#unit. study.

[screentones]

watching pluribus with izzy and i fear it's giving me huge inspiration about unit / unite because holy shit this is definitely how i imagine talking to unite when there were multiple still around. and how i imagine their creators probably were as well ( they're based in bugs. specifically ants, beetles, and bees. they're very hivemind. )

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is the movie good? mghrghrg not really it's kinda mid, but my grandma put it on so we watched it. but the formic queen from the ender's game movie are kinda exactly what i imagine unit's creators to look like. they're even telepaths which ... is implied with unit's whole shtick and for the brief appearance they had in one(1) panel.

the concept art for the movie's design for the formic queen!!!! and then the one(1) panel we have of unit's creators.

so y'know. the concept art but urple.

[screentones-a]

also catch me realizing that 451 and unit are in some ways opposites in relation to their makers:

451 was made by watchers, they watch. they were designed to record, then return to their makers. but instead 451 goes completely against it and takes action.

unit was made by people that were taking action, he was designed to go somewhere and make ask/force people into the empire. instead, unit is only really seen watching, he will influence but never really put his hand completely into the pot.

[screentones-a]

" hey nami did you read sword 2010 again " yyeah. thinking about how unit's view of a 'universal utopia' is not ... necessarily the same as most robots take the concept. a lot of the time it ends with oh the only way to save humanity is to kill humanity--or something along those lines(SIMPLIFYING A TON)--but unit, and in turn his makers, is different.

the goal is for a peace--a heaven. but not one without freewill, without humanity. unit wouldn't be the way he is--very "human"--if the goal was to make something lifeless and robotic. his makers lived thousands of years, the technology aspect was to enhance the living--even more evident by unit's name. he's unit, it's not actually a name, it's just what he is. the point is that machines are just a support to the end goal, rather than the actual end goal.

i have a ton of headcanons on how it was executed and all that but man. in part i think it's the bug/hivemind aspect of it that also plays a part. at some point i'll write down all my thoughts on how the empire was ran, and in turn how the universe would be if they hadn't been wiped out.

[screentones-a]

okay TECHNICALLY noise canceling isn't the only thing you need. unit's subliminals use a mix of light AND sound, that's why they even work--it's also why his eyes turn blue/white. but if you have earbuds it's basically just an Influence as opposed to no choice.

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also this shit is so stupid i hate him. explode.

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sorry the periodic unit rot is back and i'm thinking about how 1. he's illegal to even have and 2. the whole "pleasant, polite monster" thing.

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i've got a lot of brainrot everywhere with all my muses here but i've been brainrotting way too much on unit not to talk about it. i recently read the story arc that unit was originally intended to be the villain of and knowing that, you can absolutely see the influence of unit's character and his goals on 451. it's also interesting in the context of unit being an antagonist for tony stark. it does make sense from the little i do know about tony and his motivations--i.e., the idea of being a man of peace. unit's character revolves around universal peace/the universal utopia. everything he does is for a wider scale of things, rather than the personal, unidealistic, stance of peace. he has a whole speech--multiple times--about how the golden rule works in context of his moral framework.

according to unit, the golden rule matters less the bigger the scale--given he is working on the universal scale, crimes that would otherwise be seen as horrid or 'mean' are worth it as long as the final goal of utopia and peace is reached. destroying one or two worlds is worth it so long as they will get in the way of the inevitable universal utopia. in his words: "if i succeed, my creators were right, the end justified the means and everyone living lives happily ever after ... ... if i fail, my creators were monsters on par with the worst of tyrants. if the end is not achieved, all the means were just...mean."

it was stated by the writer that made him that unit doesn't have doubts because he wasn't programmed to have doubts. no matter what happens, unit does it for what he was made for--for universal utopia. an opportunity can arise, but that opportunity cannot always be taken because the risk of his own destruction is too big--and if he's destroyed, and every remnant of his civilization is destroy, then all of it was for naught. all the crimes committed would be considered crimes, rather than necessary sacrifices.

this is extra fascinating to me because this risk that was taken was shown as an error in the form of recorder 451's arc. in the end, he ended up failing and literally self destructing because the ends didn't justify the means, and the single failure was enough to sacrifice too much, and make all his bads just bad. i imagine a similar thing happening to unit if there was a failure that could not be lifted out from. unit is patient, patient to a fault as things will happen around him and the possibilities will pass him and he'll never move because it's too much of a risk. unit would probably wait till the heat-death of the universe just because everything that happened around him was too risky. that is the difference between what 451 ended up being, and what unit was written as. 451 works on an individual scale, while unit works on a universal.