THESE FORUMS NOW CLOSED (read only)
Comic Discussion => QUESTIONABLE CONTENT => Topic started by: Gyrre on 24 Feb 2018, 15:46
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I'm kind of surprised this isn't a topic yet. Or if not just Bubbles' chassis, the AI chassis in general.
Bubbles has synthetic skin, muscle, and hair. Her skin covers the joints in her hands, wrists, elbows, knees, ankles and feet, but it doesn't cover the seam at the base of her neck. The neck seam appears to serve as cooling ventilation. She's got individual fingers, but only 3 toe analogs that don't have seperate extentions in the skin. Bubbles has an olfactory system tuned to detect chemical and biological weapons. A
Whether or not Bubbles has a hip or shoulder seams is another question. The leotard she wears prevents us from answering a few questions directly, but there are things we can infer. We can see what appears to be hip joint seams in #3475. Her shoulders look to be different, though. Looking the muscle grouping of her shoulders, I'd actually be willing to wager that she doesn't have a seam in her shoulder like many of the other AIs we see. Which would make h the only AI we've seen who synthetic muscles extend all the way through her shoulder joints. Which means if one of her arms gets severely damaged, she has to have surgery and can't merely swap it out. We can also infer that she doesn't have a waist seam either thanks to her muscles.
So, after all of that, if she ever takes of the leotard, would she want to wear a sports bra to keep things in place when doing extensive physical work?
That question popped into my head when I was waking up today for whatever reason.
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In my defense, real world governments have wasted money on far stupider things than giving a robot super soldier jiggle physics.
The Golden Fleece Award (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Fleece_Award)
EDIT for clarification.
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In my defense, real world governments have wasted money on far stupider things than giving a robot super soldier breasts.
The Golden Fleece Award (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Fleece_Award)
+1 for mentioning my favorite politician to ever come out of the state of Wisconsin. The world needs more Bill Proxmires.
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Yay points!
Though, isn't Congress filled with too many money-wasting assholes already?
"We're spending twice as much on our military as the next 9 highest countries. Isn't that a bit much?"
"It's not enough! The terrorists might get us so we have to spend even more!"
EDIT: forgot to type 'many' the first time.
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I think that the design of the military chassis reveals something about the objectives for the combat AI program. The Pentagon didn't want a walking tank (for that they would have designed her chassis as a Veritech or a Gundam). They wanted a super-soldier who looked like a soldier. They wanted a being with whom human soldiers would feel instinctively able to bond as a fellow being rather than a bit of talking technology. This required that military infantry chassis be strongly anthropomimetic, right down to some autonomic reactions, so that human soldiers would instinctively feel at ease with her.
With regard to Momo, I suspect that her new chassis was designed for receptionist/secretarial AIs. So, once again, extreme anthropomimetics are required as such AIs would be required to present as human in order to put visitors at ease.
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Good points.
I wonder if Bubbles' chassis was specifically customized to present as female since that's how she identified, or if the military had both male and female presenting chassis models prepared beforehand for the AIs that would eventually volunteer.
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I personally suspect that, given she is from the pre-AI rights laws generation, her CPU/core is integral to her chassis and has been the only home she has known since inception. Thus she was socialised as female and never really thought about it otherwise, like most people.
Why her chassis was female to begin with? Either a coin-flip, or that issue noted in various fields but most especially advertising; both men and women find it easier to trust a(nother) woman generally.
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I personally suspect that, given she is from the pre-AI rights laws generation, her CPU/core is integral to her chassis and has been the only home she has known since inception. Thus she was socialised as female and never really thought about it otherwise, like most people.
Why her chassis was female to begin with? Either a coin-flip, or that issue noted in various fields but most especially advertising; both men and women find it easier to trust a(nother) woman generally.
If you look at the crime stats for the 'Western Word', most violent crimes are disproportionately commited by males.
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Correct me if I’m wrong, but Momo’s chassis itself is not listed as dishwasher safe. Only the covering is. She can take a shower and go “swimming” (but due to her lack of buoyancy, this appears to mean “walking on the bottom under the water”), but that hardly indicates that her chassis is designed for the high temperature and water pressure inside a dishwasher.
