*serious penguin hat on!* I think part of the issue on the people bringing up slavery is that the AnthroPC is property...actually maybe I get the problem. I believe that it's PETA that has an issue with 'pets' or the idea of them seeing it as a kind of slavery and instead prefers 'companion animals' or whatever. The AnthroPCs are of at least human level intellect and are in a similar situation. More importantly they're subject to the constant risk of lobotomy (hard reset with memory dump) and possible physical abuse at the hands of an owner. Now technically it's more a mutual contract, the human and the AnthroPC are closer to a landlord and tenant. As to why Momos new form seems to make it more...active apperance does mean a lot. Most of the AnthroPCs we've seen thus far are fairly small and 'cute' they look like kids toys and thus abstractly it's harder to look at them as actual sentient beings. As something human sized and shaped suddenly Momo seems less like a kawaii little robot friend and more like another person and suddenly the contracts and concepts of ownership are problematic. AnthroPCs, at least in my view, are a kind of Landlord/Tentant relaitonship with a healthy helping of Owner/Pet. Pintsize is the dog that humps everything he can get his hands on and gives that weird little doggy grin when he pees on the new couch, if that helps give perspective.
*serious penguin hat off!* I liked the artwork in this, both Momo and Marigold look quite adorable.
You have a serious penguin hat? I want a serious penguin hat! Is it anything like a worry hat?
Based on Clinton's
questions, it seems like there may have been something of a recent shift in the legal status of AIs, which might be adding to the confusion. It seems that at the beginning of the comic, the default relationship probably was closer to Owner/Pet, and Pintsize has always struck me as a fairly early-model AnthroPC anyway - people were originally surprised to find out that Marten had him, he's less mentally stable (or at least less adept at hiding his instability) than most other AIs we've met, and his original chassis didn't even have jointed limbs, a feature which pretty much every other AnthroPC we've met appears to have. He's also the AnthroPC character who acts most pet-like. Somewhere over the course of the comic, AIs have gained equal rights under the law, and I suspect that means that the Human/AI relationship has been restructured to an extent, bringing it closer to Landlord/Tenant. We just didn't hear about it when it happened, because none of the AnthroPCs in the cast are particularly activism oriented (with the possible exception of their linux-based friend) and all of them were content with their living situations. Like Marten said, it didn't actually change his relationship with Pintsize, and can you see Winslow or Momo being all, "Sooooo, how about that whole me not being your property anymore thing?" If they didn't want to break with their humans or make things awkward, they may not have seen much point in pointing out that they were now free to leave at any time. Maybe not the most enlightened or empowering reaction, but it makes emotional sense.