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Please share your complicated feelings about Admiral Hackett

Heheheheh. Thank you for this ask and a perfect excuse to rant about Hackett and not just him.

I think we can all agree that Mass Effect as a story often veers into military propaganda territory. Yes, every now and then there are dialog or narrative moments that turn everything on its head, but at the same time these games are more concerned with glorifying Shepard's war crimes than they are with examining or criticizing their actions.

We are constantly led to believe that Shepard has no choice, or that Shepard is somehow exempt from the moral consequences of their actions. It's a whole other conversation, but I find it very interesting that the act of killing in Mass Effect is ultimately morally gray, and that the Renegade actions and dialogue options are often just comically evil.

But it all ultimately ties into the way that military culture is presented in these games. We have Renegade Shepard and Ashley talking about shooting "bad guys" in the head as the best part of the job, we have the "Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest son of a bitch in space" dialogue, we have soldiers sacrificing their lives left and right in ME3, and of course we have all these older men.

Hackett, Anderson, Harper, Petrovsky and Victus represent different aspects of that culture for us. And we have this almost dichotomy between the army represented by Hackett and the army represented by Anderson in all three games.

Anderson is supposed to be the softer, more approachable face of military propaganda, he's supposed to be Shepard's father figure.

Anderson is supportive, he's proud, he's a little reckless as a result, more driven by emotion, but he's always good and morally correct. Him punching Udina and allowing Shepard to steal the super-secret, super-important Alliance ship is the act that's supposed to sway you to his side. He uses violence because, unlike Udina, his heart is in the right place, and because he's so good, he can do no wrong.

We constantly see him portrayed as a hero, despite the fact that he goes completely off protocol, acts unprofessionally, and frankly has no idea what he's doing half the time if Shepard chooses to make him the main Alliance representative on the Council in ME2. And all of this is supposed to endear him to us. Oh, Shepard's dad. UwU

Meanwhile, Hackett is the distant, cold father figure to Shepard. Where was that meme with Zaeed, Anderson, and Hackett? The "Daddy, Dad, Father" one? I'm not sure about Zaeed, but that's exactly what these games are trying to tell you about the last two.

Hackett is the calculating guy, the strategist. He's just as willing to commit war crimes and use violence for the greater good as he sees it, but he never publicly deviates from protocol and propriety.

He is our ultimate authority figure, and these games present him as an almost mythical figure: a man so smart he can make no mistakes. Shepard still cleans up his messes, but it's always presented as a matter beyond the control of the all-powerful Hackett, so it's okay and you shouldn't think too much about it, kitten.

There's something very poetic about the fact that his ME wiki page is headlined with this quote:

"Shepard, let me tell you something that I've learned the hard way. You can pay a soldier to fire a gun. You can pay him to charge the enemy and take a hill. But you can't pay him to believe."

And that's what you're supposed to do as Shepard. You're supposed to believe in the good guys like Anderson and Hackett at the top of the chain of command and never question their orders or their motives.

If the order comes from a bad guy like Jack Harper (that's why he's part of this propaganda message: to be a boogeyman, a contrast to all the good, selfless guys), then you should disobey. But Dad and Father? They can do no wrong. Now go out and kill people because they told you to.

Also note how Petrovsky is connected to this whole idea. He takes orders from a bad guy, yes, but he has a very strict code of honor because he's an Alliance man. Through him, the game is screaming at you not to question the system as a whole. Alliance is good! Killing is okay! The most important thing is to get orders to kill from good people.

All in all, my complicated feelings are not even about Hackett as a character, but more about what he represents in the narrative, and that shit is manipulative and vile.

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Mezzo - Chapter 13 - Wolves

Pairing: mshenko | Rating: M

Tags: Canon-typical violence, trauma, dealing with your problems poorly, body autonomy struggles  

Summary: The twists and turns of ME2, through the eyes of everyone but Commander Shepard.

Chapter Summary: Liara’s decisions come back to haunt. Joker finds himself in unexpected company. Mordin makes a discovery. Garrus is summoned to solve an aquatic mystery. Shepard’s biggest fan gets a cameo. AKA, The Normandy arrives at Illium and everyone is awkward about it.

