Alicornutopia

My only familiarity with Mass Effect is people talking about it on Tumblr. I don't like the overwhelming majority of video games and I don't think Mass Effect falls into any safe categories or qualifies for an exception, though I could be drastically wrong about what it's like.

Asimovbots are not very well suited, structurally, to... recreational use... except during the time period of the novels, like Shoal says, and I mostly haven't read the novels because I find Asimov only readable in short-form or Silverberg-novelized circumstances and can't stand his longer books.

Torching works on people. Your hard drive is not a person.

I see no overwhelming reason why someone can't have gotten an early start on humaniform robots for Entertainment Purposes, if they were sufficiently rich and eccentric. I mean, there would be problems to be solved, but they're solvable problems. And if I remember right, in the books themselves, the first few humaniform robots might have appeared in a time when humaniform robots were widely believed not to exist.

Shoal: Your hard drive is already immortal. Downside catches everything.

There were some stories about asibots in recreation use and even one that became human.

...Became human? How?

Ok then!



AHEM! Here be WoT SPOILERS!



A Joker would definitely weird out this system. Canonically, various degrees of homosexuality are common (the White Tower is an all-girls school for obvious reasons and it's fairly common for girls there to take each other as, canon quote, "pillow friends", but it shows up elsewhere too) and some of the cultures have varying attitudes towards things like cross-dressing and such (in Ebou Dar, it's not unheard of for women to make their "pretties" dress up in pink lace and such). However, the only full-on case of gender-bending in a channeler thus known is a male Forsaken (powerful Aes Sedai from the previous age - when men could channel safely - who went over to the dark side and was granted immortality, power, and protection/reincarnation in exchange for loyalty) who was "killed" and brought back in a young woman's body. She still remembers living as a man but doesn't think of herself as one anymore. The key strangeness here is that she still channels saidin (male power), which causes quite a lot of consternation as the Aes Sedai assume she can't channel because she's very obviously a woman and if she could channel they would be able to sense it.

Extrapolating from this, the power you channel is based on your birth sex, basically, but remains consistent even if your sex, much less gender, changes. No idea what would happen in the case of intersex individuals; they are not discussed in canon. The most *likely* option would be that they could have the ability to tap one half of the power or the other on in extremely rare cases both, but I'm not going to give a definite answer here. I should point out that I've spent a lot of time speculating on various points of WoT, but have not actually investigated whether there's a Word Of God answer. Somebody who could access both halves of the power could be very powerful, especially if they could do so simultaneously (some very exotic weaves require combined saidin and saidar) as they could, for example, detect women channeling and see their weaves, while themselves channeling saidin that the women cannot see. Of course, if saidin is still tainted (Rand, the protagonist in canon, eventually cleans saidin using an extremely powerful weave formed by linking himself with a strong Aes Sedai) then using it will slowly cause insanity and eventually death. A really good healer with excellent control over Spirit can fix the madness, at least up to a certain point, although in canon only one woman I know of ever learns how to do it permanently.

There is another power, the so-called "True Power" or saa, which both women and men can use... if they get permission from the source of that power, which is the Dark One himself. Using saa is both extremely dangerous/addictive (much more so of both than saidin or saidar) and carries vaguely defined but horrific penalties if done too much. It can do the same kinds of things that the One Power can, plus some others, but nobody can sense its use except the person using it, and it is harder to cut somebody off from it than from the normal Power (assuming they have access in the first place). Power-hungry researchers attempting to gain access to saa were what let the Dark One out of his prison in the first place, which led to the war of power, the (imperfect) re-sealing of the prison, the tainting of saidin, the "time of madness" when insane male Aes Sedai damn near destroyed the world, and the end of the "age of legends". Having access to saa just about makes somebody evil by definition, using it definitely does (it is a destructive power, harmful to the pattern even when using things other than balefire). It is technically a third option, but the Joker would either need to cheat it out of the Dark One somehow or have sworn near-irrevocable loyalty to him. I could believe that a Joker's internal will to do things would not be corrupted by this power, but the other issues remain.

