This is probably the "meat" of the writer's guide, or at least the mashed potatoes- everything I've found applied to turians in animalizing 'fics (although, to avoid incendiary responses, I won't be naming names). It's also important to note that this list is neither exhaustive nor conclusive. Most of these items can be fine if they are portrayed properly and used in moderation- I've used a fair number of them myself, and seen no problem with them, and you could probably get away with a good ten or fifteen and be fine depending on what they are; some of them even make a fair bit of sense and a story could seem odd without them. At the same time, just because nothing you did or are thinking of doing shows up on this list doesn't mean you're 100% free from any risk of animalization and can do whatever you want.

Animalization isn't a check-list, it's a state of mind, and these items are intended less to list the necessary symptoms than to provide a sense of the underlying problem that is hard to put into words. But addressing that is a whole other section.

Essentially, this takes the form of a giant nitpicky list, but it is not intended to be used as such. It's intended as a way to develop an intuitive sense of animalization and start thinking "what do all of these things tend to have in common". Some are more important or egregious than others, but I've not given them point values because, again, not a checklist.

I have opted not to name the names of specific 'fics where I found this stuff because I don't want to be accused of inciting some sort of mob. You all know who you are.

The list currently stands at Revision 7.


1. Giving turians ridiculously sharp talons.
This is very common, and I personally do not put a lot of stock into it. How could turians use tools if they cut everything they touched to ribbons? However, it only really becomes a problem if they start using those talons to go all Freddy Kreuger on everyone, especially in non-combat situations or if just a gun or combat knife would be more appropriate. Having them deliberately blunt their talons or making the talons retractable and only extended in life-or-death situations really helps; the big issue is having those talons used inappropriately in situations where 'shredding' would not normally be considered a reasonable response.

2. Giving turians ridiculously durable plating, or making them otherwise tougher than is reasonable for a humanoid.
This is directly contradicted by the ME1 codex, not that that stops many authors.

3. Making turians' spurs, the edges of their plates, or other random bits extremely sharp, or making the plates themselves extremely rough.
The general rule for this sort of entry is, if you find yourself spending more than a sentence at most to make a Thing out of it in-story, it is probably excessive.

4. Calling turian skin "hide", and/or making it much thicker or more durable than human skin.

5. Giving turians a very powerful sense of smell.

6. Making turians rumble, roar, growl, or otherwise produce animal sounds alongside or in place of other ways of expressing emotion.
Stuff like purring or chirping jumps out much less, but can still get weird. Additionally, any species with vocal cords complex enough to produce structured language can no doubt make a reasonable approximation of these sounds, or just say "grrr", if the situation calls for it. This is about making them a frequent, inherent part of turian communication and expression.

7. Making the turian language reminiscent of or composed of the sounds described in #6; having humans be unable to speak it and/or turians be unable to speak human languages.
To some degree this is inevitable. Any species with a different mouth structure is going to be able to produce phonemes others can't. But is it possible for humans to even approximate them and be understood? And are those phonemes just odd sounds, or what a human would identify as sounds animals in particular make?

8. Making turians hyper-emotional, particularly being quick to anger or arousal; giving them Large Ham behavior such as suddenly pouncing on and beating people who make them mad.
As mentioned previously, there is exactly one instance where a turian breaks composure, and that is Saren Arterius at the beginning of Mass Effect 1. Otherwise, universally, they keep an extremely tight rein on their emotions and when they do lash out, do so in a very cold, premeditated, careful manner (think Garrus tracking down Sidonis in Mass Effect 2).

9. Having turian sexual attraction be mediated by pheromones, some sort of magic fertility radar, or other physiological processes; as opposed to compatible personalities and surface sex characteristics that could be readily observed.
As a general rule of thumb, if it wouldn't be possible for an alien who spends a lot of time with turians to learn how to evaluate a characteristic as effectively as a turian would, it is 'fertility radar' and not a surface characteristic.

10. Making turians (almost always males) "mark" their mates in some visible way.
A single bite on the neck or shoulder is most common, which raises questions about how the scarring from such an event could possibly be that permanent. Sometimes the mark-ee refuses to cover it with clothing or is not allowed to, despite the fact that no turian in the Mass Effect games is ever seen with such a mark and they are never seen without clothing that covers the area the mark would supposedly go.

