New character thoughts.

[sarcasticsra]

Okay, pardon that crappy subject line, but I can't quite figure out how to summarize what I want to talk about.

So I've been having random thoughts occur to me lately, some relevant to S3 and some REALLY FREAKIN' OLD, lol, but I wanted to share and see if any of you guys have been having any new/different thoughts about our beloved characters.

So let's start with the new season ones: it occurred to me that Root calls the Machine 'she' and is also the only one actually directly talking to it. Do you think the Machine asked her to use that pronoun? Could that make the Machine somewhat bigender, given Ernest Thornhill? I think that would be kinda awesome.

Along those lines, the Machine is trying to rehabilitate Root--to give her another purpose, almost. Is the Machine taking after Harold? This is, after all, basically what Harold did with John, and I can't tell you how pleased I'd be to have the Machine learning behaviors from Daddy. XD

And, finally, going back in time--it randomly struck me that in "Baby Blue", when Reese shows up at the safehouse to find Szymanski wounded, it seemed kind of weird that Scarface only shot him non-lethally (well, as non-lethally as shooting someone can get, I suppose) and didn't finish the job once he was down? Given Scarface seems much more inclined to have 'kill all the things' as his motto, I'm wondering if maybe Elias had him do it that way on purpose--a sort of "don't kill him if you don't have to" kinda thing. After all, we know from the S2 finale that he has an interesting code of honor, so it would make a weird sort of sense.

So those are my thoughts! What are yours? (There will, naturally, be spoilers in the comments!)

Comments

[subluxate]

MY THOUGHTS ARE YOUR THOUGHTS

LITERALLY

Ahem.

So. The Machine views Root as an asset, one to be reprogrammed, as it were (and how Root would love viewing it that way). I do think it's partly taking after Daddy, but I also am wondering who the aux_admin might be. I'm leaning toward Reese, since he answered the phone, too. So Root is an asset, but Reese is in the trusted position of being an admin; the Machine views his relationship with Finch as something that means she can "trust" him, too, perhaps. Besides that, he's already integrated into the purpose of her coding; he saves people, working with Finch. He's even been given numbers directly, and he made her cooperate with him when Root abducted Finch. All that implies a much greater level of control, trust, and cooperation than Root will have for quite some time, if ever. It's not what Finch has, not quite, but it's still much bigger than anyone else has--possibly even bigger than Nathan had (though we don't know, or at least I don't recall, how the Machine designated him beyond as a number pre-ferry bombing).

[orockthro]

Omg. Bigender machine. Or at the very least I hope they acknowledge that a machine may approach gender differently than a human and not be constrained by the societal madness that humans currently navigate..... UG YES.

[sarcasticsra]

Wouldn't that be AWESOME? I mean, it's probably hoping for too much, but auuugh, I'd love it.

[bookblather]

What I find interesting is that the fandom as a whole seems to have decided that the Machine is female, Ernest Thornhill notwithstanding. Like you said, Root is the only one to use a feminine pronoun for the Machine, but fans refer to the Machine as she and her all the time, and sometimes as daddy's little girl (which, let's be honest, even if the Machine IDs as completely 100% male, it's still daddy's little girl).

I wonder sometimes if the Machine itself approaches gender as another lens of human interaction. So she interacts with Root and Harold as female (because daddy's little girl), but with John, he interacts as male (Ernest Thornhill) because he feels John interacts more with men, and with people who wouldn't care at all (eg Shaw), it would interact as whatever it damn well felt like interacting as.

[sarcasticsra]

I really, really like this idea, I have to say--I think it makes a nice little addition to my headcanon, lol.

[off_kilter]

I do find it very interesting that people want TM to have some kind of gender designation, fluid or otherwise. I find I still tend to call TM an it even though it has a very distinct personality to me. It seems a lot of machines and vessels tend to get designated as female historically, which I have always wondered about.

I definitely imagine that TM would take on whatever gender identity it feels suits the occasion, but I'm no sure it would even want to consider labeling itself as any in particular. I'm not sure it considers itself human, or that it would want to be even.

[emef]

Yeah, my headcanon is that The Machine is genderqueer.

Actually, my headcanon is that The Machine has issues with being non-binary. But that's a whole other plot bunny.

[subluxate]

... Pun intended?

[emef]

ha, no! But now that you mention it...

[subluxate]

It was even better for being unintentional, really.

