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Roko's Predicament as Allegory for Gender Dysphoria

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Thrillho:
I will happily start a thread, if I remember/have the energy :psyduck:

I will not be offended if someone that's not me wishes to go for it in my stead before I get around to it.

Dandi Andi:

--- Quote from: Thrillho on 26 Mar 2019, 14:04 ---*raises hand* First of all, 'death of the author' is bullshit.
--- End quote ---

Firm disagree! I can say from experience that an author's intentions are not always reliably transferred to the page. There have been many times (some even on this very forum!) where what I meant was not, upon further reflection, at all what I wrote.

Consider Mass Effect. The series (at least the first 3 games of it) has strong themes of individualism. Institutional authority consistently fails to address threats and only the lone wolf, extra-legal murder hero can murder the bad people to death and save the day. I doubt the developers had that theme in mind (you can even make a point of telling Garrus how bad that is), but that theme exists nonetheless. Whenever you're confronted with a moral question, the answer "Consult the council and seek consensus" is never on the table. God of War (again, at least the first 3 games. I haven't played the 4th) idolizes toxic masculinity. Kratos grunts, murders and quick-time-button-sexes his way to the top and is only ever brought low by acts of deception. Then he grunts and murders and quick-time-button-sexes his way back to the top to get his revenge by being the best at violence. The developers probably didn't intend for that message. They probably only created that narrative to make a fun action game. But that still is the message they created.


--- Quote from: Thrillho on 26 Mar 2019, 14:04 ---I think you're onto something with what Jeph is doing, though. He is definitely very aware that he is a cis white dude, and I think after the rapturous reception for Claire's portrayal this is the closest he can get to actually talking about these issues without having to work out how someone feels when having emotions he doesn't have. Obviously that is the nature of being a writer, but this uh... isn't the same thing.

And funnily enough, to me, I see a lot of the AI experience as that of being queer. 'You mean you want to fuck a MACHINE?'

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I suspect that AI is an all-purpose mechanism for exploring the "other". I absolutely agree that I see a lot of queer and trans* experience represented in the AI in this universe, but that may be more about my own experience than what's actually in the comic. I relate to Roko's current experiences as being similar to dysphoria, but others have compared it to trauma induced dissociation. Which, I mean, yeah. Absolutely. It allows Jeph to explore broad concepts like feeling like a stranger in your own skin while not making it about real people's actual lived experiences. It allows us as an audience to relate on a personal level and not sweat the details if the story doesn't quite get the specifics right.  Because Roko's story isn't actually about being trans*. It's about being an AI not fully adapting to her new chassis. She just happens to be having feelings I can relate to in a very visceral way.

DSL:

--- Quote from: pecoros7 on 29 Mar 2019, 01:32 ---... It allows Jeph to explore broad concepts like feeling like a stranger in your own skin while not making it about real people's actual lived experiences. It allows us as an audience to relate on a personal level and not sweat the details if the story doesn't quite get the specifics right.  ...

--- End quote ---

... which is one of the things science fiction (among other forms of extrapolative literature) does. I've heard it said that SF and Westerns are more about the time and place in which they are written than about the time and place they depict, and that's an interpretation I fully support.

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