I honestly don't know how a Joker with access to (tainted) saidin would be. On the one hand, E'd want to use it. Not just for the part-of-Em thing, but because it *is* addictive even if not usually in a harmful way. On the other hand, using it would change Em (magically self-inflicted insanity seems like something a Joker would be very opposed to, although an already-insane one might just not care?). I don't know whether an insane Joker (who got one of the relatively benign forms, like insane voices in Eir head) would even want to be cured by a hypothetical Bell who had the power to do so. "Rot to death from the inside" (eventually happens after the taint builds up enough) doesn't seem like a good pain to me, though. It's worth noting that a Joker who was subjected to the usual child abuse but had the inborn ability to channel would probably pretty much annihilate their abuser when the ability manifested (late teens is common but as early as 15 is observed in canon); the usual trigger for the first time one touches the Source untaught is wanting something worse more anything else (a canonical example is a healer's apprentice wanting a sick friend to get better, and she miraculously does). This usually results in exceptional talent with that type of weave (the canonical apprentice became her village's youngest-ever full healer, then went on to completely revolutionize the world of Aes Sedai healing, including cures for both loss of the ability to channel and for taint-insanity). It also usually results in some kind of "block" that limits their ability to use the Power (said healer had a block where she couldn't even sense the Power unless she was angry about something; encountering disease or serious injury would do that for her but for other things she often had to intentionally make herself angry until she managed to find a way past the block). The most common "wilder" (self-taught channeler) special powers are either related to secrets or to some form of compulsion/manipulation (one could "make a boy want to kiss me, or not want to"); the White Tower vehemently opposes use or development of the latter kind (full compulsion - of the "I worship you and will do anything for you" variety - is possible but very, very prohibited and Aes Sedai are not taught how to use it). It occurs to me that this setting could totally have a Chelsea... she would either be Black ajah (working for the Dark One, though usually indirectly; Black sisters are given considerable leeway in what they do with their time so long as it doesn't put their cause in jeopardy and isn't discovered by non-darkfriends) or unaffiliated with the tower (true Wilder or a member of one of the handful of other groups of channelers).

Erm. I just remembered (really shouldn't have taken this long...) something that is very likely relevant. So, WoT-verse has an empire called "Seanchan". Geographically separated (different continent) from the main setting, the Seanchan society is extremely different from that of other parts of the setting. One key point is that they, and only they, have slavery ("da'covale", or "one who is owned", and yes there are a lot of made-up words in the setting although their supposed source language is reasonably consistent and there's some fun to figuring out what the occasional untranslated snippets mean). Of particular relevance: all saidar channelers (that is, everybody both with the power or who learned to use it before the Seanchan find them) are "made property" and controlled by means of special ter'angreal (magic devices) called "a'dam", which are leashes with a collar one end and a bracelet on the other. The collar is placed on the damane or "leashed one"; the bracelet is worn by the sul'dam "leash holder". It is impossible to remove an a'dam collar unaided, or for a damane to move the bracelet part or to touch anything they think of as a weapon (manifests as pain, muscle cramps, nausea, etc.). When a sul'dam wears a damane's leash, the sul'dam can send sensations - could range from a pat on the head to the feeling of being flayed alive - to the damane. This is used to punish and to compel obedience, or to reward. It's reminiscent of Brilliance's sensation thing, actually. Damane also learn quickly not to attack their sul'dams; any harm they do is reflected tenfold through the leash, up to and including death. Seanchan believe that uncontrolled channelers are a threat akin to rabid dogs, and will do everything in their power to capture them ("marath'damane" - "one who must be leashed"). Now, with that all said, this interacts somewhat oddly with Joker templating. For one thing, a'dam can only work on those who channel (or could learn to channel) saidar; a saidin-channeler even touching an a'dam feels pain, and if one who even has the potential to wield saidin wears the leash it will kill both him and the damane. Something similar probably happens if a saidin-channeler is leashed, although there is a special a'dam that works on saidin channelers when a saidar channeler wears the bracelet. It is unclear what would happen to somebody who is too young to channel but would eventually be able to if they were leashed. Also, the Seanchan kill saidin channelers on sight (this is arguably not so different from what Aes Sedai do - cutting people off from the source of power essentially causes them to stop wanting to live, and most suicide sometime thereafter - but is rather more final since being cut off can be fixed by another channeler while resurrection is a capability solely of the Dark One, also called the Lord of the Grave).