Chapter 13: Wolves | Read on Ao3

21 December 2185, Crescent Nebula, Tasale System, Illium Liara curls her fingers around the railing, gaze locked on the observation window at the ghost ship coasting into Docking Bay 93. The last time she’d seen the Normandy, she’d been in pieces over Alchera, reduced to nothing but shrapnel tumbling past the tiny escape pod where she’d spent nearly thirty hours waiting for rescue, Caroline Grenado’s blood smeared across her hardsuit. (I will not leave you here alone.) The ship now parked serenely in Bay 93 is the wrong size, painted the wrong colors. The smoke, the leaking coolant, the shattered hull have all been erased. Ships had never meant much to Liara. Before the Normandy they were nothing more than a conduit between stars, a gateway to uncharted worlds where secrets lay buried in stone, waiting for her to discover them. Before the Normandy, she’d never even bothered to unpack a suitcase on a starship. But then Shepard had come to her rescue on Therum. Instead of focusing all her energy on the history dead and buried on all of those worlds, she’d come to care about the future, and what little of it there might be left. When she’d first boarded the Normandy, she’d had no bag to unpack even if she had wanted to. Her stay was to be as temporary as every other ship she had been on. But then Alenko had presented her with a small prothean flute they’d found on Feros. He’d had a case made for it on the Citadel and hung it for her in Dr. Chakwas’ back office. In that moment, the small space she had borrowed had become hers.   Do you think it still plays? Alenko had asked. Shall we find out? she had replied, before gently removing the flute from its case and playing a note, perhaps the first sound it had made in over fifty thousand years. The flute, like the Normandy, like Shepard, like Caroline Grenado, had all been lost over Alchera. But the ship, at least, has been reborn. And Shepard is aboard. Liara could not take back Grenado’s death. But she – or Cerberus, rather – had taken back his. She kneads her fingers as she waits. Curse the Nos Astra Docking Authority for all their blithering and bureaucracy. She has arrived much too early, but nothing to be done about it now. The last time she had seen Shepard remains perfectly clear in her memory. Slouching in a chair over coffee in the mess, digging at the gravity well even more than usual, excitement over getting back out in the Mako bleeding out as kinetic energy. See you later, T’Soni, he’d said as she’d taken her leave, crooked smile on his face. Now, at last, his words might be true. His death had taken so much with him. Any hope they had of learning what secrets Ilos held that might save them from the reapers had been locked in the prothean cipher he had possessed. Only Shiala could have closed that knowledge gap, but nearly a year since her disappearance from Feros, Liara hasn’t been able to recover her, either. But even Shiala did not have the Eden Prime beacon in her head. Shepard, be it through luck, fate, or sheer force of will, had been singularly unique. Without him, their galactic cycle may very well end the way the prothean’s had, and so many who had come before them. Snuffed out, world by world, until there was nothing left but scattered relics. Would, perhaps, some alien creature find some trinket of Liara’s and wonder who had held it, the way she’d held that flute? The Normandy hadn’t just taught her to start tending to the future. It had taught her to live in her present. Early mornings with Shepard over coffee. Daily calisthenics with Williams. Garrus and Wrex’s determined efforts to improve her aim with a pistol. Listening to Tali talk about her love stories. Alenko’s late night cooking. It had been so long since Liara had raised her head above her work and just…indulged in the people around her. Two years later, her heart still aches at the memory of Shepard’s final smile.      At long last, the airlock hisses open. Her heart jumps. She stands straighter. There he is.

Read from the beginning | Read the rest on Ao3 | The Mezzo Playlist

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wikipedia no longer being anywhere near the top of search results when looking up anything feels eviscerating

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Oh, then I'm glad I made you aware of Cerberus Daily News ! Yeah, it's all canon, but "secondary canon" is a term others and myself use for anything that's not in the games themselves and which other people (like yourself) are not necessarily aware of. It's a treasure trove of additional information, written by the same guy who wrote the planet descriptions for ME2, with 2010 (when ME2 was released) being 2185.

No idea what "VI-directed video" means either ! I do headcanon that what we IRL are currently and confusingly call AI is, at best, akin to the VIs of Mass Effect. It's tempting, in 2025, to think of it as AI art, but we just don't know what this could have meant for a game dev in 2010 - the fact Lita'Orn gets an award means there are several contenders for the title and that she has some crucial input in the final video. Beyond that, we just don't know.

Re : your headcanons : there's no reason not to believe that Lita'Orn is a quarian who remains part of Migrant Fleet society ; for all you know, she's one of those who willingly never returned, and doesn't abide by mainstream quarian standards.

Thank you for this new information about Rannoch in ME3 ! I had no idea and am delighted to discover this. I'm gonna read what you wrote right now ! Do you have the source document for the cut content ?

Headcanon asking time.

Hey, any of you guys want to ask me about my complex and convoluted headcanons about the various species of the Mass Effect universe ? Biology, culture, society, history, you name it.

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Hello ! :)

Yeah, my brain is… it doesn't react as easily to music as most other people's I know. It is what it is. I'm still happy that you found something you liked in my meanderings !

I completely understand your point about the intermixing of different traditions and forms of music together ! The reason I don't feel like answering re : the quarians is that we would need a) a firm date for first contact (so that we can know who can influence and be influenced by the quarians) and b) what are the extant forms of music of each species and culture within that species to kinda feel what can mesh together… So in the end you just have to go with what you feel would be right or interesting !

