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The Arachne System (SPIDERLIV 3)

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[X] Justine asked for help with some unrelated superhero stuff. Time to suit up!

I don't want to see the symbiote mess up a date with May. May has barely gotten over the whole "an AI is watching through my girlfriend's eyes and we have no privacy" thing - let's not lay the symbiote on her right now. We should see if we can improve our body-sharing with the symbiote a little first.
Obviously we shouldn't keep May in the dark forever, but we can probably take a week to fix things first (unless we'd be spending lots of time with May during that week, of course).
 
Anyway, next time Nat says that we should come out with exactly how much pain Liv has intentionally put herself through, because at this point it's way more then anyone should have to experience.

That was really dismissive of someone Nat thinks has extensively cybernized their body, let alone all the ruinous combat injuries.

Like really, she's going to argue pain to Liv?
 
Parzival95 said:
Anyway, next time Nat says that we should come out with exactly how much pain Liv has intentionally put herself through, because at this point it's way more then anyone should have to experience.

That was really dismissive of someone Nat thinks has extensively cybernized their body, let alone all the ruinous combat injuries.

Like really, she's going to argue pain to Liv?
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I think that a misery-off with someone who thinks that our justifications are completely invalid isn't an exercise we can really win.
 
Parzival95 said:
Anyway, next time Nat says that we should come out with exactly how much pain Liv has intentionally put herself through, because at this point it's way more then anyone should have to experience.

That was really dismissive of someone Nat thinks has extensively cybernized their body, let alone all the ruinous combat injuries.

Like really, she's going to argue pain to Liv?
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Personal read - remember that awkward MCU plotline about Nat being sterile and calling herself a monster? I think this is drawing on that and there's some bioessentialism. "Pain" here is probably more specific to that.
 
open_sketch said:
"Is that also a reference? Why do you have so many references?" the symbiote asked. There was a short pause and vague mental discomfort. "... my people rely heavily on duplication. This basilisk could be a real threat."
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I really don't get the Hydra. It seems to function as an argument only in a universe where time travel exists.
open_sketch said:
You were starting to suspect that maybe Nat wouldn't take kindly to you trying to argue that Stalin and his cronies weren't exactly not corrupt and ruining it.

"How'd that happen?" you asked, and she waved a hand.

"One question. Story for another time, kid. But to answer your question from before, I thought you were one of ours because they're the only people who had access to that kind of cybernetics. And I figured you weren't, because they don't typically work with boys."

"... I'm not a boy," you said sternly. She seemed utterly indifferent.

"Of course not. This is America. You're whatever you say you are," she said dismissively. "Just remember. Everywhere else in the world, being a woman is something you only earn with pain."

"Liv, I'm taking the front." Athena insisted, and you let her, because otherwise, somebody was going to die.
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Yikes, shes a Tankie Terf.
 
I think the best possible case scenario is Nat's just...like...really uninformed due to just having not had that much life experience not related to stabbing and midcentury communist politics.

Like, there's TERFs and there's unfrozen 70s cavewoman lawyer, and I think she's closer to the latter, right? Especially with her memory gaps?
 
Nat's also a spy and a really good spy, there is every possibility that she doesn't care one way or another but she is playing mind games for extra information. The way that was said was very on the nose, almost like it was meant to provoke. That's not something that happens on accident with someone like Nat. Doesn't mean she isn't a tankie terf, just that she knows how to play the transphobic game for her own ends.

[X] Justine asked for help with some unrelated superhero stuff. Time to suit up!

Wanna see how the symbiote plays along in superheroing
 
DragonCobolt said:
I think the best possible case scenario is Nat's just...like...really uninformed due to just having not had that much life experience not related to stabbing and midcentury communist politics.
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There's also this :

open_sketch said:
though I'm starting to favour the belief that the men in charge of the program liked having women who couldn't say no."
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In all likelihood, Natasha doesn't just have memory gaps. She might have constructed memories, reconstructed memories, imprinted loyalty, deep seated triggered memories and the twisted interpolations of a brain trying to make sense of everything that came before in there.

