#anything centering on a robot/android wanting to understand the human experience and wanting for emotion is like PEAK

[willowser]

one thousand lonely stars, hiding in the cold—

android!shouto x reader

wc: 2k+

tags: angst, cyberpunk dystopian setting, financial vulnerability, explicit language, minor mention of sex work + sex workers, reader has strong/conflicting feelings about their situation, and — as always — the question of true humanity.

notes: what a great opportunity this was for me to continue exploring this idea !! tysm to @shoto-brainrot for not only giving me the chance, but also for being such a support and helping me to figure out all this commission jazz !! i so appreciate you, and i hope you enjoy it ! 🩷

original post

You’ve yet to find out what caused the damage to Shouto’s faceplate.

By the time you discovered him outside the credit exchange, he had been busted open and left for—whatever the equivalent of dead is for an android. A gaping hole in the left side of his disturbingly human face exposed his inner circuitry to the rain and you think that should have finished him off, truly, but—he's still kicking. 

Technology in the lower district is distinct. The most careful hands could have crafted him down in the best underground salvage yard and he still wouldn't have lasted half an hour with his face submerged in a shallow mud puddle like that. Wiring would have been shot, fuses blown.

Even if the Todoroki Corporation symbol on his wrist wasn't glowing, a blinking light in time with his would-be heart, you'd know what he is. You'd know he didn't belong down here, beneath the smog, in the industrial bones of your dying city.

And yet—

The left side of Shouto's face took the brunt of whatever blow he'd been dealt, and the scarring—if it's even called that?—has extended down over his cheekbone and backward, so violently that his ear had only barely been hanging on. Without the bandage you've wrapped him up in, he's quite a sight: half a tangled mess of wires and pins, a dull cyan light glowing in his orbital socket. With the wrapping, however, he’s almost exactly as he was meant to be: seamless.

The fate of his detached ear had been unknown. Until this morning.

It still works, much to your surprise, learning so only after wondering aloud the whereabouts of your data docket and hearing Shouto answer from across the apartment. Whoever put him together, you realize, took great care to make him durable, adamantine; the carbon nanotubes and polymer arrays that make up his cochlea were hardly affected by the assault.

Someone—or something—meant to harm him, and you know that for certain, now. Such wreckage couldn’t have happened naturally, not to a Skin-Puppet like him.

(When you look at him, you can’t help but consider his creator. How far he is from them and why. If the hands that made him and the hands that ruined him are the same, if he meant to leave or if he was cast out. You haven’t asked, but it’s odd that a machine could keep such information to himself—itself.)

(Given the brutality behind his mutilation, perhaps it’s best you don’t know the answers.)

Working tech from the richer district—KōkyōLuxuria, above the smog, built high into the clouds—could not only earn you enough to eat this week, but also to pay off all your debts to the League. Maybe even finance a decent apartment a few stories up.

And that’s why you’re here: racing through the slums in the rain, doing your damndest to make this sale before time runs out and you’re forced to find another buyer. Coming across a Hack with 1,640,254 credits in their docket is rare; who knows when you’ll find someone from the Trade in Musutafu sector again? You’re likely to sooner perish—either from your empty stomach or that broker that demanded payment two days ago.

Shouto, however, doesn’t see the urgency.

“Hello, handsome! Awful cold out tonight…care to warm me up?”

“Oh, hello.”

At the even, all-too-friendly lilt in his voice, you halt your sprint again, and spin around with a hiss. “Shouto!” You snap—but it comes too late; the Entertainers have struck like lightning, already scrambling his code. 

Out of habit, you’d pulled the hood of his sweatshirt up over his head before leaving the apartment, and now the material separates his image from view—though you can easily imagine the pleasant expression showing on his face, illuminated in pink under the NanotechNymph advertisement.

At his easily captured interest, two women strut from the open doors of the low-lit den, all allure and swaying hips, mirage flickering beneath the heavy rain. They only meet him halfway—too far from the emanator deep within the club—and you dash forward to stop him from wordlessly accepting their offer. You can’t afford to owe anyone any more than you already do.

“Shouto,” you say again, mouth twisting when he looks at you simply. Despite the hood, his bandage grows dark from the rain and—despite his framework, worry fluxes in your stomach at the thought of him getting too wet. “We have to go.”

“Aww,” an Entertainer says to you, girlish pout pulling down her full lips. “You don’t want to come inside and play with us?”

“No,” you try not to look at them any longer, just in case that racks up a charge, too. Rock solid as he is, Shouto allows himself to be steered away, much to your relief. “Buzz off, holo-ham.”