I suspect that if a Joker were leashed (and somehow not killed by the whole channeling saidin thing), E would become suicidal in very short order. With that said, within Seanchan damane usually do not fight their sul'dams - they see *themselves* as dangerous if not leashed - and mistreating any slave including a damane is socially taboo. Note that this doesn't preclude punishment, merely requires that it be commensurate with the crime and not capricious. Of course, there are always outliers... although a cruel sul'dam would not usually be permitted access to a damane. Sul'dam are women who could learn to channel if they ever were taught - something the Seanchan believe is impossible - and there are always more of those than there are of women who have the inborn ability to channel and will do so regardless of desire or training (with a 1/4 chance of surviving the experience), which is where all Seanchan-sourced damane come from. I'm pretty sure a Joker wouldn't submit to the leash anyhow, whether Ey were supposedly treated well or not (and let's face it, Ey wouldn't be).

OK, there's a *lot* more to say, but I'm curious to hear what you think of things so far.

....and now, having written all that, I feel like I want to dive into the Jokerbot discussion. Unfortunately, it's been too long since I read any of the Robot-verse books except the Foundation series... whish is set way after the height of three-laws robots.

The short story "Evidence" from Asimov's I, Robot involved a person trying to get elected to political office who was suspected of being a humaniform robot masquerading as human, and who interacted with Susan Calvin. It's never canonically established whether they were in fact a human or a robot, but I think the point remains that even in Susan Calvin's time, robots that were extremely difficult to distinguish from humans, while not a common occurrence, were considered plausible by enough people for it to make effective political smear tactic.

Here is a synopsis:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bicentennial_Man

It is a good exploration about what it means to be human if somewhat objectionable from transhumanist viewpoint.

Re; GoT, innnnteresting... :D

I don't think a Joker would go for Evil Power Of Evil. I'm not sure how they'd feel about Tainted Power That Fucks With Your Head. The subject of Jokers and insanity is a complicated one, to say the least. They are kind of inherently/structurally resistant - not as a magical or primarily-metacausal property, just as part of how their minds are arranged - to many kinds of mental twisting, and on top of that they get a metacausal boost from the fact that if you warp a Joker sufficiently to make them no longer a Joker, they turn into something I would have a lot of trouble playing. "Hearing voices" falls outside that area, but forms of magical mental corruption that reliably lead to people becoming destructive or cruel will pretty reliably not lead to Jokers doing that. (I can't remember if I've mentioned this publicly before, but a Joker who loses their Sunnyverse soul will not be affected by this change in any way.) I'd need to know more details about "saidin makes people crazy" before I'd know how that would affect a Joker.

Your assessment of an inborn-channeler joker's likely childhood seems sound to me.

With the leashes thing, I'd just like to point out that for a Joker, "impossible" and "extremely painful" are far from the same thing... XD

I'm also not sure I understand the difference between inborn ability and... not-inborn ability? Why do the leash people think learning to do the thing is impossible?

Idle speculation caused by your mention of the Dark One being called the Lord of the Grave and the sole source of resurrection: maybe the hypothetical anti-fate joker's non-destiny is to kill the source of all evil and then take its job - if the mere unfettered presence of the Dark One is enough to cause horrible suffering everywhere, an equivalent phenomenon drawing from the nature of Jokers would cause much more manageable (and amenable-to-improvement) quantities of suffering along with free will all the fuck over the place. And he'd be happy to go around resurrecting people. XDDDDDDD

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Re: "Evidence" - yeah, I think that's what I was thinking of when I was thinking of humaniform robots.

Some people have an inborn ability that will manifest no matter what. Some people have an inborn capacity that if they dont train it they will never know they had it. The first group become damane, the latter become suldam. and both groups can become Aes Sedai if they go to the White Tower