Argonian females have breasts???

xenowarrior92eb17_ESO

@Trappeur we humans...we like to add boobs to everything...2nd answer is furries or was it scallies?

starkerealm

yodased wrote: »

Nature is a complex mother. Argonians are more amphibious in nature than reptile, as they can exist in freezing temperatures without having a heat lamp for a hat.

I'm pretty sure Argonians are endothermic. Which isn't quite as crazy as it might sound, as there are some partially endothermic reptiles, including some large lizards. They can't fully regulate their own body temperatures, but they can generate some heat internally. However, the Opah is a fully endothermic fish, so the idea that Argonians must be cold-blooded because their lizards isn't entirely true, there's just no real-world examples of a fully endothermic reptile. (Assuming Argonians are actually reptiles; appearances aside, that might not be accurate.)

starkerealm

TheShadowScout wrote: »

Alinhbo_Tyaka wrote: »

Human species bias. The same problem that affects sci fi movies and alien abductors. It seems human bipedal, upright posture is just about the only form intelligent life can take. I'm not sure nature would agree but content producers sure seem to.

Some. Some content producers.





But yeah, in general its... forehead bumps. More likely a question of the makeup budget then the creators creativity...

FarScape and B5?

Tan9oSuccka

I clicked in for the cringeworthy posts.

Not disappointed. Gahhh!!

TheShadowScout

starkerealm wrote: »

FarScape and B5?

Indeed... some stories did better on the "alien" front then others but... even the best have "All too human (looking)" aliens, often because they could not afford more then a foirehead bumb for an alien race they would only show for one side episode, tho sometimes to lead the viewer to make more of an emotional connection towards those that "look like us"...

For those who don't recognize them all:

TheShadowScout wrote: »

The Shadows (Babylon 5)

TheShadowScout wrote: »

Elcor (Mass Effect)

TheShadowScout wrote: »

Hynerian (FarScape)

TheShadowScout wrote: »

Hutt (Star Wars)

TheShadowScout wrote: »

Horta (Star Trek TOS)

Wildberryjack

The breasts seemed odd to me. Argonian was one race they could have actually made androgynous and used only the male rig. The "female" characteristics could have been achieved with more feminine feather-hair, horns, fins, and softer smoother skins with more varied and brighter colors (yeah I know the male of the species in the "animal kingdom" usually has the bright colors but most think female when they see that).

Maryal

They are implants.

Recremen

Itacira wrote: »

My thoughts : fantasy is still way too constricted by real life gender roles and the pressure of gender conformity

I think this is the real answer, but I have a lore theory to help. For one thing, Elder Scrolls races didn't evolve as far as we know. They were created by the gods whole-cloth pretty much in the exact form we see them now. Second, we can see beings that predate mortals also have what appear to be breasts. Various Daedra and Aedra are depicted with breasts, for instance. Unless these are purely post-creation self-modifications they use specifically for interacting with mortals (and given how Hermaeus Mora looks that seems doubtful and unnecessary) then I think it's safe to assume that "male" and "female" are some sort of raw Aetherial concept, form predating function, a basic building block of the universe. Now maybe it's always been that way throughout cycles, or maybe these are just the forms that have survived between kalpas. Maybe there really was a kalpa where the gods and daedra were more laid-back and iRL concepts like evolution were allowed to form the world from the initial guiding principles of the Earth Bones. Remember, nothing in the prophecy says that the Dragonborn can't be an amoeba. Either way though, it definitely appears that breasts are simply a universal constant in this series and we can ignore the typical scientific principles of form following function.

Claudman

Argonians aren't just reptiles...They're Reptile-Mammal-Amphibian-Avians. Natural evolution didn't create Argonians, the Hist did and they are essentially genetic nightmares who are alien to the rest of the Mundus. Honestly, I don't know why we're using real life science in a game where we fling fire spells from a magical stick. lol

Also, Khajiit have only two beasts because they came from Bosmer who were altered by Azura according to their creation myth.


Praise the Three.

Another note, some Argonians apparently sweat. They're weird.

Ardan147

It is that way because the Hist decided it would be so. Argonians' forms are determined by the Hist. So apparently the Hist decided to give Argonian females two lumps on their chests to resemble mammalian breasts so they would more closely resemble the other races.

Sheezabeast

They’re actually pouches to smuggle Skooma

Kiralyn2000

TheShadowScout wrote: »

Elcor (Mass Effect)

Of course, Mass Effect also went full-space-opera-cliche in the other direction, giving us the Blue Skinned Space Babe race who can breed with literally anything.

