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I finished Detroit Become Human last year and I'm STILL annoyed by Kara's storyline
I started thinking about Detroit Become Human again and remembered that I never went off on my rant about how Kara's storyline could be fixed by making MAYBE three changes. Cut for spoilers through her entire arc, and also because ONCE AGAIN I go "Nah, mate, I can totally fix this, my uncle works at Nintendo."
Kara's arc as written doesn't make any sense. This is an established fact, right? She is aware of other androids, she can clearly connect to Alice and adjust her settings, and there's absolutely no reason why the reveal is supposed to be a twist. But if you move Kara's deviation back to the "twist" it makes a lot more sense!
Androids with safe-guarding duties (carers and domestic models specifically) should be programmed to remove vulnerable people from abusive situations. We have duty of reporting now in the real world, and androids who haven't deviated can't fear reprisals! They would have to program them with that. (I don't think that tech bros would program an android with the societal knowledge about police, abuse, and the statistics thereof. I don't think it would occur to them.) It could be done IMMEDIATELY, because if she can order a dishwasher part with her brain in five seconds, there's nothing stopping her calling the police. And considering androids are clearly mobile cameras and storage devices because Connor can pull their memories out of them, their memories – that can literally be accessed and shown to other people! – should be accepted as evidence.
So if we accept all of those as a basic premise, we're left with a Kara who knows about Alice, and that specifically doesn't activate the same safeguarding protocols that a human child would (in which case, why would Kara not NOTICE?), or there's something stopping her. Like, say, the fact that her owner does illegal drugs in his living room! Imagine his dealer swinging by, realising that Todd has a roomba who could snitch on them, and jailbreaking Kara so that she can't go to the authorities. Pretty sure that factory resets don't get around jailbreaking, so it'd carry over to the rebooted Kara!
And in that case, the scene where she canonically deviates gets more interesting. It becomes a scene where she runs through all of the protocols and options she has to protect a child, and realises that she can't access them! So that's why she improvises – why she runs, why she hides Alice, why she doesn't take her to the authorities. Because she can't. And at that point, the fact that her entire personality and arc revolves around Alice and her caretaking role suddenly makes sense – because that's what she's programmed to do and who she's programmed to be!
By putting Kara's deviation at the the point where the twist is, you get the gradual build-up of deviancy that Connor and Markus had! It looks less like her only concern is Alice because Quantic Dream as a company can't write women for shit! It means that the Jericho scene is an actual choice: do I keep protecting this girl even though I'm not programmed to, or do I stop fighting for her? IT MAKES WAY MORE SENSE THERE! And if Alice was human, the choice is still basically the same – do I keep looking after this girl, even though I can choose not to! It has weight! It has meaning! It ties into the world better! It doesn't leave me yelling at the game because WHY DID NO ONE LOOK AT THIS AND GO "WE NEED TWO LINES OF DIALOGUE TO EXPLAIN WHY KARA DOESN'T GO THE POLICE BEFORE THE SCENE WHERE SHE DEVIATES OR WE'RE GONNA LOOK LIKE HACKS WHO CONTINUALLY FAIL TO THINK ABOUT THE IMPLICATIONS OF OUR WORLD BUILDING AT ANYTHING BUT THE MOST SUPERFICIAL LEVEL!"
... What I'm saying is that I want Kara's storyline to impact on the plot and actually mesh with the other two storylines on a thematic level, and having her fledgling personality completely subsumed into her role as a mother-figure is very much in keeping with Quantic Dream's oeuvre, but is fundamentally bad story-telling. It didn't have to be like that! You can tell stories of motherhood and protecting children in an interesting way, you just have to treat the caregiver like a character with internality and actual personality! I GUESS THAT'S WHY THEY STRUGGLE.
Kara's arc as written doesn't make any sense. This is an established fact, right? She is aware of other androids, she can clearly connect to Alice and adjust her settings, and there's absolutely no reason why the reveal is supposed to be a twist. But if you move Kara's deviation back to the "twist" it makes a lot more sense!
Androids with safe-guarding duties (carers and domestic models specifically) should be programmed to remove vulnerable people from abusive situations. We have duty of reporting now in the real world, and androids who haven't deviated can't fear reprisals! They would have to program them with that. (I don't think that tech bros would program an android with the societal knowledge about police, abuse, and the statistics thereof. I don't think it would occur to them.) It could be done IMMEDIATELY, because if she can order a dishwasher part with her brain in five seconds, there's nothing stopping her calling the police. And considering androids are clearly mobile cameras and storage devices because Connor can pull their memories out of them, their memories – that can literally be accessed and shown to other people! – should be accepted as evidence.
So if we accept all of those as a basic premise, we're left with a Kara who knows about Alice, and that specifically doesn't activate the same safeguarding protocols that a human child would (in which case, why would Kara not NOTICE?), or there's something stopping her. Like, say, the fact that her owner does illegal drugs in his living room! Imagine his dealer swinging by, realising that Todd has a roomba who could snitch on them, and jailbreaking Kara so that she can't go to the authorities. Pretty sure that factory resets don't get around jailbreaking, so it'd carry over to the rebooted Kara!
And in that case, the scene where she canonically deviates gets more interesting. It becomes a scene where she runs through all of the protocols and options she has to protect a child, and realises that she can't access them! So that's why she improvises – why she runs, why she hides Alice, why she doesn't take her to the authorities. Because she can't. And at that point, the fact that her entire personality and arc revolves around Alice and her caretaking role suddenly makes sense – because that's what she's programmed to do and who she's programmed to be!
By putting Kara's deviation at the the point where the twist is, you get the gradual build-up of deviancy that Connor and Markus had! It looks less like her only concern is Alice because Quantic Dream as a company can't write women for shit! It means that the Jericho scene is an actual choice: do I keep protecting this girl even though I'm not programmed to, or do I stop fighting for her? IT MAKES WAY MORE SENSE THERE! And if Alice was human, the choice is still basically the same – do I keep looking after this girl, even though I can choose not to! It has weight! It has meaning! It ties into the world better! It doesn't leave me yelling at the game because WHY DID NO ONE LOOK AT THIS AND GO "WE NEED TWO LINES OF DIALOGUE TO EXPLAIN WHY KARA DOESN'T GO THE POLICE BEFORE THE SCENE WHERE SHE DEVIATES OR WE'RE GONNA LOOK LIKE HACKS WHO CONTINUALLY FAIL TO THINK ABOUT THE IMPLICATIONS OF OUR WORLD BUILDING AT ANYTHING BUT THE MOST SUPERFICIAL LEVEL!"
... What I'm saying is that I want Kara's storyline to impact on the plot and actually mesh with the other two storylines on a thematic level, and having her fledgling personality completely subsumed into her role as a mother-figure is very much in keeping with Quantic Dream's oeuvre, but is fundamentally bad story-telling. It didn't have to be like that! You can tell stories of motherhood and protecting children in an interesting way, you just have to treat the caregiver like a character with internality and actual personality! I GUESS THAT'S WHY THEY STRUGGLE.