First, it would be really helpful if you actually quoted the codex entries and discussions you reference. For example, Liara has a lot of dialogue in all 3 games. It’s difficult to follow your argument without being clear what exactly you mean. Perhaps what you think you heard is actually not as convincing as you think it is. Or perhaps it’s really something that should be considered. Hard to tell without a quote.

Second, I would like to ask you to refrain from personal attacks. By saying “Everybody who has paid any attention” or “if you listen to” or “if you bother to read” you are passive-aggressively implying that the other person has been negligent or ignorant of the game’s content and therefore, their impression was invalid. I’m pretty sure we all paid a great deal of attention, just walked away with different opinions of it.

You simply can’t or won’t get it. That is why it is offensive. You think that some retconned foolishness on the part of Bioware negates the fact that they are nothing but bimbos with guns?
They are not only exotic colored space hookers but they are also categorically representitive of the Feminine Other. They embody all of the feminine traits in the galaxy with their sensuality, diplomacy, emphasis on ‘culture’, and most tellingly their affinity for biotics which is a bs word for magic. They’re not the most scientific or militaristic because those are male traits. No they have to regulated to being the space hookers that make nice with everyone with their bodies and ‘diplomacy’. Stereotypically feminine attributes.

Just because we were not informed of the Prothean involvement in the early development of the Asari until the third game does not mean it is has not always been a part of their back story for the wrtiers. Prothean involvement in the evolution of the Council races has been hinted at since the first game when Shepard stumbles across what appears to be a recording of a memory of an early human who was experimented on by the Protheans. You are using the fact the developers admitted to making the Asari look like hot alien women to make assumptions about what information the writers put in the lore for the background of the Asari and then discounting everything else about them and writing them off as sexist and racist. You’re also completely discounting story reasons that the Asari might have been given such a unique method of reproduction, they needed someone to help Shepard sort out the visions from the Prothean beacons and the Asari ability to meld is the closest the current cycle has to how Protheans communicated.

It actually is easy to say that we see far more Asari who are not dancer’s than those that we do because the Asari are the most populous race in the galaxy and if you walk through the Citadel in 1 or Illium in 2 or the Citadel and Thessia in 3 you’ll see more Asari just standing around talking than the comparative few handfuls there are in the bars dancing or in Azure during Lair of the Shadow Broker and in each game it’s not likely that you would visit the bars more than a handful of times unless you are going just to sit and stare at a dancer because there aren’t that many missions that require you to visit the bars. That’s not even counting the number of Asari you face in combat through merc groups in the first 2 games. And I hate to burst your bubble but there was a human female dressed up just like the dancers in the first game, her sister sends you to try to talk her out of working in Chora’s den.

I actually am sensitive to this issue which is why I think you are taking one comment about the physical design of the Asari and blowing it way out of proportion to express your hate for them and discounting everything else in the lore of the ME universe in regards to the Asari. If the Asari’s only purpose in the ME universe was to serve as some kind of wish fulfillment there wouldn’t be characters like Shiala or Benezia or Matriarch Aethyta and there certainly wouldn’t be a Liara. Liara is far more important to the overall plot of the trilogy than any of the other characters that travels with Shepard yet if you are to be believed her sole purpose is to be there for sex, which is ironic since Liara had never actually had sex with anyone before we meet her in ME1 and if Shepard doesn’t hook up with her likely still hasn’t by the end of ME3. Personally, I’d say Miranda’s appearance in ME2 (gratuitous ass shots were everywhere) was far more sexist than the overall presentation of the Asari. The Asari are sexualized in the game but they are also shown as far more than that as well and I think it’s a disservice to only focus on one thing.

I still think your bestiality argument is stupid. The non-human races of the ME universe are not animals, they are still people even if they aren’t human. A human having a relationship with one of these other races is not that same as someone deciding to get it on with a goat. It’s a cheap argument to belittle the personhood of the alien races especially since no one forces you to have a relationship with any of the alien races. If you don’t like it ignore it, you’ve got Ash, Miranda, Jack, Kaidan, Steve and Samantha to keep your Shepard company. It might not be realistic in the real world but in the universe of ME there is nothing wrong with a human hooking up with an Asari, a Quarian, a Turian or a Drell.

Just because something has become a trope of sci-fi doesn’t make it bad.

Tropes themselves don’t have to be bad. This one is because it is rooted in the Imperialism, Sexism and Racism of the 1st half of the 21st century. It is also bad because the game relies so heavily on it.

We face far more Asari in combat situations or in other non-sexual situations throughout the series than we see dancers.

That’s not something you can compare because:

1. It’s not something you can actually quantify. What counts as a “situation”. Is two lap dancers in a bar one or two situations? What if you visit a bar multiple times?

2. It’s not clear what the “normal” ratio of dancers vs. soldiers should be. But I think it’s enough to point out that ALL of the exotic dancers in the first and second game are Asari. I think they added human exotic dancers in the 3rd one because it was getting awkward even for Bioware. There are no Salarian, Quarian, Turian, Krogan, Drell, Elcor or Hanar exotic dancers.

you fell into the same trap as the males of the races of the Citadel of focusing on the sex.