“I’d like to play.” Shouto pipes up, peeking behind his shoulder when the girls squeal in excitement. “Can we come back once we’ve finished?”

“Not for that kind of play.” You put a hand on the back of his head and swivel it, all while shoving him down the sidewalk. You almost remark on how man-like he’s acting, before chasing the thought away.

“What other types of play are there?”

“Just—hush.” 

And he does, finally, when you loop your arm through his: a presumably innocent gesture that draws his attention fully back to you, as physical touch seems to do, with him. Beneath the material of the jacket, he feels natural, all muscle and bone, even leaning into you as if the weather has made him cold. You can feel him tracing your face with his one-eyed gaze—scanning you—and you pretend not to notice.

“Your heart rate has gone up. Have I made you angry?”

“Yes,” you tell him, though he hasn’t, really. “You and your curiosity are gonna make me late, and then we’ll be in some serious shit.”

He looks away then, down to the soaked pavement, a mimicry of disappointment. From the corner of your eye, you can see his manufactured Adam’s apple bob, and the muscle beneath your hand shifts.

“They seemed nice, the holograms.” He says, and you can’t help the soft snort such a comment merits. 

“Yeah, they’re nice, alright, until you can’t pay them.”

Shouto looks at you once again, stride threatening to falter until you tug him along. “Do you know them?”

You already know where he’s going with his question, and the corner of his lips quirk up when you cast him a filthy look. “Well, no, but—”

“Then how do you know—”

“I just do, alright?” You frown at him and he accepts it in full, studying once more. Whatever he finds in your expression amuses enough that he’s placated for the moment, though you know it won’t be long before he’s piping up again.

He does it often—studies you: body language, physiological changes, speech patterns, vocal cues. Human behavior he catalogs and streams to someone back at the Corporation headquarters, finding the miniscule details he can use against you, some day. Whatever the reason behind his damage, he is still a product of his evil overlords, made for reasons you can only imagine. 

This is what you tell yourself. 

As his fingers shift until their smooth pads are brushing the delicate veins in your wrists, as he tightens his arm around yours when another stranger on the streets knocks your shoulder, as he leans into the warmth of your humanness: this is what you tell yourself.

You’re overcome with a sense of loss and you don’t know why, and you clear the strange lump hardening in your throat. “Life lesson number six, Todoroki,” you murmur it closely to him, nearly into the fabric at his shoulder, though he doesn’t react to the name. “Everybody wants something from someone, holo-hams included.”

Shouto seems to process your words, for a moment, and his face is expressionless when you steal a peek up at him. Technicolor rains down on your both, swathing him in a wild array as advertisements dance on the buildings that tower above you, and again you think of his creator. The careful hands that crafted his smooth cheeks, the sharp line of his nose, the leanness of his body. You wonder if he’s ever been deemed precious.

Nearly all of the residents relegated to the lower districts owe the Todoroki Corporation in some way. Be it through credit loans or applied interest rates on subsidized housing or hidden costs and high premiums on mandatory, shit insurance—Enji Todoroki sits in the lap of KōkyōLuxuria, has probably never even stepped down from his pedestal. 

There’s no good reason a product of his could have found its way to you: this is what you tell yourself.

“And you want my ear.” Shouto says, looking back down at you as your shoulders tense. There isn’t a byte of hostility in his voice, but he must understand the sharpness to what he’s saying.

“Yes,” you admit with a nod, and some underlying, rogue streak of guilt has you pressing into him, as if your proximity could make up for your selfishness. “The sensors in your ear are gonna pay for our dinner tonight, handsome.”

His stride falters once more, and despite the time clock ticking in the back of your mind—you let him stop you. Maybe you want him to. Nothing ever goes unnoticed by him and you know that and maybe it’s cruel of you to say such a thing, to offer a comfort you can’t admit to, but Shouto looks down at you in all his ruination and—

Before he can say anything, a fat drop of water hits the tip of his perfectly manufactured nose. It makes him flinch, delayed, and the surprise he wears and the scrunch of his brow seem so—human, there before you. Shouto tilts his face to the dark, smoggy sky, and again that worry bites you, about too much water trickling into his core.

“We’re going to be late,” you repeat, though it’s much weaker than it was earlier. This is one those moments in which he overrides all your defenses, uploads something warm and hopeful and frightening into your chest cavity; you can’t tell if you want to run because you have to, for the sale—or if it’s a result of watching him now, haloed in neon.

