scans_daily | Hellions #8

From:

Love to see the AI vs mutants stuff from HoX/PoX coming back, especially in the book which seems most poised to comment on the hypocrisy and dubiousness ethics of the Quiet Council.

From:

jlbarnett

still, I'm not a fan of the idea that the minority sets out to defend themselves and so creates their own undoing

From:

themajesticmoose

I hope that's not the way things play out either

From:

jlbarnett

I mean, we've seen the future, and we've seen this, and it's kind of hard to prove or disprove that

From:

lordultimus

Isn't the point of Krakoa that they're not just a minority on the verge of extinction seeking to defend themselves anymore and are now the policy and decision makers?

Edited Date: 2021-01-08 07:32 pm (UTC)

From:

jlbarnett

they're still a minority

From:

donnblake

I mean, in a global sense, yeah, but then, so are white men. At some point you've got to stop counting just by population numbers and look at power and influence.

From:

jlbarnett

Considering how easy it is to empower normal humans in the MU, I'm not sure I'm buying how powerful and influential they are now

From:

donnblake

On Krakoa? Absolutely, if we accept that Sinister and Krakoa themself count as mutants.

Globally? Harder to say, but they've proved able to enforce their mutant amnesty policy in a particularly egregious case (Sabretooth blatantly murdering humans) despite opposition from the Fantastic Four.

Magneto also gave that speech about Krakoa seizing control of the world economy, but that doesn't really seem to have gone anywhere yet.

From:

jlbarnett

it's big talk but if they try to much they may find themselves having to defend against reality altering devices and that may not be so easy

From:

deh_tommy

So they’re racist against AIs as well. I guess that’s to be expected given what happened in House/Powers of X, but still. How come Nanny’s fair game? Is that why Warlock was hiding? Where does that leave people like Danger?

From:

beyondthefringe

They're only racist against BAD AIs, you see. Not good ones.
Or something.

From:

themajesticmoose

I wouldn't call "Not wanting to allow A.I to exist if it was created with the express purpose of the racist genocide of an entire people and culture" an example of racism personally

Is the Doctor racist for hating the Daleks?

Is John Connor racist for hating Skynet?

Some members of the Quiet Council have absolutely done some terrible and shady things but "Not allowing humanity to make sentient genocide engines that will try and wipe out your entire race" does not seem like a bad decision, to me anyway

From:

beyondthefringe

I seriously wouldn't call them racist either. I was just responding to the comment above me.

It does seem as though the Krakoans are going to be more proactive when it comes to the AI threats which historically and inevitably come after them, and really, I can't blame them for getting the jump on any new Sentinel/Nimrod/Mastermold/Bastion/Phalanx style threats, given their experiences.

But it's always interesting how superhero morality does seem to find loopholes when it comes to sentient enemies like aliens and robots. The X-Men typically don't try to kill humans, but they don't share that same restraint when the Brood show up. The Avengers or JLA don't kill, but when it comes to fighting off interstellar armadas, they don't always stop to make sure the Skrulls or whatevers are okay. (As always individual heroes may differ in their approach and philosophy...)

From:

themajesticmoose

The "Rules" when it comes to AI and aliens seem to be very flexible. For instance the Avengers, who in the comics do tend to have a "No Killing Unless You Absolutely Have To" rule for the most part are absolutely fine with repeatedly killing Ultron but Vision who is also an AI is considered a living being

The same also seems to be true of supernatural creatures. None of the Avengers have any issue with Blade killing vampires for instance and over in the DC universe Batman and Superman have both intentionally killed vampires, not just in the golden age when superheroes in general were more okay with killing their foes but in the modern age as well

And yeah I can't blame them either. We've seen in countless possible futures that anti-mutant AI is a threat on a universal scale to mutantkind. And sometimes to humanity as well since in some futures the AI decides that humanity is surplus to its requirements too and either wipes out or enslaves its creators

From:

bruinsfan

Ultron has existed in a state of self-declared war with the Avengers since shortly after its creation.

As for vampires, well, 1) they're already dead, 2) they're spiritually infected with supernatural evil, and 3) if you don't kill them the infection just spreads and kills more innocent victims.

From:

themajesticmoose

I mean true but the same is true of Baron Zemo and Kang the Conqueror but most of the Avengers would hesistate at the idea of killing them

To be clear I'm not saying the Avengers are WRONG for trying to destroy Ultron.

I'm just pointing out an example of how in comics heroes attitude to AI is very change-able since the Avengers consider Vision and Jocasta living beings and would treat their deaths as murder but Avengers who are against killing organic beings have been shown as being fine with destroying Ultron

From:

jlbarnett

on the other hand, since his consciousness could be transferred you could argue that destroying his body isn't even really trying to kill him

From:

crinos

"Is the Doctor racist for hating the Daleks? "

Well I mean they've kind of made that argument a couple of times.