TheShadowScout

Kiralyn2000 wrote: »

TheShadowScout wrote: »

Elcor (Mass Effect)

Of course, Mass Effect also went full-space-opera-cliche in the other direction, giving us the Blue Skinned Space Babe race who can breed with literally anything.

Yeah, there is that. Remember what i said about cheap tricks to make us people go all sympathy for one "alien" race... though there -are- hints that Asari are actually using their biotics on some subconscious level to appear "pleasing" to any race, kinda like...

...so they only look "space babe" because the protagonist is human. Maybe.

They still can and like to breed with everyone, because lonely nerds that might like to... imagine things... DO make up a large portion of their gamer consumer base... and I truly wish the developers had not chickened out on that one with the "mind-mating" shtick in ME2 but left it to the viewers imagination... (In my headcanon, they are still -all- futanari )

twev

yodased wrote: »

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20151016-five-animals-you-never-knew-make-milk-for-their-babies

Nature is a complex mother. Argonians are more amphibious in nature than reptile, as they can exist in freezing temperatures without having a heat lamp for a hat.

Beyond that, you are bringing real world physiology to a video game, which unless some kind of teaching tool, is invariably going to cause issues.

We can shoot fireballs out of our hands, there are bipedal cats and "lizards", we store thousands of kilograms of weight in a very small bag.

This game would be very, very boring if we started to apply real world constraints for it.

Would you ever pvp if you had one life? Hell no, you would barely leave town.

One of those things that you have to seperate yourself from reality to accept things as they are presented

And houses have a different number of windows on the inside, compared to the outside.

But to the point:
Why do Argonians even lay eggs, considering that there are no children of ANY kind in the game.

And I can't even imagine the DNA that would be required to make offspring of all the varied inter-species 'couples' possible.
So breasts of any kind on any of the females is purely for visual disambiguity.

Arciris

Just adding that Natural Evolution could allow something like this.

We are not sure those are actual breasts, as we don't see ***, and lactant Argonians are never mentioned, to my knowledge.
So what we see may just be protuberances that may have a very different function than nurturing offsprings.

In Human Females, breasts are "inflated" at all times, even when not lactating, unlike in other mammals.
Human breasts are in fact just a protuberance of fat around the mammal glands and ***. The existence of that protuberance is unique to Humans, just like full Bipedism is.

Full Bipedism and breasts are actually related.
In upright position, Human Females can not show their intimate area at all times, like quadrupedal Females can.
In our monkey cousins, it is the *** area that "inflates" when Females are receptive for procreation, communicating their fertile state to the males that way.

Human Females however, not only can not show their fertility that way (and not in any clear way anyway) but their fertility cycle is a looooot shorter than in other Mammals of approximate size and longevity.
Also sexuality has other social functions than just produce offsprings (not going to enter in detail here : )
As a result, Human Females have developed constant inflated breasts in order to be sexually attractive at all times.

The same could happen, in theory, to any other bipedal species.

Just saying that such an outcome is not impossible, biologically speaking.

But yeah, this is a fantasy world, and Argonians were created with magic, so anything goes :P

Edit: for some weird reason, profanity filter includes the word that starts with a N and ends with Ple and that is the correct term to reference the small external protuberance of the mammary ***, from which we all got our very first meal.
Also the word that starts with a G and ends with tal, which is the scientifically correct term to reference intimate areas is censored.

mikemacon

This is a game setting that has vampires, werewolves, dragons, extraplanar baddies, ash titans, steampunk “dwarves”, insidious giant sea slugs, animated skeletons, zombies, moons that are actually the remnants of dead gods, and magic...

...but it’s Argonian boobs that trips you up?

::turns and stares into camera::

starkerealm

TheShadowScout wrote: »

Kiralyn2000 wrote: »

TheShadowScout wrote: »

Elcor (Mass Effect)

Of course, Mass Effect also went full-space-opera-cliche in the other direction, giving us the Blue Skinned Space Babe race who can breed with literally anything.

Yeah, there is that. Remember what i said about cheap tricks to make us people go all sympathy for one "alien" race... though there -are- hints that Asari are actually using their biotics on some subconscious level to appear "pleasing" to any race, kinda like...

...so they only look "space babe" because the protagonist is human. Maybe.

They still can and like to breed with everyone, because lonely nerds that might like to... imagine things... DO make up a large portion of their gamer consumer base... and I truly wish the developers had not chickened out on that one with the "mind-mating" shtick in ME2 but left it to the viewers imagination... (In my headcanon, they are still -all- futanari )

No, they're always supposed to look like a blue skinned space babe, regardless of the viewer's species. Also, the assari are the tip of the iceberg for where Mass Effect's world building starts to fall apart. And, once it starts, it just makes things worse every time it tries to dig itself out.

