I've been curious about this so I'll just ask here: I'm I the only one who doesn't think clone Mandarin has free will or true sentience? I know that's weird to think in a show where robots have the above so long as the don't get hacked. But honestly their will being compromised doesn't seem to be treated that differently then when a flesh person gets corrupted or brainwashed. Clone Mandarin isn't even a straight up biological clone. He's made of the same dark goo SK's other minions are. -
2 as we’ve seen, those skeleton minions and Chiro clones were all just drones acting on basic programming. They weren’t really alive. It’s probably why I didn’t feel bad watching those Chiro clones get killed off. C!Mandarin doesn’t seem any different. SK programmed him to be loyal to him and hateful to Chiro. That’s basically his whole personality. I’m thinking something about that dark goo might prevent any freedom or goodness from developing in anyone made from it. Contrastthat to Mandarin-
3 who got pumped up with that stuff and got brainwashed into serving SK. Despite that he still retained some level of his old ambitions and free will. Brainwashing the Hyperforce to be loyal to just him (not SK). Running his own projects like the CO cloning. Even post goo transformation Mandarin still pleaded w/SK to let him perform his own plans. C!Mandarin has none of that. He’s literally just a shell of Mandarin’s former self. There to be SK’s adoring audience and obsessed attack dog. -
4 Point being I don’t feel huge sympathy for clone Mandarin despite pitying his existence. He’s not meant to have any humanity and I believe he’s not capable of it beyond what SK programmed. Even what we see is pretty shallow since it all can go back to what SK molded into him from the start. But that’s my view. =p
Interesting, but I do think Skelemandarin has his own will/sentience. At least in the same sense as any other robot character that’s also displayed sentience.
In the first place, there is something supposed to be different about Mandarin’s clone from the other clones in that they don’t collapse. I actually want to make a comparison to the silver monkey in that, in combination with the Power Primate, something can be created that at least emulates sentience, but that’s too random for argument. Let’s say that whatever solution Skeleton King came up with to keep Skelemandarin stable was purely in regards to their body and move on from there.
You say that SK programmed Skelemandarin to be loyal to him and hateful to Chiro, but I’d argue that’s actually wrong about Chiro. I think Skelemandarin’s hatred of Chiro is personal and developed while he was in the Dark One Worm. And quite frankly, I think that’s a weird thing to specifically add to Skelemandarin’s programming when Skeleton King already managed to get the original Mandarin willing to kill Chiro back in Hidden Fortress.
In a way though, I kind of agree. Skelemandarin didn’t seem that different from the other clones made until after Skeleton King dies. What is he supposed to do after the person he is obedient to disappears? Skelemandarin’s demeanor, for the short time we’ve seen in I, Chiro, is very different to his demeanor in Belly of the Beast. Skelemandarin, in I, Chiro, didn’t even attack Chiro until SK commanded him to. He also didn’t attack Antauri until SK was attacked by him.
And while yes, Skelemandarin basically killed Antauri in retaliation, bro didn’t even look MAD that SK was killed.
Now this is a mad monkey. AND HE HAS LIKE A WHOLE SPEECH ABOUT HOW MAD HE IS AT CHIRO AND he doesn’t even cite reasons to what happened with Skeleton King! No, they were totally just about what happened to himself! I actually think his experience in the SK Worm warped him.
But let’s say Skelemandarin’s hatred towards Chiro is based on programming and the time in the SK Worm did nothing to him. Then why did he yield to Valeena from torture and confess where the SK skull was? For some reason, he thought it wasn’t a good idea to give it to her in the first place AND previous torture wasn’t effective enough to test his loyalty. And the thing that DOES break him?
Skelemandarin feels fear that Skeleton King didn’t program (or at least why would he bother programming that) and was forced into submission by Valeena that goes counter to what he thinks would be good for Skeleton King. He displays free will and sentience the most in absence of his master, because he doesn’t have any blatant orders to listen to.
