Asari in Combat

Blow their shit hole house up.

Oh wait, minimal property damage?

Polonium rounds. Lots of them, or one big one fired from a long way away.

No, not 'but' - it's not a universally bad idea, which turians have spent ages building up 'traditions and customs' so they can do it anyway without sabotaging themselves too badly, it's a good idea because it works for them. Likewise the personal intimacy of melding is not a detriment to discipline or the exercise of leadership among asari. These systems work because of their components, not in spite of them. I do wish you'd think twice before throwing around generalisations like "basically every military in existence", when what you mean is that everyone who does something notably different to humanity doesn't count because they're somehow getting it wrong.

Try applying Alliance traditions of military training to a bunch of young elcor, or asari, or volus, and see how far it gets you...

Actually yes. Yes but. Do you

Hang on (apologies for the incoming flame Neila, you're a mostly innocent bystander in this)

Do either of you know why fraternizing is a Bad Thing? Do you know why there are reasons that even the Hierarchy, one of the most personally permissible organization in the fucking galaxy, does not condone officers actively fraternizing with the men and women under their command?

Because. It. Clouds. Your. Fucking. Judgement.

Tadaa.

When you are an officer, when you hold any measure of rank, you are, by definition, responsible for the actions of those under you. People can live and die based on your commands. People can come home intact or in chunks based upon a split second call you make. Are you getting it now? Are you getting why I am legitimately, personally, pissed about you being incredibly dismissive as to the consequences here?

If you've been intimate with your subordinates. If you've fucked them. If you're a member of their family. If you've plumbed the depths of their minds. Congratulations! You've effectively compromised your own judgement. You are now making decisions through the lens of "I personally and deeply care for this person". You will hesitate in situations in which your life, and the lives of everyone else under your command could depend upon split seconds. You will question your own decisions in situations in which your judgement must be immutable and confident. You will make choices that you should not make because you wanted to protect this one person.

Officers hang out with officers. NCO's bond with NCO's. Enlisted buddy around with enlisted. And it's like that for a fucking reason.

Hi. So. Just hypothetically. There are a couple turians in this thread as it stands so quick question. Is fucking your CO's CO generally regarded as a good idea? Just, you know, out of curiosity. Judging by the miserable fuckheap that is the greater portion of the Republics military I suspect not. Hahahahaha. Okay. Okay I'll admit. This right here? This I adore.

Daia. Darling. You're not wriggling out of this that easily.

I don't understand why my words were thrown into that.

Was the whole post unclear in meaning, maybe?

.

You have no idea how asari units are structured, do you? Given avice and guidance by your superior and older Speaker is what they are expected to do. Whatever weird fantasy you have about it, it's wrong and not 'romantic' in any way.

I'm increasingly suspecting that the answer is "incredibly stupidly" also, while I'm here


Nooooooooooo...I threw it in there because it was tacitly abetting the possibility of the existence of this abortion of military hierarchy because "commandos are special". Which I take issue with.

If that wasn't clear.

It might cloud your judgement, maybe that of any typical member of your species, but we're not human. Regardless of whatever common ground we might find, we're not humans in disguise, who think and feel and react like humans do. We respect you (mostly), some of us love some of you, there are asari now, and will be many more in the future, who will call humans 'father' and look back to Earth as their homeworld and human cultures as their own, but we are alien to you.*

Honestly, it's like being taken to task for our species never inventing the hair salon.

(* I think that's a good thing, if anyone's unsure due to how I phrased that. The galaxy would be a much smaller and emptier place otherwise.)

It's not like we just go around banging everyone that gets troubled.
You don't even have to like about someone to join minds - it doesn't make you girlfriends. You don't have to share your entire being, either. Think of it as a fast way to share an entire story with every detail you imagine. What you remember seeing, feeling, etc. all at once. No forgotten details.

And not special. Different. The Asari commandos don't always work the same as the Alliance, or the Hierarchy, or the Hegemony did. Different. A lot of times they don't work the same way as other Commando units. We don't even have any real national structure between our units, and we (the Asari) elect our leaders, instead of them just being assigned from higher up.

I was never part of a unit that had anyone do something like this, but I can still see it being a possibility. Especially in a situation where someone is beyond the point of being an effective soldier anymore.
I guess you don't, but that's fine. I'll just sit over here and politely disagree.

That is, at all.

Thoroughly enjoying this discussion, please do continue! I should add, for anyone interested, the Crimson Chains offer a variety of biotic suppression tools, up to and including the polonium rounds touted earlier by Mister Aleksanders, specially nano-coated to evade security scanners! When we were still primarily slavers we were among the most successful at procuring asari, and the legacy of that lives on in both our training and weapons offerings. Contact us today for any such needs!

If you are looking into anti-biotic tools that do not violate this or that treaty on warfare, I suggest flashbangs, smoke grenades and tear gas. Biotics need to focus to use thier magic and have an idea where the target is.
Or hell, most common crowd control devices work wonders in supressing biotics in the field.

