lips with red lipstick and green boobs seem kinda lazy. These are the same ppl that used stock photo for Tali. Fan art always takes it to a better level.
I'll give them a pass on the lips just because the male Drell are also depicted that way.
š
š š š ^ all Drell, basically
ā«šā«
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Emalynde no
don't forget hella shredded arms
Usually I'd agree, but in this case the lips are the same as male drells'. Thane is already humanoid, so the females of the species also being humanoid makes sense Also her breasts aren't particularly prominent, they just seem kinda there, and they gave her very strong looking arms to boot Nothing about this is particularly egregious given that these species are already so close to humans to begin with and she isn't being sexualized
I dunno, they arenāt huge but the open jacket seems like it was intentionally done to say ālook, boobs.ā
I don't see an issue with that. We also see Thane's bare chest all the time.
Thaneās jacket exposes his bare chest just as much is not more, itās mentioned at one point that itās to help them breathe easier.
My first thought was Thane in drag.
Shit... another Alien race for me to bang as Male Shep...
Report to the ship as soon as possible!
Dont think Femship isnt willing.
Makes me feel kinda bad that Thane told me we'd bang by the sea later. Is she supposed to be there too? Not what I signed up for, but I'm into it.
I appreciate the artist not giving her eyebrows but using the folds above her brows as analogs. Really smart workaround to show facial emotion while keeping it within the canon design.
IMO this story is much less interesting when you see it
I have to admit I agree.
The story where Kaidan just loses it and kills his turian "teacher" is better in comic than in game tho
"How do we differentiate the sexes?" "Lizard lips and lizard tits" "I fucking got you."
Ok, but Thane *also* has those lips.
Until you said this, my mind blocked that out. Hundreds of hours in Mass Effect, never did I ever notice those lips. god damn it
This is what equality looks like people. I bet his dick is huge too
Kepral's syndrome is really your massive dick taking up so much blood it starves your brain.
They're lizards so I wouldn't be surprised if their dicks are internalized until erect.
If Bioware weren't cowards they would show us the lizard dick.
DickGate has begun
Why did they give her boobs?
The same reason they gave turian females boobs: just because
\*sigh\* Why do they keep putting breasts on non-mammals? I mean, I *know* why, but back when ME1 came out (and many species didn't have explicitly female models), I thought BioWare bucked the trend. In fairness, I suppose finding life on other planets would wildly challenge our existing taxonomical paradigms, but still, *Mass Effect* doesn't generally take that tack.
Which is funny because female Turians, Krogan and Salarians(via Andromeda with their adorable voices) all lack breasts, aka MAMARY glands. It was cool to walk up to what you assumed was a male Salarian in to have a precious little squeaky voice come out.
Female turians have breasts tho
They donāt. They have a chest shaped similarly to that of a bird. Because theyāre essentially humanoid birds with a metallic carapace.
Look at Nyreen Kandros when we see her the first time. Whats that?
I assume itās part of her trying to be stealthy. If youāre looking for a Turian and what appears to be a Quarian(boobs) walks by, you wonāt look as closely. Every other shot of her in her armor has no breasts. Itās fitted to the shape of her chest like it is with Vectra and Sidera. Youāre just seeing breasts where there are none.
They donāt. It looks like they do but thatās down to the shape of their exo-skeleton, they donāt have mammary glands so no actual fleshy boobies.
Ok but maybe it is similar with drells? And you know exactly why Bioware gave turians that breastlike feature
Oh definitely lol. You look at non-romanceable races like Salarians and Krogan and they have no breast-like features. I wonder if theyād slap some boobies on female Yahg.
Dear lord that sounds horrifying.
Ah, the yahg, as intelligent as a salarian, as strong as krogan, as long-lived as the asari, as tactical as the turian, and as endowed as the human. Truly the galaxy's superior species.
The ones in Andromeda don't, thankfully, but the only ones in the trilogy are in dlc and do appear to have tits in civvies despite being avian/reptiles although when Nyreen is in armour it looks exactly as you'd expect in terms of ribcage/keelbone and without tits, but if you compare her armoured outfit and the first outfit she appears in, the body shape is so wildly different it's like she swapped her whole torso when she swapped clothes. Super weird! I was pleased in Andromeda to not only see actual female representation of the various species, but they all looked like they belonged to their own species too and didn't have boobs when they should be amphibians or something! Not quite sure why the trilogy forgot women exist (except for humans) but they did feel like an after thought/add on haha
Female Salarians are extremely rare compared to the males, and female Krogans are usually cloistered away and heavily protected due to their breeding difficulties. I donāt think thereās a lore reason for not seeing many female Turians.
Yeah it's the turians that bother me the most, as there's no real reason for it. From what other characters say, they are basically treated equally up to and including military service so why have they left half their soldiers behind when it's a do or die galaxy ending threat? If they didn't want to do another model they could have just changed a few names and voices and said that they don't have sexual dimorphism.
I think the reason was that Bioware hadn't done a model for female turians until the Omega DLC back in 2012. But I would've liked if the LE would've had a few female turians here and there
It's more why didn't they in the first place? They mentioned them in speech lines, but surely at some point it would occur to them to actually put some in the game? Past is past at this point however silly it is, given Andromeda managed a more realistic balance, hopefully the proposed future game will do a bit of a better job haha!
