It is very, very tempting to use the list in the previous chapter as the definitive guide to avoiding animalization in your story. And, indeed, if you scrupulously avoid doing any of the things above you will avoid a lot of the red flags that I and other critics on sites like the Library Of The Damned use to see if a 'fic we've just skimmed is bad enough to bother reading in depth. But there's more to it than that.

I cannot stress enough that the list is a guideline, just like the Mary Sue litmus tests that surface from time to time. Just because you wrote around the specific symptoms a list has picked up doesn't mean your story is free of the underlying problem- and, at the same time, if your story does indeed hit a few things on the list but deals with them intelligently then it is probably going to be much more thoughtful, well-developed, and all around interesting to read than if you scrupulously purged anything possibly objectionable. So, instead of assigning point values to the entries up above, here are a few things to think about:

Be Cautious About Using Terrestrial Animal Models

I suspect that a lot of otherwise very good writers who take the time to do research and try to build up additional physiology and culture for turians fall into animalization because they model the species too closely on real, terrestrial animals about which more information is available. This is a legitimate scientific method used commonly in paleontology and astrobiology, but it needs to be adjusted when the creature you are trying to predict more about is 1) alien and 2) intelligent.

Turians have some traits resembling raptors and other predatory birds, certainly. But they are not the same thing. They're an extraterrestrial species that evolved on a completely different planet and are not, in fact, related to Earth's raptors in any way shape or form. They are just as likely have traits found in literally any other Earth species, or not even found on Earth at all.

More importantly, turians are sapient. That means that their bodies and brains have had to change to accommodate complex tool use, language, and a host of other things that, in known terrestrial biology, exist only in humans and not raptors. Any attempt to model turians using terrestrial species as a guide therefore should consider not just birds or dinosaurs but humans as well, and most importantly it should consider which traits could plausibly survive into a complex technological society and which would die out well before the turian species discovered fire.

These changes could be huge- humans and bonobos, our closest living biological relatives, share 98% to 99.4% of our genetic makeup, but we could not be more different in terms of physiology or behavior. We call animalistic traits animalistic because non-intelligent Earth animals display them and humans typically don't, so it's exactly as reasonable to assume that those traits would be dropped in the evolution of turians as it is to assume turians retained traits found in Earth raptors.

Be Cautious About Using Terrestrial Cultural Models

What we see of turian culture and governance is very alien, but that doesn't stop authors from trying to find historical Earth cultures to use as models. Just like with animal models there is nothing wrong with this- and in fact it needs less concern over a naive application devolving into animalization. But animalizing authors often draw exclusively from very ancient cultures (particularly the Romans, probably because of the turian pseudo-Latin naming conventions), and even authors who don't do this deliberately need to be conscious of the fact that historical cultures all share the common element of being in the past. It gets exponentially more obvious as one moves further back from the 20th century, but to some degree it's always there.

Historical cultures didn't have space travel, or reliable medical care, or mass media, and if those things are added obviously the way those cultures operated would change drastically. Some of them might have been progressive or not in their day, but as they go further back in history more and more things become products not of the cultures themselves but of the time they existed in: when these cultures are transplanted onto Palaven without making adjustments they come across as backward and anachronistic. This is completely at odds with the modern, technologic nature of the Turian Hierarchy we see in the games- they didn't become a galactic superpower with Iron Age tactics or economics.

Generally when looking for inspiration from historical cultures, I would suggest not just looking at what seems special about that culture from a modern eye, or even what they themselves considered to be most important, but what made them different from their contemporaries and neighbors. The elements that are the same are likely products of the time or region- they are not what you are looking for. It's the differences that are probably worth carrying over.

Remember That There Is A Difference Between Carnivores And Predators

I, personally, think that it's very likely turians do prefer or even require a meat-heavy diet- just look at those teeth! But whatever direction you as a writer decide to take their dietary habits, it's important to remember that agriculture is very important in the development of advanced civilization. On the basic level of energy in versus energy out, anything larger or more complex than a small village simply can't be sustained on hunting and gathering alone.