Like in one of the Capaldi Doctor episodes they had a Doctor who encountered a dying Dalek whose "Hate circuits" had been damaged, making them less evil, so the Doctor tries to fix him, and once its Hate circuitry comes back online The Doctor tries a mind meld to make it turn good.

The thing the Dalek latches onto is the Doctor's hatred of the Daleks. Which turns it into like a rogue dalek who hates and kills other daleks.

The Doctor and the Dalek part on amicable terms (as amicable as can be expected) with the Dalek commenting The Doctor would be a good Dalek.

Of course, that all feels like that bullshit "All hatred is equal if you hate Nazi's you're just as bad as them" which.... yeah no fuck that shit and fuck Nazi's. I think if its okay to hate any race in the universe its okay to hate Daleks, who have always explicitly been Space Nazi's,

From:

themajesticmoose

Yeah I don't think even the show itself buys into the arguement in Into The Dalek that the Doctor hating Daleks is a bad thing, given that the plot of every other Dalek story in every form of Who media is that they are pure evil and absolutely need to be destroyed

I mean even Thirteen, who is the Doctor who is by far the kindest/most forgiving and the one who is most against killing has been shown to be fine with killing thousands of Daleks because she correctly knows that if you leave a Dalek alive it will kill anything that isn't a Dalek

And sometimes things which are Daleks, since Daleks insane hatred of everything has made them turn on each other when they decide they aren't "Pure" enough

From:

shakalooloo

The first appearance of the Daleks in the 'new' series was specifically an exploration of how pointless hatred is, with the Doctor forced to confront his own prejudice when dealing with the last Dalek.

Well, it turns out the first of several last Daleks, but at the time...

The message has become somewhat eroded over the years, and now the Doctor gleefully murders Daleks by the dozen, when every other single alien species gets at least a chance to back out. It's gotten to the point that you wonder if the Daleks have a point in trying to kill everyone else, since everyone else wants to kill them. I mean, technically the Doctor tried to kill them first back when they were in Davros' labs...

From:

themajesticmoose

The first appearance of the Daleks in the new series was not trying to claim that the Doctor's hatred of the Daleks was "Wrong". it was eamining what that hatred was doing to him.

The episode showed that the Daleks are monstrous hate filled killing machines that literally despise all other forms of life and the Dalek in that episode horribly murdered over two hundred innocent people just for not being a Dalek. It also showed that Daleks are incapable of truly changing as the Dalek in question literally kills itself rather than not be a Dalek.

The episode doesn't try and make the ridiculous claim that the Doctor is "Prejudiced" against Daleks. It's about the Doctor's PTSD and survivors guilt and the effect the Time War has had on him and the message isn't "Hating Daleks is wrong" it's that revenge won't bring his people back and the Doctor realising he can't let his anger and sorrow over what he lost be the only things that define him.

Literally less than ten episodes later, the Doctor was absolutely willing to wipe out the entirety of the Dalek race and the only reason he didn't is because it would also mean killing the innocent humans on earth below and he couldn't bear to kill innocents to win a victory again the way he did during the Time War. Rose actually DID wipe out the entirety of the Daleks and the Doctor's reaction was to fall even more in love with her when he was Ten so I think it's safe to say he wasn't shedding any tears about what Rose did

The Daleks are a plague upon the universe created by a nazi maniac who commited genocide against his own people out of a megalomaniacal desire to rule the universe and every species in the universe is right to want to eradicate them from the universe, just as I think it would absolutely be the right decision to arrest and execute every single Nazi everywhere on earth in real life. If the nations of the world collectively worked together to hunt down and execute every single person who is a Nazi I would not only support this, I would CHEER while they did so

The Doctor is absolutely right to destroy the Daleks every single time they encounter them. They have been doing that since their very first appearance in the sixties. Because if you allow a Dalek to live it will kill innocent people. Because that is the only thing Daleks do. Their chant is literally "Daleks conquer and destroy". That's LITERALLY their battle cry.

The only good nazi is a dead nazi. And the only good Dalek is a DEAD Dalek.

Also trying to claim that other species are wrong for wanting to kill them is akin to trying to claim that using violence to stop fascism makes you as bad as fascists

The Daleks want to kill other species because they are evil abominations created by a madman with the sole purpose of the destruction of all sentient life that isn't Dalek. Other species want to kill the Daleks because they don't want psychotic tentacle monsters in cyborg tanks invading their world to torture, enslave and murder everything that isn't shaped like an evil pepperpott. A little bit of a difference between the two

And the reason that the Doctor was sent back to kill the Daleks was because the Time Lords worried a time would come when they would destroy all other forms of life. Which...is exactly what they tried to do in Stolen Earth/Journeys End.

