While I agree 100%, think about what you're saying. Those odds that 1 person out of the several hundred she will interact with online will be a creep does not make those other guys creeps...
I refuse to believe you've even once in your life talked to a women who games online if you think creeps are "one in several hundred".
We've really deviated from what I was trying to explore. I guess that's impossible here... oh well, thanks for trying to help...
Your arguments have been made and debunked (sorry, "explored" over and over in this thread. There's a fucking hashtag for them.
I've been recently reading some stuff about how to create an alien species for a story I'm currently writing and came across
this link which has interesting information and links to other interesting sites. Some of the articles referenced over there that I've actually liked were the two following ones:
- The first one explicitely mentions Mass Effect, so I think it'd be interesting to link it here.
- The other one seems to consider different theories about aliens and if it's possible that they'd be similar to us.
I recently read The Mote in God's Eye and the alien species was without a doubt the best part of it. It was interesting, because the aliens shown there while being bipedal, had a really different mindset, culture and society compared to humanity in the book. Their sexuality is kept as a secret for a long while and when it's finally unveiled it has quite a long standing impact in their history. The author of the blog where the original article links sex (more how the species reproduces than in a more specific way) with a lot of social customs, which honestly makes a lot of sense too.
It's a shame videogames don't explore non-antropomorph alien species more. I get that for some stuff like early Star Wars and Star Trek it may be complicated to go all out due to the need to use costumes and other budget-related concerns. But videogames shouldn't have the same problem. An example that's given in one of those articles is that in a world with much higher gravity than ours, having 2 legs would be impractical.
One of my favorite sci-fi novels is A Fire Upon the Deep (by Vernor Vinge, who coined the term "singularity"); it's pretty much space opera, but with a ridiculous level of imagination and creativity in each and every page. The book centers heavily on an alien species that resemble dogs... but each sentient individual (or "pack") is made up of four to six of them, of mixed genders, communicating via super-fast short-range ultrasound. And the book explores ever single ramification from there. For example, close physicality is difficulty as "thoughts" intermingle, and is pretty much only done for inter-pack sex. Something resembling immortality is possible, as second-hand memories are shared between members of the pack, which are replaced as they die. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
The book also features other fascinating aliens, including but not limited to a species of plants uplifted by another species, equipped with artificial memory, speech and locomotion devices. It's freaking great.
Really disliked its two sequel books, though.
Mass Effect wanted so badly to be Video Game Babylon 5.
It failed.
Yeah, they didn't try to hide that the Citadel is pretty much the titular station. :D
Man, B5 was so good. If there's ever a series that would benefit from revising its special effects, it's that. I wonder what Straczynski is up to now that Sense8 was cancelled.
I DO weirdly like Yoshida because he's a 'thigh-guy'. As a girl with thighs that barely get tinier no matter how much I work out, it makes me feel a wee bit better than some people would like 'em. xD
"Some"? Het men are wired to love plump thighs and round figures in general. It's mostly women (and fashion designers, of which you can probaly count het men on a hand's fingers) who seem to be obsessed with looking like stick figures. Yoshida is just appealing to pretty much every men's tastes.
But to be fair, the theme of men being utterly wrong about what women find attractive is a recurring theme in this thread, so we're both guilty of this. In that respect, I guess gay people have it easier at least. :D