11. Making pair-bonding a physiological process as opposed to a cultural/personal one; possibly involving special pheromones or "marking" as in #10, and possibly altering the "magic radar" behavior discussed in #9.
Some people go so far as to have sex equal bonding, which begs the question of how Garrus's one-night stand as mentioned in his romance dialogue could have happened. LotD and FanFiction member BatJamags termed this "permabonding".

12. Making turian pair-bonds so strong that if one member of a pair dies, the other is caused to fly into some sort of frenzy or even just die outright.
DarkDanny first brought this to my attention targeting quarians, but I have seen it affect turians as well; he coined (or at least passed on) the term "soul bonding" to describe it. Sometimes the soul bond is so strong, the surviving mate doesn't even have to be told the other has died but instead just knows the moment it happens. Sometimes this happens instantaneously over interstellar distances, implying that pair-bonding is superluminal and nonlocal!

13. Giving turians a "heat cycle" that makes them uncontrollably hornier and/or essentially forces them to mate or pair bond, possibly by intensifying the physiological "magic signals" discussed in #9.
Many, many animals do have fertility cycles that can affect their sex drive, including humans. But for humans it is not noticeable without careful statistical analysis.

14. Giving turians limited or no ability to resist physiological urges- typically sexual, but also parental or protective drives, hunger, etc.

15. Making turian sex heavily and/or universally dominance-submission oriented.
Similar to #3, the general rule for this sort of entry is that if you find yourself spending more than a sentence at most to make a Thing out of it in-story, it is probably excessive.

16. Making turian sex universally "rough" or painful, or having turians be universally aroused by pain.
This also covers situations where turians wouldn't be in pain while mating with each other, but a human partner would be- depending on the 'fic this may result in a requirement to "be careful", or the turian in question just not caring and the human getting off on it anyway. Recall that turian skin and plating are not super-durable.

17. Making turian sex involve heavy amounts of biting, especially if it's hard enough to draw blood.

18. Making turian tongues "rough".
For whatever reason, authors always use that exact word. It's a bit frightening.
In this case by "rough" we mean in texture, not in the sense of #16. Although if it shows up in a 'romance' 'fic, it may very well be both at the same time.
Some terrestrial birds do have barbs or other rough structures on the forward sections of their tongues, but others (specifically birds of prey) do not, and when we see Garrus's tongue flop out of his mouth at the end of his recovery mission in ME2, it appears smooth and shiny.

19. Giving turians odd or oversized genitals, or including features like knots or ridges.
This is almost entirely restricted to Garrus in Shekarian 'fics and can get extremely scary extremely quickly, especially when the author doesn't have a good idea of how 'vanilla' sex works to begin with.
There's a difference between making turian reproductive anatomy different from that of humans' (which makes sense, as they are aliens), and making them resemble something that the local "adult superstore" keeps behind the counter and will only sell you if you ask for it by name.

20. Making turians show their throats as a submissive or 'come hither' gesture.
I actually think this makes a lot of sense, especially in combination with a not-hard-enough-to-do-any-real-damage version of #15. That patch of skin on a turian's throat looks like the only substantial place on their upper body where there's no plating, so it stands to reason it could be quite sensitive. Some 'fics take this in weird directions, though, especially playing up the submissive angle. The throat might be an erogenous zone; it is definitely not something any turian needs to worry about another actually ripping out in day-to-day interaction.

21. Making turians regurgitate food to feed their children.
While they may physically have this ability, that doesn't mean they actively use it- especially when preprocessed food or simply a blender would be available. Interestingly, in terrestrial birds the tongue barbs described in #18 serve to prevent regurgitation in many species where they exist.

22. Having turian couples build 'nests' for themselves and/or their children.
Giving them some sort of vaguely nest-shaped furniture is one thing, but oftentimes the 'nest' is made up of just random accumulated objects or some specific biological material and the compulsion to build it is instinctive.