Upon further reflection, and after reading your notes, I would agree that the people who would be most involved in an artistic cultural exchange would be the asari. Beside Erinya's mate (and I think we really need to understand her psychology to understand why she was so passionate about quarian music), the asari in canon are both the species most interested in learning about and experiencing the diversity of points of view, and the people who reign supreme in terms of culture ; and because they have such an interest in other people's cultures and points of view, I can also see them as the driving impetus for an exchange between quarians and non-asari, non-quarian species ("Oh, if you like T'Sabris' concertos so much, just wait till you hear the compositions of Dalatrass Shinrau !"). Ultimately, which would be the most influential is up to the reader's imagination.

To answer another of your questions, I think that when there's a first contact, there's a fad on both sides : the galactic community fascinated by a completely new species with a unique history and varied cultures, and the new species equally fascinated by the aliens, though at times others are repelled : to take up the canonical example of humans, as of 2183, radios which broadcast alien music were both very popular with the younger generations but also aroused fears that the music would incite "the younger workers to riot and sleep with aliens". Movie-wise, the human "asarisploitation holo Blue Steel" entirely relied on a premise that at the time was deemed exotic - asari crews remotely mining uranium in the Terminus Systems from orbit - but "would induce yawns" today. (Note the existence of "asarisploitation" cinema early on.) In ME:A, Liam mentions music genres like elcor core, Roman column, and batarian flood, but it's difficult to gauge their respective popularity.

Something to keep in mind too : how technology might influence music. Expel 10 is a sensory band — are there similar ways the technologically-minded quarians might have shaped their music ?

(Also, I have to mention the existence of the Galactic Music Awards in the secondary canon ; in 2185, Lita'Orn nar Idenna - either a girl on her Pilgrimage, or someone who never completed it - won Best VI-Directed Video. There's also what's potentially cultural appropriation of quarian designs in fashion during Fashion Week on Illium, with a bit of racism mixed in, to considerable galactic outrage.)

It's funny you mentioned Wildlife Park 2's soundtrack as something that stays with you forever, burned into your soul… My personal and entirely unsubstantiated headcanon about quarian music beside, y'know, vibes, is that it sounds like the OST of the videogame Journey… which has a passing resemblance in appearance to how I imagine Rannoch. And I think the music is in line with the feeling of "old souls".

You can read what I wrote here : fair warning, it's fairly old, and probably not really good, though I stand by the ideas and much of the style. There are a few issues, notably pacing.

(Also, to be clear just in case : I was being tongue-in-cheek with my hyperfixation comment, since I very much belong in the category being described myself. ;D)

Headcanon asking time.

Hey, any of you guys want to ask me about my complex and convoluted headcanons about the various species of the Mass Effect universe ? Biology, culture, society, history, you name it.

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Hey did you know there's a tell all book about the behind the scenes of Meta and the author is forbidden from promoting it?

The good news is however that it's already published and can't be stifled and whoever didn't sign the NDA can promote it as much as they want.

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On April 16th 2025 the US federal government has proposed to change the interpretation of the endangered species act so that it no longer protects habitat.

This is open for public comment until the end of May 19th. Please comment and make your voice heard.

Wildlife need their habitat. If the ESA redefines harm so that habitat is no longer protected, the implications for wildlife would be catastrophic.

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It's scary to be transgender in the world right now but if you're transgender I love you and we have to stick together and keep fighting and keep living and keep loving

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It's live. 50 USD, or 60 for some Deluxe Edition.

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Hello ! If you don't mind, I'm going to join your question with the second part of what @omegastation asked :

a more specific one: i've been wondering about quarians and poetry. do you think having to leave rannoch and all the heartbreak it bought made them more inclined to poetry and specific way of talking about their past/history, or were they like this all along?

On that note, @omegastation, if you're interested in headcanons about the quarians, feel free to ask @ideas-on-paper !

I'm going to give you two links first :

the wonderful headcanon by @madamebadger on asari and salarian literature ; on that note, I encourage you to go through her headcanons, especially on the quarians. Everything she wrote is basically what I wish was canon. She also has a headcanon on quarian dancing here !

and my own very old headcanon, "Enthusiastically : It's the Arts", on various elcor and hanar artforms

Onward !

So, the quarians. A few things from canon :

quarian poetry. Like I said in the replies : "There’s one poet named Zesoh'Thal vas Rannoch mentioned in Kasumi’s SB Dossier ; the fact it’s “vas Rannoch” means they’re a pre-Geth War poet. Since it’s a “First Folio Edition”, this also tells us a lot about the traditional written medium of at least one quarian culture (a folio being a medieval-early modern type of large book ; this is not, say, a scroll or an accordion book)."

quarian dancing. Per Tali's ambient comment in ME1 in Chora's Den : "Dancers are highly respected among my people."

quarian music : what @ideas-on-paper mentioned about Erinya's dead bondmate, who loved the quarians' music and said they had "old souls".

Full disclosure : I'm terrible with music. I know very little about it, do not play any instrument, and have difficulty processing it. That being said, I'll do my best !

