Days of Shades

I thought I'd get through ME3 before posting about issues I have with Joker and, of course, EDI. I thought I'd managed to avoid some of the Joker/EDI nastiness by shutting her down hard early on. I was pretty thankful for that, actually.

But I thought wrong.

Last night I triggered the ambient dialogue wherein Joker is basically asking Mordin about ways to have sex with the fetish-bot over the intercom. This happened after I told EDI to leave him alone, and before I was even given the chance to tell Joker to lay off, so the only way to avoid it would have been not to enter the medbay.

I think that maybe it was an attempt to show that the physical side of relationships isn't off the table for Joker; unfortunately it ends up being even more offensive than just leaving it ambiguous.

Implying that a thirty-one year old person with a disability hasn't figured out work-arounds for their own condition yet is insulting on multiple levels. It plays into multiple misconceptions and assumptions: that he's never been (and couldn't be!) sexual up 'till now, wasn't intelligent enough to figure it out for himself, and needs special help from someone else* - someone, I'll add, who isn't even human.

If you live with a disability, you are more aware of your capabilities and limitations than ANYONE else. It's YOUR body; you figure it out because you have to, every damn day. Any half-way decent doctor will offer you private, professional support, and will offer it early -- there are pamphlets, books, and support groups, all of which Joker would have been familiar with before he was 18 -- unless I'm supposed to believe that somehow sex is MORE taboo in 150 years than it is now. Any half-way decent doctor will also defer to the patient on multiple issues, because they know that the patient is more aware of their own limits than they are.

What caps it, though, is that because of how the entire ambient is framed -- who it's with, the fact that it's over intercom, the ending -- it's immediately and painfully apparent that it's supposed to make the player laugh. And I can't fucking forgive that.

*There's a whole other post on the idea of the Special Someone that I'll write in a bit. In the meantime, please be aware that there are a lot of issues here and I'm happy to attempt to explain anything that doesn't make sense -- but I might not do a good job. This whole thing is finding sensitive spots I hadn't even realized were there, and they're all interconnected, so I'm doing a lot of angry processing and my thoughts aren't as coherrent and articulate as they might otherwise be.

Also, though all of the processing is related at least indirectly to Mass Effect, some of the revelations have come through conversations with PwDs or from writing (and reading reactions to) my own fic -- there's kind of a lot going on in my head at the moment.

I mentioned to E last night that I hadn't actually played the demo yet, and he suggested I get on that and he'd be happy to watch. So I played the demo while giving full commentary, and he went to sleep rested his eyes, occasionally sitting up to say things like "I thought kids couldn't die in video games?"* and "Nice one," and, in a very, very small voice, "oh."

(That last was when I said "Huh, let's try this!" and charged the Atlas.)

( Here there be spoilers. Yarr. )

Non-spoilery reactions:

1.
When the Normandy swooped down:
E: "Is that your ship?"
S: "Yes! That's my beautiful ship! AND MY PILOT."
E: "I know. I only asked so you could say that and be all proud."

2.
Just as I was thinking "Did Shep's butt get bigger?" Erik said "HEY! She has your ass!"

I'll see what I can do about screenshots this evening or tomorrow.

*Nope. Players can't kill kids! Only devs can kill kids!