NemoMarx said:
Personal read - remember that awkward MCU plotline about Nat being sterile and calling herself a monster? I think this is drawing on that and there's some bioessentialism. "Pain" here is probably more specific to that.
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Yeah, Nat is not referring to ordinary suffering. That would be a very weak argument, after all. Suffering exists in many places, and even without modern sensibilities she should be aware of that.

She's referring to a sort of mythological shared Suffering among women, which is convenient because you can define the boundaries of that suffering exactly how you want to keep others out.

Edit : The Red Room certainly seems creepy enough to both buy into some weird version of reproductive control and indoctrinate it's operatives with a whole lot of hang-ups, but on the other hand many people are perfectly capable of having terrible opinions without ominous conspiracies.
 
[X] Liv also has a date she has to make. May's going to have to be debriefed.

I think maintaining Liv's relationship by keeping May up-to-date on things is capital-I Important.
 
open_sketch said:
They captured the lion's share of Hydra's technology after the war, including the alien artifacts much of the technology was sourced from.
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Oh, so that's where they go their super tech in this universe. Is that how they got it in the movies too? I remember them using the tesseract as a power source. I can't remember if they sourced much tech from it.

open_sketch said:
You were starting to suspect that maybe Nat wouldn't take kindly to you trying to argue that Stalin and his cronies weren't exactly not corrupt and ruining it.
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Yeah. I'm surprised that Nat still supports/believes in Stalin and his contemporaries. Then again, Nat may have been cyborg-ized before Stalin died (1953). If they messed with her memories, they may have hardwired in some party loyalty or something.

open_sketch said:
"Of course not. This is America. You're whatever you say you are," she said dismissively. "Just remember. Everywhere else in the world, being a woman is something you only earn with pain."
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Sigh. Damn it. I wanted her to be cool.

Huh. Now, I'm weirdly curious about the origin of her transphobia. I mean, that quote sounds like a TERF-y talking point. But was/is 'gender critical' feminism relatively popular in the USSR/Russia? Is it something she picked up after she left Russia? Or is she just using modern language to justify old school queerphobia.

[X] Justine asked for help with some unrelated superhero stuff. Time to suit up!
I haven't seen Justine in a while. Also, if we put off meeting with May, then we might be able to working something out with the symbiote. I'd like him to make a good first impression with May if possible.
 
Yeah, of course she's full of вата. Quite a lot of Russian communists tend to be bigoted and almost reactionary in a lot of topics, and you've been able to portray this quite nicely.
 
ancusohm said:
But was/is 'gender critical' feminism relatively popular in the USSR/Russia? Is it something she picked up after she left Russia? Or is she just using modern language to justify old school queerphobia
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I mean, Russian radical feminism has a lot of TERFs, and a lot of mainstream Russian feminist icons are transphobes. I think the answer is something among the lines of "She is using the old Soviet ''queer people are bourgeois decadence" thing almost verbatim. She probably had been queerphobic for some time, and nothing she encountered made her tone it down in any way".
 
I was very much aiming for an intersection between unfrozen 70s caveman, a bit of that socially conservative communist thing the USSR had going, the way terfs are often cis women who have been hurt reasserting a sense of control by targeting trans women and justifying it with their experiences, and also the distinct possibility that Nat's childhood memories are of Stalin's cult of personality. In any case, she's here in 2030s cyberpunk neoliberal dystopia land working for the enemy, no hope or heroes left, where its very easy to tell herself that the capitalists have even managed to commodify gender.

UARTman said:
Yeah, of course she's full of вата. Quite a lot of Russian communists tend to be bigoted and almost reactionary in a lot of topics, and you've been able to portray this quite nicely.
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Because I'm hopelessly curious, what's that Russian mean? The direct translation of "cotton wool" isn't illustrative, and I have a range of possible guesses from context but I'm really interested in how it works entomologically and a cursory search didn't reveal an answer.

(I'm sorry i just love words!)
 
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open_sketch said:
I was very much aiming for an intersection between unfrozen 70s caveman, a bit of that socially conservative communist thing the USSR had going, the way terfs are often cis women who have been hurt reasserting a sense of control by targeting trans women and justifying it with their experiences, and also the distinct possibility that Nat's childhood memories are of Stalin's cult of personality.


Because I'm hopelessly curious, what's that Russian mean? The direct translation of "cotton wool" isn't illustrative, and I have a range of possible guesses from context but I'm really interested in how it works entomologically and a cursory search didn't reveal an answer.

