#also i dont think this is the perfect ending or whatever. they are all doomed and ill no matter the severity

[girltiger5000]

some self indulgent stuff

[kyrakyrakitty]

this might come off as cruel or sadistic, but i don't want walpurgisnacht rising to have a perfect ending for madoka and homura. i dont want a doom and gloom ending, either - i think the best outcome of the film would be a bittersweet ending ♡

i dont wanna flood your dashes, so ill elaborate below the cut!! and in case you dont want to read, ill wish you a good day now ♡♡

first tho, pmmm is a story of hope, and it's given that to me and so many others for over a decade now. i think everyone is touched by it in a different way, and that's one of my favorite parts of this community!! but that's also to say, i know i don't speak for everyone here, and i love seeing posts about a happily-ever-after scenario for the holy quintet ♡ i love all of these characters immensely, and i definitely understand the desire to see them finally find peace, so i dont write this with any ill intent towards the characters or all of you in this community who just want to see them happy ♡ i know many of you have just as special a place in your heart for this series as i do, and i think thats incredible for so many reasons ♡

that said!

madoka's wish and homura's wish are inherently incompatible. they're mutually exclusive. madoka cannot sacrifice herself for the greater good without devastating homura, and homura cannot keep madoka safe without preventing her from fulfilling her dream of giving everything she has to others. there cannot be hope without despair, after all.

ive always loved the ending of the og series for being so bittersweet. it says "life can be painful, but there's always reason to hope", and "you are never alone", but it doesn't promise a perfect outcome. life will hurt, and you can do everything in your power to change it, but just as you can always find hope for a better tomorrow, you can never erase all of the pain from the world. i think a happily-ever-after ending would muddle that message, and i don't think its possible for madoka and homura to live happily together - at least not as they are now.

if madoka and homura were to end up together at the end, they'd both have to undergo major character development. madoka would have to realize that as hard as she tries, she can't save everyone, and sometimes the pain you'll cause by sacrificing yourself will outweigh whatever hope you might instill. homura would have to come to terms with the fact that she cannot spare madoka from every source of pain without, herself, hurting madoka.

the happiest ending i could forsee (for madohomu, at least) would involve both of them undergoing a major event to come to their respective conclusions and move forward together with that trauma and an earnest desire to reach an equilibrium. i think the most effective way to accomplish this would be a major character death - probably mami and/or sayaka (and if both, may as well throw in kyoko and nagisa for extra angst! :) ♡) - that occurs specifically because madoka has overused her magic to help others and no longer has any to give to save her friend(s) without completely corrupting her soul gem, and similarly because homura could not prevent madoka from witnessing the death(s) of those she cherished and experiencing that grief and pain.

alternately, the two could cease to exist together. perhaps the "homura is walpurgisnacht" theory is true (i think there's a solid chance) and in order to save the world, madoka has to use all her strength to kill her and the two of them go down together kyosaya style.

another fun ending (albeit not one where the two are together) is a variation of madoka killing homura as walpurgisnacht - what if madoka had to kill homura before she becomes walpurgisnacht, in a direct parallel to homura shooting madoka's soul gem to prevent her from becoming a witch? oh how the turn tables,,,,

ooh! or what if both homura and madoka have to disappear together, but ai (clara doll #15, and our mystery magical girl if that theory holds (which i also think is likely)) lives on as a remnant of the love they shared?? then we could get a manga afterwards thats just a lil story about ai's life as a magical girl too!!

i think i forgot the thesis of this post towards the end there, but thank you for reading!! id love to hear any thoughts you have!! ♡♡ may you always find reason to smile ♡♡

[ceasarslegion]

the frustrating thing about communism is that it doesn't scale. you need to have a central government because if you don't, everyone around you who does have that coordination will either absorb you peacefully or violently. infrastructure requires maintenance, and that maintenance cannot be managed, trained or supplied for without an organizing body. a parliament or congress is the proper form for that body, imo, but you can't not have it.

To be fair, there are many types of communism that cover similar ideas of government. Within every major political ideology, there will be sects like agree on general ideas but differ when it comes to the details of how to make that happen or how to govern such a structure. But i do see where youre coming from, I've also noticed that the nitty gritty boring things that are nonetheless critical for the functioning of a major society are often left at the wayside in (online) communist circles in favour of the revolution pipe dream.

In my opinion, any ideology that hinges on the idea that we can achieve a perfect society at all is already doomed to fail, and often to fall into actual fascism for a number of reasons. Firstly, humans are inherently flawed. Flawed beings can not achieve perfection, period. Secondly, what "perfect" means is very subjective based on experience, ideology, and personal preference, meaning that my idea of perfect would be unlivable for many of the people living in my apartment building, much less within an entire society. And if i were to be put in such a position, it would be dictatorial of me to enforce my idea of perfection upon those people. Thirdly, you will never, ever, EVER have a legitimate society where nobody disagrees with the government. It just doesn't happen without mass enforcement. There will ALWAYS be someone who disagrees with how the show is run, there will ALWAYS be someone who is hurt by ANY system, and there will ALWAYS be someone willing to officially dissent against the government. You could have a society based on the idea that everyone gets free food and shelter and water and energy and free education and puppies and rainbows and unicorns, and you will end up hurting the farmers who have to work disproportionately to others to produce the resources to allow this to happen, and then how are you going to organically convince them that this is for the greater good without some kind of enforcement?

If you can not answer the questions of "how will you deal with dissent in your perfect society," or your answer is "there will not be dissent" then im sorry but theres more than a few red flags in there for me.

Like look, i dont mean to sound like im bragging but i think pointing this out is warranted. All my education is in politics. I have a 4.0 ivy league degree, i come from a family made up entirely of history teachers and local politicians, i have spent years on the frontlines of legitimate activist movements and i volunteer as many extra hours as i can with the NDP, at this point im on a first name basis with multiple local MPs and MPPs within the party. I have read whatever political theory youre about to demand i read to "change my mind." Ive probably read it multiple times in order to write a paper on it. And i still dont have an answer for the question of "so what system wouldnt cause all this hurt?" because all that experience and education has mostly taught me how incredibly ignorant i really am and how i would be a dictator if given absolute power, because everybody would be. Yes, you. You would be too. Sometimes the best answer you have is "i dont know, so right now lets do the best we can with what we have."

[ilovechainmail]

ok ive finished :) and i do have thoughts. area unknown has been really special. its a rare bird in terms of minecraft content and theres just so many important stories being told there. the way it relates to the wider sunship canon or whatever its called is amazing, and the otehr ppls content like oli's dedicated grinding, moonzy's beautiful buildings or graaavel's awesome lore (HIS LORE VIDEO WAS SO GOOD. IT WAS SO FUCKING GOOD. THE MUSIC????? YEA), was all so amazing to witness.

BUT i do have some criticisms if you dont mind me sharing. none of it is with ill intent and i understand why the decisions that were made happened but i still think its worth pointing out.

im disappointed with how aimsey and scott's arc was left off, because i dont think it reached a satisfying conclusion at all and the loose threads they left didn't feel like a culmination of their relationship. aimsey and scott's conversations are some of my favourite parts of the lore because their relationship is so, SO interesting and really worth exploring. so ending it by saying "scott just got bored and went back to hell" was not a good move i feel. i really wanted to see something more there.

guqqie does touch on hera's influence when she discovers the grave but to be honest i dont understand why she was allowed to get married to aimsey and have a happy ending. hera has made a point of dooming them in every single universe and she just loves torturing her little experiment, and her influence has continued into season two with egging aimsey and oli on with the lab, so i really don't understand why guqqie was able to seperate herself from this and later get married when that has never been allowed before

i guess that everything was intentionally left pretty open ended so things could change in future, guqqie did say she'd write something up later this week which could give answers to what i mentioned above. and who knows, maybe in the years guqqie and aimsey were split hera could have been defeated in some way. maybe guqqie went back and confronted her or something idk. i would really like to see something like that though. and of course that open-endedness leaves room for aimsey and scott to do something which would also be great. but yeah those are my less great thoughts about the finale. but do not be fooled just because it wasnt absolutely perfect didnt mean i didnt enjoy it/think it was bad

FORTUNATELY it has given me a great window to start working on that au because i really want to develop scott and aimseys arc, explore aimsey's feelings as a demon and the horror that comes with that, and his relationship to hera because the one time they interacted always gives me chills. so i think the finale was flawed but thats ok because now i can go in and do awesome stuff with my own ideas for a bad ending. because i like hera cannot let the characters rest. ineed to be stopped hehehe

but yeah apart from that i did really enjoy the finale. it did feel like area unknown. the party, never have i ever, michela being hilarious and caitees being weird, and of course heartbreaking sunship lore. it genuinely gave me the same warm feeling as when i was watching through all those vods from 2022 when they were just messing around or screaming at each other in the rain. area unknown needed to end. no one seemed to want or have the time/inspiration/motivation to do stuff on it anymore, and the characters needed a conclusion and to be let go so they could just be in their own right. i'm glad that its done. it was really special. i cant wait to see what everyone does next :3

i agree heavily on the scott and aimsey topic, i wish we could’ve gotten more development of their relationship or seen scott in s2 bc there was a psrt of his house i think somewhere and then he was never mentioned again iirc, but they were probably both too busy or something to do anything which is ok i’ll just make it up in my head :3

and i hope there is a bit more of something w hera and auguqqies whole thing and how hera allowed ausunship to get married, or how all that went. i’m just really curious

anyways love u sneef thank u for liveasking to me this has been very fun :333 <3 im rlly glad u liked area unknown!!!!!!!

