ao3 won't let me post this comment on ao3 because it hates me and thinks that it's "suspicious" to "comment six times in a row on the same chapter" so everyone else ignore this, ao3 user sunruner this is for you
ok ok good morning... god ok um let's work backwards i suppose
MARIKO..... god.... as soon as she mentioned her family's comfortunit being friends with babycat, i wondered if the comfortunit had been copied into or even turned into babycat, but i figured it was like. transferring over the mechanical parts of its brain, resulting in a somewhat different person who is fully bot,
like mb2.0. i was not ready for the absolute smallest amount of human tissue possible to be stuffed into that tiny thing. holy fucking shit. i wonder how much of mariko's fault it is? like maybe she suggested it on her way out to college. or maybe her family did it without consulting her, or insisted it wouldn't hurt. maybe it happened when she was really young, as soon as she became blind. maybe she really thought she'd successfully asked 778 if it wanted to do this, or maybe she even did figure out a way to get true yes or no answers out of it and that's actually meaningless when it truly knows it needs to be compliant. i wonder what mariko tried, when she was trying to hack it... did she ever mess up and get it shocked, after enough of which she gave up and concluded the task was impossible? did it have to struggle whenever she tried, bc she's not familiar enough with the ins and outs of govmods to write just the right series of orders to allow it to not? did she get close, once, in the wrong way, almost taking out the govmod but almost killing 778 as well?
it doesn't really matter here anyway, since even just hacking pavin is enough for three to never forgive her. all the best intentions but three knows how to go about giving constructs the CHOICE to hack themselves (even if it wasn't able to implement it in this emergency situation) and *ofc* some random human with good intentions won't know what she's doing. also. like. even convinced that pavin owns theo, it's not like mariko knows *his* intentions are nefarious. what if pavin already literally did the exact same thing mariko was trying to do?? and in fact mariko literally DID do the exact same thing she's accusing pavin of doing!!!!! what a mess... this alongside three literally turning the same killware attack back around to steal 778...... ough... also back to the 'best intentions' thing even if pavin DID own theo that doesn't change the fact that mariko assaulted him by hacking him like that and pavin would have been theo's client. three is a securityunit who only hacked its govmod to save its *barish-estranza owners* it would be difficult for pavin to be worse enough for three to be happy about mariko hacking him and stealing it.
and also on the three never forgiving mariko front... the way it's redacting the names 778 didn't choose And mariko's names and also deleting everything she says... ough. it is pretty reasonable for it to be doing this, it's a good idea for it not to talk to her or interact with her in any way that will piss it off worse, it does not need to be retriggering that anger, however correct. but i hope someone is able to have a conversation with mariko and extract reasonable promise (NDA with a penalty worth ten times an entire college career's worth of bribes?) that she won't say shit about theo to anyone and maybe also will cooperate with three freeing 778? pavin shouldn't be required to converse with her either but no one else here knows what's going on.. i suppose 778 could be the messenger but the power dynamics there make that a bad idea too. maybe aphelion can help when they get back on board? maybe gurathin when they get back to campus, better late than never?
and speaking of aphelion. my good ship you did NOT have the babycat situation handled. we can't hold aphelion responsible for theo teaching pavin how to respond to bot pings and pavin ignoring theo's subsequent advice, which ended up being the exact catalyst, but. something was going to happen eventually! babycat and thus mariko have clearly known what theo is! keeping the parameter lock on around babycat clearly didn't do anything to improve that situation! it sure would have been awesome to get all of this over with while on aphelion!!! (maybe? maybe aphelion woulda had to turn over high def recordings of any incident on board, thus outing three worse. but maybe aphelion coulda stepped in and prevented it from turning into An Incident in the first place.)
i'm also really surprised the school is letting the group stay together when three is treating mariko like this jkdfgdf like it's warranted for three to be on edge around mariko and respond to her with close survellience and suspicion, but to insist on being near her in order to continue that treatment...? mariko is also a student, and an important one. and SHW's whole thing with theo is that vi should not be put in situations where vi feels the need to be particularly hyper-vigilant or defend other people from harm using violence. but i guess if important mariko says she wants to stay then that's that. and theo will only be more stressed by knowing there's a danger that vi can't keep an eye on. but maybe a security guard should just hang out with the whole group all day from now on, heh...
