#ii3 bot

[ohmysheetmetal]

im just pretending ii16 never happened bc im terrified of the chaos ;; let me live in peace

[plantgardemaniaa]

More Bot!

[calicorobin]

this is my first contribution to the ii fandom in like 4 years

[smile-files]

nickel and balloon stuff from spring on the breakfast!!! i'm keeping in mind that in the previous episode, both of them were under the impression that their friendship wasn't real...

in a way, ii3 balloon is a lot like late ii3 cabby. of course, balloon did something indisputably immoral (manipulate and exploit others), and cabby only did something thought to be immoral (keep and use files about her fellow contestants) -- but both did something wrong and had to subsequently undergo a disproportionate amount of abuse and malignment for it, ending up with them being apologetic and submissive to avoid any chance of being framed as bad again. the biggest difference is that cabby has internalized the guilt others have attributed to her, while balloon largely hasn't -- he understands the concept of rolling with the punches for the sake of keeping good connections, but he doesn't believe he deserves it.

nickel brushes off ii2 a LOT this episode. to rid himself of his guilt regarding that time, he necessarily has to delegitimize the hatred he felt towards balloon then, thus also ridding balloon of his guilt. he expresses this all vaguely, choosing to remember ii2 fondly and saying off-hand that its baggage should be laughed off -- implying that balloon has been forgiven. reasonably, balloon is happy that nickel seems to actually believe he's changed for the better, so initially this makes him happy.

of course, though, it becomes clear that nickel just wants to shove his own actions under the rug, and balloon reasonably gets pissed off. nickel treated balloon and suitcase like complete garbage in ii2, and balloon clearly hasn't forgotten that.

"it keeps things easy." it keeps things easy to roll with the punches, to endure nickel's abuse and accept his sudden friendship. note, also, that nickel is still placing the blame on balloon: he's saying that balloon didn't want to "make things better", as if nickel and balloon ever having a rift was entirely balloon's fault, and his problem to fix.

and as we can see, nickel still hasn't fully forgiven balloon for ii1. as i've discussed before, nickel seems to secretly feel incredible guilt about how he treated balloon in ii2 (which is why he goes to such lengths to repress the whole memory of it) -- but that guilt is about the way in which he expressed his disdain and distrust of balloon, not those opinions themselves, nor the motivations for them. this is all very interesting, then -- if he still believes balloon can't change from his old, bad self, why did nickel start being friends with him at all?

i think a large part of it is his projection onto balloon. nickel sees himself in balloon: someone who screwed up big-time and isn't able to become a better person after that (according to nickel). we tend to gravitate to people similar to us, after all. i wouldn't be surprised if nickel was also trying to overcompensate for his hostility towards balloon in ii2 by being very friendly with him in ii3, thereby helping him forget that he was ever hostile to him at all.

the most fascinating thing to me about balloon and nickel's relationship is how impersonal it is for balloon. he seems to value what nickel's affection represents rather than nickel himself -- and it represents that he's been forgiven. anyone who saw balloon and nickel's conflict in ii2, which was a product of balloon's nastiness in ii1 and nickel's subsequent inability to forgive that nastiness, would likely come to accept balloon and forgive him themselves if they then saw nickel being friendly with him -- because nickel is the epitome of the ii contestants' anger at him, and nickel of all people (seemingly) forgiving him would imply that he's really changed. the relationship is almost entirely a symbol in that regard. i don't think balloon has much residual guilt about is actions in ii1 -- he feels like he's adequately addressed them and changed -- but nickel having a positive relationship would be helpful in affirming that stance and proving to himself that he really has changed.

i wouldn't say it's cruel of balloon to keep this relationship going on under that pretense, but it is backhanded, and it helps explain why he was ever willing to accept nickel's friendliness unchallenged. he wanted his crimes to finally be laid to rest once and for all, and keeping nickel on good terms with him would let that happen. people would finally shut up about it. up until now, nickel wasn't explicitly denying his past cruelty towards balloon anyway, so balloon would be able to ignore that he neglected to ever bring it up; now, though, nickel is denying not only what he did to balloon but also to suitcase, which balloon is not able to tolerate. now that he's confronted nickel about that though, nickel snaps back with his condemnation of what balloon did in ii1, thereby uprooting the social stasis balloon had been able to maintain precisely because nickel refused to bring anything up before. in a way, then, balloon is purposefully shoving the past under the rug, just like nickel is.