[c0rpseductor]

tbh i'm thinking again about how i'm gonna approach vauthry in my fic, since i'm going to have to write him very soon.

i'm aleady planning on taking some sizeable liberties since in shadowbringers he's a bit cartoonish, both as a villain and designwise. i don't think it. well. i DO think it's a bad choice in terms of the fact that it's massively fatphobic, but in terms of tone i think a video game can get away with a somewhat absurd and cartoonish hate sink villain a bit more than a novelization, especially when he shows up sparingly. i want to keep a lot of the base tone of shb, but i do plan on morningstar being a little more sober and adult. there's sex in it i don't have to go with the shonen anime stuff if it doesn't work

i can't bring myself to agree with arguments that eulmore was Fine Actually, and in my writing i'm kind of making it worse, so i don't really want to go with a super sympathetic vauthry (although i think there can be, and want there to be, a sort of quiet tragedy to him, given his canon backstory). i Really need vauthry to still be detestable in morningstar because he has to pull double time on hate sink duty so i can pull my dirty little tricks on the reader with emet-selch. emet is getting more positive treatment in morningstar (until he isn't <3) so until such time as he has his little moment vauthry Really has to be terrible.

i've been thinking that rather than his being quite as. i guess juvenile as in canon, throwing tantrums and generally getting the "fat = dumb baby" treatment, i want to work the sort of egotistical aspect of his character from a place of sophisticated condescension (distinct in execution from emet's bitchy rich girl thing). he's supposed to represent the worst of nobility anyway, which is entitlement and a sense of others as being beneath oneself or belonging to an ontologically lesser class. i thought it might be interesting if he has a sort of grudging "respect" for pfeil, but regards him as a rogue asset to be seized moreso than a human being. i think it works very well from the angle of vauthry playing the role of a corrupt king and pfeil in many cases playing the role of a fairytale knight. like yeah of course the bad guy wants lancelot for his own. or whatever idk i dont know as much about arthuriana as i maybe should

i also think there's some running thread between them, like that there's something very similar that they take in different directions - moreso morningstar's as yet immaterial "serious vauthry" than the saturday morning cartoon vauthry of canon, but still, if you just lay out vauthry's story on paper, yknow?

on a meta level vauthry and pfeil are both fat characters from a source narrative that very much condemns and loathes fat bodies, so i think there's a sense of "similar monstrousness" that carries through even in a work intended not to be fatphobic given fic exists inherently in conversation with its source material - some of pfeil's Angst necessarily has to address that he's in a narrative role too small for his body, in a sense. fairytale knights and princes are only ever thin, shonen anime heroes are only ever thin, persephone was thin and remains so in every retelling, basically every one of those hot satan statues, you get the idea. all the motifs i draw on to inform his role-identity carry this expectation of otherworldly bodily perfection and attractiveness. to some extent this is what it means to be commodified in fiction at all. vauthry is still condemned to the same fate as he was before, but pfeil is a fat hero in a retelling of a story where fatness is evil, built on stories of heroes whose beauty is indicative of goodness and whose beauty is considered to lie in their thinness. maybe it's no wonder vauthry is like, "ditch these losers and eat bonbons with me," LMAO. sort of a like...what if solidarity was bad. you know

also, vauthry is Doomed, and pfeil is Fakeout Doomed. vauthry's story couldn't have ended any other way because he was set up to take this exact fall before even being born. even if he had been a good person morally he would have to die because his very existence upholds and hastens the apocalypse. on top of this, the circumstances under which he was raised were...less than ideal, let's say. i still vastly prefer to say that despite everything, INCLUDING the lightwarden shit, vauthry still has agency that he exercises poorly and likely had chances to be a better and kinder person which he rejected, because a narrative in which nothing is anyone's fault and no one has any choice and it all just Happens is boring. (not in the sense of tragedy, where fate and its incursion on autonomy and meaningful choice is a huge element that adds interest, but in the sense of like...if nobody ever decides to do anything and nothing is ever driven by character action it's not a story where the characters participate anymore. what is the point of that.) his ultimate aim was to secure paradise in eulmore, but no wealthy and powerful person's conception of paradise is gonna be equitable or sustainable or anything less than monstrous. also paradise is fake we live in an imperfect world and that's the only thing we get!! deal with it how you like but that's it!! the hero here is a satan allegory so he's gonna tear down your fake ass heaven!! so on and so forth. off topic. point is he's a villain, and by virtue of being a villain in a story with a clearly designated hero, he's doomed as fuck, no matter the circumstances or aims of his villainy, just like emet. sorry man

pfeil is, by contrast, Fakeout Doomed. like vauthry, he didn't really have much of a choice in becoming who he is - heroes don't get to resist the call no matter how hard they fight, and like all WoLs, hydaelyn had her sights on him for since forever because time loop shenanigans and arguably because reincarnation anyway. by virtue of being born, and even before being born, he was already stuck on the path he's on now. it's not kind to him, being on this path, but he can't give up on it because it would bring harm to others and he can't accept that. it's not who he is to shirk social responsibility. if it was, he wouldn't be the hero. but i as the author know that it's not going to kill him, and once he does what he was always meant to do he gets a whole life ahead of him free of my fuckin meddling. there's an end to the story and then pfeil kind of does a vague whatever. not my business. in the end, he escapes.

again, of course neither of them really know this because they don't know they're in a story. only emet kind of has that inkling of meta and it influences how he interacts with pfeil. but i think it's something that pfeil and vauthry might understand about each other sort of subconsciously, or voice it in other terms. vauthry is living a terminal villain's existence, where his choices are die or live and end the world, and pfeil by contrast is a Big Damn Hero, a beacon of hope who barrels toward the impossible light at the end of the tunnel. vauthry wants pfeil on his side because who wouldn't want that? maybe they can escape together. or maybe vauthry's terminal existence will feel that much less empty, with someone who is fated to one day be Real in a way he can never be at his side. heroes always win. (except in tragedies.)

[vyrim]

Some talk about the the current story, pretty spoilery so Ill put it under readmore but tldr is I really like it (it got kinda long so sorry in advance if you click on it). Also this is just how I absorbed the story so if theres stuff I interpreted wrong dont yell at me.

So I think the first thing that has to be noted is that the sinners are the absolute epitome of losers. You've got a mishmash of people that couldnt be more different from eachother stuck in a bus together and forced to fight for the Limbus Company to ultimately reach their own goals (whatever those might be).

They all suck together, the only reason most of them arent repeatedly trying/succeeding to kill eachother is because your grumpy ass chaperone is actually a color, and will not hesitate to bring them as close to the brink of death in the most painful way possible for making the job harder for no reason. Hell we almost see this with Don, who I love very much, who manages not to cause serious problems once but three whole times and her getting beat to the ground was a the idea of a warning.

Its made even worse by the fact that Dante as a character also sucks as the manager up until the third chapter's end. Theyre indecisive, cowardly, and the few people who have anything resembling respect towards them as the manager only do so with either the bare minimum or for their own gain. They outright lose all trust from Ishmael the moment we become an accomplice to one of Don's screwups, accidental or not.

Not only do these guys suck as people, they suck as a team. These guys arent just dying to pros like the trio at the beginning, theyre dying to everything. We are constantly told about how the consequences of their actions lead them to getting butchered, and the only reason theyre not losing most of the fights is because they can fight like their lives dont matter. Why worry about trading mortal blows when the guy with a clock for a face can just writhe on the floor for a bit and put you back together after you win? The first floor of the casino is a chaotic nightmare where someone drops a chandelier for artistic purposes and another destroys a months work of wishes meant to be a contingency plan. Its a mess, and nothing states that they have any semblance of teamwork, its all just a mindless brawl where anything goes so long as Dante is alive in the end.

The thing is its great writing, its a beautiful in between from the previous games. Lobotomy Corp sits on side where nothing about your employees ultimately matters. They will die, you will lose, and the clock will rewind again. Library of Ruina is the exact opposite. You cant lose, to the librarians its nothing more than a simulation to crack, and the guests are ultimately doomed to lose after finally being countered by the right setups. Even if the ending didnt go as planned for Angela, she wouldve otherwise succeeded in getting that perfect book because their was no chance of actually losing.

Limbus is directly in the middle where dying appears to have no consequences, just forcing Dante to take indescribable suffering, but its also extremely dangerous. The team dying at key moments is bad, real bad. When Gregoir pulls his bloody ass towards us in the dungeon all the sinners are already dead or close to it. The consequences of throwing themselves at the enemy has now come back to bite them, and defeat is only avoided because Effie saves them. The final boss is a complete loss this time, were saved by some spooky wonder boy with a weird obsession with Sinclair and Dante is almost melted beyond saving and is only saved because Vergil was smart enough to send in a recovery team. The sinners are constantly losing because they refuse to be anything like a team and are too reliant on the idea that theyll come back. The only reason Limbus Company hasnt sent a proper, specialized team seems to be because they cant resonate with Dante's ability.

Its a beautiful way of showing just how brutal the world is outside of a corporation's protection or the power of the library itself. The color we were comfortable having on our side is now our shitty babysitter who could care less because we cant even wipe our own asses let alone secure the boughs without help from outside parties. All we do is cause unnecessary problems despite being handed plans and strategies that are designed to just work.

The end of chapter 3 is a wonderful sign though. Despite getting constantly ass kicked, despite the sinners treating them as nothing more than a fancy checkpoint with a clock for a face, Dante watched as Sinclair tried his best and MADE the decision to want to be a proper manager. Obviously the heartfelt little speech at the end isnt what saved the day, but the fact that Dante wants to make the Sinners into a proper team should lead to some really tasty storytelling in the future.

The later half of the story will likely be where the Sinners come to terms with all the stuff thats happened to them too so that should be really fun, and I really wanna see Dante get back into good terms with Ishmael cause really theyre just trying their best.