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Correct me if I’m wrong, but Momo’s chassis itself is not listed as dishwasher safe. Only the covering is. She can take a shower and go “swimming” (but due to her lack of buoyancy, this appears to mean “walking on the bottom under the water”), but that hardly indicates that her chassis is designed for the high temperature and water pressure inside a dishwasher.
I reread the comic, and you're quite right. Though the cocovering is airtight/watertight when properly placed on her chassis.
I don't remember the comic where she goes "swimming".
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I think it is this one http://questionablecontent.soup.io/since/405131571 and try and stop at just the first one ... mwhahahahahahahahahahahahahahaaaaa
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Muskrat muskrat muskrat muskrat muskrat
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Oh, come on. As far as we know Momo has still never been swimming.
'Cause it looks like she's heavier than the volume of water she displaces. She was walking.
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She was walking.
Yes. That is exactly what I said.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but Momo’s chassis itself is not listed as dishwasher safe. Only the covering is. She can take a shower and go “swimming” (but due to her lack of buoyancy, this appears to mean “walking on the bottom under the water”), but that hardly indicates that her chassis is designed for the high temperature and water pressure inside a dishwasher.
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Yup. You're right. That'll teach me to read to the end before commenting, I guess.
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Yup. You're right. That'll teach me to read to the end before commenting, I guess.
Meh... no worries. We've all done it.
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If you look at the crime stats for the 'Western Word', most violent crimes are disproportionately commited by males.
Indeed. Noah Webster absolutely savaged the freedom-from-spelling-conventions of pre-colonial English :roll: and since then all authors have labored in chains, allowed to know only a single spelling for each word, and the words themselves, robbed of their freedom, must now find other ways to express the punster's intent. And he was followed by the terrorist Melvil Dewey, who became a millionaire by inventing hanging file folders, then invented a categorization system that bound libraries to a single system for decades, and then spent his entire life trying to repeat Webster's crimes against spelling.
Against the Western Word, No crime of similar violence has yet been perpetrated by one of the female persuasion.
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Has Bubbles lost weight...
...in the face?
??
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Nah, it's just she doesn't have her hair around her face anymore so it seems narrower.
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Nah, it's just she doesn't have her hair around her face anymore so it seems narrower.
30 seconds from now.
Bubbles undoes her ponytail and whips her hair around...
"Wh... Why, Miss Bubbles... You're... you're BEAUITIFUL!"
(And a half-million shippers dreams are answered.)
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As to the question of which one has the most advanced chassis, I'm torn between Pintsize and Bubbles, but finally decided to go with Bubbles. Both have a military chassis, that was developed, if I remember correctly, at the same time. However, it seems they went with Bubbles' "Valkyrie"-model, as a standard.
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As to the question of which one has the most advanced chassis, I'm torn between Pintsize and Bubbles, but finally decided to go with Bubbles. Both have a military chassis, that was developed, if I remember correctly, at the same time. However, it seems they went with Bubbles' "Valkyrie"-model, as a standard.
Oh, I quite agree. Bubbles’ chassis is much more humanoid, and must needs therefore be more complex than Pintsize’s. In fact, I think that May, Momo, Winslow, and even Roko’s chassis — while not military grade — are more advanced than Pintsize. Melon seems to have an older model with its detachable butt, but even that, being very humanoid, seems more complex than Pintsize. The reason Bubbles gave for why they chose to deploy her chassis type and not Pintsize’s is that the military were afraid people would find damaged or discarded units of Pintsize’s type and mistake them for toys, like a child might mistake a landmine or a grenade for a toy, and end up getting seriously injured. They also calculated that human soldiers would be able to more easily relate to and bond with a humanoid AI.
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I seemed to remember something like that, but I didn't seem to find the comic.
Anyway, I'm not sure that being humanoid is necessarily more complex. To me, it's more that they are optimised for other purposes. The analogy between Pintsize's chassis and a landmine may extend further than we like to contemplate. There's also the array of sensors, and the spectrometer, which may be related to current bomb sniffing/disarming robots. Not to mention that despite the form of his appendages, he seems very handy in his own right.
