Mass Effect General Discussion (spoilers)

I'm pretty sure that actually doesn't include the batarian, because, well, batarians.

And what you just described apllies just as much to the United Nations or the Europeean Union so it's really not an empire trait, just a governing body trait. And saying "they could crush their economy at any moment" is taking a completely hypothetical scenario that is never hinted that they would actually do, and disregards that things like UN/EU actually want their states to do actually well, not crush them, you know.

"earth has to play the game or be left behind" ? that's... such a broad statement. "You have to conform yourself to social norms or be an outcast" Yeah that's how LIFE works in general. Do your part to live with other people or stay alone. that's not an empire thing.

Edited by Yumil on Aug 13th 2019 at 12:39:12 PM

Except they don't - they stopped the war between the Turians and the humans partly because the Turians COULD have steamrolled eventually, but they also may have endured horrific casualties in doing so.

The Council also, explicitly, is loathe about getting involved in the Terminus and doesn't censure the Batarians for practicing slavery, in complete violation of Citadel law.

The Citadel's reach is certainly not absolute - they want to project the idea that it is and they have PLENTY of dirty laundry (The Citadel DLC shows their pogrom against peaceful AI awaiting hearings from the council and other actions that make you shudder) but they're no worse than any other polity, except in scale.

And the Council is entirely reliant on the sponsorship of its members - the Turians decide to not play ball, that's most of the defence fleet gone; Asari Republics finally agree on not wanting to oversee the galaxy? Bam, huge diplomatic void. Salarians decide they want to change things... well, whilst STG capabilities are a little bit exaggerated, no doubt they COULD disrupt a HELL of a lot.

The Quarians aren't so much victims of the Council, but victims of the galaxy's enhanced racism and fear, which the Council responds to.

Their power comes from shared purpose (Such as the Krogan Rebellions and Rachni wars demanded it) but the Council hasn't actively gone on the offensive as far as I can tell. It's a body dedicated to maintaining the status quo and seems to actually be fairly precarious.

that words it better than I could.

I guess we have a libertarian in the thread, if the Council is The Empire...

If by libertarian you mean that I find it a incredibly dangerous organization without nearly the number of restraints on its behavior that it should have, sure, that's an interesting definition of one. Honestly, I think they have committed and continue to commit multiple crimes against humanity (sapience) like the Genophage.

Frankly, I'm a little appalled at the idea their behavior is normal.

And the idea the Council doesn't interfere in the Terminus Systems is questionable since they gave all of the Batarians planned colony worlds to Earth.

It's The Empire at its height and rules absolutely all other races, crushing any that stand up to them and dictating terms to others. The U.N. being that way only exists in right wing reactionary fiction.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Aug 13th 2019 at 4:15:52 AM

no, it's not that. Just because you ignored 's points that they are clealry tolerating the batarian's practice of slavery despite being against their rules because of how afraid to act they are, or that they actively STOPPED the turians from obliterating the humans when they didn't complied, doesn't make your point any more valid.

Also, summing up the genophage as a crime against humanity perpetuated for their own profit is missing the entire point of the genophage, being that the council did an atrocity to preserve the entire galaxy, because the other option was to be annihilated by the krogans, which itself was the result of another no good decision scenario to uplift them agaisnt the rachnis. it was a scenario with no good options so holding it agaisnt them applying conventionnal morality is pants-on-heads silly. Their handling of the genophage after that is another issue, but not one that qualifies necessarily of crime against humanity.

The council being this right-wing totalitarian empire only exists in your head.

Edited by Yumil on Aug 13th 2019 at 1:35:09 PM

Also, from what I see, the Council took the same stance with the Skyllian Verge that they do with the Terminus: hands-off, not their problem. I don't see why the batarians would have any claim to the entirety of the Verge, seeing as it isn't their home system. Besides, it's their own damn fault that they haven't colonized the Verge by the time humans have achieved FTL travel and made their way into the galactic stage. For fuck's sake, batarians have been part of the Citadel since practically the start of the Common Era. Them throwing a hissy fit over the Council not giving them exclusive rights to the Verge was just them being the jerkasses that they are.

