#quoqueanalysis

[toadletthethird]

Data and Lore are two sides of the same dehumanisation coin: being so functionally convenient that people excuse your natural otherness [reduced to your utility] and being viewed as so fundamentally wrong that no action can change your perceived worth [reduced to your nature]

Watching Data's inability to take Lore's side against their creator in Brothers, I felt like their misunderstanding largely comes from this difference.

A deep guilt over not being as functional as they could be runs through both characters. Data's desire to be human stems from pondering whether he is good enough at being someone a person should be, some gold standard at being human. His arc ultimately proves he doesn't have to exist in a certain way to deserve life and respect — but the insecurity remains, buried deep, and is constantly revived by others' bigotry. I might even argue that one of the reasons he was deemed worthy of the Academy and starship was his usefulness, which laid the foundation for the "I have to be fully functional to be deserving" mindset. That's why "I'm not less perfect than Lore" cuts so deeply.

The same foundation exists for Lore (from longer exposure to humanity pre Dr. Soong's disappearance, constant evaluation with negative public opinion), but he strikes me as someone who pitied the question "Why didn't he just fix me?" for so long that he finally understood: no amount of functionality would earn him the respect he wanted. The lie about being a newer version feels like a last, desperate attempt at it anyway.

And these two positions colliding feels like being in and out of the illusion of close acceptability. Data was willing to listen to their inventor, and hung onto every word—even after the revelation about his functionality. But Lore? He just saw how obviously he was being ignored and belittled, and how nothing Lore could have done or said would have changed the old man's mind about the impossibility of fixing him.

Lore had clearly abandoned the idea of trying to earn humanity's love long before Data brought him to the Enterprise. But having to look his creator in the eye and know—beyond any doubt—that who he was, at his core, was the thing they couldn't accept? That was its own kind of wound, I'm sure.

***

Anyway, let me know if I'm wrong about any of these characterizations.....I've only been into star trek for about two months now.....and I'm still working my way through it........

[toadletthesecond]

Does anyone else have a feeling that whenever they think about prisoner associations like "cool independent mastermind" come up, but the slightest notion of cage and like. bbaby :( babyy.....my babby......and like. Fall to the ground. In helplessness. Or is it just me

The difference between them makes me insane.

"I had to take it in faith" vs "I didn't think it was possible". The one with an aim and the one with a dream. The patient heart, because she will wait for any chance, and the watchful heart, because there is nothing for her to wait for, only to perceive. The smart and the open hearts. The testament of will and bliss of indecisiveness. I can't. I can't.

[toadletthethird]

When Data showed Lal a painting, she exclaimed the appropriate definition: "Colours produced on a surface by applying a pigment". What puzzles me is that later she wrongly describes flowers as a painting. Sure, it's just a malfunction, but... I wonder what the reasons behind it might be.

Is her vision like a surface to her? Are the shapes and colors she sees just pigments painted onto the glass of her eyes? If that's how she experiences reality (as an image projected onto a 'surface') then maybe the line between a real flower and a painted one blurs. Maybe her whole world is a painting.

Also, the definition hinges on the act of applying. It assumes a painter. Lal, who knows she was built, might look at the world through the notion of necessary existence of intentional creation. The flower is just another beautiful arrangement of color, just like her, just like the painting. Every beauty in the world was carefully and lovingly brought to life.

In the same scene Data says "I will teach you to recognise the artistry of paintings" and. I really wish we could see it. Because I feel there could appear a unique perspective on what beauty and art are

[toadletthethird]

I'm in the feels about the creation of Lal again........

The fact that Data puts her right to authenticity above all else, allowing her to choose her own appearance in the first place. And it's just so nice to see her discovering her first likes and dislikes next. She's a few hours old and she's fascinated by Diana Troi. A few days old and she's happy with every achieved task her father teaches her. A few weeks old and she comes to realize she doesn't want to be different....but is not able to escape it.

Her story is so interconnected with learning the rules of the outside world while discovering who you are fundamentally. And it's beautiful to see Data give her space to discover things herself. Her being placed in the school and Ten Forward, instead of somewhere she could be useful like engineering, doubles that.

And when we look at Data and Lore? Sure, Dr. Soong loved androids. As inventions. As achievements. As his reflections. Soong brothers can't escape the legacy that's upon them: forever the product of someone else's dream.

But Lal was made with love first and foremost for her, as she is. It's in her name. Beloved. And that made her existence so... personal.

I just wish someone would tell Data how big of an achievement that is. No android has ever experienced such unconditioned love yet. I wish he'd be proud of that..... :(

[toadletthesecond]

What if we look at prisoner's routes as a metaphor for generational trauma

To leave with the severed head is to cut ties with the roots. It's painful and cruel, most of the close ones won't understand the decision to leave such a big part of yourself behind, - but it's her plan and she's sure of it. It's her life now. No turning back.

To wait with the prisoner is to overgrow the heritage. She saw leaving as a weakness she never could afford. That's fine - she'll wait. She'll see this place fall apart and she'll build something new on these ruins. She finds fortitude in resilience, but the responsibility for the restoration of her homeland lingers like heavy chains on her hands. It's freedom but with a bitterness of debt.

To kill the prisoner is to fall into the cycle. She never overcame her family burdens. She knew the pattern and decided there was nothing to do but to follow. And oh how well she'll return the favour to the next generation. Look me in the eyes and tell me you don't see drowned grey as an old widow in some distant godforsaken village.

And the cage is about giving up. Her last hope failed. And she needs rest as long as life could give. She'll stay not to hope for the better or to fight for the worst, but to save the pain from trying any further. It's the only thing she knows. There's no power in selfhood or in adherence, so she chooses the indulgence of detachment. She is that distant relative with big sorrowful eyes and the quietest voice, who saw the most. There's no leaving for her now. She's shattered to the core. At least she thinks so.

Does. Does this make sense.

[toadletthesecond]

Thinking about open hearts parallel for Wild and Fury

The heart of the Wild is kept further away, hidden, completely alienated in the void between her ribs, which threaten to prick it at the slightest movement in her posture. In their roundness, they remind of natural ornaments, and their sharp ends look like tree branches. Her nature is the reason for her fragility, threatening to kill her at the slightest disturbance, and only her - it's a feeling shared to another at expanse of self.

Fury's heart, on the other hand, is thrown forward by thick layers of her meat for a dramatic display – "See the horrors you've wrought upon my flesh!" So are the ribs, which once served as a shield with their correct straight shape, but have now become ridiculously useless. All her being signalises of past rightness, but now she's nothing more than an exposed feeling turned to weapon the other.

[toadletthethird]

I wish Lal had enough time to form an opinion on the Soong family

I want to know what she would think of Dr. Soong: the greatest inventor she can only hear about, never meet; the often-wrong who decided to play god, his mistakes still echoing through his creations; her grandfather, whose heritage she's destined to carry.

And about Lore? I know about the unmade episode with both of them (greatest loss ever imaginable), but even before that. How would Data tell her, if he would?

I'm sure many who've ever had to deal with mental or physical illness know the feeling of strange attachment to distant relatives from the past who seemed to share it. I think it might be the case here. I think she would be much closer to understanding Lore than anyone else.

"I would never approve of his actions, but I wonder if it felt just as suffocating. I wonder if he could feel it in his stomach. I wonder how many times he tried rebooting to make it stop."

[toadletthesecond]

Do you think vessels sometimes look at damsel and think, "This is what I could have been if the world didn't mark me as a monstrosity before I even began to live. This is something I always yearned for but never deserved. I should have been her but I never was and never will be"