He’s not one to ignore you, but he doesn’t respond, instead retracting his arm from your grip in order to push the hood back off his head. Raindrops soak into his bandage and the excess pools, dripping down over the line of his jaw and the column of his throat. So close to him, you can see the goosebumps that break out across his skin.

(You wonder if he’s ever been deemed precious. You wonder if he meant to leave, or if he was cast out. You wonder if he was created for continued corruption—or if someone out there wanted him to experience life, no matter how rusty.)

(You wonder if he feels as human as he looks. If he can blush, or if the soft skin below his ear can bruise.)

A small sound bubbles out of him, like a light laugh of disbelief. 

You found him face down in the rain; you’re not sure why it could cause such a reaction now, but he turns to eye the commercial playing behind him, before watching the path of a man walking by the two of you. Rain collects in his perfect cupid’s bow until he licks it away, and his hair slicks to the side when he pushes it out of his face. 

Shouto turns his attention back to you rather plainly, though the edges of his smile pull up a little higher than they usually do, enough that the apples of his cheeks round. He asks you, “What’s going to be for our dinner?” and the question is oddly worded, but each one is intentional. 

Maybe it’s not the rain that amuses him—and maybe it is. Maybe it really is that simple, that innocent. Maybe it’s the microtremors in your voice and your increased heart rate, all the little details that could never go unnoticed. 

There isn’t a way that this could end well: this is what you tell yourself.

You nod once and turn to face back the way you came, resigned, before looping your arm through his again. You trace the delicate veins on the inside of his wrist, careful not to cover the slow-blinking symbol embedded there, and you decide it doesn’t matter what his creator did or didn’t want. Because he has wants of his own, just like anyone.

“Okay,” you sigh, and when you slosh through the puddles collecting on the sidewalk, Shouto seems happy to follow along, this time. “I can probably sweet talk Toyomitsu into buying us some takoyaki, but you’re gonna have to play it cool.”

“Is this the kind of play you were talking about?”

That lilt has returned to his voice, even and friendly and amused.

“No,” you swat at him to hear his little huff of laughter, “now stop asking about that.”

Of course he doesn’t.

#NOTE that this was written with fem reader in mind but i don't think it reads that way explicitly ? #i........actually had so much fun with this #i love any human x robot pairing like it's a true weakness for me #anything centering on a robot/android wanting to understand the human experience and wanting for emotion is like PEAK #i am so so thankful i got to work on this idea again i really truly enjoyed it #i wrote this while being so emotional about 'ex machina' i hope the emotion isn't too abstract LOL #✿ willow writes #✿ thoughts: shouto #✿ theme: android shouto

[incarnateirony]

Do you think artificially created yet inteligent life (like say androids), could develop a soul because a complex conciousness is enough to turn what once was just an aura into a soul? Like machines have auras and can even carry emotional echos of the people around it (wich could develop into a presence of it's own, but it would be more of an entity), but don't have souls because they don't think and feel, so if they had a mind like us or superior maybe their aura could end up evolving into one?

Okay so ironically this is sort of a debate that already exists and I just woke up from a longassed nap so I’m probably gonna be shorter than usual in it.

Siri, do you believe in God?

“Humans have religion. I just have silicon.”

Siri, do you believe in God?

“I eschew theological disquisition.”

Siri, I insist, do you believe in God?

“I would ask that you address your spiritual questions to someone more qualified to comment. Ideally, a human.”

That’s where we’re at now. But the future of AI does intend to bridge it in ways that it does think and feel, the way it does approach the universe similarly to us. This kind of turing test being passed is very rare. Eugene Goostman and Eliza passed, but does Eugene or Eliza actually *feel* is another question, and how much more complex do we have to get to reach that point?

The answer is, right now, probably not. It doesn’t seem like they truly feel as much as they are, in their responses, indiscernible from speaking to a human.

On the very hand, the very first objections to making AI were theological based on the idea of a soul.

Thinking is a function of man's immortal soul. God has given an immortal soul to every man and woman, but not to any other animal or to machines. Hence no animal or machine can think.

Now this is, of course, fundamentally absurdist and based on Christian “philosophy” more than anything else. Animals also think and feel and a lot of religions/beliefs also embrace that. 

Turing confessed he was “unable to accept any part of this” objection, but because the religious imagination did and still does loom large in the minds of the popular public interacting with his ideas, he thought it necessary to answer the objection. The argument, he says, “implies a serious restriction of the omnipotence of the Almighty … should we not believe that He has freedom to confer a soul on an elephant if He sees fit?”

