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The Arachne System (SPIDERLIV 3)

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LuckyLadyLily said:
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
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If it had been in any way intended by Natasha to provoke a reaction, by intentionally provoking via transphobia, then a lot was given away. Given that she experiences a lot of memory gaps, time loss, and possibly altered behavious (to cover up trauma and trauma reactions?), it would even make sense for her to probe for that. After all, in that scene, she is checking whether she is talking to people who have similarities with her - her initial assumption is that Liv has the same origin, and so might react the same way. But even with a different origin, somewhat similar procedures could happen, no?

And of course, she got just such a reaction - because Liv and Athena switched in reaction to her provokation, which is certainly on the scale of what someone probing for altered memories or behaviours could be looking for.
Of course, this is pure speculation, and @open_sketch already said that this was more about other characterisation of Natasha.
 
open_sketch said:
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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Honestly not to argue with the QM, but are you sure Clint isn't a friend?
open_sketch said:
"Yeah, he's good at his job. But he's the only person I've ever felt safe around," she said.
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Or is this a pretty damning, never had any friends but Clint might get there eventually.

Also 'she said' ended up in Athene text?
 
Dark as Silver said:
Honestly not to argue with the QM, but are you sure Clint isn't a friend?

Or is this a pretty damning, never had any friends but Clint might get there eventually.

Also 'she said' ended up in Athene text?
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Liv has her own reasons to really, really dislike Clint.

Also, yeah, the narration switches to Athena's text when she's fronting! But the voice of whoever is talking through the phone is always techtext. It's a bit confusing but internally consistent.
 
[X] Justine asked for help with some unrelated superhero stuff. Time to suit up!
 
DragonCobolt said:
biiiiig mid century M/L vibes from this yeah
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What's that stand for?
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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Immediate guess: Nat doesn't remember the pain. Or at least, it isn't as bad for her as it presently is for Liv, since T-O is a Klyntar analogue.
(I bet our symbiote would be really interested in sampling Natasha, actually.)
Dark as Silver said:
I really don't get the Hydra. It seems to function as an argument only in a universe where time travel exists.
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I think you're just missing the religion angle. Roko's Basilisk is basically just saying "okay, so a superintelligent AI is basically just a god, and I want a god, and I have missed the fact that the threat of hell is actually a much weaker motive for obedience than the promise of justice, mercy, fun, and so forth".
(I prefer Jesus. He's got a much better track record with regard to social justice, and for that matter autonomy.)
(Also: We should totally try to convert the Symbiote to Christianity. I mean, just imagine.)
open_sketch said:
where its very easy to tell herself that the capitalists have even managed to commodify gender.
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...And this is why I currently think of myself as a really weird intersection of trans-capitalist, trans-human, and on pilgrimage through mortality - including, for the moment, only having this one male body I was born with.
I am very eccentric.
UARTman said:
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.
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Huh. I... don't want to pick a fight about this, actually, but the only issue I see with that stance is the laziness about fixing the problems of today, rather than just griping about them.
...
Anyway, I'm going to go with the bandwagon this time, but I'm super curious about what the Symbiote thinks of our workshop.
[X] Justine asked for help with some unrelated superhero stuff. Time to suit up!
 
NemoMarx said:
God tell me the symbiotes don't do rationalism things :V
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I think this version of Venom is just kind of an idiot.

Of course, the 'rationalist' movement does contain a sizeable core of idiots too, so one can expect some blurring of the lines.

PrognosticHannya said:
Thank you for not making the USSR the typical Cold War pure evil bad guys, I appreciate the nuance.
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To be fair, we're getting the perspective of someone who was extensively brainwashed by the Soviets, so her viewpoint on whose fault Cold War stuff was comes heavily deprecated in terms of relevance.

The USSR not being pure bad guys is fine and fair, mind you, it's just that Nat would love them no matter what at this point given her origins and all she's been through since.

open_sketch said:
Liv has her own reasons to really, really dislike Clint.
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Let's see...

1) Clint shot and/or knifed her.
2) Clint is dating her mom.
3) Clint was a highly decorated soldier for wars waged by the Beast that was the Trump-Zuckerberg presidencies.