In the same sense, do the robot monkeys have true free will or sentience if they are operating off the computers in their brains? But that just enhances their brains. Do you think the monkeys during The Lords of Soturix 7 had any plans to save the universe? They were built, trained, and programmed to save the universe. Ironically, that the original Mandarin is the one that goes against that is what lets us believe that even without their programming, the team would choose to save the universe. THAT BEING SAID, Mandarin’s also probably the corrupted one, which may have altered him, so……….
Talking about robots in general, if it is fact that they can be programmed AND re-programmed, what makes it so that they’re more sentient compared to Skelemandarin? That they have a default personality that they revert back to once free of hacking? That they can disobey their masters? Why can’t we consider what’s up with Skelemandarin as his default personality then? Or why not also see Skelemandarin as currently obeying his programming with potential to be different? Would he even be willing to act any differently if he only knew of SK from the start? People have chosen to work with SK uncorrupted, so why not Skelemandarin even if it was something planted in him from the start?
So I think Skelemandarin is on par with the other robot characters on the show and that if free will/sentience is debated for him, it should at least be extended to all of them as well.
I’ve been hunting down corruption stuff for analysis and I knew Quint was corrupted, but I always considered his like....lesser compared to other characters since his body doesn’t seem to change or that he was only indirectly afflicted?
BUT THIS GUY DOESN’T NEED TO BREATHE AIR ANYMORE, WHAT THE HECK!!!!!!!
I mean I guess TECHNICALLY, he may still be lesser in that everyone else’s bodies get way more obviously changed and he actually resisted corruption, but I assumed he just always had pointy teeth and baggy eyes. It didn’t occur to me that they could have been effects from corruption? Like it’s probably most easily compared to the Ringmaster.....
Up until they transform though lmbo.....
I’m like super interested in this, because almost all the corruption that occurs on-screen is pretty fast and demonstrates extreme changes. The other ones that may have been slow would possibly be the Alchemist and Mandarin, but they occurred in the past under arguably different circumstances. While we see that the Alchemist obviously changed in Golden Age, they were originally shown unchanged in ItGoE and Savage Lands. So INITIALLY, the Alchemist would have showed less change to corruption like Mandarin and Quint. I’m curious now if the dark markings around the Alchemist’s eyes were actually supposed to be another subtle display of corruption.
With Mandarin though.....I honestly don’t know to consider Mandarin’s change more or less subtle. If we didn’t know how a robot monkey was supposed to look like, I would say his was the most subtle? Red eyes, sharp teeth, sharp claws.....we already expected him as the evil monkey and he had changes from aging and the removal of parts. We didn’t see the effects of corruption on-screen until two episodes later with Thingy too......Then it becomes more apparent when he works with Skeleton King......
I used to think the white eyes in SotSM was an error compared to ItGoE and Snowbound, but considering the painted shot also showed the whites, it’s more likely that the latter episodes were errors or a design change for season 2. Did stasis slow Mandarin’s corruption or was he always less effected since he wasn’t directly corrupted the same way as the Alchemist?
Man, I really like the idea that Mandarin couldn’t resist corruption. He trained with the Verons, he was programmed to save the universe, he possessed the Power Primate, he was probably the least affected by corruption, AND THIS MONKEY STILL COULDN’T OVERCOME IT!!!!!!!! Quint got a TALK from Chiro and he managed to overcome it. Almost everyone else just got beaten or the corrupting influence was beaten and they were freed from corruption!!!!! I love thinking that Mandarin would tend towards evil even without being corrupted, so I’m just like enjoying this food.