Quarian poetry

@omegastation : I absolutely, completely, 100% believe that the aftermath of the Geth War - near-extinction, loss of everything, forced exodus and exile, loss of status and recognition from the non-quarian species, a new precarious, day-to-day existence where you're one bulkhead breach or one cough from death, and your species, your loved ones, your culture might be all dust in a few years - was such a traumatic experience and event that there's a distinct "before" and "after" in quarian art and literature. Put simply, everything they're going to do after the Geth War is always, always, always going to be impacted by it in some way.

Added to this is a context of enormous cultural loss : the only plays, movies, records, musical instruments, footage, books, e-books, paintings, sculptures, etc the quarians have with them are whatever they randomly grabbed during a hasty, unplanned evacuation is quite literally the only pieces of their culture they can access ; that, and whatever artifacts are in museums and places outside of the Perseus Veil, and their own memories. I think a lot could be (and was) recovered thanks to the distributed nature of the extranet, but some things are irretrievably lost (until, hopefully, 2186). And all over this is the possibility that the quarians will die out soon.

My first headcanon : there's a Foundation for the Preservation of Quarian Cultures, a joint effort with some non-quarians, mostly but not exclusively asari (many of them have quarian fathers, the youngest having just reached the Matron stage). The idea, from the moment it was created shortly after the Geth War, is to preserve as much of the various quarian cultures as possible, in all its forms, usually by combing for whatever pieces of quarian culture might be preserved on the various planetary internets. The Foundation has a twofold objective : first, by storing as much of the immaterial quarian culture off the Migrant Fleet, this creates redundancy and increases the probability quarian culture would survive a catastrophe (e.g. the destruction of an individual ship) ; second, should all the quarians die out, they will be remembered.

But on the Fleet itself, there's a vital, urgent need to keep quarian cultures alive. That means (to me ; this is a headcanon) that most of the poetic forms and genres quarians usually use to express what they feel over the losses of the Geth War - grief, bitterness, betrayal, rage, fear, despair, defiance, determination, and just maybe hope - are very traditional. This doesn't mean there is no innovation : among other things, all of the quarian survivors aboard the Fleet come from different clans, with different cultural traditions, and they are now sharing the same space, so there's going to be some exchange and mixing and mutual inspiration, especially if they're trying to keep alive the genres of cultures who are either dying out or already dead. But what I mean is that innovation never supersedes the traditional forms ; there's a very conscious effort to keep the "old ways" alive and vibrant. In and of itself, it's an act of rebellion, but it also has a keen urgency ; it feels vital. The same considerations would impact all quarian artforms.

I kinda believe that the quarians were a very poetical people (see also : Zesoh'Thal)… but quarian poetry had mostly died out by the early 19th century CE, along with much of quarian spirituality : the society which would create the geth and seek out digital immortality was a very modern culture, more focused on technological progress and triumphs than artistic ones ; in a sense, before the Geth War, quarian poetry was at the point Western poetry stands now — once the most important form of literature, now a minor genre in its death throes. The Exile, in that regard, was a form of renewal.

And now you're going to ask me what my headcanons on the quarian poetic genres are… and I don't have the faintest idea. This is mostly because I'm… aware of my limits ? Like, I know the Western poetic genres very well, but I know shit about non-Western genres, and I don't want to ascribe half-baked plagiarism of Western poetry on the quarians as if Western poetry was universal ; moreover, the nature of poems would depend on the characteristics of their languages (compare, for example, the English and French poetical traditions, which function completely differently because those languages just don't work in the same way), and I know shit about Khelish.

That being said, I'm absolutely persuaded that the quarians probably have a genre of poetry which is elegiac : the very nature of elegy would make it the best genre to express everything they feel they must express in the aftermath of the Geth War.

Quarian music

My explanation as to why Erinya's bondmate found quarian music so wonderful is pretty boring : different people have different interests and will hyperfixate on them for reasons that are both objective and subjective ; for example, I know a few people who have been hyperfixating on the same few aspects of an old videogame series and remain obsessed with it to this day. :)

SPOILERS : this is a cop-out, because like I said I know shit about music. What I can tell you (this was a plot point in an old fic of mine) was that wind instruments were out of the picture for the entire time quarians couldn't take their faceplates off, and that many traditional instruments were probably lost and couldn't be repaired or recreated. So I'm inclined to believe that one of the places there was a huge shift in the arts despite the best efforts of the quarians to preserve it as it was was music : quarian music would shift to singing, clapping and percussion instruments, with synthetic sounds to replace the lost instruments but no one to know how to play them when the geth gave them perfectly preserved instruments after the conclusion of the Second Geth War and Reaper War.

Other artforms

I really like your idea about photorealistic painting being a salarian artform somewhat looked down upon by others, @ideas-on-paper ; I think my answer here is going to be boring, which is that you have a ton of artforms, and for example there's also a vibrant abstract painting and expressionist painting art scene among salarians precisely because what's the point of doing something which - at best - will end up only as good as your memory ?