[sixlane]

hii the regubartylily anon here u said ur curious about my other rarepairs so here i am to talk about that because well i love my silly rarepairs and i love yapping about them

in no specific order:

sybella, sybill trelawney x bellatrix black. they make me insane. i believe it was @/quillkiller who came up with them and i havent been the same since.

regulily. im a basic bitch i see two cool people kissing i become obsessed. they are exactly who i want to be. im not sure how i imagine lily because theres so many versions of her but every single one fits with reg perfectly

regtunia. im not sure whos post it was but someone made a moodboard and @/foursaints reblogged it and oh my god. oh my fucking god. they leave and sirius and lily are so happy that they are following in their footsteps but they just want a simple quiet life they dont want to rebel. they both feel abandoned and neglected. they are two sides of the same coin.

regubartylily, you and ren are geniuses. i cant decide whether i like the happy ending (regulily & rosekiller) or the bad ending (barty gets murdered) more. there is something compelling about the idea of both reg and lily projecting onto barty and wanting things from him. im not sure if they actually care about him or is he just providing them with attention. idk. it makes me feel kinda bad for him but also thats barty crouch jr. he deserves it. hes also the perfect pure pookiebear that hasnt done a thing wrong in his entire life but like. also he should suffer. you understand.

everything that @/quillkiller comes up with. im a fan. i clap whatever they say. effiebarty. maryjames. alectolily. bartyrosiers. lurthur. bellucius. i cheer

what r ur fav rarepairs??

omg hi!!! this is so interesting thank you for sharing! and i’m so happy to see regubartylily crack your top 5 hehe. i will say you’re absolutely right that jen is a rarepair genius. i too eat up everything she posts.

sybella is so interesting i don’t think i’ve every come across that (i gotta go stalk jen’s blog) but in a similar vein i loveeee sybillily. kara @/sugarsnappeases has talked to me about them extensively and has an amazing fic for them. they’re so interesting. like the girl who’s doomed and the one who doomed her. it gets me!!!!

bartylily is probably my biggest rarepair if they can even be considered rare anymore 🥲. there still aren’t many fics for them but i think they’re kinda taking off on tumblr which so so fun. they’re so special to me and i’ll love them forever.

and then of course we’ve got regubartylily and jartylily. my cursed threesomes. what can i say i love to stick barty in the middle of a preexisting ship and see what happens.

i’ve also talked about evjames a couple times. i don’t ship them at all but i think they’re hilarious when put in a relationship together.

honorable mentions to ludora (lucius and pandora) and pandoraleco (which has been brewing in my mind lately… more later perhaps)

MWAH thank you for coming back to share with me!! feel free to yap at me anytime <3

[preshtagonist]

Marble hornets!stuck thoughts bc its that time of night again and talking into the void of shit nobody cares abt is my thing and bc this has been brewing in my head for half a year now i think? Some of these are disconnected thoughts and concepts that dont work together

their session is a horribly glitched out seemingly void session where the white queen and black queen were not separate entities (may also include black king and white king idk!) (this is the operator)

This entity is also their first guardian. Lord english esque in how it perpetuates its own creation (yknow how arasol found the code for sgrub. I think it does smth similar w tapes or some other method. Arg to find your sburb disc loser) and in how it seems almost to have always been present in the life of tim (you know) and alex (birthday video)

Possibility: Alex discovered the sburb code or whatever the mechanism was and tried to hide it thinking it would prevent the apocalypse from happening. It doesnt and never would have. Jay finds them i think (maybe for a while alex blames jay for the apocalypse bc he couldnt keep his goddamn nose out of it)

as an amalgam of four game constructs (WQ BQ BK WK) it is considered the exile of the main four (alex, brian, tim, and jay) and indirectly fucks them via “commands” on the computer terminal. Tims pills run interference for whatever reason.

Brian (as hoodie) eventually gains access to his terminal and occasionally through “hacking”, the terminals of the other four guys. TTA brainblasts you w audio visual hallucinations sometimes

Jessica, seth, amy, and sarah have “normal” exiles. Thank god

Heres a fucked up thought: tim and alex have opposing views on initiating the scratch. Who is on what side probably requires a more nuanced understanding of their characters than what i have but heres an attempt to pick a side for each and figure out reasoning:

So first of all neither character has a perfect understanding of what the scratch truly is or how it works. They do not have a doc scratch or trolls to yell at them for universe cancer so there is no real way for them to have a full picture of the implications of doing this.

alex is actually for NOT initiating the scratchz his reaction to finding out they “caused” the end of the world (or more accurately were harbingers of that end) is “we all deserve to die.”, heavily rooted in christian/cartholic (i am tired sorry for conflating the two) guilt for what i hope are Obvious Reasons and the whole “you need to kill everyone and then yourself” thing. Additionally does not believe the scratch will destroy the operator (he is right) so trapping it in this dead universe is the best they can do in his eyes (he can not actually hope to trap it). Sees them all as infected by it but ESPECIALLY Tim as “the source” (why? I dont know. I think it favored him as a doom player. Tim being a doom player also makes him the most literally representation of everything alex hates and resents about the situation).

Tim is for initiating the scratch. He believes that the scratch will wipe out the operator for good (it wont). I had mlre thoughts on this but i got sjdetracked sorry

Jessica survives the scratch somehow

Maybe she is hidden away by tim before the scratch starts, maybe he even is able to hide with her from it? Would imply tim knows the scratch is surviveable and thus the operator could escape from it but would also reflect how his self preservation kind of outweighs any desire to be a martyr unlike alex. Tim Will Survive a la final girl? I had better ways of expressing this thought but i lost it. If you look at this and say “you dont know what youre talking about” you are so correct

Either way, due to tims planning or a glitch in their already buggy session, she falls through the fabric of spacetime and into the new universe but loses all her memories/has a fuzzy recollection.

If tim does survive this could explain how she is able to be situated in a universe where she should not exist (he got everything arranged the way sburb guardians (non first ones) would)

This is how marble hornets comic happens and that cast would get involved

Have you considered skully sprite for your troubles. Yes? Okay i dont have a more developed thought than that i spedread the comics from excitement and did. Not internalize the meaningful stuff bc im small brained

….i just rmbrd the ^2sprites and. Thinking sbt that in relation to skullysprite is… yeah id be wanting to fix the broken too if i was an amalgam of several dead bodies shoved into a sprite in this timeline (maybe)

Obviously real skuly is more than that but i dont fully understand them so. Ack

Anyway this sessions FOR SURE players are jessica, taylor, adam (who i ALWAYS tag as seth bc i dont have a BRAIN) and david (and skully! In a way)

Adam kills david during the session. I know it in my heart. Bastard >:(

I cant think of anything else good night

[goldsrc-hl1]

"1. You dont have a point. What you have is what is in polite company called a “headcanon” and a “strawman” put together. Ironwood wanted to raise Atlas into the air because Salem was near Atlas and coming to kill everyone. Nowhere in the show is it stated that he will abandon Remnant entirely."

Actually, it is. From V7C11, Gravity.

Ironwood: If we harness the power of the Staff, and raise ourselves high into the atmosphere, the city's artificial climate will keep citizens and food supplies unharmed. Always out of reach of whatever Salem may try to send our way.

Notice how the always is italicized. Ironwood never intends to come back down. We've also got this line from V8C1, Divide.

Ironwood: Mantle... You're still worried about Mantle?! Remnant is doomed, Ruby. Unless we leave, Salem will destroy Atlas and with it, any hope Humanity has left. We need to think about the future. If she makes it through our defenses, everything that follows will be on your hands.

"Remnant is doomed, Ruby."

On top of him explicitly stating that he intends to have Atlas always out of reach (meaning permanently), Ironwood outright says that he thinks Remnant is doomed. Why would he return if that's the case? It just makes no sense to think that he had any intention of coming back down.

"The supporters of his plan admit that its not perfect but its the best that everyone has at that moment."

Hi, here's someone who does not support his plan, and let me tell you, that plan was fucked from the start. If Atlas is raised into the atmosphere, it's eventually gonna run out of dust, and once that happens all the power shuts down, including the hardlight shield surrounding Atlas. That's not gonna bode well for Atlas.

James can, of course, attempt to find a solution. He could try to send ships down to get more dust... but that wouldn't work either considering that in V8C8, Dark, we can see an entire Atlesian Airship getting snapped in half by a single Grimm.

Not looking like that would work out...

Well, he could always return to Remnant, bringing all of Atlas down to get more dust. Only that would probably be even worse, since Salem isn't an idiot and can play the long game. She'll wait right there for James to come back down, and once he does, Atlas is gonna get attacked.

Considering that Atlas hardly survived it's first round with Salem, I have no doubts that a resource deprived Atlas with a depleted military would stand no chance against Salem. Atlas would get utterly annihilated, Salem would get the relic, and everyone in both Atlas and Mantle ends up dead. No survivors. Total Salem victory.

"Rubys plan was to stay and fight against Salem while trying to evacuate Mantle into Atlas. Plan which would have failed if she had not found the relic of creation at the last episodes of the show. The relic which she did not plan in using, at all."

If Ironwood wasn't so stubborn, they could've 100% worked together and gotten Mantle evacuated. Hell, there was a whole 24 hour period between Salem first showing up and her actual attack on Atlas. To be fair, Ironwood didn't know that Salem was intentionally holding off the attack to set up her Grimm river. Put in his position, I would likely think that Salem was attempting to bait me out and restart the evacuation so that I let my guard down. Regardless, Ruby's plan was to broadcast Amity's message, await help, and stall Salem for as long as she could. When that didn't work out, she had to come up with a new plan, a plan that worked.

What matters in the end is that Ruby's plan did work. Atlas and Mantle's population were evacuated as safely as they could be to Vacuo, and although Penny died and the relics were taken by Salem, the end result is still far better than Ironwood's plan.

"Her plan would have gotten everyone killed. But it didnt ,because of a Deus Ex machina."

So would James's plan.

"What happened is that she was willing and would have killed everyone in her efforts to save everyone. Which, to many people, is not heroic."

This I can understand, I disagree, but I understand. What I do not understand is why Ironwood abandoning an entire city full of people for a plan that was doomed to fail is viewed as heroic.

"2. The reason why Raven was brought up is because RWBY fans constantly whine about Ironwood and people supporting his plan and call us the vilest of names. While these same fans, like you, then proceed to talk about Raven positively, about how shes amazing and fantasize about her getting it on with Summer."