-slams fists on table- CHIRO'S MORE CHILL ON SELF-SACRIFICE DURING SEASON 3, BECAUSE HE EXPERIENCED ANTAURI'S SELF-SACRIFICE IN SEASON 2. FROM REALIZING HE DOESN'T WANT HIS FRIENDS TO SACRIFICE THEMSELVES, CHIRO LEARNS HOW HIM ACTING SACRIFICIAL CAN AFFECT OTHERS!!!!!!
i have no idea why dash view doesn't work for search on this url. anyway, all tags are typically preceded by a dot ("."). this won't matter so much w searching, but if on the full site then the tag's name will typically includes a dot at the beginning, w some exceptions.
uh... i'll add the links in later idk. for now i just... idk.
women's issues and feminism: misogyny, sexism. as bizarre as it probably seems, i use the misogyny and sexism tags to also "catch" other typically women-related issues, such as female representation, among other things.
lgbtq+ bundle: homophobia, biphobia, transphobia. i have typically included these all at the same time, even if only one is touched upon. i have my reasons. as w other tags, it doesn't have to specifically be related to oppression/prejudice. i have not historically had ace or demi related tags. the posts are so few and far between that i've tended to lump them in the lgbtq+ bundle. i have my reasons for that, too, which you can probably guess from the commentary i sometimes add, but which i won't expand upon in this post.
racism related: racism, antisemitism, islamophobia, immigration, genocide. i typically won't bundle these tags together unless they're actually related. w... some exceptions.
other political: police brutality, oppression, censorship, capitalism, health care
representation: representation, "asian tag". i don't have specific tags for other races/groups. i have my reasons for this too.
self care, relationships: i tend to group these together. the self care tag may be about actual self care, or it may be a kind of "soft" thing, or it may actually be about growing as a person (which i consider a form of self care, though others may not). the relationship tag is typically bundled with this, though not always. "relationship" can be related to platonic or romantic relationships or even just "how we interact with others (or the world)". it's... probably overly broad.
ref: uh... this means almost nothing. originally it was for "how to" or "reference" posts, but it's... gotten out of hand and i'm not sure what i use it for anymore. someday, "someday", i should split this tag up. "ref" can also be used for "come back to this" or "remember this", and sometimes... shows up w "self care", for... reasons.
mental health: this tag... usually? relates to mood disorders or etc, but sometimes also just... how to... uh, feel not so miserable? idk.
i will typically tag death, murder, blood, needles, violence, gun violence (also a tag for the political thing...), food... body image is iffy? i don't tag it on representation tags, but if it shows up in a post i tag mental health then i may? but not as a cw so much as a "this post is body image related". everything before it tends to be tagged consistently, at least since my most recent return in 2019. what is NOT consistent is whether i use a dot before the tag or not. i'm not sure how tag blacklists work exactly, but when tumblr's search actually works it tends to catch the dotted tags even if searching without the dots, so i... don't know what to think. tumblr search is weird imo.
Did...did the intergalactic police understand the monkeys pre-translator? Offay and Xan would have to have understood Antauri, Mandarin, and Nova, so it makes sense to me they did, but I’m so endeared if they didn’t.......
‘Hey, hey, look the little monkey guys sent us another bad guy. They work so hard!’
‘Oh no........One of the monkey guys turned evil.........Guess gotta put them to sleep........oh, we’re gonna put them to actual sleep?’
EDIT: Ciro looked at HOOP and his comment was that it wasn't monkey team tech, but he was unsure and didn't give anything else definitive.
WHAT IF THE MONKEY TEAM DIDN'T BUILD HOOP OR THE MOON JAIL, WHAT IF IT WAS THE INTERGALACTIC POLICE!!! WHAT IF THE POLICE REMOVED MANDARIN'S CYBERNETICS!!! WHAT IF KRINKLE HACKED THE INTERGALACTIC POPO!!!
You know what, out of the unsure things, I feel a lot better about the idea that TV Monster took Skeleton King's place being trapped in the Citadel of Bone. It makes sense why TV Monster was used as SK's herald and then when SK was actually on Shuggazoom, TV Monster was still shown in the Citadel in Hunt for the Citadel of Bone. Like a lot of my headcanons and ideas died, but this one seems strong.
I'm trying to comprehend why I'm able to process the meaning of this semantic belief encoder, and the semiotic heuristic potential is off the charts. I just had a spacio-temporal sensory integration beyond anything I've ever experienced.