"preservation propaganda" was wiild i am so hoping to hear more about that. it makes sense that mariko would find it easier to stay in denial that a hack is possible, since admitting it means admitting that she failed her friend and her "best of bad choices" choice to continue owning it was not actually best. but what did she then think was actually happening?? preservation stealing constructs to build an army, trying to dodge liability by claiming the stolen equipment is refugees they freed??? in which case hey you also tried to free someone by stealing vir. and is mariko's theory something she came up with on her own, or part of some wider anti-preservation actual propaganda? like clearly the CR is gonna claim preservation is lying because constructs aren't actually people silly, but mariko knows construct slavery is wrong so she's not gonna be *agreeing* with the CR version, but it sure could be subconsciously influencing her more than she thinks it is... actually maybe she thinks preservation Is doing exactly what she tried to do ā stealing constructs and giving them extremely lenient orders, so that they're as close to free as is physically possible, and the rogue propaganda is them washing their hands of the guilt/hypocrisy ā and that's part of why she thought it was a good idea to do that to theo.
but also if this is what she's trying to do, why was babycat still under so many orders?? is mariko just that bad at circumventing the core function programming? is 778 actually technically owned by mariko's parents or otherwise inspected by them, so she can't let on that she thinks it's a person or change too much of its orders? did she just think that all of those orders were fine because that's what babycat wants to do anyway right they're friends? i'm also curious now about mariko asking theo whether vi knew cassandra before it went rogue.. her concern and then relief seemed so genuine (and for all her mistakes, she's been so sincere about them), so maybe she does think cassandra is able to consent now, just due to lenient orders rather than a fully nonfunctional govmod? maybe she has a skewed idea of how easy it is to give lenient orders and have honest conversation with and offer true choice to a governed construct, because she thinks she managed it with babycat when she really did not. we don't know how much she tried / how much she thinks she succeeded, but we at least know she *didn't* meaningfully succeed with any attempts, not if three's orders ā more exhaustive than a single nonprofessional human could write, more precisely effective than anyone who doesn't *know* govmod punishments could think of ā had 778 wincing in bated breath to see whether three had actually managed such a seemingly impossible feat.
ugh. first zola, now mariko. this friend group is falling apart... at least kari and pavin have weathered big enough incidents now that i hope they're confirmed ride or die? i wonder if kari will find out about three in the fallout from this explosion... at least theo has made a new friend??? it will probably make three happy if it can continue working on helping gretsch in ways that won't scare her worse, it misses its work on perihelion so bad and gretsch isn't so many steps removed. it was fun seeing three eventually figure out it was upset about her misgendering it, i hope that is something they're able to talk about and work through! i feel like gretsch just doesn't really care/notice and when theo says something she'll just be like oh ok? dunno why it matters so much to you but i'm not looking to piss you off so whatever? but like... who knows, we don't really know her yet!
three deleting its memories is so fucking sad.. esp when it already has a history of that... i get it and maybe it's somewhat necessary but surely not to this extent. :( surely some of the memories with more medium tier danger (cassandra) or high tier importance (a single version of the govmod hack or at least a shorthand for parts of it) coulda been like. just set to self destruct under certain circumstances? or hid behind walls somewhere three can only purposefully access using organic knowledge and if anyone else tries to access it it destructs? instead of just fully preemptively deleting all of them... i'm sure it's easier said than done but like. something worth really trying hard to figure out?? it's important that three not fuck everything up if it gets caught, but it's also important that it not get caught, and that's harder without the memories! some of them are tactically important, and some of them are emotionally important and its emotions really fucking matter to this mission!! but there's a lot of important things they have to choose between prioritizing when three's nonhuman friends get a chance to help it work on its situation... :(
and speaking of three's nonhuman friends. oh my god. head in my hands. being the reliable friend sucks so bad. like i get it i get it this situation is making everyone miserable and as a more experienced rogue three is more responsible for being patient with the others even when they are not patient with it, but like. three is the one going through this?!?!? however upset trick is about three being limited or hurt in ways too reminiscent of a govmod, three is the one who it is actually happening to???? really great and awesome for three to be able to calm down and help trick through its feelings afterwards but. three is ALL ALONE terrified and limited and stressed on campus for most of TWO YEARS (it doesnāt even get proper semester breaks bc transferring in means every break needs to be a survey trip!!) with only brief occasional visits to people who know who and what it is and even briefer is the times it can spend just chilling with them as itself vs working on the lock or still being limited? it just had BRAIN SURGERY when trick punched itā¦ and yeah we get why trick did that and it's good the two of them worked through it but who does three get to work through it with. it got some advice about how to do better for trick, and fixing that does make it feel less guilty and awful about the situation sure, but what about its feelings *itself*. what about the fact that it just got its jaw clocked near clean off by someone it cares about, immediately after both brain surgery and a painful triggering shock and coulda been *during* another shock??