[brewsternorth]

...headcanon accepted. O_O

[aprilvalentine]

Interesting thoughts. Have you seen the promo for the new episode yet? It has me thinking about the fact that the Machine has been communicating with Root in a way we haven't seen it (or her) communicate with anyone else before. With Finch, it responded to what he taught it and answered his questions when he was teaching it and it gives the numbers to him and to the relevant side. And it created Ernest Thornhill and hired people and rented cars and an office etc. And has been trying to convince Root to not murder her doctor. And then there's the promo...

spoiler space

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In the promo... a guy gets into an elevator and a very disembodied, computer-like voice says something like "you've hurt a lot of people" and the elevator starts falling fast. Could this be the Machine taking matters into its own hands to stop a number that's a perpetrator?

[brewsternorth]

Oh wow. I thought on viewing it that it was probably a *human* someone disguising their voice; hadn't given thought to the Machine doing it.

And that last would be a) terrifying b) vindicate orockthro's "Blackout".

[aprilvalentine]

Well, I could be wrong. I guess we'll see Tuesday night.

[brewsternorth]

...Another terrible thought, looking at the comic strip the official Twitter just posted of this scene: what if Root and the Machine have settled their argument? The speech patterns are rather, um, Rooty.

[spatz]

it occurred to me that Root calls the Machine 'she' and is also the only one actually directly talking to it. Do you think the Machine asked her to use that pronoun? Could that make the Machine somewhat bigender, given Ernest Thornhill? I think that would be kinda awesome.

Honestly, I don't think the Machine genders itself. Root canonically likes to project her opinions onto others (like when she had Harold captive) and also explicitly thinks the Machine is God, which is something I highly doubt it agrees with. I think the Machine is just okay with letting her believe what she likes as long as she will work for it without killing people. (perhaps it picked up Harold's manipulative streak, eh?)

[sarcasticsra]

I think my headcanon is leaning toward gender fluidity--I like the idea upthread about it presenting as different genders depending on who it is interacting with--but I absolutely looove the concept of the Machine picking up on Harold's manipulativeness, hee.

[spatz]

I like the idea upthread about it presenting as different genders depending on who it is interacting with

Oh, it absolutely does - I mean, that supported by canon: Ernest Thornhill, of course, but also the even mix of male to female voices in the phone calls in God Mode, pretending to be the Special Counsel to move its server, letting Root call it 'she' (and possibly even tailoring its voice usage - we'll hopefully see that at some point). I guess I just compartmentalize that from how it *identifies*, because the faces it puts on to interact are all functional, i.e. towards a purpose. (Which ties into the manipulative streak, hah.) I think it's important not to anthropomorphize the Machine too much, because while it does care about things in a human way, it doesn't *act* on them in a human way, or think about them like we do.

[sarcasticsra]

Ah! I see. I think we just have a fundamental disagreement there--I am actually rather hoping that the Machine becomes more and more anthropomorphized, and I'd like to see how it deals with that in the context of its original purpose. I see the Machine, while not being human, as certainly identifying very strongly with people and personhood, and I do think it does act in ways reflecting that (like letting Nathan get to the Irrelevant list, letting John convince it to help him save Harold, being desperate to save its memories, so on and so forth.) But that's just my own headcanon, of course. :D

[spatz]

I admit, I do favor the other end of things, where it has emotions but is still distinctly inhuman, but I'm actually totally okay if that's what ends up happening (so many options! so exciting!). However, I think that at *this* point in canon, it's still developing and not there yet.

[off_kilter]

My headcanon thus far is also that TM is not trying to be human, and honestly I'm pretty sure I'd like a storyline where it understands humans and likes learning about us on that level while being perfectly content to be ITSELF. Instead of acting like us and thinking like us, I really love the idea that the almost alien thoughts and processes show the good and bad of humanity by highlighting the demarcation between us as well as the similarities.

[spatz]

Yes, this! I mean, not to sound like Root or anything, but I love that the massive AI is, for once, not immediately evil but rather incredibly empathetic and devoted to saving lives by spotting things we cannot. And that it is very big picture in a way that we can't really comprehend.

machine gender

[kiranovember.livejournal.com]

In the flashback in season 1 where Harold shuts TM down to turn it over to the government, I am positive that he says 'her' just that once. He tells Nathan something like "we have to trust its programming and let her go."

Re: machine gender

[subluxate]

I had to check this tonight because it would have impacted something I'm writing in a way I really wanted to go. The subtitles say he says "it", unfortunately.