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The Arachne System (SPIDERLIV 3)

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[X] Complain to your girlfriend, tell her everything. Nothing else you can do. It's yet another secuirty hole, but you can't protect her if you're freaking out.

This. Both for similar reasons as @NemoMarx , and because having other people check the relationships you have with others (any sort of relationship, not just romantic, so that includes friendships or being headmates) is extremely healthy. And Loki does not strike us as the person who'd really do that, nor do they have the perspective on being plural.

Really, this strikes us fundamentally as an inter-personal issue. Athena is just-as-affected by these decisions as Liv is, but does not get sufficient input into them.
More computing power strikes us as the hyper-vigilant approach where Athena is always on her guard about what Liv might do.
We have no full idea what Loki might do, but at a guess they'd destabilize the relationship between Athena and Liv in some way until the two of them fix it.
But contacting and telling Walker? That strikes us as empowering Athena, giving her the stability to put through her own needs right away. That won't necessarily be easy, but it's what we'd like to see.


Also, since it came up - we think that any worry about Walker utterly misbelieving Athena, being angry at Athena about how she came about/running on a computer, or any such thing, is unnecessary. Sure, those things will likely come up. But Athena wouldn't be in a relationship with someone who just discards someone because they are a bit different. And plural systems having differences is quite common - as repedeately mentioned, how Athena and Liv work isn't even that weird (the technopathy aside).
 
[X] Contact Loki. You have their phone number. Maybe they can help. Not sure how, you have no idea what they'll do, but if anyone can solve this...
 
[X] Complain to your girlfriend, tell her everything. Nothing else you can do. It's yet another secuirty hole, but you can't protect her if you're freaking out.

I am assuming here that Athena has a plan for how to come out as an actual AI here, it is not as easy as opening a trunk and showing off her super-suit, but she's a smart girl, I am sure she has thought about it.

So from a perspective of pure info security yeah, Athena is right about how dangerous sharing these things with May is, but I think it is the kind of risk that absolutely has to be taken. If Liv is not going to stop doing the hero thing, and she isn't going to stop, then it is monumentally dangerous to not have a support group in her corner. Athena's nature makes her extremely sensitive to one of the major dangers Liv (and herself) faces and almost unaware of others. To be frank, even with their recent improvements they have been going down an absurdly self destructive path.

Even just taking Liv's tendency of self hate centered around her power set/imposter syndrome is a huge red flag. I originally wrote like 3 paragraphs about this, but ultimately it boils down to this: Liv it is your body, that includes your powers, and it is not cheating or fake to have an unusual body. The fact that she can't see that is deeply concerning.

Anyway Liv needs her emotional support and so does Athena! It's a risk, but they are already playing with fire by so heavily neglecting emotional needs in favor of info security. Gonna be major risks either way, so might as well try to balance it out a bit.

open_sketch said:
The real answer, as far as I'm concerned, is while examining our speech for problematic aspects can be useful, it is not a substitute for meaningful, material improvement in conditions for disabled, mentally ill, and neurodivergent people. Oftentimes, it's merely the only discussion we have because the only power we feel we have is to police the language of our peers.
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Speaking as someone who is very mentally ill, permanently disabled, and neurodivergent (the trifecta, baby!), adopting speech examination as a major concern has been a super disappointing road to see the left go down. Intentions were good but people became so bogged down in it, put so much importance on it, and then just entirely miss the point. If people put half as much effort into self education on mental illness as they do into policing the words things would be a lot better imo.

Let me tell you, it is super surreal and dissapointing to hear someone explain to me why they think it is totally ok for a business to refuse to hire me while very carefully avoiding saying crazy because "that would be ablest!" (this has happened multiple times)
 
open_sketch said:
The real answer, as far as I'm concerned, is while examining our speech for problematic aspects can be useful, it is not a substitute for meaningful, material improvement in conditions for disabled, mentally ill, and neurodivergent people. Oftentimes, it's merely the only discussion we have because the only power we feel we have is to police the language of our peers.
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To add to this and what @LuckyLadyLily said:
Quite often, people who are yet-unfamiliar with a topic (e.g. disability, mental illness, neurodiversity, queerness other minority identities) are too afraid of using a wrong word or phrase to actually ask good-faith questions about the topic, or talk about it.
Which is pretty bad, since that puts all the burden of explaining and educating on the (minority identity people).

And sure, it is possible to explain the basics. But it is also tiring, and alienating to have to do all the work while the other person does not seem to care about things that are extremely important to your life. (To be clear, we are talking about 1:1 interactions here, or possibly you with a small group of people, not general online spaces).
Picture talking about e.g. chronic pain, you keep explaining how much it affects you, it's clearly a constant factor in your life, and the other person does not even ask any follow-up questions at any point. Very easily, that does not come across as respectful but rather uncaring.

Moreover, doing it this way is also easily inefficient. Because you can't always just explain the terms to use, the general topic, and your personal experiences (which is already a lot). Often, it also matters what questions or preconceptions the person (or people) you are talking to have, or how their interactions with you can change for the better, and so on.
And that is just a two-way conversation.
One where it does not at all help if they're too afraid to speak up on account of "what if they say anything wrong" or "what if they do not know enough".
Yes, disabled people (etc.) should certainly be given priority when talking about their own experiences. And it is good to take some care with your language. But do it too much, and it is just another way of shutting out minority groups from the conversation.