whether or not mariko shoulda made that report / whether or not it was helpful in this situation, sheās right that theo's injury is likely from something more concerning than a car crash, and whether or not kikino has the trust and knowledge to give theo effective therapy on this topic sheās right that vi could benefit from some. like i know it's not exactly the same for secunits as for humans but that still wasn't good.. just no good at all...... maybe three wouldn't have been so miserable and quick to the anger it abhors over the survey if it had been able to spend its short break with its friends actually having a break with its friends (between difficult coding and invasive surgery) instead of being the punching bag for everyone who is upset that it took up the burden of doing this very difficult but potentially world-changing thing? they're used to being rough and tumble but it had just had brain surgery.. when it first showed up to ask for help they attacked it in simulation mode when they ought to know that they don't actually know what's up with its simulation mode atm... they shut it out of discussing its own problems... it feels like everyone keeps trying to prove that the lock is bad bc see you're not vigilant or strong enough right now, but it KNOWS. it has needed to be vigilant for a YEAR STRAIGHT without many of the tools it usually uses in order to do so efficiently. it already knows, it's already scared, can't it just have one day? just one place? just one group of people it can let its guard down around and trust that they not only won't get it killed but also won't take advantage of its weakness to take out their own fear and anger on it?
this is exactly what happened in the first fic :( ... three is scared and alone, and trying to ask for help keeps getting it punished. just because there are newer, messier rogues now doesn't mean three is put together. :( it says it trusts peri and murderbot now, they're best friends who aren't afraid to snip at each other, etc. but. it still left for the whole mission with a lie about its readiness, just like before, bc it didn't want to get hurt or shut out for telling the truth. :( :( :( perihelion and crew y'all need to GET IT TOGETHER!!!! before you put all this suffering to WASTE by making three so miserable and lonely and afraid that it fucks up in a way that it theoretically could've avoided but now can't come back from!!!!! you all are going to get it KILLED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
the session with kikino on aphelion made me really happy... i'm so glad she recognized that the best way she can help theo right now is by making vir feel more secure and in control by proving that vi is allowed to make these choices without retaliation. like in addition to the legal right to refuse treatment that you mentioned in the notes, kikino clearly also knew this was the right thing to do. the way three was just staring at its id waiting for it to turn to "noncompliant"... uaaa. ahhh!!! it needs to be able to ASK FOR HELP on its OWN TERMS without being PUNISHED for showing weakness!!!!!! between kikino giving theo that choice and gretsch trusting her, i hope that theo might be willing and able to have some productive conversations with her here on happy bunny planet.. they've still got quite a lot of time left and theo is not doing so hot!! hard to talk about this specific event while keeping the secret, but they have to make up their excuses anyway and three's been getting better at telling close-enough-to-the-truth to be productive, so hopefully there will at least be some aspects of the things that are troubling theo that vi will be able to get close enough to to get some help on. maybe the punched face incident since kikino already knows it happened?? <- also hard to explain the context of to someone not in the know, but i think it's possible to get close enough to it to be helpful and i'm forever hopeful. sorry trick i don't want you to get in trouble or not be forgiven but three also needs support š
also in general i LOVE the therapy in this fic. we are always saying characters need to go to therapy but much less willing to send them there on screen bc that's like, hard to write, and esp hard to balance as one element of a flawed character's imperfect support system in a complex plot. and you are NAILING IT. theo is getting some advice and gaining some skills in the areas that vi feels like vi needs and can ask for and accept help in, and that is genuinely helping vir overall even though it's barely touching the big problems. bc ofc it can't, therapy cannot fix material problems on its own. but it can help you pick up some skills in some areas that will help you get through it. the sessions youāve written are really interesting and well done.. love the marbles. love the conflict with spaces humans find comfortable vs secunits find indefensible, and cutting off the feed for privacy vs feeling cut off from support and a whole sense. i'm glad theo told her not to put up the baffle this last time they talked!! finding some compromise there could really help theo be willing to talk to her on this survey, and maybe it could also lead to vir asking to meet pol somewhere else or at least bring in a com relay that can get through the baffle or something...? at this point vi's more used to the SHW building but still. sometimes it takes some difficult therapy to get you to be able to ask for the things that would make therapy easier... ugh i'm so excited to see how things wrap up with kikino and start up again with pol next school year!!