No one argues that Raven is a good person or a morally good character. Or at least I hope so. Therefore, humorizing her is a lot more harmless.

Ironwood does have a lot of people saying he was a good person (which to be fair I think he always had saving people in mind) and that he's a morally good character (hard disagree when V8 comes around), therefore defending him even in a joking manner is not going to pan over as well as if you did it with Raven.

Also she's a female character so you just gotta deal with horny people.

"While Raven was an actual villain, someone who went around killing villages of innocents for shits and giggles. The reason she was brought up is to point out the double standard in the community with how Ironwood is perceived as mega-hitler all of whose fans deserve scorn, while Raven is perceived as an “Uwu im innocent” lady who never did anything wrong."

Again, I have yet to see anyone call Raven innocent. Humorizing her and saying she did nothing wrong is clearly humor, since it's blatantly obvious and (I really hope) unanimous that she's evil. That can't be said for Ironwood.

James Ironwood: I am going to take Atlas into space and leave literally everyone else on Remnant to die.

RWBY antis: Oh wow this is an amazing plan and objectively the right thing to do! Why isn't this guy the hero?!

Ruby Rose: I am going to evacuate Atlas and Mantle and save as many innocents as I can.

RWBY antis: WTF this is objective a bad plan and borderline EVIL!! Ruby is so fucking selfish! Why is this selfish bitch the hero and not the literal murderous dictator?! BAD WRITING!!

[h3l10tr0p3]

MANGA CH. 284 SPOILERS

OF REDEMPTIONS AND ATONEMENTS:

We all been knew, man. We all knew this was coming.

And godDAMN does it fucking HURT. (oh the sweet sweet angstfest this whole chapter is, just *chef's kiss*)

But i legit cannot put into words how deep the choice to 'Atone' cuts on my bleeding bkdk heart. Let's first take a step back and see how Katsuki went from DvK2 to here- that one keystone moment that has given us this beautiful chapter: And I meant ALLLL the way back to Chap. 252

I have already written a whole-ass post based on this panel, which you can check Here.

TL;DR Katsuki was actually paying real close attention to Endeavour in this part. He came to Endeavour to learn exactly what he was missing as a Hero, but he learnt so much more.

This scene in particular left a momentous impact on Kacchan. Here, Natsuo is resistant to the idea of forgiving his father for all his sins just because he is more involved in their lives now. And Endeavour had been dreaming for a while about a Home where he is not present with the rest of the Todoroki's which ultimately gave him the idea of buying a house for the others to live in apart from him. This is HUGE. This is what actually drove Endeavour's Redemption home- the perfect understanding and the perfect compensation, the two elements of a brilliant Redemption Arc. NOT THE FORGIVENESS, just as Enji says it. It is NEVER ABOUT THE FORGIVENESS.

Endeavour understood that it was his presence that caused his family distress, and although he dearly wanted to be a part of his family again, was even making efforts towards it by being cordial and accepting of Shouto's friends, inviting them to a family dinner, etc. etc. Endeavour realized the only way he can compensate/atone was to give up something that would cause him suffering, and them happiness. The idea that your family doesnt want you, when you just started to show some effort and HOPE that they might see you in different light, maybe forgive you and then to just terminate those ties entirely, punting yourself into a void where NO ONE CAN COME IN AND SAVE YOU FROM YOUR SUFFERING, is exactly what Endeavour did. He is actively shutting down the ONE window through which his family could see that he was suffering, and miserable, and wanted to be a part of the family again. Endeavour CHOSE to not be forgiven. To writhe with the knowledge of his sins day in and day out with only the shrine of Dabi Touya to haunt him every waking minute.

I cannot explain just how much determination it takes to do that, man. It's just- WOW.

Excuse me for ranting on Endeavour in a bkdk post, but I swear this has a point. And All Might says this the best:

This is the fanlation, the official release (which I couldnt get my hands on) also mentions that "When I meant you were like Endeavour, I meant the Change"

This here is an important bit that AM has caught onto.

In the 252 panel, where Endeavour says 'It's not like I want forgiveness' (Because Endeavour understands he cannot be, should not be, forgiven) "I just want to make up for everything I have done" (and to back this up, Endeavour shuts down the one communication link that could have offered him forgiveness, and thus salvation from the weight of his sins and his guilt)

Katsuki understood Endeavour's idea of redemption very well here, although he might not be shown with that light-bulb moment. He may have already known this wayyy before Endeavour said anything, but those words lent a solidity and to the path he must persue to acheive redemption: And it's Not forgiveness.

Let me tell you why I think Atonement is the greater factor here, even greater than Redemption itself. Redemption has an end-point: Forgiveness. But Atonement doesn't. Atonement has no expiry date. Atonement is purely propelled by the understanding of self, and the weight of guilt the self bears, whereas a Redemption is All About The Forgiveness.

Forgiveness is an external force, it may or may not be given to you and that is completely up to the person who has been wronged. Atonement is self-imposed, it is a meditation of the soul to forgive itself against the guilt it carries.

If Redemption is a marathon with a banner at the finish line, Atonement is trying to drag a twenty pounds of rocks through the Sahara desert without water, food or a compass- it's endless, hopeless.

And this is why Atonement is greater than Redemption.

And do you think someone as stubborn as Kastuki will ever find himself atoned of his deeds? No. And That, my friends, is The Point. In 252, when Endeavour says, "I dont want forgiveness" it's not just him saying it- it's also Katsuki. "I just want to make it upto you", is also Katsuki.

And to prove it, Katsuki will never ask for forgiveness. A verbal apology will be nice, sure. Especially since dumb-ass, gay-ass, 'Kacchan-sugoi' ass Izuku Doesn't even See it as Atonement. He is just #Blessed that Kacchan and he can talk almost-naturally again. And that is also Katsuki's intention- because the moment Izuku knows, he won't be able to atone this way anymore.

So, as much as I HATE to say this, the chances of a voluntary verbal apology are slim. If allowed to go on like this, Kacchan with continue to shadow Izuku through his life, worrying about him, LOSING SLEEP OVER HIM :

LOOK AT THOSE BAGS UNDER HIS EYES. /*shoves panels in yo face*/LOOK

Can you believe this bitch-ass gremlin who goes to sleep at 8:30 got bags just from stressing over his Deku??????

LOOK AT HIM DOING A HECCIN' MAJOR KOKORO-STOPPING CONCERN.

(He is flipping his shit because he worries, and he worries so much, and has worried for him for a long LONG time.)

- Katsuki will continue on this path of being Izuku's support.

Forever if it takes.

Forever, he hopes, it takes-

Because the only way he will stop is in death, either his own or Deku's.

This is his Atonement: To undo everything he once did, to support Izuku's dream instead of squashing it; To help him get stronger instead of perpetuating the narrative on his weakness; To protect him from all harm, when he once hurt; To be on his side when the whole world is against him, because once he was all, but, for him; To save Izuku as he wins, to win as he saves.

And, To deny each oppurtunity of forgiveness even as he desperately longs to be unburdened of his guilt.

Because Katsuki knows:

He knows Izuku is that one of a million, he is kind and humble and considerate and loving to a fault.

Katsuki knows that Izuku will forgive him in a heartbeat. That is just the kind of selfless, beautiful person he is.

Unlike Endeavour, who had no guarantee to forgiveness, Katsuki does. And that is what makes Katsuki's Atonement more powerful than Endeavour's. He recognizes it is in his grasp, just an arm's length away...

....Just an arm's length.

And Katsuki will deny himself that. Because he does not believe he deserves it. He hasn't atoned enough for it.

"Keep At Arm's Length"

He says. Because this is the critical distance between them. Not "Stay an arm's length away", because Katsuki doesn't wanna run away from Deku, and he doesn't want to be too far away to protect him, nor does he want to get too close to finally recieve the forgiveness that will give him salvation.

This is the fine balancing act Katsuki must maintain indefintely till he believes he has acheived his idea of atonement. (And when has he ever been happy just the bare minimum?)

I know I said Katsuki will never ask for forgiveness, and a voluntary verbal apology is very unlikely, because in it's very nature, it is inviting a forgiveness from Izuku, which we have established, Katsuki wants to avoid. And if this were any other manga, we would have been doomed to this conclusion. But, there is a scenario when Katsuki might issue a verbal apology and that is when Katsuki knows there isn't enough time to be forgiven in turn, or, hasn't atoned enough and can no longer continue to.

Like when Katsuki launches off, to deliver a final kamikaze blow to a villain, and he has only enough time to tell Deku a short "I am sorry", but not enough time to wait for a reply. Or when Deku is dying and at his final moments, when Katsuki knows however much he has atoned isn't enough and isn't how Deku should leave, without closure.

Whatever the future may hold, my dear readers, Katsuki still has a long, long way to go. And I hope to see him live through everything, to be there -

To survive these wars with Deku, To fight alongside him, To protect him. To win. To save.

To Live.

To hear Deku say "I had forgiven you a long time ago";

and ofcourse,

To forgive himself.

[i-did]

what would make renee angry in your opinion?

I had a really hard time answering this one actually. I thought about it for a while and asked a lot of my friends to see if they had any ideas, and here's what I came up with:

1) A professor or TA who is super shitty to her

Just a really shitty teacher.

as she goes through college, she’s bound to run into some assholes, and I don’t think Renee has perfect grades in the past or present. her not knowing academic terminology and feeling out of place in the college setting would make a lot of sense for a lot of the foxes, and Renee is good on putting on a smile, but she still eventually gets that one professor or TA that scoffs at her questions and “doesn’t have time for the likes of her” and the constant complete dismissal digs painfully under her skin and brings out her anger.