That’s not how it works. That line you are pointing out is completely undermined by the way the game presents the Asari. Players are never given a choice in this regard. Simply the fact that the developers included so many choices to watch Asari dancers or to “romance” already justifies this as part of how the game works. Or quote LaChapelle, “they may not be whores, by they are all wearing a whore’s uniform” http://imgur.com/gallery/TyjWd

I still think the comparison to bestiality is stupid and that if you are going to make that comparison you have to make it for all the possible human/non-human pairings

I’m sorry, but I think in this last paragraph you aren’t really making any sense. Why do you thin I need to consider the other human/non-human pairings in order to judge whether or not this is kinda Bestiality? Of course, all human/non-human pairings would be bestiality. I point out the Asari because they stand out. They were specifically made for this kind of wish fulfillment.

As for their mating habits I have one word for you, Protheans.

The Protheans are not real. It’s not like there are ACTUALLY Prothean out there and this is a faithful documentary about them. You are putting the cart before the horse. Bioware really wanted to have exotic sex chicks in their game. They even flat-out admit it in their making-of: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2IcNQktHIs

The Prothean bullshit is the flimsy excuse they came up with afterwards to rationalize it. There is no point discussing it because it’s a carte-blanche excuse that could justify ANYTHING. The question is what Bioware CHOSE to have in the game and rationalize this way. And it’s sexy aliens you can fuck and have a lap-dance with. It’s amazing that I still need to argue this point.

But here is a question from me: clearly you are somebody, who is not very sensitive to this issue. Where would YOU draw the line? Describe to me an alternate Mass Effect universe where YOU would say that the Asari are more of a sexist wish fulfillment rather than a believable alien race?

As for their mating habits I have one word for you, Protheans. The Protheans are responsible for the Asari’s natural biotics through genetic alteration/engineering which led to the development of the how they mate. They weren’t naturally evolved that way, Javik admits as much if you take him on the Thessia mission. So even the writers of Bioware have made the Asari’s methods of reproduction not a naturally occuring one. Their ability to reproduce with any of the other races was because of how this engineering for natural biotics altered their nervous systems either directly or over time and while it’s not realistic within the universe it does make sense. The Asari also choose to mostly mate outside of their race now because of the Ardat-Yakshi. The Protheans meddling helped create a genetic abnormality among their people that causes their methods of reproduction to kill the partner and the problem only occurs within the offspring of purebloods which is why children between Asari are frowned upon.

The genophage among the Krogan made it a given that any female Krogan we saw was going to be tied to childbirth. Their whole race has been nearly stripped of the ability to have children so is it very likely that we are going to run into a fertile Krogan female on the battlefield when their race is nearing extinction? Eve showed she was plenty capable of handling things herself when she took out those 2 Cerberus goons and when she talked about becoming Shaman. But we were curing or not curing the genophage, what else would we be talking about than the ability to bear children?

I still think the comparison to bestiality is stupid and that if you are going to make that comparison you have to make it for all the possible human/non-human pairings, the Asari aren’t the only race humans are hooking up with in the ME universe. If this were more realistic, the aliens would likely not all be so human-like in appearance but the main races that have discovered the Citadel in the ME universe were all the subjects of Prothean meddling early in their development which is the in universe explantion for the similiarities between the races even though they are still vastly different. Humans would naturally be genetically more similar to the animals on our planet but Asari mating doesn’t share genetics between the partners. I doubt it’s a coincidence that all the Council races are fairly human-like even though Turians are based on birds and Salarians on lizards. The Protheans were trying to turn the primitive versions of the currents cycle’s races into the the ones that would defeat the Reapers, they just seem to have meddled more with with the Asari and it had far more effects on their development on them. Which is likely due to where the Asari were in their evolution compared to the other races before the Protheans left them all alone after the Reaper invasion in their cycle started.

However, I wanted to address some of your concerns as I feel you seem to be missing the point in some of your arguments. First of all, the fact that there are other books that do it doesn’t mean that it’s fair game to do this. In fact, I pointed out in my article how this is a Sci-Fi trope that has been with us for almost 80 year snow. It needs a revision badly. Bioware did the opposite.

Also, the problem I describe doesn’t really have to do with the all-female society. It’s the fact that they are Asari are constantly sexualized and can have sex with everybody. This simple fact exposed them as not a serious analysis of what an all-female society would be like. They are here for cheap titillation only. It doesn’t really compare to the book you cited.

In fact, we rarely even see any other Females except for the Quarians… and yeah, there is that one Female Krogan in ME3. Guess what her job is? Having babies. Don’t even get me started with EDI.

And no, I refuse to accept as “a given that a new sci-fi universe is likely to have some sort of hot alien chick with oddly colored skin”. We have been swallowing this crap for so long, most of us can’t even see how wrong this is.

Asari are not animals.

But they aren’t Humans either. So why do they make them look like humans and why can you have sex with them? In fact, genetically speaking Humans should be closer to Animals than they are to Asari. I call bullshit on this. Again, long-time Sci-Fi trope that is in dire need of serious reconsideration.