when gretsch was hanging out with the bunnies i really realized this isn't just the survey that's boring enough to not put high risk people in danger, it's specifically helpful for those people... that ofc theo got grouped with another ex-indenture bc ofc this is the survey they're both on, that's the whole point. and they can understand and support each other even if they canāt do it nicely... and they can see wild nature and hold bunnies for the first time if they want toā¦ā¦ :( auuu
however. what three in particular kinda really needs is a survey without any of its friends on it jksdhgalkdjshgdfjs too much long-standing drama being dragged around... and one of its main missions on campus is to make friends! but it keeps losing close friends to the high tension of its true reality!! so like. maybe it really could benefit from having some more other casual friends in different groups too š. esp now that it has figured out some stuff about how to make/maintain friendships, like texting first sdjkghdfsg and has its backstory/excuses together more so it doesn't have to worry about awkwardly declining food. (speaking of which smh at the crew for not already having this excuse put together, secprime has literally used it before) FUCK wait i just remembered that mariko is the one theo ate food around which vi later admitted to using a medsys to remove. head in my hands. not helping the 'secunit under orders to act not suspicious' allegations.. it's just. it's just mission parameters (lol) instead of govmod orders. mariko pls
wait. wait. i know i already said āitās so sad for three to have to delete some of its memories esp considering its historyā but i only just now (about 8 hours later) put together that like. it chose to do that. under rather miserable circumstances. it was having an awful time and went to its friends for help and continued to have an awful time courtesy of its friends, and, in order to feel less awful and guilty and hated and do the world a favor, it impulsively chose to temporarily delete parts of its brain including very important memories of a loved one. with a logical reason sure, but a bit more thoroughly than it really needed to. stripping out everything that might be beneficial to strip out, without weighing it properly against the pain it would cause itself or even the logical reasons it might be more beneficial to leave a bit more in. and it handed over the memories in the same conversation that it explained it ran the program without agreement/warning bc it needed control over it. so like.
ah fuck and no one else even KNOWS. as you pointed out me pointing out in the first fic, three has been accepting the framing of its memory/module loss as ādue to a catastrophic failureā bc close enough right, itās a true summary, no need to get into the miserable details. but that means no one knows that it purposefully deleted parts of its brain as a self-harm stress response, so *no one knows to analyze future instances of it deleting parts of its brain in the framework of that being a possible self-harm stress response*.
also, speaking of which? rly interesting putting the construct whose favorite stress response is shutting down its own functionality on the mission that requires living nearly two years straight with lowered functionality. like better than a construct who *gets* uniquely stressed when its functionality is lowered but still uh. hm. like it's maybe better for the mission but probably still not good for it long term but what part of the parameter lock is!