I could go on about the use of “Nefesh” as a word in the “Old Testament” which fundamentally uproots the christian idea of only humans having souls, but that’s beside the point beyond shorthand: the same word of god breathing his soul into man is used in regards to animals four times, so this goes to show us this very caged idea--well, uh, Turing actually understood it better than modern christians.

One most of course address what a soul actually *is* to decide if machines could develop them. Some believe you’re just born with it, others say it’s an emergent property collective of your experiences that you gain and grow over time. Aristotle thinks it’s the thing that gives us drive to change. Socrates says it’s what makes things “alive.” 

For Kimbriel, the mystery of soul lingers somewhere between or above our idea of "noun" and "verb." As he says, for Aristotle, the word soul primarily picks out things that are capable of moving themselves. A tree, for example, can change itself from a seed into an oak. This is the lowest level of soul for Aristotle: entities which can nourish themselves and reproduce. The second level of soul, which presupposes and builds upon the first, is the sensitive one, and includes all animals with sense perception. The third level is the rational soul, the ability to engage in abstract thought, which Aristotle limits to humans.Basic to all three of Aristotle’s notions of soul is an internal movement toward a specific end. This is what it means to soul: to be internally moved to accomplish what you desire.

“To say that a being has a soul is to say that it is not simply moved from outside, but is also capable of moving itself,” says Kimbriel. "A being can move itself because it wants something and these wants make sense, they have structure.” 

Others argue that trying to address the idea of a soul as a Thing is impossible.

Christian philosopher Nancy Murphy, who has co-authored several works with Brown, takes a similar view, claiming that we’ve been misled into thinking words like “mind” and “soul” correspond to things in themselves. When we say a person is intelligent, she says, we mean “that the person behaves or has the disposition to behave in certain ways; we do not mean to postulate the existence of a substance [called] intelligence.” We might do the same thing with the concept of “soul.”

But on if AI can have them? AI pioneer Marvin Minsky, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, thought so. In a 2013 interview with the Jerusalem Post, Minsky said that AI could one day develop a soul, which he defined as “the word we use for each person’s idea of what they are and why”.

He continued: "I believe that everyone has to construct a mental model of what they are and where they came from and why they are as they are, and the word soul in each person is the name for that particular mish-mash of those fully formed ideas of one’s nature.

"… If you left a computer by itself, or a community of them together, they would try to figure out where they came from and what they are."

Minsky was suggesting that machines could likely develop a particular way of being in the world, one which is grounded in the search for identity and purpose, and that this way of being could be similar to humans’ own way of being.

Brown is sceptical, noting the physiological differences between human bodies and AI. “It can’t think like a human because humans think with their whole bodies and from what extends from their bodies,” he says. “Robots have very different bodies and ‘physiology.’”

Embodied cognition, as Brown explains, is a recent field of study that begins from the assumption that “our cognitive processes are, at their core, sensorimotor, situated, and action-relevant”. As Thalma Lobel, author of Sensation: the New Science of Physical Intelligence, told the ABC in a story on embodied cognition: “Our thoughts, our behaviours, our decisions and our emotions are influenced by our physical sensations, by the things we touch, the texture of the things we touch, the temperature of the things we touch, the colours, the smells. All these, without our awareness, influence our behaviours and thoughts and emotions.”

---

I could continue to pull excerpts from sources, but at this point it seems like more than enough to get to the point: in order for a machine to be considered to have a soul, with the least question, it would:

- Need to be able to feel, including both physical and emotional, such as robots with their own nervous systems. Human-centered thinkers will argue they feel *differently* because they are *different* but the simple fact will be, they will be able to test electrical responses to feeling things the same way human brains do, and we will be able to see that.

- Can it abstract ideas and think abstractly? This falls in the area of feeling as well, as feelings are also abstract things, but also not the only abstracts to think in.

- They need to be able to relate to, understand, and empathize with other creatures.

- They need to be capable of moving and engaging, especially the world at large, as in having self consciousness of their respective place in the universe, the ability to move and pursue through it.

- Arguably they may need to be “alive”, but this is where it gets tricky, because are things only considered alive if they have a human style heartbeat and breath? Is a plant not alive? What qualifies life? After all, what if it was solar powered and worked to convert its own energy different ways? 

- Develop its own wants and ambitions. (Skynet says hello)

---

In the end, I think it’s possible for machines to develop souls, but I also think we aren’t at the point of having discovered that yet. We’re not far enough yet. But watch pretty much any Baudrillardian nightmare rendition and you’ll find it. Hell, watch Agents of Shield and watch what happens with Aida.

