[ SECRET POST #2114 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2114 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 061 secrets from Secret Submission Post #302.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 - unreadable ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

16. http://i45.tinypic.com/rkdfmr.png

[brightblueink]

Eh, the asari don't bother me but I can see why people would find them creepy. The tropes they're based on are in general a little....weird?

And I liked Liara fine originally, but I get frustrated with how much ME3 seems to focus on her (and retroactively seems to make the entire trilogy focus on her).

[forgottenjester]

I like Liara but find the role of the asari incredibly irritating and sexist. Occasionally it's not even the asari I have grief with but how the species is framed.

But I can understand why people might find them in the uncanny valley. It's actually an internal head canon I have that when asari and humans met they were initially kind of repulsed by each other because of the uncanny valley effect happening on both sides.

[bored_bitch]

Asari bother me because they're basically fetish fodder, and nothing else.
Alien enough to be exotic, but human enough not to squick out the demographic from being attracted to them.
And they work as prostitutes. And they are the only squad mates (until ME3) that a Shepard of either gender can romance.

Hell, the art book even outright states that they are supposed to be the token sexy alien babes.

It just bothers me, because we already have human characters to romance, and the Asari could have been replaced with another, more creative alien species, instead just "ALIEN TITTIES!"


Liara, herself, annoys me as a character, and was one of my least favorite characters in the series.
I hate how much they try to force her onto you.
But I was pretty okay with Samara and Morinth. And Aria's pretty cool.

[darkmanifest]

instead just "ALIEN TITTIES!"

Hell, I think if they'd just removed the breasts from the asari and quarians, it would have been a great improvement. They're pretty cool aliens, it's the completely incongruous secondary female characteristics that make them both generic and uncanny.

[(Anonymous)]

Asari bother me for the exact same reason as you, but at the same time, I'm glad they're there because to have the whole race only of one gender (which isn't supposed to be female but who seriousy believe that shit), the producers kind of got forced to develop multiple female characters, often in high rank and position, and I think the gender imbalance would have been glaring without them.

[(Anonymous)]

+1 every time I think of an asari, I think of a deprived fanboy making his dreams come true. Liara really bothered me too, she was way too pushy even when it was obvious that I kept her as far away as possible.

[(Anonymous)]

I can see your point with most of this comment, but getting all hung up on the fact that either gender Shepard can romance Liara is a little ridiculous.

They're a single sex species that mates with every species in the galaxy.
If they can be attracted to any species, despite the wide variance, why would they have issues with different sexes in a single species?

And on top of that, if you're looking at it from the perspective of the game creators, since they do have such wide variance in sexual interest, why would they not take that perfectly legitimate opportunity to create two romance subplots with only slightly more work than it would be to make one?

[kyuusei]

I don't hate all asari, but Liara bothers me. I find some of them interesting (the ardat-yakshi in particular). But their role in the series and how they're fetishized in the Mass Effect universe (seriously why are all the erotic dancers asari?)

The whole bit on Thessia and what you discover there does make me like the race quite a bit less too....

[(Anonymous)]

I like the asari, and while they were definitely fetish fodder in the first game one of the best things about the sequels were all the completely fucking badass asari they introduced. Aria the fucking pirate queen! Samara the ruthless psychic knight of justice! Even Liara got an upgrade, and they still managed to keep her character pretty much intact.

idk, it felt like they were taking them a lot more seriously as a species and culture to build on in the later games and I really appreciated that, even if they did start off as basically "the hot blue alien chicks"

buuuuut they are kind of weird-looking. those guys at the bachelor party in 2 hit on some unsettling shit with them though so I think a lot of that might have been intentional? I choose to interpret it as them subtly manipulating you to see them as something familiar but it doesn't quuuuiiiittte work.

Liara's freckles are adorable though I don't know what you're on about there

[(Anonymous)]

I find it hilarious how the designer who created Thane (and the asari, maybe? I'm not sure) talked about how when designing aliens women will be attracted to, you need to do this and that and this and that, but when designing aliens men will be attracted to, you just need to make them generically sexy, with a few token alien traits. (It's all the better because of how wrong he was, given how few people liked Liara compared to Tali.)

[forgottenjester]

I remember listening to them design the asari and how they said they couldn't change the face.

Then I looked at Thane and was like, "Oh, so you can't change the face?"

I felt like they didn't care as much about women finding Thane sexy so much as they cared about making him look cool. While with asari it has always been sexy first. So I feel like I was undervalued. Don't get me wrong, I find Thane nice-looking most of the time, but he's not the sex symbol the asari are.

[darkmanifest]

Exactly. People seem to think that, for straight women, "powerful badass" is all the sex appeal needed in male characters. I find Thane sexy as hell, but he doesn't get revealing outfits (the pec window is lol) or a stripped-down romance scene full of lean rippling muscles and fine scaly ass.

And man, I would have loved it if the asari had unsettling faces like every other alien (whose face we can see).

[forgottenjester]

It just shows that even with the characters supposed to be designed with the female fans in mind they still cared more about what their male fans thought of Thane over their female fans. At least, that's how I interpreted it.

I honestly wished they'd gone uncanny valley with them. All other species are like, "Yeah, asari are cool." Then the humans come along and they're the only ones who are like, "asari creep me the fuck out." They would also be the only ones asari would be hesitant to deal with. (If uncanny valley goes both ways.) It would create a real interesting dynamic.

[rivia]

well iirc, there's a video of a concept artist talking about making female aliens and joked about how the only way for them to read as 'women' was to "slap on some lipstick" or some shit like that. i don't really have much faith in them anymore in that respect -_-

[(Anonymous)]

I kind of respect that they're a nod to green alien babes from old sci-fi, and I was SUPER grateful for the badass members of the species we finally got in ME2, but...yeah. There's something off about their appearance to me (for me, personally, it's the fact that 99% of them lack eyebrows. See http://www.hotchickswithnoeyebrows.blogspot.com.au/ )

[(Anonymous)]

I have no idea what this is but they look like white aliens.

[(Anonymous)]

But they're blue