Oh, and as a side note just because the Asari reproduce through their melding ability it doesn’t mean they don’t actually physically have sex.

Exactly my point. It’s a device to deliver cheap titillation for the cost of plausibility or consistency.

Personally, I could care less how realistic it is for the Asari to exist. The fact that they do exist in the ME universe is a good thing IMO, and let’s face it, what are the odds of any of the species in ME existing? Or even the biotic powers the games use? Because it’s their natural ability to use biotics that led to the Asari’s unique form of breeding. It’s a given that a new sci-fi universe is likely to have some sort of hot alien chick with oddly colored skin, at least the Asari are actually more than just strippers, hookers or slaves in the ME universe.

Honestly, equating mating with an Asari to bestiality is the dumbest thing in this entire post because Asari are not animals. If you’re going to go there with it you have to say the same for all the relationships possible in the series that do not occur between 2 humans. And you really don’t want to go there, because that covers just about all the most popular romances and some of those fans can be scary.

Oh, and as a side note just because the Asari reproduce through their melding ability it doesn’t mean they don’t actually physically have sex. Did you miss the furor on Fox News over the FemShep/Liara “sex scene” (how much do they ever really show during those scenes?) when ME1 came out? That scene has a fair bit of physicallity in it, as do all the Shep/Liara scenes and even the Shep/Consort scene from ME1.

The fact is that the writers are telling a story, and nothing should get in the way of that.

Writers can tell any story, yes. But that’s not an argument against critique. That doesn’t mean that any story is good just because a writer wanted to tell it. There are standards by which one can analyze, judge and value a story. This is one. The writers of Mass Effect brought this up themselves by introducing scientific explanations for what is happening. They could have left it out.

I can’t imagine how insane you must have gone over Reapers.

The Reapers are cheap, yes. But they are much less implausible. They are very un-human after all. They also aren’t modeled after Racist / Sexist stereotypes so that’s certainly way better than the Asari.

Of course, that last boss of ME2 is another thing. But let’s just not get into this discussion:
http://www.gameranx.com/features/id/5131/article/collective-denial-mass-effect-jumped-the-shark/

I still don’t understand why you are using the term Racist

Ok, let’s do an analogy that’s perhaps easier to see. Let’s suppose a game called “Moss Effect”. In this game, there is an all-female species you can romance with. They are all indistinguishable from human children. They all look like 4-year old girls, except they have no belly button. They look like this because.. whatever – high gravity or something. A detailed codex entry has a contrived experimentation. Oh yeah, and this species also behaves like human children. They have biologically evolved to be naturally curious, kind and in some regard a little naive. But in spite of their appearance, they are full-grown adults. They keep their appearance until an age of 800 or so. They are sexually mature and in fact, sexually very active. They prefer to mate with older males. They like their companionship because they can learn so much from them.

If you say that Moss Effect is not a pedophile Phantasy because hey, it’s aliens! The missing bellybutton is the proof! It’s a different species. It’s totally fine to have sex with them – That’s the same as if we say Asari are not racist.

From all the possible ways in which an alien can look, from all the possible kinds of relationships one could have in a game, Bioware specifically selected the one combinations that perfectly fulfills the fantasy of having clean, guilt-less sex with very exotic, promiscuous, foreign women.

If there was a perfectly reasonable Scientific experimentation, this would have been an excuse. But the opposite it’s true. It’s all a deliberate, contrived construction with this one goal.

I agree that the racist aspect is not quite as easy to see because normal inter-racial relationships are a lot more common nowadays. But one still prominent example is sex tourism.

I assume you also hate Star Wars at this point?

Not that much. The original trilogy didn’t care about being scientifically plausible, so there is no point calling them out on that. It was otherwise rather harmless anyway. The Sexy Slave thing with Jabba was probably questionable, especially because it was so out-of character of Leia not to even say anything. But I consider this Future Fantasy anyway. And I’m completely disinterested in the expanded universe.

As for your numerous other examples. Yes, there is a lot of Fridge Horror ( http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FridgeHorror ) in pop culture. For example, there are some who argue that Lord of the Rings is a racist phantasy. I feel like he they may have a point there: http://www.rediff.com/news/2003/jan/08lord.htm

But the above article focused on the Asari of Mass Effect. And in fact, I clearly established that this is not an isolated case but a tired cliché. I single them out because I have been thinking a lot about Mass Effect recently. The Asari are higly visible in this game. And also, it’s a very recent series that had the opportunity to end this outdated trope – and it failed.

Now as for how much Science there needs to be in Science Fiction, I pretty much agree with what that one Extra Credits episode says. I think you should go either one way or the other.
http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/technobabble

If so I am shocked that you would think games have no cultural significance.

I have no clue where you got that from. But I’m glad we seem to agree at lest in this regard. That’s why I suggested for you to refrain from arguments like “It’s just a game”. Sure it’s just a game. But a game expresses certain ideas. Explicitly and implicitly. Deliberate or accidentally. It’s perfectly valid to scrutinize them. That’s cultural significance is all about.