Edited by ITNW1989 on Aug 13th 2019 at 4:33:04 AM

I think the fans of the game are a lot more forgiving and understanding of the Genophage than the actual game seems to be as ME 2 treats it as a monstrous evil and ME 3 is about curing it. A lot of fans seem to think it was perfectly valid I Did What I Had to Do and I don't think that's a good stance to take.

Especially since it's "sterilize the Irish" writ large.

Mind you, I also think the whole, "We uplifted the Krogan" is a sign the Salarians are racist and arrogant not actually meant to be taken seriously as a decision.

I see a lot of colonialism, Empire building, and British Empire attitudes in the Citadel. Mind you, the Turians are explictly Space Romans.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Aug 13th 2019 at 4:38:38 AM

ME 2 treating it as monstrous evil is a questionnable move in the first place considering ME 1 was a lot less preaching about it. Especially since it provides no good argument against it aside from screaming very loudly that it was an atrocity and appealing to altruism while never accounting for the context. yes, it was an atrocity. That was the entire thing that made the genophage interesting in the first place- it was a complicated situation with no good answer that let the player do a bit of thinking and reach their own conclusion, including the one that it was a bad thing.

The game doesn't even really try to make a good argument about it, such as noting that while the genophage might have been necessary centuries ago, it certianly no longer is - a valid point, but one the game never broughts up, but that renders the fact that ME 3 is about curing it irrelevant to the argument of its necessity.

It's not "sterilize the irish" because the irish aren't a threat to the rest of the world, making the comparison irrelevant. Once again, context matters.

As for "we uplifted the krogans" being the salarians being racist and somehow not being supposed to be treated as serious, that's pure headcanon that is never supported by the game. The rachnis are consistently acknowledged as a very serious threat that nearly wiped all other civilizations and the krogan uplifting is conssitently agreed to be the move that stopped them - and no other good alternatives is ever evoked by the setting.

Those decisions are only bad if that there was a better way to solve the problems - which the games never provide, and that you are therefore projecting and headcanoning. And I mean fine, that's your right, but don't be surprised that people don't agree with those.

Edited by Yumil on Aug 13th 2019 at 1:50:13 PM

The Council is not malevolent - it is a massive bureaucracy that is consistently afraid to act and displays an ineptitude that is at times amazing... but its inaction is also justified, because the last two times it went with its "gut" they a) uplifted the Krogan WAAAAY before they were ready and b) then had to do something about said Krogan.

They're scary because of the SPECTR Es but even those have limits and, realistically, whilst they carry the threat of "unlimited response" and on an individual level can be scary... all it takes is one military unit to go "nuh uh, you dun goofed son." and bam, that specialist is a grease smear on the side of a dreadnought.

They operate much in the same way that espionage at a certain level is tolerated between nation states.

AS we've said, the Council only operates at the discretion of its contributing members - the institution of the council is busted in many ways (The Elcor and Volus being in the the situation they are is testament to that); and the Citadel not getting involved in the Terminus is not therefor a sign that they are able to INFLUENCE the Terminus - they showed how impotent they were by backing away from the fracas between the Batarians (Who had raided human colonies via proxy privateers) and the response of the humans who then annexed worlds in the systems.

As for the Krogan, a better comparison would be the acts of Britain not respecting or granting rights to Commonwealth soldiers - we have a terrible track record of actually rewarding troops from Fiji, Samoa and other areas that join the British Army; and that's not even going into how the Ghurka veterans have had to fight for rights to citizenship etc. There's no like-for-like (We haven't sterilised anyone!) but there is an echo in "memorialising" their sacrifice (The statue on the Presidium) whilst also ignoring and demeaning the individuals (Day to day)

The Council is only scary in how calcified it is and, due to the Asari being the predominant influencers, how SLOWLY it adapts to change. Because the Asari can afford to just wait you out until the current generation of others species representatives just die off.

if anything, it's the reliance on Asari culture that has proven fairly toxic, not the institution itself.

Uplift is used in science fiction terminology as giving sentience and evolution to less evolved lifeforms. The Salarians did nothing of the sort. They just gave the Krogan advanced weapons and starships. One thing I love is the complete bullshit of the Prime Directive is made fun of. All of the races in the galaxy received their tech from the Reapers and Protheans so there's no such thing as "evolved enough" to join the rest of the galaxy. You just adapt to new technology and go out into space.