In humans, the earliest adoption of agriculture was between ten and fifteen thousand years ago, and only three thousand years later did the first cities of Sumer develop. Would aliens follow the same trajectory? We have no way of knowing, because humans are still our only example. But I don't see any reason why a roughly humanoid species with a roughly similar culture would not follow a roughly similar evolution, and if that's the case then turians stopped hunting and started ranching in the very distant past. They might be carnivores, but they certainly wouldn't be predators any more than humans are. That's my take on the issue, anyway.

Seek Balance In All Things

It's very difficult to say whether evolutionary processes actually keep constant any sort of "powerfulness" attribute, whether a species gaining one ability must necessarily lose another of somehow "equal value". These things are, in the real world, extremely difficult to quantify and study.

However, in fiction, being "underpowered" or "overpowered" ("OP", for short) are fairly well-defined concepts that every writer should be aware of. The terms are more common in tabletop RPGs where characters actually have numerical stats for things like strength and endurance, but the concepts apply just as well in narrative writing when the hard numbers are taken away. The problems with OPness are, again, somewhat beyond the scope of this guide, but a short version of one issue is that if a character is too strong in too many areas, they can only either win in a way that is unearned and boring, or lose through contrived authorial fiat.

How does this relate to animalization? Well, as much as they make for crappy characters in a literary sense, animalized turians are almost always OP when it comes to their actual physiology. They might do a terrible job of showing it, but at least in theory they're a species intelligent enough to have invented interstellar flight- and yet, they're also as strong/fast/perceptive/whatnot as wild, predatory animals that don't have that intelligence. The animalized turians don't want a piece of the ability pie, they just take the whole thing.

Introducing limitations on turian physiology (and actually thinking through them) does a lot to keep animalization at bay. In mechanical terms they gained something when they became an intelligent species... so think about what traits of animals they may have lost.

As a general rule, try to keep turians and humans (and the other Citadel races) roughly physically equal with each other overall- turians might have, say, sharper senses and quicker reflexes than humans, but would be less durable and tire more quickly. It's generally not a good idea to make these gains and losses too extreme, as just in general that causes situations where one species is completely incapable of doing some things and utterly trounces everyone at others, and that can make it very hard to write about those groups interacting in a shared setting.

Moderation Goes A Long Way

There's a matter of degree to everything. Just like typos, stilted dialogue, or scientific errors, an otherwise good story can feature some animalizing elements and not be crushed under the weight of them. A lot of the entries on the list, on their own, aren't even animalizing at all. Just in general I'd say the best way to approach the problem of animalization while writing is to be aware of it, but don't stress out about it.

So Does Good Writing

Probably the best way to avoid animalization in a story is simply to learn to write well- structurally well, not just putting the right words together to form a sentence. If your turian characters have complex personalities and motivations, they won't need to lapse into fits of rage just to move the plot forward; if your relationships have actual chemistry, you won't need to rely on pheromones and heat cycles; if your culture has development and depth that allows it to stand on its own you won't need to create a carbon copy of 3rd-century Rome; and if you can write a Garrus-Shepard love scene tastefully there is no need to fill up space listing characters' pain thresholds and rely on 'instinct' to move things along. I have never seen a 'fic succeed on the merits of writing in spite of rampant animalization, but at the same time I have never had an otherwise good 'fic leave a bad taste in my mouth because of rampant animalization. It's just another thing to think about.

Good luck, and happy writing.

-AdmiralSakai

Special thanks to Serketry for contributing his invaluable knowledge of all things biological, and to HerrWozzek and the entire Library of the Damned community for supporting my venture and supplying me with some of the worst literary offenders for study.

ADDENDUM 25 March 2017: Holy crap, a thousand views in less than three days! I am, quite franky, just amazed by the reception this little guide has gotten from the ME fan community- most importantly how supportive everyone has been of it. I've had people present reasoned arguments about this that or the other thing, and I've tried to respond to them and incorporate them in the document as best I could, but everyone has been very civil and while I've had a few people thank me for giving them something to keep in mind while writing I've gotten absolutely no hostility or claims that I'm attacking anyone's work. After tracking through so many horrible 'fics to make this thing, the response of the community has just been a wonderful breath of fresh air.