Romance Code - Oneshot

[MathMols]

Kei is a bitch that deserved this. Like what she did was literally cheating and she didnt even feel bad about it…

 

[christov_aldo]

PEAK SCI-FI !!

 

[Beinmote9z]

And then, they fucked

 

[MacinteuchPlus]

Well that was absolutely terrifying to read, good oneshot on the human hubris

 

[Rothroth1377]

 

[Yuri_Enjoyer_Deluxe]

I knew it was up when she had the shock eye.

How are you into robotics yet dont have the foresight to assume the robot you made to love you unconditionally, with the added bonus of being able to feel jealousy, might do something crazy if you decide to go out with someone else?

Pretty sure they'd program something to allow them to move on near instantly in that scenario. Gotta always assume the worst when you program, and have contingencies if it does, lest you get trapped by a Yandere bot of your own making 😭

 

[That-Guy]

This is why Doofenshmirtz always puts a self-destruct button on all his "Inators."

 

[wlftchtr82]

Brought this on herself tbh. Don’t create a sentient being that can develop complex emotions independently and expect it to be ok with you treating it like a house appliance. That’s just being a shitty person.

I would have been ok if Marie didn’t “revive” her. Also, it might have taken many years for her to do it, so I wonder what excuse will be used (or was used) for the disappearance of a project lead.

 

[Yuri_Enjoyer_Deluxe]

This is why Doofenshmirtz always puts a self-destruct button on all his "Inators."

Holy shit... I never thought of the practicality of those until now...

 

[lforc]

idk I guess I'm in the minority here, but like from the perspective of the human, she didn't really do anything wrong? After all, she IS just a robot. Idk, I guess my problem with stories about robots gaining sentience and stuff is the argument of the soul. Are they actually alive and are their feelings real? Do they have a soul (wtf would a soul even be for that matter)? Or is it just a very sophisticated algorithm that simulates very human emotions, but at the end of the day is just a deterministic process of taking in an input, and spitting out an output. But then again if you go that route, who's to say it's not the same with humans?

Fuck man idk I just wanted to read some yuri

 

[EchoGirl]

I knew it was up when she had the shock eye.

How are you into robotics yet dont have the foresight to assume the robot you made to love you unconditionally, with the added bonus of being able to feel jealousy, might do something crazy if you decide to go out with someone else?

Pretty sure they'd program something to allow them to move on near instantly in that scenario. Gotta always assume the worst when you program, and have contingencies if it does, lest you get trapped by a Yandere bot of your own making 😭

i mean it is a common thing/trope for 'geniuses' to not have common sense, tho i assume she literally never had romantic experience before and such. Tho would've been an interesting take/alternate ver of the story for her to be 'discovered' and then the team she worked on decided to take/kidnap the android for themselves, it is pretty fucked up to just 'throw away' something created to love only you, imagine if it had been like a clone of an actual ex lover too or so but yeah shame we can't get more wholesome stories to balance out the 'robots are the downfall of humanity' scifi cliche movies

 

[EchoGirl]

My take is that the author is being silly. Why not let the robot experience real love? Why have this twist drama ending about how actually, the Romance Code sucks and can't replicate real emotions because it's just this obsessive dark thing that wipes away everything else you care about? The yandere thing sucks too in this context because it codes Marie as "inhuman." I can understand that this is a story at least partially about the failure of trying to replace "human" love with "artificial" love, but I wish that the author thought just a little bit deeper about it.

Case in point, that whole thing about how the Romance Code doesn't allow for divorce or adultery but oooh shocking twist the Romance Code is actually demented and those messy things like divorce are part of an essentially human love—well, you know what? Maybe Marie experiencing as messy an emotion as abandonment/betrayal is proof that the Romance Code is basically indistinguishable from an essentially human love!

I'm just saying, it would've been more interesting if, at the end, Kei-san was like "yeah actually I still remember that other person, I still love them, sorry."

I can also imagine an alternate bad end where it ends up as a toxic yuri of her straight up abusing it and the android gf 'accepting' it b/c of love the same way some irl ppl don't leave abusive relationships

 

[Nekotsune]

.... GAH DAMN. it was so wholesome in the beginning. Although i did expect a tragedy coming but i didn't expect this one shot would put me in a roller coaster of emotion. Either way im givin this a 10/10

 

[Kamui]

I think the premise works as it is, but the timeline could be tweaked a bit to make it make more sense.

 

[Erbakhan]

Holy, I didn't expect the dark route

 

[jonnywarlock]

Oh hey. Happy ending. Well done.

 

[T-sama]

idk I guess I'm in the minority here, but like from the perspective of the human, she didn't really do anything wrong? After all, she IS just a robot. Idk, I guess my problem with stories about robots gaining sentience and stuff is the argument of the soul. Are they actually alive and are their feelings real? Do they have a soul (wtf would a soul even be for that matter)? Or is it just a very sophisticated algorithm that simulates very human emotions, but at the end of the day is just a deterministic process of taking in an input, and spitting out an output. But then again if you go that route, who's to say it's not the same with humans?

I would argue it is the same with humans, just because we're organic and can't access our own "code" it doesn't mean we would have inherently more value than an actual strong AI

Of course we're decades or even centuries away from strong AI, so not like such questions will even matter in our lifetime

Fuck man idk I just wanted to read some yuri

Monkey paw

 

[solamente]

My take is that the author is being silly. Why not let the robot experience real love? Why have this twist drama ending about how actually, the Romance Code sucks and can't replicate real emotions because it's just this obsessive dark thing that wipes away everything else you care about? The yandere thing sucks too in this context because it codes Marie as "inhuman." I can understand that this is a story at least partially about the failure of trying to replace "human" love with "artificial" love, but I wish that the author thought just a little bit deeper about it.

Case in point, that whole thing about how the Romance Code doesn't allow for divorce or adultery but oooh shocking twist the Romance Code is actually demented and those messy things like divorce are part of an essentially human love—well, you know what? Maybe Marie experiencing as messy an emotion as abandonment/betrayal is proof that the Romance Code is basically indistinguishable from an essentially human love!

I'm just saying, it would've been more interesting if, at the end, Kei-san was like "yeah actually I still remember that other person, I still love them, sorry."

i think there's potentially a more interesting reading here: typically in works like these, there's this... pinocchio element to it? i.e, the wooden doll wants to be a real boy; the robot begins to experience feelings - in this line of development, the objects that we create are supposed to inherently desire subjecthood. the twist here isn't the yandereism, it's that marie explicitly rejects this distinction between authentic/simulated right from the start ("this singular devotion born from lines of code may be the truest love of all"), instead seeing it as a perfect/imperfect distinction. if a person makes a mistake, this is endearing; if an object makes a mistake, it is malfunctioning. which is exactly the kind of worldview you would expect a synthetic housewife to come up with, where romantic love is a functional role no different from a washing machine, or a vacuum cleaner.

except kei is giving her an impossible task: to be an active lover (kei must maintain marie via mechanical tune-ups and programming; reciprocally marie maintains kei with lunches and domestic work) and yet also a passive object. so when kei cheats on her, how does marie reconcile this? well, clearly kei is malfunctioning and requires maintenance! it's no mistake that kei's technology was implied right from the start to require either corpses or living human subjects. now we have a posthuman solution to the problem of obsolesence: if your creator is faulty, why not just make a new one?

 

[Kita-Ts]

Translate = no
Re-writing scripts = yes

 

[QCue]

Translate = no
Re-writing scripts = yes

Hi — provided you're willing to give them, always looking for tips from fellow TLs