As for the Genophage, the Council feared the Krogan (brown people) would overwhelm them population wise. Then the Krogan would take over.

That's not a good view to say is objectively right.

It operates at the discretion of its members in the sense that the Council exists for and by the members to extend their power level across the galaxy. The Batarians were supposed to be a member but the humans proved to be a better option, militarily and otherwise, so the Council used the humans a catspaw to smack down the Batarians in a Proxy War.

Humans had to claim as much technology, power, and wealth as possible or otherwise, they'd end up like the Volus.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Aug 13th 2019 at 7:53:13 AM

As if to perfectly illustrate that you’re missing the point, you began your post with the premise that Mass Effect is wrong because it uses its jargon different than other stories use the same words.

It’s not. It just uses the same word to mean something different.

You're assuming I'm being wrong versus interpreting characters differently.

The Salarians being racist against Krogan as wrong is kind of a weird argument.

When, again, the game beats us over the head with how awful the Genophage was as well as how the rest of the galaxy looks down on the Krogan.

Technological uplifting is a thing you know <_< Like there are three kinds of uplifting: cultural, technological and biological.

...Did you just seriously do that comparison?

...You do realize how offensive that is considering the krogans themselves note that they are warlike and that they wanted to conquer rest of the galaxy violently?

Like, they weren't worrying about population overgrowth, they were worrying about the actual war that was happening were krogan were expanding their population extremely rapidly and invading planets

Edited by SpookyMask on Aug 13th 2019 at 6:07:54 PM

Yeah The Krogan pretty much Gladly Announced that if they don't get THIER way

They were gonna Burn, Pillage, and Rape thier way across Council Space

Hell Wrex is probably the most balanced point of view and EVEN HE SAYS THE KROGAN HAD IT COMING

The brown people analogy to krogan is astoundingly stupid. It wasn't "a fear" the krogan would "overwhelm them", the krogan DID started galactic-scale invasion and tried to overtake everyone. it wasn't a fear, it was a fact. brown people didn't fucking do that and that comaprison is actively offensive to brown people because the krogans ARE a warlike species and Wrex openly acknowledge that not only they had it coming, but if you cure the genophage, they might just redo what they tried doing, in mass effect 1. what's next, a genophage analogy to the atomic bomb ?

Are you under the impression the genophage was introduced as a solution to overpopulation from a peaceful nation ? because it's not. It was the single less atrocious weapon they could come up with to stop a galactic war, by removing the biggest asset of the opposing force, bieng their explosive birthrates that made the grindgame a viable tactic for krogans.

There is something as "evolved enough" to join the rest of the galaxy. Other race weren't "given" prothean tech - they discovered it naturally, but the discovery was already a sign of their evolution - humanity, for example, was capable of making expeditions to Mars, as in, were on the beginning of the spacefaring era. That's nothing comparable to giving spaceships and laser arms to a civilization that might have been to its equivalent of the stone age for what we know and throwing them at the rachnis. The only exception are the asari and it's openly presented as technological uplifting on the protheans's part.

If humanity had been thrown into the space age without having developed a notion of history, collective memory, etchis and morality and so on, the result wouldn't have been pretty.

Edited by Yumil on Aug 13th 2019 at 5:21:03 PM

I had to step back from the PC and take a deep breath because yeah, likening brown people like me to the krogan in that we're both apparently violent and warmongering peoples... well.

As for the krogan themselves, well, as the others have said, Wrex himself, arguably the most levelheaded Krogan after Bakara, admits that the krogan had it coming.

Also, how was it that the Council used humanity as a catspaw against the batarians? The batarians wanted exclusive rights to the Verge, the Council refused to side with either, the batarians threw a hissy fit and started raiding human colonies even more. Is there some kind Extended Universe novel or comic that corroborates your assertion that the Council somehow engineered the Blitz and/or the assault on Torfan?