So I have to say as far as I'm concerned the Time Lords were absolutely correct to try and prevent the existence of the Daleks so that they could never be a threat to other beings. Because speaking personally, I value my own life more than I value the existence of a race of monsters grown in a lab by a cyborg lunatic

And the reason the Doctor will usually give other species a chance is simple: most other species aren't pure evil

They give them a chance because there is a chance they might prove themselves to not be monsters. Daleks though? Daleks were literally born evil. Daleks are Unnatural Born Killers, knowing only hate, cruelty and evil from birth to death. Even the Master has a tiny flicker of goodness somewhere inside him. Some small part of him that has the capacity to not be a monster. Daleks do not

Edited Date: 2021-01-08 07:23 pm (UTC)

From:

donnblake

There's a distinction between the reasoning provided in the Hesiod Protocols, which specifically talks about anti-mutant AI, and Psylocke's declaration that "No A.I. may flourish under our watch."

From:

fra080389

There was an episode where a dalek said to the doctor he would be a good dalek because he exterminated all its race...

From:

lordultimus

I would like to point out that the Doctor had one big exception to killing the Daleks - killing Daleks that hadn't actually killed anyone yet. Genesis of the Daleks had Fourth poised to literally abort the Daleks out of existence, but he hesitated, comparing it to killing a dictator back when they were an innocent child. They even revisited the idea - albeit in a roundabout way - when Twelve encountered a young Davros.

And here, we see Psylocke kill a bunch of sentient (or if you want to split hairs, seemingly sentient) robots before they actually killed any mutants. I'm pretty sure the Doctor would at least TRY to reprogram them first.

From:

themajesticmoose

They would and that's a valid point...perhaps the Council should try to develop something that makes AI incapable of harming mutantkind by their action or inaction, some kind of virus or such that installs a "Do Not Harm" protocol in them similar to the idea of the "Three Laws of Robotics"

But if they don't currently have something like that ready to go I think it's understandable for them to not want to give AI a first go at commiting genocide against mutantkind and instead stop them before it starts

I think it's also worth pointing out: Twelve absolutely did make the choice to leave Davros to die the first time around. He was ashamed of it, but he was willing to live with that shame. The only reason he went back and saved Davros at the stories end is that he realised it was the only way to set up the series of events that lead to Clara not dying.

Eight would also later tell Davros, when the latter tried to call him out for trying to wipe the Daleks out in Remembrance of the Daleks that he ABSOLUTELY had the right to do so given all that the Daleks have done and will continue to do.

Genesis of the Daleks is right that it's a moral dillemma but also it crucially doesn't say whether Four made the right choice or not. Even Four himself doesn't know if he made the right choice. The Doctor made the decision they could live with. Psylocke here made the decision she could live with.

I don't think there's a "Wrong" choice in this situation. There's just the decision you can bear to make

From:

themajesticmoose

They're not against AI as a whole, they're against anti-mutant AI

And given that Moira has seen with her own eyes how anti-Mutant AI literally leads to the genocide of her entire people and culture in every single timeline where it is allowed to exist I am completely fine with that approach

No A.I that is or was programmed to act against mutantkind should be allowed to exist if it poses the threat of a world in which the sentinels or beings like them come into existence and threaten mutantkinds safety and freedom

From:

deh_tommy

That’s likelier I’ve misread things, but doesn’t Kwannon here say that no A.I. Is allowed to flourish, not just anti-mutant A.I.? And we see Havok making a breakthrough with those A.I. getting ruined by their cyberattack.

From:

themajesticmoose

I assume it's simply the way she phrased it. The actual order makes it clear that they're not out to destroy all A.I...they're not going after the Vision or Jocasta for example. Their target is any A.I that was created with any form of specific anti-mutant purpose

And let's be fair: Psylocke didn't know about that. When she last saw the Smileys they were in the process of attempting to murder her friends and calling them "Mutant Scum"

And honestly even with them being friendly with Alex now...would it last? These are machines at the end of the day. Machines programmed with the purpose of killing mutants. It's entirely possible that programming would reassert itself or that they'd simply change their mind one day and again view mutantkind as an enemy.

I can't say I blame the council for not wanting to take the chance when what's at stake is nothing less than the safety of their entire people. And honestly in the situation that Psylocke was in here, I'd make the same call. The existence of anti mutant machines of any kind in any shape or form should not be tolerated.

From:

mindsweeper

I find that Hellions is a really good book. I was sad at the ending of this but that's obviously the point.