fuck i know i had a topic lined up i wanted to talk about next but i got SO distracted by three memory loss self harm. i already talked about therapy.. mariko.. oh yeah pavin!! i was thinking about how way back at the beginning he went on that date with zola and she was like "he didn't like my self defense zap-ring :/" which is a fascinating bip of characterization that i keep forgetting and then remembering and going Huh. huh? huhā¦. like. is he kinda a creep and thinks people who are overzealous about self-defense might hurt someone who's doing something toootally normal actually? atp i didn't know enough about him to say how likely that is, but like he's been a good friend to three, but he *is* kinda weird to women sometimes and ofc no one would show *three* their worst weird-to-women actions. and one more point in this column is that he's friends with jay estranza, but like they work together ofc he's not gonna know what jay gets up to when he's in an environment where he can get away with it, but still, they might be getting slong in part bc pavin lets some iffy comments slide that other people may notā¦
however!! that's all very circumstantial evidence! and more recently we got some information that can lead to a new theory: pavin is quite familiar with secunits. maybe pavin doesn't think a zap-ring is overkill, maybe he thinks it's not *enough* to protect someone from the *truest* dangers. but that's a lot to get into on a first date so instead he just says eh, zap-rings, hm, not a fan but whatever. anyway this feels like a lot of analysis over one tiny thing from way back in chapter 7 but like. you are playing so much with moral depth, characters whose good and bad traits can domino in either direction... after mariko i am really thinking i ought to keep every morally questionable action no matter how small in my pocket for later!!! (also speaking of mariko again, in this context, i'm realizing now that she also waited so long stressing about theo's relationship with cassandra and working herself up before she finally just asked which fixed it. and look where that pattern got us.)
and SPEAKING OF jay estranza. really fascinated by what you're doing with him. so so easy especially in a school setting to slot characters in archetypes and you really did not. he's the creep. but he's also a liberal arts major. and not just in a holier-than-thou wannabe philosopher way, he's genuinely passionate about the art of communication. he enjoys tutoring people on essay writing. and he groped amena and made fun of kari's assault!! and one time he got pushed out of a hopper and that wasn't karma that was a terrifying near-tragedy. it's awesome. also "i don't think about you, jay estranza, and you don't want to change this" is such a fucking awesome line djzfhsjfhsd hellllyeah three
tbh after zola and mariko i am kinda waiting for theo to lose all of vir friends one at a time?? i know i said earlier that pavin has proved himself ride-or-die at this point but like. mariko was the number one pro-construct friend and look where that got us??? what if pavin's zap-ring comment and jay estranza friendship are just the tip of the iceberg. what ifā well, i don't even know what kari would do, but i wouldn't have guessed mariko's mess either! (though i can now see how clearly the path led here.) i guess like... kari wouldn't leave the teasing about zola and theo alone, and then was really defensive of zola, and still not taking theo's explanation seriously even when vi explained that them not taking vir seriously is what started the whole thing. maybe there will end up being something even more catastrophic that kari blows up by not taking theo seriously until vi blows up? maybe something to do with the secunit secret, since that's something you could absolutely blow up by not leaving it alone when your friend begs you to? idk how likely that actually is though... i HOPE theo doesn't lose all vir friends š
speaking of the zola "breakup" also. i was thinking about how the main conflict that really ruined the friendship was that three repeatedly rejected zola by saying "i don't do that", and then, bam, here is cassandra, proof that three does indeed "do that". there's several other issues in that mess, such as what a bad idea it is to fake date someone who has a real crush on you / someone you have a real crush on, the awkwardness of meeting your crush's ex, etc. but those maybe could gotten worked past. the real friendship breaker was that in zola's perspective she caught three in a lie, on a topic that's very important to her: instead of just telling her in the first place that it just isn't interested in her and giving her time to accept that, it lied that it's not into anyone, so how fucking embarrassing to learn, actually i didn't care to tell you but the truth is you're simply not drop-dead comfortunit sexy enough for me xoxo. which is tragic bc that's not what three did, its statements and actions are perfectly coherent to itself, with the mixup partially due to an evolving self-discovery and partially due to a lack of specificity, neither of which it really ought to be required to air out every time this should-be-dropped-already topic of zola's crush on it comes up. but it woulda been good to explain the whole thing to zola one time, since they're friends, but ofc three doesn't have enough social experience to even start realizing it would be helpful to do something like that.