If I remember correctly the salarians only created the genophage to scare the krogan into surrendering, it was the turians (who weren't a counsel race at the time) who deployed it. As for the batarians, both they and humanity were colonizing worlds in the attican traverse which as a whole, is unclaimed territory. The batarians got pissy that humans were acquiring planets that didn't belong to anyone and the batarians themselves likely didn't know of till after they've already been found. It wasn't the citadels place to grant them exclusive rights to the traverse because ig didn't belong to them.

Correct. The salarians had only ever created the genophage as a means of scaring the krogan into submission. It was the turians who decided to deploy it. I think this was confirmed in Citadel during the Archive section.

And yeah, with the batarians: like I said earlier, they literally had two thousand years to colonize the Verge, time which they decided to instead spend antagonizing the Council and continuing their slaving parties. It wasn't until humanity popped up and started colonizing the Verge that the batarians decided they wanted all of it to themselves.

Edited by ITNW1989 on Aug 13th 2019 at 8:28:18 AM

oh yeah ,that too. it's true that me1 explicitly put the blame on the turians for actually using the weapon, while the salarians just created it, and makes it very clear it was anything but a joint effort from the council.

Add to that that the Turians were another species that the Citadel had to rope in to solve their problems - not uplifting them, per se, but certainly bringing them into the fold. So, again, the Citadel had to o a rinse / repeat of the Krogan situation, like intergalactic whack-a-mole.

Can't remember which character says it, but there's a fear that Humanity are to the Turians what the Turians were to the Krogan - the replacement, basically.

I think the closest you can get with the council is Crystal Spires and Togas and Deadly Decadent Court - mainly at the intermediary levels of the bureaucracy. They're The Federation, basically, albeit with more loose ties and thus are at times closer to The Alliance.

Societies bonding together for the common good. Now, where I do agree with Charles is in how the prime Directive is mocked and shuffled about - the Council claims a moral high ground but tends to falter; the whole escapade at Shanxi; the concealment of Prothean knowledge; the toleration of Salarians CLEARLY abducting sentient beings (The Yaahg you see on Suurkesh and the Krogan being held in the facility); the complete impotence and lack of interest in dealing with raids or issues of polity members (The Alliance colonies in the Verge and out toward the Terminus).

Now, the original query - Humanity taking control of the council... it's less that Shepard sees them as the Empire, but recognises that they're actually USELESS... and in the end, even a pro-human council is next to effing useless at supporting Shepard in the sequels.

yeah, again, the council is anything but The Empire. Wolrd domination isn't their goal, and they are pshyically unable to go on the offensive because while the turians certainly are a military race, they're not warmongers. You know who is the closest to being The Empire in this setting ? Pre-genophage krogans. it's all there. galactic domination as the goal, viiolent war as their primary means of doing so... only thing that's missing is an evil empreror.

Edited by Yumil on Aug 13th 2019 at 5:41:41 PM

The Turians also had Numbers which is apparently the Asari and Salarians main issues

The Asari might be the Most powerful Techwise but they don't apparently reproduce like Rabbit

Then again Elf like longevity means it takes a while for a Child to reach Maidenhood

^^^That is because though the factions that are part of council play realpolitik with each other. Its not case of other two tolerating what salarians do, its them doing it "secretly". Like I think turians and salarians were both angry at asari for hiding the protean technology they had

Like I said, considering the council members to be leader of their species is incorrect, they representatives and ambassadors, they aren't space monarchs

Edited by SpookyMask on Aug 13th 2019 at 6:46:09 PM

also that yeah. The thing that scares the rest of the galaxy from humanity in particular is that they had a war where they didn't lost by a landslide (they didn't even really lost since the council stopped the war), against the turians. Yeah sure, the turians were actively not going full-power on them, but turians are a military race where literally everyone is a reserve soldier if they can hold a gun, while humanity is just humanity and somehow in the same ballpark of power.

The galaxy is scared of humanity because they can see what they could do if they decide to square up to the turians, because if they do, they'll be the single most influencing force in the galaxy, - and because it's very much in their reach in what's very little time on Asari scale. Humanity didn't had to claim as much power as they could to be relevant, they are literally too relevant for their own good.

Edited by Yumil on Aug 13th 2019 at 5:49:54 PM