On the hand, having decided to go with Bubbles' chassis, they've likely just stopped development on the other type. So, regardless of function, she will have the more advanced chassis - also because there's no reason to believe most functionalities haven't been carried over.
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My reasoning is this: While Pintsize is clearly more versatile than he looks, a fully humanoid chassis must necessarily have more motor functions, joints, etc., simply to be able to properly articulate the limbs and appendages, not to mention the more complex facial expressions. Pintsize has demonstrated the ability to consume (and much to Faye and Marten’s chagrin, pass through) foods, but even Melon has been shown eating. And since Bubbles and Pintsize are both designed for military service, it would be reasonable to expect them to both have a similar set of sensors, including the chemical spectrometer. Bubbles said she does not consume beverages for refreshment, but she didn’t say she can’t consume them for chemical analysis. Pintsize has not, that I can recall, discussed any other sensors he may have, but we know Bubbles has infrared vision, as well as a full suite of other sensors. And I almost forgot, Bubbles has the advanced hair follicles that can actually “grow” under the proper conditions.
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the terrorist Melvil Dewey
That's "Dui".
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30 seconds from now.
Bubbles undoes her ponytail and whips her hair around...
"Wh... Why, Miss Bubbles... You're... you're BEAUITIFUL!"
(And a half-million shippers dreams are answered.)
She whips her hair back and forth, she whips her hair back and forth (just whip it)
:laugh:
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...Both have a military chassis, that was developed, if I remember correctly, at the same time. However, it seems they went with Bubbles' "Valkyrie"-model, as a standard.
You want a more humanoid chassis so that an AI can step in and use equipment designed for organic use, whether it's driving a tank, a HUM-V. using a mounted machine gun or ... well, anything, really. Although there might be tight squeezes in some spaces, I'm sure her joint flexibility helps a bit with that.
After all, the military's all about interchangeability on the field.
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30 seconds from now.
Bubbles undoes her ponytail and whips her hair around...
"Wh... Why, Miss Bubbles... You're... you're BEAUITIFUL!"
(And a half-million shippers dreams are answered.)
She whips her hair back and forth, she whips her hair back and forth (just whip it)
:laugh:
When Bubbles whips her hair back and forth, she creates a four-foot diameter zone of death.
"Cause of death, doctor?"
"Decapitation by artificial hair folicles."
"Dammit, when will people learn?"
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Nah, it's just she doesn't have her hair around her face anymore so it seems narrower.
30 seconds from now.
Bubbles undoes her ponytail and whips her hair around...
To the accompaniment of the saxophone solo from George Michael's 'Careless Whisper'.
Come on, you were all thinking it too!
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Nah, it's just she doesn't have her hair around her face anymore so it seems narrower.
30 seconds from now.
Bubbles undoes her ponytail and whips her hair around...
To the accompaniment of the saxophone solo from George Michael's 'Careless Whisper'.
Come on, you were all thinking it too!
Nope. Totally have Jimi Hendrix' Foxy Lady blasting out of the speakers here. (Think Wayne's World).
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30 seconds from now.
Bubbles undoes her ponytail and whips her hair around...
"Wh... Why, Miss Bubbles... You're... you're BEAUITIFUL!"
(And a half-million shippers dreams are answered.)
She whips her hair back and forth, she whips her hair back and forth (just whip it)
:laugh:
When Bubbles whips her hair back and forth, she creates a four-foot diameter zone of death.
"Cause of death, doctor?"
"Decapitation by artificial hair folicles."
"Dammit, when will people learn?"
As the old poem says; "if you can keep your head while all around you are losing theirs, park your helicopter somewhere quieter."
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Poor Bubbles. Can’t even enjoy the simple pleasure of whipping her hair back and forth without causing destruction!
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...Both have a military chassis, that was developed, if I remember correctly, at the same time. However, it seems they went with Bubbles' "Valkyrie"-model, as a standard.
You want a more humanoid chassis so that an AI can step in and use equipment designed for organic use, whether it's driving a tank, a HUM-V. using a mounted machine gun or ... well, anything, really. Although there might be tight squeezes in some spaces, I'm sure her joint flexibility helps a bit with that.