Ironically, the species whose art I have the most headcanons about are the batarians, but that would be its own post and I'm just very tired at this point ^^". A few of my headcanons :

the asari have a strong tradition of oral literature, as on Thessia the asari themselves last far longer than paper, parchment or any writing material (this was originally a headcanon by @dr-jekyl). I'll add that to this day there are professional storytellers on Thessia, as in the times of Homeric Greece or pre-Maoist China ; in the asari equivalent to coffee or tea houses, storytellers sing, declaim or otherwise perform their stories ; the full telling can last months. The asari have an equally strong tradition of public reading : you go in a café and someone might be reading aloud the poetry of Techllis Bel or a new (or old) philosophical work or a novel. Overall, this entails that stylistically, one of the criteria of good asari literature is how beautiful or well it sounds when read aloud.

salarian and elcor music are considered to be undanceable by just about every other species, while each species can usually truly, really enjoy music composed by their conspecifics. Salarian brains can anticipate much more syncopation than non-salarians, on faster rhythms, whereas elcor typically can anticipate less syncopation than other species, on slower rhythms. To salarians, non-salarian music is a monotonous drone ; to elcor, non-elcor music is discordant noise.

the two main genres of turian literature are : the epic, especially the historical epic, and the mock-epic ; both have many subgenres. In turian epic literature, generations of turians fight and die in service of the state, for the greater glory of the turian species (I'm freely stealing from the Cardassians here). A frequent tragic theme is the need to choose between what one wants for oneself and what one's duty ; those who do not choose what is best for the state are always punished. To quote Oscar Wilde : "The good ended happily, and the evil unhappily. That is what Fiction means."

volus painting and literature often focus on rural or pre-modern settings, probably because merchants are nostalgic for a pre-modern era when the pressures and stress of their precarious lives didn't exist, the simpler time of the pre-capitalism world when you could actually rest and enjoy life.

If you want to know more, ask me !

Headcanon asking time.

Hey, any of you guys want to ask me about my complex and convoluted headcanons about the various species of the Mass Effect universe ? Biology, culture, society, history, you name it.

[crapeaucrapeau]

@omegastation said :

!!!! now this is too tempting. okay a general question: do you have any headcanons about the krogan? a more specific one: i've been wondering about quarians and poetry. do you think having to leave rannoch and all the heartbreak it bought made them more inclined to poetry and specific way of talking about their past/history, or were they like this all along?

Krogan first !

In my never-ending quest to give the alien species literally anything else than the female/male biological mating system, I tried to come up with something for the krogan. Problem : the female/male divide is pretty significant for the krogan. Solution ? Faeder males.

While krogan are divided in the usual female/male dipolar spectrum, the truth is complicated by the existence of so-called "faeder males" or "female mimics". A faeder krogan is a male krogan who looks exactly like a female krogan, albeit slightly larger and with larger, concealed testes ; this allows faeders to introduce themselves among krogan women, seduce them and mate with them - a strategy known as sneak-mating.

A quirk of faeder genetics entails that, should offspring inherit two copies of the inverted supergene characteristic of a faeder's genome, the offspring will not be viable and will die ; however, given a faeder's ability to bypass the fierce competition between typical males over sexual privilege, this low probability of offspring viability is offset by the greater reproductive success faeders enjoy over their lifetime relative to aggressive male krogan.

Estimates suggest that prior to the genophage, faeders might have constituted up to 16% of the krogan male population. Throughout history, faeders have enjoyed different statuses in the various krogan cultures. In some, they were reviled as cuckoo-like and actively shunned and hunted by typical males ; in others, they had the paradoxical, transgressive position of social and moral outcasts, allowed to do what was proscribed to typical males and females ; in others yet, they were both admired and feared, believed to be tricksters with a link to the divine, connected to luck good and bad ; and in a significant amount of krogan cultures, faeders were unambiguously associated with good fortune, wisdom, fertility and sexual prowess, and were actively sought out by males, as heterosexual and homosexual activity with a faeder in orgies was both enormously appealing in and of itself and also conducive to greater reproductive successes.

During the time of the Krogan Empire, faeders were universally accepted among the krogan and enjoyed a high symbolic status, and were socially and legally equal to all other males. Unfortunately, the advent of the genophage changed that, as faeders were barred from reproducing by both males and females, on account of the lower probability of offspring survival compounded by the genophage. In best-case scenarios, faeders survived in the female camps as expendable assets, agents and envoys, or were clandestinely harbored by female krogan masquerading them as actual females ; but most of the time, faeders were hated and hunted down. Ironically, the ability of faeders to survive on their own in the wilds of Tuchanka earned them the grudging, hateful respect of males and increased their appeal to females ; but that legendary status cannot conceal the fact that, by 2186 CE, less than 1% of all recorded krogan males were faeders.