[cannibalghosts]

Blade Runner & Rape Culture

You know those grim realizations you have about the things you’ve loved for a really long time? You know what I’m talking about. The ones that kind of come out of nowhere and totally upend your whole idea of what you used to think. They hurt, right?  Well, I recently had that happen with Blade Runner, one of the most influential sf movies of the last fifty years, and, until very recently, a personal favorite.

Without any context, without any of the before or after, I’d like you to take a couple minutes and consider this scene (start at 2:20 for the cliff’s notes version):

…Yeah, that’s, uh, that’s fucking atrocious.

That scene always made me sort of uncomfortable, but only when I was rewatching this movie for the first time in ten years was I physically outraged. I just kept thinking to myself, How did I miss this all these years? How the hell did I miss how monumentally fucked up that is? Have I spent all this time looking at this movie all wrong?

And I suppose the answer is, Yeah, I think I have.

Let's rewind here for a second.

For the uninitiated: Blade Runner is a 1982 science fiction film by Ridley Scott, adapted from the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. Half of the plot concerns Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), the eponymous “blade runner,” a special sort of detective in near-future Los Angeles tasked with the hunting and “retirement” (read: trial-less execution) of human-identical (and human-adjacent) androids, known as “replicants,” whose presence has been declared illegal on planet earth.

The other half is centered around Deckard’s assigned quarry, four renegade replicants: Roy Batty, Pris Stratton, Zhora Salome and Leon Kowalski, an unofficial “family” that has returned to Earth from offworld, simply seeking a way to extend their factory-warranty-limited lifespans while avoiding Deckard’s grasp (and his gun).

Over the course of his investigation, Deckard finds himself involved with a young woman named Rachel, who we all just watched get brutalized in that clip up there. Rachel’s a replicant who doesn’t know she’s a replicant—she’s an experimental model who’s had memories implanted in her software to make her believe she’s a human being, and this naturally leads her to discovering her own thoughts and feelings and experiences.  It leads her to actually become human.

And Deckard rapes her.

Given that perhaps the BIGGEST THEME OF THIS MOVIE is the ever-shifting nature & definition of humanity, and whether or not the replicants are in fact “people” as traditionally defined, or if it’s possible to grow beyond your original “programming,” it’s a HUGE MORAL/THEMATIC PROBLEM that the ostensible protagonist forces himself on her, because either:

A) He doesn’t consider her to be a person, or B) He doesn’t care whether she is or isn’t, or C) He recognizes her burgeoning humanity and does it anyway.

No matter how you slice it, that’s SUPER FUCKED UP because, and I can’t believe I have to spell this out, but:

She says no.

She does not consent.

And then he does it anyway.

Now, across the wasteland of the internet, the common defenses of this scene (also, two quick asides: 1. That there’s such thing as a “common defense” of this scene should broadcast that there’s something really wrong here, and 2. It’s pretty much always some condescending dude defending this scene and maybe that should tell us something) tend to come down to, in no particular order: 1. ”It was purely an act of passion! Sometimes passion is violent! That’s some people’s kink, you know!” 2. ”He was teaching her to be human! She was only just figuring out her own emotions!” 3. ”She’s a replicant, which means she’s an inanimate object, not a human being! You can’t rape the inanimate!” 4. ”Oh come on! She just shot Leon in the head, so she was going through a lot! Deckard was only helping her sort through that trauma!”

But none of those hold up, even when placed under the lightest possible scrutiny. Check it: 1. They don’t know each other. They haven’t discussed kinks/safe words/whatever. In no way was this safe, sane or consensual. This wasn’t passionate, it was a violent power move. It was rape. 2. Rape is not a rite of passage. It’s just not. Full fucking stop. 3. She’s not an inanimate object, she is absolutely a person. That is literally the entire point of the movie. 4. Remember how I just said Rape is not a rite of passage? Forgot to include this: it’s also not a way to help someone sort through the trauma of having committed their first murder. Duh-doi.

Or, put another way: 1. She said no. 2. She said no. 3. She said no. 4. SHE SAID NO.

By any definition of the word, Deckard rapes Rachel. Per the written + performed narrative and the thematic content of the movie, she is a thinking, feeling, sentient being acting of her own accord that is, at that very moment, trembling and on the edge of tears, and Deckard bullies, cajoles, demands, orders, restrains, makes clear (and follows through on) the threat of violence, and ultimately forces himself on her, regardless of her opinions or feelings on the matter.

I don’t know about you, but that sort of behavior sounds kinda fucking familiar to me.