My only excuse for the Mutants is that when Psylocke pulled the trigger, it was anti-Mutant AI. She wasn't aware of Havok's moment with the smiley-faces.

The ending did point out one of the problems with AI - for the robots, Mutants were either friends or enemies - no nuance.

From:

themajesticmoose

Well quite...what if at some point another mutant, acting on their own had done something to harm the Smileys? What if Sebastian Shaw or Shadow King or Mr Sinister, all of whom are still up to their old tricks just in secret had done something that had set them against them?

You can see why the Council don't want to take any chances. It's dirty work but if you knew that not doing this might mean your entire people being killed...would any of us do differently?

Would any of us choose to run the risk of allowing a threat like this to exist, knowing that the ultimate outcome might well be the genocide of our entire people and culture?

Ultimately it's the "Baby Hitler" arguement I suppose. You know, "If you could go back in time and kill Hitler as a kid, would you do it?"

Speaking for myself? I'm with Rhodey in Endgame on this one. I absolutely would do it

From:

crinos

Nanny isn't a robot.

I think you may be confusing the egg Nanny with the robot Nanny Magneto made to look after the X-men when he had them strapped in chairs which reduced their mental and physical attributes to that of babies. (Because its Claremont and he can never not make it weird).

From:

donnblake

Good thing that Ororo has had her full physical capacity and coordination since she was an infant!

Oh, Claremont. You did write some things, didn't you?

From:

nyadnar17

Humans, Clones, AI.

Marginalized people can be the best ones at marginalizing because they've had so much experience with it.

I am really, really digging this era of X-men. Its the first time they have really felt like a minority subculture instead of just superheroes with a bad PR team. This slow boil they are going with the cultural tensions of the natural xenophobia vs tolerance/acceptance feels so true to life to me.

From:

deh_tommy

I have a feeling they’re going that route, but I dread the potential backlash the X-office will get if they do.

I don’t know, I just don’t like or get how/why *every* X-person is pretty much 100% on board with all this, and whenever someone actually brings up their issues they’re secretly or openly either strawmen, evil, bigoted, do something stupid or any combination of the four. I suppose that’s why that new S.W.O.R.D. book is such a breath of fresh air for me, but time will tell if that goes the way of every other book circlejerking over how brilliant Krakoa is.

Edited Date: 2021-01-08 08:07 pm (UTC)

From:

themajesticmoose

I agree that it's worrying that Krakoa is drawing lines between mutants and clone mutants and that this should be stopped. All mutants should be treated the same, whether they are clones or not otherwise we're just headed for some kind of Animal Farm situation

But I don't see how mutantkind are narginalising either of the other two groups. Mutantkind has honestly honestly shown humanity more tolerance, patience and mercy than I would if I were a mutant in the Marvel universe who has had to put up with the crap humanity has done. Nothing mutantkind has done has marginalised humans any more than a gay pride parade marginalises straight people

And it's literally impossible to marginalise racist murder robots built by bigoted nutcases with a tool kit.

From:

zachbeacon

I mean, killing Danger is just covering up another one of the Professor's crimes so I'm sure the Council is fine with that.

AI racism just gives them another reason to hate Scarlett Witch.

I worry about Warlock hiding in plain sight like that

From:

lbd_nytetrayn

Really looking forward to X-Men vs Transformers now.

From:

themajesticmoose

Transformers aren't A.I though. Except in the 80's cartoon and War for Cybertron I guess and even then it's kind of debatable

And I don't think Optimus Prime and the Autobots would be on humanities side here as I can't imagine the leader of a heroic band of freedom fighters battling against oppression and conquest going "Humans should absolutely be allowed to create racist murder robots for the purpose of genocide against those they think are different"

Hell even the Decepticons wouldn't be on humanities side. I imagine Megatron's reaction to human supremacists like Cameron Hodge or William Stryker would basically be how he dealt with Silas on Transformers Prime because he'd find the idea of fleshlings thinking their species was special hillarious at best and revolting at worst

"You've certainly earned a seat at the table...THE DISSECTION TABLE"

Edited Date: 2021-01-08 10:13 am (UTC)

From:

lbd_nytetrayn

Transformers aren't A.I though.

Oh, but that's precisely why I bring it up. So many humans, especially Marvel humans, have thought they were AI, sometimes right in the face of evidence to the contrary.

Heck, Optimus was once even fooled into thinking he was nothing more than a game program.

Of course, as always, there's more to them than meets the eye.

But until they can convince others of that, it could be a fun story.

From:

themajesticmoose

Ahhhhh a classic superhero misunderstanding

The X-men assume the Autobots are a new kind of Sentinel and Optimus and co are just "Please stop trying to stab us with your knife claws, tiny angry fleshling"