Mass Effect: Reaper Dreams

Identity Crisis

As much as she loved Jean, Ashley couldn't bite her tongue on this one. Even more than Shepard, this was one of her hot buttons.

"Oh, here we go again, Rome burns while Nero fiddles," said Ashley.

Jean looked at her quizzically. "What do you mean?"

Ashely took a deep breath. "Indulging oneself in meaningless frivolities while serious problems threaten to overwhelm us. I don't want to get into this too much, but you know what? Your friend Deborah can go fuck herself."

Jean was shocked. "Ashley, that's no way to talk."

"I know you meant no harm," said Ashley, "but it's a bit of a sore subject for me. Do you know that if I had joined the military in my grandfather's time, I wouldn't have been allowed to be a combat marine without undergoing breast reduction surgery? I thank God every day for mass effect technology. We take for granted just how much the tech has changed our lives, especially as women. Imagine if I had to do that 10k in an old style sports bra with only micro-fibers for support?"

"It would have been hell on you," said Jean.

"At my size, it would've thrown me off balance, hurt my back, and turned eighteen minutes into thirty," said Ashley.

"Yes, but I'm not talking about a sports bra," said Jean. "It's the armor. I hear that those protrusions sticking out of the chest can be quite dangerous in combat."

Ashley rolled her eyes. "First of all, it's not dangerous—that's just an urban myth created by social crusaders who have no clue or background in engineering. All that nonsense you hear about breast armor crushing the sternum assumes that the design is ass-backwards—concave instead of convex, but that's all a moot point anyway. Armor itself offers little to no protection against kinetic force. Even in medieval times, when weapons were crude, the thickest armor was proof only against stabbing weapons. No matter the shape, or the style of armor, a thin piece of alloy or composit could never protect you from a round traveling at hypersonic velocities. In fact, it wouldn't even work against a simple punch from one of the stronger alien species.

I've been hit by a Krogan before, several times in fact. Without the inertia fields my armor conducts, my ribs would have been fragmented and my heart and lungs would have been smashed right through my shoulder blades regardless of the shape of my chest piece. The style of the armor a soldier wears is nothing more than decoration. Without the mass effect technology, it's completely useless."

"I see," said Jean. "Well, then, if those boobs on that armor aren't useful, why have them at all? Isn't it rather undignified?"

Ashley reached for her display pad and pulled up some combat footage. She held it out for Jean to watch.

"Look," she said. "Notice the alien species? Turian battle armor is a stylistic choice that reflects their decorum and history. Krogan Armor exaggerates the size of their humps, and that very slutty looking Asari armor hasn't changed in thousands of years because they completely lack inhibitions. Maybe it's because they've never had to endure gender orientated body shaming.

Quarian armor accentuates their extraordinary hips and knee joints. Why? Because they choose to present themselves in a certain cultural aesthetic. We are much the same, our Alliance armor often reflects ancient designs that have nothing to do with function. Do you know who initially created the notion of breast armor?"

Jean shook her head. "No, but I imagine you are going to tell me."

"The Greeks, Romans, and Persians," said Ashley. "They wore a breastplate carved in the exact likeness of a male chest. Often their armor was even decorated by nipples to further sexualize it, which pleased the wives and lovers of the soldiers. We've been reproducing that look in one way or another for dozens of centuries without ever questioning its origins.