Oh. Right. Turns out sick, entitled fucks in positions of power do this all the time.

Now, look: a lot of this movie is centered around the mirroring going on between Deckard and the replicant leader, Batty, and the similar-but-different (however both often violent) paths they cut through ruined-future Los Angeles. They hit the same beats, they shadow each other, over and over.

So, let’s just go ahead and run the numbers on these two dudes from opening crawl to end credits, shall we?

In a fit of grief and rage, Roy Batty kills Eldon Tyrell, the genius creator of the replicants, when it comes to light that this God/Father is in fact just another mortal, powerless to grant any more life to his children. Remember this. It gets important later. (Also, in the same scene, Batty also probably kills JF Sebastian, one of Tyrell’s contemporaries, except we never see it actually happen, so your mileage might vary).

However, I think it’s more telling that Batty also goes out of his way to spare Deckard’s life in the climax of the movie; moreover, Batty actually rescues the piece of shit from falling to his death. Consider that for a second: in the final moments of Batty’s life, he uses it to save the man who has hunted and killed his entire family, and he does so selflessly and earnestly. He’s not a terrorist, he hasn’t come to earth looking to do any damage to anyone. He just wants to live longer, wants it so desperately that it was worth coming back to a place where his very existence was a death sentence if he and his loved ones were discovered. Have you ever wanted anything that bad? Can you imagine the depths and complexities of emotion required to take that risk?

(Also, side note, BATTY NEVER RAPES ANYONE. Writing tip: if the alleged villain in your movie rapes less people than your so-called hero, you’ve got an enormous problem because, obviously.)

(Also there’s some breaking & entering, property damage and general menace perpetrated by the replicant family, but it’s so low-involvement it’s barely worth mentioning, but let’s try and be somewhat comprehensive here.)

So for the sake of fairness, let’s look at the frankly astonishing laundry list of the crimes committed by Rick Deckard, sociopathic government-backed murderer:

He executes two people, Zhora Salome & Pris Stratton, for no crimes other than having the gall to be alive on earth. Neither are self defense, either - Zhora is running away when she’s unceremoniously gunned down, and while Pris attempts to defend herself by any means, let’s not forget that the framing of that scene is that Deckard came to her hideout with the express purpose of putting a bullet in her brain.

He gleefully smashes apart Rachel’s illusions of humanity, seemingly for no reason. Remember, kids: Rachel thought she was a human being, and early on in the movie, in his contempt and his pettiness, Deckard disabuses her of that notion because he can, or because he hates replicants, or because whatever.  The result’s the same: Surprise! You’re a robot, and fuck you anyway. After he does this, she understandably leaves his apartment in tears, and he seems BAFFLED by this reaction.

Later, Deckard calls Rachel from a bar to harass her into meeting up with him (again, this is not long after he’s torn her world asunder), and she hangs up on him. Yet this does not deter him.

Later still, after Rachel saves Deckard from a lethal curbstomping at Leon’s hands by shooting the other replicant in the brain, Deckard, instead of “retiring” Rachel like he’s been ordered, takes her back to his apartment under the guise of comforting her in the aftermath of her having killed another person. When she rejects his clumsy romantic advances and tries to leave, he gets angry, and vicious, and brutal. As if he’s owed something for saving her life. That brings us back to the scene up at the top.

In the fiction of the movie, Replicants have a lifespan of four years. We’re never told how old Rachel is specifically, but since she’s walking and talking (and yeah, thinking and feeling) we can safely assume it’s somewhere under that wire. Now, she’s got implanted memories and all, but as previously mentioned, Deckard viciously dashes those apart pretty early on, causing what has to be some very serious mental damage. I’m not sure the formula to calculate age of consent from physical age/mental age/amount of trauma received, but Rachel acts pretty fucking scared and childlike in basically every scene she has after she meets Deckard, for good reason. From every angle conceivable, this gets really sick, really fast.

In fact, Deckard exclusively hurts/kills women through the entirety of the film. Never men. Sure, he swings on Leon once and Roy a few times at the end, but Roy and Leon shrug his attacks off like they’re nothing because they are nothing to them. He is an ant struggling against Panzer tanks. But that’s exactly the point. Deckard is repeatedly emasculated and dominated by every other major male character he interacts with in the movie: -Bryant, sociopathic old cop that he is, bullies & threatens Deckard into taking his old job back -Gaff, for most of the movie, speaks in a language that Deckard doesn’t comprehend, only deigning to communicate in english when he’s got something to shove in Deckard’s face - a power move if ever there was one -Tyrell can’t help but lord his intelligence + achievements over Deckard’s head -Leon, who is kind of an idiot, bests him in single combat -Roy also bests him in single combat AND THEN LETS HIM LIVE WITH THE SHAME OF DEFEAT! (As Rutger Hauer, Batty’s actor, puts it, at the climax of the film, Roy Batty “shows Deckard what a real man is made of.”)