I also happen to sell those.

Certainly, if you'd prefer less effective tools at a higher price and you enjoy the thought of the taxes on said tools going directly into the economy of the people you're trying to kill, capture, or even just silence, feel free to shop at our Citadel-space based competition.

Well, I have my clientel you have yours so I don't view you as direct competition.

...You legitimately don't get it do you? You really, really don't?

Right. Okay. Batten down the hatches because shit is about to get dire.

See, this is legitimately what I love about those few of you here on the boards so adamantly determined to have the Republics be the hero, the champion of culture and prosperity in the vastness of the galaxy. You make all these pretty arguments and never actually think about the potential consequences of what you're saying. For example: the concept that someone can meld with another, can expose their deepest thoughts and desires and invite someone into the sanctity of their own mind and have the exchange be reciprocated and then not develop any personal attachments or bias implies two further things. Either/or. Either you're completely full of shit or you're right, your commanders can make decisions unburdened by emotional connections to people whose minds they've explored, it just so happens that it's because they're utter sociopaths. In which case congratulations I suppose their judgement isn't actually clouded.

It's an ugly picture is what I'm saying that either way functionally robs the process of any purpose by its very nature. If the whole point is to establish an empathetic bond and provide support on a fundamentally emotional level being attached is what's supposed to happen. That's the whole point of mutual support. And you can't have that and the objective clarity required of a commander at the same time because they're mutually exclusive.

Now let's go back to the original thrust made by Taleeze. And let's do a bit of a thought exercise. You and me.

Say you're an asari huntress, you've fought in the Reaper War, you've seen your homeworld burn, civilians cut down in the street by monsters, and the greater galaxy holds your government and military is quiet and not-so quiet contempt because of your failings. So you have a tiny sneaking suspicion that something might have gone fuckways inside your skull. Sometimes you can't sleep. Other times you sleep too much. Your appetite changes. You notice you're avoiding certain smells, certain images, certain sounds because they send red-hot flashes of memory to skewer your cortex. You gradually realize that when you enter a room you're mentally clearing it and checking for egress points. You don't feel safe with your back to a door or open window. Got it? Good. You're starting to grasp the first hint of the big, ugly, disorder that is PTSD. And trust me it's just the tip because the whole thing is a fucking iceberg the size of a moon.

Now. Here's the question.

What do you do?

According to you and the illustrious and always entertaining Taleeze, what with all the emphasis on sharing and community the huntress is obligated to tell her cadre about it. Share the burden so that they might all meditate on it. Right off we hit our first hurtle, namely: people with mental disorders don't like talking about them. Especially not in an environment like the cadres where apparently there's a pretty fucking heavy social stigma attached to it so it basically feels like tying an anchor to your neck. So, really, a program that relies on sufferers to self report is basically doing the bureaucratic equivalent trying to run a marathon with two kneecapped legs and a blinding hangover. But our nameless protagonist is a good huntress. She believes in her cadre. Besides, she tells herself, she's not really that far gone (because, you know, people are hardly objective when it comes to themselves; even asari) it's just a thing. A phase. She's done all her exercises, practiced her "mental hygiene" she should be fine.

So she shares. And the cadre, because it's a good little cadre, the very picture of Republics excellence according to you two, rallies around her to provide support and "share the burden". So we're good right? Problem solved. Thoughts shared. She'll be fine yeah?

You could not. Be. More. Fucking. Wrong.

Shit like PTSD doesn't just go away with a few hugs and a few heart to hearts. Friendship isn't enough. Lovers aren't enough. Sisters in arms aren't enough because it's a syndrome that literally rewires your brain and feeds on toxic thought processes. You can't successfully deal with it on your own, full stop. Because, as it just so happens, an organic mind. Any organic mind (yes even the special bit of blue that is apparently the asari brain) is complete shit at dealing with issues that it itself is creating. You can't really fight your own brain with your own brain. That's not how it works. And if it was I seriously doubt mental health would be as severe an issue as it is now.

But anyway, as I was saying: at best our huntress feels better for a short amount of time. But gradually the thoughts and feelings creep back in. And now? Now she's scared. She's doing everything she's supposed to do, she's meditating, she's shared with her fellows, and it's still. Not. Working. She doesn't want to be damaged as Taleeze calls it (and oh my fucking Christ could you have labeled that any more unfortunately? You don't call people who have their limbs blown off by an IED "damaged" you elitist mongler of cocks). And she's trying.

So now what?