We want to say that again:
Being too overly careful with speech about minority issues can effectively shut out minorities* from speech, because speech is often about having a conversation. Respect means actually talking to the other person - and minorities typically want to talk about actual changes more than to educate you on what terms to use.
(*disabled people, neurodiverse people, mentally ill people, racial minorities, queer people, etc. this can apply to so many groups of people)
 
[X] Contact Loki. You have their phone number. Maybe they can help. Not sure how, you have no idea what they'll do, but if anyone can solve this...
 
[X] Complain to your girlfriend, tell her everything. Nothing else you can do. It's yet another secuirty hole, but you can't protect her if you're freaking out.
 
[X] Complain to your girlfriend, tell her everything. Nothing else you can do. It's yet another secuirty hole, but you can't protect her if you're freaking out.

I've gone back and forth and I think this is the better call.
 
[ ] Complain to your girlfriend, tell her everything. Nothing else you can do. It's yet another secuirty hole, but you can't protect her if you're freaking out.
If it was just her girlfriend, sure, but If I remember correctly she is not the only one who will learn. I am willing to trust Walker, but not Mary, if that makes sense. I don't think that sentiment is that far fetched, given that Walker doesn't seem to have much trust in Mary either right now.

[X] Contact Loki. You have their phone number. Maybe they can help. Not sure how, you have no idea what they'll do, but if anyone can solve this...
The swingiest option, with outcomes depending mostly on whether Loki is feeling helpfull or not. Given my misgivings about the other two options, I think I will vote mystery box here.

[ ] You're going to need to double down on digital security and prediction. Which means you need more computing power. You'll have to... borrow... some...
Hard no, if SSR doesn't at least suspect Liv is involved with AI after the stuff with JARVIS, I would be very surprised. And as dirty as it is to talk about AI safety when that AI is a person, said AI amassing processing power on its own would be, in my opinion, a big code red for anyone looking on. It is basically step one in just about any realistc AI apocalypse scenario.
 
It feels appropriate that Athena is freaking out about Liv creating security holes and deals with her freak-out by going out and creating more security holes.
 
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Vebyast said:
It feels appropriate that Athena is freaking out about Liv creating security holes and responds by going out and creating more security holes.
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I think that's a major reason for the popularity of the Loki vote. Loki already got most of our secrets when (s)he did the casual mindread when we met, so there are minimal security implications to ranting at her.
 
notgreat said:
I think that's a major reason for the popularity of the Loki vote. Loki already got most of our secrets when (s)he did the casual mindread when we met.
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Yeah. Loki's at least going to screw us over in some way that isn't blowing Liv's cover even more. Sending Athena on a quest, causing shenanigans, turning May into a supervillain so she can defend herself, yeah, but Loki wouldn't stoop to something as banal as leaking our info.
 
allmightytoaster said:
If it was just her girlfriend, sure, but If I remember correctly she is not the only one who will learn. I am willing to trust Walker, but not Mary, if that makes sense.
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In the first post of this thread they have a discussion(I am having quoting issues, but it is the first post and starts just before the image, and goes on to mention notes.) about that and they have to pass notes back and forth in order to communicate. Of course, Mary has saccess to all of Walker's stuff, and may well snoop, and Walker has her own outlets such as therapy and what have you... Standard "three people can keep a secret..." stuff. I do not know what Zero's deal is, but I do not think that Mary automatically knows what Walker hears. There are still a lot of vectors by which it could spread but not immediately, as far as we have been informed...
 
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[X] Contact Loki. You have their phone number. Maybe they can help. Not sure how, you have no idea what they'll do, but if anyone can solve this...

As per notgreat's reasoning. Probably not an optimal choice, but should be entertaining.
 
[X] Contact Loki. You have their phone number. Maybe they can help. Not sure how, you have no idea what they'll do, but if anyone can solve this...
 
[X] Contact Loki. You have their phone number. Maybe they can help. Not sure how, you have no idea what they'll do, but if anyone can solve this...
 
allmightytoaster said:
[X] Contact Loki. You have their phone number. Maybe they can help. Not sure how, you have no idea what they'll do, but if anyone can solve this...
The swingiest option, with outcomes depending mostly on whether Loki is feeling helpfull or not. Given my misgivings about the other two options, I think I will vote mystery box here.
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I'm mostly concerned about what loki thinks about Athena going from zero to "borrow the power of the gods" for her info sec problem.
 
[X] Contact Loki. You have their phone number. Maybe they can help. Not sure how, you have no idea what they'll do, but if anyone can solve this...
 
[X] Contact Loki. You have their phone number. Maybe they can help. Not sure how, you have no idea what they'll do, but if anyone can solve this...

Gonna be honest...I just wanna see more Loki!
 
Good arguments for talking to Walker. But I think maybe the thing that will most help Athena be less afraid... is actually thinking out past the panic zone, and considering the ways this could play out.
I don't think I have time to write up a vote for it, though. Someone help?
 
allmightytoaster said:
If it was just her girlfriend, sure, but If I remember correctly she is not the only one who will learn. I am willing to trust Walker, but not Mary, if that makes sense. I don't think that sentiment is that far fetched, given that Walker doesn't seem to have much trust in Mary either right now.
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What @Aunty Shi Ping said, basically. As I recall, they are a fairly typical DID system with little or no shared memory. There's a good chance the secret is safe, though how memory works varies a lot between systems.
 
[X] Contact Loki. You have their phone number. Maybe they can help. Not sure how, you have no idea what they'll do, but if anyone can solve this...


I've had a rough few months, where I lost interest in a lot of fics and quests I was following. Just caught back up yesterday, and Spider-Liv is as great as always. I can't wait for more.
 
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[X] Contact Loki. You have their phone number. Maybe they can help. Not sure how, you have no idea what they'll do, but if anyone can solve this...
 
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