2) People who are intensely rude to her despite her best efforts to be as kind as she can be

Renee is patient, but we all have our limit. similar to the one above, but Renee dealing with someone who is just rude all the time and she struggles to keep reminding herself “we all have bad days, I don’t know what they’re going though.” Renee working in a coffee shop and a woman bumping into Renee and spilling her coffee on herself, only to yell at Renee for an hour, ignoring all of Renee’s pleasant customer service smiles. said customer later on becoming a regular and repeating this behavior, cutting off people in parking lots and flipping them off, Renee being kind and trying to give her a free scone only for the woman to tell her she hates scones, Renee offering something else only for the woman to tell her to shut up. that shit wears you down, and Renee still dumping her kindness onto someone every time only for it to backfire or be dismissed would make her have to take a few deep breaths in the back room before deciding, fuck it, she's cut off from active kindness, now only passible neutrality and not being aggressive is enough. 

3) someone who refuses her help

her knowing she could really make a difference, but some people just don’t want help, and she feels helpless and angry. she's not angry at the person, but the situation of them not being ready to accept help or even able to accept help makes her so frustrated she would start to grind her teeth in her sleep. She understands how it is, how hard it can be to take the first step to change or giving up pride or whatever the hurtle may be, but that doesn’t make it any easier than her thinking in her head “just let me fucking help you!!! or anyone!!! just let anyone in to help you!!!! fuck!!!” inside her head. she knows not everyone needs help or saving, but some people do, and when they shove her back, unwilling and not ready for it over and over while she’s trying to save them, she gets frustrated that she can’t.... do anything. and just has to wait. but Renee can be patient, and she’s willing to wait. 

4) Someone actively trying to wear her down and get under her skin

okay so this isn’t something that happens often, the closest Renee has really come to it is with Andrew when he first was scoping her out. but– if someone was actively trying to aggravate her, laughing at everything she said and making fun of her, pulling at her looser strings and picking at her ticks, watching to see what brought out her reaction, they could eventually do it and get under her skin. i think she wouldn’t let herself blow up at them since thats what they want, but she would silently excuse herself from the situation to take a breather. no one really does this with her, and Andrew only does this to size her up and even still his interrogation isn’t the type of harassment i’m imagining. i mean like old school bullying, not locker shoving, but the middle school girl shit that leaves emotional scars. and them being older, they’re less afraid to show it and be more straight forward mean. people don’t really do this to her tho, its too much effort to get a reaction, and when they do, its never what they would have wanted, like crying, but instead is her smile falling and then finding a way to make them feel like shit. Renee is kind, but she also knows how to play on a similar level as them, not just with fists. i HC Renee as plus size, and fuck it is hard to be different in anyway as a kid. but childhood bullying was the least of her worries and these people dont see how deep her personal self assurance has grown and how she has learned to stand with her head held high and her face serine. her and dan are quite similar in this, but dan is much more active and direct while Renee is passive in her letting it glide over her, dan has even gotten annoyed on Renee’s behalf and then annoyed that Renee was not affected and why she didn’t fight more directly back. 

5) People who are overtly cruel and she struggles to sympathize with

okay so, you ever see someone so mean and rude for zero reason to someone else and you’re just like... what the fuck??? Renee doesn’t let others get to her really, but damn.... someone going after someone else in ways that are just so uncalled for and so harshly.... it gets to her. She once watched an episode of catfish where the catfisher laughed at the girl, uncaring that he crossed so many emotional lines and manipulated people without really any care. and she wanted to throw the remote and punch the tv right where the guys face was on the paused screen. nothing like someone just, kicking someone else while their down with no mercy, or making fun of someone behind their back and them not knowing, making fun of the deaf kids voice behind his back and he doesn’t see them doing it, and she’s like, man, Fuck. You. in her head. I don’t think she was like, always a nice person, in fact, i think Renee used to very much so not be the type to sit with the alone kid at lunch but instead ignore him and think “yea he’s weird, kinda ugly” without thinking much of it. But then she decided to change, and she took everything she thought it meant to be a good person, and became that. she started sitting with the alone kid, she started doing charities, she started to smile instead of punch, and she started going to church. and so when she sees cruelness she was once passive in the face of, maybe even active in, she uses kindness. Renee is she good at using taking the high road in such a graceful way it makes others feel bad. like when she tells Nicky calmly “thats not very nice” after he jokes about Seth dying in a car crash on his way from the airport book 1, and Nicky feels like shit. it feels like shit to get called out sometimes, and while its not her goal, she does know it is an effect of it. (i don’t think she’s mad at Nicky in that scene, but she did say something since she is there to protect hers and she redraws that line in that moment, especially without Allison or Seth there yet to say fuck you themselves.)

6) Injustice and systems of oppression

for these i feel she gets more frustrated, overwhelmed, and sometimes resigned. she knows how dark and shitty the world is, but she stays up at night with her hand on her heart as she breathes deep, thinking about how... utterly fucked everything is. its pretty easy for me to HC that Renee is politically far left and has seen the dark side to lack of resources and systemic issues that are just... so overwhelming she doesn’t even know what she does as just one person. world pollution, corruption, class divide, flint water crisis, the homeless crisis, the prison system, functioning segregation in school systems, just... it all. she’s had nights after volunteering where she thinks “i did something, i did.” and she has days where she realizes “...i’m doing nothing, in the end... its all for nothing, there’s just too much.” just a bad day where she sits there, thinking about how much is wrong and wont be fixed and how ‘doomed’ things are, how broken, and she doesn’t feel at a loss, but rather this deep anger that comes from who she was before. 

7) herself. 

Her being unable to live up to her own standards. she still thinks mean things, she has mean and cruel urges, and when she has them, she remembers that she’s still a bad person trying very hard to be a good one, and she thinks she’s still a bad person at her core. she’s not self loathing with it, but she does think to herself “i’m a hypocrite.” and sits with that thought for a minute. sparring with Andrew has helped her, to balance the two sides of her in a way that feels both self indulgent and honest to her path forward. but sometimes while sitting in that church pew, she thinks of her dead mother, her dead step father, those she turned in without batting an eye, stabbing in the back to save herself, and she thinks “i should feel something.” but she doesn’t, she wasn’t sorry then and she’s not sorry now. and she thinks, “the others call Andrew a monster, and they don’t realize that i’m one too.” and she tries to muster up something deep inside her, but she cant. and it can frustrate her, how after all these actions, all those hours of beach clean up and homeless shelters and building houses in some other country and going around clapping her hands to the songs, but she’s still the person she is deep down. and it gets to her. i think her having a conversation with Neil one day, on what it means to be a real person, is she pretending who she is? is she her thoughts or her actions? which is the real her? and Neil saying, it’s all of it. every facet of the self is still the self, he is Nathaniel and Neil and Abram and every other person he has been and will be. we change but we are also always ourselves, and her actions are just as true as her thoughts. 

[a-slut-for-smut]

002 for eremika 😈😆🤡

Anon why would you do me dirty like this i cant believe youve done this lol

ehh ask and ye shall receive so i'll give it a stab i guess. Before i begin just a reminder once again that i have no issue with the ship itself, just how it was canonically executed.

002 | Send me a ship and I will tell you:

When I started shipping them:

i dont really but if i did it would have been when Eren started showing/treating Mikasa the respect she deserves, so right around when....

......uh.....

....ermm....

.....yo can someone help me out here? im struggling

My thoughts:

This was an obvious pairing from the get go, with Eren saving her life and growing up together etc, etc which is great and all but as ive said before- it can count for something but you dont owe someone love because of that- but because of how you mutually treat one another

Anyway from what i saw early on in the series was Eren constantly showed irritation from her attentions and there are def instances of resentment of her skill, etc so off the bat i just didn't really vibe with it. Not to say this dynamic couldn't change or grow, so i kept an open mind (altho once Levi & Mikasa vs Annie fight happen i knew my OTP) but as the story progressed i didn't really see their relationship doing so. Still felt incredibly one-sided from Mikasa and more and more i just wanted her to break from this cycle because it was so limiting character development-wise and she had so much potential to shine beyond "ereh ereh ereh". I also struggled to see WHY mikasa felt the way she did as they grew up other than "just because" or a questionable fixation (based on his treatment of her).

What makes me happy about them:

What makes me sad about them:

If Isayama truly had this "epic doomed romance" planned from the beginning...well, to put it simply, he executed it very poorly. And anyone who knows me i am a total angst slut and i LOVE tragic romances- the feels involved when the story conveys the mutual love/proper development that they are so perfect for each other, that they belong together despite everything threatening to tear them apart? And then the moment they (or one) realize that they, together, cannot be??? THATS THE GOOD STUFF AND EVERYONE WAS TOTALLY ROBBED OF IT

Things done in fanfic that annoys me:

I havent read EM but i have read threesome fics with Levi x Mikasa x Eren. The ones i like are when its initially EM but Eren pushes Mikasa into Levi's path because he knows he'll die soon and wants the best for her...because...well, true love is selfless, not selfish (lookin at you ISAYAMA smh). Anyway i have 2 fics on my old smutty rec list if that interests anyone

Things I look for in fanfic:

see above

My wishlist:

As far as this ship goes, just the proper development to truly establish a proper doomed romance. Also an ending where their character arcs aren't trashed completely.