She has two main options withing the system of the cadres as portrayed by you two. Let's set aside the second one for now and assume that, despite everything, she elects to talk to her Matriarch and agree to meld therapy. It hasn't been the first time she's sought guidance from the military matriarchs, and they're fixtures in the armed forces. Points of stability and reliability. So she sets aside her personal reservations, her fears, and doubts and dives into the connection like a good little huntress. And here we hit a hurdle much like the one we did when she was dealing with her colleagues face to face except exponentially compounded. Because, as it just so happens, people sensitive about and wary of their own fucking mind are less than likely to let other people take a peek at it. Especially, again, given how apparently heavily stigmatized mental illness is in the Republics (and once again, how utterly shitlordish of you all though, in the interests if full disclosure and for the sake of the handful of self aware asari on the boards, I'm assuming that's not how it actually works). But for the sake of our discussion let's say she goes ahead with the meld. Her boss's boss is poking around her skull now and it is a singularly uncomfortable feeling but she powers through. She's not too far gone. She wants to get better.

At best, at very best, the meld is merely an invasion of personal space matched only by the likes of mouthbreathers and people who unironically think they can pull off a goshin. At worst it's emotional blackmail material considering that the person who the huntress is entrusting with the contents of her mind is organic and completely capable of being a terrible and manipulative person (in the Republics? gasp le gasp). In neither scenario does it work unless now you're going to tell me that Matriarchs can permanently alter another person's brain chemistry and neural patters in which case I will tell you to fuck off and take your budding cranial leech with you.

Because, as we've established, PTSD and it's like are pretty fucking broad.

And here the second choice from earlier comes into play. Our huntress is uncertain, she's vulnerable, the system's not working and she doesn't know what to do. But she does know she doesn't want to go to some isolated monastery until she's "fixed". She doesn't want to be known as the girl who couldn't hack it. She doesn't want to lose her job. Her position. Her friends. Her family. She really doesn't want to spend hours and hours a day in quiet contemplation wrestling with an ugly beast that she's been trying to deal with on her own for weeks if not months now.

So she ignores it. She smiles and nods along and shoves down all those nasty thoughts and nightmares and feelings. "It worked!" They'll say. "She's cured!" And she'll smile and nod and all the while all that garbage will turn septic inside her and fester. Maybe she'll become self destructive, try to give voice to what she's actually feeling. Maybe she'll cultivate a habit, a vice, so she has a measure of control and escape from the rancid confines of her own skull. Maybe she'll just push it so damn far down that something inside her just cracks.

But I'll tell you what she won't be.

She won't be happy. She won't be healthy. And she won't be her.

And because she never actually got help. Because she never set the wound and splinted the bone when the worst finally does heal it'll be scarred over. Twisted. And crippled.

And it will be like that for years.

Why are you constantly insisting that the intimacy has to be sexual. I never said it was. I explicitly said it wasn't actually.

So not at all is what yo-

God. Fucking. Dammit. Ib-bar.

It would appear that every asari commando is a sociopath.

Such strength, such assertion of dominance! Truly, the man or woman behind the moniker of Mr_Sandman is the alpha human of the extranet! But alas, here lies his inherent weakness as well, for humans are prone to err as they grasp at things they do not fully comprehend.

Let us see...you have extolled for considerable length of this thread on how the certain members of the board, Taleeze and asari_promiscuity are wrong in their perception of PTSD (or its equivalent syndrome in the asari, as while broad strokes with illnesses across species may be more convenient, deep down we are different creatures with our different ills). Or should I instead interpret this highly educational role you have assumed, that you infact are a learned expert on the asari mind and are simply educating the alien about themselves? Please, do tell me, I'd hate to be in the wrong.

Humour me, do you derive pleasure from beating members of the sex industry verbally down for not being in the know about military topics? Truly were you one of the glorious species blessed with superior ocular sense, I'd shake your hand for being a born leader and doing your part in informing the lower castes of their place in regards to yours! But sadly, you are a disgusting human, so I shall hold my hand back forever. Maybe if the Great Shaper will see it fit for you to reincarnate as batarian, I'll greet you with delight.

To Mister Aleksanders' everlasting credit, he has done his best to remove as many of his human parts as possible.

Fascinating!

Aleksanders, may I hear you reasoning to this solution? If Akmawt is to be believed, you are a...transhumanist? Is that the correct term? Are you distancing yourself from the fleshy other humans or improving yourself through technology? Although I do admit, imagining you to do your best to be as not-human as possible does amuse me!

What's with all the fucking blinks on these boards these days?

So do you want to hegemony back or something?

As for the thread, well shit. Therapy is a thing you know? Mental hospitals should be a last resort, not something you just automatically move onto when the first stuff you try doesn't work. And just...don't use the word 'damaged' because Jesus fucking Christ.

I haven't the faintest, human female, but the forums are Cerberus Daily News after all! Human supremacists and terrorists, responsibility ranging from Bahak to allying themselves with the Reapers...such unsavoury legacy to carry with the name.

Maybe it is a guided effort, maybe it is only the instinct of us to reply to the challenge issued by these forums. As long as the word Cerberus is associated with human extremism and ethnocentric genocide, batarians will be drawn here until the very word has been turned and conquered into a rallying cry of Khar'Shan's sons and daughters!

Or to put in words you might comprehend: I will claim Cerberus and what it means as mine for sake of batarianity until the human context to it are all but extinct!