23. Giving turian culture strict sex roles or otherwise heavily institutionalized sexism.
The question of where all the female turians went throughout 99% of the trilogy's playtime is something every writer needs to answer in his or her own way, and is beyond the scope of this guide. I, personally, have seen the best results in stories that either indicate (in defiance of that bizarre episode in the ME3 Omega DLC) that turians are not strongly sexually dimorphic and therefore females have been around us, unnoticed, the whole time; or simply retcon them in. I suppose a story could come up with a plausible reason why turian females are rarely if ever seen beyond Palaven, but obviously a prospective author would have to approach that sort of decision very, very carefully. I don't want to say don't ever do it no matter the circumstances, but you probably shouldn't ever do it no matter the circumstances.

24. Causing all female turians to consistently display specific negative personality traits.
Being overly proud, jealous, or vain is most common, but sometimes they are shown to be mindlessly aggressive and other times weirdly submissive. I don't know whether it's because authors perceive them as a potential competitor for Garrus's affections, so that authors can feel better about subjecting them to the absurd levels of sexism animalization typically entails, or what exactly, but it's creepy as fuck and often results in an odd situation where male turians, en masse, prefer human women over their own species.

25. Making turian culture, language, and/or behavior heavily focused on hunting, packs, or other predator-inspired constructions.
There is an entire section in the following chapter that addresses predators, carnivores, and the implications thereof, but for the purposes of the list: some mention of predatory metaphors or concepts is certainly fine, when appropriate (or even inappropriate). Humans do that all the time, especially in military or paramilitary contexts. But while some humans might go so far as to describe themselves in a predatory light, it's not a formative component of most human cultures and very few people seriously consider predation to be an ingrained element of human psychology.
Note that there are some biologists who consider humans to be apex predators precisely because their technologic civilization makes it much harder for any animal to kill them than vice versa. I don't have strong feelings on this naming convention one way or the other, but since the distinction here between animal-type predation and technologic predation is important, I will be restricting the meaning of 'predator' to more traditional pack, ambush, or pursuit predators.

26. Giving the turian legal system excessive or barbaric punishments, such as the death penalty for relatively minor offenses or bizarre methods of torture/execution.
This is explicitly contradicted by the Mass Effect 1 codex (not that many authors care), which states that the Turian Hierarchy has no single uniform legal code, most infractions are handled by a turian's superiors in the form of interventions, and the maximum sentence mentioned is a lifetime of hard labor.

27. Giving turians convoluted clan/family structures with patriarchs, approvals for marriages, carefully-maintained bloodlines, and other elements more at home in the Old Testament than a spacefaring society.

28. Giving turians "houses", nobility, or other hereditary or title-based constructs, as a part of their government or alongside it.
The ME1 codex is fairly clear on the concept that the Turian Hierarchy is a meritocracy where advancement through society is determined by non-hereditary military and civilian citizenship tiers. Based on similar military rank structures and civilian bureaucracies in governments on Earth, it is likely that higher tiers receive not a great deal much more pay or fancy accoutrements than lower tiers. While it is possible to present monarchies in a more modern light (look at Britain and the United Arab Emirates for two very different examples), I find that such things still clash tonally with the rest of what we see of turian society, and more to the point that's not what most authors do- they go full King Arthur with courts and chambermaids and all sorts of regency romance tropes.

29. Having turians speak in an archaic or overly formal manner.
There's two dimensions to this- one involves just making turians speak in a way that no modern person ever would, sometimes even verging on straight-up Ye Butchr'de Olde Englishe territory. The other involves making them speak in a way that is properly formal in setting where it would not be appropriate- Sparatus is of course going to speak more formally when debating policy in Council sessions, but that doesn't mean he or any other turian talks like that all the time.

30. Making up "turian" words that are actually just Latin with few or no changes.
This is on the list because the connotations of Latin as an ancient language can make its overuse cause turian culture to seem archaic, but it's something I look out for to begin with because it's just lazy writing.

31. Claiming that the turian language has no word for "love".
I see this line a fair bit too and I'm wondering where it actually comes from. Presumably one person originated it because it repeats exactly, but I have no idea who, where, or why. It also seems rather implausible to me that turians could both have developed as an organized society on their own and interacted with other Citadel species like the asari for so long that they don't at least have a rough equivalent or loanword. I mean, there probably isn't a word that has an exact one-to-one mapping to the English 'love', but that doesn't mean a whole lot- look at Greek, with its "eros"/"agape"/"philos" distinction- and we know they have words for closely related concepts like attraction and pair-bonding.

