#even tho their design is based off a male peacock

[carpetbug]

darling duusu my beloved

[garrus-vakarus]

anyway even tho I just bitched about discourse here’s my two cents on turians:

the males should have been designed with more color and flair. having longer fringes make sense. if they’re based off of avian species (they are) then almost all avian species have colorful/loud males because there is dramatic sex selection in those populations. look at: robins, peacocks, cardinals, blue jays, mallards, like any bird ever. the females are typically “bland” i.e. they are more suited for survival by having coloring that easily camouflages them. males’ bright colors/pretty songs/whatever mean they are easier targets for predators but they’re also more likely to find a mate and reproduce therefore passing on the genes that make them pretty etc etc.

so the turian women probs shouldn’t have those long bits on their mandibles but who knows maybe it served some evolutionary purpose OR maybe it just never conferred a disadvantage so they still have it kind of how we still have our basically useless appendix (please don’t message me with: well actually this recent paper came out that says they’re not useless...). they should also probably have plating that covers their scalp even if it’s not a crest of horns, which again, makes far more sense on males as a sex trait that confers evolutionary fitness. also they don’t have boobs it’s literally their keel bone even one of the developers said this.

but bioware is also just horrendously bad at consistency AND while I will give them props for a lot of their science (and naming a planet in ME2 after Rosalind Franklin, and another after Alfred Wallace, what upppp underappreciated scientists) a lot of their science is also Just Shit (see levo/dextro nonsense). so like...I would not exactly expect them to take time to consider the evolutionary aspects of avian species when designing two (2) whole female turians for the trilogy (I could go on a whole rant about this but I won’t, and they did better about this in Andromeda, so like, at least they’re trying).

the cool thing about stuff you love is that you like to analyze it from your worldview, or from different angles, or whatever. it is ok to criticize stuff you love. for me that usually entails assessing the scientifically inaccurate and/or sexist shit that slides through even in a studio as arguably progressive as bioware. 

thx for coming to my ted talk.