The victory over the genophage and the progressive self-liberation of female krogan bring about an era of hope for faeder men, whose life is protected by the law of the new Krogan Imperium ; but the prejudice and stigma tied to the particularities of their gender still burden their lives.

Inspiration : Ruff birds orgies : https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28493-ruff-bird-orgies-have-four-sexes-thanks-to-a-supergene-flip/

I haven't kept satellite males, because weaker males as part of a krantt show the strong male's strength. Which means that being part of someone's krantt grants/granted sexual privileges.

Headcanon asking time.

Hey, any of you guys want to ask me about my complex and convoluted headcanons about the various species of the Mass Effect universe ? Biology, culture, society, history, you name it.

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I would love to hear any headcanons you have about Volus society!

Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy ! Thanks for the wonderful ask !

Okay, so this is all reliant on canon to some extent, and then I'm improvising. I'm interpreting your ask as the volus social organizations, but tell me if you want to know more about volus lifestyle !

So, when I come up with headcanons for societies, species, etc for Mass Effect, my rules are :

can I keep it canon-compliant ? I'm linking an old post on the volus canon here.

is there any existing science-fiction I can use as the basis for an homage ? (much like the krogan are a riff on the Klingons and the Mandalorians, and the turians are based on Starship Troopers, and the quarians on Battlestar Galactica, etc)

can I make the society and species I'm working on less human and more alien ?

With the volus, there's an added consideration : since they are mostly space capitalists, it's hugely important not to end up recycling antisemitic stereotypes.

And so… My WIP at present…

Okay, so the volus. Main concern : freedom — you don't get a family name because this would suggest your family can own you. Main political unit : a tribe, a fluid polity, in dynamic configurations. This is interesting, because this is not a state, which is our go-to political structure on Earth : a tribe suggests relatively small numbers of people (but more than just various shades of relatives), with no strictly defined territory and no strict centralization of authority. A tribe is a community of citizens, and is indeed suggestive here of greater individual agency than the state. The capitalism of the volus and their eschewing of the state and stated attachment to freedom could suggest a form of anarcho-capitalism or other shades of libertarianism (see also : Rapture), but this is very cliché and therefore boring, and Bioshock kinda conclusively shows why it wouldn't last long.

At the same time, we should note that there are at least two states in the life of your average volus : the Turian Hierarchy (duh) and the Vol Protectorate itself. The Vol Protectorate is very state-like : it has diplomats acting as the exclusive representative of the volus and entitled to make decisions in their name (e.g. Din Korlack, Kwunu), it has an executive leader (i.e. the Chairman of the Vol Protectorate), it has a permanent bureaucracy (e.g. the Vol Ministry of the Frontier) and extensive patent laws. On the planetary level, Irune, at least, as a Senior Commerce Advisor (whatever that is) and police, with military titles (e.g. Major). And we have hints of state-like polities within the Protectorate in a few pieces of the canon : the "corporate nation of Binar" with a "master tradesman", Noval San, as a representative (ME3) ; or "the Nao Clan", with one Udra Nao acting as its spokesman (CDN). So obviously the volus as a whole are not pathologically adverse to the idea of a state, though the fact they prefer the small, dynamic, fluid tribe as their polity of choice means they're not fond of state restrictions either. See also : importance of freedom.

Speaking of the Nao Clan… something we don't talk about is the emphasis the volus place on clans, you Earth-clan. A "clan", in English, is a large group with a shared ancestry, actual or presumed ; this is in keeping with the fact all non-volus are addressed not by species but by homeworld, or native biosphere : Thessia-clan, Sur'Kesh-clan, Palaven-clan, etc. That suggests your species is less important than where you come from : your common ancestry is your biosphere. Since it's insulting to call quarians "clanless", then it's in some sense dishonorable to lose your homeworld (presumably not damage : humans are never disparaged for the poor state Earth is in). Your homeworld, in a sense… is your common()wealth. This is a thread that could be imagined as a strong environmentalist conscience, though it would need to be reconciled with the capitalism of the volus (SPOILERS : capitalism isn't good for your planet).

So, in the end, what we have are :

the Vol Protectorate : a supreme state-like authority

the tribes : socio-political units you willingly join and from which you can depart, the larger can engulf the smaller ones or split apart. Most of the tribes are fairly small and lack the structure of states, but we could understand "tribe" as reminiscent of the Latin tribus, which doesn't describe a polity but a component of a polity

the clans : individuals with common ancestry ; e.g. the Vol-clan : all volus ; lesser clans are people who've lived together in the same place for a long time. Tied to notions of land, place of origin, environment - hence why other species get [homeworld name]-clan, e.g. Thessia-clan, Sur'Kesh-clan, etc. In some cases (e.g. the Nao Clan), a tribe and a clan overlap ; in other cases (e.g. Binar), it clearly doesn't. You can give your clan - the unit you belong to whether you care to or not - as much or as little importance as you want, though you'll always be Vol-clan.

So how do I reconcile all of that and give you more substantial headcanons ?

