And something I love about the Pres humans is that the whole b plot of the series is them realizing how bad their cognitive dissonance was and that they are in fact just the nice slave owners of the universe. That their system based on ‘equality and freedom’ (and community is just for humans) still does perpetuate oppression/inequality and that they are now active participants in that systems continuation. I really like how simple Martha keeps it. They’re good people in a flawed unjust universe who realize if somethings gonna change they’ve gotta lead the charge. And. They. Do.
I love that it’s not on MB to educate, debate, and justify its existence and fight for its rights. I love that’s there’s no angry out for revenge bot/construct uprising plot. That the story is its personal diary entries about figuring out autonomy and what the consequences of its actions mean to it.
It’s messy, mean, prejudice. It has an outright distain/repulsion of comfortunits, a superiority complex over lower functioning bots, is terrified of relationships, and has an extremely toxic disregard for its own life. To the dismay of all around it. Books 2-5 are about it confronting those things about itself. While Presaux does all the peopleing/legaling/advocating boring stuff in the background. It doesn’t care about being a political rebellion leader or whatever. Ew. That’s way too much attention. It wants to be like the protagonists of its serials, solving murders/mysteries while f*cking over CR management whenever it can (because it doesn’t blame all of humanity for the few that actually cause the majority of harm. Even if there are a lot of sad angry assholes, but it’s a sad angry asshole too so it can’t fault them there.) And it likes doing those things.
Because it’s systems and capitalists that are the problem not all of humanity. Mb loves humanity. Well it definitely loves the things humans make (ok so pretty must just serials but still humans are necessary to make those). But even preservation humans treat bots/constructs as second class citizens. I like that story makes it clear the humans are the ones that need to reflect/act on that. That it shouldn’t have to be the oppresseds’ sole responsibility to topple/dismantle the systems of their oppression. That’s why I love presaux.
Bhardwaj making the documentary to spread awareness and the hack, Pin-Lee being its CSU legal counsel, Gurathin being down to help commit crimes with/for jt, Ratthi supporting it in social situations, Arada actually consulting it because she hired it as a trusted and qualified/skilled individual, Mensah admitting she originally hadn’t considered the depth of its autonomy and was wrong to try and decide what was best for it. Later setting boundaries to protect their friendship in their inherently unequal legal relationship/status. Because Mensah knows it well enough to know it will try to be the person she needs even if it doesn’t want to be that person. And it loves Mensah for knowing it well enough to understand that, and for respecting/caring about it to not ask it to do that, without it even needing to say so.
And it is honestly hilarious to me at how realistic/casual and in the background the portrayal of legal advocacy is. Like yeah, there’s no over night fixes, it’s gonna be a lot of rights campaigning, lobbying, like constructs = person is a whole mental a** societal paradigm shift that needs to happen. And at the end of the cycle it’s mostly gonna be money fights/legal battles. (Because the business of slavery is worth the profit and won’t be forfeited easily! Yay the cr is terrible.)
The story focusing on MB being a free-roaming security consultant/intrepid galactic explorer with its asshole gunship partner in crime instead of political drama is just so fun to me. I love the subversion away from bitter/destroy all humanity MI trope. (And moving into the but I’m still willing and able too if the price is right area) And that MB gets to experience being in an encouraging environment and actually having a support network. Where the not my problem fuck offery of it all is just: chefs kiss!!
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