EDIT: It's been a few years, but I'm pretty sure that scene in ME2 was a direct response to a discussion on the old Bioware boards. Making problems that didn't need to be solved, worse.

ArchMikem

Trappeur wrote: »

I have been playing ESO for quite a while (from day one, actually!) and I have just noticed something: female Argonians have breasts! Natural evolution would never allow that, unless Argonians have mutated from amphibians to mammals!

What are your thoughts on that?

Shadd-oh, aka Thumperhead, aka Kresnick-the-elder

My Argonian's Hist Sacs have the slider alllll the way up. Its funny cause they're larger than the other races.

TheShadowScout

starkerealm wrote: »

TheShadowScout wrote: »

Kiralyn2000 wrote: »

TheShadowScout wrote: »

Elcor (Mass Effect)

Of course, Mass Effect also went full-space-opera-cliche in the other direction, giving us the Blue Skinned Space Babe race who can breed with literally anything.

Yeah, there is that. Remember what i said about cheap tricks to make us people go all sympathy for one "alien" race... though there -are- hints that Asari are actually using their biotics on some subconscious level to appear "pleasing" to any race, kinda like...

...so they only look "space babe" because the protagonist is human. Maybe.

They still can and like to breed with everyone, because lonely nerds that might like to... imagine things... DO make up a large portion of their gamer consumer base... and I truly wish the developers had not chickened out on that one with the "mind-mating" shtick in ME2 but left it to the viewers imagination... (In my headcanon, they are still -all- futanari )

No, they're always supposed to look like a blue skinned space babe, regardless of the viewer's species. Also, the assari are the tip of the iceberg for where Mass Effect's world building starts to fall apart. And, once it starts, it just makes things worse every time it tries to dig itself out.

EDIT: It's been a few years, but I'm pretty sure that scene in ME2 was a direct response to a discussion on the old Bioware boards. Making problems that didn't need to be solved, worse.

Oh, I do not doubt they added that scene for those reasons. Doesn't matter, they -did- add it... even if its a weak attempt to duct-tape their fluff, it IS in an official game, and thus has to be considered for all in-character fluff discussions.

And as I said... OoC they of course were supposed to be blue space babes, to gain an emotional response from the gamers who play the game. Duh! (its interesting to look at the "Art of Mass Effect" pages around the Asari... how they played around with concepts until they ended up with the blue space babe look... tho the first draft had them be "beautiful green alien girls", which then someone noticed was maaaybe a bit too Star Trek Orions...)

And most universes have (more or less) small details where the world building shows cracks. No surprise really, considering that the developers are not perfect, often have to juggle requests from various soruces, and other considerations...
...even tho it often makes me wish I had a time machine and could go back to the early fluff development stages of various games or TV shows, and have a little talk with the worldbuilders in charge...

ChunkyCat

Rake wrote: »

tiddies

I lulled harder than I should have.

starkerealm

TheShadowScout wrote: »

And most universes have (more or less) small details where the world building shows cracks. No surprise really, considering that the developers are not perfect, often have to juggle requests from various soruces, and other considerations...
...even tho it often makes me wish I had a time machine and could go back to the early fluff development stages of various games or TV shows, and have a little talk with the worldbuilders in charge...

I don't want a time machine.

Also, you're not completely wrong about worldbuilding. I'm guilty of this as well. There's always going to be stuff around the fringes of your setting that doesn't quite mesh, especially as the narrative goals, and the scope of the story changes over time. In fact, I'm legitimately dealing with having to rework and expand a setting bible to account for rewrites right now. And don't get me started on the stuff that just doesn't make it into the setting bible. So, yeah, there is a point here. No fault on that subject.

The problem with Mass Effect's world building is, when something was a little odd, the team went back, and picked at the thread, exacerbating the anomaly, and opening up new problems.

When the asari were just inexplicably human looking, it was weird, but that's the genre, so we take it in stride. The scene draws attention to that weirdness, and then asks you to think about it. If you didn't notice this was odd beforehand, congrats, you now do. Also, the scene doesn't offer an explanation, it just says, "hey, look at this thing that doesn't make sense," and the topic is never brought up again. That's something to avoid.

The equivalent would be if a TES game had dialog to the effect of, "hey, why do Argonian women have boobs!?" And no in the scene had an answer. Congrats, if you never thought about it, now you're going to.