I made the Vol Protectorate a panarchy.

Basically, a panarchy is the idea that you can join any nation and political system you want, and even form whichever you want, and a state structure exists only to make sure your right to do that is not suppressed. The idea is to take the liberal idea of competition in a free market is beneficial for the economy and the consumers, and expand it to politics. IRL, it has huge feasibility problems and issues which entail I find it quite unrealistic, but it just might work with non-human capitalists who have abolished violence.

So, in "my" Vol Protectorate, the volus don't have tribes because they are a pre-state society, they are in fact a post-state* society : you have a multiplicity of micro political and economic regimes - the tribes - who correspond to whatever shades of the human political spectrum you care to identify them with. You've got : Megachurches ! Corporate nations ! Anarcho-capitalist gulches ! Anarcho-communist communes ! Social liberal democracies ! Absolute monarchies ! An enclave of volus Hierarchy citizens who live by turian rules and expectations ! and so on. Among other things, the Vol Protectorate exists to make sure anyone can join or leave any of those tribes, and no one tries to impose their way of life on people outside of their tribe. That's why, in my headcanon, Gaffno Yap (from Mass Effect : Annihilation) was exiled twice from the Vol Protectorate : the problem wasn't that he was anarcho-communist, which was fine and dandy, the problem was that the people he inspired blew up "banks and treasuries and any place where there might be a lot of money or influence or money and influence all together in one spot" to abolish currency, personal property, capital and "trade itself". That being said, it's pretty clear that one of the common traits for the overwhelming majority of volus polities - the hegemony, one might say - is the legitimacy and attractiveness of capitalism.

Crucially, each tribe would have as little or as many laws as they'd like, decided through whatever process they want, as long as they didn't contravene the laws of the Protectorate, the Citadel or (as of the 8th century CE) the Turian Hierarchy.

Equally crucially, people from different tribes would share the same territories and infrastructure : you could be roommates with someone subject to an entirely different legal system than yours.

At this point, I didn't have much else, beside the idea of the Vol Protectorate being the Vol Commonwealth before they joined the Hierarchy. I had to… hit the books.

Were there any science-fiction novels out there which I could use as the basis for the structure of the panarchy in the Vol Protectorate ? I could find :

Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age

and Ada Palmer's Terra Ignota series.

Of those three, I found the last one most interesting and useful. The readers of Terra Ignota will read the following and recognize what I'm talking about. For example, the following based on the Universal Free Alliance :

Prerogatives of the Vol Protectorate

The specific and exclusive prerogatives of the Vol Protectorate include :

representing the volus before non-volus : - representation of the shared and unique interests of the citizens of the Vol Protectorate, all volus and all their properties, assets and commensals for their continued prosperity and well-being before the Citadel Council - representation of the same before the Turian Hierarchy, acting as an intermediary between the Turian Hierarchy and various volus interest groups

maintaining the interconnected systems all volus depend on to live and live well : - measuring and, if necessary, issuing alerts on the state of the various ecosystems supporting volus life, in particular Irune's biosphere ; should the government of the Vol Protectorate have reasonable evidence supporting the conclusion that state intervention is preferable to no intervention whatsoever in a way that benefits an ecosystem as a whole, it is entitled to intervene and manage it, usually by stopping disruptive economic activity - measuring and, if necessary, issuing alerts on the state of the integrated volus and interstellar economies ; should the government of the Vol Protectorate have reasonable evidence supporting the conclusion that state intervention is preferable to no intervention whatsoever in a way that benefits the economy as a whole, it is entitled to intervene and manage parts of or the whole of the volus economy

ensuring the freedom of all volus to live in a tribe of their choice, essential to the panarchy of the Vol Protectorate, is respected : - registering adult volus in a tribe of their choice - handling volus switching from one tribe to another

enforcing the law : - handling litigation between different volus tribes, each with its own legal system - ensuring every tribe respects the Axioms of Vol Law (notably respecting the environment and the rights of minors) through a process known as law-auditing

The legislative branch

The Laws of Vol, that is to say the whole of volus law that applies to all citizens and residents of the Vol Protectorate regardless of political affiliation, is extremely short : beside the Founding Charter of the Vol Protectorate, there are less than ten laws, the Axioms of Vol Law (or Axioms).

To pass a new Axiom, or repeal an extant one, at least 75% of the adult citizens of the Vol Protectorate as well as at least 66.7% of the adult population in each tribe must agree to it.

In practice, the Shareholder Assembly (see below) ratifies or vetoes policies introduced by the Management Board and repeals past policies, while the judiciary makes sure the Axioms and those policies are followed. This results in a de facto complex common law system ; the extensiveness of the volus patent laws, for example, has been frequently noted.

Every group operating on a Vol Protectorate host-world (see below), including the Protectorate itself, must also abide by the directives of the local Planetary Management Directorate.

The Axioms are based on the eight (8) universal Blacklaws in Terra Ignota. The patent laws are canon.