(I'm sorry i just love words!)
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It began with Vatnik (slang) - Wikipedia , and then it just kinda shifted to describing the mega-patriotic conservative communists who vote for Putin because "stability", adore Stalin, and long for the gone days of USSR, where grass was greener, tech was sturdier, and Russia was a superpower rivalling the USA. The image also includes a bit of casual racism and explaining all the things they don't like about society as western propaganda.
 
NemoMarx said:
Personal read - remember that awkward MCU plotline about Nat being sterile and calling herself a monster? I think this is drawing on that and there's some bioessentialism. "Pain" here is probably more specific to that.
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That makes a lot of sense.

When I first saw that scene, I genuinely thought Nat was saying, "I can't have kids. [And on a unrelated note] I am a monster [presumably, because of all the people I've killed.]" On rewatch, she's clearly saying she's a monster because she's sterile.

I completely understand how being forcibly sterilized feels dehumanizing. I could even see how (out of all the things she's been through) the sterilization would haunt her the most. I just wish her story had gotten more focus and been handled by a better director.

DragonCobolt said:
Like, there's TERFs and there's unfrozen 70s cavewoman lawyer, and I think she's closer to the latter, right? Especially with her memory gaps?
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Would the memory gaps work like that? I mean, I would guess that most of her memory gaps were from before the fall of the USSR (1991). It's the 2030s now. She might have more memories from after the fall than before it. I could see Nat beingg closer to a (Russian) Millennial than a Boomer

open_sketch said:
I was very much aiming for an intersection between unfrozen 70s caveman,
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Oh, well, that shows how little I know. 🙂
 
ancusohm said:
That makes a lot of sense.

When I first saw that scene, I genuinely thought Nat was saying, "I can't have kids. [And on a unrelated note] I am a monster [presumably, because of all the people I've killed.]" On rewatch, she's clearly saying she's a monster because she's sterile.

I completely understand how being forcibly sterilized feels dehumanizing. I could even see how (out of all the things she's been through) the sterilization would haunt her the most. I just wish her story had gotten more focus and been handled by a better director.


Would the memory gaps work like that? I mean, I would guess that most of her memory gaps were from before the fall of the USSR (1991). It's the 2030s now. She might have more memories from after the fall than before it. I could see Nat beingg closer to a (Russian) Millennial than a Boomer


Oh, well, that shows how little I know. 🙂
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The SSR did not stop fucking with her memories either, if you'll recall. She was just rather resigned to it.

While the meat of this update is a reminder to Liv that Nat and Clint, while useful allies, are not her friends, I also think its important to note that both of them are quietly having their own character arcs in the background. Clint slowly reclaiming some semblance of a normal life, much to Liv's displeasure, and Nat deciding that actually, she's done being other people's property, escalating from just trying to ditch her transponder to maybe taking a joyride in the supercar, both of them keeping a secret for their own reasons instead of their agency's. They're not great people, but they're still people, you know?

A lot of this was informed by having seen the Black Widow movie, with its on-the-nose metaphor about trafficking that really did not at all engage with the systematic problems, but also the Red Guardian. I really liked the Red Guardian, both because um, there was a hero in a movie with KARL MARX tattooed on his knuckles and that's rad, but also because the dude's disillusion was with his handlers and the politicians running the show, not with socialism. the dude was still the Red Guardian! While, yes, something something capitalist realism, I really liked that, it was neat.

I kinda tried to pull some of that together here, because I really like the idea of using our Black Widow's cybernetics thing to allow me to also make her the ex-KGB agent of the comics and tackle some of that stuff from a wildly different angle. Bring those hands together so to speak.
 
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open_sketch said:
"But Stalin," you summarized, and she frowned.

"But Truman. The Cold War meant it was now a secret weapon. First in the event of nuclear war, then for espionage. It fell under the MVD as the highest of state secrets, then the KGB. Come the 1960s, they were using it to make assassins."
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Thank you for not making the USSR the typical Cold War pure evil bad guys, I appreciate the nuance.
 
[X] Nothing. She's just going to hang out at home and watch Star Trek with her mom

We're hate-watching "Skin of Evil" with the symbiote
 
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