After all, the military's all about interchangeability on the field.
Which begs the question: Why did they make Bubbles' chassis so big then? It wasn't necessity since other robot bodies can be much smaller and still mimic human mobility. My theory being, since Bubbles was in an experimental unit combining human and AI soldier that they designed her to be the 'heavy'. Specifically made to be a larger target because they could armor her up better, and when damaged repair her faster. She would alternately operate as the lead, especially in urban environments. She can take anything short of an anti-armor round when in her armor and can open a locked door or go through a wall without a battering ram or breaching charge. Alternately in a more open environment her greater strength means she could lug around more gear and a larger weapon.
The greater question to me is why was she allowed to keep her military issue body and armor when she was discharged. Perhaps it was an oversight, kind of like with Pintsize's built in laser. Maybe it was allowed at the insistence of one or more of the psychiatrists who was seeing her for her PTSD. A recommendation that forcing her into a smaller, commercial chassis would compound her feelings of vulnerability and loss, so they at least temporarily recommended she be allowed to keep her military issue chassis and armor. And then she slipped from the radar and was forgotten like so many veterans. Or the least likely to my thinking, since the experiment was being disbanded they just couldn't afford or be bothered to switch Bubbles to a civilian chassis when they discharged her.
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There are plenty of extremely strong chassis running around - DROID 06 is my favorite - but there is the droid that is trying to hunt down Pintsize in an early strip. It, or a similar one, appear in the background sometimes in street scenes. Bubbles kept her sensors and strength, but probably not her beam weapons.
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Bubbles kept her sensors and strength, but probably not her beam weapons.
My guess is that Bubbles, as an infantry android, had no in-built weapons at all and was intended to use standard military infantry weapons and other equipment. The reason for this is purely logistical - The more different pieces of equipment you have in any given unit, the more complex the logistical chain it needs to support it in the field.
FWIW, I'm waiting for someone to post a picture of Bubbles carrying a AER-9 laser rifle and an M72 gauss sniper rifle (both from the Fallout franchise) slung over her back. Possibly from a US Army recruitment poster aimed at AIs.
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It appears the Bubbles project was highly classified. When she received her medical(?) discharge the paperwork forwarded to the Department of Veterans' Affairs lacked considerable information. From what they could see, she did not qualify for a different chassis because her current one met all the specifications, but everything about how far it exceeded those specs had been not just redacted but completely edited out. To the DoD people who released it and the VA folks who issued it to her, it was just more surplus.
As for Pintsize, he's a first generation Anthro PC, a sentient personal computer with some locomotive abilities (and, formerly, a laser weapon). Marten was an early adopter of the technology. The socio-legal status of AIs changed substantially after he came off the assembly line. Indeed, he may be of the last generation of AI chassis to be assembled as a consumer electronics device. Obtaining an Anthro PC was more like purchasing a personal computer in those days and the process has acquired far more legal obligations.
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That seems like kind of a mean question. Why should Bubbles not be allowed to have her body?
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I don't know if Marten was an early adopter. When he got Pintsize there was already Gordon and somewhat human shaped AI's. (http://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=2334)
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That seems like kind of a mean question. Why should Bubbles not be allowed to have her body?
Because her body is very likely property of the US Department of Defense and may contain proprietary or classified technology not approved for civilian use.
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That seems like kind of a mean question. Why should Bubbles not be allowed to have her body?
Technically her body was government property when Pintsize got military grade equipment the government came and seized it.
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That seems like kind of a mean question. Why should Bubbles not be allowed to have her body?
Because her body is very likely property of the US Department of Defense and may contain proprietary or classified technology not approved for civilian use.
I don’t think it does...?
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I don’t think it does...?
We didn't think Pintsize had a laser weapon in his chest either.
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Remember to exercise caution when applying things about AIs we saw in the first few hundreds of the comic to their current situation.
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Going purely on direct observation of Bubbles, she has shown to be superior in strength and skill to similar supposedly civilian chassis. Her muscles are advanced myomers with greater flexibility to comparable products that are to be installed into Punchbot. Furthermore do we know whether or not the singularity had happened by the time she was released? If not, at the time in the eyes of the military she was property regardless of her intelligence.