OH and i really wish that weird ch 138 dream/paths cottage sequence (or whatever the eff that was) instead addressed the shitty things he said to her "Ive always hated you, you're a slave etc etc" because was that EVER resolved??? Like im sorry, if homebody said that straight to my face i woulda decked him, or at the least peaced out on my efforts/feelings for him. Think about it- what is the message here??? "Ladies, don't give up on a dude you like even if he treats you like shit...on the OFF CHANCE THAT HE MIGHT BE FAKING HIS FEELINGS TOWARDS YOU????" ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME WITH THIS SHIT???? big yikes/just a huge disservice to mikasa's character/speaks volumes of isayama's warped sense of romance

The scene could have been a PATHs sequence right before the final blow but instead he is so sorry, tells her never meant those things, he did it to drive her away from further hurt/anguish because he thought it would protect her, that despite knowing what she has to do, he had always loved her and always would...wouldnt that have been a better sequence to sell this stupid random af tragic romance plotline??? instead of that cringe af meltdown with ARMIN of all people??? AUGHHH it makes me want to pull my hair out how badly executed it was holy shiiiiiiiiiit

Who I’d be comfortable them ending up with, if not each other:

LOL an easy one finally!! Mikasa with her smashmate soulmate Levi and Eren with either Historia or Annie

My happily ever after for them:

ehhh ive lost all energy to continue sorry folks

[aprito]

hello <3 since i got these asks at the same time i decided to combine my thoughts on them in this post. yet another annoying sjw essay from yours truly on this blog 

before i get into these i think i need to preface why im like. i guess overly hyperfocused on a certain unproblematic base (same age au / platonic canon) for them and avoid the ped0philic content like the plague lol

tw for pedophilia ment, rape ment if that makes you squicky. ALSO THIS IS LONG AND RAMBLY

as i’ve mentioned a couple times already, ive been into the ship since i was 12, back when it was very very common to not only post untagged (nsfw) canonverse content of the two in writing and in drawing but also non con and the like, so you can imagine how bad my first impression online was. thinking back on it ...as a child i found it disturbing but didnt really register how problematic it really was?? (i know, but i also lived in the middle of nowhere and had no one explain this to me) 

skip to 2014 aka me coming back to naruto at 17ish and i had kinda become hyper aware of the fact that there was an increasing amount of people online who had come forward with explaining how fictional problematic content, mostly pedophilia, had been used to groom them into starting relationships with adullts. it was also a time where a lot of people didnt believe these victims, not registering how common it was for minors to be online friends with adults who had no boundaries and no qualms exposing them such content. not gonna get into my personal life here but i was lucky to not having gone through this myself. like... it kinda was my first time truly realising how fiction can EASILY be used to manipulate others irl (and yes i will not argue this, if you dont think fictional media can form and manipulate people’s opinions on attitudes, countries, cultures and virtues, pick up a book about the effects of propaganda media at least once please) 

i, being young, still liking the dynamic but not really the romance, would point this out here and there in the fandom and get into fights with grown adults in their mid 20s who assumed i automatically hated the ship(s) and tried to restrict their freedom of speech or whatever, heard everything from the “age of consent doesnt exist in naruto” to the “sasori looks like a child what does it matter” despite people clearly playing on him being older and experienced. it made me so upset that people were just consuming all this content uncritically and exposing children to it tbh?? not really just sos but a lot of minor/adult ships in naruto in general. and thats where i sat down and thought, i do not want to be a grown adult talking down to children that point out how unsafe the fandom is. theyre absolutely right in drawing these boundaries and calling out adults who defend the uncritical consumption and creation of this content. i do not want to consume or create content that predators could use to groom minors, and i absolutely do want to let younger people in fandom know that i am respecting their comfort zones and want them to have a safe and fun experience. after all, naruto is not an adult show and i think a lot of people forget that!!!! i am not perfect in that regard but its something that i, at the age of 23, am very passionate about and strive towards to.

and i guess thats where same age au was born for me and i have been sticking to it ever since. 

so finally we can move to the first question 

aside from the fact that we both dont like canon sos, i dont think it would work out even if i wasnt prejudiced to it anyways. in all honesty, 35 year old canon sasori is not a redeemable character to me, given the fact that he’s easily amongst the cruelest villains in naruto (torturing and killing and taxiderming people for his own fun personal gain, never for a goal that served anyone but himself. how do you redeem having over 300 corpses in your backpack that you felt absolutely no remorse for killing). sasori was legit one of the only cruel villains that didnt had someone else pull the strings, which sends a clear message on kishi’s part, who absolutely loves to redeem villains LOL.

being that old, he obviously had already been very manifested in what he believed in, even if it was shakey, to the point where the first crack in that world view (sakura and chiyo protecting each other) immediately had him give up on his life all together. that, in my opinion, is not a man who’s going to know what healthy relationships would look like, regardless of it being romantic or not. 35 year old sasori to me has the same appeal as an expired can of tuna and he’s probably very happy 6 feet under. he’s supposed to be a failed gaara in that sense that he had no one to look out for him and therefore was never going to experience anything but a bad ending in life. its fine that hes dead honestly, it wraps up his short character development the best IMO.

adding to that, seriously, sakura was obviously interested in knowing why he was that way, and called him out for being seriously fucked in the head, but it’s weird to me that people assume she had any interest in actively rehabilitating him, let alone starting a serious romantic relationship with him. sakura who’s not only very, uhm, immature and straight forward when it comes to her romantic viewpoints also, as a big bootlicker, wouldnt soil her standing in the village by starting anything with a disgraced and far too gone criminal like sasori. shipping that version of sasori with sakura intimately is still going to set her up for a huge power imbalance that would be difficult to handle imo, even if she was the one in the fight ultimately exerting her power over him. i would still look at it and think damn she deserves better than having to play therapist for man like that lol.

additionally, even if you ignored all of this, you cant really ignore that sasori had already known her as a child, and that had been his first and most impactful impression of her. i dont think that sasori would look at 35 year old sakura and see her as a grown woman and not the little green girl she was in the fight. plus, you easily fall into predatory comparison territory between the “childish” and “womanly” and i have seen way too often in fic just being boiled down to her now being fuckable. a lot of of ships do this and i would just like to remind yall thats it not normal for adults to want to start relationships with children they have seen grown up or known as a child when they themselves were fully grown adults. therefore, maybe if sakura hadnt met sasori before it would be less of a problem? but that also obviously defeats the point of the dynamic and the reason he died in the first place. so yeah, it sounds kind of doomed especially if you were to make it romantic. 

WHICH BRINGS ME TO THE SECOND QUESTION

let me preface this that im not fundamentally against age gaps, even if im not super interested in it. after all, colorblind had a 5 yr age gap (with sakura being 21), even if, say, i wrote similar fics today i probably would make it smaller lol. i think it can be handled well if both parties have enough life experience to deal with it, and the author is cautious of where the age gap starts, i think a 10+ year age gap would be fine in a scenario where the younger party (i guess sakura) was at least 25-27ish, meaning she has completed most of her most formative life stages and probably had been in relationships before, meaning she would be able to handle it without having to fear a huge power imbalance. the older the younger party is the less the age gap is going to matter tbh .TsukiHoshino and AngelOfDeath10 both handle age gaps in their fics really well imo, so i do not mind reading about them.

unfortunately, a lot of people in this fandom think making sakura barely "”””legal””””” (18, not even 20 which is hilarious to me because the source material is obviously japanese) because they both cannot stand her being past her “prime years” of being young fertile and fuckable to much older men as well as thinking a 20 year old is automatically old enough to handle that type of relationship. ive seen a lot of unironic takes that believe it will absolve them of callout posts if they throw around age of consent and “shes 18 now suckers!!!” enough lmfao. absolutely hilarious. aging a minor up without aging the adult down seriously reeks of predatory “cant wait until youre 18″ narratives and thats why i find it similarly disturbing as straight up pedo shipping.

ultimately, sasosaku is and will always be a inherently problematic ship in canon, which is why i think it should always be handled a little more responsibly in fandom spaces, ignoring or outright excusing the main problem factor, which is sasori, isnt going to convince anyone that the dynamic in itself is well written and interesting enough to explore in aus, like giving sasori the redemption most of us wanted him to have by aging him down to a point in time where he was still realistically going to allow being positively influenced, similar to gaara. 

so really, what i think is well handled age gap and how most people handle age gap in the naruto fandom are two different worlds at times lol 

tl;dr

canon shippers have never been anything but gross when i was younger and i didnt wanna be like that, even if youre “smart”enough to differenate, actual creeps dont really care and might use your content to blur the lines, sasori isnt rly redeemable so romantic canonverse realistically wouldnt make much sense and is still iffy, age gaps are fine if they are handled well, but given that the dynamic doesnt really need the age gap to still work im not that invested on making that an essential part of my shipping experience.  

thank you for reading and hope this makes sense!

[takrat]

I hope its okay that ive stolen snazzy-suit's name for this... I wanna go ahead and share my take on the District 9 AU. Oh yeah spoilers for the movie

Irken/child shippers DNI (yes dib is older in this au but z*drs do not fucking interact)

District Doom AU notes under cut:

So its not a perfect parallel of the movie but roughly here are the character parallels: Dib is Wikus (son of Prof. Membrane the founder of PEG labs--"MNU" who's primary goal is researching the aliens for SCIENCE! and Dib desperately wants to be a part of it), Zim is Christopher (former Irken Scientist and lead Invader of his squad in Impending Doom I who were aboard the Massive before catastrophe hit), Gir is Oliver 😊, Skoodge is Paul aka the alien that gets shot early on in the movie but don't worry he's okay now, Gaz is here but idk she's just vibing on her own, oh that assistant guy to Wikus? Uhmm probably gonna be Dwicky or something

After an encounter with a Florpus Hole, the Massive is seriously messed up and finds its way to Earth, hovering over a miserable city, miserably out of fuel with dozens of miserable Irkens aboard. Its systems are horribly damaged so there is no contacting Irk for help.

At the very oldest Dib is 19 and the Irkens have been there for around 20 years, possibly only 15 or so?

Because the Massive's systems are all offline, theres no online PAK charging stations--after about ~20 years, the Irkens with standard issue PAKs are growing weak and dying off (Zim has an Invader's PAK--his charge can last much longer)

The Tallests are there basically in hiding. Purple hates earth donuts.