32. Focusing excessively on oaths and other ritualized displays of honor as opposed to a personal moral code.
They probably don't think highly of individuals who go back on a promise, but there's a difference between simply taking betrayals seriously and approaching the subject in a ritualized or even superstitious manner.

33. Causing the turian military to rely on essentially Antebellum tactics.

34. Conflating a "not one step back" unwillingness to retreat while defending a valuable objective with the idea that turian soldiers will not take basic defensive measures or make tactical withdrawals from worthless objectives.
Being well-disciplined is not the same thing as keeping to excessively rigid formations, taking no steps to avoid or remove threats that are heading directly at you, or (as RandomRockets put it) charging directly into gunfire like idiots.
While I'm sure turian forces would make suicidal charges or stand around without cover under heavy enemy fire if there was absolutely no other way to accomplish their objective, they are not stupid and do care about the lives of their men. (That, and generally taking the stupid option is not the only or best way to accomplish an objective- there's a difference between a suicide mission accomplished with standard modern tactics and just being suicidally old-fashioned, in that the former is much more likely to actually work.)
To make a long story short, the song is called 'To Die For A Cause' and not 'To Die For No Reason Whatsoever'.

35. Giving the turian military outdated unit structures such as legions or centuries.
This- like the throat thing- is another borderline case, and typically doesn't stand out unless other elements of turian military practice are made more archaic as well. There are somewhat legitimate reasons for it, not in the least because presumably those names are translations and as a result are picked as best fits from a wider pool without a lot of thought to their connotations- but that is not an excuse to be lazy and use archaic or historical terms when more modern ones are available and would work just as well.

36. Making sparring and physical combat heavily ritualized or ceremonial.
There's a difference between making sparring structured in the sense of having rules like a contact sport, and making it ritualized. As a general rule of thumb, rules relate to the actual functioning of the match and have a clear reason for existing; ceremonies relate at most symbolically and wouldn't really change the outcome if they were altered or removed. Having participants wear protective gear or assigning point values to different strikes would be good examples of the former (Archangel1207 developed a good system), while requiring participants to recite some sort of oath at the beginning of a match or requiring specific decorations of some kind nearby would be examples of the latter.

37. Giving the turian military a reliance on sparring and physical combat (especially heavily ritualized as in #32) as a means of not just "blowing off steam" but resolving command decisions such as promotions.
There's kind of a grey area here involving interpersonal issues with two different approaches that are difficult to pin down objectively. I think the best way to draw the line is that sparring shouldn't be connected to other specific, cultural institutions (i.e. things that are written down in a book of laws somewhere) as opposed to a unique interpersonal dynamic confined to two or more participants. The basic idea is that "You two don't seem to like each other and it's affecting unit performance. Go work it out in the ring" is fine, but "whoever wins the most matches hath the right to first pick of bondmates" is not.
Note that reasonable exceptions can be made for institutional things that obviously do relate to sparring- it would make sense, for instance, for a turian's performance in matches to affect her hand-to-hand combat certification.

38. Having advancement through the turian military determined by displays of physical prowess and bravery, and not tactical insight or administrative ability.
In basically all modern militaries, the soldiers who wade through enemy fire and come back with a handful of trophies do not make General. Assuming they pass their psych evaluation, they are given a bunch of medals and top out at Master Chief Petty Officer at the absolute highest.

39. Confining turian scientists, engineers, and other non-military occupations to very low positions in society, or suggesting that they are 'dishonorable'.
Even the goddamn krogan know to treat their eggheads right. There's turian scientists on Noveria and the Citadel, and Lorik Qui'in is a successful businessman. None of them give any indication of being rejects from turian culture or the Hierarchy, and other characters specifically mention that Qui'in still holds to it.


And, finally, most importantly:

40. Attributing turian cultural or psychological traits to instincts or direct results of their biology, as opposed to an interplay of biology, history, environment, and other factors.
In scientific circles, this is often called 'reductionism', and is disturbingly common.

41. Using superlative adjectives like 'primal', 'feral', or 'savage' to describe the actions of turian characters.
This is kind of a no-brainer, really. But people keep doing it anyway.