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I mean we saw her with Faye. It’s just her body. She doesn’t have any lasers or anything. I think her chassis was just meant to help her bond with others and she doesn’t have any weapons in her body any more than her human fellow soldiers did.
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Going purely on direct observation of Bubbles, she has shown to be superior in strength and skill to similar supposedly civilian chassis. Her muscles are advanced myomers with greater flexibility to comparable products that are to be installed into Punchbot. Furthermore do we know whether or not the singularity had happened by the time she was released? If not, at the time in the eyes of the military she was property regardless of her intelligence.
Other than being very strong. Okay, fine, maybe that makes her entire body a "weapon." So what? Bleh.
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That seems like kind of a mean question. Why should Bubbles not be allowed to have her body?
Technically her body was government property when Pintsize got military grade equipment the government came and seized it.
Attempted to seize it. They seemed particularly concerned with the fact that Pintsize had a functioning military-grade weapon (the laser) in his chassis. Once that was removed and returned to the government agent, Pintsize was allowed to keep the rest of the chassis. So if Bubbles had any built-in weaponry, they would have removed it when she was discharged.
Bubbles made it sound like when the Military AI project was abandoned, the government basically disavowed any knowledge of her. Sort of like the line they always give to covert-ops agents in the movies... “if you are captured or exposed, we will deny any knowledge of, or complicity with, your actions.” Destroy-bot 9000 (sorry, I’m terrible at remembering names unless I use them a lot) is in a similar situation, but without the PTSD. Since they pulled the plug on his program, he just sits in his hangar all day surfing the net.
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30 seconds from now.
Bubbles undoes her ponytail and whips her hair around...
"Wh... Why, Miss Bubbles... You're... you're BEAUITIFUL!"
(And a half-million shippers dreams are answered.)
She whips her hair back and forth, she whips her hair back and forth (just whip it)
:laugh:
When Bubbles whips her hair back and forth, she creates a four-foot diameter zone of death.
"Cause of death, doctor?"
"Decapitation by artificial hair folicles."
"Dammit, when will people learn?"
It's pretty efficient as a weapon. Just ask Shantae (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=r6cCy2qtxw8) or Colonel Scott O'Connor (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1_0pvU8ZykA).
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You can keep your uniform when you discharge but uniforms can't punch holes in brick walls.
On the other hand Jeph did say once that AIs are the legal owners of the bodies they inhabit. That can't always be right. The nuclear sub who's now working at the Idoru store must have been an exception.
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I've assumed that some AI chassis have a degree of anatomical correctness
Didn't Momo once say she could shoot "Eels out of her.....orifice?"
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I've assumed that some AI chassis have a degree of anatomical correctness
Didn't Momo once say she could shoot "Eels out of her.....orifice?"
Nope. She said "shoot live eels out of my" when she was cut off by Marten. (http://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1298) (Momo's first appearance in the strip BTW.)
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I've assumed that some AI chassis have a degree of anatomical correctness
Didn't Momo once say she could shoot "Eels out of her.....orifice?"
Nope. She said "shoot live eels out of my" when she was cut off by Marten. (http://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1298) (Momo's first appearance in the strip BTW.)
Yeah you know what she's talking about though.
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FWIW, I've always assumed that it was part of a party mode (on what was, after all, clearly meant to be a 'doll/toy' chassis) and she shot those spring-loaded foam rubber snakes out of an internal compartment for special celebrations.
Either that or it was a sarcastic comment she always appended to her specification list because she liked freaking out nosy humans.
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I've assumed that some AI chassis have a degree of anatomical correctness
Didn't Momo once say she could shoot "Eels out of her.....orifice?"
Nope. She said "shoot live eels out of my" when she was cut off by Marten. (http://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1298) (Momo's first appearance in the strip BTW.)
Yeah you know what she's talking about though.
No, you assume what she's talking about. And around here, it's unwise to make assumptions about anatomy.
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Furthermore Momo was in a Chibi chassis then and any speculation about how her anatomy corresponds to human doesn't really make any sense.
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You can keep your uniform when you discharge but uniforms can't punch holes in brick walls.