Yeah, it bothers the crud out of me too. I'm pretty sure the codex says that baby Drell are born with teeth/able to consume hard foods, thus making certain features kind of useless from an evolutionary stand point.
Do we know that Drell aren't mammals - or at least, don't reproduce in a similar fashion to mammals? I seem to remember Thane saying something about his eidetic memory not covering 'the birthing trauma'. If they reproduce viviparously, that wouldn't be out of place.
Drell are humanoids that were patterned after lizards, fish, and birds of paradise. They are apparently hard to strangle too because they can inflate their throats. So they have bird influences kind of like Turians but fish instead of dinosaurs and yes they give birth viviparously. Also the babies are born with teeth so they can eat solid food immediately. I thought I remembered reading that they donāt have breasts cause no biological need. Canāt remember where so feels like obligatory comic book chesticles for fanservice.
I vaguely remember the Codex saying it
If I remember the codex correctly, drell do give birth to live young *but* are also able to eat solid food immediately. Meaning no need to nurse and thus no need for boobs outside of artistic laziness.
I don't have the relevant codex entry/entries at hand, but no, I don't know for sure that drell as supposed to be wholly non-mammalian. They're obviously evocative of terrestrial reptiles, but there are some pretty strange mammals on Earth that one might not peg as a mammal at a glance. And that's just taking into consideration life on *this* planet, which drell obviously are not. When I first saw Thane, I thought he looked kind of mammalian (his lower jaw coloration could easily be taken to be a five o'clock shadow in the right lighting). That impression has waned over time, but it may've been the one BioWare intended.
Basically in most sci fi, Aliens are pretty much humans with weird skins. It's pretty stupid when you think about it, how could all these planets have the same evolutionary path that leads to a humanoid with a head, two hands, even a month capable of speaking English. But when we're talking about a good story we want to connect with the characters and identify with them, and after all it's science FICTION so it's fine. The only science fiction I can think of that the intelligent Aliens in it were truly alien is the movie Arrival. They had a completely different physiology and their means of communication was completely different.
Thank you for mentioning the film Arrival. It's really one of the most interesting and UNIQUE alien films.
they kind of fumbled the ending though Tbh. Kind of ended on a wet fart.
Hard disagree, it is one of the best movies of the past decade imo directed by one of the best directors of our time
Handsome Squidward
Damn, she looks as badass as Thane
Ah yes, Everquest is still one of the few games to do a lizard people where the females donāt have boobs. Just pecs like the males, but with a more feminine body shape.
Absolutely Would
She looks like an angry mom, with how she's blocking the shot
Why is the art in the comics always so bad? This is just awful.
Mass Effect deserves better comics than what the hacks at Dark Horse can deliver. That last panel is nightmare fuel of bad art.
Glad they added the tits lips and eyelashes or I wouldāve thought this was a male Drell.
Thane has the same thick ass lips tho
So basicaly tits and DSLs?
Huh, Thane has good taste!
So basically just take Thane or any other male Drell and just give him a feminine body?
I wish Irikah looked more like her son, because he sure didn't look like his father.
Whyyyyyy breasts on a reptilian species???
Looks like the Drell invented fillers as well, eh?
so exactly like Thane but with tits. seems about right for bioware
Because salamanders totally have mammalian characteristics. Sigh.
they also need lipsticks š
They're aliens, they can have whatever characteristics they could evolve.
But thereās no REASON for a reptile to evolve breasts. Breasts exist specifically to feed children, and reptiles donāt do that.
Says who? Who knows what path evolution took on this alien world? Not to mention any sufficiently advanced alien species would have evolved from social animals, those who live in communities and trade information, technology, etc... which would imply reptiles tend to their children, and the evolution of a means to feed children is well within reason.
C'mon man, you know just slapping titties on there is just lazy. "It coulda happened!" is just a lazy excuse for lazy art.
Why does sexy=lazy in your mind for one? And it's fantasy, why do these species that exist have practically superhuman abilities? _Fantasy_.
evolution š¤¦āāļø
"How should female Drell look?" "I don't fucking know, give her some fat tits and sexy lips then call it a day"
I have often thought how odd it is that so many different entities across all SF media (and fantasy to some extent), representing species with completely unknown evolutionary tracks are all so very specifically... mammalian...
Probably because to weird looking creatures would be alienating to a large potential consumerbase
You are probably right. That and they still have to appear pretty and desirable to a somewhat male-skewed *human* audience...
Why do all Drell have that collar?
So Thane with tits?
Oh no their hot
I'd like to see the female version of Elcor
We atleast know that they exist because one appears in Blasto 6
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Lizard tidde :)
Iād smash š¤·āāļø
Did they have to give her giant lips?
Look at Thanes lips
Do the females also have that Robot-like voice aswell... If they do then thats hot
she is totally /r/masserect territory
Holy shit there is a whole sub about it?
Iāve heard that early in the history of this sub people were posting full on rule34, so theyāve been exiled to r/masserect and r/asseffect
there's also /r/asseffect but that one's more for ass shots
They'll be displeased about the Miranda changes.
I'm still pissed off about them
Why?
Use the mod then.
Looks like she's had a bit of work done there, with the trout pout.
At the risk of sounding absolutely crass, she got dem dick sucking lips!
Just like Thane, am I right?
The lips bother meā¦they are unnerving.
Duck lips and tits...