#algorithms adapted for methods of warfare???? girl what??????????

[itsslivernotsilver]

hi guys does anyone wanna hear about the dichotomy that mist and maddie form in reference to that god damn tomato from the og short stories. ok great here i go

pantheon definitely expands a LOT on the differences between the two sisters but ken liu’s bit about the tomato has always stood out to me and i’m kinda sad they didn’t keep it in the show but whatEVER!!!!!! anyways it’s such a perfect symbol for the glaring differences between mist and maddie and i’ve been thinking about this for almost a year now so i gotta get it out there

like. it’s so simple. it’s just a tomato.

🍅<—tomato. round and red 👍 (also i love that little interaction so much holy shit)

anyways it’s so simple in it’s design but the connections that each sister has with such basic object like this are so drastically different it’s crazy

maddie approaches it from a deeply emotional and human perspective. to her, a tomato means the taste of one, her grandma, her family’s garden, her family’s dog, and just like. general childhood memories. in the show, she represents the side of humanity that wants to stay physically in the real world. she’s obviously friendly with UIs and CIs given that like. yk. and she expresses curiosity in mist and her whole deal!!!!!

but she clearly has her biases and those are shown through her wants for her son and how upset she gets when he advocates for uploading (even though mist practically raised him too but whatever i’m not gonna get into that rn). anyways my point is that she’s approaching this tomato conversation with her experiences regarding physicality, nostalgia, and other “human” feelings

but mist doesn’t have any of those!!!!!! she doesn’t have any human experience at all. she approaches a tomato from an extremely technical and factual perspective. she brings up the species categorization, court cases, genome info, etc. she even decides to mention that, logically speaking, she knows more about tomatoes than maddie does (which is like??? girl????? a little unnecessary but true)

in the show there’s the conversation about nostalgia and her line about having the code for nostalgia but not being able to execute it because of a lack of memories fucks me up sooo bad

she loves maddie and everyone around her because she’s kinda just an actual embodiment of love but she can’t help but feel alone in a world where everyone moves so slow and nobody really gets that she can’t understand a lot of “human” emotions. it’s why she’s so ecstatic to introduce caspian to the cloud and why she’s so passionate about the drive with all the CIs who are just like her. but in this moment she tries her best to connect with maddie but ultimately can’t because of the sheer lack of similar experiences

they just can’t understand each other fully and they never will. they’re forced to agree to disagree over something as simple as a tomato and god that tension keeps me up at night

another thing that i thought was super interesting was how the maddie’s interest in mist was flipped in the show if that makes sense???? like in the stories, it’s clearly maddie who wants to learn more about mist. she tries her best to bridge the gap and it’s her idea to give mist a body. but in the show, it’s mist that seems “more obsessed” (heavy on the quotes) with maddie. she’s reaching out more and she asked for a body herself and maddie lashes out when mist does something while trying to help (don’t even get me started on caspian and his whole deal this season i’ll fucking kill someone)

ALSO i feel like this post is getting too long now but i wanna at least mention the quote at the beginning of the chapter cause holy shit man

anyways that’s it for now i think. i might make another post about the quote and the other stories and some other details i really liked for the nonexistent people who’ve seen this show 👍