On the other hand Jeph did say once that AIs are the legal owners of the bodies they inhabit. That can't always be right. The nuclear sub who's now working at the Idoru store must have been an exception.
The gubbermint would have a specific definition of a "body" which wouldn't include aircraft above hobby drone size, tanks, destroyers, expensive stuff that could be re-configured to be human operable. It would specifically describe anthropomorphic chassis and other relatively small units (I'm thinking Jerome). May didn't own her host media/"cell" in robot prison, for example, and E-C Industries owns the spaceship and space station that Spaceship and Station control (although the latter owns enough E-CI shares that he might be able to claim it if they were to liquidate).
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I’m still of the opinion that Bubbles either can’t (write-once memory, non-standard interfaces, weird hardware, take your pick) leave her body, or her body can’t be occupied (autonomic kill-software/hardware tailored to her ‘signature’) by any AI but her, for reasons that probably seemed perfectly rational when Operation Robo-Valkyrie was being developed (e.g. that way no-one can KO the body, wipe our girl and insert their own AI infiltrator) but led to her having to be discharged mostly intact when she suddenly stopped being property and became a veteran…
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You can keep your uniform when you discharge but uniforms can't punch holes in brick walls.
On the other hand Jeph did say once that AIs are the legal owners of the bodies they inhabit. That can't always be right. The nuclear sub who's now working at the Idoru store must have been an exception.
The gubbermint would have a specific definition of a "body" which wouldn't include aircraft above hobby drone size, tanks, destroyers, expensive stuff that could be re-configured to be human operable. It would specifically describe anthropomorphic chassis and other relatively small units (I'm thinking Jerome). May didn't own her host media/"cell" in robot prison, for example, and E-C Industries owns the spaceship and space station that Spaceship and Station control (although the latter owns enough E-CI shares that he might be able to claim it if they were to liquidate).
There’s also the question of whether she was the nuclear sub, or was simply living in it, without a physical body of her own. I don’t remember her exact account of it, and I still don’t have my computer up and running, so I can’t look it up easily.
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...Both have a military chassis, that was developed, if I remember correctly, at the same time. However, it seems they went with Bubbles' "Valkyrie"-model, as a standard.
You want a more humanoid chassis so that an AI can step in and use equipment designed for organic use, whether it's driving a tank, a HUM-V. using a mounted machine gun or ... well, anything, really. Although there might be tight squeezes in some spaces, I'm sure her joint flexibility helps a bit with that.
After all, the military's all about interchangeability on the field.
Except that Bubbles' chassis can't be used for many purposes. Any number of military ranks need small soldiers: tankers, in particular, need to be quite short. (An M1-A1 may be big, but the crew compartment is tiny.) In fact, she would be terribly ill-suited to any role in the mobile artillery -- she's Just Too Big. I don't know how much she weighs, but I'm pretty sure that she would materially reduce the complement which could be carried to a deployment point on a helicopter.
From a strategic point of view, Bubbles is actually poorly designed. She'd have been much more useful if she were roughly 5' 5" and about the same girth as an average woman of similar height. And had all the rest of her features, of course.
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I'm pretty sure that Bubbles is specifically an infantry unit; I doubt that she'd be be in any other vehicle other than a Hummer or a passenger on a Blackhawk.
I also suspect that her chassis was designed in part for psychological warfare purposes. Since the day of the Judeo-Philistine wars of the 10th Century BC, it has been an accepted tactic that, when confronted by a very, very large combatant, most irregular soldiers (and the contemporary US Army faces mostly irregular/insurgent-level foes) will just run away.
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Some after-the-fact story line logic. Armor and infantry work very closely in nearly all environments* with armor providing movable cover for foot soldiers. The US D-Day landing on Omaha Beach started out as a disaster because most of their tanks didn't make it to shore so the poor grunts had NO cover and got chopped to pieces.
Bubbles' chassis was meant to function like a very small, very nimble tank for a 4 to 9 person team - she could soak up hostile fire while the unit advances with impunity. Seeing her coming towards you while you shoot at her to no discernable effect would be terrifying. You'd duck down, maybe pray some, and actually feel relieved when her team mates disarm you and slip Flex-Cuffs on you. No wonder taking her out became a special project.