Dib is put in charge of Operation Eviction, moving the Irkens to a new district further away from the city because they are just so fucking ANNOYING nobody can stand them--while this isn't what he wants, he still goes with it because he hopes to study the aliens up close. It'll be the first time he's been allowed in District D--not just snuck in as a kid and either got kicked out by security or almost blown up

Zim and Skoodge have been collecting fluid from scattered Irken technology for many years, fuel for the Massive so that they may return to Irk and send aid (and also come back and destroy Earth)

Commence chaos and commotion--Dib finds himself with a dead Irken's PAK attached to his chest that is slowly turning him into an Irken. and also he confiscated the fuel which was taken to high security PEG labs

I cant believe they fucking killed skoodge

PEG doesn't have a large focus on alien weaponry like in the movie (they do have some, but studying the aliens and their tech in the name SCIENCE! is their whole deal)

Dib and Zim clash and have to end up working together. Dib is able to get them into PEG labs to get the fuel, Zim can get the PAK safely detached from Dib without killing him and reverse the side effects once they get aboard the Massive. There's a lot more character development and friendship that i just don't have the brain power to work out right now

Unfortunately Prof. Membrane is a bit less redeemable in this au.. hes more antagonistic but I really don't want to fuck my man up too bad cus I really like this guy. Hes not horrible, but he does see whats happening to Dib and wants to study him, reasonably though I think that comes across as very scary to Dib and he freaks out. So not entirely sure why Dib has to run away and seek refuge in District D, but I think he's just scared? Miscommunications with him and Prof. I'll flesh it out later whatever

They go to the Tallests' little hideout and Zim tells them his plan for saving them all.. they think he's crazy but send him and Dib off with some cool gear (probably hoping he'll end up killed or captured by PEG labs).

Zim is outcasted among the stranded Irkens because he's generally assumed to have caused the Florpus hole (yea it was him), but he's been desperately trying to prove himself and make up for it (and hes really the only one with any initiative to save them and return to Irk--everyone else is too stupid, hopeless, or cowardly).

They break in whatever. end up running into Skoodge who's kind of just been chilling in the labs and going through some boring experiments

"Skoodge? I thought the humans killed you" "Yeeeaahh but im okay now"

However, Skoodge exempt(?), there's been some Fucked up tests going on to captured Irkens and Zim is really angry and distraught. Dibs also freaked out--like yea he assumed the scientists were doing scary tests and in fact wanted to perform them, but actually seeing the results and how it effects Zim, and getting to know Zim and the Irkens as people, really snaps him to reality and how messed up what PEG labs is doing

Now this would be the end where Zim takes off in the Massive back to Irk and Dib ends up retreating to District D and ultimately transforming fully into an Irken.. but the au definitely doesn't end here. But I dont have the brain power to think any further. Let's see if District 10 ever really does come out like the directors promised

They get the fluid, escape, Zim gets the control module up and running God DAMMIT who is supposed to be that stupid bald military guy in this. That guy in the movie. Okay there's some guy ill figure it out later.

Zim was gonna just fix Dib up, leave him, and take off for Irk, but after finding out about what PEG labs has been doing with experimenting on his people, he has to use all of the fuel and get help as fast as he can, so Dib is left behind.

Anyway if anybody has any ideas im begging dont hesitate to share 🥺 ive also got a bunch of doodles for this? So if you think I should post them sometime let me know. I need to stop typing because my hands hurt now

[duhragonball]

For the Ask Game: Son Goku

Give me a character and I will answer:

Why I like them: Goku is the main character in Dragon Ball Z, an anime that I have enjoyed tremendously for over 20 years.  He kicks aliens really fast and hard, and he eats wolves and bugs and clouds, and he’s very cool and good.   

That may sound kind of basic, maybe even borderline sarcastic, but I’m not sure how else to put it.    I’ve gotten so used to liking Goku that it’s hard to articulate why.   

Like, okay, you know that one episode during the Cell Games, where he’s gonna pick apples from his favorite apple tree?   And he does the special karate punch that makes the apples all fall out of the branches without really hurting the tree?    In the dub, he says to the tree “Ready for one more round, old timer?”  Or something like that, and then after he hits it, he’s like “See?  That didn’t hurt a bit.”  I’m not getting the lines right, but you get the idea.    That’s some choice Goku right there.    He’s friends with that tree!   

Why I don’t: hE gAvE mOrO a SeNzU bEaN-- ha ha just kidding, but can you imagine not liking Goku?   Because of something he did in some horseshit fancomic that doesn’t even count?

Lately, I’ve been hearing a lot of guff from people about Goku showing mercy to his enemies.   This is humorous to me, because I’d bet you dollars to donuts that they’re fans of Vegeta and/or Piccolo, and that only happened because Goku decided to have mercy on their stank asses.    “Well I like Vegeta because he kills people.”  He only gets to do that because Goku allowed him to live.    Best Green Dad doesn’t happen without Goku, period, end of sentence, new paragraph.   

I’m not a lore expert like that guy on Twitter who only watched DBZ Abridged, but here’s some cool trivia for you: Cell could have self-destructed and destroyed the Earth at any time.    It literally does not matter that Goku gave Cell a senzu bean before Gohan fought him, because Cell would have done the same thing no matter who beat him or how.     If Gohan had wiped him out quickly, that nucleus would have survived and regenerated, and he would come back even stronger.   The senzu bean just delayed the inevitable outcome, and not even by that much, because Cell wasn’t that worn out in the first place.   The whole thing with the senzu bean was Goku playing headgames with Cell and no one seems to understand that but me.   

But what about Moro, you ask?   Hey, come here.  

Closer.    No, closer.   

Listen to me.   I love you, okay?    But the Dragon Ball Super manga isn’t canon.   Hating Goku over something he did in Super is like hating Superman for something he did in a Mad Magazine bit.      

“Blargle blargle he doesn’t kiss his wife bad father, tournament of power--” I super mega don’t care about any of these ice cold takes.      Every day I go on YouTube and it recommends me the dirt worst Star Wars commentary videos.   “Maybe the SITH were actually the GOOD GUYS and the JEDI were the BAD GUYS!  Huh?  Did I just BLOW your MIND?   Be sure to like and subscribe!”  Every dope with a keyboard seems to think they can flip the script and pretend they’re some kind of genius.    “Thanos was right!”  “Magneto was right!” “Dr. Doom was right!” “Antifa are the real fascists when you stop and think about it!”  “Masks and vaccines are bullshit, COVID-19 is a hoax, but if it were real, maybe it’s the good guy in this situation!”

I didn’t mean to go off on a rant here, but the whole point of Goku is that he’s a pretty cool guy, and the hero of his particular adventure, and you see all these people trying to outsmart that somehow, like it’s not the premise of the character.   It’s like all those fan theories about how every show is really one character having a coma dream in the hospital.    It’s fake-deep, like when Will Smith’s kid goes on the internet and says something like “Water isn’t wet when you stop and think about it.”  

I’m not saying everyone has to like Goku, but I don’t get the hate-boner people have for him.    I don’t like cole slaw, it’s soggy and insipid and I don’t understand it, but I don’t go around trying to convince people it’s not made out of cabbage.  

Anyway, Goku’s awesome. 

Favorite episode (scene if movie): It’s hard to choose, but DBZ #248 always fucks me up.   I looked it up in my liveblog archive to get the episode number right, and the first line of that post: This one always fucks me up.

Moving on.

Favorite season/movie: In Dragon Ball terms, I guess this refers to the sagas, so I’ll go with Cell Games.    Goku goes into the battle with this flawed, touch-and-go plan, and it works.    He defeats perfection with imperfection, and it’s glorious.  

Favorite line: “What I represent can never be destroyed,” is one of the most metal lines ever uttered, anywhere.   It’s a threat and a moral lesson all in one.   

Favorite outfit: Two answers for this one.  

Shu’s outfit in the Fortuneteller Baba Saga was awesome.    I used to wear yellow T-shirts to work, so when I put on my blue labcoat I would see myself in the restroom mirror and think: yeaaaaahhhhhh.

I’m also big into Goku’s look during the Cell Games, classic orange outfit, blue shirt, with the Super Saiyan form ready to go.    That may sound obvious, since this is kind of Goku’s default look, but it takes a while to get all of this together.  For me, it was a big deal to see Goku in action as a Super Saiyan in his standard fighting gear, because the whole time he was SSJ on Namek his shirt was ruined.   Against Gero and 19 he was sick, but starting with the Cell Games, we get him fresh as a daisy, and it’s worth the wait.   Harder to stealth cosplay, though.

OTP: Gochi.   Come on.    I don’t even care that much about ships, but they’re adorable on the show, and the internet backlash against Gochi only intensifies my defiance.   

Brotp: I wrote a fanfic with Goku and Yamcha just joyriding in the desert, and that seemed pretty awesome, so maybe we need more of that.   

I dunno, maybe I’m giving this to Bulma.   They don’t get a ton of screen time together after a certain point in the show, but the bond between them is this really sublime thing.    In the same fanfic, I wrote Bulma and Goku interacting, and that was just a pleasure to write.

Head Canon: I think Goku being an alien orphan matters more to him than he lets on.   Early on, he knew he had parents but he didn’t know why they left him in the woods.   Pretty much every interaction he has with the outside world is about him being different.   Then he finds out he’s a Saiyan and all the Saiyans hate him for being weak and sentimental and so on.   He can kick all their asses, but that doesn’t make him any less of an outcast.   

I think becoming a Super Saiyan is a bigger deal to him than he lets on.   That moment kind of serves as this unspoken proof that there’s more to being a “true” Saiyan than Vegeta, Nappa, and Raditz ever knew.   That maybe, if his great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great granny could see him, she might approve.

Unpopular opinion:

Yukio Ebisawa is underrated. 

A wish: I always wanted to see Goku style on Broly ‘93.   It seemed unfair to me that they kept bringing Broly back, and even teased a rematch with Goku in Movie 11, only to not deliver on it.    I wanted Goku to turn Super Saiyan 2 and Broly’d be all “oh noes!” and Goku would look at him and be all “Yeah.   What now, bitch?    That green shit won’t cut it anymore.”

An oh-god-please-dont-ever-happen: I think my darkest fear about the Dragon Ball franchise is that it’ll get bastardized like Superman, where some giant multimedia corporation owns it, has no idea how to tell new stories with it, and refuses to let it lapse into the public domain.   I have no idea how public domain works in Japan, but “Disney Toei’s Dragon Ball KH” doesn’t sit well with me.    Hopefully I’ll be dead by the time that happens.  