we can't forget, though, that nickel has his own complex about fearing that he's incapable of change and incapable of forming positive, genuine relationships with people. balloon is essentially revealing that, in a way, he wasn't really friends with nickel -- at least not in the way nickel wished and fooled himself into thinking they were. if balloon truly were friends with nickel like that, then that would mean that balloon had forgiven him for his cruelty in ii2, and perhaps that he really has changed... but no. balloon hasn't forgiven him. why should he? nickel never apologized -- and given how he never apologized, it's impossible that he could've changed anyway: nickel doesn't want to apologize because that means addressing his guilt and allowing himself to feel it. he wants the forgiveness to be handed to him on a silver platter, without him having to do all of the painful work, and he's incredibly upset when it isn't. he wants to not be a bad person, but in order to do that, he has to feel like one, and he really doesn't want to. he hates who he was and doesn't want to associate with it at all.

(note how it's the suitcase robot who says "you can say sorry" when nickel says that nothing can be done about making things better...)

there's clearly an immeasurable amount of resentment these two have been harboring for each other throughout this season, which they'd only been hiding for the sake of fooling themselves into thinking they've changed (nickel) or thinking that others think they've changed (balloon). and now that they've let themselves explode with anger, partly related to the lies they'd been telling themselves falling apart, they yell at each other and balloon drops nickel down a hole!

ah, balloon and nickel's relationship... it's bizarre, it's toxic, it's convoluted, it's shady, and it's incredibly sad. i'm glad i'm revisiting ii3, especially this episode -- i used to be utterly baffled by nickel's writing, particularly in spring on the breakfast, but now it makes complete sense to me. also, i used to think balloon was entirely the victim in this relationship, while now i know that he has his own faults and own baggage in that regard. it's weird -- they hate each other, but at the same time they're dying to be liked by one another. god i love these freaks...

[thurious]

i made some references for my designs

[loserbynaturee]

Bot!!!

[artificialpocky]

!NOT SHIP! familial relationship portrayed

ive been saying mephone cool uncle to bow like all year guys

[leederpfucker]

I think because of the finale we all forget how silly Walkie Talkie can be

[snailfen]

forget what i said about not having something consume my thoughts Inanimate Insanity

[gavonosc]

Bot is so 👊❤️❤️

[rusty-gloinks]

nonbinery peopl are real

[ohmysheetmetal]

miss you [redraw of this]

[plantgardemaniaa]

Identity pt 2

[thecondimentgal]

Uncle OJ’s married. Also he’s gay.

-@ask-bot-ii

Knew it, I called it, hah!

And even after telling Salty that he might be gay, she still doesn't believe me. I swear to god, I'm going to strangle that bastard.

Salt should be focusing on me, her BCFF, not some stupid hotel owner. I like you more than your uncle, right now.

[smile-files]

i'd always been kinda confused by the whole pseudo-plot about cabby's parents, but in the context of ii16 it's actually pretty good foreshadowing.

bot in a way is the only contestant to have a parent or parents, as they're the only one whose life was purposefully, consciously created by someone (we don't know if mephone made the other contestants knowingly, so that distinction is important). mephone is like bot in that he's a sentient machine created by someone consciously. funnily enough, despite mephone and bot being debatably "more fake" than the others for being machines, they are real in that they have a genesis to look back to, while the other contestants don't. the synthetic is the organic, and the organic is the synthetic.

all of them -- mephone, bot, the other contestants -- were all made to serve a specific function. but the thing is, mephone and bot, by being made consciously and knowing that they were made consciously, can be aware of that intended function from the get-go and actively defy it. the others couldn't, as it wasn't until now that any of them knew they were made to serve a function at all. they took their personhood for granted, while mephone and bot knew they had to prove it for themselves.

i've seen criticisms of AE couching this foreshadowing within cabby's memory disability being ableist, which are fair, but i personally am fine with it -- i don't think cabby's whole character and whole disability were written for that purpose; i think, rather, that AE thought that cabby not remembering a lot of things would present a good opportunity to reveal a hidden fact of this world without us even realizing it's been revealed. it had been established at this point that cabby has memory issues, so we wouldn't automatically find it suspicious that she has no memory of her parents. note how it's specifically bot that asks cabby about her parents! the one person here who has parents!! and it makes sense for the hidden reveal to happen through cabby, because she's the sort of person to ruminate on what she can't remember -- any other contestant would just assume they have memories with parents of some kind and not dwell on it. in my opinion, it's organic and pretty clever!

(that doesn't make the rest of the episode not ableist, though. it really really is lol)

[rook-specter]

this was made on sheer impulse alone