The Joker Issue

[sinvraal]

I have to get something off my chest, but it's annoyingly complicated. I find I can't wholly agree with either side of this Joker issue. The only spoiler here has to do with him in ME3, as I've seen very little of the other spoilers. This is a reaction to a reaction, an attempt to articulate what I consider a nuanced problem

Comments

[skellington1]

I think you already know that I disagree, strongly, when you say it isn't actually a disability issue. For a whole lot of us it is. Saying that EDI isn't a lesser being would be well and good if we didn't exist in a society where so many people think that virtual love is IT for people with disabilities; unfortunately, we don't. In fact, it feels like being expected to laugh at being the brunt of a joke.

...because I do think the whole 'robot body' and 'he loves a computer' is a joke. A lot of that actually stems from things you point out -- EDI is used as a superficial gag character in many ways, without any investigation over what it means to be an AI. Why would an AI feel any kind of pair bonding? Why would an AI accept a bipedial robot body, over the abilities of a starship? How would a being that can be tracking so many different things at once at such fast speed ever really relate to a human? Instead, it'll be "As she gets more 'intelligent', she gets more human, and boom, human body and luv."

In short, it lessens both

[sinvraal]

It'll be interesting to see exactly how it's handled, but I see what you mean about how it will likely be read by the audience. I don't personally see it as meaning Joker isn't 'good enough' for a relationship with another human (or alien), but I can see how it might be read that way by an audience steeped in certain biases toward disabled people.

It could be an issue of viewpoint. I guess I'm looking at it from the perspective of wondering how exactly EDI's relationship with humans works from her point of view. But sadly those nuances won't be explored, so instead of being a fascinating dissection of what it means to be sentient, it falls back on feeding a negative stereotype. And most players will only see the latter.

I'll reserve more judgment until I see the final result, because for me a great deal will lean on how exactly it's executed. But I do see your point! So thanks for making it.

[virusq]

Very well spoken. I agree with you completely. I didn't mean for my reaction to degrade EDI in any way. I love her character. I love that she and Legion are kind of above all the human nuances of hormonal attachment, but still have a sense of loyalty and protection

[sinvraal]

I'm honestly confused as to how the devs arrived at their handling of Joker's character, because he seems like such a missed opportunity. Having him disabled in the first place was a good step, then for some reason they never dared to actually develop him as a person, nor his relationship with Shepard. It's like they couldn't decide how to deal with the death issue so they just ignored it, which only serves to make it more glaring.

As always, I cringe when they talk about listening to fan feedback, because BSN is a hellhole. The constant noise of "Shepard and Joker can't fuck LOL" (and variations thereof) is just revolting. The fembot solution is such a... lazy cop-out. It doesn't make EDI more interesting, it doesn't explore AIs, it doesn't do anything for people who wanted to learn more about Joker.

I hope you guys get through to them. I know the frustration very well.

[skellington1]

It's also fairly easy to argue that as reserved and defensive as Joker is about all important things, it's really not a big leap to suggest that the things not talked about are the most important.

Of course, that's falling under your 'psychology' heading, isn't it?

I also take issue with any relationship that starts with "Ew, she's like my mother" and goes to sexeh times -- or even starting with the 'old married couple' stage. I've never seen a romantic relationship that worked like that at the beginning.

[sinvraal]

I agree that it isn't a leap, but if we never actually see any of those things, then they may as well not exist. Building a character based on negative space only goes so far, because it leans almost 100% on what the audience infers rather than who the person is. You see it differently than I do- between us, Joker ends up being an utterly different person. By that point, what BioWare does is irrelevant, because the character is a construct unique to each viewer.

One could argue that the mother comment was teasing. I've heard many people refer to their spouses as their mothers, usually in a mocking light. But they still sleep with them.

At any rate, I never saw an even remotely romantic things between them, but that's more because EDI isn't human than anything else. Adding a sexual angle to the relationship just feels like a weird, pandering cludge.

[skellington1]

I totally see your point on the first note (characterization in negative space).

On the second, though, I think that the spouse-as-mother joking happens, but it doesn't usually happen with your crush -- it happens with the person you've been with for years. Their dynamic *could* be, as Kasumi says, an 'old married couple', but most couples don't start out sounding like old married couples. The tone never worked for me.

You already know I agree with you in regards to how the AI ought to have different reactions/motivations than a human character, so I'll leave that part.

[sinvraal]

I don't disagree with you on the tone issue. That's the reason I say I want to see how they handle it. What if Joker wasn't attracted to EDI anyway during ME2? What if any attraction only happens in ME3? Will it end up making sense for him, or will it come off as silly and forced? I don't have a ton of faith that it'll work, but I'll see how they approach it before deciding what I think.

[metaraymek]

I'm going to be brutally honest here: as someone who never "got" the appeal of Joker (I actually found him far more annoying than anything else, though that could also be due to my irrational loathing of Seth Green projected onto that, too) and always ignored him whenever possible, and that I didn't care for EDI either, I must confess that I'm having a difficult time with any major opinion on the issue. It's one of those "*shrug* Okay then" moments for me.

Personal feelings on the characters themselves aside, I think I better than anyone know the whole situation of getting attached to a character that doesn't fall within the parameters of LI status and wanting something to go further. If that makes any sense. So to an extent, I am sympathetic to the Any!Shepard/Joker 'shippers who are probably hurting really badly at seeing their ship get sunk (so far as we know, of course). I would like to see their ship happen and have it be kinda like... I dunno, Liara and Feron in a non-romanced Shepard playthrough? If that makes any sense

[sinvraal]

The fact is the characters are all pretty lightly sketched in, but Joker suffers more than most. So I think a great deal of what we think of him has to do with our own inference. I grew to like him more in no small part because I wrote his POV, so I doodled in more lines to make a character I enjoyed writing and who served as a good foil for reserved characters like Kaidan. That's my Joker. But it's probably a different person from the ones the BW writers see, or what the hardcore shippers see. I'm pretty sure that one thing alone is responsible for most of our grief as character-shippers of any stripe.

[leidhen]

Short note here - I think I remember EDI suggests that she wouldn't have taken over the ship when she had the chance because she has some allegiance to 'her fellow crew members'. It's been a long time so I'm not sure I remember well.

Good point about Joker's character, though. It's sometimes the case with very skilled people that they focus entirely on that. He says so himself, I think, when you ask him of his opinion of the other crew members. 'You need to ask a ...people person'.

[sinvraal]

See, I don't believe EDI isn't capable of forming attachments. I think a strong case can be made for her being sufficiently complex to generate internal states that weren't originally programmed for. This happened with humans- certain physical structures in the brain most likely evolved for one thing but spun off into something else.

So I don't see EDI as "unemotional", for lack of a better term. (Legion, either, but that's another kettle of AIs). But I think it's lazy exalt human emotions over potential non-human ones, and assume that sentience comes packaged with sexual and romantic urges.

Agreed on your point about Joker.

[leidhen]

Actually, I couldn't agree more about how human emotions are lazily projected onto AIs. You would expect an AI to have a fundamentally different consciousness and that would be a fascinating thing to explore in itself. But I guess most people prefer to just recognise things they already know.

(The same happens with alien characters, by the way).