Am I missing anything big?
 
open_sketch said:
"Wasn't always an SSR agent, and the SSR wasn't always the only agency on Earth managing the supernatural. Soviets had one too," she said, talking about it as though it were common knowledge. "They captured the lion's share of Hydra's technology after the war, including the alien artifacts much of the technology was sourced from. They set about trying to come up with peaceful uses for it all, but then the Cold War happened and there were more pressing concerns."

You wondered, for a moment, how her body handled that much replacement. There had been enormous strides in anti-rejection technology in the past decade, fueled by the never-ending wars and the increasing age of the monied classes. Transplants were given CRISPR treatments to make them closer match the host, implants coated in self-perpetuating protein mats your body recognized as part of itself. But on a scale like this...

"There was a lot of interesting things the Red Army got their hands on, but one of the biggest was captured late in the war. They overran a camp where Hydra was doing medical experimentation, and one of the samples they took was promising. They called it a virus at the time, though now we'd recognize it as nanotechnology. They'd tested it before the end of the war: it allowed easy interfacing with simple electrically powered limbs and organs, filling in the gaps of the technology at the time. They were going to reveal it to the world, but..."

"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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Really digging the worldbuilding here.
open_sketch said:
"Wait, how old are you?" Athena asked.

"I don't know," she confessed. "They did things to my memories, I have a lot of missing time. The people who created us envisioned... disruption on a worldwide scale, the destruction of capitalist nations, assassinating fascist leaders with ease. They picked women to do it, one of their early test subjects was a Red Army nurse who got blown up. They said it was because women made better assassins, 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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There are a lot of bad parts of this, but somehow the bit that saddens me the most is that we were this close to communist magical girls but stumbled at the finish line.
open_sketch said:
"... 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."
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That'll be a yikes from me on this one, cheif. Bad form there Natasha, if sadly completely believable.
NemoMarx said:
God tell me the symbiotes don't do rationalism things
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I don't know if symbiotes are rationalists, but I know a lot of rationalists who would take symbiotes if given the option :V
Dark as Silver said:
I really don't get the Hydra. It seems to function as an argument only in a universe where time travel exists.
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It's not, it's literally just a reskinned pascal's wager, dressed up for people who fail at math in the same ways but are more attached to the aesthetics of utilitarianism and cognitive identity theory than religion. Like pretty much every real life "infohazard" aside from basic ones like "you are now aware of your tongue," it's effectiveness is more due to the people who learn of it than anything about the idea itself. Venom just seems to be exactly the target demographic and thus got taken in by one of the really simple ones instead of something actually optimized like modern propaganda or advertising techniques.



[X] Nothing. She's just going to hang out at home and watch Star Trek with her mom.

Can't wait for the symbiote to decide that Star Treck is actually a documentary and it needs to wildly alter its strategy if it wants to succeed.
 
On that note, y'all should definitely read Luna Lovegood and the Chamber of Secrets. I feel like it addressed nearly all of my gripes with HPMOR, while respecting the original enough that I started to like it again too.
...
Also, not to be a shameless shill, my own Marvel AU quest is updating! I haven't quite got the hang of longer chapters yet, but there's still a lot of fun ideas I'm hoping to pack in, and I think the pace is picking up a bit.
 
[X] Liv also has a date she has to make. May's going to have to be debriefed.
 
Pardon, but what's the deal with bronies again? Last I knew, it was just a term for masculine folk who enjoy My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.
 
HoratioVonBecker said:
Pardon, but what's the deal with bronies again? Last I knew, it was just a term for masculine folk who enjoy My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.
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In my experience, the main issue people have with that particular fandom identity is that they've been struggling with a major fascist subculture since... well, given the fact that it originated on 4chan, one could quite reasonably argue that the brony fandom has been dealing with a major fascist subculture since its very inception.

EDIT: Though I'll fully admit that the discussion in this thread may be referring to one of the several other issues people have had with the fandom in question.
 
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Hakazin said:
In my experience, the main issue people have with that particular fandom identity is that they've been struggling with a major fascist subculture since... well, given the fact that it originated on 4chan, one could quite reasonably argue that the brony fandom has been dealing with a major fascist subculture since its very inception.

EDIT: Though I'll fully admit that the discussion in this thread may be referring to one of the several other issues people have had with the fandom in question.
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I think the creepy shit and some of the predators exposed in that fandom also come to mind. It produced a lot of good content, but...it was not a perfect fandom. A surprising amount of people tried to make ponies edgy and grimdark in fan works, it didn't go great.
 
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