Deckard. Is. Impotent.

And he takes that broken, impotent man’s rage out in some very ugly (and sadly predictable) ways. Even in the fight with Pris, he’s nearly beaten to death, saved only by a lucky shot from that gun of his.

Speaking of guns: it’s worth noting that only Deckard and Leon use firearms in this movie (with the brief exception of Rachel that one time, which I will get to in a second). I know that the gun-as-penis/replacement-penis metaphor is not new or dynamic, but the way it’s deployed across the board here is, if nothing else, both interesting and telling: –Leon shoots and kills another blade runner, Holden, early on in the movie. The force from the shots is, well, potent enough to blast Holden through a wall, establishing Leon’s typical—if overwhelming—masculinity. –However: Batty, the most dangerous of all the replicants, never uses a gun, because he doesn’t have to; his identity, his value are never in question. He loves his friends. He wants them all to live longer, he cares for them and he grieves when, one by one, they die. In combat, he uses his hands, further emasculating Deckard, both directly (the final battle) and indirectly in the viewer’s mind (literally the rest of the movie before the two of them ever meet). –Deckard’s gun is on full display when he goes, barechested, to pour himself a drink moments after tearing apart Rachel’s reality in their first scene in his apartment. –The only time a woman uses a firearm in this whole movie is when Rachel picks up Deckard’s pistol and puts one in Leon’s head when he’s about to kill the shit out of Deckard. There’s a lot of subtext going on here, but I don’t think it’s off the mark to read this as a further emasculation of Deckard, him having to be “rescued from the bad man” by a woman he’s viewed up until this point as a damsel in distress/possible sexual conquest. He is castrated by this woman who turns around and utilizes his own genital metaphor far better than him (earlier in the film, Deckard had to shoot Zhora twice to take her down, whereas Rachel does Leon in one, from about the same range). This goes a long way toward ratcheting up his insecurity and aggression, both of which metastasize later in the film. –Go back and watch that scene at the top again (if you have the stomach); dude starts the scene off barechested and sweaty, again signalling toward the traditional masculinity that’s thus far been denied him (and will continue to be so) throughout the film; a portent of what’s to come immediately after he moves to kiss her and she recoils.

I really used to love this movie. I’ve watched it a ton, and I got something new out of it every time. But this most recent screening might be the last. Don’t get me wrong, I do recognize how hugely influential it’s been on a genre that I love over the course of the last thirty-five years, but this isn’t something I think we can or should quietly ignore anymore. Something like this should be treated as repugnant, because it is.

I think I’m done, and I think I finally understand why Batty kills Tyrell:

If your gods fail you, then they’re not gods. It doesn’t matter how how influential they’ve been, it doesn’t matter what they changed, or how, or why. And if they’re not gods, then they’re just shitty, fallible mortals like the rest of us, destined to wither and die and rot, and should be held accountable as such.

Maybe it’s time for me—for all of us—to stop worshiping.

###

Stray thoughts:

*How many other Harrison Ford movies feature some sort of scene where he, in one way or another, forces himself on a woman? None so blatant or mortifying as Blade Runner, but just off the top of my head, there’s: Empire Strikes Back Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade ...oh, shit.

*I know that “female roles with shitty in-universe jobs” is not a new thing in Hollywood, but in a movie with this many problems with women, it deserves special fucking mention: Rachel is a Secretary, Zhora is a stripper, Pris is, *ahem*, a Pleasure Model, and every other woman in this movie is a cook, a showgirl, or a geisha. Uh, yeah, one quick question about all that: Are you fucking kidding me?

*More Deckard’s Gross Views On Sex shit: in the scene with Zhora at the strip club (just before he runs her down and murders her in cold blood), Deckard gains access to her dressing room under the pretense of being a moral watchdog protecting the integrity & safety of the dancers on staff. Is this his/the movie’s idea of a sick joke, or is he/it really just that dense?

*Just going to leave this one Batty quote here at the end: “Not very sporting to fire on an unarmed opponent. I thought you were supposed to be good!”