Why don't characters ask why Argonian women have enlarged, mammalian breasts? Because they do, and this is fairly common knowledge. Why shouldn't that dialog have come in with the asari? Because it'd been 30 years since humans first encountered alien life, over 2500 years since salarian and asari first contact, and over 1500 for the turians. At this point, it should be common knowledge, if this was something that was happening.

So, like I said, it takes a non-issue, and then blows it up, so you'll think about it. When writing fiction it's important to resist the impulse to pull on those strands.

Also, not that it matters, but Mass Effect specifically states that the racial names aren't proper nouns, so they shouldn't be capitalized mid-sentence (the same way that "human" isn't normally capitalized.) It's a nice touch that doesn't get considered very often in fantasy/sci-fi.

starkerealm

Ardan147 wrote: »

It is that way because the Hist decided it would be so. Argonians' forms are determined by the Hist. So apparently the Hist decided to give Argonian females two lumps on their chests to resemble mammalian breasts so they would more closely resemble the other races.

Have we considered the possibility that the Hist is just a perv?

starkerealm

DjinnRa wrote: »

The breasts seemed odd to me. Argonian was one race they could have actually made androgynous and used only the male rig. The "female" characteristics could have been achieved with more feminine feather-hair, horns, fins, and softer smoother skins with more varied and brighter colors (yeah I know the male of the species in the "animal kingdom" usually has the bright colors but most think female when they see that).

Amusingly, they didn't, back in TES3. But, because of how clothing was coded, they'd get breasts whenever they put on a shirt. Not sure about Daggerfall or Arena, though.

I'm trying to remember the game I played where there was, choice that had massively different secondary sexual characteristics on one of the playable races. You could determine their gender based on their facial structure, or something. I forget.

Luigi_Vampa

kendellking_chaosb14_ESO wrote: »

Trappeur wrote: »

I have been playing ESO for quite a while (from day one, actually!) and I have just noticed something: female Argonians have breasts! Natural evolution would never allow that, unless Argonians have mutated from amphibians to mammals!

What are your thoughts on that?

Shadd-oh, aka Thumperhead, aka Kresnick-the-elder

No mutation Argonians can lay eggs or give love birth when in Black Marsh this is not a problem but when outside of Black the baby needs to find a source Hist sap. All Argonians need it at birth and those that don’t go crazy or die.

While mammalian breast create milk for their offspring, Argonian female consume excess Hist sap can store it for their offspring. If the female is outside of Black Marsh with no Hist Tree she will live birth and let the baby lick the sap (Argonian mounts can’t suck like suck). If inside Black Marsh or near a Hist Tree they will lay eggs in a pool of Hist sap for the egg to absorb.

Female Argonian have to be ready for both so they store up extra when they can.

Except I'm pretty sure some of the lore experts have said that no, Argonians do not breast feed hist sap to babies. At least no one has ever provided a source. Can you find any source that supports that? Argonians born outside of Blackmarsh with no access to hist sap do not go crazy or die. In Shadowfen there is a quest dealing with just such an Argonian. He was born in slavery and never had hist sap. Thus he was not connected to the hist and was socially stunted in his dealings with other Argonians. Without that connection he was not able to pick up on subtle social queues and body language that is natural for a hist connected Argonian. You connect him to the hist and he is fine, he was never crazy.

Brittany_Joy

Trappeur wrote: »

I have been playing ESO for quite a while (from day one, actually!) and I have just noticed something: female Argonians have breasts! Natural evolution would never allow that, unless Argonians have mutated from amphibians to mammals!

What are your thoughts on that?

Shadd-oh, aka Thumperhead, aka Kresnick-the-elder

I believe its due to a heavy masculine influence in the art department combined with the convenience of the same body structure from the technical department. The beast races lost their digitigrade legs to reduce the time needed to adjust armors to their 'special needs'. Biologically argonians with breasts don't make sense as pregnancy hormones are needed to supply breast-milk and argonians don't go through pregnancy as they are more similar to constructs of magic than a true biological being.

Madhattr64

You can milk anything that has “***”. Lol

Androconium

Dogbert (hiding behind the couch) "Build it and they will come"
Dilbert (sitting on the couch) "Build what?"
Dogbert "I don't know; I hadn't planned on getting this far..."

Banana

Same reason Khajitt only have 2. Fantasy. Although a boob less argonian and a khajitt with 8 would be different.

BigBragg

BigBragg wrote: »

GimpyPorcupine wrote: »

Still can't figure out why the "females" have mammaries...

This is also something that has bothered and baffled me for the longest time. Only thing I can think of is the hist gave them boobs to help increase the success rate of finding gainful employment as maids.

DanteYoda

Don't think into too hard ES lore isn't... exactly.. amazing.