Warning. This post is a bit of a rant. If you don’t like that, please go look at pictures of your favorite animal doing cute animal things.
Ok. So there’s something that really bothers me and it’s been sitting in my head for weeks now.
Game fandoms can be incredible. There’s a lot of amazing art, literature, headcanons and theories that come out of the collective. However, fandoms, ESPECIALLY the Mass Effect fandom, have this REALLY bad habit of simplifiying down complicated characters to make them more ‘cute’.
Over the last month or so I’ve been seeing this a LOT with Jaal and Evfra (I can’t speak for other characters because Jaal and Evfra are my focus in that game).
I won’t deny that in game, Jaal has his cute moments. However, Jaal isn’t all cute all the time. He has moments of profound sadness and anger. This is a guy who has a goal in life of killing other living things to help keep his people safe.
Jaal is also riddled with self doubt. He doesn’t show it at first but the more you get to know him, the more he lets his guard down and shows you that he isn’t sure what he should be doing with his life and that he’s worried about not living up to the accomplishments of his family and those around him.
Jaal is also amazingly intelligent. Even as a child he liked to take things apart to try and figure out how they worked. As an adult he is now a tech expert; an acomplishment he basically had to reach on his own as the angara don’t have organized schooling anymore.
And let’s not forget that inside Jaal also lives a philosopher. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard him say deep, introspective things that really make you think.
And yet he is always reduced down to the cute moments. Very seldom do you see any of the rest of that in all the fandom whatnots. He’s always depicted as cute and, frequently, innocent. Jaal is FAR from innocent. He’s seen some shit. He’s DONE some shit. He’s a soldier in what is basically the closest thing the angara have to a military anymore. Talk to any soldier that has done a tour of duty during times of war and has had to kill someone. You don’t walk away from that clean and innocent.
Now let’s talk about Evfra. Depictions of Evfra as cute are probably my BIGGEST issue because Evfra is NOT cute. He doesn’t do cute things. He doesn’t say cute things.
Evfra is not only the leader of what is basically the angaran military, he’s the guy that made it what it is today. His own codex entry says that he’s shut himself off to others. That he tries to create either respect or fear in those around him.
FEAR. Evfra ACTIVELY makes people fear him. And it shows in some of the ambient dialog you can hear on Aya and other places with Resistance angara. Such as the two angara getting his shuttle cleaned up and ready for… whatever. One of them doesn’t so much as want to SAY Evfra’s name aloud because he’s always listening and he’ll catch the two of them talking about him behind his back. I mean, that’s practically Voldemort levels of fear.
And Evfra has completely closed himself off from all interpersonal relationships. He doen’t let people close. Paaran is one of the people that is likely closest to Evfra and even SHE says she doesn’t know how to get on his good side.
Evfra doesn’t let people in. He doesn’t make friends. Why? Well for one he’s the leader of the entire Resistance. His JOB is to knowingly send angara, his people whom he loves and wants to survive the kett, to quite certain death to fight the kett in hopes that more kett than angara die. He even says so when you ask about him.
“You want to know what being me? I wake up every morning to fight a war. I send people to kill, and die. If I’m lucky, there are more dead kett than Resistance when I go to sleep.”
A word for word quote from Evfra. That isn’t cute. That’s haunting. His words and his tone are both angry and haunted, but resolved. He knows he has to do this.
And let’s not ignore the ‘if I’m lucky’ part. That’s telling in and of itself. It’s probably very common in a day for Evfra to learn that more of his people died than there was kett that died.
So why make friends with people you are knowingly sending to their death? Evfra already knows the pain that can cause. He lost his ENTIRE family to the kett. Not just a couple family members, but everyone. Evfra is the only Tershaav left, which is a hell of a thing when you consider how large angaran families are. Not to mention the game just says his 'family’. It doesn’t list out family members which leaves it up to speculation on who all he lost. Since it doesn’t say otherwise, it’s possible that Evfra could have lost a mate and children along with the rest.
He’s deliberately closed himself off from being friends. The best a person can hope for his his approval. Nothing more.
And the ammount of stress this guy must have is difficult to imagine. He’s basically holding his entire people on his shoulders. Without Evfra, the Resistance wouldn’t be an organized group. It would still be a bunch of angara running around trying to do something and getting nothing done. Hell, maybe the angara wouldn’t even exist anymore if it wasn’t for Evfra. And he can’t just quit. Can’t just walk away. Can’t stop what he’s doing. For better or for worse, he’s stuck in the role he’s in until the threat of the kett is elimiated and his people are safe.
Evfra is all hard, sharp edges. There’s no cute in there save for his physical features because all the angara have that kinda cute squid cat thing going on. And yet despite that, I increasingly see Evfra depicted as cute. Often time it’s as an uncle to Ryder and Jaals children, a friend to Jaal or more unusally, a participant in a poly relationship between he, Jaal and Ryder.
Evfra. Is not. Friends. With. Jaal. I mean, yes yes yes. It’s all headcanon. Everyone is entitled to their headcanon. It just BOTHERS me. Everyone has their buttons, and this is one of mine.
Jaal is a SOLDIER. Yes, he’s one of Evfra’s best, but they aren’t buddies.
And I think my biggest issue with the two of them being depicted as cute all the time is it’s happening BECAUSE angara look like adorable squid cats. I mean, that kind of shit happens all the time in real life; having the rest of your intelligence and personality pushed aside and deminished because you’re adorable/hansome/beautiful/etc. Making a false image of a person in your head based on what they look like and just blatantly ignoring the rest of them, even when you know the rest of them, in favor of the image in your head. It’s up there on a list of 'don’t do that’ along with things like infantalizing grown people.
And yes! I know! They’re fictional characters in a video game. But that doesn’t mean the core issue isn’t a real one. I mean, people were fucking up in arms to make Jaal bisexual due to the real life issue of bisexual erasure in media. And this particular issue, of ignoring a personality and just making them cute because they look cute, is also a real issue. Except this issue isn’t one that is IN the video game itself. This is one that is being perpetuated BY the fans.
And not everyone is guilty of it. I know that. There are some amazing creators out there that don’t just ignore the rest of the character’s important personality points because they want to make them more cute. And good on you people who do that.
It just bugs me when people constantly depict those two as cute. Especailly Evfra. he just… isn’t. He isn’t a cute little kitten with pinchable ears, he’s a freaking sea urchin. All sharp edges.
(Lets out a breath). Ok. I think I’m done with that rant. And that was… a lot longer than I thought it was gonna be.