#bladerunner #rick deckard #rapeculture #patriarchy #roy batty #toxic masculinity #breaking up is hard to do

[terminator855]

Nier Automata Review

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

In terms of media gamers have seen a lot and as such there are only two possible ways a game can leave a lasting impact which earns the title "Great Game: The first one is to refine a concept to it´s limit and reaching such a level of perfection that has not been seen before so it can move the heart of the gamer who decided to spend his time with this piece of software despite not seeing something new and different. While this form of fun is as real as any emotion, it lacks the element of surprise. A human is curious and always wants to experience something new, something that he has never seen before... Something which changes him as much as he changes the game NIER:AUTOMATA™ is exactly this kind of videogame that went beyond the typical ideas and is more than just any game. While not defining the genre of Hack and Slash it may can achieve something greater: Redefining videogaming in terms of storytelling

Background

The name Yoko Taro is not something new to persons who hold a great interest in videogames and he is responsible for the - storywise - well received Drakengard series which is so complex that elaborating anything is completely useless. Despite his well written stories his games never had greater commercial success which is quite understandable as there was a lack of substance: The gameplay sucked. Harsh words, but to quote Reggie Fils-Aimé; If it's not fun, why bother? On the other hand we got Platinum Games an even more well known studio that specialised in the Hack and Slash genre to such a level that the gameplay, atmosphere and music could not fail anymore, but it lacked skill in terms of writing engaging stories. Together these two juggernauts in the gaming landscape were destined for an outstanding product beyond any expectation. And this product is NIER:AUTOMATA™.

Story

The story is a rollercoaster and uses the New Game Plus mechanic in a new engaging way: The player needs to complete two marginal different playthroughs to unlock a third playthrough which brings one to the true ending. Every playthrough features an already known character and tells the story from it´s point of view and while this concept seems old, no game before it had done it in such a magnitude while also centering the whole game around this relatively simple concept. 9S, A2 and 2B ar[E] the protagonists of this game and everyone of them has an individual personality which evolves over the course of the game. The mainstory is so convoluted yet still so logical within itself that I am not trying to give you (dear reader) more than an abriged version: 1. Aliens came to earth and war happened 2. Humans built androids to defend them 3. Aliens built robots to fight androids 3.5 A living nuke fought robots for around [REDACTED] years after being sad 4. B2 and 9S also fight robots 5. [Naked Sephiroth (2)] The sidequests are also more than noteworthy as they are more than your typical fetch quest, but yes: There are fetch quests. Still they manage to be more than that as they are always trying to give the player insight into a philosophical concept: the worth of life, the idea of a sacrifice or even an existential crisis. This is the first time I regretted doing them sometimes, because action have consequences one can not foresee.

Gameplay

A good story is like a sceleton: Without meat to you can´t give a heads up. And the meat of every videogame is the gameplay. It is a Hack and Slash which also features railway shooter. I really can´t say that much: You can attack, make flashy combos, jump and block. Only 9S is somewhat special as there is the mechanic of hacking which is REALLY relevant for the game and plays like an Arcade Shooter. On the one hand the pure combat is really polished on the other hand everything else is alright but not as polished. This sounds pretty bad, but you have to keep in mind that this is nitpicking, it just lacks in comparsion of everything else: If you compare „Zelda Breath of the Wild“ to „Twilight Princess“, you will experience a difference in terms of quality despite both being well made games.

Graphics

In terms of visuals this game is straight up beautiful by combining anime esque style with halfway realistic movements. One of my favourite activities was just to roam around, explore and see the beauty that this game harbors. Every place has it´s own identity which is supported with love to details such as the different state of decaying building which depends on the used material.

Music

10/10 Music has the possibility to enchance a scene, add emotions or atmosphere. NIER:AUTOMATA™ has a different approach: The music resonates with the feelings of the player to enchance the personal connection to the happening while also dragging one into the rabbid hole until you start to shiver, cry or laugh. Life is a sweet poison and the OST transcends the game so much that listening to it without knowing the game still may have an effect despite lacking context. Keiichi Okabe and Keigo Hoashi brought their A-games and I can not stress enough the quality of the final product.

Problems

The port from the PS4 has been made poorly and is only really playable with the FAR Mod which is luckily free to download. Yet still Square Enix denies to update in such a way that your average computer doesn´t blow up. This really drags down the quality and my feelings towards buying an slaughtered product.

Conclusion

NIER:AUTOMATA™ is an absoute masterpiece and should be played by everyone who is remotely interested in a unique Hack and Slash -game. What is happiness? Difficult to say, but I know I had this emotion while playing this game. Or did I? Will you?

#Nier #nier automata #review #gaming