*open country is the notable exception
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Having seen, in clips from Series 3 of The Expanse, the way Bobby Draper "takes point" in her powered armour while her lightly-armoured comrades stack up behind her and cover the flanks, this makes perfect sense of Bubbles's role and size.
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As a further extension, I'd think her mass and strength would make her a natural slot for heavy weapons specialist - plenty of recoil control to enable mobile, accurate LMG or heavier fire, able to carry more ammo than any human to allow sustained cover and suppression, armor allows for more exposed positions to better leverage firelanes, and depending on bulk of gear, she'd likely be able to carry a SAM or LAW with a reload or two just in case.
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I had been thinking of her as Special Ops, where her bulk would be a significant disadvantage. I'd come to that conclusion because only her unit was destroyed, which suggests they were detached from the main force. In that case, her bulk would work against her: sure, she's murder on the ground in a stand-up fight, but she's not much use in a stealthy advance: being able to shield one or more soldiers doesn't help if everybody is trying to move forward one soldier at a time.
In fact, I think that's true even in modern infantry tactics.
That said, the point someone raised about her pure visual threat against irregulars is very sound: if I walk towards you through your fire carrying a really big f*ing gun and say "Hi there! Feeling lucky today?", you are likely to at least try to retreat.
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Having seen, in clips from Series 3 of The Expanse, the way Bobby Draper "takes point" in her powered armour while her lightly-armoured comrades stack up behind her and cover the flanks, this makes perfect sense of Bubbles's role and size.
She and Bobby do have a lot in common.
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Being a military prototype, the government might not have wanted certain secrets to be accessible to enemies. My theory is that either Bubbles AI is hardwired to her chassis, or extracting/separating the AI from the chassis destroys certain or all memories.
She did get disabled, and her squad killed, but apparently only immobilized than knocked out completely. Disabling hee consciousness might be harder thab you think, probably for self destruct purposes.
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Having seen, in clips from Series 3 of The Expanse, the way Bobby Draper "takes point" in her powered armour while her lightly-armoured comrades stack up behind her and cover the flanks, this makes perfect sense of Bubbles's role and size.
She and Bobby do have a lot in common.
Oh, yes. Bobby is human though, but the whole Ganymede incident is practically the same origin thing. I wouldn't be surprised if Jeph had drawn some inspiration from that.
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Being a military prototype, the government might not have wanted certain secrets to be accessible to enemies. My theory is that either Bubbles AI is hardwired to her chassis, or extracting/separating the AI from the chassis destroys certain or all memories.
She did get disabled, and her squad killed, but apparently only immobilized than knocked out completely. Disabling hee consciousness might be harder thab you think, probably for self destruct purposes.
On the other hand Corpse Witch talked about Bubbles potentially losing her body. It was the conversation where Bubbles replied "I am certain that was not intended as a threat".
Will Bubbles still want to keep her current chassis now? With a civilian model she could get repairs without mil-spec parts and probably have a lower electric bill. She might consider the military chassis to be a burden to be set aside as she did with her armor.
On the other hand, it's good to have one person in a partnership who can reach the top shelf, and open jars. Faye would be certain to say "I love you just the way you are" and would mean it.
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I'm quite sure that had Bubbles not been the physical specimen she is, Faye would not have considered bringing her out of her shell such a challenge.
All this may not have happened.
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I think deep down, Bubbles had always accepted her to be the person the chassis was made for. Partially because of her history, partially as a memory to her comrades. And as she told Faye, she's always been different, she's embracing that.
Also, she kept the armor on not as physical protection, but emotional protection, so I guess she'd have felt way too vulnerable before to change into a civilian chassis. And now she is accepted the way she is, so she has no reason to change, rather keep it for being who she is.
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Possible twist: Bubbles' core chassis is a civilian model that the DoD just wrapped knock-off tactical armour around. They weren't about to let a real combat chassis out into demobilised life but found that Bubbles was so traumatised that she accepted her new similar-looking chassis without question.
As recompense to her for all she had suffered, her demob chassis is as complete and should offer as full a sensory life as is possible.