tuchanka:

oh man yeah i have words for this involving how much i agree

in the mass effect universe humans don’t have much societal power in the first place, and ashley’s distrust of alien species is not because they are aliens, it comes from the prejudice against her family by aliens and humans alike due to her grandfather’s attempt at peaceful surrender to a turian fleet when he saw no way to win without extreme human casualties

ash tells liara that she’s had to work twice as hard in the military to be considered half as good because she’s a woman, and she’s had to work five times as hard because she’s a williams (while still being turned down inexplicably for positions she arguably was not only qualified, but overqualified for—and after watching the same thing happen to her father)

so she is not just going to be like WELL OKAY LET US WORK WITH THESE ALIENS WITHOUT QUESTION after seeing what happened to her grandfather and living with the repercussions of what he did since just about everyone involved decided it was an enormous mistake

meanwhile the mass effect fandom is under the misconception that tali is an innocent woobie waifu who would never hurt anyone how cute!!!!!!!!!!

she wants to commit genocide

if we are going to talk about racism in mass effect can we discuss garrus and wrex

garrus is a turian, turians are one of the most powerful races in council space, they control a large amount of the military, have a seat on the council, etc and not to mention have had quite a hand in writing and crafting history/literature/etc as it is

so what does garrus say to wrex, a krogan, who he has been taught by the turian government are all without fail a bunch of bloodthirsty monsters (and that’s why the turian government had to drop that sterility plague, it was for the best!)

“wow wrex!! you sure aren’t like those OTHER krogan.  i thought they were all bad guys!”

ummm

^^^

I hate how Ashley gets dissed so hard because people fail to realize that, in the Mass Effect world, humans are not the dominant species. They may be in most other sci-fi worlds, but not in ME. They’re the new kids on the block and still having to prove themselves. Remember that part in ME1 where there’s no human on the Council? Humans were (and are) still having to prove themselves to the rest of the Council races.

I have not much to add on the Geth, other than that they are kind of the Frankenstein’s monster of ME: their creators decided not to take responsibility for guiding their creations, rejected them (in this case, attempted to destroy them all), and everyone has to deal with the fallout.