Like, Rise of Skywalker wasn’t that bad.   But it did lead me to worry that they really have no idea how to make Star Wars work.    They got it right enough, but the part where Rose is going to stay and guard the base or whatever, it just made me realize they’re only guessing, and they just happen to guess right often enough to succeed.   And it’s not like you can jump over to some other studio and see how they handle a Star Wars movie.

5 words to best describe them: Ain’t nothin’ to fuck with.

My nickname for them: Geeko.    Ha ha, just kidding.  

[black-mesa-hive-au]

Entry 3

(on their way to Dr. Kleiner’s office) Calhoun: So, doc- how's your day been?

Dr. Freeman: (silent for a minute, then gives a slight nod and thumbs up)

Calhoun: Hmm...that's good, that's good. What did you have for lunch?

Dr. Freeman: [pasta.]

Calhoun: (nods slowly) Mm...pasta is good. I like spaghetti. Alfredo is OKAY...but I'm not a big fan of cheese.

Dr. Freeman: (nods slightly, putting his hands in his pockets)

Calhoun: say….what do you think we're gonna learn? Like you got any theories as to any of this, really?

Dr. Freeman: (silent for a minute, then shakes his head no)

Calhoun: Me either. Watch it be a small little thing that'll easily pass (chuckle) I bet this is all just a misunderstanding!

Dr. Freeman: (shakes his head no harshly)

Calhoun: Huh? What makes you think that?

Dr. Freeman: [........]

Calhoun: it's fine, you don't have to answer….I was just curious. I'm kinda bombarding you with questions I guess. I'm just anxious.

(They reach the door to Dr. Kliener's office, Dr. Freeman taking the lead and knocking on the door. Moments later, a pair of eyes poke through the blinds of the window.)

Dr. Kleiner: (opens the door) Oh hello Gordon! And Barney 2...2295?

Calhoun: I prefer Calhoun if that's no trouble to you. 

Dr. Kleiner: Ah! Hello then Calhoun. Come in come in! Apologies for the mess….I've been working all day and making a mess of things! (he motions the two in, shutting the door behind him. He locks the office up one by one. The door, the blinds, covers the vents….ect.) 

Calhoun: wow, that's uh- a lotta security. 

Dr. Kleiner: You can never be too careful. Is that recording device on?

Calhoun: it's been on this whole time, sir.

Dr. Kleiner: Ah! good! Just make sure this stays between us for now. Video diaries is a very good hobby to have, especially during these times. 

Calhoun: I guess so, whatever "these times" are. 

Dr. Kleiner: Well Mr. Calhoun, these times (grabs a mug of coffee from the counter, probably 4 hours old or so) are getting worse by the minute. 

Calhoun: Oh...well that sure is reassuring.

Dr. Kleiner: (chuckles) I don't like this anymore than you do. So, I believe it's time for me to elaborate. 

Calhoun: Please do doc, Freeman's got work to finish and I've got a shift coming up….

Dr. Kleiner: Don't worry, don't worry. I'll try to be brief. Now keep in mind the most I know is from mumbles heard from those who have been in contact with administration recently. I've also done some "snooping" around. A lot of my intel isn't exact, but I feel it should be close enough! To start, Dr. Freeman here told me 2 of your dorm mates disappeared, correct?

Calhoun: Yes sir, Gilbert and Michael.

Dr. Kleiner: Pardon?

Calhoun: Oh! Er- 3006 and 1225 

Dr. Kleiner: Yes! Them! The 1st generation clone and the new generation clone. Well I looked up their files earlier this week. 3006...I believe you called them "Micheal", finished training a week earlier, as you know. Their report was near identical to your fellow clones- emphasis on near. They were exactly 2.5% below parameters. 

Calhoun: 2.5%?? That's like, nothing! He worked perfectly fine from what I saw. He did his work, came home to eat and sleep and woke up and got back to work like the test of us. 

Dr. Kleiner: See- it sounds outrageous, but knowing black mesa I wouldn't doubt it. May I remind you I've been here way before you were even produced. Black Mesa has a history of hiding things under their ugly rug. Anyways, my apologies for getting off track! As Dr. Freeman knows, I (he chuckles) tend to do that. But yes, I believe they took Micheal away due to that percentage off, of course. I could possibly prove that if given the other one's file but I couldn't find it. Their file should've been with the other 1st generation clones. I even looked through the other generations just in case it got mixed up but I found nothing. It's all very suspicious. 

Calhoun: I can tell ya that Gilbert showed no problems at all. 

Dr. Kleiner: No doubt about it. The best theory I had was that Gilbert wasn't supposed to be here in the first place and got under their radar somehow. But that's unlikely due to the fact he's been in commission for 3 years. 

Calhoun: Listen, doc- are you a believer in the uh….theory?

Dr. Kleiner: The theory? Like ethics or-

Calhoun: No, no the theory about clone deteriorating- whatever it's called. 

Dr. Freeman: (taps on Calhoun's shoulder) [b-a-r-n-p-l-e-t-i-o-n]

Calhoun: Is that really what you scientists call it? Barnpletion? I thought it would be some sort of scientific name or something.

Dr. Freeman: (shrugs) 

Dr. Kleiner: oh yes! Barnpletion! I do believe in it, yes. (He takes another sip of coffee) I see where you're going with this. 

Calhoun: Yeah! Gilbert was a first generation clone, been here 3 years. He might've reached his time, like the theory states. He's definitely fairly self aware- and he questioned quite a bit. He'd ask me a lot about existential things. I didn't question it much at the time I guess. 

Dr. Kleiner: Well then! That helps quite a bit actually! (he rummaged around, grabbing a pen and clipboard and scribbling things down) So, how exactly self aware was he? 

Calhoun: Well, he didn't like working all the time. Which I mean, most of us don't but we don't talk about it. Cause you know, if we don't like working then they'll probably throw us out or something. But like, he'd talk about how this is all we're going to be doing all our life, just working and working. Ya know, we're made not to think things like that. Made not to question what the future is going to be like- but Gilbert moved past it.

Dr. Kleiner: (writes some more down) Okay, how often would he tell you this?

Calhoun: Mainly before curfew. He'd come back to the dorm, get some water and ask me this stuff.

Dr. Kleiner: Was Micheal apart of these conversations?

Calhoun: Well- yes. He wouldn't participate that much. I think his programming was stopping him from taking too much in, he was around a week old anyways, so he didn't have much time to become vulnerable? I don't really understand exactly how all this works, but that's the best grasp I have on it.

Dr. Kleiner: It makes sense enough! It's the best we have right now. The administration might've taken note. That'll clear it up easily, but that still raises the question of what do they do with the clone? There's no real ethical way to dispose of one isn't there? And you were also apart of those conversations, wouldn't they get rid of you too? 

Calhoun:.......

Dr. Freeman: (nervously waves his hands in rejection)

Dr. Kleiner: Oh! Pardon me I- mean, er- 

Calhoun: It's fine sir, it's a question we all have to get to eventually.(he takes a deep breath) I've only heard rumors about what happens when you're decommissioned. None of them make me feel any better….. God I hope they dont take me for all that crap.

Dr. Kleiner: I hope so too Mr. Calhoun. I hope so. (He takes a quick breath) Anyways we can't say for sure if Gilbert was decommissioned yet. I've got more to tell you, I'll be quick so you can get my protege back to work. A government representative recently came by-

Calhoun: Government? Since when? (He clears his throat) I mean when was the government here, sir?

Dr. Kleiner: Just a week ago.

Calhoun: Are we being shut down?

Dr. Kleiner: No I'm afraid the government isn't going to help us. The government usually never does, remember that Mr. Calhoun. We have to help ourselves.

Calhoun: I will try to remember that sir.

Dr. Kleiner: Sorry about that! I don't know what got into me just now (chuckles) pardon me. Anyways the representative came by, no warning to any of us. Dr. Vance talked with him. The man of course didn't tell him much, but he did ask about the rest of your clone colleagues. Not to mention this was the day of the disappearance. 

Calhoun: Okay doc, lemme get this straight. So you're saying- that the government could've taken them?

Dr. Kleiner: They would've been the perfect subjects! Complete opposites yet the same DNA, not to mention they were both considered incomplete. Either that or it's just a coincidence the representative was here and the two were decommissioned. 

Calhoun: This is- a lot if I'm being honest. It's taking me a bit to think it through…Dr. Vance, do you think we could talk to him?

Dr. Kleiner: I was going to suggest that. I'll be sure to have him stop by to talk with you two. You'd probably also want to talk with Azian, she's the one who's been collecting information on Black Mesa's messy history for years, she ought to have something. 

Calhoun: (turning to Gordon) You good with that?

Dr. Freeman: (nods)

Calhoun: Alright then, we'll stop by again whenever we can to see them. Thank you for all this- we gotta run.

Dr. Kleiner: Ah yes, I kept you too long! We did have a lot to talk about! You're a kind man, Mr. Calhoun. No offense but I don’t think your fellow clones would've done anything about this, let alone think too hard about it. 

Calhoun: Oh trust me sir, if they listened to me they would. 

Dr. Kleiner: (moves over to the door, opening it for the two) Dr. Vance should be here in the morning. I'll see you then Mr. Calhoun. (he stops Calhoun, grabbing him by the shoulder, whispering) keep an eye on Freeman. 

Calhoun: (nervously nods)

(Dr. Kleiner shuts the door, leaving them in the hallway)

Calhoun: Well, hey, we're doomed.

Dr. Freeman: (shakes his head no)

Calhoun: Well we can't stop the government! I'll be dead for sure if we even try! 

Dr. Freeman: [.....]

Calhoun: God I don't know. I'm not going to be able to sleep tonight. If I'm gone the next morning you'll know what happened.

Dr. Freeman: (frowns)

Calhoun: Yea, me too doc. (reaches to turn off the recorder)

-end of recording-