The executive branch

Each adult citizen of the Vol Protectorate is part of the Shareholder Assembly, with a political share determined on the proportionate amount of their wealth freely given to the Protectorate as taxes, and an added bonus for the poorer volus so that they do not have to give a lot to be on relatively equal footing with the wealthiest.

The Shareholder Assembly elects the members of the Boards of Directors, or Supervisory Board, who in turn elect the head of state of the Vol Protectorate, the Chairperson. Chairman Ulra Nron is the current leader of the Vol Protectorate.

The Board of Directors appoints and fires in turn the members of the Executive Committee, or Management Board, headed by a Chief Executive (or Managing Director). As head of government, the Chief Executive is in charge of the day-to-day running of the Vol Protectorate and formulating and implementing policies, while the Board of Directors safeguards the interests of the shareholders. The separation of the two prevents the most obvious forms of conflicts of interests.

Below the Executive Committee is the massive bureaucratic apparatus of the Vol Ministries, each tasked with a specific area of activity, such as the Vol Ministry of the Frontier. Unlike the directors, the members of the ministries are career bureaucrats.

Each director of the Executive Committee heads one of the Vol Ministries ; their immediate subordinates are the Subordinate Directors, whom they appoint, as well as the Advisors of the Advisor Panel, led by a Senior Advisor. The Advisors are ministry bureaucrats who rose to their positions based on merit and experience.

For example, the Chief Finance Director in the Vol Ministry of Finance delegates much of their affairs to several Subordinate Finance Directors and can rely on the advice of the Vol Senior Finance Advisor and the other Vol Finance Advisor.

The description of the Vol Protectorate government is simply that of the government of the Republic of Venice, an explicit inspiration for the volus, with corporate terms swapped in, and with an added management board as is common practice in the corporate world.

The judiciary branch

Sorry, I haven't come up with anything yet ! I'm of the mind of there being an independent Inspectorate which investigates cases where multiple legal systems are in conflict, Arbiters to settle such cases, and Law Auditors to conduct surprise law-audits and check (say) if those children are well taken care of and your tribe isn't actually a cult.

The planetary governments

An added wrinkle is that I imagined Planetary Management Directorates to handle issues which concern everyone on a given world - a "host-world" - mostly where you have integrated systems which go beyond just one tribe. The two major issues would be the planetary ecosystem and the planetary economy. Given that territory stops to matter for tribal, panarchist polities, what we have instead are governments managing a) the environment, e.g. the commons, and b) the integration of various groups by geographical proximity. Here I'm vaguely gesturing toward the Dutch Republic (the other direct historical inspiration for the volus) with a political system for decentralization, management planet by planet — but I haven't decided how those institutions function ! That's definitely where Irune's Senior Commerce Advisor is, though.

Economy

Capitalism. That being said, the government is stable, the volus are happy and the volus planets are beautiful and clean because most of the filthy, horrific exploitative stuff takes place out of sight, in the Terminus Systems (see also : Elkoss Combine in canon). The volus have outsourced the exploitation inherent to capitalism, and (much like everyone else in the galaxy btw) capitalism remains stable because there's virtually endless growth thanks to the virtually endless resources left to exploit in the undiscovered space of the galaxy.

Okay, @unfair-water-plane, I don't know if this was what you were asking for ; if you wanted something else, tell me and I'm sure I'll have something up my sleeve !

[crapeaucrapeau]

Headcanon asking time.

Hey, any of you guys want to ask me about my complex and convoluted headcanons about the various species of the Mass Effect universe ? Biology, culture, society, history, you name it.

[crapeaucrapeau]

$7 / Hours on Tumblr = Small Number

That's my actual pitch. Enjoy this free advertisement I made for this place

*caveat about having money*

[crapeaucrapeau]

The Internet Archive needs your help.

A coalition of major record labels has filed a lawsuit against the Internet Archive—demanding $700 million for our work preserving and providing access to historical 78rpm records. These fragile, obsolete discs hold some of the earliest recordings of a vanishing American culture. But this lawsuit goes far beyond old records. It’s an attack on the Internet Archive itself.

This lawsuit is an existential threat to the Internet Archive and everything we preserve—including the Wayback Machine, a cornerstone of memory and preservation on the internet.

At a time when digital information is disappearing, being rewritten, or erased entirely, the tools to preserve history must be defended—not dismantled.

This isn’t just about music. It’s about whether future generations will have access to knowledge, history, and culture.

Sign our open letter and tell the record labels to drop their lawsuit. 

[crapeaucrapeau]

They're wanting to change the definition of water to see which water would qualify under the Clean Water Act...I wish I was making this up.

What this means, in layman's terms, is that not all water or wetlands would be under environmental protections, so some could legally be dumped in, scraped out of, or otherwise harmed.

The comment period for this is pretty short (just a few days left!) so please submit comments asking for ALL water to be protected.

[crapeaucrapeau]