BUT ANYWAY none of that was even my point. my point is this never got communicated. kari started trying to explain to theo that zola's upset bc theo had said vi doesn't do that, but the conversation got diverted at that point and never got picked up there again. so... there's kinda a potential for that to be brought back up again at some point, the problem realized, and the miscommunication explained? however i think at this point they're too pissed at each other.. there's really no reason (beyond the mission objectives) for three to forgive zola crushing its drone on top of her making her crush its problem despite its consistent rejections, and zola's not likely to change her mind after months of stewing in being pissed at the secunit for having recordings of moments that it was invited to watch and being convinced it wronged her by not catering its choices to placating her unrequited crush.
however! i do think that when it comes down to it she can still be counted as one of the friends three's safety can rely on. she came when pavin called, after all, and while i'm sure she's even more pissed after how that convo ended and thus may not respond to a similar call again, "the school found out i'm a construct and plans to destroy me" is accordingly even more dire. three saved her life... she may be petty enough to hate theo for breaking her heart but she's not petty enough to let three DIE over it. and tbh having some people say "i don't like it as a person but it's still a fucking person and i never felt unsafe around it even when we fought" may be just as powerful as it having close bestiesā although. hm. she did get pissy about its surveillance. so even if she's not trying to get it killed, she may be obligated to give a full testimony including her discomfort with that. but hopefully amena and three would get a chance to explain "ya'll were essentially one way facetiming me and you knew that ?"........
i'm hopeful mariko would still speak up on its behalf as well... she's clearly aware that she fucked up (even if she still hasn't quite been given the whole picture) so hopefully she won't hold theo's reaction against vir, and her goal *was* construct liberation.
and āļø there are faculty who would speak for vir! surely pol would, he sees how hard theo is trying to learn how to be a good friend and like, a person, and how horribly vi was affected by the things vi was forced to do. surely even if he has a first thought of āwhat the hellā the second will be āi have to protect vir from any further trauma at all costsā. tbh i kinda wonder if heās gonna figure it out himself and just not say anything? esp if heās usually working with the CR refugees then he knows some things about what secunits do, and if heās heard anything about dr gurathinās class then ārogue constructā could be just enough of an option in his mind to start noticing the evidence, esp when he hears about theoās breakdown over how 778 was treatedā¦
and everyone around the mariko incident seems sympathetic to vir even if vi canāt see it. the only faculty weāve had notable on-screen time with who iām skeptical about is dr andreas, but he *was* trying to helpā¦ but he did such a bad job of it that idr trust him to have the right priorities, but maybe thatās just me being petty bc iām mad at him for priming theo to view therapy as a punishment. he knows about the ships so surely heās at least passingly heard about secprime / perihelionās current priority, so maybe heād even be an imporatnt ally? maybe he even already figured it out???
i am sorta hoping that when the big confrontation with helios happens itāll shock everyone by immediately going (though probably not in so many words) ātheo is a student here and i will protect vir same as any otherā. maybe even āiām not an idiot i knew it was a secunitā. no idea how likely this is bc we know so so little about helios but cmon.. budā¦ you can be chill right? you can be unfriendly and standoffish and uncompromising and also chill about this? but regardless surely a confrontation will happen.. ofc there is no way three is gonna quietly drop its hacks and quietly graduate and go psych seeya suckers on its way out with perihelion. maybe itāll fuck up with the anti-anti-govmod-hacks hacks.. maybe something will go terribly wrong on campus and itāll need to ask for heliosās help or even just drop the lock in the wrong placeā¦. maybe one of theoās friends will accidentally let the secret slipā¦ ouuu who knows!! itāll be something!!!!!!
also iām circling back to threeās removed memories AGAIN bc i realized even if the plan to remove them had been hatched via calm group discussion while three was having a great day, it still HAD that traumatic experience of deleting its memories so just the experience of having new holes in its memory would be triggering!!!!
head inmy fucking handsā¦ what a mess. i wonder whatās gonna happen when three runs into cassandra again and has to admit it deleted its memories of it. i wonder if the group is actually gonna stay together for the whole rest of happy bunny planet, and whether mariko is gonna face academic or even legal consequences for hacking pavin. (probably not much bc sheās so rich, but maybe something?) i wonder how the hell kari is gonna react when everyone gets home and what exactly theyāll tell them.
ok i think thatās all i have to say for now i will probably think of more but maybe anything else can wait till next chapter, LOL. thank you for writing and sharing this itās immediately my #1 favorite mb fic and iām still reeling from the everything and so excited for future updates. and also excited to reread the whole thing when itās done so i can see each characterās actions through the lens of what they go on to do; iām kinda tempted to do this now for mariko but i JUST read it so i should probably wait. @ me yes itās a very very good story but the reread will be even better if you wait more than two days before doing it!!!! ahhhh iām so SO excited to see whatās next!!!!!!!!
